Works

"I would not live alway,"
Why should I wish to stay,
Now, when grown old and grey,
Enduring slow decay?
When power to do has fled,
'Twere better to be dead -
The tree that's ceased to bear,...

I looked upon the fair young flowers
That in our gardens bloom,
Gazed on their winning loveliness,
And then upon the tomb;
I looked upon the smiling earth,
The blue and cloudless sky,...

"I write about the butterfly,
It is a pretty thing;
And flies about like the birds,
But it does not sing.

"First it is a little grub,
And then it is a nice yellow cocoon,...

I wrung my hands under my dark veil. . .
"Why are you pale, what makes you reckless?"
-- Because I have made my loved one drunk
with an astringent sadness.

I'll never forget. He went out, reeling;...

These are the words of Jacob's wives, the words
Which Leah spake and Rachel to his ears,
When, in the shade at eventide, he sat
By the tent door, a palm-tree overhead,...

A rail fence is more than that on a country dawn
moving by lots over hill & stone;
it barely pauses in the small of the field's lap,
then is caught in grey positioning as
light unfurls the sky.
...

I. James Lee's Wife Speaks at the Window

I.
Ah, Love, but a day
And the world has changed!
The sun's away,
And the bird estranged;
The wind has dropped,
And the sky's deranged...

(From a Westerner's Point of View.)

No matter what you call it,
Whether genius, or art,
He sings the simple songs that come
The closest to your heart.
Fur trim an' skillful phrases,...

The Text of the ballad is here given from Kinloch's MSS., where it is in the handwriting of John Hill Burton when a youth. The text of the song Waly, waly, I take from Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany. The song and the ballad have...

The saints should never be dismay'd,
Nor sink in hopeless fear;
For when they least expect his aid,
The Saviour will appear.


This Abraham found: he raised the knife;...

Madam! you ask what marks for beauty pass:
Require them rather from your looking-glass!

Oh, when I found that Death had set
His awful stamp on thee,
Deserted on Life's stormy shore,
I thought that Time could have in store
Not one more shaft for me.
...

There came a lonely Briton to the town,
A solitary Briton with a mission,
He'd vowed a vow to put all 'shouting' down,
To relegate it to a low position.

Transcendently Britannic in his dress,...

Yes, there it hangs upon the wall
And never gives a sound,
The hand that trimmed its greenhide fall
Is hidden underground,
There, in that patch of sally shade,
Beneath that grassy mound.
...

"Write me a rhyme of the present time".
And the poet took his pen
And wrote such lines as the miser minds
Hide in the hearts of men.

He grew enthused, as the poets used...

I

At The Piano

I
Love me and leave me; what love bids retrieve me? can June's fist grasp May?
Leave me and love me; hopes eyed once above me like spring's sprouts decay;...

The Text is taken almost entirely from a copy which was sent in 1780 to Bishop Percy by a Miss Fisher of Carlisle; in the last half of the first stanza her version gives, unintelligibly:
...

I'd been right round by overlands to see the world and life,
And on the boat at Plymouth I met Johnson and his wife;
He was a man who knew the world and wore the know-all smile,...

A strange life - strangely passed!
We may not read the soul
When God has folded up the scroll
In death at last.
We may not - dare not say of one
Whose task of life as well was done...

Oh! the dew-wet grass of the meadow in North Carolina
Through which Rebecca followed me wailing, wailing,
One child in her arms, and three that ran along wailing,...