I like the Anglo-Saxon speech
With its direct revealings;
It takes a hold, and seems to reach
'Way down into your feelings;
That some folk deem it rude, I know,
And therefore they abuse it;
But I have never found it so,--
Before all else I choose it.
I don't object that men should air
The Gallic they have paid for,
With "Au revoir," "Adieu, ma chère,"
For that's what French was made for.
But when a crony takes your hand
At parting, to address you,
He drops all foreign lingo and
He says, "Good-by--God bless you!"

This seems to me a sacred phrase,
With reverence impassioned,--
A thing come down from righteous days,
Quaintly but nobly fashioned;
It well becomes an honest face,
A voice that's round and cheerful;
It stays the stu...

Amor con la man destra il lato manco.

UNDER THE FIGURE OF A LAUREL, HE RELATES THE GROWTH OF HIS LOVE.


    My poor heart op'ning with his puissant hand,
Love planted there, as in its home, to dwell
A Laurel, green and bright, whose hues might well
In rivalry with proudest emeralds stand:
Plough'd by my pen and by my heart-sighs fann'd,
Cool'd by the soft rain from mine eyes that fell,
It grew in grace, upbreathing a sweet smell,
Unparallel'd in any age or land.
Fair fame, bright honour, virtue firm, rare grace,
The chastest beauty in celestial frame,--
These be the roots whence birth so noble came.
Such ever in my mind her form I trace,
A happy burden and a holy thing,
To which on rev'rent knee with loving prayer I cling.

MACGREG...

"While the trees grow,
While the streams flow,
While the winds blow,
We will be free:
Free as trees growing,
Free as streams flowing,
Free as winds blowing,
Evermore free."

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty's orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more where those stars 'light
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become as in their sphere.

Ask me no more if east or west
The Phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.

We who beg for bread as we daily tread
    Country lane and city street,
Let us kneel and pray on the broad highway
    To the saint with the vagrant feet.
Our altar light is a buttercup bright,
    And our shrine is a bank of sod,
But still we share St. Alexis' care,
    The Vagabond of God.

They gave him a home in purple Rome
    And a princess for his bride,
But he rowed away on his wedding day
    Down the Tiber's rushing tide.
And he came to land on the Asian strand
    Where the heathen people dwell;
As a beggar he strayed and he preached and prayed
    And he saved their souls from hell.

Bowed with years and pain he came back again
    To his father's dwelling place.
There was none to see who this tramp might be,
    For they ...

The nodding oxeye bends before the wind,
The woodbine quakes lest boys their flowers should find,
And prickly dogrose spite of its array
Can't dare the blossom-seeking hand away,
While thistles wear their heavy knobs of bloom
Proud as a warhorse wears its haughty plume,
And by the roadside danger's self defy;
On commons where pined sheep and oxen lie
In ruddy pomp and ever thronging mood
It stands and spreads like danger in a wood,
And in the village street where meanest weeds
Can't stand untouched to fill their husks with seeds,
The haughty thistle oer all danger towers,
In every place the very wasp of flowers.

"Love brought Me down; and cannot love make thee
Carol for joy to Me?
Hear cheerful robin carol from his tree,
Who owes not half to Me
I won for thee."

"Yea, Lord, I hear his carol's wordless voice;
And well may he rejoice
Who hath not heard of death's discordant noise.
So might I too rejoice
With such a voice."

"True, thou hast compassed death; but hast not thou
The tree of life's own bough?
Am I not Life and Resurrection now?
My Cross balm-bearing bough
For such as thou?"

"Ah me, Thy Cross! - but that seems far away;
Thy Cradle-song to-day
I too would raise, and worship Thee and pray:
Not empty, Lord, to-day
Send me away."

"If thou wilt not go empty, spend thy store;
And I will give thee more,
Yea, make t...

I'm weary of this weather and I hanker for the ways
Which people read of in the psalms and preachers paraphrase--
The grassy fields, the leafy woods, the banks where I can lie
And listen to the music of the brook that flutters by,
Or, by the pond out yonder, hear the redwing blackbird's call
Where he makes believe he has a nest, but hasn't one at all;
And by my side should be a friend--a trusty, genial friend,
With plenteous store of tales galore and natural leaf to lend;
Oh, how I pine and hanker for the gracious boon of spring--
For then I'm going a-fishing with John Lyle King!

How like to pigmies will appear creation, as we float
Upon the bosom of the tide in a three-by-thirteen boat--
Forgotten all vexations and all vanities shall be,
As we cast our cares to...

All look and likeness caught from earth
All accident of kin and birth,
Had pass'd away. There was no trace
Of aught on that illumined face,
Uprais'd beneath the rifted stone
But of one spirit all her own;
She, she herself, and only she,
Shone through her body visibly.

Sleep is a spirit, who beside us sits,
Or through our frames like some dim glamour flits;
From out her form a pearly light is shed,
As from a lily, in a lily-bed,
A firefly's gleam. Her face is pale as stone,
And languid as a cloud that drifts alone
In starry heav'n. And her diaphanous feet
Are easy as the dew or opaline heat
Of summer.

Lo! with ears aurora pink
As Dawn's she leans and listens on the brink
Of being, dark with dreadfulness and doubt,
Wherein vague lights and shadows move about,
And palpitations beat like some huge heart
Of Earth the surging pulse of which we're part.

One hand, that hollows her divining eyes,
Glows like the curved moon over twilight skies;
And with her gaze she fathoms life and death
Gulfs, where man's cons...

I said of laughter: it is vain.
    Of mirth I said: what profits it?
    Therefore I found a book, and writ
Therein how ease and also pain,
How health and sickness, every one
Is vanity beneath the sun.

Man walks in a vain shadow; he
    Disquieteth himself in vain.
    The things that were shall be again;
The rivers do not fill the sea,
But turn back to their secret source;
The winds too turn upon their course.

Our treasures moth and rust corrupt,
    Or thieves break through and steal, or they
    Make themselves wings and fly away.
One man made merry as he supped,
Nor guessed how when that night grew dim,
His soul would be required of him.

We build our houses on the sand
    Comely withoutside and within;
    But when t...

While waiting debating I stated before,
Jack Merdle drove up in his carriage and bays,
"Halloo," said the banker, "I see you're ashore--
No wonder--this weather is all in a haze--
But come in my carriage, and truly confess
You're a victim of hunger and dinner down town;
A case of most common distressing distress;
When dining in public with Jones, Smith or Brown,
Or some other practical men of the nation,
Is worse on the whole than a little starvation.

But come home with me for the sake of Lang Syne,
And see Mrs. Merdle and see how we dine.

I must not expect," he advised in advance,
"To meet with a dinner got up in perfection,
But must run the risk of the luck and the chance,
As candidates do on the day of election."

Up high black walls, up sombre terraces,
Clinging like luminous birds to the sides of cliffs,
The yellow lights went climbing towards the sky.
From high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain,
Each yellow light looked down like a golden eye.

They trembled from coign to coign, and tower to tower,
Along high terraces quicker than dream they flew.
And some of them steadily glowed, and some soon vanished,
And some strange shadows threw.

And behind them all the ghosts of thoughts went moving,
Restlessly moving in each lamplit room,
From chair to mirror, from mirror to fire;
From some, the light was scarcely more than a gloom:
From some, a dazzling desire.

And there was one, beneath black eaves, who thought,
Combing with lifted arms her golden hair,

At Mary's tomb (sad sacred place!)
The Virtues shall their vigils keep,
And every Muse and every Grace
In solemn state shall ever weep.

The future pious mournful fair,
Oft as the rolling years return,
With fragrant wreaths and flowering hair
Shall visit her distinguish'd urn.

For her the wise and great shall mourn,
When late records her deeds repeat;
Ages to come and men unborn
Shall bless her name and sigh her fate.

Fair Albion shall, with faithful trust,
Her holy Queen's sad relics guard,
Till Heaven awakes the precious dust,
And gives the saint her full reward.

But let the King dismiss his woes,
Reflecting on his fair renown,
And take the cypress from his brows,
To put his wonted laurels on.

If press'd by gr...