Short Poems

Songs from hearts sincere,
Though heard but once in passing,
Touching souls atune,
Can never be forgotten,
Or lost, however simple.

Father, to you who taught me
To care for the wold and the fen,
Father, to you who brought me
Love of the Lincoln men,
These poor songs — in a tongue
That is dying, homely and harsh —
To you who are dead I have sung
From the fen and the wold and the marsh.

Here Delia 's buried at Fourscore:
When young ; a leud, rapacious Whore ,
Vain, and expensive; but when old ;
A pious, fordid, drunken Scold .

LADY'S SLIPPER .

I am not to be drawn off and on like the trifle,
Whose name is bestowed on the blossom I send;
My affections no dreaming romancer shall rifle,
If our vows be not heart-hallowed — here let them end.

CHINA-ASTER .

The greatest wonder, Mary,
Is this, that while, to me,
Your charms each moment vary,
Your heart should constant be.

AGRIMONY

And the nuns used to dream, as they roamed about
The convent-garden of St. Ursula,
That, at matins and vespers, a peal rang out,
From the fairy bells of the campanula.

NARVEL OF PERU .

The blossom that bashfully shuns the daylight,
And yields all its sweetness and bloom unto night.

WHITE ROSEBUD .

When Love was born in Eden's bower,
The first soft blush of Eve was shed
On a white rose — her emblem-flower —
Which ever since has blossomed red!

MUSHROOM .

Better confide and be deceived,
A thousand times, by treacherous foes,
Than once accuse the innocent,
Or let suspicion mar repose.

LOBELIA .

She stood 'mid the dazzling insigma of Wealth;
But the jewels, that shone o'er her beauty and bloom,
Were less fair than the sunny ray smiling by stealth,
Through the rose-teinted damask, that curtained the room.