Works

In London I never know what I'd be at,
Enraptured with this, and enchanted with that;
I'm wild with the sweets of variety's plan,
And life seems a blessing too happy for man.
...

Out of the gulf into the glory,
Father, my soul cries out to be lifted.
Dark is the woof of my dismal story,
Thorough thy sun-warp stormily drifted!--
Out of the gulf into the glory,...

O Hunger, Hunger, I will harness thee
And make thee harrow all my spirit's glebe.
Of old the blind bard Herve sang so sweet
He made a wolf to plow his land.

When I am in the Orient once again,
And turn into the gay and squalid street,
One side in the shadow, one in vivid heat,
The thought of England, fresh beneath the rain,
Will rise unbidden as a gently pain....

Hold my hand, little Sister, and nurse my head, whilst I try to remember the word,
What was it?--that the doctor says is now fairly established both in me and my bird....

You are a pink and lovely autumn sky!
But sadness in me rises like the sea,
And leaves in ebbing only bitter clay
On my sad lip, the smart of memory.

Your hand slides up my fainting breast at will;...

We were a baker's dozen in the house - six women and six men
Besides myself; and all of us had known
Those benefits supposed to come from school and church and brush and pen,
And opportunities of being thrown...

Nam neque me tantum venientis sibilus austri,
Nec percussa juvant fluctu tam litora, nec quae
Saxosas inter decurrunt flumina valles.
- Virg. Ecl. 5.



...

I have lived this life as the skeptic lives it;
I have said the sweetness was less than the gall;
Praising, nor cursing, the Hand that gives it,
I have drifted aimlessly through it all....

The verdict was announced today:
He Is sentenced to death.
Only tears that were seething in his chest.
Are all gone... and he is not crying.
it is calm in the prison... from the nocturnal sky...

Sing the song of wave-worn Coogee, Coogee in the distance white,
With its jags and points disrupted, gaps and fractures fringed with light;
Haunt of gledes, and restless plovers of the melancholy wail...

(To a Poor Man.)


Consider man in every sphere,
Then answer, - Is your lot severe?
Is God unjust? You would be fed:
I grant you have to toil for bread.
Your wants are plainly to you known,...

I meditate upon a swallow's flight,
Upon a aged woman and her house,
A sycamore and lime-tree lost in night
Although that western cloud is luminous,
Great works constructed there in nature's spite...

I meditate upon a swallow's flight,
Upon a aged woman and her house,
A sycamore and lime-tree lost in night
Although that western cloud is luminous,
Great works constructed there in nature's spite...

Call the strange spirit that abides unseen
In wilds, and wastes, and shaggy solitudes,
And bid his dim hand lead thee through these scenes
That burst immense around! By mountains, glens,...

There's a pretty little story with a touch of moonlit glory
Comes from Beenleigh on the Logan, but we don't know if it's true;
For we scarcely dare to credit ev'rything they say who edit...

I inherited forty acres from my Father
And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters
From dawn to dusk, I acquired
A thousand acres.
But not content,
Wishing to own two thousand acres,...

Canadians oft by light of moon
Love to go a hunting coon,
But this our tale it is no yarn,
While chopping down tree Henry Karn
Found therein a hollow chamber
Full of coons who there did clamber,...

Years fifty, and seven to boot, have smitten the children of men
Since sound of a voice or a foot came out of the head of that glen.
The brand of black devil is there an evil wind moaneth around...

Coortin days, - Coortin days, - loved one an lover!
What wod aw give if those days could come ovver?
Weddin is joyous, - its pleasur unstinted;
But coortin is th' sweetest thing ivver invented....