Works

Sick of self-love, Malvolio, like an owl
That hoots the sun rerisen where starlight sank,
With German garters crossed athwart thy frank
Stout Scottish legs, men watched thee snarl and scowl,...

Earth, Ocean, Air, beloved brotherhood!
If our great Mother has imbued my soul
With aught of natural piety to feel
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,...

Let us go hence: the night is now at hand;
The day is overworn, the birds all flown;
And we have reaped the crops the gods have sown
Despair and death; deep darkness o'er the land,...

Oh, for some cup of consummating might,
Filled with life's kind conclusion, lost in night!
A wine of darkness, that with death shall cure
This sickness called existence! Oh to find...

Not for thyself, but for the sake of Song,
Strive to succeed as others have, who gave
Their lives unto her; shaping sure and strong
Her lovely limbs that made them god and slave.
...

Alas! what boots the long laborious quest
Of moral prudence, sought through good and ill;
Or pains abstruse, to elevate the will,
And lead us on to that transcendent rest...

My lamp is out, my task is done,
And up the stair with lingering feet
I climb. The staircase clock strikes one.
Good night, my love! good night, my sweet!

My solitary room I gain....

[1]


regnis EX sul ademptis.--Verg. 1827.


To Swanage--that neat little town in whose bay
Fair Thetis shows off in her best silver slippers--...

Twelve weeks had passed - how slowly! - day by day,
Since formal, dull Sir Calendar had bowed
Old Winter from the scene, and cried, "Make way!
The Spring, the Spring!" and still a sullen cloud...

When I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.

And when I come to the garden ground,...

The brook that down the valley
So musically drips,
Flowed never half so brightly
As the light laugh from her lips.

Her face was like the lily,
Her heart was like the rose,...

One morning of the first sad Fall,
Poor Adam and his bride
Sat in the shade of Eden's wall,
But on the outer side.

She, blushing in her fig-leaf suit
For the chaste garb of old;...

"Some are born with a wooden spoon in their mouths,
and some with a golden ladle." GOLDSMITH.

"Some are born with tin rings in their noses, and
with silver ones." SILVERSMITH.
...

'Non multo post, Gengulphus, in domo sua dormiens, occisus est a quodam clerico qui cum uxore sua adulterare solebat. Cujus corpus dum in fereto in sepulturam portaretur, multi infirmi de tactu sanati sunt.'

...

'Statim sacerdoti apparuit diabolus in specie puell pulchritudinis mir, et ecce Divus, fide catholica et cruce et aqua benedicta armatus, venit, et aspersit aquam in nomine Sanct et Individu Trinitatis, quam, quasi ardentem, di...

It's up and away from our work to-day,
For the breeze sweeps over the down;
And it's hey for a game where the gorse blossoms flame,
And the bracken is bronzing to brown....

The trees bend down along the stream,
Where anchored swings my tiny boat.
The day is one to drowse and dream
And list the thrush's throttling note.
When music from his bosom bleeds...

One day, little Albert Ramsbottom
To see 'ow much money 'e'd got
Stuck a knife in 'is money-box slot 'ole
And fiddled and fished out the lot.

It amounted to fifteen and fourpence...

On young Albert Ramsbottom's birthday
His parents asked what he'd like most;
He said to see t' Tower of London
And gaze upon Anne Boleyn's ghost.

They thowt this request were unusual...

Albert were what you'd call "thwarted".
He had long had an ambition, which...
Were to save up and go to Australia,
The saving up that were the hitch.

He'd a red money box on the pot shelf,...