Poetry Books

AN INTRODUCTION BY CHARLES DICKENS In the spring of the year 1853, I observed, as conductor of the weekly journal Household Words, a short poem among the proffered contributions, very different, as I thought, from the shoal of verses perpetually setting through the office of such a periodical, and possessing much more merit.  Its authoress was quite unknown to me.  She was one Miss Mary Berwick, whom... more...

GREEN FIELDS AND RUNNING BROOKS   Ho! green fields and running brooks!  Knotted strings and fishing-hooks  Of the truant, stealing down  Weedy backways of the town.   Where the sunshine overlooks,  By green fields and running brooks,  All intruding guests of chance  With a golden tolerance,   Cooing doves, or pensive pair  Of picnickers, straying there—  By green fields and... more...

POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE One who, after twenty years, is restored to the University where he was taught and first tried to teach, and who has received at the hands of his Alma Mater an honour of which he never dreamed, is tempted to speak both of himself and of her. But I remember that you have come to listen to my thoughts about a great subject, and not to my feelings about myself; and, of... more...

The Inn of Dreams           Sweet Laughter! Sweet Delight!My heart is like a lighted Inn that waitsYour swift approach . . . and at the open gatesWhite Beauty stands and listens like a flower.She has been dreaming of you in the night,O fairy Princes; and her eyes are bright.Spur your fleet horses, this is Beauty's hour!Even as when a golden flame up-curledQuivers and flickers out in a... more...

WITH PIPE AND BOOK. With Pipe and Book at close of day, Oh, what is sweeter, mortal, say? It matters not what book on knee, Old Izaak or the Odyssey, It matters not meerschaum or clay. And though one's eyes will dream astray, And lips forget to sue or sway, It is "enough to merely be," With Pipe and Book. What though our modern skies be gray, As bards aver, I will not pray For... more...

THREE HEAVY HUSBANDS I He had a high nose. He looked at one over the collar, so to speak. His regard was very assured, and his speech was that short bundle of monosyllables which the subaltern throws at the orderly. He had never been questioned, and, the precedent being absent, he had never questioned himself. Why should he? We live by question and answer, but we do not know the reply to anything until... more...

In the tenth book of the Republic, when Plato has completed his final burning denunciation of Poetry, the false Siren, the imitator of things which themselves are shadows, the ally of all that is low and weak in the soul against that which is high and strong, who makes us feed the things we ought to starve and serve the things we ought to rule, he ends with a touch of compunction: 'We will give... more...

embellished with designs.Young Master Pig you here may seeUpon his tender Mother’s kneeNo longer he with patience sucksFor See, he’s cutting both his tusks.Behold him now in Go Cart safely tiedHis pretty feet go trotting side by sideOld Granny smiles and grunting seems to say“Ce petit prodige c’est moi qui l’ai fait.”To Master Goat next Pig is sentWhose learning is most excellentBut all his... more...

Recent inquiries into the life of Henry Vaughan have added but little to the information already contained in the memoirs of Mr. Lyte and Dr. Grosart. I have, however, been enabled to put together a few notes on this somewhat obscure subject, which may be taken as supplementary to Mr. Beeching's Introduction in Vol. I. It will be well to preface them by reprinting the account of Anthony à Wood,... more...

PREFACE To the readers of this poem an apology is needed for affixing thereto a praem. Some friends of mine have been plaguing me beyond the restrictive line of Patience for the true cause of conceiving the accompanying collection of words, balderdash or what you will, some even asseverating with the eruditeness of an Aristole that it was a nebulous idea, an embryonic form of thought hibernating within... more...