I paddle up to Harleyford, And sometimes I incline To cushions take with lunch aboard, And let my face get brown; I go to luncheon at the Lawn, I list to All Saints' chime. At pleasant Marlow town. So when no longer London life Just quit its noise, its whirl, its strife, Here Shelley dream'd and thought and wrote, And wander'd o'er the leas; And sung and drifted in his boat Beneath the Bisham trees. So let me sing, although I'm no Of hours that much too quickly go A PORTRAIT I sing each race whom we displace With Norman Dukes the still Sioux I celebrate each perish'd State; 'Tis thus mean moths treat finest cloths, Mean men the obsolete. Shall nought be said of theories dead ? Sihons and Ogs? and showers of frogs? Pillion and pack have left their track; Steam rails cut down each festive crown O fancy, why hast thou let die Doublet and hose, and powder'd beaux ? Where are thy songs, whose passion Turn'd thought to fire in knight and squire, While hearts of ladies beat? Where thy sweet style, ours, ours erewhile? All this is obsolete. In Auvergne low potatoes grow The moon, they say, had her young day, Even so our earth, sorrow and mirth, Check'd by her tides in silence glides The astrolabe of every babe Reads, in its fatal sky, "Man's largest room is the low tombYe all are born to die." Therefore this theme, O Birds, I deem IN PRAISE OF GILBERT WHITE IF Transmigration e'er compel A bird to live with human heart, When swallows through the world went forth, And watch'd affairs in every nation, They found for ever, south and north, Vanity and Vexation. So let him dwell not in the Town There Trade and Penury roar and weep: But 'neath the silence of a down Disturb'd by grazing sheep. There, like his brook, his life shall glide, There he shall Learning woo, and Art, Nor seek to pain another's heart, |