Inhuman man! curse on thy barb'rous art,
        And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye;
        May never pity soothe thee with a sigh,
    Nor ever pleasure glad thy cruel heart.

    Go live, poor wanderer of the wood and field!
        The bitter little that of life remains:
        No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains
    To thee shall home, or food, or pastime yield.

    Seek, mangled wretch, some place of wonted rest,
        No more of rest, but now thy dying bed!
        The sheltering rushes whistling o'er thy head,
    The cold earth with thy bloody bosom prest.

    Oft as by winding Nith, I, musing, wait
        The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn;
        I'll miss thee sporting o'er the dewy lawn,
    And curse the ...

1.
The flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow dies;
All that we wish to stay
Tempts and then flies.
What is this world's delight?
Lightning that mocks the night,
Brief even as bright.

2.
Virtue, how frail it is!
Friendship how rare!
Love, how it sells poor bliss
For proud despair!
But we, though soon they fall,
Survive their joy, and all
Which ours we call.

3.
Whilst skies are blue and bright,
Whilst flowers are gay,
Whilst eyes that change ere night
Make glad the day;
Whilst yet the calm hours creep,
Dream thou - and from thy sleep
Then wake to weep.

I.

Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy
To those who woo her with too slavish knees,
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy,
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;
She is a Gypsy, will not speak to those
Who have not learnt to be content without her;
A Jilt, whose ear was never whisper'd close,
Who thinks they scandal her who talk about her;
A very Gypsy is she, Nilus-born,
Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar;
Ye love-sick Bards! repay her scorn for scorn;
Ye Artists lovelorn! madmen that ye are!
Make your best bow to her and bid adieu,
Then, if she likes it, she will follow you.

II.

"You cannot eat your cake and have it too."
- Proverb.


How fever'd is the man, who cannot look
Upon his mortal day...

Bleak, in dark rags of clouds, the day begins,
That passed so splendidly but yesterday,
Wrapped in magnificence of gold and gray,
And poppy and rose. Now, burdened as with sins,
Their wildness clad in fogs, like coats of skins,
Tattered and streaked with rain; gaunt, clogged with clay,
The mendicant Hours take their somber way
Westward o'er Earth, to which no sunray wins.
Their splashing sandals ooze; their foosteps drip,
Puddle and brim with moisture; their sad hair
Is tagged with haggard drops, that with their eyes'
Slow streams are blent; each sullen fingertip
Rivers; while round them, in the grief-drenched air
Wearies the wind of their perpetual sighs.

His identity was discovered by finding the maker's name on the suit he wore and by sending a strip of the cloth to the maker in Montreal.

        A young man's body long it lay
        In bottom of Toronto Bay,
        But at last the waters bore,
        And raised him up near to the shore.

        But no one knew his rank or station,
        No one knew his home or nation,
        But his form and dress were genteel,
        And sorrow many they did feel.

        Kind man took charge of the remains,
        And was well rewarded for his pains,
        So skilful he did him embalm,
        Restored the features sweet and calm.

        The father came and he did bless
        The man who did restore the face,
        And saved for him his so...

The immediate provocation to this fierce satire upon the Irish Parliament was the introduction of a Bill to put an end to the tithe on pasturage, called agistment, and thus to free the landlords from a legal payment, with severe loss to the Church.


As I stroll the city, oft I
See a building large and lofty,
Not a bow-shot from the college;
Half the globe from sense and knowledge
By the prudent architect,
Placed against the church direct,[1]
Making good my grandam's jest,
"Near the church" - you know the rest.[2]
    Tell us what the pile contains?
Many a head that has no brains.
These demoniacs let me dub
With the name of Legion[3] Club.
Such assemblies, you might swear,
Meet when butchers bait a bear:
Such a noise, and such haranguing,
When...

“Would a man ’scape the rod?”
Rabbi Ben Karshook saith,
“See that he turn to God
The day before his death.”

“Ay could a man enquire
When it shall come!” I say,
The Rabbi’s eye shoots fire
“Then let him turn to-day! “

Quoth a young Sadducee:
“Reader of many rolls,
Is it so certain we
Have, as they tell us, souls?”

“Son, there is no reply!”
The Rabbi bit his beard:
“Certain, a soul have I
We may have none,” he sneer’d.

Thus Karshook, the Hiram’s-Hammer,
The Right-hand Temple-column,
Taught babes in grace their grammar,
And struck the simple, solemn.

Rome, April 27, 1854

The old enthusiasms
Are dead, quite dead, in me;
Dead the aspiring spasms
Of art and poesy,
That opened magic chasms,
Once, of wild mystery,
In youth's rich Araby.
That opened magic chasms.

The longing and the care
Are mine; and, helplessly,
The heartache and despair
For what can never be.
More than my mortal share
Of sad mortality,
It seems, God gives to me,
More than my mortal share.

O world! O time! O fate!
Remorseless trinity!
Let not your wheel abate
Its iron rotary!
Turn round! nor make me wait,
Bound to it neck and knee,
Hope's final agony!
Turn round! nor make me wait.

I. NOONDAY.

Two angry men - in heat they sever,
    And one goes home by a harvest field: -
"Hope's nought," quoth he, "and vain endeavor;
    I said and say it, I will not yield!

"As for this wrong, no art can mend it,
    The bond is shiver'd that held us twain;
Old friends we be, but law must end it,
    Whether for loss or whether for gain.

"Yon stream is small - full slow its wending;
    But winning is sweet, but right is fine;
And shoal of trout, or willowy bending -
    Though Law be costly - I'll prove them mine.

"His strawberry cow slipped loose her tether,
    And trod the best of my barley down;
His little lasses at play together
    Pluck'd the poppies my boys had grown.

"What then? - Why naught! She lack'...

The bugler sent a call of high romance,
"Lights out! Lights out!" to the deserted square.
On the thin brazen notes he threw a prayer,
"God, if it's this for me next time in France ...
O spare the phantom bugle as I lie
Dead in the gas and smoke and roar of guns,
Dead in a row with the other broken ones
Lying so stiff and still under the sky,
Jolly young Fusiliers too good to die."

The world is tired, the year is old,
The fading leaves are glad to die,
The wind goes shivering with cold
Where the brown reeds are dry.

Our love is dying like the grass,
And we who kissed grow coldly kind,
Half glad to see our old love pass
Like leaves along the wind.

The happy men that lose their heads
They find their heads in heaven,
As cherub heads with cherub wings,
And cherub haloes even:
Out of the infinite evening lands
Along the sunset sea,
Leaving the purple fields behind,
The cherub wings beat down the wind
Back to the groping body and blind
As the bird back to the tree.

Whether the plumes be passion-red
For him that truly dies
By headsmen's blade or battle-axe,
Or blue like butterflies,
For him that lost it in a lane
In April's fits and starts,
His folly is forgiven then:
But higher, and far beyond our ken,
Is the healing of the unhappy men,
The men that lost their hearts.

Is there not pardon for the brave
And broad release above,
Who lost their heads for liberty
Or ...

She's tall and gaunt, and in her hard, sad face
With flashes of the old fun's animation
There lowers the fixed and peevish resignation
Bred of a past where troubles came apace.
She tells me that her husband, ere he died,
Saw seven of their children pass away,
And never knew the little lass at play
Out on the green, in whom he's deified.
Her kin dispersed, her friends forgot and gone,
All simple faith her honest Irish mind,
Scolding her spoiled young saint, she labours on:
Telling her dreams, taking her patients' part,
Trailing her coat sometimes:    and you shall find
No rougher, quainter speech, nor kinder heart.

A river binds the lonely land,
A river like a silver band,
To crags and shores of yellow sand.

It is a place where kildees cry,
And endless marshes eastward lie,
Whereon looks down a ghostly sky.

A house stands gray and all alone
Upon a hill, as dim of tone,
And lonely, as a lonely stone.

There are no signs of life about;
No barnyard bustle, cry and shout
Of children who run laughing out.

No crow of cocks, no low of cows,
No sheep-bell tinkling under boughs
Of beech, or song in garth or house.

Only the curlew's mournful call,
Circling the sky at evenfall,
And loon lamenting over all.

A garden, where the sunflower dies
And lily on the pathway lies,
Looks blindly at the blinder skies.

And round t...

God ne'er afflicts us more than our desert,
Though He may seem to overact His part:
Sometimes He strikes us more than flesh can bear;
But yet still less than grace can suffer here.

"A little child shall lead them."


I trod an arduous way, but came at last
To where the city walls rose fair and white
Above the darkening plain,--a goodly sight.
And eagerly, while yet a great way off,
My eyes did seek the Gates--the Great White Gates
That close not ever, day or night, but stand
Wide as the love of Christ that opened them.
But nought could I discern of gate or breach,
The wall stood flawless far as eye could reach.

"But when I drew in closer to the wall,
I saw a lowly portal, strait and small;
So small, a man might hardly enter there,
Low-browed and shadowed, and close-pressed to earth--
A very needle's eye--scarce visible.
I looked and wondered. Could this trivial way
Be the sole entrance to the light of day?
And as I s...

When first, descending from the moorlands,
I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide
Along a bare and open valley,
The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.

When last along its banks I wandered,
Through groves that had begun to shed
Their golden leaves upon the pathways,
My steps the Border-minstrel led.

The mighty Minstrel breathes no longer,
'Mid mouldering ruins low he lies;
And death upon the braes of Yarrow,
Has closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes:

Nor has the rolling year twice measured,
From sign to sign, its steadfast course,
Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvelous source;

The rapt One, of the godlike forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth:
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
Has vanished from h...

While Celia's Tears make sorrow bright,
Proud Grief sits swelling in her eyes;
The Sun, next those the fairest light,
Thus from the Ocean first did rise:
And thus thro' Mists we see the Sun,
Which else we durst not gaze upon.

These silver drops, like morning dew,
Foretell the fervour of the day:
So from one Cloud soft show'rs we view,
And blasting lightnings burst away.
The Stars that fall from Celia's eye
Declare our Doom in drawing nigh.

The Baby in that sunny Sphere
So like a Phaeton appears,
That Heav'n, the threaten'd World to spare,
Thought fit to drown him in her tears;
Else might th' ambitious Nymph aspire,
To set, like him, Heav'n too on fire.