Works

THE Lombard princes oft pervade my mind;
The present tale Boccace relates you'll find;
Agiluf was the noble monarch's name;
Teudelingua he married, beauteous dame,...

Down in the mullein meadow
The lusty thistle springs,
The butterflies go criss-cross,
The lonesome catbird sings,

The alderbush is flaunting
Her blossoms white as snow -...

Around me the images of thirty years:
An ambush; pilgrims at the water-side;
Casement upon trial, half hidden by the bars,
Guarded; Griffith staring in hysterical pride;...

Say a mass for my soul's repose, my brother,
Say a mass for my soul's repose, I need it,
Lovingly lived we, the sons of one mother,
Mine was the sin, but I pray you not heed it.
...

When spring, to woods and wastes around,
Brought bloom and joy again,
The murdered traveller's bones were found,
Far down a narrow glen.

The fragrant birch, above him, hung
Her tassels in the sky;...

My wife is dead and I am free!
And I can guzzle all I want.
When I came home without a cent
Her crying knifed the heart in me.

I am as happy as a king;
The air is pure, the sky divine......

Come, all you jolly natives, and I'll relate to you
Some of my observations'adventures, too, a few.
I've travelled about the country for miles, full many a score,...

In the deepest nights of Winter
To the Muses kind oft cried I:
"Not a ray of morn is gleaming,
Not a sign of daylight breaking;
Bring, then, at the fitting moment,...

The rooster is a brainless dude, although he sports a crest,
The hen's an awful fool we know, though hen-eggs are the best;
She'll flutter, cackling, anywhere save through a gate or door,...

The Muse said, Let us sing a little song
Wherein no hint of wrong,
No echo of the great world need, or pain,
Shall mar the strain.
Lock fast the swinging portal of thy heart;
Keep sympathy apart....

Where the pines with the eagles are nestled in rifts,
And the torrent leaps down to the surges,
I have followed her, clambering over the clifts,
By the chasms and moon-haunted verges....

Early one day, the Muse, when eagerly bent on adornment,
Follow'd a swift-running streamlet, the quietest nook by it seeking.
Quickly and noisily flowing, the changeful surface distorted...

AN ANECDOTE OF HELICON.

Once the nine all weeping came
To the god of song
"Oh, papa!" they there exclaim
"Hear our tale of wrong!

"Young ink-lickers swarm about
Our dear Helicon;...

THROUGH field and wood to stray,
And pipe my tuneful lay,

'Tis thus my days are pass'd;
And all keep tune with me,
And move in harmony,

And so on, to the last.
...

Awake, my Muse! awake each slumb'ring string,
And (mighty subject!) of a Mushroom sing,
Fair to the eye, and pleasant to the taste;
Charm'd by the note, a pigmy group, in haste,...

The mushroom is the elf of plants,
At evening it is not;
At morning in a truffled hut
It stops upon a spot

As if it tarried always;
And yet its whole career
Is shorter than a snake's delay,...

Lifelong to be
Seemed the fair colour of the time;
That there was standing shadowed near
A spirit who sang to the gentle chime
Of the self-struck notes, I did not hear,
I did not see.
...

"Look here," said Rose, with laughing eyes,
"Within this box, by magic hid,
"A tuneful Sprite imprisoned lies,
"Who sings to me whene'er he's bid.
"Tho' roving once his voice and wing,...

There are three ways in which men take
One's money from his purse,
And very hard it is to tell
Which of the three is worse;
But all of them are bad enough
To make a body curse.
...

Thou'rt gone like the meteor that blazed in the sky,
And the spot thou hast smiled upon knows thee no more,
Is there no one that heaves o'er thy ashes a sigh?
Is there none to regret? Is there none to deplore?...