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This is a tale, but it is truth,
Of maiden lady named Ruth,
She owned a small four acre farm,
Which possessed some rural charm.

This maiden she was past her youth,...

"NAHANT, September 8, 1880,
Four o'clock in the morning."

Four by the clock! and yet not day;
But the great world rolls and wheels away,
With its cities on land, and its ships at sea,...

Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing;
What a little thing
To remember for years
To remember with tears!

I have done mostly what most men do,
And pushed it out of my mind;
But I can't forget, if I wanted to,
Four-Feet trotting behind.

Day after day, the whole day through,
Wherever my road inclined,...

Here are the tracks upon the sand
Where stood last evening she and I -
Pressed heart to heart and hand to hand;
The morning sun has baked them dry.

I kissed her wet face - wet with rain,...

I

LOVE'S DAWN


Still thine eyes haunt me; in the darkness now,
The dreamtime, the hushed stillness of the night,
I see them shining pure and earnest light;...

I

There was an ancient City, stricken down
With a strange frenzy, and for many a day
They paced from morn to eve the crowded town,
And danced the night away.
...

I. Winter in Northumberland


Outside the garden
The wet skies harden;
The gates are barred on
The summer side:
"Shut out the flower-time,
Sunbeam and shower-time;...

Health is the first good lent to men;
A gentle disposition then:
Next, to be rich by no by-ways;
Lastly, with friends t' enjoy our days.

"Four winds blowing through the sky,
You have seen poor maidens die,
Tell me then what I shall do
That my lover may be true."
Said the wind from out the south,
"Lay no kiss upon his mouth,"...

Said Mistress Smith to Mistress Green,
Aw'm feeard we'st ha to flit;
Twelve year i' this same haase we've been,
An should be stoppin yet,
I'th' same old spot, we thowt to spend...

TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE AND MOST VERTUOUS LADIES, THE LADIE MARGARET, COUNTESSE OF CUMBERLAND; AND THE LADIE MARIE*, COUNTESSE OF WARWICK.

...

When Samson set my brush afire
To spoil the Timnites barley,
I made my point for Leicestershire
And left Philistia early.
Through Gath and Rankesborough Gorse I fled,
And took the Coplow Road, sir!...

Take now a country mood,
Resolve, distil it:
Nine Acre swaying alive,
June flowers that fill it,

Spicy sweet-briar bush,
The uneasy wren
Fluttering from ash to birch
And back again....

Air - "Carron Side."


I.

Frae the friends and land I love,
Driv'n by fortune's felly spite,
Frae my best belov'd I rove,
Never mair to taste delight;
Never mair maun hope to find,...

Yes I will take a cheerful tone
And feign to share their heartless glee,
But I would rather weep alone
Than laugh amid their revelry.

What being in rank-old nature should earlier have that breath been
That h're p'rsonal tells off these heart-song powerful peals? -
A bush-browed, beetle-br'wed b'llow is it?...

I strayed about the deck, an hour, to-night
Under a cloudy moonless sky; and peeped
In at the windows, watched my friends at table,
In the windows, watched my friends at table,...

The cataract, whirling down the precipice,
Elbows down rocks and, shouldering, thunders through.
Roars, howls, and stifled murmurs never cease;
Hell and its agonies seem hid below....

At last I entered a long dark gallery,
Catacomb-lined; and ranged at the side
Were the bodies of men from far and wide
Who, motion past, were nevertheless not dead.
...