Poetry Books

DEDICATORY POEM.   Dear Carrie, were we truly wise,  And could discern with finer eyes,    And half-inspired sense,    The ways of Providence:   Could we but know the hidden things  That brood beneath the Future's wings,    Hermetically sealed,    But soon to be revealed:   Would we, more blest than we are now,  In due submission learn to bow,—    Receiving on our... more...

TRADITIONAL NURSERY SONGS. A diller, a dollar,A ten o'clock scholar,What makes you come so soon?You used to come at ten o'clock,And now you come at noon. A long tailed pig, or a short tailed pig,Or a pig without a tail,A sow pig, or a boar pig,Or a pig with a curly tail. As I was going up Pippen hill,Pippen hill was dirty;There I met a pretty Miss,And she dropt me a curtsey. Little Miss,... more...

THE EXPEDITION TO BIRTING’S LAND The King he o’er the castle rules,   He rules o’er all the land;O’er many a hardy hero too,   With naked sword in hand. Let the courtier govern his steed,   The boor his thatchèd cot,But Denmark’s King o’er castles rules,   For nobler is his lot. King Diderik sits on Brattingsborg,   And round he looks with pride:“No one I know of in the... more...

BIOGRAPHICAL The life of John Clare, offering as it does so much opportunity for sensational contrast and unbridled distortion, became at one time (like the tragedy of Chatterton) a favourite with the quillmen. Even his serious biographers have made excessive use of light and darkness, poetry and poverty, genius and stupidity: that there should be some uncertainty about dates and incidents is no great... more...

  I. The Old Woman  (A Morality Play)   The Old Woman  (A Morality Play)   Characters:  The Woman  The House  The Doctor  The Deacon  The Landlady   Doctor:  There is an old woman  Who ought to die—   Deacon:  And nobody knows  But what she's dead—   Doctor:  The air will be cleaner  When she's gone—   Deacon:  But we dare not bury her  Till... more...

Gerontion Thou hast nor youth nor ageBut as it were an after dinner sleepDreaming of both. Here I am, an old man in a dry month,Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.I was neither at the hot gatesNor fought in the warm rainNor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,Bitten by flies, fought.My house is a decayed house,And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner,Spawned in some estaminet... more...

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Although Bret Harte's name is identified with Californian life, it was not till he was fifteen that the author of "Plain Language from Truthful James" saw the country of his adoption. Francis Bret Harte, to give the full name which he carried till he became famous, was born at Albany, New York, August 25, 1839. He went with his widowed mother to California in 1854, and... more...

LAMENT I Come, Heraclitus and Simonides,Come with your weeping and sad elegies:Ye griefs and sorrows, come from all the landsWherein ye sigh and wail and wring your hands:Gather ye here within my house todayAnd help me mourn my sweet, whom in her MayUngodly Death hath ta'en to his estate,Leaving me on a sudden desolate.'Tis so a serpent glides on some shy nestAnd, of the tiny nightingales... more...

Though flattered by imitators galore Miss Potter's work stands supreme. Her many picture stories should be among the first books owned by children. Cecily Parsley lived in a pen,And brewed good ale for gentlemen; Gentlemen came every day,Till Cecily Parsley ran away. Goosey, goosey, gander,Whither will you wander?Upstairs and downstairs,And in my lady's chamber! This pig went to market;This... more...

PROEM Lo, thus, as prostrate, "In the dust I writeMy heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears."Yet why evoke the spectres of black nightTo blot the sunshine of exultant years?Why disinter dead faith from mouldering hidden? 5Why break the seals of mute despair unbidden,And wail life's discords into careless ears? Because a cold rage seizes one at whilesTo show the bitter old... more...