Works

Come to the casement, we'll watch the snow
Softly descending on earth below,
Fairer and whiter than spotless down
Or the pearls that gleam in a monarch's crown,
Clothing the earth in its robe's bright flow;...

Folks has be'n to town, and Sahry
Fetched 'er home a pet canary,
And of all the blame', contrary,
Aggervatin' things alive!
I love music - that I love it
When it's free - and plenty of it;...

A song of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms'a song of the soil of fields.

A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork;...

Let it not your wonder move,
Less your laughter, that I love.
Though I now write fifty years,
I have had, and have, my peers;
Poets, though divine, are men,
Some have lov'd as old again....

(Grandpapa Loquitur.)


You don't know Froissart now, young folks.
This age, I think, prefers recitals
Of high-spiced crime, with "slang" for jokes,
And startling titles;
...

A charm invests a face
Imperfectly beheld, --
The lady dare not lift her veil
For fear it be dispelled.

But peers beyond her mesh,
And wishes, and denies, --
Lest interview annul a want...

If so be a toad be laid
In a sheep's-skin newly flay'd,
And that tied to man, 'twill sever
Him and his affections ever.

She had been told that God made all the stars
That twinkled up in heaven, and now she stood
Watching the coming of the twilight on,
As if it were a new and perfect world,...

What will it please you, my darling, hereafter to be?
Fame upon land will you look for, or glory by sea?
Gallant your life will be always, and all of it free.
...

THE YEAR OF THE TROUBLE IN LANCASHIRE.

The skies are pale, the trees are stiff,
The earth is dull and old;
The frost is glittering as if
The very sun were cold....

Early on Christmas Day,
Love, as awake I lay,
And heard the Christmas bells ring sweet and clearly,
My heart stole through the gloom
Into your silent room,...

De win' is blowin' wahmah,
An hit's blowin' f'om de bay;
Dey's a so't o' mist a-risin'
All erlong de meddah way;
Dey ain't a hint o' frostin'
On de groun' ner in de sky,...

The hills hang woods around, where green, below
Dark, breezy boughs of beech-trees, mats the moss,
Crisp with the brittle hulls of last year's nuts;
The water hums one bar there; and a glow...

Since Anna, whose bounty thy merits had fed,
Ere her own was laid low, had exalted thy head:
And since our good queen to the wise is so just,
To raise heads for such as are humbled in dust,...

Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less
Here, far away, than when I tarried near;
I even smile old smiles with listlessness -
Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.
...

My forest brave, my Red-skin love, farewell;
We may not meet to-morrow; who can tell
What mighty ills befall our little band,
Or what you'll suffer from the white man's hand?...

The present Lord Kenyon (the Peer who writes letters,
For which the waste-paper folks much are his debtors)
Hath one little oddity well worth reciting,
Which puzzleth observers even more than his writing....

Prologue

I heard an angel speak last night,
And he said "Write!
Write a Nation's curse for me,
And send it over the Western Sea."

I faltered, taking up the word:
"Not so, my lord!...

A curse upon each king who leads his state,
No matter what his plea, to this foul game,
And may it end his wicked dynasty,
And may he die in exile and black shame.
...

Lady, very fair are you,
And your eyes are very blue,
And your hose;
And your brow is like the snow,
And the various things you know,
Goodness knows.

And the rose-flush on your cheek,...