Written by
Robert Browning |
I.
Gr-r-r---there go, my heart's abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God's blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims---
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames!
II.
At the meal we sit together:
_Salve tibi!_ I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
Sort of season, time of year:
_Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely
Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:
What's the Latin name for ``parsley''?_
What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?
III.
Whew! We'll have our platter burnished,
Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,
And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial
Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps---
Marked with L. for our initial!
(He-he! There his lily snaps!)
IV.
_Saint_, forsooth! While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
---Can't I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?
(That is, if he'd let it show!)
V.
When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As do I, in Jesu's praise.
I the Trinity illustrate,
Drinking watered orange-pulp---
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
While he drains his at one gulp.
VI.
Oh, those melons? If he's able
We're to have a feast! so nice!
One goes to the Abbot's table,
All of us get each a slice.
How go on your flowers? None double
Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange!---And I, too, at such trouble,
Keep them close-nipped on the sly!
VII.
There's a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails:
If I trip him just a-dying,
Sure of heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
Off to hell, a Manichee?
VIII.
Or, my scrofulous French novel
On grey paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
Hand and foot in Belial's gripe:
If I double down its pages
At the woeful sixteenth print,
When he gathers his greengages,
Ope a sieve and slip it in't?
IX.
Or, there's Satan!---one might venture
Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
As he'd miss till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
We're so proud of! _Hy, Zy, Hine ..._
'St, there's Vespers! _Plena grati
Ave, Virgo!_ Gr-r-r---you swine!
|
Written by
Anne Bronte |
Gloomily the clouds are sailing
O'er the dimly moonlit sky;
Dolefully the wind is wailing;
Not another sound is nigh;
Only I can hear it sweeping
Heathclad hill and woodland dale,
And at times the nights's sad weeping
Sounds above its dying wail.
Now the struggling moonbeams glimmer;
Now the shadows deeper fall,
Till the dim light, waxing dimmer,
Scarce reveals yon stately hall.
All beneath its roof are sleeping;
Such a silence reigns around
I can hear the cold rain steeping
Dripping roof and plashy ground.
No: not all are wrapped in slumber;
At yon chamber window stands
One whose years can scarce outnumber
The tears that dew his clasped hands.
From the open casement bending
He surveys the murky skies,
Dreary sighs his bosom rending;
Hot tears gushing from his eyes.
Now that Autumn's charms are dying,
Summer's glories long since gone,
Faded leaves on damp earth lying,
Hoary winter striding on, --
'Tis no marvel skies are lowering,
Winds are moaning thus around,
And cold rain, with ceaseless pouring,
Swells the streams and swamps the ground;
But such wild, such bitter grieving
Fits not slender boys like thee;
Such deep sighs should not be heaving
Breasts so young as thine must be.
Life with thee is only springing;
Summer in thy pathway lies;
Every day is nearer bringing
June's bright flowers and glowing skies.
Ah, he sees no brighter morrow!
He is not too young to prove
All the pain and all the sorrow
That attend the steps of love.
|
Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
I
This is the sorrowful story
Told when the twilight fails
And the monkeys walk together
Holding their neighbours' tails: --
"Our fathers lived in the forest,
Foolish people were they,
They went down to the cornland
To teach the farmers to play.
"Our fathers frisked in the millet,
Our fathers skipped in the wheat,
Our fathers hung from the branches,
Our fathers danced in the street.
"Then came the terrible farmers,
Nothing of play they knew,
Only. . .they caught our fathers
And set them to labour too!
"Set them to work in the cornland
With ploughs and sickles and flails,
Put them in mud-walled prisons
And -- cut off their beautiful tails!
"Now, we can watch our fathers,
Sullen and bowed and old,
Stooping over the millet,
Sharing the silly mould,
"Driving a foolish furrow,
Mending a muddy yoke,
Sleeping in mud-walled prisons,
Steeping their food in smoke.
"We may not speak to our fathers,
For if the farmers knew
They would come up to the forest
And set us to labour too."
This is the horrible story
Told as the twilight fails
And the monkeys walk together
Holding their kinsmen's tails.
II
'Twas when the rain fell steady an' the Ark was pitched an' ready,
That Noah got his orders for to take the bastes below;
He dragged them all together by the horn an' hide an' feather,
An' all excipt the Donkey was agreeable to go.
Thin Noah spoke him fairly, thin talked to him sevarely,
An' thin he cursed him squarely to the glory av the Lord: --
"Divil take the ass that bred you, and the greater ass that fed you --
Divil go wid you, ye spalpeen!" an' the Donkey went aboard.
But the wind was always failin', an' 'twas most onaisy sailin',
An' the ladies in the cabin couldn't stand the stable air;
An' the bastes betwuxt the hatches, they tuk an' died in batches,
Till Noah said: -- "There's wan av us that hasn't paid his fare!"
For he heard a flusteration 'mid the bastes av all creation --
The trumpetin' av elephints an' bellowin' av whales;
An' he saw forninst the windy whin he wint to stop the shindy
The Divil wid a stable-fork bedivillin' their tails.
The Divil cursed outrageous, but Noah said umbrageous: --
"To what am I indebted for this tenant-right invasion?"
An' the Divil gave for answer: -- "Evict me if you can, sir,
For I came in wid the Donkey -- on Your Honour's invitation."
|
Written by
Robert Burns |
O WAT ye wha that lo’es me
And has my heart a-keeping?
O sweet is she that lo’es me,
As dews o’ summer weeping,
In tears the rosebuds steeping!
Chorus.—O that’s the lassie o’ my heart,
My lassie ever dearer;
O she’s the queen o’ womankind,
And ne’er a ane to peer her.
If thou shalt meet a lassie,
In grace and beauty charming,
That e’en thy chosen lassie,
Erewhile thy breast sae warming,
Had ne’er sic powers alarming;
O that’s the lassie, &c.
If thou hadst heard her talking,
And thy attention’s plighted,
That ilka body talking,
But her, by thee is slighted,
And thou art all delighted;
O that’s the lassie, &c.
If thou hast met this Fair One,
When frae her thou hast parted,
If every other Fair One
But her, thou hast deserted,
And thou art broken-hearted,
O that’s the lassie o’ my heart,
My lassie ever dearer;
O that’s the queen o’ womankind,
And ne’er a ane to peer her.
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