Short Poems

Let those who will stride on their barren roads
And prick themselves to haste with self-made goads,
Unheeding, as they struggle day by day,
If flowers be sweet or skies be blue or gray:
For me, the lone, cool way by purling brooks,
The solemn quiet of the woodland nooks,
A song-bird somewhere trilling sadly gay,
A pause to pick a flower beside the way.

Friends I used to see
I shunned
in taking up life
in my mountain home—
where the blossoms
every spring
acquaint me again

Oh! had each Scot of ancient times,
Been, Jeany Scott, as thou art,
The bravest heart on English ground,
Had yielded like a coward.

When M-r-ne, deceased, to the devil went down,
'Twas nothing would serve him but Satan's own crown:
Thy fool's head, quoth Satan, that crown shall wear never;
I grant thou'rt as wicked—but not quite so clever.—

How timely
the delight of
this snowfall,
obliterating the mountain trail
just when I wanted to be alone!

The easterly still cold, coming inside my doors,
I decided to see plum flowers, stepped down, but too late:
a branch emitting elegant scent in the declining sun—
a frozen bee had already noticed it before I did.

The hedges will be green again,
And flowers will come on hill and plain;
And though we meet a rainy day,
The hawthorn will be white with May.
If love and nature still agree,
Green leaves will clothe the trysting-tree;
And when these pleasing days you view,
Think Lucy's heart yet be true.

Why walkes Nick Flimsey like a Male-content?
Is it because his money all is spent?
No, but because the Ding-thrift now is poore,
And knowes not where i'th world to borrow more.

On, as thou hast begunne, brave youth, and get
The Palme from Urbin, Titian, Tintarret,
Brugel and Coxie, and the workes out-doe,
Of Holben, and That mighty Ruben too.
So draw, and paint, as none may do the like,
No, not the glory of the World, Vandike.

Rock o' my soul in de bosom of Abraham,
Lord, rock o' my soul.
He toted the young lambs in his bosom,
And leave the old sheep alone.