What is the name of King Ringang’s daughter?Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut!And what does she do the livelong day,Since she dare not knit and spin alway?O hunting and fishing is ever her play!And, heigh! that her huntsman I might be!I’d hunt and fish right merrily!Be silent, heart! And it chanced that, after this some time, –Rohtraut, Beauty […]

And–‘Yonder look! yoho! yoho!Nancy is off!’ the farmer cried,Advancing by the river side,Red-kerchieft and brown-coated;–‘So,My girl, who else could leap like that?So neatly! like a lady! ‘Zounds!Look at her how she leads the hounds!’And waving his dusty beaver hat,He cheered across the chase-filled water,And clapt his arm about his daughter,And gave to Joan a courteous […]

Chillanwallah, Chillanwallah!Where our brothers fought and bled,O thy name is natural musicAnd a dirge above the dead!Though we have not been defeated,Though we can’t be overcome,Still, whene’er thou art repeated,I would fain that grief were dumb. Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!‘Tis a name so sad and strange,Like a breeze through midnight harpstringsRinging many a mournful change;But the wildness […]

A wicked man is bad enough on earth;But O the baleful lustre of a chiefOnce pledged in tyranny! O star of dearthDarkly illumining a nation’s grief!How many men have worn thee on their brows!Alas for them and us! God’s precious giftOf gracious dispensation got by theft –The damning form of false unholy vows!The thief of […]

The moon is alone in the skyAs thou in my soul;The sea takes her image to lieWhere the white ripples rollAll night in a dream,With the light of her beam,Hushedly, mournfully, mistily up to the shore.The pebbles speak lowIn the ebb and the flow,As I when thy voice came at intervals, tuned to adore:Nought other […]

When April with her wild blue eyeComes dancing over the grass,And all the crimson buds so shyPeep out to see her pass;As lightly she loosens her showery locksAnd flutters her rainy wings;Laughingly stoopsTo the glass of the stream,And loosens and loopsHer hair by the gleam,While all the young villagers blithe as the flocksGo frolicking round […]

The Snowdrop is the prophet of the flowers;It lives and dies upon its bed of snows;And like a thought of spring it comes and goes,Hanging its head beside our leafless bowers.The sun’s betrothing kiss it never knows,Nor all the glowing joy of golden showers;But ever in a placid, pure repose,More like a spirit with its […]

See’st thou a Skylark whose glistening winglets ascendingQuiver like pulses beneath the melodious dawn?Deep in the heart-yearning distance of heaven it flutters –Wisdom and beauty and love are the treasures it brings down at eve.

Love within the lover’s breastBurns like Hesper in the west,O’er the ashes of the sun,Till the day and night are done;Then when dawn drives up her car –Lo! it is the morning star. Love! thy love pours down on mineAs the sunlight on the vine,As the snow-rill on the vale,As the salt breeze in the […]

A brook glancing under green leaves, self-delighting, exulting,And full of a gurgling melody ever renewed –Renewed thro’ all changes of Heaven, unceasing in sunlight,Unceasing in moonlight, but hushed in the beams of the holier orb.

Keen as an eagle whose flight towards the dim empyreanFearless of toil or fatigue ever royally wends!Vast in the cloud-coloured robes of the balm-breathing OrientLo! the grand Epic advances, unfolding the humanest truth.

Like to some deep-chested organ whose grand inspiration,Serenely majestic in utterance, lofty and calm,Interprets to mortals with melody great as its burthenThe mystical harmonies chiming for ever throughout the bright spheres.

Picture some Isle smiling green ‘mid the white-foaming ocean; –Full of old woods, leafy wisdoms, and frolicsome fays;Passions and pageants; sweet love singing bird-like above it;Life in all shapes, aims, and fates, is there warm’d by one great human heart.

Lakes where the sunsheen is mystic with splendour and softness;Vales where sweet life is all Summer with golden romance:Forests that glimmer with twilight round revel-bright palaces;Here in our May-blood we wander, careering ‘mongst ladies and knights.

Grey with all honours of age! but fresh-featured and ruddyAs dawn when the drowsy farm-yard has thrice heard Chaunticlere.Tender to tearfulness–childlike, and manly, and motherly;Here beats true English blood richest joyance on sweet English ground.

A Princess in the eastern talePaced thro’ a marble city pale,And saw in ghastly shapes of stoneThe sculptured life she breathed alone; Saw, where’er her eye might range,Herself the only child of change;And heard her echoed footfall chimeBetween Oblivion and Time; And in the squares where fountains played,And up the spiral balustrade,Along the drowsy corridors,Even […]

Know you the low pervading breezeThat softly singsIn the trembling leaves of twilight trees,As if the wind were dreaming on its wings?And have you marked their still degreesOf ebbing melody, like the stringsOf a silver harp swept by a spirit’s handIn some strange glimmering land,‘Mid gushing springs,And glisteningsOf waters and of planets, wild and grand!And […]

Angelic love that stoops with heavenly lipsTo meet its earthly mate;Heroic love that to its sphere’s eclipseCan dare to join its fateWith one beloved devoted human heart,And share with it the passion and the smart,The undying blissOf its most fleeting kiss;The fading graceOf its most sweet embrace:-Angelic love, heroic love!Whose birth can only be above,Whose […]

The song of a nightingale sent thro’ a slumbrous valley,Low-lidded with twilight, and tranced with the dolorous sound,Tranced with a tender enchantment; the yearning of passionThat wins immortality even while panting delirious with death.

A breath of the mountains, fresh born in the regions majestic,That look with their eye-daring summits deep into the sky.The voice of great Nature; sublime with her lofty conceptions,Yet earnest and simple as any sweet child of the green lowly vale.