In the cowslip pips I lie, Hidden from the buzzing fly, While green grass beneath me lies, Pearled with dew like fishes' eyes, Here I lie, a clock-a-clay, Waiting for the time of day. ...
Dear brother robin this comes from us all With our kind love and could Gip write and all Though but a dog he'd have his love to spare For still he knows and by your corner chair...
Now eve's hours hot noon succeed; And day's herald, wing'd with speed, Flush'd with summer's ruddy face, Hies to light some cooler place. Now industry her hand has dropt, And the din of labour's stopt:...
The red east glows, the dewy cheek of Day Has not yet met the sun's o'erpowering smile; The dew-drops in their beauty still are gay, Save those the shepherd's early steps defile....
Why should man's high aspiring mind Burn in him with so proud a breath, When all his haughty views can find In this world yields to death? The fair, the brave, the vain, the wise,...
O Poesy is on the wane, For Fancy's visions all unfitting; I hardly know her face again, Nature herself seems on the flitting. The fields grow old and common things,...
Slow boiling up, on the horizon's brim, Huge clouds arise, mountainous, dark and grim, Sluggish and slow upon the air they ride, As pitch-black ships o'er the blue ocean glide;...
The dewdrops on every blade of grass are so much like silver drops that I am obliged to stoop down as I walk to see if they are pearls, and those sprinkled on the ivy-woven beds of primroses underneath the...
The frog croaks loud, and maidens dare not pass But fear the noisome toad and shun the grass; And on the sunny banks they dare not go Where hissing snakes run to the flood below....
The Spring of life is o'er with me, And love and all gone by; Like broken bough upon yon tree, I'm left to fade and die. Stern ruin seized my home and me, And desolate's my cot:...
When first we hear the shy-come nightingales, They seem to mutter oer their songs in fear, And, climb we eer so soft the spinney rails, All stops as if no bird was anywhere....
Full many a sharp, sad, unexpected thorn Finds room to wound Life's lacerated flower, Which subtle fate, to every mortal born, Guides unprevented in an early hour....
The Spring is come, and Spring flowers coming too, The crocus, patty kay, the rich hearts' ease; The polyanthus peeps with blebs of dew, And daisy flowers; the buds swell on the trees;...
Winter is past--the little bee resumes Her share of sun and shade, and o'er the lea Hums her first hymnings to the flowers' perfumes, And wakes a sense of gratefulness in me:...
Man, Earth's poor shadow! talks of Earth's decay: But hath it nothing of eternal kin? No majesty that shall not pass away? No soul of greatness springing up within?...
Ah, little did I think in time that's past, By summer burnt, or numb'd by winter's blast, Delving the ditch a livelihood to earn, Or lumping corn out in a dusty barn;...
I love to see the old heath's withered brake Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling, While the old heron from the lonely lake Starts slow and flaps his melancholy wing,...
'Tis evening; the black snail has got on his track, And gone to its nest is the wren, And the packman snail, too, with his home on his back, Clings to the bowed bents like a wen. ...
What time the cricket unmolested sings, And blundering beetles try their clumsy wings, Leave me to meet the sweets of Even's hour By hawthorn hedges when the May's in flower,...