The were wolves mutter, the night hawks moan,
The raven croaks from the Raven-stone;
What care I for his boding groan,
Riding the moorland to come to mine own?
Hark! hark! hark!
The lark sings high in the dark.
Hark! hark! hark!
The lark sings high in the dark.
Long have I wander’d by land and by sea,
Long have I ridden by moorland and lea;
Yonder she sits with my babe on her knee,
Sits at the window and watches for me!
Hark! hark! hark!
The lark sings high in the dark.
Written for music, 1857.
Mighty war-smiths, thanes and lords,In Senlac slept the sleep of swords.Harold Earl, shot over shield,Lay along the autumn weald;Slaughter such was never noneSince the Ethelings England won.Thither Lady Githa came,Weeping sore for grief and shame;How may she her first-born tell?Frenchmen stript him where he fell,Gashed and marred his comely face;Who can know him in his…
And kinsfolk, shaking hands but once a year,And dames who tell old legends by the fire?Red sun, blue sky, white snow, and pearled ice,Keen ringing air, which sets the blood on fire,And makes the old man merry with the young,Through the short sunshine, through the longer night?Or southern Christmas, dark and dank with mist,And heavy…
They’re no great shakes, those Snowdon Lakes,And all their pounders myth and story.Blow Snowdon! What’s Lake Gwynant to Killarney,Or spluttering Welsh to tender blarney, blarney, blarney?So Thomas Hughes, sir, if you choose,I’ll tell you where we think of going,To swate and far o’er cliff and scar,Hear horns of Elfland faintly blowing;Blow Snowdon! There’s a hundred…
Among the moorlands of her own fair land,Amid a ring of old and moss-grown stonesIn gorse and heather all embosomed.There should be no tall stone, no marble tombAbove her gentle corse;-the ponderous pileWould press too rudely on those fairy limbs.The turf should lightly he, that marked her home.A sacred spot it would be-every birdThat came…
Plucking up maiden heart for the fencesWhere his brother won honour of yore.The walk to ‘the Meet’ with fair children,And women as gentle as gay,-Ah! how do we male hogs in armourDeserve such companions as they?The afternoon’s wander to windward,To meet the dear boy coming back;And to catch, down the turns of the valley,The last…
Odes to every zephyr;Ne’er a verse to thee.Welcome, black Northeaster!O’er the German foam;O’er the Danish moorlands,From thy frozen home.Tired are we of summer,Tired of gaudy glare,Showers soft and steaming,Hot and breathless air.Tired of listless dreaming,Through the lazy day–Jovial wind of winterTurn us out to play!Sweep the golden reed-beds;Crisp the lazy dike;Hunger into madnessEvery plunging pike.Fill…
