Works

Knight and Troubadour, to his Lady the Beautiful Maenz of Martagnac

The burden of the sometime years,
That once my soul did overweigh,
Falls from me, with its griefs and fears,...

Beside a monstrous Jewish whore I lay
One night, we were two corpses side by side,
And came to dream beside this hired bride
Of beauty my desire had turned away.

I saw again her native majesty,...

Beside the idle summer sea
And in the vacant summer days,
Light Love came fluting down the ways,
Where you were loitering with me.

Who has not welcomed, even as we,...

Tune - "The sweet lass that lo'es me."


I.

O leeze me on my spinning-wheel,
O leeze me on the rock and reel;
Frae tap to tae that cleeds me bien,
And haps me fiel and warm at e'en!...

'Twas April when she came to town;
The birds had come; the bees were swarming.
Her name, she said, was Doctor Brown;
I saw at once that she was charming.
She took a cottage tinted green,...

When life looks drear and lonely, love,
And pleasant fancies flee,
Then will the Muses only, love,
Bestow a thought on me!
Mine is a harp which Pleasure, love,
To waken strives in vain;...

The Text is from Sharpe's Ballad Book. A parody of this ballad, concerning an episode of the end of the seventeenth century, shows it to have been popular not long after its making. In England it has become a nursery rhyme (see...

In the gruesome night and the wintry weather,
I watched two dear friends die,
And I buried them both in one grave together.
Oh! who is so sad as I?
For the old love, and the old year,...

O throbbing heart, be still!
Canst thou not bear
The heavy dash of Memory's troubled tide,
Long sternly pent, but broken forth again,
Sweeping all barriers ruthlessly aside,...

We went a day's excursion to the stream,
Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam,
And I did not know
That life would show,
However it might flower, no finer glow.
...

Fools are they who never know
How the times away do go;
But for us, who wisely see
Where the bounds of black death be,
Let's live merrily, and thus
Gratify the Genius.

A Sequel


I saw again the spirits on a day,
Where on the earth in mournful case they lay;
Five porches were there, and a pool, and round,
Huddling in blankets, strewn upon the ground,...

O ye who sail Potomac's even tide
To Vernon's shades, our Chieftain's hallowed mound;
Or who at distant shrines high paeans sound
In Alfred's cult, old England's morning pride;...

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea. Matthew 2:1.


Bethlehem, where Christ was born,
Bethlehem, the Christian's star!
Bethlehem's prophetic morn
Echoed ages from afar....

As I was going to Bethlehem-town,
Upon the earth I cast me down
All underneath a little tree
That whispered in this wise to me:
"Oh, I shall stand on Calvary
And bear what burthen saveth thee!"
...

She will not die, they say,
She will but put her beauty by
And hie away.

Oh, but her beauty gone, how lonely
Then will seem all reverie,
How black to me!

All things will sad be made...

Dream not of love, to think it like
What waking love may prove to be,
For I dreamed so and broke my heart,
When my false lover slighted me.

Love, like to flowers, is sweet when green;...

Draw up the papers, lawyer, and make 'em good and stout;
For things at home are crossways, and Betsey and I are out.
We, who have worked together so long as man and wife,...

I have loved you all my days,
Betsie Brown,
And I'll never cease to praise
Betsie Brown;
Still must I break love's tie,
To act a patriot part,
But I'll yield thee, as I die,...

Better in bitterest agony to lie,
Before Thy throne,
Than through much increase to be lifted up on high,
And stand alone.

Better by one sweet soul, constant and true,
To be beloved,...