A Happy day at Whitsuntide,
As soon ’s the zun begun to vall,
We all strolled up the steep hill-zide
To Meldon, gret an’ small;
Out where the Castle wall stood high
A-mwoldrèn to the zunny sky.
An’ there wi’ Jenny took a stroll
Her youngest sister, Poll, so gaÿ,
Bezide John Hind, ah! merry soul,
An’ mid her...
Athwart the sky a lowly sigh
From west to east the sweet wind carried;
The sun stood still on Primrose Hill;
His light in all the city tarried:
The clouds on viewless columns bloomed
Like smouldering lilies unconsumed.
“O sweetheart, see! how shadowy,
Of some occult magician’s rearing,
Or swung in space of heaven’s grace...
OUT of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover’s pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the...
I Was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.
Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient,
I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,
Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb,
Rich, hemmed thick all around with...
Mowers, weary and brown, and blithe,
What is the word methinks ye know,
Endless over-word that the Scythe
Sings to the blades of the grass below?
Scythes that swing in the grass and clover,
Something, still, they say as they pass;
What is the word that, over and over,
Sings the Scythe to the flowers and grass?
Hush, ah...
The Sunburnt mowers are in the swath—
Swing, swing, swing!
The towering lilies loath
Tremble and totter and fall;
The meadow-rue
Dashes its tassels of golden dew;
And the keen blade sweeps o’er all—
Swing, swing, swing!
The flowers, the berries, the feathered grass,
Are thrown in a...
(Afloat)
I.
THE Red-tiled towers of the old Château,
Perched on the cliff above our bark,
Burn in the western evening glow.
The fiery spirit of Papineau
Consumes them still with its fever spark,
The red-tiled towers of the old Château!
Drift by and mark how bright they show,
And how the mullioned windows—mark!...
Lars Porsena of Clusium,
By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin
Should suffer wrong no more.
By the Nine Gods he swore it,
And named a trysting-day,
And bade his messengers ride forth,
East and west and south and north,
To summon his array.
East and west and south and north
The...
From the Swedish by William Strong
From the “Frithiof Saga,” Canto XI.
’T IS time to tell how Angantyr,
The earl, was seated then
High in his hall of stately fir,
Carousing with his men.
Thence he surveyed, in merry mood,
The day-car as it rolled;
Now cleaving through the purple flood,
All like a swan of gold.
“SPEAK! 1 speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,
Comest to daunt me!
Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretched, as if asking alms,
Why dost thou haunt me?”
Then from those cavernous eyes
Pale flashes seemed to rise,
As when the Northern skies...
