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Stella’s Birth-Day.1719-20

All travellers at first incline
Where'er they see the fairest sign
And if they find the chambers neat,
And like the liquor and the meat,
Will call again, and recommend
The Angel Inn to every friend.
And though the painting grows decay'd,
The house will never lose its trade:
Nay, though the treach'rous tapster, Thomas,
Hangs a new Angel two doors from us,
As fine as daubers' hands can make it,
In hopes that strangers may mistake it,
We think it both a shame and sin
To quit the true old Angel Inn.
Now this is Stella's case in fact,
An angel's face a little crack'd.
(Could poets or could painters fix
How angels look at thirty-six
This drew us in at first to find
In such a form an angel's mind;

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poem by Jonathan Swift
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Verses Written At Bath, On Finding The Heel Of A Shoe

Fortune! I thank thee: gentle goddess! thanks!
Not that my muse, though bashful, shall deny
She would have thank’d thee rather hadst thou cast
A treasure in her way; for neither meed
Of early breakfast, to dispel the fumes,
And bowel-racking pains of emptiness,
Nor noontide feast, nor evening’s cool repast,
Hopes she from this—presumptuous, though, perhaps,
The cobbler, leather-carving artist! might.
Nathless she thanks thee and accepts thy boon,
Whatever; not as erst the fabled cock,
Vain-glorious fool! unknowing what he found,
Spurn’d the rich gem thou gavest him. Wherefore, ah!
Why not on me that favour (worthier sure!)
Conferr’dst thou, goddess! Thou art blind thou say’st:
Enough!—thy blindness shall excuse the deed.
Nor does my muse no benefit exhale
From this thy scant indulgence!—even here
Hints worthy sage philosophy are found;
Illustrious hints, to moralize my song!

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poem by William Cowper
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Song Of A Mad Girl, Whose Lover Has Died At Sea

Under the green white blue of this and that and the other,
That and the other, and that and the other, for ever and ever,
Under the up and down and the swaying ships swingswonging,
There they flung him to sleep who will never come back to my longing.
The Father comes back to his child and the son comes back to his Mother,
But neither by land or sea
Will he ever come back to me,
Never, never, never
Will he come back to me.
All day I run by the Cliff, all night I stand in the sand,
All day I furrow and burrow the holmes and the heights.
But whether by night or day
There's never a trace or a track,
Never a word or a breath,
In the swill and the swoop and the flash and the foam and the wind,
Never a fleck or a speck
Coming, coming my way.
The mew comes back to the strand and the ship comes back to the land,
But he will never come back
To all the prayers that I pray thro' the scorching black of the day

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poem by Sydney Thompson Dobell
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The God Who Waits

The old men in the olden days,
Who thought and worked in simple ways,
Believed in God and sought His praise.

They looked to God in daily need,
He shone in simple, homely deed;
They prayed to Him to raise their seed.

He sowed on mountain side and weald,
He steered the plough across the field,
He garnered in their harvest yield.

And if He gave them barren sod,
Or smote them with His lightning rod,
They yielded humbly to their God.

They searched the record of their days
To find and mend their evil ways,
Which made the wrath of God to blaze.

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poem by Leslie Coulson
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Ode to Health, 1730

O Health! capricious maid!
Why dost thou shun my peaceful bower,
Where I had hope to share thy power,
And bless thy lasting aid?

Since thou, alas! art flown,
It 'vails not whether Muse or Grace,
With tempting smile, frequent the place;
I sigh for thee alone.

Age not forbids thy stay:
Thou yet mightst act the friendly part;
Thou yet mightst raise this languid heart;
Why speed so swift away?

Thou scorn'st the city air;
I breathe fresh gales o'er furrow'd ground,
Yet hast not thou my wishes crown'd,
O false! O partial Fair!

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poem by William Shenstone
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Whom the World Calls Idle

He is brother-born to the wind. Its song, in his heart implanted,
Stirs and wakes when the morning breaks and the wide horizon burns;
He is brother-born to the sea, and visions of isles enchanted
Slowly rise to his dreaming eyes from the furrow his labor turns.
Child of fate, be it soon or late that his heart he learns to know,
Not his to say if he roam or stay when the summons bids him go:
Brother-born to the wind of morn, he must share its endless quest
Who once hath heard the sovereign word of the gods of Great Unrest!

The stretch of the open road, the challenge of heights unmounted,
The distant cry of the beasts that lie at the mouth of some latent lair,
The sweep of the pathless plain and the speeding of miles uncounted,
When the rangers ride, with a star for guide, in the face of the battling air—
These are his whose fortune is, like the tireless tide’s, to roam,
Brother-born to the wind of morn, with the whole wide world for home:
Child of the soil, he must turn from toil to the dim and dreamt-of West,
Who once hath heard the sovereign word of the gods of Great Unrest!

Song of the stately pines to the winds of northward high lands,
Song of the palms across the calms that sleep on the long lagoon,

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poem by Guy Wetmore Carryl from The Garden of Years and Other Poems (1899)
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An English Peasant

To pomp and pageantry in nought allied,
A noble peasant, Isaac Ashford, died.
Noble he was, contemning all things mean,
His truth unquestion'd, and his soul serene:
Of no man's presence Isaac felt afraid,
At no man's question Isaac look'd dismay'd;
Shame knew him not, he dreaded no disgrace;
Truth, simple truth, was written in his face;
Yet while the serious thought his soul approved,
Cheerful he seem'd, and gentleness he loved:
To bliss domestic he his heart resign'd,
And, with the firmest, had the fondest mind:
Were others joyful, he looked smiling on,
And have allowance where he needed none;
Good he refused with future ill to buy,
Nor knew a joy that caused reflection's sigh;
A friend to virtue, his unclouded breast
No envy stung, no jealousy distressed;
(Bane of the poor! it wounds their weaker mind,
To miss one favour which their neighbours find):

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poem by George Crabbe
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Lexington

Slowly the mist o’er the meadow was creeping,
Bright on the dewy buds glistened the sun,
When from his couch, while his children were sleeping,
Rose the bold rebel and shouldered his gun.
Waving her golden veil
Over the silent dale,
Blithe looked the morning on cottage and spire;
Hushed was his parting sigh,
While from his noble eye
Flashed the last sparkle of liberty’s fire.

On the smooth green where the fresh leaf is springing
Calmly the first-born of glory have met;
Hark! the death-volley around them is ringing!
Look! with their life-blood the young grass is wet
Faint is the feeble breath,
Murmuring low in death,
“Tell to our sons how their fathers have died;”
Nerveless the iron hand,
Raised for its native land,

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poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
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The Legends Of Evil

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!

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poem by Rudyard Kipling
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The Legend Of Evil

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

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poem by Rudyard Kipling
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