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Ere the birth of my life, if I wished it or no
No question was asked me, it could not be so!
If the life was the question, a thing sent to try
And to live on be YES; what can NO be? to die.
...

Last night I drew up mine account,
And found my debits to amount
To such a height, as for to tell
How I should pay 's impossible.
Well, this I'll do: my mighty score
Thy mercy-seat I'll lay before;...

[1]

Rejoicing on their tyrant's wedding-day,
The people drown'd their care in drink;
While from the general joy did Aesop shrink,
And show'd its folly in this way....

The sun is dying; space and room.
Serenity, vast sense of rest,
Lie bosomed in the orange west
Of Orient waters. Hear the boom
Of long, strong billows; wave on wave,
Like funeral guns above a grave.

Friends! do you see in yon sunset sky,
That cloud of crimson bright?
Soon will its gorgeous colors die
In coming dim twilight;
E'en now it fadeth ray by ray -
Like it I too shall pass away!
...

"Oh flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!" - MERCUTIO


I.

'Twas twelve o'clock by Chelsea chimes,
When all in hungry trim,
Good Mister Jupp sat down to sup
With wife, and Kate, and Jim....

I

He bends his travel-tarnished feet
To where she wastes in clay:
From day-dawn until eve he fares
Along the wintry way;
From day-dawn until eve repairs
Unto her mound to pray.

II...

I pray! My little body and whole span
Of years is Thine, my Owner and my Man.
For Thou hast made me, unto Thee I owe
This dim, distressed half-soul that hurts me so,...

!Full Chorus.
To Him Who bade the Heavens abide, yet cease not from their motion,
To Him Who tames the moonstruck tide twice a day round Ocean,
Let His Names be magnified in all poor folks' devotion!
...

The surges gushed and sounded,
The blue was the blue of June,
And low above the brightening east
Floated a shred of moon.

The woods were black and solemn,
The night winds large and free,...

(April, 1865.)


As billows upon billows roll,
On victory victory breaks;
Ere yet seven days from Richmond's fall
And crowning triumph wakes
The loud joy-gun, whose thunders run...

And must we part, because some say
Loud is our love, and loose our play,
And more than well becomes the day?
Alas for pity! and for us
Most innocent, and injured thus!...

From north to south throughout the year
The shearing seasons run,
The Queensland stations start to shear
When Maoriland has done;
But labour's cheap and runs are wide,
And some the track must tread...

By voyages in air,
With constant thought and care,
Much knowledge had a swallow gain'd,
Which she for public use retain'd,
The slightest storms she well foreknew,
And told the sailors ere they blew....

The swallows, at the close of day,
When autumn shone with fainter ray,
Around the chimney circling flew,
Ere yet they bade a long adieu,
To climes where soon the winter drear...

There is a coal-black Angel
With a thick Afric lip,
And he dwells (like the hunted and harried)
In a swamp where the green frogs dip.
But his face is against a City
Which is over a bay of the sea,...

[1]

The pleasures of a poultry yard
Were by a swan and gosling shared.
The swan was kept there for his looks,
The thrifty gosling for the cooks;
The first the garden's pride, the latter...

When the reaper's task was ended, and the summer wearing late,
Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with his wife and children eight,
Dropping down the river-harbor in the shallop "Watch and Wait."
...

Yesterday brown was still thy head, as the locks of my loved one,

Whose sweet image so dear silently beckons afar.
Silver-grey is the early snow to-day on thy summit,
...

The sword of the hero!
The staff of the sage!
Whose valor and wisdom
Are stamped on the age!
Time-hallowed mementos
Of those who have riven
The sceptre from tyrants,...