by Homer
Hugh Miller (1802–1856)
NAE shoon to hide her tiny taes,
Nae stockings on her feet;
Her supple ankles white as snow
Of early blossoms sweet.
Her simple dress of sprinkled pink, 5
Her double, dimpled chin;
Her pucker’d lip and bonny mou’,
With nae ane tooth between.
Her een sae like her mither’s een,
Twa gentle, liquid things; 10
Her face is like an angel’s face —
We’re glad she has nae wings.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Helen Selina, Lady Dufferin
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Lament of the Irish Emigrant
Helen Selina, Lady Dufferin (1807–1867)
I’M sittin’ on the stile, Mary,
Where we sat side by side
On a bright May mornin’ long ago,
When first you were my bride;
The corn was springin’ fresh and green, 5
And the lark sang loud and high —
And the red was on your lip, Mary,
And the love-light in your eye.
The place is little changed, Mary,
The day is bright as then, 10
The lark’s loud song is in my ear,
And the corn is green again;
But I miss the soft clasp of your hand,
And your breath warm on my cheek,
And I still keep list’ning for the words 15
You never more will speak.
’Tis but a step down yonder lane,
And the little church stands near,
The church where we were wed, Mary,
I see the spire from here. 20
But the graveyard lies between, Mary,
And my step might break your rest —
For I’ve laid you, darling! down to sleep,
With your baby on your breast.
I’m very lonely now, Mary, 25
For the poor make no new friends,
But, O, they love the better still,
The few our Father sends!
And you were all I had, Mary,
My blessin’ and my pride: 30
There’s nothin’ left to care for now,
Since my poor Mary died.
Yours was the good, brave heart, Mary,
That still kept hoping on,
When the trust in God had left my soul, 35
And my arm’s young strength was gone:
There was comfort ever on your lip,
And the kind look on your brow —
I bless you, Mary, for that same,
Though you cannot hear me now. 40
I thank you for the patient smile
When your heart was fit to break,
When the hunger pain was gnawin’ there,
And you hid it, for my sake!
I bless you for the pleasant word, 45
When your heart was sad and sore —
O, I’m thankful you are gone, Mary,
Where grief can’t reach you more!
I’m biddin’ you a long farewell,
My Mary — kind and true! 50
But I’ll not forget you, darling!
In the land I’m goin’ to;
They say there’s bread and work for all,
And the sun shines always there —
But I’ll not forget old Ireland, 55
Were it fifty times as fair!
And often in those grand old woods
I’ll sit, and shut my eyes,
And my heart will travel back again
To the place where Mary lies; 60
And I’ll think I see the little stile
Where we sat side by side:
And the springin’ corn, and the bright May morn,
When first you were my bride.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Charles Tennyson Turner
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Letty’s Globe
Charles Tennyson Turner (1808–1879)
WHEN Letty had scarce pass’d her third glad year,
And her young artless words began to flow,
One day we gave the child a colour’d sphere
Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,
By tint and outline, all its sea and land. 5
She patted all the world; old empires peep’d
Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap’d,
And laugh’d and prattled in her world-wide bliss;
But when we turn’d her sweet unlearnèd eye 10
On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry —
‘Oh! yes, I see it, Letty’s home is there!’
And while she hid all England with a kiss,
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Sir Samuel Ferguson
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
The Fair Hills of Ireland
From the Irish
Sir Samuel Ferguson (1810–1886)
A PLENTEOUS place is Ireland for hospitable cheer,
Uileacan dubh O!
Where the wholesome fruit is bursting from the yellow barley ear;
Uileacan dubh O!
There is honey in the trees where her misty vales expand, 5
And her forest paths in summer are by falling waters fann’d,
There is dew at high noontide there, and springs i’ the yellow sand,
On the fair hills of holy Ireland.
Curl’d he is and ringleted, and plaited to the knee —
Uileacan dubh O! 10
Each captain who comes sailing across the Irish Sea;
Uileacan dubh O!
And I will make my journey, if life and health but stand,
Unto that pleasant country, that fresh and fragrant strand,
And leave your boasted braveries, your wealth and high command, 15
For the fair hills of holy Ireland.
Large and profitable are the stacks upon the ground,
Uileacan dubh O!
The butter and the cream do wondrously abound;
Uileacan dubh O! 20
The cresses on the water and the sorrels are at hand,
And the cuckoo’s calling daily his note of music bland,
And the bold thrush sings so bravely his song i’ the forests grand,
On the fair hills of holy Ireland.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
A Musical Instrument
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat 5
With the dragon-fly on the river.
He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river;
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay, 10
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.
High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
While turbidly flow’d the river;
And hack’d and hew’d as a great god can 15
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
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sp; Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.
He cut it short, did the great god Pan
(How tall it stood in the river!), 20
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notch’d the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.
‘This is the way,’ laugh’d the great god Pan 25
(Laugh’d while he sat by the river),
‘The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.’
Then dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river. 30
Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly 35
Came back to dream on the river.
Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain — 40
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds of the river.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Sonnets from the Portuguese I
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
I THOUGHT once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in its antique tongue, 5
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was ‘ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move 10
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove, —
“Guess now who holds thee?”— “Death,” I said. But, there,
The silver answer rang,— “Not Death, but Love.”
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Sonnets from the Portuguese II
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
BUT only three in all God’s universe
Have heard this word thou hast said, — Himself, beside
Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied
One of us … that was God, … and laid the curse
So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce 5
My sight from seeing thee, — that if I had died,
The deathweights, placed there, would have signified
Less absolute exclusion. “Nay” is worse
From God than from all others, O my friend!
Men could not part us with their worldly jars, 10
Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend;
Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars:
And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,
We should but vow the faster for the stars.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Sonnets from the Portuguese III
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
UNLIKE are we, unlike, O princely Heart!
Unlike our uses and our destinies.
Our ministering two angels look surprise
On one another, as they strike athwart
Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art 5
A guest for queens to social pageantries,
With gages from a hundred brighter eyes
Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part
Of chief musician. What hast thou to do
With looking from the lattice-lights at me, 10
A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through
The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?
The chrism is on thine head, — on mine, the dew, —
And Death must dig the level where these agree.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Sonnets from the Portuguese IV
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
THOU hast thy calling to some palace-floor,
Most gracious singer of high poems! where
The dancers will break footing, from the care
Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.
And dost thou lift this house’s latch too poor 5
For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear
To let thy music drop here unaware
In folds of golden fulness at my door?
Look up and see the casement broken in,
The bats and owlets builders in the roof! 10
My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.
Hush, call no echo up in further proof
Of desolation! there’s a voice within
That weeps … as thou must sing … alone, aloof.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Sonnets from the Portuguese V
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
I LIFT my heavy heart up solemnly,
As once Electra her sepulchral urn,
And looking in thine eyes, I overturn
The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see
What a great heap of grief lay hid in me, 5
And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn
Through the ashen grayness. If thy foot in scorn
Could tread them out to darkness utterly,
It might be well perhaps. But if instead
Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow 10
The gray dust up, … those laurels on thine head,
O my Belovèd, will not shield thee so,
That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred
The hair beneath. Stand farther off then! go.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Sonnets from the Portuguese VI
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
GO from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Hence forward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand 5
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore —
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do 10
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Sonnets from the Portuguese VII
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
THE FACE of all the world is changed, I think,
Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul
Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole
Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink
Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink, 5
Was caught up into love, and taught the whole
Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole
God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink,
And praise its sweetness, Sweet, with thee anear.
The names of country, heaven, are changed away 10
For where th
ou art or shalt be, there or here;
And this … this lute and song … loved yesterday,
(The singing angels know) are only dear
Because thy name moves right in what they say.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Sonnets from the Portuguese VIII
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
WHAT can I give thee back, O liberal
And princely giver, who hast brought the gold
And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold,
And laid them on the outside of the wall
For such as I to take or leave withal, 5
In unexpected largesse? am I cold,
Ungrateful, that for these most manifold
High gifts, I render nothing back at all?
Not so; not cold, — but very poor instead.
Ask God who knows. For frequent tears have run 10
The colors from my life, and left so dead
And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done
To give the same as pillow to thy head.
Go farther! let it serve to trample on.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Sonnets from the Portuguese IX
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)