Works

I'll tell you what you wanderers, who drift from town to town;
Don't look into a good girl's eyes, until you've settled down.
It's hard to go away alone and leave old chums behind,...

I looked up from my writing,
And gave a start to see,
As if rapt in my inditing,
The moon's full gaze on me.

Her meditative misty head
Was spectral in its air,
And I involuntarily said,...

I meant to do my work to-day -
But a brown bird sang in the apple-tree,
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.

And the wind went sighing over the land,...

I meant to find her when I came;
Death had the same design;
But the success was his, it seems,
And the discomfit mine.

I meant to tell her how I longed
For just this single time;...

He brought a team from Inversnaid
To play our Third Fifteen,
A man whom none of us had played
And very few had seen.

He weighed not less than eighteen stone,
And to a practised eye...

Fair charmer, cease! nor make your voice's prize,
A heart resign'd, the conquest of your eyes:
Well might, alas! that threaten'd vessel fail,
Which winds and lightning both at once assail....

Immortal is an ample word
When what we need is by,
But when it leaves us for a time,
'T is a necessity.

Of heaven above the firmest proof
We fundamental know,
Except for its marauding hand,...

How like is childhood to the lucid tide
That calmly wanders thro' the mossy dell,
Sweeps o'er the lily by the margin's side,
And, as it kisses, murmurs out, Farewell!

The sign of the house should be chang'd, I'll be sworn,
Where enchanted we find so much beauty and grace;
Then quick from the door let the lion be torn,
And an angel expand her white wings in his place.

Occasioned By Four Satirical Verses On Women Wits, In 'The Rape Of The Lock.'

In vain you boast poetic names of yore,
And cite those Sapphos we admire no more:
Fate doom'd the fall of every female wit;...

In vain you boast Poetic Names of yore,
And cite those Sapho's we admire no more:
Fate doom'd the Fall of ev'ry Female Wit,
But doom'd it then when first Ardelia writ.
Of all Examples by the World confest,...

Whilst, in a dress that one might swear
The whole was made of woven air,
Pert Fashion spreads her senseless sway
Over the giddy and the gay
(Who think, by showing all their charms,...

Lady! who didst--with angel-look and smile,
And the sweet lustre of those dear, dark eyes,
Gracefully bend before the font of Christ,
In humble adoration, faith, and prayer!...

Between Adam and me the great difference is,
Tho' a paradise each has been forced to resign,
That he never wore breeches, till turned out of his,
While for want of my breeches, I'm banisht from mine.

I'm with you once again, my friends,
No more my footsteps roam;
Where it began my journey ends,
Amid the scenes of home.
No other clime has skies so blue,
Or streams so broad and clear,...

The years have gathered grayly
Since I danced upon this leaze
With one who kindled gaily
Love's fitful ecstasies!
But despite the term as teacher,
I remain what I was then
In each essential feature...

Man of despair and death,
Bought and slaved in the gangs,
Starved and stripped and left
To the pitiful pitiless night,
Away with your selfish thoughts!
Touch not your ignorant life!...

On a morning sick as the day of doom
With the drizzling gray
Of an English May,
There were few in the railway waiting-room.
About its walls were framed and varnished...

That whisper takes the voice
Of a Spirit's compassionings
Close, but invisible,
And throws me under a spell
At the kindling vision it brings;
And for a moment I rejoice,...

See how it flashes,
This grape-blood fine!
Our beards it splashes,
O comrade mine!
Life dust and ashes
Were, wanting wine.

Amontillado
Fires heart and eyes;
Champagne the shadow...