Works

The farmers now should all adorn
A few fields with sweet southern corn,
It is luscious, thick and tall,
The beauty of the fields in fall.

For it doth make best ensilage,...

Oh for the spirit which inspired of old
The seer's prophetic song--the voice that spake
Through Israel's warrior king. The strains that burst
In thrilling tones from Zion's heaven-strung harp,...

Ants colonized it
- huge abodes littered with the dead
(leaves, sticks, the occasional granulated insect
piled high, totemic-fashion)
reaping a fortune in scenery,...

Now Minnie was a pretty girl,
Her hair so gracefully did curl;
She had a slender figure, too,
And rosy cheeks, and eyes of blue.
And yet, with all those beauties rare,
Those angel eyes and curly hair,...

Fly, white butterflies, out to sea,
Frail pale wings for the winds to try,
Small white wings that we scarce can see
Fly.

Here and there may a chance-caught eye...

A little bird woke singing in the night,
Dreaming of coming day,
And piped, for very fulness of delight,
His little roundelay.

Dreaming he heard the wood-lark's carol loud,...

Beloved, when my heart's awake to God
And all the world becomes His testimony,
In you I most do see, in your brave spirit,
Erect and certain, flashing deeds of light,...

Child, do you love the flower
Ashine with colour and dew
Lighting its transient hour?
So I love you.

The lambs in the mead are at play,
'Neath a hurdle the shepherd's asleep;...

Now don't go and say you'd a dim
Idea of these stories before,
For I've frankly confessed them from Grimm,
The monarch of magical lore:

And if, by repeating, I took
Your time, I will candidly vow...

Many pleasures of youth have been buoyantly sung -
And, borne on the winds of delight, may they beat
With their palpitant wings at the hearts of the Young,
And in bosoms of Age find as warm a retreat! -...

Oh, to be able to capture and bring
And bind in the bonds of control,
Some of the carols that warble and sing
Down in the depths of my soul.

There clung three roses to a stem,
Did all their hues of summer don,
But came a wind and troubled them,
And all were gone.

I heard three bells in unison
Clap out some transient heart's delight,...

Prince, show me the quickest way and best
To gain the subject of my moan;
We've neither spinsters nor relics out West--
These do I love, and these alone.

Clear was the night: the moon was young:
The larkspurs in the plots
Mingled their orange with the gold
Of the forget-me-nots.

The poppies seemed a silver mist:
So darkly fell the gloom....

Just as of old! The world rolls on and on;
The day dies into night - night into dawn -
Dawn into dusk - through centuries untold. -
Just as of old.

Time loiters not. The river ever flows,...

Here are the doleful rains,
And one would say the sky is weeping
The death of the tolerable weather.

Tedium cloaks the wit like a veil of clouds
And we sit down indoors.
...

Do you remember
That afternoon - that Sunday afternoon! -
When, as the kirks were ringing in,
And the grey city teemed
With Sabbath feelings and aspects,
LEWIS - our LEWIS then,...

When Satan sends - to vex the mind of man
And urge him on to meanness and to wrong -
His satellites, there is not one that can
Acquit itself like envy. Not so strong...

("L'Avarice et l'Envie.")

[LE CONSERVATEUR LIIT'RAIRE, 1820.]


Envy and Avarice, one summer day,
Sauntering abroad
In quest of the abode
Of some poor wretch or fool who lived that way -...

I

Past the hills that peep
Where the leaze is smiling,
On and on beguiling
Crisply-cropping sheep;
Under boughs of brushwood
Linking tree and tree
In a shade of lushwood,...