Works

Why be at pains that I should know
You sought not me?
Do breezes, then, make features glow
So rosily?
Come, the lit port is at our back,
And the tumbling sea;
Elsewhere the lampless uphill track...

Why does she so long delay?
Night is waning fast away;
Thrice have I my lamp renewed,
Watching here in solitude,
Where can she so long delay?
Where, so long delay?
...

Why do they prate of the blessings of peace? we have made them a curse,
Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own;
And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse...

There was a tracker in the force
Of wondrous sight (the story ran):,
He never failed to track a horse,
He never failed to find his man.

They brought him from a distant town...

Why should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly-fisher's wrist
Turn to a drunken journalist;
A girl that knew all Dante once
Live to bear children to a dunce;...

"Why sit'st thou by that ruin'd hall,
Thou aged carle so stern and grey?
Dost thou its former pride recall,
Or ponder how it pass'd away?"

"Know'st thou not me?" the Deep Voice cried;...

In days gone by, when cows could fly
And goblins rode on bears;
When fairies danced upon the green
And giants moped in lairs,
There lived alone upon a shelf
A tinsie, winsie little elf.
...

Why was Cupid a boy,
And why a boy was he?
He should have been a girl,
For aught that I can see.

For he shoots with his bow,
And the girl shoots with her eye,...

O reverend sir, I do declare
It drives me most to frenzy,
To think of you a-lying there
Down sick with influenzy.

A body'd thought it was enough
To mourn your wife's departer,...

These children of the sun which summer brings
As pastoral minstrels in her merry train
Pipe rustic ballads upon busy wings
And glad the cotters' quiet toils again....

A sheep lay tethered, and her life
Fast ebbing on the butcher's knife;
The silly flock looked on with dread.
A wild boar, passing them, then said:
"O cowards! cowards! will nought make...

Our Mr. Jiggs was certainly an estimable youth,
A pillar of propriety, a champion of truth;
He had a good position in a warehouse in the town;
A staunch church-worker, he became a layman of renown.
...

That love of letters which is as the light
Of deathless verse, intense, ineffable,
Hath made this scholar's nature like the white,
Pure Roman soul of whom the poets tell.
...

He came to the desert of London town
Gray miles long;
He wandered up and he wandered down,
Singing a quiet song.
He came to the desert of London town,
Mirk miles broad;...

Oh, well may Essex sit forlorn
Beside her sea-blown shore;
Her well beloved, her noblest born,
Is hers in life no more!

No lapse of years can render less
Her memory's sacred claim;...

Air - "The Sutor's Dochter."




I.

Wilt thou be my dearie?
When sorrow wrings thy gentle heart,
Wilt thou let me cheer thee?
By the treasure of my soul,...

Wind thy horn, my hunter boy,
And leave thy lute's inglorious sighs;
Hunting is the hero's joy,
Till war his nobler game supplies.
Hark! the hound-bells ringing sweet,...

All day between high-curded clouds the sun
Shone down like summer on the steaming planks.
The long, bright icicles in dwindling ranks
Dripped from the murmuring eaves till one by one...

The frost has settled down upon the trees
And ruthlessly strangled off the fantasies
Of leaves that have gone unnoticed, swept like old
Romantic stories now no more to be told.
...

Is it not fine to walk in spring,
When leaves are born, and hear birds sing?
And when they lose their singing powers,
In summer, watch the bees at flowers?
Is it not fine, when summer's past,...