’t Is an old dial, dark with many a stain;
In summer crowned with drifting orchard bloom,
Tricked in the autumn with the yellow rain,
And white in winter like a marble tomb.
And round about its gray, time-eaten brow
Lean letters speak,—a worn and shattered row:
I am a Shade; a Shadowe too art thou:
I marke the Time: saye, Gossip...
Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ’t is early morn,—
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn.
’T is the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,
Dreary gleams about the moorland, flying over Locksley Hall:
Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,
And the hollow ocean-ridges...
“a Weary lot is thine, fair maid,
A weary lot is thine!
To pull the thorn thy brow to braid,
And press the rue for wine!
A lightsome eye, a soldier’s mien,
A feather of the blue,
A doublet of the Lincoln green—
No more of me you knew,
My love!
No more of me you knew.
“The morn is merry June...
When the sheep are in the fauld and the kye a’ at hame,
When a’ the weary world to sleep are gane,
The waes o’ my heart fa’ in showers frae my e’e,
While my gudeman lies sound by me.
Young Jamie lo’ed me weel, and sought me for his bride;
But saving a crown, he had naething else beside.
To mak’ the crown a pound, my Jamie gaed to sea;
...
A Pensive photograph
Watches me from the shelf—
Ghost of old love, and half
Ghost of myself!
How the dear waiting eyes
Watch me and love me yet—
Sad home of memories,
Her waiting eyes!
Ghost of old love, wronged ghost,
Return: though all the pain
Of all once loved, long lost,
Come back again...
Sonnet Cvi.
when in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights;
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have expressed
Even such a beauty as you...
The Lark now leaves his watery nest,
And climbing shakes his dewy wings,
He takes your window for the east,
And to implore your light, he sings;
Awake, awake, the morn will never rise,
Till she can dress her beauty at your eyes.
The merchant bows unto the seaman’s star,
The ploughman from the sun his season takes;
But...
Sonnet Xviii.
shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed:
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or...
Give place, ye ladies, and begone,
Boast not yourselves at all:
For here at hand approacheth one
Whose face will stain you all.
The virtue of her lively looks
Excels the precious stone:
I wish to have none other books
To read or look upon.
In each of her two crystal eyes
Smileth a naked boy:
It would you all in...
Give place, ye lovers, here before
That spent your boasts and brags in vain;
My lady’s beauty passeth more
The best of yours, I dare well sayen,
Than doth the sun the candle light,
Or brightest day the darkest night.
And thereto hath a troth as just
As had Penelope the fair;
For what she saith, ye may it trust,
...
