RAINBOW GOLD

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RAINBOW GOLD

POEMS OLD AND NEW
SELECTED FOR BOYS AND GIRLS
By SARA TEASDALE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
By DUGALD WALKER

NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Copyright, 1922,
By THE MACMILLAN CO.
Set up and published September, 1922
CONDÉ NAST PRESS GREENWICH, CONN.
TO THE BEAUTIFUL MEMORY
OF MY FATHER
JOHN WARREN TEASDALE

PREFATORY NOTE

Every anthologist must adopt some plan for making selections. Mine has been very simple. I have made a small collection of poems that would have pleased the child I used to be and the boy who was my playmate. Above all things I have striven to keep the book small, for the big books of poetry on our shelves were always left to themselves. It was the little books that became our intimate companions.

To make a selection for boys and girls from the countless riches of lyric poetry in our language, and to reduce that selection to the contents of so small a book as this one, is a grave task. It involves the exclusion on the grounds of mere lack of space, of so much that one loves. I should have liked to make a book of this size containing only Elizabethan songs and early English ballads, another entirely devoted to Georgian and Victorian poets, a third to living writers, and a fourth to child-rhymes, parodies, nonsense verses and the like. If the grown-up reader regrets omissions, I beg him to be sympathetic toward the compiler, who has been a prey to those same regrets constantly during the year in which she has been at work on the book. Alas that a volume cannot have the advantages of being both a big book and a little one at the same time!

In selecting the poems for the girl and boy who used to be, I have tried always to read with their eyes. I have been guided from first to last by their enjoyment or their boredom. The poems that they loved best had highly accented rhythms, and took them into “a land of clear colors and stories.” They enjoyed certain sad poems as much as merry ones, but meditative, moralistic and gloomy poems were never read but once, if they were read at all. And I am glad to say that poems full of sentimentality fared no better. I have brought together much that has been written since they were children, and boys and girls of to-day will find among these poems many of the most enjoyable things in the book. To mention only one recent poet that they would have loved, Walter de la Mare, is to realize how much a child has missed who does not possess his inimitable “Peacock Pie.”

A child’s enjoyment, as I said above, is what I have striven for in this collection. We who have seen how poetry has come to our rescue with its delight, its healing, and its new courage in times of stress and sorrow, know that it is an inestimable possession. We cannot come to the knowledge of it too early. If we can have a clear personal realization while we are children, that we love poetry, no amount of well-meaning but sometimes tactless and uninspired teaching of it in schools and colleges can shake us in the knowledge of that love. I remember that the first poem I was condemned to learn by heart in school was “The Builders” by Longfellow. I say condemned, but it was not as a punishment. Every child in the class had to learn it. It is one of the poems that I am sure the poet himself would never have given to a child to learn, beginning, as grown-up readers will remember:

“All are Architects of Fate
Working in these walls of Time.”

After committing the nine stanzas of this poem to memory, it took me a long time to grow willing to read the stirring things that the same poet has written, poems as interesting as this one is humdrum.

But education is better managed now than then. Teachers and parents alike have come to feel that the love of poetry in general is more to be desired for children than the knowledge of certain “well known” poems, no matter how good, or even how great, these poems may be. Besides a more tactfully managed education in the schools, there are children’s rooms in the public libraries. I have wished many times during the months spent in making this book, when visits to these rooms were an inspiration, that I might have browsed among the low shelves long ago in childhood, and talked with the same delightful librarians. I should like to express my thanks to these librarians, who have been so kind in various ways. I want especially to thank Annie Carroll Moore, Supervisor of Work with Children in the New York Public Library, who knows the heart of a child from long travelling on “The Roads to Childhood.”

In closing I shall quote briefly from the introduction by Andrew Lang to his anthology for children, “The Blue Poetry Book,” for he speaks my own thoughts better than I can express them: “It does not appear to the Editor that poems about children, or especially intended for children, are those which a child likes best. A child’s imaginative life is spent in the unknown future, and in the romantic past.... The poems written for and about children rather appeal to the old, whose own childhood is now to them a distant fairy world, as the man’s life is to the child.... We make a mistake when we ‘write down’ to children; still more do we err when we tell a child not to read this or that because he cannot understand it. He understands far more than we give him credit for, but nothing that can harm him. The half-understanding of it, too, the sense of a margin beyond, as in a wood full of unknown glades and birds and flowers unfamiliar, is a great part of a child’s pleasure in reading.... The child does not want everything to be explained. In the unexplained is great pleasure.”

A number of my friends have been kind in giving me the names of poems that they liked best when they were children. The small compass of the book has made it impossible to use all of the poems suggested in this way, but it has been a pleasure to include as many of them as I could. I want to acknowledge very gratefully my indebtedness for counsel and suggestions to John Gould Fletcher, Vachel Lindsay, Amy Lowell, Jessie B. Rittenhouse, Louis Untermeyer, Jean Untermeyer, John Hall Wheelock and Marguerite Wilkinson.

Sara Teasdale

New York City, 1922

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks are due the following publishers for permission to include the poems enumerated below:

To Messrs. Constable & Co., for “Berries,” “Jim Jay,” and “Off the Ground,” by Walter de la Mare.

To Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Co., for “A Prayer,” by Edwin Markham, and “O Captain! My Captain,” by Walt Whitman.

To Messrs. Harper & Brothers for “When the Hounds of Spring,” by Algernon Charles Swinburne.

To Messrs. Henry Holt & Co., for “Good Hours,” by Robert Frost; and “Berries,” “Jim Jay” and “Off the Ground” from “Peacock Pie,” by Walter de la Mare.

To Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Co., by whose permission and by special arrangement with whom the following poems are included: “Fable,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson; “The Fountain,” by James Russell Lowell; “My Lost Youth,” and “The Skeleton in Armor,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; and “A Song for My Mother,” by Anna Hempstead Branch.

To Mr. Alfred Knopf for “Nature’s Friend,” by William H. Davies.

To Messrs. Little, Brown & Co., for “The Snow,” by Emily Dickinson.

To The Macmillan Co., for “The Fairies,” and “The Lepracaun,” by William Allingham; “The Forsaken Merman,” by Matthew Arnold; “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” and “Song: The Year’s at the Spring,” by Robert Browning; “The Terrible Robber Men,” by Padraic Colum; “Moon Folly,” by Fannie Stearns Gifford; “Time, You Old Gipsy Man,” by Ralph Hodgson; “Sea Fever,” by John Masefield; “A Christmas Carol,” by Christina Rossetti; “The Song of Wandering Aengus,” by William Butler Yeats; and “The Ghosts of the Buffaloes,” by Vachel Lindsay.

To Messrs. Macmillan & Co., for “The Fairies,” and “The Lepracaun,” by William Allingham; “The Forsaken Merman,” by Matthew Arnold; and “A Christmas Carol,” by Christina Rossetti.

To The Poetry Bookshop for “Star-Talk,” by Robert Graves.

To Messrs. Charles Scribner’s Sons for “Song of the Chattahoochee,” by Sidney Lanier from “Poems of Sidney Lanier”; copyright 1884, 1891, 1918 by Mary D. Lanier, by permission of the publishers; and “Escape at Bedtime,” and “Romance,” by Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Messrs. Frederick A. Stokes Co., for “Tree-Toad,” by Hilda Conkling; and “A Song of Sherwood,” by Alfred Noyes, from his Collected Poems, Volume I.

To the living poets who have generously allowed their poems to appear in this book, the compiler expresses grateful thanks.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

KUBLA KHAN
A Vision in a Dream

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossom’d many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail;
And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reach’d the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! Those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

MEG MERRILIES

Old Meg she was a Gipsy,
And liv’d upon the Moors:
Her bed it was the brown heath turf,
And her house was out of doors.

Her apples were swart blackberries,
Her currants pods o’ broom;
Her wine was dew of the wild white rose,
Her book a churchyard tomb.

Her Brothers were the craggy hills,
Her Sisters larchen trees—
Alone with her great family
She liv’d as she did please.

No breakfast had she many a morn,
No dinner many a noon,
And ’stead of supper she would stare
Full hard against the Moon.

But every morn of woodbine fresh
She made her garlanding,
And every night the dark glen Yew
She wove, and she would sing.

And with her fingers old and brown
She plaited Mats o’ Rushes,
And gave them to the Cottagers
She met among the Bushes.

Old Meg was brave as Margaret Queen
And tall as Amazon:
An old red blanket cloak she wore;
A chip hat had she on.
God rest her aged bones somewhere—
She died full long agone!—John Keats

BERRIES

There was an old woman
Went blackberry picking
Along the hedges
From Weep to Wicking.
Half a pottle—
No more she had got,
When out steps a Fairy
From her green grot;
And says, “Well, Jill,
Would ’ee pick ’ee mo?”
And Jill, she curtseys,
And looks just so.
“Be off,” says the Fairy,
“As quick as you can,
Over the meadows
To the little green lane,
That dips to the hayfields
Of Farmer Grimes:
I’ve berried those hedges
A score of times;
Bushel on bushel
I’ll promise ’ee, Jill,
This side of supper
If ’ee pick with a will.”
She glints very bright,
And speaks her fair;
Then lo, and behold!
She has faded in air.

Be sure old Goodie
She trots betimes
Over the meadows
To Farmer Grimes.
And never was queen
With jewellery rich
As those same hedges
From twig to ditch;
Like Dutchmen’s coffers,
Fruit, thorn, and flower—
They shone like William
And Mary’s bower.
And be sure Old Goodie
Went back to Weep,
So tired with her basket
She scarce could creep.
When she comes in the dusk
To her cottage door,
There’s Towser wagging
As never before,
To see his Missus
So glad to be
Come from her fruit-picking
Back to he.

And soon as next morning
Dawn was grey,
The pot on the hob
Was simmering away;
And all in a stew
And a hugger-mugger
Towser and Jill
A-boiling of sugar,
And the dark clear fruit
That from Faërie came,
For syrup and jelly
And blackberry jam.

Twelve jolly gallipots
Jill put by;
And one little teeny one,
One inch high;
And that she’s hidden
A good thumb deep,
Half way over
From Wicking to Weep.

Walter de la Mare

ROMANCE

I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
I will make a palace fit for you and me,
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.

I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom,
And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.

And this shall be for music when no one else is near
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.

Robert Louis Stevenson

HYMN OF PAN

From the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb,
Listening to my sweet pipings.
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.

Liquid Penëus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion’s shadow outgrowing
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and waves,
To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,
With envy of my sweet pipings.

I sang of the dancing Stars,
I sang of the daedal Earth,
And of Heaven, and the giant wars,
And Love, and Death, and Birth.
And then I changed my pipings—
Singing how down the vale of Maenalus
I pursued a maiden, and clasped a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus;
It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed.
All wept—as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood,
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

WRITTEN IN MARCH

The Cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter,
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!

Like an army defeated
The snow hath retreated,
And now doth fare ill
On the top of the bare hill;
The ploughboy is whooping—anon—anon
There’s joy in the mountains;
There’s life in the fountains;
Small clouds are sailing,
Blue sky prevailing;
The rain is over and gone!

William Wordsworth

“WHEN THE HOUNDS OF SPRING”

When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
Maiden most perfect, lady of light,
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
With a clamor of waters, and with might;
Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
Over the splendor and speed of thy feet;
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,
Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.

Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that man’s heart were as fire and could spring to her,
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!
For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.

For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins....

Algernon Charles Swinburne

SONG

The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His Heaven—
All’s right with the world!

Robert Browning

“UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE”

Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird’s throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

Who doth ambition shun,
And loves to live i’ the sun,
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleased with what he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

William Shakespeare

TO VIOLETS

Welcome, maids of honor,
You do bring
In the Spring,
And wait upon her.
She has virgins many,
Fresh and fair;
Yet you are
More sweet than any.

You’re the maiden posies,
And, so graced,
To be placed
’Fore damask roses.
Yet, though thus respected,
By and by
Ye do lie,
Poor girls, neglected.

Robert Herrick

ON MAY MORNING

Now the bright morning star, day’s harbinger,
Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her
The flow’ry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May, that doth inspire
Mirth and youth and warm desire!
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

John Milton

THE LEPRACAUN OR FAIRY SHOEMAKER

Little Cowboy, what have you heard,
Up on the lonely rath’s green mound?
Only the plaintive yellow bird
Sighing in sultry fields around,
Chary, chary, chary, chee-ee!—
Only the grasshopper and the bee?—
“Tip-tap, rip-rap,
Tick-a-tack-too!
Scarlet leather, sewn together,
This will make a shoe.
Left, right, pull it tight;
Summer days are warm;
Underground in winter,
Laughing at the storm!”
Lay your ear close to the hill.
Do you not catch the tiny clamour,
Busy click of elfin hammer,
Voice of the Lepracaun singing shrill
As he merrily plies his trade?
He’s a span
And a quarter in height.
Get him in sight, hold him tight,
And you’re a made
Man!

You watch your cattle the summer day,
Sup on potatoes, sleep in the hay;
How would you like to roll in your carriage,
Look for a duchess’s daughter in marriage?
Seize the Shoemaker—then you may!
“Big boots a-hunting,
Sandals in the hall,
White for a wedding-feast,
Pink for a ball.
This way, that way,
So we make a shoe;
Getting rich every stitch,
Tick-tack-too!”
Nine-and-ninety treasure-crocks
This keen miser-fairy hath,
Hid in mountains, woods and rocks,
Ruin and round-tow’r, cave and rath,
And where the cormorants build;
From time of old
Guarded by him;
Each of them fill’d
Full to the brim
With gold!

I caught him at work one day, myself,
In the castle-ditch, where foxglove grows,—
A wrinkled, wizen’d, and bearded Elf,
Spectacles stuck on his pointed nose,
Silver buckles to his hose,
Leather apron—shoe in his lap—
“Rip-rap, tip-tap,
Tack-tack-too!
(A grasshopper on my cap!
Away the moth flew!)
Buskins for a fairy prince,
Brogues for his son,—
Pay me well, pay me well,
When the job is done!”
The rogue was mine, beyond a doubt.
I stared at him; he stared at me;
‘Servant, Sir!’ ‘Humph!’ says he,
And pull’d a snuff-box out.
He took a long pinch, look’d better pleased,
The queer little Lepracaun;
Offer’d the box with a whimsical grace,—
Pouf! he flung the dust in my face,
And, while I sneezed,
Was gone!

William Allingham

HUNTING SONG

Waken, lords and ladies gay!
On the mountain dawns the day;
All the jolly chase is here,
With hawk, and horse, and hunting spear!
Hounds are in their couples yelling,
Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling;
Merrily, merrily, mingle they,
‘Waken, lords and ladies gay.’

Waken, lords and ladies gay!
The mist has left the mountain grey,
Springlets in the dawn are steaming,
Diamonds on the brake are gleaming;
And foresters have busy been,
To track the buck in thicket green;
Now we come to chant our lay,
‘Waken, lords and ladies gay.’

Waken, lords and ladies gay!
To the greenwood haste away;
We can show you where he lies,
Fleet of foot, and tall of size;
We can show the marks he made,
When ’gainst the oak his antlers fray’d;
You shall see him brought to bay—
‘Waken, lords and ladies gay.’

Louder, louder chant the lay,
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
Tell them youth, and mirth, and glee,
Run a course as well as we;
Time, stern huntsman! who can baulk,
Stanch as hound, and fleet as hawk?
Think of this, and rise with day,
Gentle lords and ladies gay!

Sir Walter Scott

THE LADY OF SHALOTT

Part I

On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road runs by
To many-towered Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle embowers
The Lady of Shalott.

By the margin, willow-veiled,
Slide the heavy barges trailed
By slow horses; and unhailed
The shallop flitteth silken-sailed
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?

Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to towered Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers “’Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott.”

Part II

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colors gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.

And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot:
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market-girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
Or long-haired page in crimson clad,
Goes by to towered Camelot;
And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror’s magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed;
“I am half sick of shadows,” said
The Lady of Shalott.

Part III

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling through the leaves
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneeled
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glittered free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot;
And from his blazoned baldric slung

A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armor rung,
Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jeweled shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burned like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot;
As often through the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glowed;
On burnished hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flowed
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror,
“Tirra lirra,” by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side;
“The curse is come upon me!” cried
The Lady of Shalott.

Part IV

In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over towered Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.

And down the river’s dim expanse—
Like some bold seër in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance—
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.

Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right—
The leaves upon her falling light—
Through the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turned to towered Camelot;
For ere she reached upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.

Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, “She has a lovely face;
God in His mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.”

Alfred Tennyson

HYMN TO DIANA

Queen and Huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep:
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright.

Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia’s shining orb was made
Heav’n to clear, when day did close:
Bless us then with wishéd sight,
Goddess excellently bright.

Lay thy bow of pearl apart
And thy crystal shining quiver;
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe, how short soever:
Thou that mak’st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright.

Ben Jonson

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

William Butler Yeats

THE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and vallies, dales and fields,
And woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair-linèd slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy-buds
With coral clasps and amber studs,
An’ if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

Thy silver dishes for thy meat
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be
Prepar’d each day for thee and me.

The shepherd-swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

Christopher Marlowe

ROBIN HOOD AND THE BUTCHER

Come, all you brave gallants, and listen a while,
With hey down, down, an a down,
That are in the bowers within;
For of Robin Hood, that archer good,
A song I intend for to sing.

Upon a time it chancëd so
Bold Robin in forrest did spy
A jolly butcher, with a bonny fine mare,
With his flesh to the market did hye.

‘Good morrow, good fellow,’ said jolly Robin,
‘What food hast? tell unto me;
And thy trade to me tell, and where thou dost dwell,
For I like well thy company.’

The butcher he answered jolly Robin:
‘No matter where I dwell;
For a butcher I am, and to Notingham
I am going, my flesh to sell.’

‘What is the price of thy flesh?’ said jolly Robin,
‘Come tell it soon unto me;
And the price of thy mare, be she never so dear,
For a butcher fain would I be.’

‘The price of my flesh,’ the butcher repli’d,
‘I soon will tell unto thee;
With my bonny mare, and they are not dear,
Four mark thou must give unto me.’

‘Four mark I will give thee,’ saith jolly Robin,
‘Four mark it shall be thy fee;
Thy mony come count, and let me mount,
For a butcher I fain would be.’

Now Robin he is to Notingham gone,
His butcher’s trade for to begin;
With good intent, to the sheriff he went,
And there he took up his inn.

When other butchers they opened their meat,
Bold Robin he then begun;
But how for to sell he knew not well,
For a butcher he was but young.

When other butchers no meat could sell,
Robin got both gold and fee;
For he sold more meat for one peny
Than others could do for three.

But when he sold his meat so fast,
No butcher by him could thrive;
For he sold more meat for one peny
Than others could do for five.

Which made the butchers of Notingham
To study as they did stand,
Saying, surely he was some prodigal,
That had sold his father’s land.

The butchers they stepped to jolly Robin,
Acquainted with him for to be;
‘Come, brother,’ one said, ‘we be all of one trade,
Come, will you go dine with me?’

‘Accurst of his heart,’ said jolly Robin,
‘That a butcher doth deny;
I will go with you my brethren true,
And as fast as I can hie.’

But when to the sheriff’s house they came,
To dinner they hied apace,
And Robin he the man must be
Before them all to say grace.

‘Pray God bless us all,’ said jolly Robin,
‘And our meat within this place;
A cup of sack so good will nourish our blood,
And so I do end my grace.

‘Come fill us more wine,’ said jolly Robin,
‘Let us merry be while we do stay;
For wine and good cheer, be it never so dear,
I vow I the reckning will pay.

‘Come, brothers, be merry,’ said jolly Robin,
‘Let us drink, and never give ore;
For the shot I will pay, ere I go my way,
If it cost me five pounds and more.’

‘This is a mad blade,’ the butchers then said;
Saies the sheriff, ‘He is some prodigal,
That some land has sold, for silver and gold,
And now he doth mean to spend all.

‘Hast thou any horn-beasts,’ the sheriff repli’d,
‘Good fellow, to sell unto me?’
‘Yes, that I have, good Master Sheriff,
I have hundreds two or three.

‘And a hundred aker of good free land,
If you please it to see;
And I’le make you as good assurance of it
As ever my father made me.’

The sheriff he saddled a good palfrey,
With three hundred pound in gold,
And away he went with bold Robin Hood,
His horned beasts to behold.

Away then the sheriff and Robin did ride,
To the forrest of merry Sherwood;
Then the sheriff did say, ‘God bless us this day
From a man they call Robin Hood!’

But when that a little further they came,
Bold Robin he chanced to spy
A hundred head of good red deer,
Come tripping the sheriff full nigh.

‘How like you my hornd beasts, good Master Sheriff?
They be fat and fair for to see:’
‘I tell thee, good fellow, I would I were gone,
For I like not thy company.’

Then Robin he set his horn to his mouth,
And blew but blasts three;
Then quickly anon there came Little John,
And all his company.

‘What is your will?’ then said little John,
‘Good master come tell it to me;’
‘I have brought hither the sheriff of Notingham,
This day to dine with thee.’

‘He is welcome to me,’ then said Little John,
‘I hope he will honestly pay;
I know he has gold, if it be but well told,
Will serve us to drink a whole day.’

Then Robin took his mantle from his back,
And laid it upon the ground,
And out of the sheriffe’s portmantle
He told three hundred pound.

The Robin he brought him thorow the wood,
And set him on his dapple gray:
‘O have me commended to your wife at home;’
So Robin went laughing away.

Author Unknown

A SEA SONG

A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
A wind that follows fast,
And fills the white and rustling sail,
And bends the gallant mast;
And bends the gallant mast, my boys,
While, like the eagle free,
Away the good ship flies, and leaves
Old England on the lee.

O for a soft and gentle wind!
I heard a fair one cry;
But give to me the snoring breeze
And white waves heaving high;
And white waves heaving high, my boys,
The good ship tight and free—
The world of waters is our home,
And merry men are we.

There’s tempest in yon hornèd moon,
And lightning in yon cloud;
And hark the music, mariners!
The wind is piping loud;
The wind is piping loud, my boys,
The lightning flashes free—
While the hollow oak our palace is,
Our heritage the sea.

Allan Cunningham

EPITAPH ON A HARE

Here lies, whom hound did ne’er pursue,
Nor swifter greyhound follow,
Whose foot ne’er tainted morning dew,
Nor ear heard huntsman’s hallo;

Old Tiney, surliest of his kind,
Who, nursed with tender care,
And to domestic bounds confined,
Was still a wild Jack-hare.

Though duly from my hand he took
His pittance every night,
He did it with a jealous look,
And, when he could, would bite.

His diet was of wheaten bread,
And milk, and oats, and straw;
Thistles, or lettuces instead,
With sand to scour his maw.

On twigs of hawthorn he regaled,
On pippins’ russet peel;
And, when his juicy salads failed,
Sliced carrot pleased him well.

A Turkey carpet was his lawn,
Whereon he loved to bound,
To skip and gambol like a fawn,
And swing his rump around.

His frisking was at evening hours,
For then he lost his fear;
But most before approaching showers,
Or when a storm drew near.

Eight years and five round-rolling moons
He thus saw steal away,
Dozing out all his idle noons,
And every night at play.

I kept him for his humor’s sake,
For he would oft beguile
My heart of thoughts that made it ache,
And force me to a smile.

But now, beneath this walnut-shade
He finds his long, last home,
And waits, in snug concealment laid,
Till gentler Puss shall come.

He, still more agèd, feels the shocks
From which no care can save,
And, partner once of Tiney’s box,
Must soon partake his grave.

William Cowper

THE PILGRIM
From “The Pilgrim’s Progress”

Who would true valor see,
Let him come hither!
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather;
There’s no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first-avowed intent
To be a Pilgrim.

Whoso beset him round
With dismal stories,
Do but themselves confound;
His strength the more is.
No lion can him fright;
He’ll with a giant fight;
But he will have a right
To be a Pilgrim.

Hobgoblin, nor foul fiend,
Can daunt his spirit;
He knows he at the end
Shall Life inherit:—
Then, fancies, fly away;
He’ll not fear what men say;
He’ll labor night and day,
To be a Pilgrim.

John Bunyan

LULLABY FOR TITANIA

First Fairy

You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts, and blind-worms, do no wrong;
Come not near our fairy queen.

Chorus

Philomel with melody
Sing in our sweet lullaby!
Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby!
Never harm, nor spell, nor charm,
Come our lovely lady nigh!
So good-night, with lullaby.

Second Fairy

Weaving spiders, come not here;
Hence, you long-legg’d spinners, hence;
Beetles black, approach not near;
Worm, nor snail, do no offence.

Chorus

Philomel with melody
Sing in our sweet lullaby;

Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby!
Never harm, nor spell, nor charm,
Come our lovely lady nigh!
So good-night, with lullaby.

William Shakespeare