By the fire that loves to tint her
Cheeks the color of a rose,
While the wanton winds of winter
Lose the landscape in the snows,—
While the air grows keen and bitter,
And the clean-cut silver stars
Tremble in the cold and glitter
Through the twilight’s dusky bars,—
In a cosey room where lingers
Happy Time on...
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A Little way below her chin,
Caught in her bosom’s snowy hem,
Some buttercups are fastened in,—
Ah, how I envy them!
They do not miss their meadow place,
Nor are they conscious that their skies
Are not the heavens, but her face,
Her hair, and mild blue eyes.There, in the downy meshes pinned,
Such sweet... -
O, Fairest of the rural maids!
Thy birth was in the forest shades;
Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky,
Were all that met thine infant eye.Thy sports, thy wanderings, when a child,
Were ever in the sylvan wild,
And all the beauty of the place
Is in thy heart and on thy face.The twilight of the trees and rocks
Is in... -
On Her Art of Growing Old Gracefully
YOU ask a verse, to sing (ah, laughing face!)
Your happy art of growing old with grace?
O Muse, begin, and let the truth—but hold!
First let me see that you are growing old. -
Three horsemen galloped the dusty way
While sun and moon were both in the sky;
An old crone crouched in the cactus’ shade,
And craved an alms as they rode by.
A friendless hag she seemed to be,
But the queen of a bandit crew was she.One horseman tossed her a scanty dole,
A scoffing couplet the second trolled;
But... -
The Year stood at its equinox,
And bluff the North was blowing,
A bleat of lambs came from the flocks,
Green hardy things were growing;
I met a maid with shining locks
Where milky kine were lowing.She wore a kerchief on her neck,
Her bare arm showed its dimple,
Her apron spread without a speck,
Her air was... -
O Lovely Mary Donnelly, it ’s you I love the best!
If fifty girls were round you, I ’d hardly see the rest.
Be what it may the time of day, the place be where it will,
Sweet looks of Mary Donnelly, they bloom before me still.Her eyes like mountain water that ’s flowing on a rock,
How clear they are! how dark they are! and they give me many a shock.... -
SHOW me a sight,
Bates for delight
An ould Irish wheel wid a young Irish girl at it.
Oh no!
Nothing you ’ll show
Aquals her sittin’ an’ takin’ a whirl at it.Look at her there—
Night in her hair,
The blue ray of day from her eye... -
When first I saw sweet Peggy,
’T was on a market day:
A low-backed car she drove, and sat
Upon a truss of hay;
And when that hay was blooming grass
And decked with flowers of spring
No flower was there that could compare
With the blooming girl I sing.
As she sat in the low-backed car,
The man at the turnpike bar... -
“Martiis cælebs quid agam Kalendis,
——— miraris?”
—Horace iii. 8.CHARLES,—for it seems you wish to know,—
You wonder what could scare me so,
And why, in this long-locked bureau,
With trembling fingers,—
With tragic air, I now replace
This ancient web of yellow lace,
Among whose faded folds the trace...