Works

A juggler once had travelled thorough
Each city, market-town, and borough;
You'd think, so far his art transcended,
Old Nick upon his fingers tended.

Vice heard his name: she read his bill,...

How cold are thy baths, Apollo!
Cried the African monarch, the splendid,
As down to his death in the hollow
Dark dungeons of Rome he descended,
Uncrowned, unthroned, unattended;...

Here's Uncle Jujuba,
Who has a sweet tooth;
He used to eat sugar-
Cane oft in his youth,

In South Carolina,
Where sugar-cane grows,
From which they make sugar,
As everyone knows.

[NOTE. - The following imitation of Cowper's Boadicea was written in 1858; most of its predictions have since been fulfilled.]

When the Cambridge flower-show ended,
And the flowers and guests were gone,...

We quarreled that morning,
For he was sixty - five, and I was thirty,
And I was nervous and heavy with the child
Whose birth I dreaded.
I thought over the last letter written me...

I rode one evening with Count Maddalo
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,...

Toward the last
The truth of others was untruth to me;
The justice of others injustice to me;
Their reasons for death, reasons with me for life;
Their reasons for life, reasons with me for death;...

Put on thy holy filletings, and so
To th' temple with the sober midwife go.
Attended thus, in a most solemn wise,
By those who serve the child-bed mysteries,...

Thy azure robe I did behold
As airy as the leaves of gold,
Which, erring here, and wandering there,
Pleas'd with transgression ev'rywhere:
Sometimes 'twould pant, and sigh, and heave,...

Sing; how 'a would sing!
How 'a would raise the tune
When we rode in the waggon from harvesting
By the light o' the moon!

Dance; how 'a would dance!
If a fiddlestring did but sound...

How did the party go in Portman Square?
I cannot tell you; Juliet was not there.

And how did Lady Gaster's party go?
Juliet was next me and I do not know.

(With Mr. Dicksee's Picture)

Take 'this of Juliet and her Romeo,'
Dear Heart of mine, for though yon budding sky
Yearns o'er Verona, and so long ago
That kiss was kissed; yet surely Thou and I,...

In old-world nursery vacant now of children,
With posied walls, familiar, fair, demure,
And facing southward o'er romantic streets,
Sits yet and gossips winter's dark away...

Ten sous. . . . I think one can sing best of poverty when one is holding it at arm's length. I'm sure that when I wrote these lines, fortune had for a moment tweaked me by the nose. To-night, however, I am truly down to ten sou...

Now 'tis the time when, tall,
The long blue torches of the bellflower gleam
Among the trees; and, by the wooded stream,
In many a fragrant ball,
Blooms of the button-bush fall.
...

'Twas Jack-o'-Winter hailed it first,
But now more timid angels sing,
For what dull ear can fail to hear
Afar the fluting of the Spring?

In all free spaces of the land...

Between two pillared clouds of gold
The beautiful gates of evening swung --
And far and wide from flashing fold
The half-furled banners of light, that hung
O'er green of wood and gray of wold...

Hail, glorious morning of Columbia's birth,
Celestial dawn of freedom! There shall be
In recognition of thy wondrous worth
By mighty millions this side of the sea,...

O queenly month of indolent repose!
I drink thy breath in sips of rare perfume,
As in thy downy lap of clover-bloom
I nestle like a drowsy child and doze
The lazy hours away. The zephyr throws...

Long, long ago, it seems, this summer morn
That pale-browed April passed with pensive tread
Through the frore woods, and from its frost-bound bed
Woke the arbutus with her silver horn;...