Maternity
HEIGH-HO! daisies and buttercups,
Fair yellow daffodils, stately and tall!
When the wind wakes, how they rock in the grasses,
And dance with the cuckoo-buds slender and small!
Here ’s two bonny boys, and here ’s mother’s own lasses,
Eager to gather them all.
Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups!
Mother shall...
There’s no dew left on the daisies and clover,
There’s no rain left in heaven.
I ’ve said my “seven times” over and over,—
Seven times one are seven.
I am old,—so old I can write a letter;
My birthday lessons are done.
The lambs play always,—they know no better;
They are only one times one.
O Moon! in the night...
Romance
YOU bells in the steeple, ring out your changes,
How many soever they be,
And let the brown meadow-lark’s note as he ranges
Come over, come over to me.
Yet birds’ clearest carol by fall or by swelling
No magical sense conveys,
And bells have forgotten their old art of telling
The fortune of future days.
Giving in Marriage
TO bear, to nurse, to rear,
To watch, and then to lose:
To see my bright ones disappear,
Drawn up like morning dews;—
To bear, to nurse, to rear,
To watch, and then to lose:
This have I done when God drew near
Among his own to choose.
To hear, to heed, to wed,
And with thy lord depart...
Love
I Leaned out of window, I smelt the white clover,
Dark, dark was the garden, I saw not the gate;
“Now, if there be footsteps, he comes, my one lover—
Hush, nightingale, hush! O sweet nightingale, wait
Till I listen and hear
If a step draweth near,
For my love he is late!
“The skies in the darkness...
It ’s we two, it ’s we two for aye,
All the world, and we two, and Heaven be our stay!
Like a laverock 1 in the lift, 2 sing, O bonny bride!
All the world was Adam once, with Eve by his side.
What ’s the world, my lass, my love!—what can it do?
I am thine, and thou art mine; life is sweet and new.
If the world have missed the mark, let it stand...
I.
an Empty sky, a world of heather,
Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom:
We two among them wading together,
Shaking out honey, treading perfume.
Crowds of bees are giddy with clover,
Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet:
Crowds of larks at their matins hang over,
Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet.
...
[Time, 1571]
the OLD mayor climbed the belfry tower,
The ringers ran by two, by three;
“Pull! if ye never pulled before;
Good ringers, pull your best,” quoth he.
“Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston bells!
Ply all your changes, all your swells!
Play uppe The Brides of Enderby!”
Men say it was a “stolen tyde,”—
The Lord...
