Works

The Celt in all his variants from Builth to Ballyhoo,
His mental processes are plain, one knows what he will do,
And can logically predicate his finish by his start;...

Discord has always reigned in the universe; of this our world furnishes a thousand different instances, for with us the sinister goddess has many subjects.
...

DAME FORTUNE often loves a laugh to raise,
And, playing off her tricks and roguish ways,
Instead of giving us what we desire,
Mere quid pro quo permits us to acquire....

When I have noticed how man acts at times, and how, in a thousand ways, he comports himself just as the lower animals do, I have often said to myself that the lord of these lower orders has no fewer faults than his subjects....

A pond of filth a sewer flows into,
Around whose edge the evil ragweeds crowd,
Poison in every breath; and, cloud on cloud,
Insects that sing and sting, the pool's fierce spew:...

In the face of the sun are great thunderbolts hurled,
And the storm-clouds have shut out its light;
But a Rainbow of Promise now shines on the world,
And the universe thrills at the sight.
...

I borrow De Quincey's Confessions
of an Opium Eater, the aforementioned
an account of that singular
Oriental vice,
whereupon misplacing the volume
in transit
from the checkpoint, I attempt...

Part I

What dire Offence from am'rous Causes springs,
What mighty Contests rise from trivial Things,
I sing, This Verse to C---, Muse! is due;
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchfafe to view:...

An uncommonly small rat was watching an uncommonly big elephant and sneering at the slowness of his steps.
...

The ancients had a legend which told of a certain rat who, weary of the anxieties of this world, retired to a cheese, therein to live in peace. Profound solitude reigned around the hermit. He worked so hard with his feet and hi...

"I trust we shall part as we met, in peace and charity. My last payment to you paid your salary up to the 1st of this month. Since that, I owe you for one month, which, being a long month, of thirty-one days, amounts, as near a...

The day after Christmas, young Albert
Were what's called, confined to his bed,
With a tight kind of pain in his stummick
And a light feeling up in his head.

His parents were all in a fluster...

This man has taken my Husband's life
And laid my Brethren low,
No sister indeed, were I, no wife,
To pardon and let him go.

Yet why does he look so young and slim
As he weak and wounded lies?...

'There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only Poets know'; 'twas rightly said;
Whom could the Muses else allure to tread
Their smoothest paths, to wear their lightest chains?...

June, 1865

Armies he's seen--the herds of war,
But never such swarms of men
As now in the Nineveh of the North--
How mad the Rebellion then!

And yet but dimly he divines...

Tune - "There art few gude fellows when Willie's awa."


I.

By yon castle wa', at the close of the day,
I heard a man sing, though his head it was gray;...

"There!" said a Stripling, pointing with meet pride
Towards a low roof with green trees half concealed,
"Is Mosgiel Farm; and that's the very field
Where Burns ploughed up the Daisy." Far and wide...

For each one body that i' th' earth is sown,
There's an uprising but of one for one;
But for each grain that in the ground is thrown,
Threescore or fourscore spring up thence for one:...

Oh, have you heard what hapt of late?
If not, come lend an ear,
While sad I state the piteous fate
Of the Reverend Pamphleteer.

All praised his skilful jockeyship,
Loud rung the Tory cheer,...

At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,
Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years:
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard
In the silence of morning the song of the Bird....