Works

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy - I fought it,
I hurled my youth into the grave.
I wanted the gold and I got it -...

The sun sinks down in the crimson west,
Oh, a beautiful sun is he;
With his purple robes and his crown of gold
And his feet dipped in the sea.

Along the shore where the sea-weeds lie...

I

How can I help from laughing while
The daffodilies at me smile;
The tickled dew winks tipsily
In clusters of the lilac-tree;
The crocuses and hyacinths
Storm through the grassy labyrinths...

(For T. A. Daly)


America, Ireland and Italy,
All have known this poor old tree.

* * *

A rickety fence goes round the yard
And the noisy streets stand high:...

[Bk. III. vi., October, 1846.]


A lion camped beside a spring, where came the Bird
Of Jove to drink:
When, haply, sought two kings, without their courtier herd,
The moistened brink,...

'Did she care as much as I did
When our paths of Fate divided?
Was the love, then, all onesided,
Did she understand or care?'
Slowly fall the moments leaden,
And the silence seems to deaden,...

A lady red upon the hill
Her annual secret keeps;
A lady white within the field
In placid lily sleeps!

The tidy breezes with their brooms
Sweep vale, and hill, and tree!...

A Sense of something that is sad and strange;
Of something that is felt as death is felt,
As shadows, phantoms, in a haunted grange,
Around me seems to melt.

It rises, so it seems, from the decay...

My trade was old when the world was new,
Ere the pyramids rose by the Nile
Men quitted their wives, and gave me their goods
For the warmth of my kiss, and my smile.
For never was wife who could hold her man...

To the Tune of "Derry Down."

Jolly boys of St. Kevan's,[2] St. Patrick's, Donore
And Smithfield, I'll tell you, if not told before,
How Bettesworth, that booby, and scoundrel in grain,...

THIS is the Yak, so neg-li-g'e:
His coif-fure's like a stack of hay;
He lives so far from Any-where,
I fear the Yak neg-lects his hair,
And thinks, since there is none to see,...

She sings by her wheel at that low cottage door,
Which the long evening shadow is stretching before;
With a music as sweet as the music which seems
Breathed softly and faintly in the ear of our dreams!
...

The Loch Achray was a clipper tall
With seven-and-twenty hands in all.
Twenty to hand and reef and haul,
A skipper to sail and mates to bawl
"Tally on to the tackle-fall,...

'Twas on the shores that round our coast
From Deal to Ramsgate span,
That I found alone, on a piece of stone,
An elderly naval man.

His hair was weedy, his beard was long,...

I.

A Tortured tree in a huddled hollow,
On whose gnarled boughs three leaves are blowing:
A strip of path that the hunters follow,
That leads to fields of the wind's wild sowing,...

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That's not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,...

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That's not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,...

We zot bezide the leafy wall,
Upon the bench at evenfall,
While aunt led off our minds wrom ceare
Wi' veairy teales, I can't tell where,
An' vound us woone among her stock...

There were four loves that one by one,
Following the seasons and the sun,
Passed over without tears, and fell
Away without farewell.

The first was made of gold and tears,...

From the depths of the green garden-closes
Where the summer in darkness dozes
Till autumn pluck from his hand
An hour-glass that holds not a sand;
From the maze that a flower-belt encloses...