• TWO little busy hands patting on the window,

      Two laughing bright eyes looking out at me;

    Two rosy red cheeks dented with a dimple;

      Mother-bird is coming; Baby, do you see?


    Down by the lilac-bush, something white and azure

      Saw I in the window as I passed the tree;

    Well I knew the apron and...

  • Back from the cordial Grave I drag thee

    He shall not take thy Hand

    Nor put his spacious arm around thee

    That none can understand

  • Baffled for just a day or two —

    Embarrassed — not afraid —

    Encounter in my garden

    An unexpected Maid.

    She beckons, and the woods start —

    She nods, and all begin —

    Surely, such a country

    I was never in!

  •  

    FABLE XVI.


    A Bag-wig of a jauntee air,

    Trick'd up with all a barber's care,

    Loaded with powder and perfume,

    Hung in a spendthrift's dressing-room;
    5 Close by its side, by chance...

  • COME live with me, and be my love,

    And we will some new pleasures prove

    Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,

    With silken lines and silver hooks.


    There will the river whisp'ring run

    Warm'd by thy eyes, more than the sun;

    And there th' enamour'd fish will stay,

    Begging themselves they may...

  • As I was walkin' the jungle round, a-klllin' of tigers an' time,

    I seed a kind of an author man, a writin' a rousin' rhyme;

    'E was writin' a mile a minute an' more, an' I sez to 'im: "Oo are you?"

    Sez 'e, "I'm a poet—'er majesty's poet—soldier an' sailor, too!"

    An' 'is poem began at Ipsahan an' ended In Kalamazoo;

    ...

  • This is the story of G.R.D.,

    Who went on a mission across the sea

    To borrow some money for you and me.


    This G. R. Dibbs was a stalwart man

    Who was built on a most extensive plan,

    And a regular staunch Republican.


    But he fell in the hands of the Tory crew

    Who said, "It's a shame...

  • In Reading gaol by Reading town

       There is a pit of shame,

    And in it lies a wretched man

       Eaten by teeth of flame,

    In a...

  • No! never such a draught was poured

      Since Hebe served with nectar

    The bright Olympians and their Lord,

      Her over-kind protector,—

    Since Father Noah squeezed the grape

      And took to such behaving

    As would have shamed our grandsire ape

      Before the days of shaving,—

    No! ne'er was...

  • By the far Samoan shore,

    Where the league-long rollers pour

    All the wash of the Pacific on the coral-guarded bay,

    Riding lightly at their ease,

    In the calm of tropic seas,

    The three great nations' warships at their anchors proudly lay.


    Riding lightly, head to wind,

    With the coral reefs...