John Abbot

To the right Honourable Algernon Percie, Earle of

Northumberland
My Lord,

So many glorious titles crowne

Your Noble Stemme, as easily they put down
Great Romes à milians, Scipio's, Fabio's, whose
One single Tribe adventured to oppose
Themselves their Cities Wall: and with their bloud,
Preserve Rome from the innumerous Multitude
Of Veians. How oft have our Ancestours
Seen, and extold like Piety of Yours?
How many Victories have the PERCIES got?
What Trophies reard of the subdued SCOT?
How many of your Martiall Linage are
In FAMES BOOK, written Thunderbolts of VVAR,
Who with HEROICK Actions adde new Grace,
To Charlemain's MARTELLVS, PEPINS race,
From whom you are discendants; and we know
How much GRADIVUS and the MVSES owe
To your Progenitours: and dare rehearse
Our better VOVVES and SERVICES in verse,
Be Greatest FABIVS, be great ALGER NON,
And emulate your PERCIES CRESCENT MOON
Shewre down your influence: make our clouded night
By your wise Counsailes, then the day more bright.
Your Honours humble Servant, A, Rivers.
Cecil Frances Alexander
All Things Bright And Beauteous
All things bright and beauteous,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wondrous,
The LORD GOD made them all.

Each little flower that opens,

Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colours,
He made their tiny wings.

The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,
GOD made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

The purple-headed mountain,

The river running by,
The sunset, and the morning,
That brightens up the sky,

The cold wind in the winter,

The pleasant summer sun,
The ripe fruits in the garden,
He made them every one.

The tall trees in the greenwood,

The meadows where we play,
The rushes by the water,
We gather every day;--

He gave us eyes to see them,

And lips that we might tell,
How great is GOD Almighty,
Who has made all things well.
Sabine Baring-Gould
Child’s Evening Hymn
NOW the day is over,
Night is drawing nigh,
Shadows of the evening
Steal across the sky.

Now the darkness gathers,

Stars begin to peep,
Birds and beasts and flowers
Soon will be asleep.

Jesu, give the weary

Calm and sweet repose;
With thy tenderest blessing
May our eyelids close.

Grant to little children

Visions bright of thee;
Guard the sailors tossing
On the deep blue sea.

Comfort every sufferer

Watching late in pain;
Those who plan some evil
From their sin restrain.

Through the long night-watches

May thine angels spread
Their white wings above me,
Watching round my bed.

When the morning wakens,

Then may I arise
Pure and fresh and sinless
In thy holy eyes.

Glory to the Father,

Glory to the Son,
And to thee, bless’d Spirit,
Whilst all ages run. AMEN
Maya Angelou
Human Family
I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.

Some declare their lives are lived

as true profundity,
and others claim they really live
the real reality.

The variety of our skin tones

can confuse, bemuse, delight,
brown and pink and beige and purple,
tan and blue and white.

I've sailed upon the seven seas

and stopped in every land,
I've seen the wonders of the world
not yet one common man.

I know ten thousand women

called Jane and Mary Jane,
but I've not seen any two
who really were the same.

Mirror twins are different

although their features jibe,
and lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side.

We love and lose in China,

we weep on England's moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.

We seek success in Finland,

are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we're the same.

I note the obvious differences

between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.

We are more alike, my friends,

than we are unalike.

We are more alike, my friends,

than we are unalike.
William Edmondstoune Aytoun
The Massacre of MacPherson
Fhairshon had a son,
Who married Noah's daughter,
And nearly spoiled ta Flood
By trinking up ta water:

Which he would have done,

I at least pelieve it,
Had the mixture peen
Only half Glenlivet.
Anne Reeve Aldrich
Recollection
How can it be that I forget
The way he phrased my doom,
When I recall the arabesques
That carpeted the room?

How can it be that I forget

His look and mein that hour,
When I recall I wore a rose,
And still can smell the flower?

How can it be that I forget

Those words that were his last,
When I recall the tune a man
Was whistling as he passed?

These things are what we keep from life's

Supremest joy or pain;
For memory locks her chaff in bins
And throws away the grain.
Joseph Auslander
Home-Bound
The moon is a wavering rim where one fish slips,
The water makes a quietness of sound;
Night is an anchoring of many ships
Home-bound.

There are strange tunnelers in the dark, and whirs

Of wings that die, and hairy spiders spin
The silence into nets, and tenanters
Move softly in.

I step on shadows riding through the grass,

And feel the night lean cool against my face;
And challenged by the sentinel of space,
I pass.
Joel Barlow
Psalm CXXXVII The Babylonian Captivity
ALONG the banks where Babel's current flows
Our captive bands in deep despondence stray'd,
While Zion's fall in sad remembrance rose,
Her friends, her children mingled with the dead.

The tuneless harp, that once with joy we strung,

When praise employ'd and mirth inspir'd the lay,
In mournful silence on the willows hung;
And growing grief prolong'd the tedious day.

The barbarous tyrants, to increase the woe,

With taunting smiles a song of Zion claim;
Bid sacred praise in strains melodious flow,
While they blaspheme the great Jehovah's name.

But how, in heathen chains and lands unknown,

Shall Israel's sons a song of Zion raise?
O hapless Salem, God's terrestrial throne,
Thou land of glory, sacred mount of praise.

If e'er my memory lose thy lovely name,

If my cold heart neglect my kindred race,
Let dire destruction seize this guilty frame;
My hand shall perish and my voice shall cease.

Yet shall the Lord, who hears when Zion calls,

O'ertake her foes with terror and dismay,
His arm avenge her desolated walls,
And raise her children to eternal day.
George Barker
O Child Beside The Waterfall
O Child beside the Waterfall
what songs without a word
rise from those waters like the call
only a heart has heard-
the Joy, the Joy in all things
rise whistling like a bird.

O Child beside the Waterfall

I hear them too, the brief
heavenly notes, the harp of dawn,
the nightingale on the leaf,
all, all dispel the darkness and
the silence of our grief.

O Child beside the Waterfall

I see you standing there
with waterdrops and fireflies
and hummingbirds in the air,
all singing praise of paradise,
paradise everywhere.
Jean Antoine de Baif
O ma belle rebelle!
O ma belle rebelle!
Las! que tu m'es cruelle,
Ou quand d'une doux souris,
Larron de mes esprits,
Ou quand d'une parole,
Mignardètement molle,
Ou quand d'une regard d'yeux
Fièrement gracieux,
Ou quand d'un petit geste,
Tout divin, tout céleste,
En amoureuse ardeur
Tu plonges tout mon coeur!

O ma belle rebelle!
Las! que tu m'est cruelle,
Quand la cuisant ardeur
Qui me brule le coeur
Fait que je te demande,
A sa brûlure grande,
Un rafraichissement
D'un baiser seulement.
O! ma belle rebelle!
Las, que tu m'es cruelle,
Quand d'un petit baiser
Tu ne veux m'apaiser.

Me puisse-je un jour, dure!

Venger de ton injure;
Mon petit maître amour
Te puisse outrer un jour,
Et pour moi langoureuse
Il te fasse amoureuse
Comme il m'a langoureux
De toi fait amoureux.
Alors, par ma vengeance
Tu auras connaissance
Quel mal fait du baiser
Un amant refuser.

O my fine rebel

O my fine rebel,
how cruel you are to me!
When you steal my spirits
with a gentle smile,
or when with a word
dainty and soft,
or with a glance of your eyes
full of proud grace,
or with a so divine,
so heavenly gesture,
you plunge my heart
into amorous flame!

O my fine rebel,
how cruel you are to me!
When the flames
which consume my heart
compel me to beg you
this great heat
to cool and slake
with but one kiss.
O my fine rebel,
how cruel you are to me,
when with one little kiss
you will not appease me.

If I could but one day

avenge your wronging of me,
if only my little master Amor
could provoke you one day
and make you fall
in love with me,
who am so langorous
being in love with you!
Then by my revenge
you would know
what it means to refuse
a kiss to a lover.
John Barlas
Love Sonnet
The poor dumb creatures of the field, that call
So sadly to their young; whose narrow mind,
Consciously helpless, looks up to mankind
Through piteous pleading eyes; that live in thrall,
Or, stricken in the shambles, groaning fall -
Thinking of these, how little grace they find,
And then of thee who never wast unkind,
And of our love, I could weep for them all,
This is the gift of Love, that we, so blest,
Should feel for the afflicted; that we twain
Should be united against wrong and pain,
The slaughtered lamb, the wild bird's rifled nest,
And, most of all, the fraud and force that stain
Homes of the human poor and the oppressed.
Jane Austen
Mock Panegyric on a Young Friend
In measured verse I'll now rehearse
The charms of lovely Anna:
And, first, her mind is unconfined
Like any vast savannah.

Ontario's lake may fitly speak

Her fancy's ample bound:
Its circuit may, on strict survey
Five hundred miles be found.

Her wit descends on foes and friends

Like famed Niagara's fall;
And travellers gaze in wild amaze,
And listen, one and all.

Her judgment sound, thick, black, profound,

Like transatlantic groves,
Dispenses aid, and friendly shade
To all that in it roves.

If thus her mind to be defined

America exhausts,
And all that's grand in that great land
In similes it costs --

Oh how can I her person try

To image and portray?
How paint the face, the form how trace,
In which those virtues lay?

Another world must be unfurled,

Another language known,
Ere tongue or sound can publish round
Her charms of flesh and bone.
Sir William Alexander
XVI: Some Verses: Of Conquerouris
Thay quho to conqueir all the erth presume,
A littill airth schall thame at last consume.

Of Kingis

Mo Kingis in chalmeris fall by flatterreris charmis,

Than in the feild by the aduersareis armis.

A Comparisone betuix heich and law Estaitis.

The bramble growis althocht it be obscure,
Quhillis michty cederis feilis the busteous windis;
And myld plebeyan spreitis may leif secure,
Quhylis michty tempestis toss imperiall myndis.

Off an Ennemy

An ennemy, gif it be weill adwysd',

Thocht he seme waik sould' never be dispysd.

Off Man

No woundir thocht men change and faid,

Quho of thir chengeing elementis ar maid.

Off the Erth

We may compair the erthis glory to a floure,

That flurische and faideth in an houre.

Off Man
Quhat are we bot a puff of braith,
Quho live assurd' of nothing bot of deth.
Richard Harris Barham
manipulation
Oh, my head! my head! my head!
Lack! for my poor unfortunate head!
Mister de Ville
Has been to feel,
And what do you think he said?
He felt it up, and he felt it down,
Behind the ears, and across the crown,
Sinciput, occiput, great and small,
Bumps and organs, he tickled 'em all;
And he shook his own, as he gravely said,
'Sir, you really have got a most singular head!

'Why here's a bump,

Only feel what a lump;
Why the organ of "Sound" is an absolute hump;
And only feel here,
Why, behind each ear,
There's a bump for a butcher or a bombardier;
Such organs of slaughter
Would spill blood like water;
Such "lopping and topping" of heads and of tails,
Why, you'll cut up a jackass with Alderman S--.'
[Caetera desunt.]
Mumia Abu-Jamal
To Those
nameless ones who came before
and are no more,
to those who leapt
to dark, salty depths,
to those who battled
against all odds,
to those who would give birth
to gods,
to those who would not yield--
To those who came before,
to those who are to come,
I dedicate this shield.
Robert Aytoun
To An Inconstant Mistress
I loved thee once, I'll love no more,
Thine be the grief as is the blame,
Thou art not what thou wast before,
What reason I should be the same?
He that can love unloved again
Hath better store of love than brain;
God send me love my debts to pay,
While unthrifts fool their love away.

Nothing could have my love o'erthrown,

If thou hadst still continued mine;
Nay, if thou hadst remained thine own,
I might perchance have yet been thine.
But thou thy freedom did recall,
That it thou might elsewhere enthrall,
And then how could I but disdain
A captive's captive to remain?

When new desires had conquered thee,

And changed the object of thy will,
It had been lethargy in me,
Not constancy, to love thee still;
Yea, it had been a sin to go
And prostitute affection so,
Since we are taught no prayers to say
To such as must to others pray.

Yet do thou glory in thy choice,

Thy choice of his good fortune boast;
I'll neither grieve, nor yet rejoice
To see him gain what I have lost.
The height of my disdain shall be
To laugh at him, to blush for thee;
To love thee still, but go no more
A-begging at a beggar's door.
William H Babcock
The Mirthfulness of Guinevere
Usual is wind from the north,
Usual for maids to be lovely
Usual a handsome man in Gwynedd,
Usual after drinking is derangement of the senses.
Valentine Ackland
Instructions From England
Note nothing of why or how, enquire
no deeper than you need
into what set these veins on fire,
note simply that they bleed.

Spain fought before and fights again,

better no question why;
note churches burned and popes in pain
but not the men who die.
Margaret Steele Anderson
Song
The bride, she wears a white, white rose -- the plucking it was mine;
The poet wears a laurel wreath -- and I the laurel twine;
And oh, the child, your little child, that's clinging close to you,
It laughs to wear my violets -- they are so sweet and blue!

And I, I have a wreath to wear -- ah, never rue nor thorn!

I sometimes think that bitter wreath could be more sweetly worn!
For mine is made of ghostly bloom, of what I can't forget --
The fallen leaves of other crowns -- rose, laurel, violet!
Lascelles Abercrombie
From "Vashti"
WHAT thing shall be held up to woman's beauty?
Where are the bounds of it? Yea, what is all
The world, but an awning scaffolded amid
The waste perilous Eternity, to lodge
This Heaven-wander'd princess, woman's beauty?
The East and West kneel down to thee, the North
And South; and all for thee their shoulders bear
The load of fourfold space. As yellow morn
Runs on the slippery waves of the spread sea,
Thy feet are on the griefs and joys of men
That sheen to be thy causey. Out of tears
Indeed, and blitheness, murder and lust and love,
Whatever has been passionate in clay,
Thy flesh was tempered. Behold in thy body
The yearnings of all men measured and told,
Insatiate endless agonies of desire
Given thy flesh, the meaning of thy shape!
What beauty is there, but thou makest it?
How is earth good to look on, woods and fields,
The season's garden, and the courageous hills,
All this green raft of earth moored in the seas?
The manner of the sun to ride the air,
The stars God has imagined for the night?
What's this behind them, that we cannot near,
Secret still on the point of being blabbed,
The ghost in the world that flies from being named?
Where do they get their beauty from, all these?
They do but glaze a lantern lit for man,
And woman's beauty is the flame therein.
Raymond Queneau
The Thrush
Killed by my cat, the thrush
sits hard in my gloved hand.
His feathers are his shape.

Round my thought flutters

a fluff of words, its shape;
it lies hard inside.
Feathers reveal and hide.
J. W. Holman
He Died At His Post
A soldier had fallen! 'Tis well that we weep!
O soft be his pillow, and peaceful his sleep!
Far, far from his home, and the friends he loved most,
He fell in the conflict, and died at his post.

When brave ones were summoned their country to save,

He hasted war's perils to share with the brave,
And proudly he stood in the van of the host,
And, like his Great Captain, he died at his post.

No more shall earth's conflicts disturb his repose,

He has gone where the weary are free from life's woes;
There covered with glory, on Eden's bright coast,
'Twill be sweet to remember he died at his post.

Farewell youthful soldier! we ne'er will forget,

The life thou has offered, the death thou has met!
Of thee may our nation in history boast;
And tell the whole world, thou didst die at thy post.

A soldier has fallen; but long shall remain

The star-spangled flag which he died to sustain;
For, sooner than let our loved country be lost,
A nation of freemen will die at their post!
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
The Messages
"I cannot quite remember.... There were five
Dropt dead beside me in the trench--and three
Whispered their dying messages to me...."

Back from the trenches, more dead than alive,

Stone-deaf and dazed, and with a broken knee,
He hobbled slowly, muttering vacantly:

"I cannot quite remember.... There were five

Dropt dead beside me in the trench, and three
Whispered their dying messages to me....

"Their friends are waiting, wondering how they thrive--

Waiting a word in silence patiently....
But what they said, or who their friends may be

"I cannot quite remember.... There were five

Dropt dead beside me in the trench--and three
Whispered their dying messages to me...."
George Sterling
"In Extremis"
Till dawn the winds' insuperable throng
passed over like archangels in their might,
with roar of chariots from their stormy height,
and broken thunder of mysterious song-
by mariner or sentry heard along
the star-usurping battlements of night-
and wafture of immeasurable flight,
and high-blown trumpets mutinous and strong.
Till louder on the dreadful dark I heard
the shrieking of the tempest-tortured tree,
and deeper on immensity the call
and tumult of the empire-forging sea;
but near the eternal Peace I lay, nor stirred,
knowing the happy dead hear not at all.
Thomas Achelley
To The Authour
Thy booke beginning sweete and ending sowre,
Deere friend, bewrayes thy false successe in loue,
Where smiling first, thy Mistres falles to lowre,
When thou did'st hope her curtesie to proue;
And finding thy expected lucke to fayle,
Thou falst from praise, and dost begin to rayle.
To vse great tearmes in praise of thy deuise,
I thinke were vaine: therefore I leaue them out;
Content thee, that the Censure of the wise
Hath put that needeles question out of doubt:
Yet howe I weigh the worke that thou hast wrought,
My iudgement I referre vnto thy thought.
William Gordon McCabe
Christmas Night Of '62
The wintry blast goes wailing by,
The snow is falling overhead;
I hear the lonely sentry's tread,
And distant watch-fires light the sky.

Dim forms go flitting through the gloom;

The soldiers cluster round the blaze
To talk of other Christmas days,
And softly speak of home and home.

My sabre swinging overhead

Gleams in the watch-fire's fitful glow,
While fiercely drives the blinding snow,
And memory leads me to the dead.

My thoughts go wandering to and fro,

Vibrating between the Now and Then;
I see the low-browed home again,
The old hall wreathed with mistletoe.

And sweetly from the far-off years

Comes borne the laughter faint and low,
The voices of the Long Ago!
My eyes are wet with tender tears.

I feel again the mother-kiss,

I see again the glad surprise
That lightened up the tranquil eyes
And brimmed them o'er with tears of bliss,

As, rushing from the old hall-door,

She fondly clasped her wayward boy--
Her face all radiant with the joy
She felt to see him home once more.

My sabre swinging on the bough

Gleams in the watch-fire's fitful glow,
While fiercely drives the blinding snow
Aslant upon my saddened brow.

Those cherished faces all are gone!

Asleep within the quiet graves
Where lies the snow in drifting waves,--
And I am sitting here alone.

There's not a comrade here to-night

But knows that loved ones far away
On bended knee this night will pray:
"God bring our darling from the fight."

But there are none to wish me back,

For me no yearning prayers arise.
The lips are mute and closed the eyes--
My home is in the bivouac.
Evelyn Underhill
The Lady Poverty by Evelyn Underhill
I met her on the Umbrian hills,
Her hair unbound, her feet unshod:
As one whom secret glory fills
She walked, alone with God.

I met her in the city street:

Oh, changed was all her aspect then!
With heavy eyes and weary feet
She walked alone, with men.
Edward Shanks
On Account of Ill-Health
You go, brave friends, and I am cast to stay behind,
To read with frowning eyes and discontented mind
The shining history that you are gone to make,
To sleep with working brain, to dream and to awake
Into another day of most ignoble peace,
To drowse, to read, to smoke, to pray that war may cease.
The spring is coming on, and with the spring you go
In countries where strange scents on the April breezes blow;
You'll see the primroses marched down into the mud,
You'll see the hawthorn-tree wear crimson flowers of blood,
And I shall walk about, as I did walk of old,
Where the laburnum trails its chains of useless gold,
I'll break a branch of may, I'll pick a violet
And see the new-born flowers that soldiers must forget,
I'll love, I'11 laugh, I'll dream and write undying songs,
But with your regiment my marching soul belongs.
Men that have marched with me and men that I have led
Shall know and feel the things that I have only read,
Shall know what thing it is to sleep beneath the skies
And to expect their death what time the sun shall rise.
Men that have marched with me shall march to peace again,
Bringing for plunder home glad memories of pain,
Of toils endured and done, of terrors quite brought under,
And all the world shall be their plaything and their wonder.
Then in that new-born world, unfriendly and estranged,
I shall be quite alone, I shall be left unchanged.
W.H. Auden
Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:

To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's sensual ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreadful cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but not from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:

Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of sweetness show
Eye and knocking heart may bless.
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.
Eliza Acton
A Sketch
Where is he now?--that mightiest one, whose name
Was still the spell-word of the fray,--the sound
Which led his legions on untir'd, to win
Their thousand fights ;--the man whose daring deeds
Were heralded by Fame, till Fame herself
Exhausted sank beneath th' o'er whelming task.
And is his high career of glory done?--
Can he be nothing, to whom monarchs bow'd
Their crown-encircled brows, and nations knelt
In most subservient homage, till he stood
E'en like a god above the conquer'd world?
Where is he now?--Far o'er the rolling waves,
On a most rude, and sea-surrounded rock,
Rises a simple tomb, whose whiteness gleams

Through the low-bending branches of the tree,

Which droops, in seeming mournfulness, above
The marble monument it shadows o'er.
'Tis there an Emp'ror sleeps! and on that isle
Which his foes made his dwelling-place, he pin'd
Like a cag'd eagle, till he perish'd there,
Tortur'd by petty tyranny, and bow'd
By low, mean insults. Was it not enough
To wrest away the kingdoms he had won,
His diadem,--his sword,--his child,--and she,
Th' imperial mother of his princely boy ?--
To bind him down on that so desolate spot
A prison'd exile from the land he lov'd,
His own bright, fertile France? A fallen foe
Cast on the mercy of his vanquishers
Had met from gen'rous minds a nobler doom.
He was our enemy !--and he had been
The scourge of human-kind--and if for this
His blood had been required, they had done well
To shed it quickly; not to drain his life
By slow sure means, far worse than death itself.
'Tis a stern lesson which his fate holds forth
To after-votaries at ambition's shrine.
Pois'd on the proudest pinnacle of pow'r,
He fell, as doth the breath-stirr'd avalanche,
With fearful, and appalling suddenness,
Yet spreading less of desolation round
Than doth the mountain-terror :--he had done
The work of ruin, ere his star was bow'd
Before the vengeful Genius of the earth,
Whom he had dar'd too far.
Jean Hans Arp
The Plain
I was alone with a chair on a plain
Which lost itself in an empty horizon.

The plain was flawlessly paved.

Nothing, absolutely nothing but the chair and I
were there.

The sky was forever blue,

No sun gave life to it.

An inscrutable, insensible light

illuminated the infinite plain.

To me this eternal day seemed to be projected --

artificially-- from a different sphere.

I was never sleepy nor hungry nor thirsty,

never hot nor cold.

Time was only an abstruse ghost

since nothing happened or changed.

In me Time still lived a little

This, mainly, thanks to the chair.

Because of my occupation with it

I did not completely
lose my sense of the past.

Now and then I'd hitch myself, as if I were a horse, to the chair
and trot around with it,
sometimes in circles,
and sometimes straight ahead.

I assume that I succeeded.

Whether I really succeeded I do not know
Since there was nothing in space
By which I could have checked my movements.

As I sat on the chair I pondered sadly, but not desperately,

Why the core of the world exuded such black light.
Gerrit Achterberg
A Small Cabala For Children
4 is squarely masculine
and 3 round and feminine
9 is distant and out-of-sight
of 6 more of the light
7 stands apart
against its stick so hard.

Probably a saint is he
so nothing to fear have we
8 has two zeros one above the other
just laugh just laugh
5 is an old hag
with on her body not even a bag.

2 is happy and whitish

a fair child of about 20
1 is completely alone
but marries later all 10
10
it remains to be seen.
Edgar Albert Guest
At Sugar Camp
At Sugar Camp the cook is kind
And laughs the laugh we knew as boys;
And there we slip away and find
Awaiting us the old-time joys.
The catbird calls the selfsame way
She used to in the long ago,
And there's a chorus all the day
Of songsters it is good to know.

The killdeer in the distance cries;

The thrasher, in her garb of brown,
From tree to tree in gladness flies.
Forgotten is the world's renown,
Forgotten are the years we've known;
At Sugar Camp there are no men;
We've ceased to strive for things to own;
We're in the woods as boys again.

Our pride is in the strength of trees,

Our pomp the pomp of living things;
Our ears are tuned to melodies
That every feathered songster sings.
At Sugar Camp our noonday meal
Is eaten in the open air,
Where through the leaves the sunbeams steal
And simple is our bill of fare.

At Sugar Camp in peace we dwell

And none is boastful of himself;
None plots to gain with shot and shell
His neighbor's bit of land or pelf.
The roar of cannon isn't heard,
There stilled is money's tempting voice;
Someone detects a new-come bird
And at her presence all rejoice.
At Sugar Camp the cook is kind;
His steak is broiling o'er the coals
And in its sputtering we find
Sweet harmony for tired souls.
There, sheltered by the friendly trees,
As boys we sit to eat our meal,
And, brothers to the birds and bees,
We hold communion with the real.
Mary Barber
To a Lady
WELL you Sincerity display,
A virtue wond'rous rare !
Nor value, tho' the world should say,
You're rude, so you're sincere.
To be sincere, then, give me leave ;
And I will frankly own,
Since you but this one virtue have,
'Twere better you had none.
Richard Barnfield
Untitled
Sighing, and sadly sitting by my love,
He asked the cause of my heart's sorrowing,
Conjuring me by heaven's eternal King
To tell the cause which me so much did move.
Compelled (quoth I), to thee will I confess,
Love is the cause, and only love it is
That doth deprive me of my heavenly bliss.
Love is the pain that doth my heart oppress.
And what is she (quoth he) whom thou dost love?
Look in this glass (quoth I), there shalt thou see
The perfect form of my felicity.
When, thinking that it would strange magic prove,
He opened it, and taking off the cover,
He straight perceived himself to be my lover.
Zabel Asadour
Tears
There are tears that fall in grief and sadness;
Slow and mournfully the cheek they stain,
Every drop a sob, a lamentation,
In its dew a throb of bitter pain.

There are other tears, bright, clear, untroubled,

Shining as the sun, untouched of care,
Like the violet rain, calm, cool, refreshing,
When the scent of earth is on the air.

There are tears all silent and mysterious,

From the soul's love-yearning depths that steal;
They relate to us long tales of sorrow,
Buried loves which mourning veils conceal.

There are tears that seem to me like laughter -

Like clouds tempest-tossed, that roam for aye,
Flinging lightnings to the winds of ocean,
Drifting, mistlike, out and far away.

There's a dry tear, burning, never falling -

Liquid flame, intense, consuming, dread -
Not to pass until the eyes are ashes,
And the mind is ruined too and dead.

Tears, I know you all, though ye be only

Memories of a past that sorrows fill.
Strong emotions, be ye blest forever!
'Tis through you my heart is living still.
Anna Laetitia Barbauld
This Solemn Day
When, as returns this solemn day,
Man comes to meet his maker God,
What rites, what honours shall he pay?
How spread his sovereign's praise abroad?
From marble domes and gilded spires
Shall curling clouds of incense rise?
And gems, and gold, and garlands deck
The costly pomp of sacrifice?
Vain sinful man! Creation's lord
Thy golden offerings well may spare;
But give thy heart, and thou shalt find,
Here dwells a God who heareth prayer.
Philip James Bailey
Helen's Song
The Rose is
Weeping for her love,
The nightingale.

And he is flying
Fast above,
To her he will
Not fail.

Already golden
Eve appears;
He wings his way along;

Ah! look he comes

To kiss her tears,
And soothe her
With his song.
George Moreby Acklom
In Memoriam
It fell as softly as the winter's snow:
There was no sound of storm nor any stress,
No fevered daring of Death's mightiness,
No struggle for a strong man's overthrow:
Just some few hours of moaning, soft and low,
Some hard-drawn breathing, quickly hushed, ah yes!
And then,--and then,--small white limbs motionless,
While we who wait must whisper as we go.
A face and voice we looked for lovingly
Lost from the fellowship of our small band:
One little ripple of Life's restless sea
Soothed into stillness by the Master's hand,
And missing here:--but a white soul to stand
In the vast Temple of Eternity.
Janet Norris Bangs
Care
Care now lies
Where care was not,
Shoved in the corner
But not forgot --
Care, in the corner

I would call Laughter

Out of the trees;
But Laughter has bird eyes,
And Laughter sees
Care, in the corner.
Sir Francis Bacon
Help Lord
Help Lord, for godly men have took their flight,
And left the earth to be the wicked's den:
Not one that standeth fast to Truth and Right,
But fears, or seeks to please, the eyes of men.
When one with other fall's to take apart,
Their meaning goeth not with their words in proof;
But fair they flatter, with a cloven heart,
By pleasing words, to work their own behoof.

But God cut off the lips, that are all set,
To trap the harmless soul, that peace hath vow'd;
And pierce the tongues, that seek to counterfeit
The confidence of truth, by lying loud:
Yet so they think to reign, and work their will,
By subtle speech, which enters every where:
And say, our tongues are ours, to help us still,
What need we any higher power to fear?

Now for the bitter sighing of the poor,

The lord hath said, I will no more forbear,
The wicked's kingdom to invade and scour,
And set at large the men restrain'd in fear.
And sure, the word of God is pure, and fine.
And in the trial never loseth weight;
Like noble gold, which, since it left the mine,
Hath seven times passed through the fiery straight.

And now thou wilt not first thy word forsake,

Nor yet the righteous man, that leans thereto;
But will't his safe protection undertake,
In spite of all, their force and wiles can do.
And time it is, O Lord, thou didst draw nigh,
The wicked daily do enlarge their bands;
And that, which makes them follow ill a vie,
Rule is betaken to unworthy hands.
Alfred Austin
Love's Trinity
SOUL, heart, and body, we thus singly name,
Are not in love divisible and distinct, But each with each inseparably
link'd. One is not honour, and the other shame,
But burn as closely fused as fuel, heat, and flame.

They do not love who give the body and keep

The heart ungiven; nor they who yield the soul, And guard the body. Love
doth give the whole; Its range being high as heaven, as ocean deep,
Wide as the realms of air or planet's curving sweep.
Ingeborg Bachmann
In The Storm Of Roses
Wherever we turn in the storm of roses,
the night is lit up by thorns, and the thunder
of leaves, once so quiet within the bushes,
rumbling at our heels.
Bernard Barton
Bruce and the Spider
FOR Scotland's and for freedom's right
The Bruce his part had played,
In five successive fields of fight
Been conqured and dismayed;
Once more against the English host
His band he led, and once more lost
The meed for which he fought;
And now from battle, faint and worn,
The homeless fugitive forlorn
A hut's lone shelter sought.

And cheerless was that resting-place

For him who claimed a throne:
His canopy devoid of grace,
The rude, rough beams alone;
The heather couch his only bed, --
Yet well I ween had slumber fled
From couch of eider-down!
Through darksome night till dawn of day,
Absorbed in wakeful thought he lay
Of Scotland and her crown.

The sun rose brightly, and its gleam

Fell on that hapless bed,
And tinged with light each shapeless beam
Which roofed the lowly shed;
When, looking up with wistful eye,
The Bruce beheld a spider try
His filmy thread to fling
From beam to beam of that rude cot;
And well the insect's toilsome lot
Taught Scotland's future king.

Six times his gossamery thread

The wary spider threw;
In vain the filmy line was sped,
For powerless or untrue
Each aim appeared, and back recoiled
The patient insect, six times foiled,
And yet unconquered still;
And soon the Bruce, with eager eye,
Saw him prepare once more to try
His courage, strength, and skill.

One effort more, his seventh and last!

The hero hailed the sign!
And on the wished-for beam hung fast
That slender, silken line;
Slight as it was, his spirit caught
The more than omen, for his thought
The lesson well could trace,
Which even "he who runs may read,"
That Perseverance gains its meed,
And Patience wins the race.
Rabi'ah al-Basri
Dream Fable
I saw myself in a wide green garden, more beautiful than I could begin to
understand. In this garden was a young girl. I said to her, "How wonderful
this place is!"

"Would you like to see a place even more wonderful than this?" she asked.

"Oh yes," I answered. Then taking me by the hand, she led me on until we
came to a magnificent palace, like nothing that was ever seen by human
eyes. The young girl knocked on the door, and someone opened it.
Immediately both of us were flooded with light.

Only Allah knows the inner meaning of the maidens we saw living there.
Each one carried in her hand a serving-tray filled with light. The young
girl asked the maidens where they were going, and they answered her,
"We are looking for someone who was drowned in the sea, and so became
a martyr. She never slept at night, not one wink! We are going to rub
funeral spices on her body."

"Then rub some on my friend here," the young girl said.

"Once upon a time," said the maidens, "part of this spice and the fragrance
of it clung to her body -- but then she shied away."

Quickly the young girl let go of my hand, turned, and said to me:

"Your prayers are your light;

Your devotion is your strength;
Sleep is the enemy of both.
Your life is the only opportunity that life can give you.
If you ignore it, if you waste it,
You will only turn to dust."

Then the young girl disappeared.

Patrick Barrington
I had a hippopotamus
I had a Hippopotamus, I kept him in a shed
And fed him upon vitamins and vegetable bread
I made him my companion on many cheery walks
And had his portrait done by a celebrity in chalk

His charming eccentricities were known on every side

The creatures' popularity was wonderfully wide
He frolicked with the Rector in a dozen friendly tussles
Who could not but remark on his hippopotamuscles

If he should be affected by depression or the dumps

By hippopotameasles or the hippopotamumps
I never knew a particle of peace 'till it was plain
He was hippopotamasticating properly again

I had a Hippopotamus, I loved him as a friend

But beautiful relationships are bound to have an end
Time takes alas! our joys from us and rids us of our blisses
My hippopotamus turned out to be a hippopotamisses

My house keeper regarded him with jaundice in her eye

She did not want a colony of hippotami
She borrowed a machine gun from from her soldier nephew, Percy
And showed my hippopotamus no hippopotamercy

My house now lacks that glamour that the charming creature gave
The garage where I kept him is now as silent as the grave
No longer he displays among the motor tyres and spanners
His hippopomastery of hippopotamanners

No longer now he gambles in the orchards in the spring

No longer do I lead him through the village on a string
No longer in the morning does the neighbourhood rejoice
To his hippopotamusically-meditated voice

I had a hippopotamus but nothing upon earth

Is constant in its happiness or lasting in its mirth
No joy that life can give me can be strong enough to smother
My sorrow for that might-have-been-a-hippopota-mothe
Patrick Barrington
I am the Wind
I am the wind that wavers,
You are the certain land;
I am the shadow that passes
Over the sand.

I am the leaf that quivers,

You, the unshaken tree;
You are the stars that are steadfast,
I am the sea.

You are the light eternal--

Like a torch I shall die.
You are the surge of deep music,
I but a cry!
Joanna Baillie
Song
What voice is this, thou evening gale!
That mingles with thy rising wail;
And, as it passes, sadly seems
The faint return of youthful dreams?

Though now its strain is wild and drear,

Blithe was it once as sky-lark's cheer --
Sweet at the night-bird's sweetest song, --
Dear as the lisp of infant's tongue.

It was the voice, at whose sweet flow

The heart did beat, and cheek did glow,
And lip did smile, and eye did weep,
And motioned love the measure keep.

Oft be thy sound, soft gale of even,

Thus to my wistful fancy given;
And, as I list the swelling strain,
The dead shall seem to live again!
Benjamin Banneker
A Mathematical Problem In Verse
A Cooper and Vintner sat down for a talk,
Both being so groggy, that neither could walk,
Says Cooper to Vintner, "I'm the first of my trade,
There's no kind of vessel, but what I have made,
And of any shape, Sir, -just what you will,-
And of any size, Sir, -from a ton to a gill!"
"Then," says the Vintner, "you're the man for me,-
Make me a vessel, if we can agree.
The top and the bottom diameter define,
To bear that proportion as fifteen to nine,
Thirty-five inches are just what I crave,
No more and no less, in the depth, will I have;
Just thirty-nine gallons this vessel must hold,-
Then I will reward you with silver or gold,-
Give me your promise, my honest old friend?"
"I'll make it tomorrow, that you may depend!"
So the next day the Cooper his work to discharge,
Soon made the new vessel, but made it too large;-
He took out some staves, which made it too small,
And then cursed the vessel, the Vintner and all.
He beat on his breast, "By the Powers!" - he swore,
He never would work at his trade any more.
Now my worthy friend, find out, if you can,
The vessel's dimensions and comfort the man!*
John Codrington Bampfylde
On a Frightful Dream
THIS morn ere yet had rung the matin peal,
The cursed Merlin, with his potent spell,
Aggrieved me sore, and from his wizard cell,
(First fixing on mine eyes a magic seal)
Millions of ghosts and shadowy shapes let steal;
Who, swarming round my couch, with horrid yell,
Chattered and mocked, as though from deepest Hell
They had escaped. -- I oft, with fervent zeal,
Essayed, and prayer, to mar the enchanter's power.
In vain for thicker still the crew came on,
And now had weighed me down, but that the day
Appeared, and Phoebus, from his eastern tower,
With new-tricked beam, like truth immortal, shone,
And chased the visionary forms away.