The Blue Poetry Book

Front Cover
Andrew Lang
Longmans, Green, 1891 - Children's poetry - 348 pages
 

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Page 61 - Tu-who, a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. When all aloud the wind doth blow And coughing drowns the parson's saw And birds sit brooding in the snow And Marian's nose looks red and raw, When roasted...
Page 67 - GOING TO THE WARS Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind, To war and arms I fly. True, a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field; And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield. Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore; I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more.
Page 23 - At length, upon the harp, with glee, Mingled with arch simplicity, A soft, yet lively, air she rung, While thus the wily lady sung : LOCHINVAR. O, young Lochinvar is come out of the west, Through all the wide Border his steed was the best ; And save his good broadsword he weapons had none, He rode all unarm'd, and he rode all alone. So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.
Page 150 - Keturn, Alpheus, the dread voice is past, That shrunk thy streams ; return, Sicilian Muse, And call the vales, and bid them hither cast Their bells, and flow 'rets of a thousand hues. Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks : Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes That on the green turf suck the honied showers And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Page 115 - We look before and after And pine for what is not : Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught ; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound — Better than all treasures That in books are found — Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground ! Teach me half the gladness That thy brain...
Page 151 - Shepherds, weep no more ! For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky...
Page 145 - Muse, The place of fame and elegy supply: And many a holy text around she strews, That teach the rustic moralist to die. For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?
Page 108 - TO HELEN. Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome.
Page 117 - The upper air burst into life! And a hundred fire-flags sheen, To and fro they were hurried about! And to and fro, and in and out, The wan stars danced between. And the coming wind did roar more loud, And the sails did sigh like sedge; And the rain poured down from one black cloud; The Moon was at its edge. The thick black cloud was cleft, and still The Moon was at its side: Like waters shot from some high crag, The lightning fell with never a jag, A river steep and wide.
Page 75 - Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful jollity, Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek ; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding both his sides...

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