Works

From the Tales of Bonaventura des Periers, Servant to Marguerite of Valois, Queen of Navarre. By HORACE LORD ORFORD.


How anxious is the pensive parents' thought,...

Once upon a time when pigs spoke rhyme

And monkeys chewed tobacco,

And hens took snuff to make them tough,

And ducks went quack, quack, quack, O!

All the birds of the air came to the magpie and asked...

A certain maid, as proud as fair,
A husband thought to find
Exactly to her mind -
Well-form'd and young, genteel in air,
Not cold nor jealous; - mark this well.
Whoe'er would wed this dainty belle...

The Text is from the Percy Folio MS. The only other known text is a fragment from Sir Walter Scott's recollection, printed in C. K. Sharpe's Ballad Book.

...

So look the mornings when the sun
Paints them with fresh vermilion:
So cherries blush, and Kathern pears,
And apricots in youthful years:
So corals look more lovely red,
And rubies lately polished:...

Within a vale, each infant year,
When earliest larks first carol free,
To humble shepherds cloth appear
A wondrous maiden, fair to see.
Not born within that lowly place...

How sweet are Spring wild flowers! They grow past the counting.
How sweet are the wood-paths that thread through the grove!
But sweeter than all the wild flowers of the mountain...

She wandered so young on the shore around,
Her thoughts were by naught on earth now bound.
Soon came there a painter, his art he plied
Above the tide,
In shadow wide, -...

A certain damsel of considerable pride made up her mind to choose a husband who should be young, well-built, and handsome; of agreeable manners and - note these two points - neither cold nor jealous. Moreover, she held it neces...

The clouds fast gather,
The forest-oaks roar
A maiden is sitting
Beside the green shore,
The billows are breaking with might, with might,
And she sighs aloud in the darkling night,...

How grave thou loookest, loved one! wherefore so?

Thy marble image seems a type of thee;

Like it, no sign of life thou giv'st to me;
Compared with thee, the stone appears to glow.
...

Good-morning, sun, 'mid the leaves so green -
Mind of youth in the dales' deep reaches,
Smile that brightens their somber speeches,
Heaven's gold on our earth-dust seen!
...

Seven long years has the desert rain
Dropped on the clods that hide thy face;
Seven long years of sorrow and pain
I have thought of thy burial-place.

Thought of thy fate in the distant west,...

Of all the swains that meet at eve
Upon the green to play,
The shepherd is the lad for me,
And I'll ne'er say him nay.
Though father glowers beneath his hat,
And mother talks of bed,...

Only you'd have me speak.
Whether to speak
Or whether to be silent is all one;
Whether to sleep and in my dreaming front
Her small scared face forlorn; whether to wake...

Rolling through the gloomy gorges, comes the roaring southern blast,
With a sound of torrents flying, like a routed army, past,
And, beneath the shaggy forelands, strange fantastic forms of surf...

Maid of Jerusalem, by the Dead Sea,
I wandered all sorrowing thinking of thee,--
Thy city in ruins, thy kindred deplored,
All fallen and lost by the Ottoman's sword.
...

I hear that maiden still
Of Keinton Mandeville
Singing, in flights that played
As wind-wafts through us all,
Till they made our mood a thrall
To their aery rise and fall,
"Should he upbraid."
...

That was the proud woman, Naaman's wife.
Basking at noon under the Syrian fans,
While Naaman, the leprous mighty captain,
Proud glowing flesh now silver-skinned and tainted,...

O lovers' eyes are sharp to see,
And lovers' ears in hearing;
And love in life's extremity
Can lend an hour of cheering.
Disease had been in Mary's bower,
And slow decay from mourning,...