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...
From the Persian by Edward Fitzgerald
ONE night Shah Mahmúd, who had been of late
Somewhat distempered with Affairs of State,
Strolled through the Streets disguised, as wont to do—
And coming to the Baths, there on the Flue
Saw the poor Fellow who the Furnace fed
Sitting beside his Water-jug and Bread.
Mahmúd stept in—sat down—unasked took...
From “Julius Cæsar,” Act IV. Sc. 3.
Enter BRUTUS and CASSIUS.
CASSIUS.—That you have wronged me doth appear in this:
You have condemned and noted Lucius Pella
For taking bribes here of the Sardians;
Wherein my letter, praying on his side,
Because I knew the man, was slighted off.
BRUTUS.—You wronged yourself to write in such a case....
Sparkling and bright in liquid light,
Does the wine our goblets gleam in,
With hue as red as the rosy bed
Which a bee would choose to dream in.
Then fill to-night, with hearts as light,
To loves as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim on the beaker’s brim,
And break on the lips while meeting.
Oh! if Mirth might...
WREATHE the bowl
With flowers of soul,
The brightest wit can find us;
We ’ll take a flight
Towards heaven to-night,
And leave dull earth behind us!
Should Love amid
The wreaths be hid
That Joy, the enchanter, brings us,
No danger fear
While wine is...
OLD wine to drink!—
Ay, give the slippery juice
That drippeth from the grape thrown loose
Within the tun;
Plucked from beneath the cliff
Of sunny-sided Teneriffe,
And ripened ’neath the blink
Of India’s sun!
Peat whiskey hot,
Tempered with well-boiled water!
These make the long night shorter,—...
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...
From the Greek by W. Cory
THEY told me, Heracleitus, they told me you were dead;
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.
I wept as I remembered, how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of gray ashes, long, long ago at rest...
We know not yet what life shall be,
What shore beyond earth’s shore be set;
What grief awaits us, or what glee,
We know not yet.
Still somewhere in sweet converse met,
Old friends, we say, beyond death’s sea
Shall meet and greet us, nor forget
Those days of yore, those years when we
Were loved and true,—but will...
