Sounds of rural life and labour!
Not the notes of pipe and tabour,
Not the clash of helm and sabre
    Bright'ning up the field of glory,
Can compare with thy ovations,
That make glad the hearts of nations;
E'en the poet's fond creations
    Pale before thy simple story.

In the years beyond our present,
King was little more than peasant,
Labour was the shining crescent,
    Toil, the poor man's crown of glory;
Have we passed from worse to better
Since we wove the silken fetter,
Changed the plough for book and letter.
    Truest life for tinsel story?

Up the ladder of the ages
Clomb the patriarchal sages,
Solving nature's secret pages,
    Kings of thought's supremest glory;
Eagle-winged, and sight far reaching -
Are we wise...

Dainty little Love came tripping
    Down the hill,
Smiling as he thought of sipping
    Sweets at will.
        SHE said, "No,
        Love must go."
Dainty little Love came tripping
    Down the hill.

Dainty little Love went sighing
    Up the hill,
All his little hopes were dying -
    Love was ill.
        Vain he tried
        Tears to hide.
Dainty little Love went sighing
    Up the hill.

Safe enough lay the poor hunted Deer
In the ox-stall, with nothing to fear
From the careless-eyed men:
Till the Master came; then
There was no hiding-place for the Deer.

An Eye Is Keen In Its Own Interest

Laugh your best, O blazoned forests,
Me ye shall not shift or shame
With your beauty: here among you
Man hath set his spear of flame.

Lamp to lamp we send the signal,
For our lord goes forth to war;
Since a voice, ere stars were builded,
Bade him colonise a star.

Laugh ye, cruel as the morning,
Deck your heads with fruit and flower,
Though our souls be sick with pity,
Yet our hands are hard with power.

We have read your evil stories,
We have heard the tiny yell
Through the voiceless conflagration
Of your green and shining hell.

And when men, with fires and shouting,
Break your old tyrannic pales;
And where ruled a single spider
Laugh and weep a million tales.

This shall be your best of boasting:
That some ...

No soft-skinned Durham steers are they,
No Devons plump and red,
But brindled, black, and iron-grey
That mark the mountain-bred;
For mountain-bred and mountain-broke,
With sullen eyes agleam,
No stranger's hand could pull a yoke
On old Black Harry's team.

Pull out, pull out, at break of morn
The creeks are running white,
And Tiger, Spot, and Snailey-horn
Must bend their bows by night;
And axles, wheels and flooring boards
Are swept with flying spray
As, shoulder-deep, through mountain fords
The leaders feel their way.

He needs no sign of cross or kirn
To guide him as he goes,
For every twist and every turn
That old black leader knows.
Up mountains steep they heave and strain
Where never wheel has rolled,
And what the t...

    The brother knew well the castle old,
        Every closet, each outlook fair,
    Every turret and bartizan bold,
        Every chamber, garnished or bare.
        The brother was out in the heavenly air;
    Little ones lost the starry way,
        Wandered down the dungeon stair.
    The brother missed them, and on the clay
        Of the dungeon-floor he found them all.
        Up they jumped when they heard him call!
    He led the little ones into the day--
    Out and up to the sunshine gay,
        Up to the father's own door-sill--
        In at the father's own room door,
    There to be merry and work and play,
        There to come and go at their will,
        Good boys and girls to be lost no more!

Young again!    Young again!
Beating heart!    I deemed that sorrow,
With its torture-rack of pain,
Had eclipsed each bright to-morrow;
And that Love could never rise
Into life's cerulean skies,
Singing the divine refrain -
    "Young again!    Young again!"

Young again!    Young again!
Passion dies as we grow older;
Love that in repose has lain,
Takes a higher flight, and bolder:
Fresh from rest and dewy sleep,
Like the skylark's matin sweep,
Singing the divine refrain -
    "Young again!    Young again!"

Young again!    Young again!
Book of Youth, thy sunny pages
Here and there a tear may stain,
But 'tis Love that makes us sages.
Love, Hope, Youth - blest trinity!
Wanting these, and what were we?
Who would chant the ...

Without the slightest basis
For hypochondriasis
A widow had forebodings which a cloud around her flung,
And with expression cynical
For half the day a clinical
Thermometer she held beneath her tongue.

Whene'er she read the papers
She suffered from the vapors,
At every tale of malady or accident she'd groan;
In every new and smart disease,
From housemaid's knee to heart disease,
She recognized the symptoms as her own!

She had a yearning chronic
To try each novel tonic,
Elixir, panacea, lotion, opiate, and balm;
And from a homoeopathist
Would change to an hydropathist,
And back again, with stupefying calm!

The closets of her villa
Were full of sarsaparilla,
Ammonia, digitalis, bronchial troches, soda mint.
Restoratives ...

        ah quoties dubies Scriptis exarsit amator.
        OVID.


The Ghost of Miltiades came at night,
And he stood by the bed of the Benthamite,
And he said, in a voice that thrilled the frame,
"If ever the sound of Marathon's name
    Hath fired thy blood or flusht thy brow,
"Lover of Liberty, rouse thee now!"

The Benthamite yawning left his bed--
Away to the Stock Exchange he sped,
And he found the Scrip of Greece so high,
That it fired his blood, it flusht his eye,
And oh! 'twas a sight for the Ghost to see,
For never was Greek more Greek than he!
And still as the premium higher went,
His ecstasy rose--so much per cent.
(As we see in a glass that tells the weather
The heat and the silver rise together,)
And ...

[Being an humble address to Her Majesty's Naval advisers, who sold Nelson's old flagship to the Germans for a thousand pounds.]

Who says the Nation's purse is lean,
Who fears for claim or bond or debt,
When all the glories that have been
Are scheduled as a cash asset?
If times are black and trade is slack,
If coal and cotton fail at last,
We've something left to barter yet -
Our glorious past.

There's many a crypt in which lies hid
The dust of statesman or of king;
There's Shakespeare's home to raise a bid,
And Milton's house its price would bring.
What for the sword that Cromwell drew?
What for Prince Edward's coat of mail?
What for our Saxon Alfred's tomb?
They're all for sale!

And stone and marble may be sold
Which serve no prese...

"By-and-bye," the maiden sighed - "by-and-bye
He will claim me for his bride,
Hope is strong and time is fleet;
Youth is fair, and love is sweet,
Clouds will pass that fleck my sky,
He will come back by-and-bye - by-and-bye."

"By-and-bye," the soldier said - "by-and-bye,
After I have fought and bled,
I shall go home from the wars,
Crowned with glory, seamed with scars.
Joy will flash from some one's eye
When she greets me by-and-bye - by-and-bye."

"By-and-bye," the mother cried - "by-and-bye,
Strong and sturdy at my side,
Like a staff supporting me,
Will my bonnie baby be.
Break my rest, then, wail and cry -
Thou'lt repay me by-and-bye - by-and-bye."

Fleeting years of time have sped - hurried by -
Still the maiden is unwed:

        A Poem Dedicated to All Crusaders against the International and Interstate Traffic in Young Girls



    Galahad... soldier that perished... ages ago,
    Our hearts are breaking with shame, our tears overflow.
    Galahad... knight who perished... awaken again,
    Teach us to fight for immaculate ways among men.
    Soldiers fantastic, we pray to the star of the sea,
    We pray to the mother of God that the bound may be free.
    Rose-crowned lady from heaven, give us thy grace,
    Help us the intricate, desperate battle to face
    Till the leer of the trader is seen nevermore in the land,
    Till we bring every maid of the age to one sheltering hand.
    Ah, they are priceless, the pale and the ivory and red!
    Breathless we gaze on the curls of ea...

Friend, though thy soul should burn thee, yet be still.
Thoughts were not meant for strife, nor tongues for swords.
He that sees clear is gentlest of his words,
And that's not truth that hath the heart to kill.
The whole world's thought shall not one truth fulfil.
Dull in our age, and passionate in youth,
No mind of man hath found the perfect truth,
Nor shalt thou find it; therefore, friend, be still.

Watch and be still, nor hearken to the fool,
The babbler of consistency and rule:
Wisest is he, who, never quite secure,
Changes his thoughts for better day by day:
To-morrow some new light will shine, be sure,
And thou shalt see thy thought another way.

        There stands a hostel by a travelled way;
        Life is the road and Death the worthy host;
        Each guest he greets, nor ever lacks to say,
        "How have ye fared?"    They answer him, the most,
        "This lodging place is other than we sought;
        We had intended farther, but the gloom
        Came on apace, and found us ere we thought:
        Yet will we lodge.    Thou hast abundant room."

        Within sit haggard men that speak no word,
        No fire gleams their cheerful welcome shed;
        No voice of fellowship or strife is heard
        But silence of a multitude of dead.
        "Naught can I offer ye," quoth Death, "but rest!"
        And to his chamber leads each tired guest.

Underneath protected branches, from the highway just aloof;
Stands the house of Grand'ther Baldwin, with its gently sloping roof.

Square of shape and solid-timbered, it was standing, I have heard,
In the days of Whig and Tory, under royal George the Third.

Many a time, I well remember, I have gazed with Childish awe
At the bullet-hole remaining in the sturdy oaken door,

Turning round half-apprehensive (recking not how time had fled)
Of the lurking, savage foeman from whose musket it was sped..

Not far off, the barn, plethoric with the autumn's harvest spoils,
Holds the farmer's well-earned trophies--the guerdon of his toils;

Filled the lofts with hay, sweet-scented, ravished from the meadows green,
While beneath are stalled the cattle, with their quiet, d...

It passed like the breath of the night-wind away,
It fled like a mist at the dawn of the day;
It lasted its moment, then backward was hurled,
Another increase to the age of the world.

It passed with its shadows, its smiles and its tears,
It passed as a stream to the ocean of years;
Years that were coming were here and are o’er,
The ages departed to visit no more.

It passed, but the bark on its billowy track
Leaves an impression on waters aback:
The glow of the gloaming remains on the sky,
Unwilling to leave us unwilling to die.

It fled; but away and away in its wake
There lingers a something that time cannot break.
The past and the future are joined by a chain,
And memories live that must ever remain.

In your beautiful book, dear Mary,
    With pages so white and fair,
I pause ere I trace the first sentence,
    And thoughtfully breathe a prayer:--

That in the dew of the morning,
    Ere the shadows begin to fall,
You may turn with a child's devotion
    To the Book that is best of all:--

And learn with the gentle Mary,
    At the Saviour's feet to stay,
And to choose that better portion
    Which shall never be taken away.

Ah! lovely and thrice beloved,
    Sitting at Jesus' feet,
In the shady walks of Bethany,
    And the summer twilight sweet,--

With the thrilling palms and the olives,
    Listening overhead,
To that wonderful voice whose music
    Had power to waken the dead!

Even thus through life's gra...

Far-fetched and dear-bought, as the proverb rehearses,
Is good, or was held so, for ladies:    but nought
In a song can be good if the turn of the verse is
Far-fetched and dear-bought.

As the turn of a wave should it sound, and the thought
Ring smooth, and as light as the spray that disperses
Be the gleam of the words for the garb thereof wrought.

Let the soul in it shine through the sound as it pierces
Men's hearts with possession of music unsought;
For the bounties of song are no jealous god's mercies,
Far-fetched and dear-bought.