Works

The Scottish hinds, too poor to house
In frosty nights their starving cows,
While not a blade of grass or hay
Appears from Michaelmas to May,
Must let their cattle range in vain...

I.

Not for you and me the path
Winding through the shadowless
Fields of morning's dewiness!
Where the brook, that hurries, hath
Laughter lighter than a boy's;
Where recurrent odors poise,...

I like your collyrium,
Take my eyes, sir, and clear ye 'um,
'Twill gain you a great reputation;
By this you may rise,
Like the doctor so wise,[1]
Who open'd the eyes of the nation.
...

"I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done
Than to be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching,"
- Merchant of Venice.

"Do as I tell you, and not as I do."
- Old Saying.
...

Ponder my words, if so that any be
Known guilty here of incivility;
Let what is graceless, discomposed, and rude,
With sweetness, smoothness, softness be endued:
Teach it to blush, to curtsy, lisp, and show...

Those hearts of ours -- how strange! how strange!
How they yearn to ramble and love to range
Down through the vales of the years long gone,
Up through the future that fast rolls on.
...

Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with, take warning--I am surely far different from what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?...

I.

There is sorrow in Beechenbrook Cottage; the day
Has been bright with the earliest glory of May;
The blue of the sky is as tender a blue
As ever the sunshine came shimmering through:...

Julia, I bring
To thee this Ring.
Made for thy finger fit;
To shew by this,
That our love is
(Or sho'd be) like to it.

Close though it be,
The joynt is free:...

It was long and long ago our love began;
It is something all unmeasured by time's span:
In an era and a spot, by the Modern World forgot,
We were lovers, ere God named us, Maid and Man.
...

A great and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe,
The flying bullet down the Pass,...

As beats the sun from mountain crest,
With "pretty, pretty",
Cometh the partridge from her nest;
The flowers threw kisses sweet to her
(For all the flowers that bloomed knew her);...

Welcome, O truant stork!
And where have you been so long?
And do you bring that grace of spring
That filleth my heart with song?

Descend upon my roof--
Bide on this ash content;...

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.
...

Young Croesus went to pay his call
On Colonel Sawbones, Caxton Hall:
And, though his wound was healed and mended,
He hoped he'd get his leave extended.

The waiting-room was dark and bare....

Of their great names I may record but few;
He who beholds the Ocean white with sails
And copies each confuses all the view,
He paints too much - and fails.

His picture shows no high, emphatic light,...

O'er town, and works, and waves amain
Far fell grim Ruin's furious rain,
O'er parapet and mast,
And riding on the thunder-swell
Far flew the shot, far flew the shell
Red Havoc on the blast!...

Superb in white and red, and white and gold,
And white and violet, the French unfold
Their blazoned banners on the Autumn air,
While cymbols clash and brazen trumpets blare:...

Achilles came from Homer's Jove-like brain,
Pavilioned 'mid his ships where Thetis trod;
But he whose image dominates this plain
Came from the hand of God!

Yet, of his life, which shall all time adorn...

Full-burnished through the long-revolving years
The ploughshare of a Century to-day
Runs peaceful furrows where a crop of Spears
Once stood in War's array.

And we, like those who on the Trojan plain...