“o Mary, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
Across the sands o’ Dee!”
The western wind was wild and dank wi’ foam,
And all alone went she.
The creeping tide came up along the sand,
And o’er and o’er the sand,
And round and round the sand,
...
Written When the News Arrived; 1782
TOLL for the brave,—
The brave that are no more!
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore.
Eight hundred of the brave,
Whose courage well was tried,
Had made the vessel heel,
And laid her on her side.
A land-breeze shook the shrouds,
And she was overset...
Three fishers went sailing out into the west,—
Out into the west as the sun went down;
Each thought of the woman who loved him the best,
And the children stood watching them out of the town;
For men must work, and women must weep;
And there ’s little to earn, and many to keep,
Though the harbor bar be moaning.
Three wives sat up...
[Young Casabianca, a boy about thirteen years old, son of the Admiral of the Orient, remained at his post (in the Battle of the Nile) after the ship had taken fire and all the guns had been abandoned, and perished in the explosion of the vessel, when the flames had reached the powder.]
THE BOY stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but him had fled;
The flame that...
It was the schooner Hesperus
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.
The skipper he stood beside the helm;...
“ho, there! Fisherman, hold your hand!
Tell me, what is that far away,—
There, where over the isle of sand
Hangs the mist-cloud sullen and gray?
See! it rocks with a ghastly life,
Rising and rolling through clouds of spray,
Right in the midst of the breakers’ strife,—
Tell me what is it, Fisherman, pray?”
“That, good sir...
Silence. A while ago
Shrieks went up piercingly;
But now is the ship gone down;
Good ship, well manned, was she.
There ’s a raft that ’s a chance of life for one,
This day upon the sea.
A chance for one of two—
Young, strong, are he and he,
Just in the manhood prime,
The comelier, verily,
For...
When Eve brought woe to all mankind
Old Adam called her wo-man;
But when she wooed with love so kind,
He then pronounced her woo-man.
But now, with folly and with pride,
Their husbands’ pockets trimming,
The women are so full of whims
That men pronounce them wimmen!
O, SAIRLY 1 may I rue the day
I fancied first the womenkind;
For aye sinsyne I ne’er can hae
Ae quiet thought or peace o’ mind!
They hae plagued my heart an’ pleased my e’e,
An’ teased an’ flattered me at will,
But aye for a’ their witcherye,
The pawky things I lo’e them still.
O the women fo’k! O the women fo’k!...
There was (not certaine when) a certaine preacher,
That never learned, and yet became a teacher,
Who having read in Latine thus a text
Of erat quidam homo, much perplext,
He seemed the same with studie great to scan,
In English thus, There was a certaine man.
But now (quoth he), good people, note you this,
He saith there was, he doth not...
