Bursts trembling from my swollen eyes,The rain’s big drop, quick meets it there,And on my naked bosom flies!O pity, all ye sons of Joy,The little wand’ring Negro-boy.These tatter’d clothes, this ice-cold breastBy Winter harden’d into steel,These eyes, that know not soothing rest,But speak the half of what I feel!Long, long, I never new one joy,The…
Time, you thief, who love to getSweets into your list, put that in!Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,Say that health and wealth have missed me,Say I’m growing old, but add,Jenny kissed me.
Ye brave, enduring Englishmen,Who dash through fire and flood,And spend with equal thoughtlessnessYour money and your blood,I sing of that black season,Which all true hearts deplore,When ye lay,Night and day,Upon Walcheren’s swampy shore.‘Twas in the summer’s sunshineYour mighty host set sail,With valour in each longing heartAnd vigour in the gale;The Frenchman dropp’d his laughter,The Fleming’s…
They had almost as many tracks as thoughts,: And whistles and songs as words.Up they were with the earliest signOf the sun’s up-looking eye;But not an archer breakfastedTill he twinkled from the sky.All the morning they were wontTo fly their grey-goose quillsAt butts, or wands, or trees, or twigs,Till theirs was the skill of skills.With…
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,An angel writing in a book of gold:—Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,And to the Presence in the room he said‘What writest thou?’—The vision raised its head,And with a look made of all sweet accord,Answered ‘The names of those…
And balmy rest about theeSmooths off the day’s annoy.I sit me down, and thinkOf all thy winning ways;Yet almost wish, with sudden shrink,That I had less to praise.Thy sidelong pillowed meekness;Thy thanks to all that aid;Thy heart, in pain and weakness,Of fancied faults afraid;The little trembling handThat wipes thy quiet tears,—These, these are things that…
Her eyelids still were closing, and she heardBut indistinctly yet a little bird.That in the leaves o’erhead, waiting the sun.Seemed answering another distant one.She wakes, but stirred not, only just to pleaseHer pillow-nestling cheek; while the full seas.* * * * *Her senses lingering in the feel of sleep;And with a little smile she seemed…
The living head I stood in honoured pride,Talking of lovely things that conquer death.Perhaps he pressed it once, or underneathRan his fine fingers when he leant, blank-eyed,And saw in fancy Adam and his brideWith their heaped locks, or his own Delphic wreath.There seems a love in hair, though it be dead.It is the gentlest, yet…
Of honour-shaded thought,–an influenceAs from great nature’s fingers, and be twinedWith her old, sacred, verdurous ivy-bind,As though she hallowed with that sylvan fenceA head that bows to her benevolence,Midst pomp of fancied trumpets in the wind.It is what’s within us crowned. And kind and greatAre all the conquering wishes it inspires,Love of things lasting, love…
For surely as I feel the bird that singsBehind the leaves, or dawn as it up grows,Or the rich bee rejoicing as he goes,Or the glad issue of emerging springs,Or overhead the glide of a dove’s wings,Or turf, or trees, or, midst of all, repose.And surely as I feel things lovelier still,The human look, and…
