The Penguin Book of English Verse
Page 78
A fibre from the Brain does tear
A Skylark wounded in the wing
A Cherubim does cease to sing
The Game Cock clipd & armd for fight
Does the Rising Sun affright
Every Wolfs & Lions howl
Raises from Hell a Human Soul
The wild deer wandring here & there
Keeps the Human Soul from Care
The Lamb misusd breeds Public strife
And yet forgives the Butchers Knife
The Bat that flits at close of Eve
Has left the Brain that wont Believe
The Owl that calls upon the Night
Speaks the Unbelievers fright
He who shall hurt the little Wren
Shall never be belovd by Men
He who the Ox to wrath has movd
Shall never be by Woman lovd
The wanton Boy that kills the Fly
Shall feel the Spiders enmity
He who torments the Chafers sprite
Weaves a Bower in endless Night
The Catterpiller on the Leaf
Repeats to thee thy Mothers grief
Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh
He who shall train the Horse to War
Shall never pass the Polar Bar
The Beggers Dog & Widows Cat
Feed them & thou wilt grow fat
The Gnat that sings his Summers song
Poison gets from Slanders tongue
The poison of the Snake & Newt
Is the sweat of Envys Foot
The Poison of the Honey Bee
Is the Artists Jealousy
The Princes Robes & Beggars Rags
Are Toadstools on the Misers Bags
A truth thats told with bad intent
Beats all the Lies you can invent
(1863)
ANONYMOUS Lamkin 1806
It’s Lamkin was a mason good
As ever built wi stane;
He built Lord Wearie’s castle,
But payment got he nane.
5
‘O pay me, Lord Wearie,
Come, pay me my fee:’
‘I canna pay you, Lamkin,
For I maun gang oer the sea.’
‘O pay me now, Lord Wearie,
10
Come, pay me out o hand:’
‘I canna pay you, Lamkin,
Unless I sell my land.’
‘O gin ye winna pay me,
I here sall mak a vow,
15
Before that ye come hame again,
Ye sail hae cause to rue.’
Lord Wearie got a bonny ship,
To sail the saut sea faem;
Bade his lady weel the castle keep,
20
Ay till he should come hame.
But the nourice was a fause limmer
As eer hung on a tree;
She laid a plot wi Lamkin,
Whan her lord was oer the sea.
25
She laid a plot wi Lamkin,
When the servants were awa,
Loot him in at a little shot-window,
And brought him to the ha.
‘O whare’s a’ the men o this house,
30
That ca me Lamkin?’
‘They’re at the barn-well thrashing;
’T will be lang ere they come in.’
‘And whare’s the women o this house,
That ca me Lamkin?’
35
‘They’re at the far well washing;
’T will be lang ere they come in.’
‘And whare’s the bairns o this house,
That ca me Lamkin?’
‘They’re at the school reading;
40
’T will be night or they come hame.’
‘O whare’s the lady o this house,
That ca’s me Lamkin?’
‘She’s up in her bower sewing,
But we soon can bring her down.’
45
Then Lamkin’s tane a sharp knife,
That hang down by his gaire,
And he has gien the bonny babe
A deep wound and a sair.
Then Lamkin he rocked,
50
And the fause nourice sang,
Till frae ilkae bore o the cradle
The red blood out sprang.
Then out it spak the lady,
As she stood on the stair:
55
‘What ails my bairn, nourice,
That he’s greeting sae sair?
‘O still my bairn, nourice,
O still him wi the pap!’
‘He winna still, lady,
60
For this nor for that.’
‘O still my bairn, nourice,
O still him wi the wand!’
‘He winna still, lady,
For a’ his father’s land.’
65
‘O still my bairn, nourice,
O still him wi the bell!’
‘He winna still, lady,
Till ye come down yoursel.’
O the firsten step she steppit,
70
She steppit on a stane;
But the neisten step she steppit,
She met him Lamkin.
‘O mercy, mercy, Lamkin,
Hae mercy upon me!
75
Though you’ve taen my young son’s life,
Ye may let mysel be.’
‘O sail I kill her, nourice,
Or sail I lat her be?’
‘O kill her, kill her, Lamkin,
80
For she neer was good to me.’
‘O scour the bason, nourice,
And mak it fair and clean,
For to keep this lady’s heart’s blood,
For she’s come o noble kin.’
85
‘There need nae bason, Lamkin,
Lat it run through the floor;
What better is the heart’s blood
O the rich than o the poor?’
But ere three months were at an end,
90
Lord Wearie came again;
But dowie, dowie was his heart
When first he came hame.
‘O wha’s blood is this,’ he says,
‘That lies in the chamer?’
95
‘It is your lady’s heart’s blood;
’T is as clear as the lamer.’
‘And wha’s blood is this,’ he says,
‘That lies in my ha?’
‘It is your young son’s heart’s blood;
100
’T is the clearest ava.’
O sweetly sang the black-bird
That sat upon the tree;
But sairer grat Lamkin,
When he was condemned to die.
105
And bonny sang the mavis,
Out o the thorny brake;
But sairer grat the nourice,
When she was tied to the stake.
1807 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Composed upon Westminster Bridge
Sept. 3, 1802
Earth has not any thing to shew more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peel
e Castle, in a Storm, Painted by Sir George Beaumont
I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.
So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
So like, so very like, was day to day!
Whene’er I looked, thy Image still was there;
It trembled, but it never passed away.
How perfect was the calm! it seemed no sleep;
No mood, which season takes away, or brings:
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle Things.
Ah! THEN, if mine had been the Painter’s hand,
To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the Poet’s dream;
I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile
Amid a world how different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.
Thou shouldst have seemed a treasure-house divine
Of peaceful years; a chronicle of heaven; –
Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine
The very sweetest had to thee been given.
A Picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature’s breathing life.
Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
Such Picture would I at that time have made:
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A stedfast peace that might not be betrayed.
So once it would have been, – ’tis so no more;
I have submitted to a new control:
A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
A deep distress hath humanized my Soul.
Not for a moment could I now behold
A smiling sea, and be what I have been:
The feeling of my loss will ne’er be old;
This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.
Then, Beaumont, friend! who would have been the Friend,
If he had lived, of Him whom I deplore,
This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.
O ’tis a passionate Work! – yet wise and well,
Well chosen is the spirit that is here;
That Hulk which labours in the deadly swell,
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!
And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,
I love to see the look with which it braves,
Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time,
The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.
Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,
Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied; for ’tis surely blind.
But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here. –
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH The Small Celandine
There is a Flower, the Lesser Celandine,
That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain;
And, the first moment that the sun may shine,
Bright as the sun himself, ’tis out again!
When hailstones have been falling swarm on swarm,
Or blasts the green field and the trees distrest,
Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm,
In close self-shelter, like a Thing at rest.
But lately, one rough day, this Flower I passed,
And recognized it, though an altered Form,
Now standing forth an offering to the Blast,
And buffetted at will by Rain and Storm.
I stopped, and said with inly muttered voice,
‘It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold:
This neither is its courage nor its choice,
But its necessity in being old.
‘The sunshine may not bless it, nor the dew;
It cannot help itself in its decay;
Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue.’
And, in my spleen, I smiled that it was grey.
To be a Prodigal’s Favorite – then, worse truth,
A Miser’s Pensioner – behold our lot!
O Man! that from thy fair and shining youth
Age might but take the things Youth needed not!
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Ode (Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood)
Paulò majora canamus
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it has been of yore; –
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the Birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong.
The Cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;