Works

To his book's end this last line he'd have placed:
Jocund his muse was, but his life was chaste.

They were 'ratty' they were hooted by the meanest and the least,
When they woke the Drum of Glory long ago in London East.
They were often mobbed by hoodlums, they were few, but unafraid,...

We're foot, slog, slog, slog, sloggin' over Africa,
Foot, foot, foot, foot, sloggin' over Africa,
(Boots, boots, boots, boots, movin' up and down again!)
There's no discharge in the war!
...

We've travelled per Joe Gardiner, a humping of our swag
In the country of the Gidgee and Belar.
We've swum the Di'mantina with our raiment in a bag,
And we've travelled per superior motor car,...

1.
Little Bo-Peep, she lost her sheep,
And didn't know where to find them;
Let them alone, they'll all come home
And bring their tails behind them.

2.
Little Bo-Peep fell fast asleep,...

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep,
And couldn't tell where to find 'em.
Let 'em alone, and they'll come home,
And bring their tails behind 'em.

Parvula Bopipias amissos qu'ritat agnos,...

March, march, Ettrick and Teviotdale,
Why the deil dinna ye march forward in order!
March, march, Eskdale and Liddesdale,
All the Blue Bonnets are bound for the Border.
Many a banner spread,...

Opening salvo in "The Bush Controversy".



I am back from up the country, very sorry that I went,
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent;...

Methought I stood among the stars alone,
Watching a grey parched orb which onward flew
Half blinded by the dusty winds that blew,
Empty as Death and barren as a stone,...

A Preface and a Piracy


Prologue

Of borrow'd plumes I take the sin,
My extracts will apply
To some few silly songs which in
These pages scatter'd lie.
...

FROM THE FRENCH

Some of your hurts you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived,
But what torments of grief you endured
From evils which never arrived!

St. Bototlph's Town! Hither across the plains
And fens of Lincolnshire, in garb austere,
There came a Saxon monk, and founded here
A Priory, pillaged by marauding Danes,...

READ IN MUSIC HALL, JANUARY 1, 1863

The word of the Lord by night
To the watching Pilgrims came,
As they sat by the seaside,
And filled their hearts with flame.
...

Baby's brain is tired of thinking
On the Wherefore and the Whence;
Baby's precious eyes are blinking
With incipient somnolence.

Little hands are weary turning
Heavy leaves of lexicon;...

The rocky nook with hilltops three
Looked eastward from the farms,
And twice each day the flowing sea
Took Boston in its arms;
The men of yore were stout and poor,
And sailed for bread to every shore....

Proud of her clustering spires, her new-built towers,
Our Venice, stolen from the slumbering sea,
A sister's kindliest greeting wafts to thee,
Rose of Val d' Arno, queen of all its flowers!...

He follows me no more, I said, nor stands
Beside me. And I wake these later days
In an April mood, a wonder light and free.
The vision is gone, but gone the constant pain...

Go thou to thy learned task,
I stay with the flowers of Spring:
Do thou of the Ages ask
What me the Hours will bring.

And because you love me
think you you do not hate me?
Ha, since you love me to ecstasy
it follows you hate me to ecstasy.

Because when you hear me
go down the road outside the house...

Immured in Bothwell's Towers, at times the Brave
(So beautiful is the Clyde) forgot to mourn
The liberty they lost at Bannockburn.
Once on those steeps I roamed at large, and have...