Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

  • [September 20, 1854]
    WILLIE, fold your little hands;
      Let it drop,—that “soldier” toy;
    Look where father’s picture stands,—
      Father, that here kissed his boy
    Not a mouth since,—father kind,
    Who this night may (never mind
    Mother’s sob, my...

  •         “CARRY me across!”
    The Syrian heard, rose up, and braced
    His huge limbs to the accustomed toil:
    “My child, see how the waters boil?
    The night-black heavens look angry-faced;
            But life is little loss.

            “I ’ll carry thee with...

  •    “Some cotton has lately been imported into Farringdon, where the mills have been closed for a considerable time. The people, who were previously in the deepest distress, went out to meet the cotton: the women wept over the bales and kissed them, and finally sang the Doxology over them.”—...

  • From the near city comes the clang of bells:
    Their hundred jarring diverse tones combine
    In one faint misty harmony, as fine
    As the soft note yon winter robin swells.
    What if to Thee in thine infinity
    These multiform and many-colored creeds
    Seem...

  • “Dowglas, Dowglas, tendir and treu”
    COULD ye come back to me, Douglas, Douglas,
      In the old likeness that I knew,
    I would be so faithful, so loving, Douglas,
      Douglas, Douglas, tender and true.

    Never a scornful word should grieve ye,
      I ’d...

  •  “Two hands upon the breast, and labor is past.”
    —RUSSIAN PROVERB.    

    “TWO hands upon the breast,
      And labor ’s done;
    Two pale feet crossed in rest,—
      The race is won;
    Two eyes with coin-weights shut,
      And all tears cease;
    Two...

  •  “She loves with love that cannot tire:
      And if, ah, woe! she loves alone,
    Through passionate duty love flames higher,
      As grass grows taller round a stone.”
    —COVENTRY PATMORE.    

    SO, the truth ’s out. I ’ll grasp it like a snake,—
    It will not...

  • A Girl, who has so many wilful ways
      She would have caused Job’s patience to forsake him;
    Yet is so rich in all that ’s girlhood’s praise,
    Did Job himself upon her goodness gaze,
      A little better she would surely make him.

    Yet is this girl I sing in...

  •  “Who bears upon his baby brow the round
    And top of sovereignty.”
    Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act IV. Sc. 1.    

    LOOK 1 at me with thy large brown eyes,
            Philip, my king!
    Round whom the enshadowing purple lies
    Of babyhood’s royal dignities....