In the dark they fell a-crying
For the dead who'd gone away,
And you could hear the drowsy wailing
Of those compelled to stay —
But when the sun rose making
All the dooryard bright and clear
The mourners got up smiling,
Happy they were here.

The furious Frenchman comes with his clarions and his drums,
His tactics of Sadowa and his maxims of Jean-Paul,
He is bursting on our flanks, grasp your pikes and close your ranks,
For Belloc never comes but to conquer or to fall.

Wash your hands, or else the fire
Will not tend to your desire;
Unwashed hands, ye maidens, know,
Dead the fire, though we blow.

A WORD of Godspeed and good cheer
To all on earth, or far or near,
Or friend or foe, or thine or mine—
In echo of the voice divine,
Heard when the Star bloomed forth and lit
The world's face, with God's smile on it.

LAS' time 'at Uncle Sidney come,
He bringed a watermelon home —
An' half the boys in town

Come taggin' after him. — An' he
Says, when we et it, — " Gracious me!
'S the boy-house fell down? "

Walk with the sun,
Dance at high noon;
And dream when night falls black;
But when the stars
Vie with the moon,
Then call the lost dream back.

Here in surprising chaos, doubly sweet,
Both heav'n and earth within this fountain meet;
The pleasing cheat with rapture strikes us all
In gay confusion as the figures fall.
Here on the branches fishes perched repose,
And on the angler's hook you see the rose;
Thus the deluding idol charms the eye,
While birds appear to swim and fishes fly.

The voice of the last cricket
across the first frost
is one kind of good-by.
It is so thin a splinter of singing.

An epigram does many things require,
A poignant wit and quick poetic fire,
Of style a natural simplicity
In which there's beauty, point and brevity.
No puns or quibbles here a place should find;
They're but the squibs of thoughts that please a vulgar mind.

He's King of Mirth that slyly cheats our sense
With pun ambiguous, pleasing in suspense;
The shoulders lax become; the bending back
Upheaved with laughter makes our ribs to crack;
Ev'n to the liver he can joys impart,
And play upon the fibres of the heart,
Open the chambers of the lungs, and there
Give longer life in laughing, than in air.