Works

Error is a hardy plant; it flourisheth in every soil;
In the heart of the wise and good, alike with the wicked and foolish.
For there is no error so crooked, but it hath in it some lines of truth:...

Let others speak of her shame,
I speak of my own.

O Germany, pale mother!
How soiled you are
As you sit among the peoples.
You flaunt yourself
Among the besmirched.
...

Oh fair! oh purest! be thou the dove
That flies alone to some sunny grove,
And lives unseen, and bathes her wing,
All vestal white, in the limpid spring.
There, if the hovering hawk be near,...

'Oh, Peggy was a jolly lass,
Ye heave ho, boys, ye heave ho!
She never grudged her Jack a glass,
Ye heave ho, boys, ye heave ho!
And when he sailed the raging main,
She faithful was unto her swain,...

Lord of all the Universe, when I think of YOU,
Flinging stars out into space, moving suns and tides;
Then this little mortal mind gets the larger view,
And the carping self of me runs away and hides.
...

Oh stay at home, my lad, and plough
The land and not the sea,
And leave the soldiers at their drill,
And all about the idle hill
Shepherd your sheep with me.

Oh stay with company and mirth...

See how the autumn leaves float by decaying,
Down the wild swirls of the rain-swollen stream.
So fleet the works of men, back to their earth again;
Ancient and holy things fade like a dream.
...

"Soa, yo're th' new parson, are yo?
Well, awm fain to see yo've come;
Yo'll feel a trifle strange at furst,
But mak yorsen at hooam.

Aw hooap yo'll think nor war o' me,...

It should not be doubted that at least one-third of the affection with which we regard the elder poets of Great Britain should be attributed to what is, in itself, a thing apart from poetry we mean to the simple love of the ant...

Far from the trouble and toil of town,
Where the reed beds sweep and shiver,
Look at a fragment of velvet brown,
Old Man Platypus drifting down,
Drifting along the river.
...

You never heard tell of the story?
Well, now, I can hardly believe!
Never heard of the honour and glory
Of Pardon, the son of Reprieve?
But maybe you're only a Johnnie
And don't know a horse from a hoe?...

When rival adorers come courting a maid,
There's something or other may often be said,
Why HE should be pitched upon rather than HIM.
This wasn't the case with Old PAUL and Old TIM.
...

Old lady, put your glasses on,
With polished lenses, mounting golden,
And once again look slowly through
The album olden.

How the old portraits take you back...

I.
The morn when first it thunders in March,
The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say.
As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch
Of the villa-gate this warm March day,...

(For Robert Cortez Holliday)



If I should live in a forest
And sleep underneath a tree,
No grove of impudent saplings
Would make a home for me.

I'd go where the old oaks gather,...

Text.-- The Percy Folio is the sole authority for this excellent ballad, and the text of the MS. is therefore given here literatim, in preference to the copy served up 'with considerable corrections' by Percy in the Reliques. I...

It was Christmas Day in the trenches
In Spain in Penninsular War,
And Sam Small were cleaning his musket
A thing as he'd ne're done before.

They'd had 'em inspected that morning...

Remembering what passed
Under the scent of the plum-tree,
I asked the plum-tree for tidings
Of that other.
Alas ... the cold moon of spring....

From the Japanese of Fujiwara Ietaka. (1158-1237).

I lak on summer ev'ning, w'en nice cool win' is blowin'
An' up above ma head, I hear de pigeon on de roof,
To bring ma chair an' sit dere, an' watch de current flowin'...

I will praise thee every day,
Now thine anger's turn'd away!
Comfortable thoughts arise
From the bleeding Sacrifice.


Here in the fair gospel-field,
Wells of free salvation yield...