Works

Hymen, late, his love-knots selling,
Called at many a maiden's dwelling:
None could doubt, who saw or knew them,
Hymen's call was welcome to them.
"Who'll buy my love-knots?
"Who'll buy my love-knots?"...

(The Argosy, Feb. 1866.)


God strengthen me to bear myself;
That heaviest weight of all to bear,
Inalienable weight of care.

All others are outside myself,...

Who was it swept against my door just now,
With rustling robes like Autumn's - was it thou?
Ah! would it were thy gown against my door -
Only thy gown once more.
...

Why don't the men propose, mamma?
Why don't the men propose?
Each seems just coming to the point,
And then away he goes;
It is no fault of yours, mamma,
That everybody knows;...

"Why, Minstrel, these untuneful murmurings
Dull, flagging notes that with each other jar?"
"Think, gentle Lady, of a Harp so far
From its own country, and forgive the strings."...

Why, my heart, do we love her so?
(Geraldine, Geraldine!)
Why does the great sea ebb and flow? -
Why does the round world spin?
Geraldine, Geraldine,
Bid me my life renew:...

Why should I care for the men of thames
Or the cheating waves of charter'd streams
Or shrink at the little blasts of fear
That the hireling blows into my ear

Tho born on the cheating banks of Thames...

Why should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly-fisher's wrist
Turn to a drunken journalist;
A girl that knew all Dante once
Live to bear children to a dunce;...

In days gone by, when cows could fly
And goblins rode on bears;
When fairies danced upon the green
And giants moped in lairs,
There lived alone upon a shelf
A tinsie, winsie little elf.
...

Did you hear of the Widow Malone
O hone!
Who lived in the town of Athlone
Alone?
O, she melted the hearts
Of the swains in them parts;
So lovely the Widow Malone,
O hone!...

I was the Widow McFarlane,
Weaver of carpets for all the village.
And I pity you still at the loom of life,
You who are singing to the shuttle
And lovingly watching the work of your hands,...

Came the same cuckoo's cry
All day across the mead.
Flitted the butterfly
All day dittering over my head.
Came a bleak crawk-caw
Between tall broad trees....

From the regions of the north
Where the waters now are frozen,
Towards the south they issue forth
A flock of wild geese of four dozen.

But when they flew o'er the river Thames...

(Deserters)
There is a world outside the one you know,
To which for curiousness 'Ell can't compare,
It is the place where "wilful-missings" go,
As we can testify, for we are there.
...

He sits before you silent as Buddha,
And then you say
This man is Rabelais.
And while you wonder what his stock is,
English or Irish, you behold his eyes
As big and brown as those desirable crockies...

I was Willie Metcalf.
They used to call me "Doctor Meyers,"
Because, they said, I looked like him.
And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire.
I lived in the livery stable,
Sleeping on the floor...

Heigh-ho! for a husband!--Heigh-ho!
There's danger in longer delay!
Shall I never again have a beau?
Will nobody marry me, pray!
I begin to feel strange, I declare!
With beauty my prospects will fade--...

O plump head-waiter at The Cock,
To which I most resort,
How goes the time? 'Tis five o'clock.
Go fetch a pint of port:
But let it not be such as that
You set before chance-comers,...

In the parlour of the shanty where the lives have all gone wrong,
When a singer or reciter gives a story or a song,
Where the poet's heart is speaking to their hearts in every line,...

Wilt pray for me?
They tell me I have Fame;
I plead with thee,
Sometimes just fold my name
In beautiful "Hail Marys"!
And you give me more
Than all the world besides....