Works

"Here's a nut, there's a nut;
Hide it quick away,
In a hole, under leaves,
To eat some winter day.
Acorns sweet are plenty,
We will have them all:
Skip and scamper lively...

Tune - "The job of journey-work."




Altho' my back be at the wa',
An' tho' he be the fautor;
Altho' my back be at the wa',
Yet here's his health in water!...

Here sleeps the Bard who knew so well
All the sweet windings of Apollo's shell;
Whether its music rolled like torrents near.
Or died, like distant streamlets, on the ear....

Here's looking
at you, dear!
though I should pour
A sea of wine,
my eyes would
thirst for more.

Old Time is tramping close to-day, you hear his bluchers fall,
A mighty change is on the way, an' God protect us all;
Some dust'll fly from beery coats, at least it's been declared....

Here's the bower she loved so much,
And the tree she planted;
Here's the harp she used to touch--
Oh, how that touch enchanted!
Roses now unheeded sigh;
Where's the hand to wreathe them?...

(Written with the hope that the socialists might yet dethrone Kaiser and Czar.)


Here's to the mice that scare the lions,
Creeping into their cages.
Here's to the fairy mice that bite...

Tune - "Laggan Burn."


I.

Here's to thy health, my bonnie lass,
Gude night, and joy be wi' thee;
I'll come na mair to thy bower-door,
To tell thee that I lo'e thee....

Here, take my heart--'twill be safe in thy keeping,
While I go wandering o'er land and o'er sea;
Smiling or sorrowing, waking or sleeping,
What need I care, so my heart is with thee?
...

Here the frailest leaves of me, and yet my strongest-lasting:
Here I shade and hide my thoughts - I myself do not expose them,
And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.

Here they lie who once learned here
All that is taught of hurt or fear;
Dead, but by free will they died:
They were true men, they had pride.

To P. A. G.



Here they trysted, here they strayed,
In the leafage dewy and boon,
Many a man and many a maid,
And the morn was merry June.
'Death is fleet, Life is sweet,'...

Heretics all, whoever you may be,
In Tarbes or Nimes, or over the sea,
You never shall have good words from me.
Caritas non conturbat me.

But Catholic men that live upon wine...

I should not have shown in the flesh,
I ought to have gone as a ghost;
It was awkward, unseemly almost,
Standing solidly there as when fresh,
Pink, tiny, crisp-curled,
My pinions yet furled...

In her dark eyes dreams poetize;
The soul sits lost in love:
There is no thing in all the skies,
To gladden all the world I prize,
Like the deep love in her dark eyes,
Or one sweet dream thereof.
...

There is no Paradise like that which lies
Deep in the heavens of her azure eyes:
There is no Eden here on Earth that glows
Like that which smiles rich in her mouth's red rose.

Her eyes are bluebells now, her voice a bird,
And the long sighing grass her elegy;
She who a woman was is now a star
In the high heaven shining down on me.

I

Her eyes are wild, her head is bare,
The sun has burnt her coal-black hair;
Her eyebrows have a rusty stain,
And she came far from over the main.
She has a baby on her arm,...

The gladness of our Southern spring; the grace
Of summer; and the dreaminess of fall
Are parts of her sweet nature. Such a face
Was Ruth's, methinks, divinely spiritual.

Ah, help me! but her face and brow
Are lovelier than lilies are
Beneath the light of moon and star
That smile as they are smiling now -
White lilies in a pallid swoon...