Joyeux nouveau venu ! m’éjouis de t’entendre
Gentil Coucou, t’appelerai-je oiseau,
Ou seulement une voix tendre
Qui vient jouter avec l’écho ?
Tandis que suis gîsant sur la pelouse verte
J’entends ta voix qui deux fois fait coucou,
Alerte et toujours plus...
Six Years Old
O THOU whose fancies from afar are brought;
Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel,
And fittest to unutterable thought
The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol,
Thou fairy voyager! that dost float
In such clear water, that thy boat
May rather seem
To brood on air than on an earthly stream—
Suspended...
Three years she grew in sun and shower;
Then Nature said, “A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown:
This child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.
“Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse; and with me
The girl, in rock and plain,
In earth and heaven, in glade and...
A Simple child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
I met a little cottage girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.
She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad...
At Inversnaid, upon Loch Lomond
SWEET Highland Girl, a very shower
Of beauty is thy earthly dower!
Twice seven consenting years have shed
Their utmost bounty on thy head;
And these gray rocks, this household lawn,
These trees,—a veil just half withdrawn,—
This fall of water that doth make
A murmur near the silent lake,
This...
She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent
To be a moment’s ornament;
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like Twilight’s, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn;
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and...
“with sacrifice, before the rising morn,
Vows have I made by fruitless hope inspired;
And from th’ infernal gods, ’mid shades forlorn
Of night, my slaughtered lord have I required;
Celestial pity I again implore;
Restore him to my sight—great Jove, restore!”
So speaking, and by fervent love endowed
With faith, the suppliant...
STERN daughter of the voice of God!
O Duty! if that name thou love
Who art a light to guide, a rod
To check the erring, and reprove—
Thou, who art victory and law
When empty terrors overawe;
From vain temptations dost set free,
And calm’st the weary strife of frail humanity!
There are who ask...
I.
there was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,—
The glory and the freshness of the dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore:
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now...
THE Cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter,
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!
Like an army defeated...
