'SAlbert Edward, well meaning but flighty, Who invited King Arthur, the blameless and mighty, To meet Alcibiades and Aphrodite.       is for Bernhardt, who fails to awaken Much feeling in Bismarck, Barabbas, and Bacon.       is Columbus, who tries to explain How to balance an egg—to the utter disdain Of Confucius, Carlyle, Cleopatra, and Cain.  ... more...

A carrion crow sat on an oak,Watching a tailor shape his cloak."Wife, bring me my old bent bow,That I may shoot yon carrion crow."The tailor he shot and missed his mark,And shot his own sow quite through the heart."Wife, wife, bring brandy in a spoon,For our old sow is in a swoon." B Ba, ba, black sheep,  Have you any wool?Yes, marry, have I,  Three bags full.One for my master,  One for my... more...

In great King Arthur’s reign, Tom’s history first begun;A farmer’s wife had sigh’d in vain to have a darling son!A fairy listen’d to her call, and granted her the same;But being very small, Tom Thumb she did him name.   To please him every means she’d take,And a pudding large did for him make;But in trying to obtain a sip,Into the batter did he slip!The batter in the pot went plump;Tom made the pudding... more...

Too long have Britain’s sons with proud disdainSurvey’d the gay Patrician’s titled train,Their various merit scann’d with eye severe,Nor learn’d to know the peasant from the peer:At length the Gothic ignorance is o’er,And vulgar brows shall scowl on LORDS no more;Commons shall shrink at each ennobled nod,And ev’ry lordling shine a demigod:By CRAVEN taught, the humbler herd shall know,How high the Peerage,... more...

They who maintained their rights,Through storm and stress,And walked in all the waysThat God made known,Led by no wandering lights,And by no guess,Through dark and desolate daysOf trial and moan:Here let their monumentRise, like a wordIn rock commemorativeOf our Land's youth;Of ways the Puritan went,With soul love-spurredTo suffer, die, and liveFor faith and truth.Here they the corner-stoneOf Freedom laid;Here in their hearts' distressThey lit... more...

The ordered interminglingof the real and the dream,—The mill above the river,and the mist above the stream;The life of ceaseless labor,brave with song and cheery call—The radiant skies of evening,with its rainbow o'er us all. An Old Sweetheart of Mine!—Is thisher presence here with me,Or but a vain creation ofa lover's memory? A fair, illusive visionthat would vanish into airDared I even touch the silencewith the whisper of... more...

ANIMAL CHILDREN     Sometimes I am so sorry that my papa is a king,It's really most annoying and hurts like everythingTo have the little girls and boys all want to run away,For if I am a Lion prince, I'm a baby, anyway!   Some jungle boys, by mischief made quite bold,Once took the baby Tiger, so we're told,And in broad stripes they smeared his coat so fine,And 'round his neck they hung a "Fresh Paint"... more...

ARE WOMEN PEOPLE? A Consistent Anti to Her Son ("Look at the hazards, the risks, the physical dangers that ladies would be exposed to at the polls."—Anti-suffrage speech.) You're twenty-one to-day, Willie, And a danger lurks at the door, I've known about it always, But I never spoke before; When you were only a baby It seemed so very remote, But you're twenty-one to-day, Willie, And old enough to vote. You must not go to... 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 her champions, not poets themselves but poet-lovers,... more...

ASTROPHEL AFTER READING SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S ARCADIA IN THE GARDEN OF AN OLD ENGLISH MANOR HOUSE I A star in the silence that followsThe song of the death of the sunSpeaks music in heaven, and the hollowsAnd heights of the world are as one;One lyre that outsings and outlightensThe rapture of sunset, and thrillsMute night till the sense of it brightensThe soul that it fills. The flowers of the sun that is sunkenHang heavy of heart as of... more...