Works

Put off the vestal Veil, nor, oh!
Let weeping angels View it;
Your cheeks belie its virgin snow.
And blush repenting through it.

Put off the fatal zone you wear;
The shining pearls around it...

Pompey, what fortune gives you back
To the friends and the gods who love you?
Once more you stand in your native land,
With your native sky above you.
Ah, side by side, in years agone,...

Madam, you have done well! Let others with praise unholy,
Speech addressed to a woman who never breathed upon earth,
Daub you over with lies or deafen your ears with folly,...

Vane, young in yeares, but in sage counsell old,
Then whome a better Senatour nere held
The helme of Rome, when gownes not armes repelld
The feirce Epeirot & the African bold,...

Pallas, observing Stella's wit
Was more than for her sex was fit,
And that her beauty, soon or late,
Might breed confusion in the state,
In high concern for human kind,
Fix'd honour in her infant mind....

1.

Thy verse is "sad" enough, no doubt:
A devilish deal more sad than witty!
Why we should weep I can't find out,
Unless for thee we weep in pity.


2.
...

[Bought with the proceeds of Readings of "Les Ch'timents" during the Siege of Paris.]

[1872.]


Thou deadly crater, moulded by my muse,
Cast thou thy bronze into my bowed and wounded heart,...

I never looked upon thy face;
I never saw thy dwelling-place;
My home is by Lake Erie's shore,
Beyond Niagara's distant roar;
And thine where ships at anchor ride,
By fair St. Lawrence's rolling tide,...

Whether the fruitful Nile, or Tyrian shore,
The seeds of arts and infant science bore,
'Tis sure the noble plant, translated first,
Advanced its head in Grecian gardens nursed....

When I of Villars do but hear the name,
It calls to mind that mighty Buckingham,
Who was your brave exalted uncle here,
Binding the wheel of fortune to his sphere,...

FROM THE CITY OP WASHINGTON.


If former times had never left a trace
Of human frailty in their onward race,
Nor o'er their pathway written, as they ran,
One dark memorial of the crimes of man;...

On dirt, on stinking wet straw under the shelter of a tumble-down barn, turned in haste into a camp hospital, in a ruined Bulgarian village, for over a fortnight she lay dying of typhus.
...

When I through all my many poems look,
And see yourself to beautify my book,
Methinks that only lustre doth appear
A light fulfilling all the region here.
Gild still with flames this firmament, and be...

What strong allurement draws, what spirit guides,
Thee, Vesper! brightening still, as if the nearer
Thou com'st to man's abode the spot grew dearer
Night after night? True is it Nature hides...

Though joy attend Thee orient at the birth
Of dawn, it cheers the lofty spirit most
To watch thy course when Day-light, fled from earth,
In the grey sky hath left his lingering Ghost,...

My rose, Gravina, blooms anew,
And steep'd not now in rain,
But in Castilian streams by you,
Will never fade again.

Sweet tiny flower of darkly hue,
Lone dweller in the pathless shade;
How much I love thy pensive blue
Of innocence so well display'd!

What time the watery skies are full...

Mother of Him we call the Christ,
No halo round thy brows we paint,
Incense and prayer we offer not,
Nor mind to title thee as saint.

And yet, no woman's name, of all...

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a flying:
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a getting;...

You braue Heroique minds,
Worthy your Countries Name;
That Honour still pursue,
Goe, and subdue,
Whilst loyt'ring Hinds
Lurke here at home, with shame.

Britans, you stay too long,...