Lady, lovely lady,
    Careless and gay!
Once when a beggar called
    She gave her child away.

The beggar took the baby,
    Wrapped it in a shawl,
"Bring her back," the lady said,
    "Next time you call."

Hard by lived a vain man,
    So vain and so proud,
He walked on stilts
    To be seen by the crowd.

Up above the chimney pots,
    Tall as a mast,
And all the people ran about
    Shouting till he passed.

"A splendid match surely,"
    Neighbours saw it plain,
"Although she is so careless,
    Although he is so vain."

But the lady played bobcherry,
    Did not see or care,
As the vain man went by her
    Aloft in the air.

This gentle-born couple
    Lived and died apart.

The sinking sun is taking leave,
And sweetly gilds the edge of Eve,
While huddling clouds of purple dye
Gloomy hang the western sky.
Crows crowd croaking over head,
Hastening to the woods to bed.
Cooing sits the lonely dove,
Calling home her absent love.
With "Kirchup! Kirchup!" mong the wheats
Partridge distant partridge greets;
Beckoning hints to those that roam,
That guide the squandered covey home.
Swallows check their winding flight,
And twittering on the chimney light.
Round the pond the martins flirt,
Their snowy breasts bedaubed with dirt,
While the mason, neath the slates,
Each mortar-bearing bird awaits:
By art untaught, each labouring spouse
Curious daubs his hanging house.

Bats flit by in hood and cowl;
Through the ba...

Here sparrows build upon the trees,
And stockdove hides her nest;
The leaves are winnowed by the breeze
Into a calmer rest;
The black-cap's song was very sweet,
That used the rose to kiss;
It made the Paradise complete:
My early home was this.

The red-breast from the sweetbriar bush
Drop't down to pick the worm;
On the horse-chestnut sang the thrush,
O'er the house where I was born;
The moonlight, like a shower of pearls,
Fell o'er this "bower of bliss,"
And on the bench sat boys and girls:
My early home was this.

The old house stooped just like a cave,
Thatched o'er with mosses green;
Winter around the walls would rave,
But all was calm within;
The trees are here all green agen,
Here bees the flowers still kiss,
But f...

One gloomy eve I roamed about
Neath Oxey's hazel bowers,
While timid hares were darting out,
To crop the dewy flowers;
And soothing was the scene to me,
Right pleased was my soul,
My breast was calm as summer's sea
When waves forget to roll.

But short was even's placid smile,
My startled soul to charm,
When Nelly lightly skipt the stile,
With milk-pail on her arm:
One careless look on me she flung,
As bright as parting day;
And like a hawk from covert sprung,
It pounced my peace away.

    The friend whom wild from wisdom's way,
        The fumes of wine infuriate send;
    (Not moony madness more astray;)
        Who but deplores that hapless friend?

    Mine was th' insensate frenzied part,
        Ah, why should I such scenes outlive
    Scenes so abhorrent to my heart!
        'Tis thine to pity and forgive.

Old and alone, sit we,
Caged, riddle-rid men;
Lost to Earth's "Listen!" and "See!"
Thought's "Wherefore?" and "When?"

Only far memories stray
Of a past once lovely, but now
Wasted and faded away,
Like green leaves from the bough.

Vast broods the silence of night,
The ruinous moon
Lifts on our faces her light,
Whence all dreaming is gone.

We speak not; trembles each head;
In their sockets our eyes are still;
Desire as cold as the dead;
Without wonder or will.
And One, with a lanthorn, draws near,
At clash with the moon in our eyes:
"Where art thou?" he asks: "I am here,"
One by one we arise.

And none lifts a hand to withhold
A friend from the touch of that foe:
Heart cries unto heart, "Thou art old!"
Ye...

I don't know somehow it seems sufficient
to see and hear whatever coming and going is,
losing the self to the victory
of stones and trees,
of bending sandpit lakes, crescent
round groves of dwarf pine:

for it is not so much to know the self
as to know it as it is known
by galaxy and cedar cone,
as if birth had never found it
and death could never end it:

the swamp's slow water comes
down Gravelly Run fanning the long
stone-held algal
hair and narrowing roils between
the shoulders of the highway bridge:

holly grows on the banks in the woods there,
and the cedars' gothic-clustered
spires could make
green religion in winter bones:

so I look and reflect, but the air's glass
jail seals each thing in its entity:
...

Winter, some call thee fair,
Yea! flatter thy cold face
With vain compare
Of all thy glittering ways
And magic snows
With summer and the rose;
Thy phantom flowers
And fretted traceries
Of crystal breath,
Thy frozen and fantastic art of death,
With April as she showers
The violet on the leas,
And bares her bosom
In the blossoming trees,
And dances on her way
To laugh with May -
Winter that hath no bird
To sing thee, and no bloom
To deck thy brow:
To me thou art an empty haunted room,
Where once the music
Of the summer stirred,
And all the dancers
Fallen on silence now.

Last night I saw you in my sleep:
And how your charm of face was changed!
I asked, “Some love, some faith you keep?”
You answered, “Faith gone, love estranged.”

Whereat I woke, a twofold bliss:
Waking was one, but next there came
This other: “Though I felt, for this,
My heart break, I loved on the same.”

The burly driver at my side,
We slowly climbed the hill,
Whose summit, in the hot noontide,
Seemed rising, rising still.
At last, our short noon-shadows bid
The top-stone, bare and brown,
From whence, like Gizeh's pyramid,
The rough mass slanted down.

I felt the cool breath of the North;
Between me and the sun,
O'er deep, still lake, and ridgy earth,
I saw the cloud-shades run.
Before me, stretched for glistening miles,
Lay mountain-girdled Squam;
Like green-winged birds, the leafy isles
Upon its bosom swam.

And, glimmering through the sun-haze warm,
Far as the eye could roam,
Dark billows of an earthquake storm
Beflecked with clouds like foam,
Their vales in misty shadow deep,
Their rugged peaks in shine,
I saw the mo...

Why go the east road now? . . .
That way a youth went on a morrow
After mirth, and he brought back sorrow
Painted upon his brow
Why go the east road now?

Why go the north road now?
Torn, leaf-strewn, as if scoured by foemen,
Once edging fiefs of my forefolk yeomen,
Fallows fat to the plough:
Why go the north road now?

Why go the west road now?
Thence to us came she, bosom-burning,
Welcome with joyousness returning . . .
She sleeps under the bough:
Why go the west road now?

Why go the south road now?
That way marched they some are forgetting,
Stark to the moon left, past regretting
Loves who have falsed their vow . . .
Why go the south road now?

Why go any road now?
White stands the handpost for brisk on-bearers,...

Frederick leaves the land of France,
Homeward hastes his steps to measure,
Careless casts the parting glance
On the scene of former pleasure.

Joying in his prancing steed,
Keen to prove his untried blade,
Hope's gay dreams the soldier lead
Over mountain, moor, and glade.

Helpless, ruin'd, left forlorn,
Lovely Alice wept alone;
Mourn'd o'er love's fond contract torn,
Hope, and peace, and honour flown.

Mark her breast's convulsive throbs!
See, the tear of anguish flows!
Mingling soon with bursting sobs,
Loud the laugh of frenzy rose.

Wild she cursed, and wild she pray'd;
Seven long days and nights are o'er;
Death in pity brought his aid,
As the village bell struck four.

Far from her, and far from France,
Fai...

Some people hang portraits up
In a room where they dine or sup:
And the wife clinks tea-things under,
And her cousin, he stirs his cup,
Asks “Who was the lady, I wonder?”
“’T is a daub John bought at a sale,”
Quoth the wife, looks black as thunder:
“What a shade beneath her nose!
“Snuff-taking, I suppose,”
Adds the cousin, while John’s corns ail.

Or else, there ’s no wife in the case,
But the portrait ’s queen of the place,
Alone mid the other spoils
Of youth, masks, gloves and foils,
And pipe-sticks, rose, cherry-tree, jasmine,
And the long whip, the tandem-lasher,
And the cast from a fist (“not, alas! mine,
“But my master’s, the Tipton Slasher”),
And the cards where pistol-balls mark ace,
And a satin shoe used for cigar-case,
And th...

[M. Alfred Austin, poete-laureat d'Angleterre, vient d'arriver a Nice, où il a devance la Reine. Il etait, hier, dans les jardins de Monte-Carlo. Sera-ce sous notre ciel qu'il ecrira son premier poeme?, Menton-Mondain.]


Wrong? are they wrong? Of course they are,
    I venture to reply;
For I bore 'my first' (and, I hope, my worst)
    A month or so gone by;
And I can't repeat it under this
    Or any other sky.

What! has the public never heard
    In these benighted climes
That nascent note of my Laureate throat,
    That fluty fitte of rhymes
Which occupied about a half
    A column of the Times?

They little know what they have lost,
    Nor what a carnal beano
They might have spent in the thick of Lent
    If only Daniel...

There is no break in all the wide grey sky,
Nor light on any field, and the wind grieves,
And talks of death. Where cold grey waters lie
Round greyer stones, and the new-fallen leaves
Heap the chill hollows of the naked woods,
A lisping moan, an inarticulate cry,
Creeps far among the charnel solitudes,
Numbing the waste with mindless misery.
In these bare paths, these melancholy lands,
What dream, or flesh, could ever have been young?
What lovers have gone forth with linkèd hands?
What flowers could ever have bloomed, what birds have sung?
Life, hopes, and human things seem wrapped away,
With shrouds and spectres, in one long decay.

Sweet tiny flower of darkly hue,
Lone dweller in the pathless shade;
How much I love thy pensive blue
Of innocence so well display'd!

What time the watery skies are full
Of streaming dappled clouds so pale,
And sideling rocks, more white than wool,
Portending snowy sleet, or hail;

I 'gin to seek thy charming flower
Along each hedge-row's mossy seat,
Where, dithering many a cold bleak hour,
I've hugg'd myself in thy retreat.

What makes me cherish such fond taste,
What makes such raptures spring for thee,
Is, that thou lov'st the dreary waste
Which is so well belov'd by me.

For solitude should be my choice
Could I this labouring life resign,
To see the little birds rejoice,
And thy sweet flowers in clusters shine.

O home, however homely,--thoughts of thee
Can never fail to cheer the absent breast;
How oft wild raptures have been felt by me,
When back returning, weary and distrest:
How oft I've stood to see the chimney pour
Thick clouds of smoke in columns lightly blue,
And, close beneath, the house-leek's yellow flower,
While fast approaching to a nearer view.
These, though they're trifles, ever gave delight;
E'en now they prompt me with a fond desire,
Painting the evening group before my sight,
Of friends and kindred seated round the fire.
O Time! how rapid did thy moments flow,
That chang'd these scenes of joy to scenes of woe.

The door was shut. I looked between
    Its iron bars; and saw it lie,
    My garden, mine, beneath the sky,
Pied with all flowers bedewed and green:

From bough to bough the song-birds crossed,
    From flower to flower the moths and bees;
    With all its nests and stately trees
It had been mine, and it was lost.

A shadowless spirit kept the gate,
    Blank and unchanging like the grave.
    I peering through said: 'Let me have
Some buds to cheer my outcast state.'

He answered not. 'Or give me, then,
    But one small twig from shrub or tree;
    And bid my home remember me
Until I come to it again.'

The spirit was silent; but he took
    Mortar and stone to build a wall;
    He left no loophole great or small
Through wh...