Low spake the knight to the peasant-girl:
“I tell thee sooth, I am belted earl;
Fly with me from this garden small,
And thou shalt sit in my castle’s hall;
“Thou shalt have pomp, and wealth, and pleasure,
Joys beyond thy fancy’s measure;
Here with my sword and horse I stand,
To bear thee away to my distant land.
“Take, thou...
Grief hath been known to turn the young head gray,—
To silver over in a single day
The bright locks of the beautiful, their prime
Scarcely o’erpast; as in the fearful time
Of Gallia’s madness, that discrownèd head
Serene, that on the accursèd altar bled
Miscalled of Liberty. O martyred Queen!
What must the sufferings of that night have...
[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...
17—
i.
wailing, wailing, wailing, the wind over land and sea—
And Willy’s voice in the wind, “O mother, come out to me.”
Why should he call me to-night, when he knows that I cannot go?
For the downs are as bright as day, and the full moon stares at the snow.
II.
We should be seen, my dear; they would spy us out of the town.
The...
’t Was in the prime of summer time,
An evening calm and cool,
And four-and-twenty happy boys
Came bounding out of school;
There were some that ran, and some that leapt
Like troutlets in a pool.
Away they sped with gamesome minds
And souls untouched by sin;
To a level mead they came, and there
They drave the...
Through air made heavy with vapors murk,
O’er slack and cinders in heaps and holes,
The engine-driver came to his work,
Burly and bluff as a bag of coals;
With a thick gold chain where he bulged the most,
And a beard like a brush, and a face like a toast,
And a hat half-eaten by fire and frost;
And a diamond pin in the folded dirt...
[Supposed to be written in India, while the plague was raging, and playing havoc among the British residents and troops stationed there.]
WE meet ’neath the sounding rafter,
And the walls around are bare;
As they shout to our peals of laughter,
It seems that the dead are there.
But stand to your glasses, steady!
We drink to our comrades...
All day long the storm of battle through the startled valley swept;
All night long the stars in heaven o’er the slain sad vigils kept.
O, the ghastly upturned faces gleaming whitely through the night!
O, the heaps of mangled corses in that dim sepulchral light!
One by one the pale stars faded, and at length the morning broke;
But not one of all the...
Refugio Mine, Northern Mexico
DRUNK and senseless in his place,
Prone and sprawling on his face,
More like brute than any man
Alive or dead,—
By his great pump out of gear,
Lay the peon engineer,
Waking only just to hear,
Overhead,
Angry tones that called his name,
Oaths and cries of bitter...
You had two girls—Baptiste—
One is Virginie—
Hold hard—Baptiste!
Listen to me.
The whole drive was jammed,
In that bend at the Cedars;
The rapids were dammed
With the logs tight rammed
And crammed; you might know
The devil had clinched them below.
We worked three days—not a budge!
“She ’s as tight as a...
