While at her bedroom window once,
Learning her task for school,
Little Louisa lonely sat
In the morning clear and cool,
She slanted her small bead-brown eyes
Across the empty street,
And saw Death softly watching her
In the sunshine pale and sweet.

His was a long lean sallow face;
He sat with half-shut eyes,
Like a old sailor in a ship
Becalmed 'neath tropic skies.
Beside him in the dust he had set
His staff and shady hat;
These, peeping small, Louisa saw
Quite clearly where she sat -

"Miss Rosemary," I dourly said,
"Our balance verges on the red,
We must cut down our overhead.
One of the staff will have to go.
There's Mister Jones, he's mighty slow,
Although he does his best, I know.

"A deer old man; I like him well,
But age, alas! will always tell.
Miss Rosemary, please ring the bell
And tell old Jones to step this way . . .
Oh dear, oh dear, it isn't gay
To say the things I have to say.

"Come in and sit down, Mister Jones."
He thanks me in sepulchral tones.
Poor chap! I hear his creaking bones.

Oh, Paddy dear, and did you hear
The news that's going round,
On the head of bold Ned Kelly
They have placed two thousand pound.
And on Steve Hart, Joe Byrne and Dan
Two thousand more they'd give,
But if the price was doubled, boys,
The Kelly gang would live.
'Tis hard to think such plucky hearts
In crime should be employed,
'Tis by police persecution
They have all been much annoyed.
Revenge is sweet, and in the bush
They can defy the law,
Such sticking up and plundering
You never saw before.

Kanagaroo, Kangaroo!
Thou Spirit of Australia,
That redeems from utter failure,
From perfect desolation,
And warrants the creation
Of this fifth part of the Earth,
Which would seem an after-birth,
Not conceiv'd in the Beginning
(For GOD bless'd His work at first,
And saw that it was good),
But emerg'd at the first sinning,
When the ground was therefore curst; --
And hence this barren wood!


Kangaroo, Kangaroo!
Tho' at first sight we should say,
In thy nature that there may

The Judge looked down, his face was grim,
He scratched his ear;
The gangster's moll looked up at him
With eyes of fear.
She thought: 'This guy in velvet gown,
With balding pate,
Who now on me is looking down,
Can seal my fate.'

The Judge thought: 'Fifteen years or ten
I might decree.
Just let me say the word and then
Go home to tea.
But then this poor wretch might not be
So long alive . . .'
So with surprise he heard that he
Was saying 'Five'.

Say of him what you please, but I know my child's failings.
I do not love him because he is good, but because he is my
little child.
How should you know how dear he can be when you try to weigh
his merits against his faults?
When I must punish him he becomes all the more a part of my
being.
When I cause his tears to come my heart weeps with him.
I alone have a right to blame and punish, for he only may
chastise who loves.

Anghiari is medieval, a sleeve sloping down
A steep hill, suddenly sweeping out
To the edge of a cliff, and dwindling.
But far up the mountain, behind the town,
We too were swept out, out by the wind,
Alone with the Tuscan grass.

Wind had been blowing across the hills
For days, and everything now was graying gold
With dust, everything we saw, even
Some small children scampering along a road,
Twittering Italian to a small caged bird.

We sat beside them to rest in some brushwood,
And I leaned down to rinse the dust from my face.

Ye mountains and glens of Old Ireland,
I've returned home to ye again;
During my absence from ye
My heart always felt great pain.

Oh, how I long'd to see you dear Nora,
And the old folks at home;
And the beautiful Lakes o' Killarney,
Where we oft together did roam.

Ye beautiful Lakes of Killarney,
Ye are welcome to me again;
I will now reform my character,
And from all bad company refrain.

Oh, how I have long'd to see my old father
And my mother dearer than all;
And my favourite dog Charlie

See Selborne spreads her boldest beauties round
The varied valley, and the mountain ground,
Wildly majestic! what is all the pride
Of flats, with loads of ornament supply'd?
Unpleasing, tasteless, impotent expense,
Compar'd with nature's rude magnificence.
Arise, my stranger, to these wild scenes haste
The unfinish'd farm awaits your forming taste:
Plan the pavilion, airy, light and true;
Thro' the high arch call in the lengthening view;
Expand the forest sloping up the hill;
Swell to a lake the scant, penurious rill;

I.

Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.


II.