Works

[M. Alfred Austin, poete-laureat d'Angleterre, vient d'arriver a Nice, o' il a devance la Reine. Il etait, hier, dans les jardins de Monte-Carlo. Sera-ce sous notre ciel qu'il ecrira son premier poeme?, Menton-Mondain.]
...

Truly ye come of The Blood; slower to bless than to ban;
Little used to lie down at the bidding of any man.
Flesh of the flesh that I bred, bone of the bone that I bare;...

The yeoman lays aside his soil-stained smock,
And from his herd selects a trusty steed,
And sallies forth to help in hour of need;
Nor dreads the battle's shock.
...

She stands like one with mazy cares distraught.
Around her sudden angry storm-clouds rise,
Dark, dark! and comes the look into her eyes
Of eld. All that herself herself hath taught...

England's Hope and England's Heir!
Head and crown of Britain's glory,
Be thy future half so fair
As her past is famed in story,
Then wilt thou be great, indeed,
Daring, where there's cause to dare;...

England! the time is come when thou should'st wean
Thy heart from its emasculating food;
The truth should now be better understood;
Old things have been unsettled; we have seen...

And what of thee, O Lincoln's Land? What gloom
Is darkening above the Sunset Sea?
Vowed Champion of Liberty, deplume
Thy war-crest, bow thy knee,
Before God answer thee.
...

"O England, may God punish thee!"
- Is it that Teuton genius flowers
Only to breathe malignity
Upon its friend of earlier hours?
- We have eaten your bread, you have eaten ours,...

"I had rather be a kitten, and cry, mew!
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers."

- Shakespeare.


"Such shameless Bards we have; and yet 'tis true,...

O that I were
Where breaks the pure cold light
On English hills,
And peewits rising cry,
And gray is all the sky.

Or at evening there
When the faint slow light stays,
And far below...

England has given us the names
To adorn Canadian Thames,
And charms to them she has lent
In Oxford, Middlesex and Kent,
She Essex kisseth in her mouth,
And Scottish names, one north, one south,...

Tercentenary ode on Shakespeare read by the author at the anniversary concert, 1864.


Three centuries have passed away
Since that most famous April day,
When the sweet, gentle Will was born,...

Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation, rousting herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle, mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her endazzled eyes a...

monstrum nulla virtute redemptum.


Come, riddle-me-ree, come, riddle-me-ree,
And tell me what my name may be.
I am nearly one hundred and thirty years old,...

Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm;
And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands;
Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf
In cluster; then a moulder'd church; and higher...

How many times, during the twenty years
I was your leader, friends of Spoon River,
Did you neglect the convention and caucus,
And leave the burden on my hands
Of guarding and saving the people's cause? -...

It is enough for me by day
To walk the same bright earth with him;
Enough that over us by night
The same great roof of stars is dim.

I do not hope to bind the wind
Or set a fetter on the sea,...

God gave a loaf to every bird,
But just a crumb to me;
I dare not eat it, though I starve, --
My poignant luxury
To own it, touch it, prove the feat
That made the pellet mine, --...

Did he forget? ... I do not remember,
All I had of him once I still have to-day;
He was lovely to me as the word "amber,"
As the taste of honey and as the smell of hay.

What if he forget if I remember?...

She came among us from the South
And made the North her home awhile
Our dimness brightened in her smile,
Our tongue grew sweeter in her mouth.

We chilled beside her liberal glow,...