Works

I.

As one in sorrow looks upon
The dead face of a loyal friend,
By the dim light of New Year's dawn
I saw the Old Year end.

Upon the pallid features lay...

Once in a time old Johnny Bull
Flew in a raging fury,
And swore that Jonathan should have
No trials, sir, by jury;
That no elections should be held
Across the briny waters:...

My glass is filled, my pipe is lit,
My den is all a cosy glow;
And snug before the fire I sit,
And wait to FEEL the old year go.
I dedicate to solemn thought
Amid my too-unthinking days,...

May his pretty dukeship grow
Like t'a rose of Jericho:
Sweeter far than ever yet
Showers or sunshines could beget.
May the Graces and the Hours
Strew his hopes and him with flowers:...

Maria! I have every good
For thee wish'd many a time,
Both sad, and in a cheerful mood,
But never yet in rhyme.


To wish thee fairer is no need,
More prudent, or more sprightly,...

We lay at St. Helen's, and easy she rode
With one anchor catted and fresh-water stowed;
When the barge came alongside like bullocks we roared,
For we knew what we carried with Nelson aboard.
...

To a Gaelic Air.


I.

There's a youth in this city,
It were a great pity
That he frae our lasses shou'd wander awa:
For he's bonnie an' braw,
Weel-favour'd an' a',...

Again the warm bare earth, the noon
That hangs upon her healing scars,
The midnight round, the great red moon,
The mother with her brood of stars,

The mist-rack and the wakening rain...

My friend, thou sorrowest for thy golden prime,
For thy fair youthful years too swift of flight;
Thou musest, with wet eyes, upon the time
Of cheerful hopes that filled the world with light,...

A dark plume fetch me from yon blasted yew,
Perched on whose top the Danish Raven croaks;
Aloft, the imperial Bird of Rome invokes
Departed ages, shedding where he flew...

His step was light, and his looks as bright
As the beams of the morning sun,
And his boyish dreams, as the rippling streams
That gently onward run,
Without a shock from rugged rock...

I

Winter is white on turf and tree,
And birds are fled;
But summer songsters pipe to me,
And petals spread,
For what I dreamt of secretly
His lips have said!

II
...

Cyrus Cambyses Son of Persia King,
Whom Lady Mandana did to him bring,
She daughter unto great Astiages,
He in descent the seventh from Arbaces.
Cambyses was of Achemenes race,...

1
Though no high-hung bells or din
Of braggart bugles cry it in -
What is sound? Nature's round
Makes the Silver Jubilee.

2
Five and twenty years have run...

JANUARY


Now Time the harvester surveys
His sorry crops of yesterdays;
Of trampled hopes and reaped regrets,
And for another harvest whets
His ancient scythe, eying the while...

(For Thomas Augustine Daly)



The Judge's house has a splendid porch, with pillars and steps of stone,
And the Judge has a lovely flowering hedge that came from across the seas;...

All that I know of love I see
In eyes that never look at me;
All that I know of love I guess
But from another's happiness.

A beggar at the window I,
Who, famished, looks on revelry;...

I

But yesterday
I looked away
O'er happy lands, where sunshine lay
In golden blots
Inlaid with spots
Of shade and wild forget-me-nots.

My head was fair
With flaxen hair,...

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I ey'd,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,...

Love is too young to know what conscience is,
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?
Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,
Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:...