Works

Along the back of the baby tortoise
The scales are locked in an arch like a bridge,
Scale-lapping, like a lobster's sections
Or a bee's.

Then crossways down his sides
Tiger-stripes and wasp-bands....

I thought he was dumb,
I said he was dumb,
Yet I've heard him cry.

First faint scream,
Out of life's unfathomable dawn,
Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon's dawning rim,...

I.

All hail! inexorable lord!
At whose destruction-breathing word,
The mightiest empires fall!
Thy cruel, woe-delighted train,
The ministers of grief and pain,
A sullen welcome, all!...

Who tamed your lawless Tartar blood?
What David bearded in her den
The Russian bear in ages when
You strode your black, unbridled stud,
A skin-clad savage of your steppes?...

I pledge myself thro' thick and thin,
To labor still with zeal devout
To get the Outs, poor devils, in,
And turn the Ins, the wretches, out.

I pledge myself, tho' much bereft...

Olor Iscanus queries: 'Why should we
Vex at the land's ridiculous miserie?'
So on his Usk banks, in the blood-red dawn
Of England's civil strife, did careless Vaughan...

Most tangible of all the gods that be,
O Santa Claus - our own since Infancy!
As first we scampered to thee - now, as then,
Take us as children to thy heart again.

Be wholly good to us, just as of old:...

Sapho, I will choose to go
Where the northern winds do blow
Endless ice, and endless snow;
Rather than I once would see
But a winter's face in thee,
To benumb my hopes and me.

Let us now take time and play,
Love, and live here while we may;
Drink rich wine, and make good cheer,
While we have our being here;
For once dead and laid i' th' grave,
No return from thence we have.

Impassioned singer of the happy time.
When all the world was waking into morn,
And dew still glistened on the tangled thorn,
And lingered on the branches of the lime,
Oh peerless singer of the golden rhyme,...

Your lines that linger for us down the years,
Like sparks that tell the glory of a flame,
Still keep alight the splendor of your name,
And living still, they sting us into tears....

I.

One happy year has fled, Sall,
Since you were all my own,
The leaves have felt the autumn blight,
The wintry storm has blown.
We heeded not the cold blast,
Nor the winter's icy air;...

Written at the Cottage of T. LEWIS, Esq. Woodbury Downs.


In the retirement of this lovely spot,
Sacred to friendship, industry, and worth,
To boundless hospitality and mirth,...

Blithe dreams arise to greet us,
And life feels clean and new,
For the old love comes to meet us
In the dawning and the dew.
O'erblown with sunny shadows,
O'ersped with winds at play,...

I can see the back-log blazing and the sparkles take their flight
Up the cavernous old chimney on a merry Christmas night;
I can see the old folks smiling and the children's cheeks aglow,...

(See Note 32)

With friends you stalwart stand and fair,
To-day of fifty years the heir;
The past your works rejoicing praise,
But forward goes your gaze.
Your childlike faith, your spirit true,...

To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life
Among strang'rs. Father and mother dear,
Brothers and sisters are in Christ not near
And he my peace my parting, sword and strife....

In Sensibility's lov'd praise
I tune my trembling reed;
And seek to deck her shrine with bays,
On which my heart must bleed!

No cold exemption from her pain
I ever wish'd to know;...

Excuse is needless when with love sincere
Of occupation, not by fashion led,
Thou turn'st the Wheel that slept with dust o'erspread;
'My' nerves from no such murmur shrink, tho' near,...

Bright baffling Soul, least capturable of themes,
Thou, who display'dst a life of common-place,
Leaving no intimate word or personal trace
Of high design outside the artistry
Of thy penned dreams,...