The bird's call this morning was a fine bird call.
Twenty bushels an acre isn't at all a bad crop.
The good bird sang of eighteen bushels of rice.
The bird sang, deep at night—I had to tell my lord to go home.
Let's listen to that bird's auspicious call!

A birdless heaven, seadusk, one lone star
Piercing the west,
As thou, fond heart, love's time, so faint, so far,
Rememberest.

The clear young eyes' soft look, the candid brow,
The fragrant hair,
Falling as through the silence falleth now
Dusk of the air.
Why then, remembering those shy
Sweet lures, repine
When the dear love she yielded with a sigh
Was all but thine?

A BIRD in my bower
Sat calling, a-calling;
A bird answered low from the garden afar.
His note came with power,
While falling, a-falling,
Her note quivered faint as the light of a star.
" I am Life! I am Life! "
From the bower a-ringing,
Trilled forth a mad melody, soaring above;
" I am Love! I am Love! "
From the garden a-singing,
Came soft as a dream, and the echoes sang " Love. "

They joined, and together
Fast flying, a-flying,
Were lost to my gaze in the arch of the sky.
The wind through the heather

The birches that dance on the top of the hill
Are so slender and young that they cannot keep still,
They bend and they nod at each whiff of a breeze,
For you see they are still just the children of trees.

But the birches below in the valley are older,
They are calmer and straighter and taller and colder.
Perhaps when we've grown up as solemn and grave,
We, too, will have children who do not behave!

The bindweed roots pierce down
Deeper than men do lie,
Laid in their dark-shut graves
Their slumbering kinsmen by.

Yet what frail thin-spun flowers
She casts into the air,
To breathe the sunshine, and
To leave her fragrance there.

But when the sweet moon comes,
Showering her silver down,
Half-wreathed in faint sleep,
They droop where they have blown.

So all the grass is set,
Beneath her trembling ray,
With buds that have been flowers,
Brimmed with reflected day.

Bind your straight hair,
Thessalian,
For the winds pursue you
And the leaves.

The lake breeze would have you for a wrestler,
It would dust you with sand in the marshes,
Wash sedges and lilies to your feet;

Test your shoulders,
Whether they or the rushes were more supple,
Whether they or the larches were more sweet.

Bind back your hair,
Thessalian,
The fists of the wind are clenched.

Behold, dear mistress, how each pleasant green
Will now renew his summer's livery:
The fragrant flowers which have not long been seen
Will flourish now ere long in bravery.
But I, alas, within whose mourning mind
The grafts of grief are only given to grow,
Cannot enjoy the spring which others find,
But still my will must wither all in woe.
The lusty Ver that whilom might exchange
My grief to joy, and my delight increase,
Springs now elsewhere and shows to me but strange;
My winter's woe, therefore, can never cease.

Version 1

Billy was a bad man
And carried a big gun,
He was always after Greasers
And kept 'em on the run.

He shot one every morning,
For to make his morning meal.
And let a white man sass him,
He was shore to feel his steel.

He kept folks in hot water,
And he stole from many a stage;
And when he was full of liquor
He was always in a rage.

He kept things boilin' over,
He stayed out in the brush,
And when he was full of dead eye,
T'other folkses better hush.

But one day he met a man

Billy Boy, Billy Boy, what will you bring for me?
Riding Old Dobbin to Banbury Fair.
Billy Boy, Billy Boy, shall you be long away?
Just twice as long as it takes to get there.

Billy Boy, Billy Boy, what will you bring for me?
One golden fiddle to play a fine tune,
Two magic wishes and three fairy fishes,
And four rainbow ropes to climb up to the moon.

The billowy headlands swiftly fly
The crested path I keep,
My ribboned smoke stains many a sky,
My embers dye the deep;
A continent has hardly space —
Mid-ocean little more,
Wherein to trace my eager race
While clang the alarums of war.

I come, the warship Oregon,
My wake a whitening world,
My cannon shotted, thundering on
With battle-flags unfurled.
My land knows no successful foe —
Behold, to sink or save,
From stoker's flame to gunner's aim
The race that rules the wave!

A nation's prayers my bulwark are