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'Tis daily this baste
Will prosade to the fayste,
The best that Ould Oireland has seen;
The P's are but three,
But they're plenty for me, -
The Pratie, the Pig, the Poteen.
...

The Texts of these two variations on the same theme are taken from T. Ravenscroft's Melismata, 1611, and Scott's Minstrelsy, 1803, respectively. There are several other versions of the Scots ballad, while Motherwell prints The ...

Art going to do a kindly deed?
'Tis never too soon to begin;
Make haste, make haste, for the moments speed,
The world, my dear one, has pressing need
Of your tender thought and kindly deed....

With mighty rush and roar,
Adown a mountain steep
A torrent tumbled, - swelling o'er
Its rugged banks, - and bore
Vast ruin in its sweep.
The traveller were surely rash...

[1]

A light-brain'd tortoise, anciently,
Tired of her hole, the world would see.
Prone are all such, self-banish'd, to roam -
Prone are all cripples to abhor their home....

'sop, Babrius, Horace, Prior, and Pope.


Our friend Dan Prior had, you know,
A tale exactly ' propos;
Name a town life - and, in a trice,
He had a story of two mice.
...

There lies afar behind a western hill
The Town without a Market, white and still;
For six feet long and not a third as high
Are those small habitations. There stood I,
Waiting to hear the citizens beneath...

I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made
Against the bitter East their barricade,
And, guided by its sweet
Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell,
The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell...

Dimmi di grazia, amor.


Nay, prithee tell me, Love, when I behold
My lady, do mine eyes her beauty see
In truth, or dwells that loveliness in me
Which multiplies her grace a thousandfold?...

While I translated Baudelaire,
Children were playing out in the air.
Turning to watch, I saw the light
That made their clothes and faces bright.
I heard the tune they meant to sing...

HE.

Canst thou give, oh fair and matchless maiden,

'Neath the shadow of the lindens yonder,

Where I'd fain one moment cease to wander,
Food and drink to one so heavy laden?

SHE....

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,
Or by the lazy Scheldt, or wandering Po;
Or onward, where the rude Carinthian boor
Against the houseless stranger shuts the door;...

[1]

A man whose credit fail'd, and what was worse,
Who lodged the devil in his purse, -
That is to say, lodged nothing there, -
By self-suspension in the air
Concluded his accounts to square,...

I have done all I could
For that lady I knew! Through the heats I have shaded her,
Drawn to her songsters when summer has jaded her,
Home from the heath or the wood.

At the mirth-time of May,...

I

Its roots are bristling in the air
Like some mad Earth-god's spiny hair;
The loud south-wester's swell and yell
Smote it at midnight, and it fell.
Thus ends the tree...

Ready with leaves and with buds stood the tree.
"Shall I take them?" the frost said, now puffing with glee.
"Oh my, no, let them stand,
Till flowers are at hand!"...

Under vague silver moonlight
The trees are lovely and ghostly,
In the pale blue of the night
There are few stars to see.

The leaves are green still, but brown-blent:
They stir not, only known...

By love are blest the gods on high,
Frail man becomes a deity
When love to him is given;
'Tis love that makes the heavens shine
With hues more radiant, more divine,
And turns dull earth to heaven!
...

Oh, the truant boy to the woods has gone,
And you ne'er, alas, can find him,
He's strapp'd his empty school bag on,
For his books are left behind him.

He's gone to shake the beechnuts down...

It is very aggravating
To hear the solemn prating
Of the fossils who are stating
That old Horace was a prude;
When we know that with the ladies
He was always raising Hades,...