Works

A spaniel mightily well bred,
Ne'er taught to labour for his bread,
But to play tricks and bear him smart,
To please his lady's eyes and heart,
Who never had the whip for mischief,...

A Traveller's Tale.1

He that supper for is dight,
He lyes full cold, I trow, this night!
Yestreen to chamber I him led,
This night Gray-steel has made his bed!...

It was the stalwart butcher man,
That knit his swarthy brow,
And said the gentle Pig must die,
And sealed it with a vow.

And oh! it was the gentle Pig
Lay stretched upon the ground,...

Waltz in, waltz in, ye little kids, and gather round my knee,
And drop them books and first pot-hooks, and hear a yarn from me.
I kin not sling a fairy tale of Jinnys fierce and wild,...

The sun shines bright, the morning's fair,
The gossamers float on the air,
The dew-gems twinkle in the glare,
The spider's loom
Is closely plied, with artful care,
Even in my room.
...

Once I loved a spider
When I was born a fly,
A velvet-footed spider
With a gown of rainbow-dye.
She ate my wings and gloated.
She bound me with a hair.
She drove me to her parlor...

[1]

'O Jupiter, whose fruitful brain,
By odd obstetrics freed from pain,
Bore Pallas,[2] erst my mortal foe,[3]
Pray listen to my tale of woe.
This Progne[4] takes my lawful prey....

1
Milk for my sweet-arts, Bess! fur it mun be the time about now
When dolly cooms in fro' the far-end close wi' her pa'ils fro' the cow.
Eh! tha be new to the pla'ce'thou'rt ga'pin''doesn't tha see...

I need not perhaps inform the reader, that I had before written a Canto on the subject of this poem; but I was dissatisfied with the metre, and felt the necessity of some connecting idea that might give it a degree of unity and...

Book The First.

...

[VOICES SINGING.]


FIRST CHORUS.

Ere the birth of Death and of Time,
Ere the birth of Hell and its torments,
Ere the orbs of heat and of rime...

From this bleeding hand of mine,
Take this sprig of Eglantine:
Which, though sweet unto your smell,
Yet the fretful briar will tell,
He who plucks the sweets, shall prove
Many thorns to be in love.

Ah, give again the pitiless snow and sleet
November's leaves, or raving winds, that beat
The heart's own doors, or rain's long ache and fret!
Only, not spring and all this delicate sweet!...

(A Dirge of Sin and Sorrow, Sung by Joe Swallow)

There was a Squatter in the land,
So runs the truthful tale I tell,
There also were three cornstalks, and
There also was the Squatter's Well.
...

Nothing so idle as to waste
This Life disputing upon Taste;
And most--let that sad Truth be written--
In this contentious Land of Britain,
Where each one holds "it seems to me"
Equivalent to Q. E. D.,...

Two instruments belong unto our God:
The one a staff is and the next a rod;
That if the twig should chance too much to smart,
The staff might come to play the friendly part.

[1]

A stag, by favour of a vine,
Which grew where suns most genial shine,
And form'd a thick and matted bower
Which might have turn'd a summer shower,
Was saved from ruinous assault....

Scheherazade immediately began the following story.


I.

Ali Ben Ali (did you never read
His wond'rous acts that chronicles relate, -
How there was one in pity might exceed...

The sun stepped down from his golden throne.
And lay in the silent sea,
And the Lily had folded her satin leaves,
For a sleepy thing was she;
What is the Lily dreaming of?
Why crisp the waters blue?...

We boast no more of our bloodless flag, that rose from a nation's slime;
Better a shred of a deep-dyed rag from the storms of the olden time.
From grander clouds in our `peaceful skies' than ever were there before...