Addressed during the Summer Term of 1888 by Mr. Algernon Dexter, Scholar of ------ College, Oxford, to his cousin, Miss Kitty Tremayne, at ------ Vicarage, Devonshire.
In verse by your command I write. Shortly you'll bid me ride astride, and fight: These talents better with our sex agree Than lofty flights of dangerous poetry....
Fanfare of northwest wind, a bluejay wind announces autumn, and the equinox rolls back blue bays to a far afternoon. Somewhere beyond the Gorge Li Po is gone, looking for friendship or an old love's sleeve...
Here I'm sitting in the gloom Of my quiet attic room. France goes rolling all around, Fledged with forest May has crowned. And I puff my pipe, calm-hearted,...
The past is like a story I have listened to in dreams That vanished in the glory Of the Morning's early gleams; And - at my shadow glancing - I feel a loss of strength, As the Day of Life advancing...
Sir, since the last Elizabethan died, Or, rather, that more Paradisal muse, Blind with much light, passed to the light more glorious Or deeper blindness, no man's hand, as thine,...
But yesterday the earth drank like a child With eager thirst the autumn rain. Or like a wistful bride who waits the hour Of love's mysterious bliss and pain. And now the Spring is here with yearning eyes;...
My noble, lovely, little Peggy, Let this my First Epistle beg ye, At dawn of morn, and close of even, To lift your heart and hands to Heaven. In double duty say your prayer:...
Since hired for life, thy servile Muse must sing Successive conquests and a glorious King; Must of a man immortal vainly boast, And bring him laurels whatsoe'er they cost,...
To you who live in chill degree, As map informs, of fifty-three, And do not much for cold atone, By bringing thither fifty-one, Methinks all climes should be alike, From tropic e'en to pole arctique;...
Deluded mortals, whom the great Choose for companions t'te-'-t'te; Who at their dinners, en famille, Get leave to sit whene'er you will; Then boasting tell us where you dined,...
A liberty bond! What a queer contradiction! Although truth, as you've heard, may be stranger than fiction. For Liberty should from all fetters release us, While bonds hold one fast, whether pauper or Croesus....
As one, who, from an antechamber dim, Is ushered suddenly to his surprise Before a gathering of the great and wise, Feels for the moment all his senses swim, Then looks around him like a veteran grim...