Give place, ye lovers, here before
That spent your boasts and brags in vain;
My lady's beauty passeth more
The best of yours, I dare well sayen,
Than doth the sun the candle light,
Or brightest day the darkest night.

And thereto hath a troth as just
As had Penelope the fair;
For what she saith, ye may it trust,
As it by writing sealed were:
And virtues hath she many moe
Than I with pen have skill to show.

I could rehearse, if that I would,
The whole effect of Nature's plaint
When she had lost the perfect mould,

1. Give peace in these our days, O Lord, Great dangers are now at hand;
2. Give us that peace that we do lack, Through misbelief and ill life.
Thine enemies with one accord Christ's name in every land
Thy word to offer thou dost not slack, Which we unkindly gainstrive.
Seek to deface, root out and rase, Thy true right worship indeed.
With fire and sword, this healthful word Some persecute and oppress.
Be thou the stay, Lord, we thee pray, Thou helpest alone in all need.
Some with the mouth confess the truth Without sincere godliness.

Give pardon, blessed soul, to my bold cries
If they, importune, interrupt thy song,
Which now with joyful notes thou sing'st among
The angel-quirsters of heavenly skies.
Give pardon eke, sweet soul, to my slow eyes,
That since I saw thee now it is so long,
And yet the tears that unto thee belong
To thee as yet they did not sacrifice.

I did not know that thou wert dead before;
I did not feel the grief I did sustain;
The greater stroke astonisheth the more;
Astonishment takes from us sense of pain.
I stood amazed when other's tears begun,

Give me work to do;
Give me health;
Give me joy in simple things.
Give me an eye for beauty,
A tongue for truth,
A heart that loves,
A mind that reasons,
A sympathy that understands;
Give me neither malice nor envy,
But a true kindness
And a noble common sense.
At the close of each day
Give me a book,
And a friend with whom
I can be silent.

Give me work to do;
Give me health;
Give me joy in simple things.
Give me an eye for beauty,
A tongue for truth,
A heart that loves,
A mind that reasons,

Give me white paper!
This which you use is black and rough with smears
Of sweat and grime and fraud and blood and tears,
Crossed with the story of men's sins and fears,
Of battle and of famine all these years,
When all God's children had forgot their birth,
And drudged and fought and died like beasts of earth.

“Give me white paper!”
One storm-trained seaman listened to the word;
What no man saw he saw; he heard what no man heard.
In answer he compelled the sea
To eager man to tell
The secret she had kept so well!

1

Give me three grains of corn, mother
Only three grains of corn.
'Twill keep what little life I have
Till the coming of the morn.

2

For I'm dying of hunger and cold, mother
Dying of hunger and cold,
And the agony of such a death
My lips have never told.

3

Oh, what has old Ireland done, mother,
Oh, what has old Ireland done,
That the world looks on and sees them starve,
Perishing one by one?

4

There is many a brave heart, mother,
That is dying of hunger and cold,

1

Give me the splendid silent sun
with all his beams full-dazzling,
Give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,
Give me a field where the unmow'd grass grows,
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis'd grape,
Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching content,
Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars,
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturb'd,

Give me the plains, — the barren and sun-beaten plains!
Free in the vague indeterminate murmur of winds,
High on the arched and tremendous back of the world,
Alone and close up under the skies,
Let me lie dark in the grass like an Indian,
Hearing loud footfalls afar in the rumbling sod,
And know that it knows me! — Up from the grass to the sky,
From the skies again back to the grass — I go to the plains!

Give me the plains — the lonely and rain-beaten plains!
There no escape, nor to hide from the all-seeing heavens, —

Give me the hills, that echo silence back,
Save the harp-haunted pines' wild minstrelsy,
And white peaks, lifting rapt Madonna gaze
To where God's cloud-sheep roam the azure lea.

Give me the Lethe of the harebell's wine,
And in the fleece of silence folded deep,
Let half-heard echoes of an Oread's song
Breathe on the drowsy lyre of my sleep.

Give me the darkest corner of a cloud,
Placed high upon some lonely mountain's head,
Craggy and harsh with ruin; let me shroud
My life in horror, for I wish me dead
No gentle lowland known and loved of old,
Lure me to life back through the gate of tears;
But long time drenched with rain and numb with cold,
May I forget the solace of the years:
No trees by streams, no light and warmth of day,
No white clouds pausing o'er the happy town;
But wind and rain, and fogbanks slow and gray,
And stony wastes, and uplands scalped and brown