Works

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,...

"How shall we honor the man who creates?"
Asked the Bedouin chief, the poet Antar; -
"Who unto the truth flings open our gates,
Or fashions new thoughts from the light of a star;...

Forth from its scabbard, pure and bright,
Flashed the sword of Lee!
Far in the front of the deadly fight,
High o'er the brave in the cause of Right,
Its stainless sheen, like a beacon light,...

Sunder me from my bones, O sword of God,
Till they stand stark and strange as do the trees;
That I whose heart goes up with the soaring woods
May marvel as much at these.
...

In the outskirts of the village
On the river's winding shores
Stand the Occidental plane-trees,
Stand the ancient sycamores.

One long century hath been numbered,
And another half-way told...

I knew a sweet girl, with a bonny blue eye,
Who was born in the shade
The wild sycamore made,
Where the brook sang its song
All the summer-day long,
And the moments went merrily by,...

A raven sat upon a tree,
And not a word he spoke, for
His beak contained a piece of Brie,
Or, maybe, it was Roquefort:
We'll make it any kind you please--
At all events, it was a cheese.
...

(The poem which won the prize offered by the proprietors of the 'Sydney Morning Herald'.)


Now, while Orion, flaming south, doth set
A shining foot on hills of wind and wet...

God said, Let there be light, and there was light!
At once the glorious sun, at his command,
From space illimitable, void and dark,
Sprang jubilant, and angel hierarchies,...

A sylph, as bright as ever sported
Her figure thro' the fields of air,
By an old swarthy Gnome was courted.
And, strange to say, he won the fair.

The annals of the oldest witch...

I

O, fairest Dame of sylvan glades,
We come to pay thee homage due,
Embrace thee softly and to kiss
Thy lovely, long-forsaken cheeks;
To smooth thy flowing silver locks...

Thus pass the glories of the world!
He lies beneath the pall's white folds:
His sword is sheathed, his pennon furled,
Him silence holds.

The pilgrim staff, the cockle shell,...

Wonder in happy eyes
Fades, fades away:
And the angel-coloured skies
Whisper farewell.

Loveliness over the strings of the heart may stray
In fugitive melodies;...

"O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!
The Time needs heart - 'tis tired of head:
We're all for love," the violins said.
"Of what avail the rigorous tale
Of bill for coin and box for bale?...

'Tis the tale of Simon Steven, braceman at the Odd-and-Even,
At The Nations, in the gully. They were sinking in the rock.
Sim was small and wiry rather, and a husband and a father,...

Try we life long, we can never
Straighten out life's tangled skein,
Why should we, in vain endeavor,
Guess and guess and guess again?
Life's a pudding full of plums;
Care's a canker that benumbs....

["The history of the following production is briefly this:--A lady, fond of blank verse, demanded a poem of that kind from the author, and gave him the SOFA for a subject. He obeyed, and having much leisure, connected another s...

A modern hour from London (as we spin
Into a silver thread the miles of space
Between us and our goal), there is a place
Apart from city traffic, dust, and din,...

I saw a child some four years old,
Along a meadow stray;
Alone she went unchecked untold
Her home not far away.

She gazed around on earth and sky
Now paused, and now proceeded;...

The room is quiet, thoughts alone
People its mute tranquillity;
The yoke put off, the long task done,
I am, as it is bliss to be,
Still and untroubled. Now, I see,
For the first time, how soft the day...