Well hast thou cried, departed Burke,
All chivalrous romantic work
Is ended now and past! -
That iron age - which some have thought
Of metal rather overwrought -
Is now all overcast!

Ay! where are those heroic knights
Of old - those armadillo wights
Who wore the plated vest? -
Great Charlemagne and all his peers
Are cold - enjoying with their spears
An everlasting rest!

The bold King Arthur sleepeth sound;
So sleep his knights who gave that Round
Old Table such éclat!
Oh, Time has pluck'd the plumy brow!
And none engage at tourneys now
But those that go to law!

Grim John o' Gaunt is quite gone by,
And Guy is nothing but a Guy,
Orlando lies forlorn! -
Bold Sidney, and his kidney - nay,
Those "early champions" - wh...

I sent my love two roses, - one
    As white as driven snow,
And one a blushing royal red,
    A flaming Jacqueminot.

I meant to touch and test my fate;
    That night I should divine,
The moment I should see my love,
    If her true heart were mine.

For if she holds me dear, I said,
    She'll wear my blushing rose;
If not, she'll wear my cold Lamarque
    As white as winter's snows.

My heart sank when I met her:    sure
    I had been over bold,
For on her breast my pale rose lay
    In virgin whiteness cold.

Yet with low words she greeted me,
    With smiles divinely tender;
Upon her cheek the red rose dawned. -
    The white rose meant surrender.

When in the even ways of life
    The old world jogs along,
Our little coloured flags we flaunt:
Our little separate selves we vaunt:
    Each pipes his native song.
And jealousy and greed and pride
    Join their ungodly hands,
And this round lovely world divide
    Into opposing lands.

But let some crucial hour of pain
    Sound from the tower of time,
Then consciousness of brotherhood
Wakes in each heart the latent good,
    And men become sublime.
As swarming insects of the night,
    Fly when the sun bursts in,
Self fades, before love's radiant light,
    And all the world is kin.

God, what a place this earth would be
    If that uplifting thought,
Born of some vast world accident,
Into our daily lives were blent,

I am the ancient Apple-Queen,
As once I was so am I now.
For evermore a hope unseen,
Betwixt the blossom and the bough.

Ah, where's the river's hidden Gold!
And where the windy grave of Troy?
Yet come I as I came of old,
From out the heart of Summer's joy.

I do not count the hours I spend
In wandering by the sea;
The forest is my loyal friend,
Like God it useth me.

In plains that room for shadows make
Of skirting hills to lie,
Bound in by streams which give and take
Their colors from the sky;

Or on the mountain-crest sublime,
Or down the oaken glade,
O what have I to do with time?
For this the day was made.

Cities of mortals woe-begone
Fantastic care derides,
But in the serious landscape lone
Stern benefit abides.

Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy,
And merry is only a mask of sad,
But, sober on a fund of joy,
The woods at heart are glad.

There the great Planter plants
Of fruitful worlds the grain,
And with a million spells enchants
The souls that walk...

Among the orchard weeds, from every search,
Snugly and sure, the old hen’s nest is made,
Who cackles every morning from her perch
To tell the servant girl new eggs are laid;
Who lays her washing by, and far and near
Goes seeking all about from day to day,
And stung with nettles tramples everywhere;
But still the cackling pullet lays away.
The boy on Sundays goes the stack to pull
In hopes to find her there, but naught is seen,
And takes his hat and thinks to find it full,
She’s laid so long so many might have been.
But naught is found and all is given o’er
Till the young brood come chirping to the door.

Some day I shall rise and leave my friends
And seek you again through the world's far ends,
You whom I found so fair
(Touch of your hands and smell of your hair!),
My only god in the days that were.
My eager feet shall find you again,
Though the sullen years and the mark of pain
Have changed you wholly; for I shall know
(How could I forget having loved you so?),
In the sad half-light of evening,
The face that was all my sunrising.
So then at the ends of the earth I'll stand
And hold you fiercely by either hand,
And seeing your age and ashen hair
I'll curse the thing that once you were,
Because it is changed and pale and old
(Lips that were scarlet, hair that was gold!),
And I loved you before you were old and wise,
When the flame of youth was strong ...

Of bronze and blaze
The north, to-night!
So adequate its forms,
So preconcerted with itself,
So distant to alarms, --
An unconcern so sovereign
To universe, or me,
It paints my simple spirit
With tints of majesty,
Till I take vaster attitudes,
And strut upon my stem,
Disdaining men and oxygen,
For arrogance of them.

My splendors are menagerie;
But their competeless show
Will entertain the centuries
When I am, long ago,
An island in dishonored grass,
Whom none but daisies know.

Thou green isle of sorrows, I think of thee daily,
And sad are the thoughts that come into my brain,
When here, to my home, o'er the wide, rolling ocean,
Is wafted the news of thy trouble and pain.

Oh, Erin! I love thee in spite of thine errors,
And now for thee, Erin, my heart is forlorn,
Disturb'd as thou art by such various terrors,
Thou beautiful isle, where my kindred were born.

E'en now, in my thoughts, I can climb thy steep mountains,
Or roam through thy valleys, where green shamrocks grow,
Or over thy meadows, where hedges of hawthorn
Stand gracefully clipp'd, an impassable row.

And I see the thatch'd cottage, where often, the stranger,
With kind word of welcome, is met at the door;
The castle or tow'r, a shelter from danger,
When foemen i...

1.
Thou art fair, and few are fairer
Of the Nymphs of earth or ocean;
They are robes that fit the wearer -
Those soft limbs of thine, whose motion
Ever falls and shifts and glances
As the life within them dances.

2.
Thy deep eyes, a double Planet,
Gaze the wisest into madness
With soft clear fire, - the winds that fan it
Are those thoughts of tender gladness
Which, like zephyrs on the billow,
Make thy gentle soul their pillow.

3.
If, whatever face thou paintest
In those eyes, grows pale with pleasure,
If the fainting soul is faintest
When it hears thy harp's wild measure,
Wonder not that when thou speakest
Of the weak my heart is weakest.

4.
As dew beneath the wind of morning,
As the sea which whirlwinds wak...

    "Ye states! and empires! nor of empires least,
Though least in size, hear, Britain! thou whose lot,
Whose final lot, is in the balance laid,
Irresolutely play the doubtful scales,
Nor know'st thou which will win.--Know then from me,
As govern'd well or ill, states sink or rise:
State ministers, as upright or corrupt,
Are balm or poison in a nation's veins!
Health or distemper, hasten or retard
The period of her pride, her day of doom:
And though, for reasons obvious to the wise,
Just Providence deals otherwise with men,
Yet believe, Britons! nor too late believe,
'Tis fix'd! by fate irrevocably fix'd!
Virtue and vice are empire's life and death."

    Thus it is written--Heard you not a groan?
Is Britain on her death-bed?--No, that groan
Was utte...

O west of all that a man holds dear, on the edge of the Kingdom Come,
Where carriage is far too high for beer, and the pubs keep only rum,
On the sunburnt ways of the Outer Back, on the plains of the darkening scrub,
I have followed the wandering teamster's track, and it always led to a pub.

There's always in man some gift to show, some power he can command,
And mine is the Gift that I always know when a pub is close at hand;
I can pick them out on the London streets, though most of their pubs are queer,
Such solid-looking and swell retreats, with never a sign of beer.

In the march of the boys through Palestine when the noontide fervour glowed,
Over the desert in thirsty line our sunburnt squadrons rode.
They looked at the desert lone and drear, stone ridges and stunted scrub,<...

1.

Think'st thou I saw thy beauteous eyes,
Suffus'd in tears, implore to stay;
And heard unmov'd thy plenteous sighs,
Which said far more than words can say?


2.

Though keen the grief thy tears exprest,
When love and hope lay both o'erthrown;
Yet still, my girl, this bleeding breast
Throbb'd, with deep sorrow, as thine own.


3.

But, when our cheeks with anguish glow'd,
When thy sweet lips were join'd to mine;
The tears that from my eyelids flow'd
Were lost in those which fell from thine.


4.

Thou could'st not feel my burning cheek,
Thy gushing tears had quench'd its flame,
And, as thy tongue essay'd to speak,
In sighs alone<...