Works

PREFACE
...

The bee is not afraid of me,
I know the butterfly;
The pretty people in the woods
Receive me cordially.

The brooks laugh louder when I come,
The breezes madder play....

Her arms across her breast she laid;
She was more fair than words can say;
Barefooted came the beggar maid
Before the king Cophetua.
In robe and crown the king stept down,...

Please your Grace, from out your store
Give an alms to one that's poor,
That your mickle may have more.
Black I'm grown for want of meat,
Give me then an ant to eat,
Or the cleft ear of a mouse...

Along the dark and silent night,
With my lantern and my light
And the tinkling of my bell,
Thus I walk, and this I tell:
Death and dreadfulness call on
To the general session;...

Man is a bird:
He rises on fine wings
Into the Heaven's clear light;
He flies away and sings,
There's music in his flight.

Man is a bird:
In swiftest speed he burns,...

What are the mortal facts
With which we deal? The man is thirty years,
Most vital, in a richness physical,
Of musical heart and feeling; and the woman
Is twenty-eight, a cradle warm and rich...

A Legend of the Talmud.


I.


When angels visit earth, the messengers
Of God's decree, they come as lightning, wind:
Before the throne, they all are living fire....

Inscribed To Lord Carteret[1] (Verses Written During Lord Carteret's Administration Of Ireland)
1724

Gratior et pulcro veniens in corpore virtus. - VIRG., Aen., v, 344.
...

Francois Xavier Auguste was a gay Mousquetaire,
The Pride of the Camp, the delight of the Fair:
He'd a mien so distingu and so dbonnaire,
And shrugg'd with a grace so recherch and rare,...

From this bleeding hand of mine,
Take this sprig of Eglantine:
Which, though sweet unto your smell,
Yet the fretful briar will tell,
He who plucks the sweets, shall prove
Many thorns to be in love.

He sat by the dusty way-side,
With weary, hopeless mien,
On his furrowed brow the traces
Of care and want were seen;
With outstretched hand and with bowed-down head
He asked the passers-by for bread....

There is a poor blind man, who, every day,
In summer sunshine, or in winter's rain,
Duly as tolls the bell, to the high fane
Explores, with faltering footsteps, his dark way,...

Though she depart, a vision flitting,
If I these thoughts in words exhale:
I love you, you blonde maiden, sitting
Within your pure white beauty's veil.
I love you for your blue eyes dreaming,...

Tune - "To daunton me."


I.

The blude red rose at Yule may blaw,
The simmer lilies bloom in snaw,
The frost may freeze the deepest sea;
But an auld man shall never daunton me....

Sweet are the hours when roseate spring
With health and joy salutes the day.
When zephyr, borne on wanton wing,
Soft whispering, wakes the blushing May.
Sweet are the hours, yet not so sweet...

This is the path he used to take,
That ended at a rose-porched door:
He takes it now for oldtime's sake;
And love of yore.

The blue mertensia, by the stone,...

Above the ashes straight and tall,
Through ferns with moisture dripping,
I climb beneath the sandstone wall,
My feet on mosses slipping.

Like ramparts round the valley's edge...

The bone that has no marrow;
What ultimate for that?
It is not fit for table,
For beggar, or for cat.

A bone has obligations,
A being has the same;
A marrowless assembly...

The Text is given from Allan Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany, where it first appeared in the tenth edition (1740) in vol. iv. pp. 356-7. Child had not seen this, and gave his text from the eleventh edition of 1750. There is, howe...