I.

Shed no tear! oh, shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more! oh, weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root's white core.
Dry your eyes! oh, dry your eyes!
For I was taught in Paradise
To ease my breast of melodies,
Shed no tear.

Overhead! look overhead!
'Mong the blossoms white and red
Look up, look up! I flutter now
On this fresh pomegranate bough.
See me! 'tis this silvery bill
Ever cures the good man's ill.
Shed no tear! oh, shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Adieu, adieu, I fly adieu!
I vanish in the heaven’s blue,
Adieu, adieu!

II.

Ah! woe is me! poor silver-wing!
That I must chant thy lady's dirge,
And death to this fair haunt of spring,
Of melody, and...

Thou see'st me, Lucia, this year droop;
Three zodiacs fill'd more, I shall stoop;
Let crutches then provided be
To shore up my debility:
Then, while thou laugh'st, I'll sighing cry,
A ruin underpropt am I:
Don will I then my beadsman's gown;
And when so feeble I am grown
As my weak shoulders cannot bear
The burden of a grasshopper;
Yet with the bench of aged sires,
When I and they keep termly fires,
With my weak voice I'll sing, or say
Some odes I made of Lucia;
Then will I heave my wither'd hand
To Jove the mighty, for to stand
Thy faithful friend, and to pour down
Upon thee many a benison.

Ere with cold beads of midnight dew
Had mingled tears of thine,
I grieved, fond Youth! that thou shouldst sue
To haughty Geraldine.

Immoveable by generous sighs,
She glories in a train
Who drag, beneath our native skies,
An oriental chain.

Pine not like them with arms across,
Forgetting in thy care
How the fast-rooted trees can toss
Their branches in mid air.

The humblest rivulet will take
Its own wild liberties;
And, every day, the imprisoned lake
Is flowing in the breeze.

Then, crouch no more on suppliant knee,
But scorn with scorn outbrave;
A Briton, even in love, should be
A subject, not a slave!

Not without heavy grief of heart did He
On whom the duty fell (for at that time
The father sojourned in a distant land)
Deposit in the hollow of this tomb
A brother's Child, most tenderly beloved!
FRANCESCO was the name the Youth had borne,
POZZOBONNELLI his illustrious house;
And, when beneath this stone the Corse was laid,
The eyes of all Savona streamed with tears.
Alas! the twentieth April of his life
Had scarcely flowered: and at this early time,
By genuine virtue he inspired a hope
That greatly cheered his country: to his kin
He promised comfort; and the flattering thoughts
His friends had in their fondness entertained,
He suffered not to languish or decay.
Now is there not good reason to break forth
Into a passionate lament? O Soul!
Short whil...

So light we were, so right we were, so fair faith shone,
And the way was laid so certainly, that, when I'd gone,
What dumb thing looked up at you? Was it something heard,
Or a sudden cry, that meekly and without a word
You broke the faith, and strangely, weakly, slipped apart.
You gave in, you, the proud of heart, unbowed of heart!
Was this, friend, the end of all that we could do?
And have you found the best for you, the rest for you?
Did you learn so suddenly (and I not by!)
Some whispered story, that stole the glory from the sky,
And ended all the splendid dream, and made you go
So dully from the fight we know, the light we know?

O faithless! the faith remains, and I must pass
Gay down the way, and on alone. Under the grass
You wait; the breeze moves in the tre...

    Poets, like disputants, when reasons fail,
    Have one sure refuge left--and that's to rail.
    Fop, coxcomb, fool, are thunder'd through the pit;
    And this is all their equipage of wit.
    We wonder how the devil this difference grows,
    Betwixt our fools in verse, and yours in prose:
    For, 'faith, the quarrel rightly understood,
    'Tis civil war with their own flesh and blood.
    The threadbare author hates the gaudy coat;
    And swears at the gilt coach, but swears afoot:
    For 'tis observed of every scribbling man,
    He grows a fop as fast as e'er he can;
    Prunes up, and asks his oracle, the glass,
    If pink and purple best become his face.
    For our poor wretch, he neither rails nor prays;
    Nor likes your wit, just as you like ...

    I leaned against the mantel, sick, sick,
    Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm,
    Weak from the noon-day heat.
    A church bell sounded mournfully far away,
    I heard the cry of a baby,
    And the coughing of John Yarnell,
    Bed-ridden, feverish, feverish, dying,
    Then the violent voice of my wife:
    "Watch out, the potatoes are burning!"
    I smelled them . . . then there was irresistible disgust.
    I pulled the trigger . . . blackness . . . light . . .
    Unspeakable regret . . . fumbling for the world again.
    Too late! Thus I came here,
    With lungs for breathing . . . one cannot breathe here with lungs,
    Though one must breathe
    Of what use is it To rid one's self of the world,
    When no soul may ever escape t...

When the bright sun back on his yearly road
    Comes towards us, his great glory seems to me,
As from the sky he pours it all abroad,
    A golden herald, my beloved, of thee.

When from the south the gentle winds do blow,
    Calling the flowers that sleep beneath the earth,
It sounds like sweetest music, that doth go
    Before thy coming, full of love and mirth.

When one by one the violets appear,
    Opening their purple vests so modestly,
To greet the virgin daughter of the year,
    Each seems a fragrant prophecy of thee.

For with the spring thou shalt return again;
    Therefore the wind, the flower, and clear sunshine,
A double worship from my heart obtain,
    A love and welcome not their own, but thine.

Sometimes I wish the railroads all were torn out,
    The ships all sunk among the coral strands.
I am so very weary, yea so worn out,
    With tales of those who visit foreign lands.

When asked to dine, to meet these traveled people,
    My soup seems brewed from cemetery bones.
The fish grows cold on some cathedral steeple,
    I miss two courses while I stare at thrones.

I'm forced to leave my salad quite untasted,
    Some musty, moldy temple to explore.
The ices, fruit and coffee all are wasted
    While into realms of ancient art I soar.

I'd rather take my chance of life and reason,
    If in a den of roaring lions hurled
Than for a single year, ay, for one season,
    To dwell with folks who'd traveled round the world.

So patroni...

Two old St. Andrews men, after a separation of nearly thirty years, meet by chance at a wayside inn.    They interchange experiences; and at length one of them, who is an admirer of Mr. Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, speaks as follows:

If you were now a bejant,
    And I a first year man,
We'd grind and grub together
In every kind of weather,
When Winter's snows were regent,
    Or when the Spring began;
If you were now a bejant,
    And I a first year man.

If you were what you once were,
    And I the same man still,
You'd be the gainer by it,
For you--you can't deny it--
A most uncommon dunce were;
    My profit would be nil,
If you were what you once were,
    And I the same man still.

If you were last in Latin,
    And I ...

Old Grandpere gat in the corner,
With his grandchild on his knee,
Looking up at his wrinkled visage,
For his winters were ninety-three.

Fair Eleanor's locks were flaxen,
The old man's once were gray,
But now, they were white as the snow-drift
That lay on the bleak highway.

Her summers rolled on as golden
As waves over sunny seas;
But Grandpere could perceive no summers,
The winters alone were his.

He folded his arms around her,
Like Winter embracing Spring;
And the angels looked down from heaven,
And smiled on their slumbering.

But soon the angelic faces
Were filled with seraphic light,
As they gazed on a beauteous spirit
Passing up through the frosty night:

Till it stood serene before them,
A youth most d...

Over the hill to the poor-house I'm trudgin' my weary way -


I, a woman of seventy, and only a trifle gray -
I, who am smart an' chipper, for all the years I've told,
As many another woman that's only half as old.

Over the hill to the poor-house - I can't quite make it clear!
Over the hill to the poor-house - it seems so horrid queer!
Many a step I've taken a-toilin' to and fro,
But this is a sort of journey I never thought to go.

What is the use of heapin' on me a pauper's shame?
Am I lazy or crazy? am I blind or lame?
True, I am not so supple, nor yet so awful stout;
But charity ain't no favor, if one can l...

When times are troubled, then forbear; but speak
When a clear day out of a cloud does break.

How Sweet to be thus nestling deep in boughs,
Upon an ashen stoven pillowing me;
Faintly are heard the ploughmen at their ploughs,
But not an eye can find its way to see.
The sunbeams scarce molest me with a smile,
So thick the leafy armies gather round;
And where they do, the breeze blows cool the while,
Their leafy shadows dancing on the ground.
Full many a flower, too, wishing to be seen,
Perks up its head the hiding grass between.--
In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be;
Where all the noises, that on peace intrude,
Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee,
Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude.

Be those few hours, which I have yet to spend,
Blest with the meditation of my end;
Though they be few in number, I'm content;
If otherwise, I stand indifferent,
Nor makes it matter, Nestor's years to tell,
If man lives long, and if he live not well.
A multitude of days still heaped on
Seldom brings order, but confusion.
Might I make choice, long life should be with-stood;
Nor would I care how short it were, if good;
Which to effect, let ev'ry passing bell
Possess my thoughts, next comes my doleful knell;
And when the night persuades me to my bed,
I'll think I'm going to be buried;
So shall the blankets which come over me
Present those turfs, which once must cover me;
And with as firm behaviour I will meet
The sheet I sleep in, as my winding-sheet.
W...

"O, open the door, some pity to show,
Keen blows the northern wind!
The glen is white with the drifted snow,
And the path is hard to find.

"No outlaw seeks your castle gate,
From chasing the King's deer,
Though even an outlaw's wretched state
Might claim compassion here.

"A weary Palmer, worn and weak,
I wander for my sin;
O, open, for our Lady's sake!
A pilgrim's blessing win!

"I'll give you pardons from the Pope,
And reliques from o'er the sea,
Or if for these you will not ope,
Yet open for charity.

"The hare is crouching in her form,
The hard beside the hind;
An aged man, amid the storm,
No shelter can I find.

"You hear the Ettrick's sullen roar,
Dark, deep, and strong is he,
And I must ford the Et...

Her mist of primroses within her breast
Twilight hath folded up, and o'er the west,
Seeking remoter valleys long hath gone,
Not yet hath come her sister of the dawn.
Silence and coolness now the earth enfold:
Jewels of glittering green, long mists of gold,
Hazes of nebulous silver veil the height,
And shake in tremors through the shadowy night.
Heard through the stillness, as in whispered words,
The wandering God-guided wings of birds
Ruffle the dark. The little lives that lie
Deep hid in grass join in a long-drawn sigh
More softly still; and unheard through the blue
The falling of innumerable dew,
Lifts with grey fingers all the leaves that lay
Burned in the heat of the consuming day.
The lawns and lakes lie in this night of love,
Admitted to the majesty...

As one, the secret lover of a queen,
Watches her move within the people's eye,
Hears their poor chatter as she passes by,
And smiles to think of what his eyes have seen;
The little room where love did 'shut them in,'
The fragrant couch whereon they twain did lie,
And rests his hand where on his heart doth die
A bruised daffodil of last night's sin:

So, Poet, as I read your rhyme once more
Here where a thousand eyes may read it too,
I smile your own sweet secret smile at those
Who deem the outer petals of the rose
The rose's heart - I, who through grace of you,
Have known it for my own so long before.