Beside the old hall-fire—upon my nurse’s knee,
Of happy fairy days—what tales were told to me!
I thought the world was once—all peopled with princesses,
And my heart would beat to hear—their loves and their distresses;
And many a quiet night—in slumber sweet and deep,
The pretty fairy people—would visit me in sleep.
I saw them in my dreams—come...
Riding from Coleraine
(Famed for lovely Kitty),
Came a Cockney bound
Unto Derby city;
Weary was his soul,
Shivering and sad, he
Bumped along the road
Leads to Limavaddy.
Mountains stretched around,
Gloomy was their tinting,
And the horse’s hoofs
Made a dismal clinting;
Wind upon the...
With pensive eyes the little room I view,
Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long;
With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two,
And a light heart still breaking into song:
Making a mock of life, and all its cares,
Rich in the glory of my rising sun,
Lightly I vaulted up four pair of stairs,
In the brave days when I was twenty-...
In tattered old slippers that toast at the bars,
And a ragged old jacket perfumed with cigars,
Away from the world and its toils and its cares,
I ’ve a snug little kingdom up four pair of stairs.
To mount to this realm is a toil, to be sure,
But the fire there is bright and the air rather pure;
And the view I behold on a sunshiny day
Is...
Christmas is here;
Winds whistle shrill,
Icy and chill,
Little care we;
Little we fear
Weather without,
Sheltered about
The mahogany-tree.
Once on the boughs
Birds of rare plume
Sang, in its bloom;
Night-birds are we;
Here we carouse,
Singing, like them,
Perched round the stem...
A Street there is in Paris famous,
For which no rhyme our language yields,
Rue Neuve des Petits Champs its name is—
The New Street of the Little Fields;
And there ’s an inn, not rich and splendid,
But still in comfortable case—
The which in youth I oft attended,
To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse.
This Bouillabaisse a noble...
Although I enter not,
Yet round about the spot
Ofttimes I hover;
And near the sacred gate
With longing eyes I wait,
Expectant of her.
The minster bell tolls out
Above the city’s rout,
And noise and humming;
They ’ve hushed the minster bell;
The organ ’gins to swell;
She ’s coming, coming...
Ho! pretty page, with the dimpled chin,
That never has known the barber’s shear,
All your wish is woman to win;
This is the way that boys begin,—
Wait till you come to forty year.
Curly gold locks cover foolish brains;
Billing and cooing is all your cheer,—
Sighing, and singing of midnight strains,
Under Bonnybell’s window...
The Play is done,—the curtain drops,
Slow falling to the prompter’s bell;
A moment yet the actor stops,
And looks around, to say farewell.
It is an irksome word and task;
And, when he ’s laughed and said his say,
He shows, as he removes the mask,
A face that ’s anything but gay.
One word, ere yet the evening ends,—...
Werther had a love for Charlotte
Such as words could never utter;
Would you know how first he met her?
She was cutting bread and butter.
Charlotte was a married lady,
And a moral man was Werther,
And for all the wealth of Indies
Would do nothing for to hurt her.
So he sighed and pined and ogled,
And his...
