The Stately Homes of England,
How beautiful they stand,
To prove the upper classes
Have still the upper hand;
Though the fact that they have to be rebuilt
And frequently mortgaged to the hilt
Is inclined to take the gilt
Off the gingerbread,
And certainly damps the fun
Of the eldest son—
But still we won't be beaten,
We'll scrimp and scrape and save,
The playing fields of Eton
Have made us frightfully brave—
And though if the Van Dycks have to go
And we pawn the Bechstein Grand,
We'll stand
By the Stately Homes of England.

O Time has a kiss
For every Miss
And a bed for every Trull!
But thou, my Dearie,
O! Come not near me,
Our love is a wheeling gull.
Lovely he flies 'twixt sea and skies,
He's a silly bird on land.
No wrath of black weathers
Will ruffle his feathers
Like the touch of a capturing hand.

Say , have you in the valley seen
A gentle youth of pensive mien?
And have you marked his pallid cheek,
Which secret sorrow seems to speak?
Perhaps you'd wish his name to hear.....
'Tis Allen Brooke of Windermere.

But, ah! the cause that prompts his sigh,
That dims with tears his sparkling eye,
That bids his youthful cheek turn pale
And sorrow's hue o'er health's prevail,....
That cause from me you must not hear;
Ask Allen Brooke of Windermere.

Yet needless were his words to prove
His sorrow springs from hopeless love,

A land there is, lying near far-northern snow,
Where only the fissures life's springtime may know.
But surging, the sea tells of great deeds done,
And loved is the land as a mother by son.

What time we were little and sat on her knee,
She gave us her saga with pictures to see.
We read till our eyes opened wide and moist,
While nodding and smiling she mute rejoiced.

We went to the fjord and in wonder beheld
The ashen-gray bauta, that record of eld;
Still older she stood and her silence kept,
While stone-studded hows all around us slept.

Love is a restless brigand; that you'll own:
He heeds no law and strips men to the bone.

OS PIRIT pure! though trite and faded forms
Point like a cold clock-finger to thy Truth,
And but a glimmer of thy radiance warms
The symbols that should gleam with Nature's youth:

Though men of selfish codes may hide or darken
That light of thine own Purity and Love,
So that we scarce may still the world and hearken
To thy sweet voice that droppeth from above:

Though man be false and institutions vain,
Not false or vain let thy high Presence be;
Through icy custom and through man's disdain,
Shine on my heart and set my spirit free!

“They shall not die in vain,” we said.
“Let us impose, since we forget
The hopeless giant alphabet,
Great stones above the general dead,”
The living said.

“They shall not be outdone in stones.
Generously, sculptured grief shall stand
In general over numbered bones
With book and index near at hand
For particular sons.

“And we the living left in peace
Will set aside such legal date
At such and suchlike time or state
Or place as meet and fitting is,
Respecting this.”

O boy, locked in the grisly hollow,

My days are strung in amber
Till I am sad again:
My days are full of sunlight
Beyond all sun or rain.

My heart is full of tidings
From every wind that blows;
And I cannot say, ‘Good-day to you,’
But everybody knows!

SAINT Patrick , slave to Milcho of the herds
Of Ballymena, wakened with these words:
“Arise, and flee
Out from the land of bondage, and be free!”

Glad as a soul in pain, who hears from heaven
The angels singing of his sins forgiven,
And, wondering, sees
His prison opening to their golden keys,

He rose a man who laid him down a slave,
Shook from his locks the ashes of the grave,
And outward trod
Into the glorious liberty of God.

He cast the symbols of his shame away;
And, passing where the sleeping Milcho lay,

Where the sun has entered the western hills,
I look for a monk in his little straw hut;
But only the fallen leaves are at home,
And I turn through chilling levels of cloud.
I hear a stone gong in the dusk,
I lean full-weight on my slender staff …
How within this world, within this grain of dust,
Can there be any room for the passions of men?