Works

The boats of Newhaven and Folkestone and Dover
To Dieppe and Boulogne and to Calais cross over;
And in each of those runs there is not a square yard
Where the English and French haven't fought and fought hard!...

[14]
Sherman's advance through the Carolinas.
(February, 1865.)


So strong to suffer, shall we be
Weak to contend, and break
The sinews of the Oppressor's knee
That grinds upon the neck?...

The Text is taken from Buchan's MSS., the Scots version being rather more condensed than the corresponding English broadside. There is a reference to this ballad in Munday's Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington (1598); but ea...

Through the dark wood
There came to me a friend,
Bringing in his cold hands
Two words - 'The End.'

His face was fair
As fading autumn flowers,
And the lost joy
Of unforgotten hours....

In spreading mantle to my chin conceald,

I trod the rocky path, so steep and grey,

Then to the wintry plain I bent my way
Uneasily, to flight my bosom steel'd.
...

"Emam tua carmina sanus?"--MARTIAL.

F. OF H. I want a verse. It gives you little pains;--
You just sit down, and draw upon your brains.

Come, now, be amiable.

R. To hear you talk,...

I had some friends, but I dreamed that they were dead,
Who used to dance with lanterns round a little boy in bed;
Green and white lanterns that waved to and fro:...

We were friends, and the warmest of friends, he and I,
Each glance was a language that broke from the heart,
No cloudlet swept over the realm of the sky,
And beneath it we swore that we never would part.
...

My thoughts are all in yonder town,
Where, wept by many tears,
To-day my mother's friend lays down
The burden of her years.

True as in life, no poor disguise
Of death with her is seen,...

The battlefield behind us,
And night loomed on the track;
The Friends of Fallen Fortunes
Were riding at my back.
Save those who lay face upward
Upon the sodden plain,
Not one of all I'd trusted...

A Bull Frog, according to rule,
Sat a-croak in his usual pool:
And he laughed in his heart
As a Lion did start
In a fright from the brink like a fool.

Imaginary Fears Are The Worst

I went in the fields with the leisure I got,
The stranger might smile but I heeded him not,
The hovel was ready to screen from a shower,
And the book in my pocket was read in an hour.
...

Now have I left the world and all its tears,
And high above the sunny cloud-banks fly,
Alone in all this vast and lonely sky -
This limpid space in which the myriad spheres...

Be kind and tender to the Frog,
And do not call him names,
As "Slimy skin," or "Polly-wog,"
Or likewise "Ugly James,"
Or "Gap-a-grin," or "Toad-gone-wrong,"
Or "Bill Bandy-knees":...

Who am I but the Frog - the Frog!
My realm is the dark bayou,
And my throne is the muddy and moss-grown log
That the poison-vine clings to -
And the blacksnakes slide in the slimy tide...

[1]

They to bamboozle are inclined,
Saith Merlin,[2] who bamboozled are.
The word, though rather unrefined,
Has yet an energy we ill can spare;
So by its aid I introduce my tale....

A Pool was once congeal'd with frost;
The frogs, in its deep waters lost,

No longer dared to croak or spring;
But promised, being half asleep,
If suffer'd to the air to creep,
...

I.

Breathers of wisdom won without a quest,
Quaint uncouth dreamers, voices high and strange,
Flutists of lands where beauty hath no change,
And wintery grief is a forgotten guest,...

[1]

A certain commonwealth aquatic,
Grown tired of order democratic,
By clamouring in the ears of Jove, effected
Its being to a monarch's power subjected....

The tenant of a bog,
An envious little frog,
Not bigger than an egg,
A stately bullock spies,
And, smitten with his size,
Attempts to be as big.
With earnestness and pains,...