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A CHANNEL PASSAGE 1855Forth from Calais, at dawn of night, when sunset summer on autumn shone,Fared the steamer alert and loud through seas whence only the sun was gone:Soft and sweet as the sky they smiled, and bade man welcome: a dim sweet hourGleamed and whispered in wind and sea, and heaven was fair as a field in flower.Stars fulfilled the desire of the darkling world as with music: the starbright... more...

ATHENS AN ODEEre from under earth again like fire the violet kindle,[Str. 1. Ere the holy buds and hoar on olive-branches bloom,Ere the crescent of the last pale month of winter dwindle,Shrink, and fall as falls a dead leaf on the dead month's tomb,Round the hills whose heights the first-born olive-blossom brightened,Round the city brow-bound once with violets like a bride,Up from under earth... more...

THE DEFEAT OF YOUTH I. UNDER THE TREES. here had been phantoms, pale-remembered shapesOf this and this occasion, sisterlyIn their resemblances, each effigyCrowned with the same bright hair above the nape'sWhite rounded firmness, and each body alertWith such swift loveliness, that very restSeemed a poised movement: ... phantoms that impressedBut a faint influence and could bless or hurtNo more than... more...

INTRODUCTION Professor Elizabeth Story Donno, in her recent (New York, 1963), has made an important contribution to both scholarship and teaching. Not only has she brought together for the first time in one volume most of the extant Elizabethan minor epics, but in so doing, she has hastened the recognition that the minor epic, or "epyllion" as it has often been called in modern times,[] is a... more...

THE BROOK.I come from haunts of coot and hern,I make sudden sallyAnd sparkle out among the fern,To bicker down a valley.By thirty hills I hurry down,Or slip between the ridges,By twenty thorps, a little town,And half a hundred bridges.I chatter over stony ways,In little sharps and trebles,I bubble into eddying bays,I babble on the pebbles.With many a curve my banks I fretBy many a field and fallow,And... more...

PREFACE. Scotland has probably produced a more patriotic and more extended minstrelsy than any other country in the world. Those Caledonian harp-strains, styled by Sir Walter Scott "gems of our own mountains," have frequently been gathered into caskets of national song, but have never been stored in any complete cabinet; while no attempt has been made, at least on an ample scale, to adapt, by... more...

PROUD SIGNILD. Proud Signild’s bold brothers have taken her hand,They’ve wedded her into a far distant land. They’ve wedded her far from her own native land,To her father’s foul murderer gave they her hand. And so for eight winters the matter it stood,Their face for eight winters she never once view’d. Proud Signild she brews, and the ruddy wine blends;To her brothers so courteous a bidding... more...

I Strings in the earth and airMake music sweet;Strings by the river whereThe willows meet. There's music along the riverFor Love wanders there,Pale flowers on his mantle,Dark leaves on his hair. All softly playing,With head to the music bent,And fingers strayingUpon an instrument. The twilight turns from amethystTo deep and deeper blue,The lamp fills with a pale green glowThe trees of the avenue.... more...

ANALYSIS OF THE FIRST PART. THE Poem begins with the description of an obscure village, and of the pleasing melancholy which it excites on being revisited after a long absence. This mixed sensation is an effect of the Memory. From an effect we naturally ascend to the cause; and the subject proposed is then unfolded with an investigation of the nature and leading principles of this faculty. It is... more...

THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN Listen I.Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,By famous Hanover city;The river Weser, deep and wide,Washes its wall on the southern side;A pleasanter spot you never spied;But, when begins my ditty,Almost five hundred years ago,To see the townsfolk suffer soFrom vermin, was a pity. ListenRats!They fought the dogs and killed the cats,And bit the babies in the cradles, And ate the... more...