The noon was shady, and soft airs
Swept Ouse’s silent tide,
When, ‘scaped from literary cares,
I wander’d on his side.


My spaniel, prettiest of his race,
And high in pedigree
(Two nymphs[1] adorn’d with every grace
That spaniel found for me),


Now wanton’d lost in flags and reeds,
Now starting into sight,
Pursued the swallow o’er the meads
With scarce a slower flight.


It was the time when Ouse display’d
His lilies newly blown;
Their beauties I intent survey’d,
And one I wish’d my own.


With cane extended far I sought
To steer it close to land;
But still the prize, though nearly caught,
Escaped my eager hand.


Beau mark’d my unsuccessful pains
With fix’d considerate fac...

Dear Heart, I think the young impassioned priest
When first he takes from out the hidden shrine
His God imprisoned in the Eucharist,
And eats the bread, and drinks the dreadful wine,

Feels not such awful wonder as I felt
When first my smitten eyes beat full on thee,
And all night long before thy feet I knelt
Till thou wert wearied of Idolatry.

Ah! hadst thou liked me less and loved me more,
Through all those summer days of joy and rain,
I had not now been sorrow's heritor,
Or stood a lackey in the House of Pain.

Yet, though remorse, youth's white-faced seneschal,
Tread on my heels with all his retinue,
I am most glad I loved thee think of all
The suns that go to make one speedwell blue!

I wandered o'er the vast green plains of youth,
And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height
Fame's silhouette stood sharp against the skies.
Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad high-way
I caught the glimmer of a golden goal,
While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love.

Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed at Love,
With all the haughty insolence of youth,
As past her bower I strode to seek my goal.
"Now will I climb to glory's dizzy height,"
I said, "for there above the common way
Doth pleasure dwell companioned by the skies."

But when I reached that summit near the skies,
So far from man I seemed, so far from Love -
"Not here," I cried, "doth Pleasure find her way,"
Seen from the distant borderland of youth.
Fame smiles upon us from her...

Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang)
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow; let the torr...

What care I, so they stand the same,--
Things of the heavenly mind,--
How long the power to give them name
Tarries yet behind?

Thus far to-day your favors reach,
O fair, appeasing presences!
Ye taught my lips a single speech,
And a thousand silences.

Space grants beyond his fated road
No inch to the god of day;
And copious language still bestowed
One word, no more, to say.

The tears that trickled down our eyes,
They do not touch the earth to-day;
But soar like angels to the skies,
And, like the angels, may not die;
    For ah! our immortality
    Flows thro' each tear -- sounds in each sigh.

What waves of tears surge o'er the deep
Of sorrow in our restless souls!
And they are strong, not weak, who weep
Those drops from out the sea that rolls
    Within their hearts forevermore,
    Without a depth -- without a shore.

But ah! the tears that are not wept,
The tears that never outward fall;
The tears that grief for years has kept
Within us -- they are best of all;
    The tears our eyes shall never know,
    Are dearer than the tears that flow.

Each night upon earth's flowers below,
The dew comes do...

La donna che 'l mio cor nel viso porta.

HER KIND AND GENTLE SALUTATION THRILLS HIS HEART WITH PLEASURE.


    She, in her face who doth my gone heart wear,
As lone I sate 'mid love-thoughts dear and true,
Appear'd before me: to show honour due,
I rose, with pallid brow and reverent air.
Soon as of such my state she was aware,
She turn'd on me with look so soft and new
As, in Jove's greatest fury, might subdue
His rage, and from his hand the thunders tear.
I started: on her further way she pass'd
Graceful, and speaking words I could not brook,
Nor of her lustrous eyes the loving look.
When on that dear salute my thoughts are cast,
So rich and varied do my pleasures flow,
No pain I feel, nor evil fear below.

MACGREGOR.

Once when the snow of the year was beginning to fall,
We stopped by a mountain pasture to say, “Whose colt?”
A little Morgan had one forefoot on the wall,
The other curled at his breast. He dipped his head
And snorted to us. And then we saw him bolt.
We heard the miniature thunder where he fled,
And we saw him, or thought we saw him, dim and gray,
Like a shadow across instead of behind the flakes.
The little fellow’s afraid of the falling snow.
He never saw it before. It isn’t play
With the little fellow at all. He’s running away.
He wouldn’t believe when his mother told him, ‘Sakes,
It’s only weather.’ He thought she didn’t know!
So this is something he has to bear alone
And now he comes again with a clatter of stone,
He mounts the wall again with whited eyes

    Star high,
    Baby low:
    'Twixt the two
    Wise men go;
    Find the baby,
    Grasp the star--
    Heirs of all things
    Near and far!

(TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN)

Hello!    Hello!
Are you there?    Are you there?
Ah!    That you?    Well,--
This is just to tell you
That there's trouble in the air...
Trouble,--
T-R-O-U-B-L-E--Trouble!
Where?
In the air.
Trouble in the air!
Got that?    ...    Right!
Then--take a word of warning,
And ...    Beware!

What trouble?
Every trouble,--everywhere,
Every wildest kind of nightmare
That has ridden you is there,
In the air.
And it's coming like a whirlwind,
Like a wild beast mad with hunger,
To rend and wrench and tear,--
To tear the world in pieces maybe,
Unless it gets its share.
Can't you see the signs and portents?
Can't you feel them in the air?
Can't you see,--you unbeliever?
Can't you s...

(For John Bunker)



The roar of the world is in my ears.
Thank God for the roar of the world!
Thank God for the mighty tide of fears
Against me always hurled!

Thank God for the bitter and ceaseless strife,
And the sting of His chastening rod!
Thank God for the stress and the pain of life,
And Oh, thank God for God!

O'Er field and plain, in childhood's artless days,

Thou sprang'st with me, on many a spring-morn fair.

"For such a daughter, with what pleasing care,
Would I, as father, happy dwellings raise!"

And when thou on the world didst cast thy gaze,

Thy joy was then in household toils to share.

"Why did I trust her, why she trust me e'er?
For such a sister, how I Heaven should praise!"

Nothing can now the beauteous growth retard;

Love's glowing flame within my breast is fann'd.

Shall I embrace her form, my grief to end?

Thee as a queen must I, alas, regard:

So high above me placed thou seem'st to stand;

Before a passing look I meekly bend.

Shadowed so long by the storm-cloud of danger,
Thou whom the prayers of an empire defend,
Welcome, thrice welcome! but not as a stranger,
Come to the nation that calls thee its friend!

Bleak are our shores with the blasts of December,
Fettered and chill is the rivulet's flow;
Throbbing and warm are the hearts that remember
Who was our friend when the world was our foe.

Look on the lips that are smiling to greet thee,
See the fresh flowers that a people has strewn
Count them thy sisters and brothers that meet thee;
Guest of the Nation, her heart is thine own!

Fires of the North, in eternal communion,
Blend your broad flashes with evening's bright star!
God bless the Empire that loves the Great Union;
Strength to her people! Long life to the Czar!

"Then what is life?" I cried. And with that cry
I woke from deeper slumber - was it sleep? -
And saw a hooded figure standing by
The bed whereon I lay.

    "Why do you keep,
O spirit beautiful and swift, this guard
About my slumber? Shelley, from the deep
Why do you come with veiled face, mighty bard,
As that unearthly shape was veiled to you
At Casa Magni?"

        Then the room was starred
With light as I was speaking, and I knew
The god, my brother, from whose face the veil
Melted as mist.

        "What mission fair and true,
While I am sleeping, brings you? For I pale
Amid this solemn stillness, for your face
Unutterably majestic."

    As when the dale
At midnight echoes for a little space,
The night-bird's cry, ...

    Merry, merry we well may be,
    For Jesus Christ is come down to see:
    Long before, at the top of the stair,
    He set our angels a waiting there,
    Waiting hither and thither to fly,
    Tending the children of the sky,
    Lest they dash little feet against big stones,
    And tumble down and break little bones;
    For the path is rough, and we must not roam;
    We have learned to walk, and must follow him home!

This is the heart's own day:
With dreaming eyes
Life seems to look away
Beyond the skies
Into some long-gone May.

A May that can not die;
Across whose hills
Youth's heart goes singing by,
'Mid daffodils,
With Love the young and shy.

Love of the slender form
And elvish face;
Who with uplifted arm
Points to one place
A place of oldtime charm.

Where once the lilies grew
For Love to twine,
With violets, white and blue,
And columbine,
Of gold and crimson hue.

Gone is the long-ago;
Gone like the wind;
And Love we used to know
Sits dumb and blind,
With locks of winter snow.

And by him Memory
Sits sketching back
Into the used-to-be,
In white and black,
One flower on his knee...

1.
Like the ghost of a dear friend dead
Is Time long past.
A tone which is now forever fled,
A hope which is now forever past,
A love so sweet it could not last,
Was Time long past.

2.
There were sweet dreams in the night
Of Time long past:
And, was it sadness or delight,
Each day a shadow onward cast
Which made us wish it yet might last -
That Time long past.

3.
There is regret, almost remorse,
For Time long past.
'Tis like a child's beloved corse
A father watches, till at last
Beauty is like remembrance, cast
From Time long past.

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...