Works

To my quick ear the leaves conferred;
The bushes they were bells;
I could not find a privacy
From Nature's sentinels.

In cave if I presumed to hide,
The walls began to tell;...

I can write no stately proem
As a prelude to my lay;
From a poet to a poem
I would dare to say.

For if of these fallen petals
One to you seem fair,
Love will waft it till it settles...

My dear Next Christmas, -
It is an excellent journalistic thing,
Not to say a poetical thing,
To be first in the field.
Behold me, therefore, advancing
At the head of that motley army...

Your paths were all unknown to us:
We were so far away from you,
We mixed in thought your spirit thus--
With whiteness, stars of gold, and dew.

The mighty mother nourished you:...

What fate decreed, time now has made us see,
A renovation of the west by thee.
That preternatural fever, which did threat
Death to our country, now hath lost his heat,...

A child,
Curious and innocent,
Slips from his Nurse, and rejoicing
Loses himself in the Fair.

Thro' the jostle and din
Wandering, he revels,
Dreaming, desiring, possessing;...

On he goes, the little one,
Bud of the universe,
Pediment of life.

Setting off somewhere, apparently.
Whither away, brisk egg?
...

Most tangible of all the gods that be,
O Santa Claus - our own since Infancy!
As first we scampered to thee - now, as then,
Take us as children to thy heart again.

Be wholly good to us, just as of old:...

Blithe dreams arise to greet us,
And life feels clean and new,
For the old love comes to meet us
In the dawning and the dew.
O'erblown with sunny shadows,
O'ersped with winds at play,...

There has been many a grander deed since man had life to give,
And thousands have gone to certain death, eyes open, that men might live;...

Since to the country first I came,
I have lost my former flame;
And, methinks, I not inherit,
As I did, my ravish'd spirit.
If I write a verse or two,
'Tis with very much ado;...

Far from our home by Grasmere's quiet Lake,
From the Vale's peace which all her fields partake,
Here on the bleakest point of Cumbria's shore
We sojourn stunned by Ocean's ceaseless roar;...

I have my laurel chaplet on my head
If, 'mongst these many numbers to be read,
But one by you be hugg'd and cherished.

Peruse my measures thoroughly, and where
Your judgment finds a guilty poem, there...

As, when a lofty pile is raised,
We never hear the workmen praised,
Who bring the lime, or place the stones.
But all admire Inigo Jones:
So, if this pile of scatter'd rhymes...

Here's to stern Critics!
May they some day learn
The forward lookout's
Better than the stern!

My dear Cambridge,
You have pulled it off,
As all men know.
This ode
Will make Oxford pretty sick;
But the spoils are to the victor.
If Oxford had rowed better
And won,...

Faire stood the Wind for France,
When we our Sayles aduance,
Nor now to proue our chance,
Longer will tarry;
But putting to the Mayne,
At Kaux, the Mouth of Sene,
With all his Martiall Trayne,...

[Bought with the proceeds of Readings of "Les Ch'timents" during the Siege of Paris.]

[1872.]


Thou deadly crater, moulded by my muse,
Cast thou thy bronze into my bowed and wounded heart,...

(Before his Retirement)

My dear Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, -
The devotion of one's life
To the service of the Muses
And the neglect of golden opportunities,
Is not without its compensations,...

"Lo I, the man who erst the Muse did ask
Her deepest notes to swell the Patriot's meeds,
Am now enforst a far unfitter task
For cap and gown to leave my minstrel weeds,"...