Works

[Midnight.]

First, two white arms that held him very close,
And ever closer as he drew him back
Reluctantly, the loose gold-colored hair
A thousand delicate fibres reaching out...

In our dainty little kitchen,
Where my aproned wife is queen
Over all the tin-pan people,
In a realm exceeding clean,
Oft I like to loiter, watching
While she mixes things for tea;...

I have sipped, with drooping lashes,
Dreamy draughts of Verzenay;
I have flourished brandy-smashes
In the wildest sort of way;
I have joked with "Tom and Jerry"
Till wee hours ayont the twal' -...

Where are they all departed,
The loved ones of my youth,
Those emblems white of purity,
Sweet innocence and truth?
When day-light drives the darkness,
When evening melts to night,...

I knew a little boy, not very long ago,
Who was as bright and happy as any boy you know.
He had an only fault, and you will all agree
That from a fault like this a boy himself might free.
...

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....

I heard such a curious story
Of Santa Claus: once, so they say,
He set out to see what people were kind,
Before he took presents their way.
'This year I will give but to givers,...

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.
...

From Hull, Halifax, and Hell, good Lord deliver us.
A Yorkshire Proverb.


It's hard when fowks can't finnd their wark
Wheer they've bin bred an' born;
When I were young I awlus thowt...

The Text of this half-carol, half-ballad is taken from the Sloane MS. 2593, whence we get Saint Stephen and King Herod and other charming pieces like the well-known carol, 'I syng of a mayden.' It is written in eight long lines...

After W. W.

An adventure of the Author's, and one designed to show that grievances may be met with in the cottages of the humblest, and may take the most unexpected forms.

...

God made him, like the angels, innocent,
And made a garden marvellously fair,
With arbors green, sun-kissed and dew-besprent,
And fruits and flowers whose fragrance filled the air;...

Green Tunisia, I have come to you as a lover
On my brow, a rose and a book
For I am the Damascene whose profession is passion
Whose singing turns the herbs green
A Damascene moon travels through my blood...

The Text.--The earliest complete text, here given, was printed by William Copland between 1548 and 1568: there are extant two printed fragments, one printed by John Byddell in 1536, and the other in a type older than Copland's....

"Dumque virent genua
Et decet, obducta solvatur fonte senectus."

The muse of boyhood's fervid hour
Grows tame as skies get chill and hazy;
Where once she sought a passion-flower,...

We sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, "A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,...

I was crushed between Altgeld and Armour.
I lost many friends, much time and money
Fighting for Altgeld whom Editor Whedon
Denounced as the candidate of gamblers and anarchists....

I wish I'd never gone to board
In that house where I met
The touring lady from abroad,
Who mocks my nightmares yet.
I wish, I wish that she had saved
Her news of what she'd seen,...

Though Summer walks the world to-day
With corn-crowned hours for her guard,
Her thoughts have clad themselves in gray,
And wait in Autumn's weedy yard.

And where the larkspur and the phlox...