I.
she hung the cage at the window,
“If he goes by,” she said,
“He will hear my robin singing,
And when he lifts his head,
I shall be sitting here to sew,
And he will bow to me, I know.”
The robin sang a love-sweet song,
The young man raised his head;
The maiden turned away and blushed:
“I ’m a fool!” she...
“i Saw him kiss your cheek!”—“’T is true.”
“O Modesty!”—“’T was strictly kept:
He thought me asleep; at least, I knew
He thought I thought he thought I slept.”
Once, on a golden afternoon,
With radiant faces and hearts in tune,
Two fond lovers in dreaming mood
Threaded a rural solitude.
Wholly happy, they only knew
That the earth was bright and the sky was blue,
That light and beauty and joy and song
Charmed the way as they passed along:
The air was fragrant with woodland...
Under yonder beech-tree standing on the green sward,
Couched with her arms behind her little head,
Her knees folded up, and her tresses on her bosom,
Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.
Had I the heart to slide one arm beneath her!
Press her dreaming lips as her waist I folded slow,
Waking on the instant she could not but embrace me—...
I ’m sitting alone by the fire,
Dressed just as I came from the dance,
In a robe even you would admire,—
It cost a cool thousand in France;
I ’m bediamonded out of all reason,
My hair is done up in a cue:
In short, sir, “the belle of the season”
Is wasting an hour on you.
A dozen engagements I ’ve broken;
I left in the...
From “The Earthly Paradise”
ATALANTA VICTORIOUS
AND there two runners did the sign abide
Foot set to foot,—a young man slim and fair,
Crisp-haired, well knit, with firm limbs often tried
In places where no man his strength may spare;
Dainty his thin coat was, and on his hair
A golden circlet of renown he wore,
And in his hand an...
I Wandered by the brookside,
I wandered by the mill;
I could not hear the brook flow,—
The noisy wheel was still;
There was no burr of grasshopper,
No chirp of any bird,
But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.
I sat beneath the elm-tree;
I watched the long, long shade,
And, as it grew still...
From “The Angel in the House”
I GREW assured, before I asked,
That she ’d be mine without reserve,
And in her unclaimed graces basked
At leisure, till the time should serve,—
With just enough of dread to thrill
The hope, and make it trebly dear:
Thus loath to speak the word, to kill
Either the hope or happy fear.
...
One evening walking out, I o’ertook a modest colleen,
When the wind was blowing cool, and the harvest leaves were falling:
“Is our way by chance the same? might we travel on together?”
“Oh, I keep the mountain side,” she replied, “among the heather.”
“Your mountain air is sweet when the days are long and sunny,
When the grass grows round the rocks, and...
A New Old Ballad
THE WIND it blew, and the ship it flew;
And it was “Hey for hame!
And ho for hame!” But the skipper cried,
“Haud her oot o’er the saut sea faem.”
Then up and spoke the King himsel’:
“Haud on for Dumferline!”
Quo the skipper, “Ye ’re king upo’ the land—
I’m king upo’ the brine.”
And he took the...
