I sit upon the old sea wall, And watch the shimmering sea, Where soft and white the moonbeams fall, Till, in a fantasy, Some pure white maiden's funeral pall The strange light seems to me. ...
Here lies old Hobson, Death hath broke his girt, And here alas, hath laid him in the dirt, Or els the ways being foul, twenty to one, He's here stuck in a slough, and overthrown....
Now the tent poles are rotting, the camp fires are dead, And the possums may gambol in trees overhead; I am humping my bluey far out on the land, And the prints of my bluchers sink deep in the sand:...
Dancing and prancing to town we go, On the top of the wall of the town we go. Shall we talk to the stars, or talk to the moon, Or run along home to our dinner so soon? ...
The trees fret fitfully and twist, Shutters rattle and carpets heave, Slime is the dust of yestereve, And in the streaming mist Fishes might seem to fin a passage if they list.
On the way to Kew, By the river old and gray, Where in the Long Ago We laughed and loitered so, I met a ghost to-day, A ghost that told of you - A ghost of low replies...
I found a dreadful acre of the dead, Marked with the only sign on earth that saves. The wings of death were hurrying overhead, The loose earth shook on those unquiet graves;...
Once in a dream (for once I dreamed of you) We stood together in an open field; Above our heads two swift-winged pigeons wheeled, Sporting at ease and courting full in view....
O God, take the sun from the sky! It's burning me, scorching me up. God, can't You hear my cry? 'Water! A poor, little cup!' It's laughing, the cursed sun! See how it swells and swells...
Once, when midnight smote the air, Eunuchs ran through Hell and met On every crowded street to stare Upon great Juan riding by: Even like these to rail and sweat Staring upon his sinewy thigh.
Fine-tissued as her finger-tips, and white As all her thoughts; in shape like shields of prize, As if before young Violet's dreaming eyes Still blazed the two great Theban bucklers bright...
"I'm going to gran'ma's for a bit My mother's got the copper lit; An' piles of clothes are on the floor, An' steam comes out the wash-house door; An' Mrs. Griggs has come, an' she...
Sic a reptile was Wat, Sic a miscreant slave, That the very worms damn'd him When laid in his grave. "In his flesh there's a famine," A starv'd reptile cries; "An' his heart is rank poison,"...
O poor Romancer thou whose printed page, Filled with rude speech and ruder forms of strife, Was given to heroes in whose vulgar rage No trace appears of gentler ways and life! ...
Shrewd Willie Smellie to Crochallan came, The old cock'd hat, the gray surtout, the same; His bristling beard just rising in its might, 'Twas four long nights and days to shaving night: ...
When will the grave shelter thy few gray hairs, O aged man! Thy sand is almost run, And many a year, in vain, to meet the sun, Thine eyes have rolled in darkness; want and cares...
May God be praised for woman That gives up all her mind, A man may find in no man A friendship of her kind That covers all he has brought As with her flesh and bone, Nor quarrels with a thought...
Salmoneus,[1] as the Grecian tale is, Was a mad coppersmith of Elis: Up at his forge by morning peep, No creature in the lane could sleep; Among a crew of roystering fellows...