SMITH POEMS

The Holy Fair

A note of seeming truth and trust
Hid crafty observation;
And secret hung, with poison'd crust,
The dirk of defamation:
.....

Robert Burns

Was It You?

“Hullo, young Jones! with your tie so gay
And your pen behind your ear;
Will you mark my cheque in the usual way?
For I'm overdrawn, I fear.”
.....

Robert Service

The Englishman In Italy

(PIANO DI SORRENTO.)

Fortu, Frotu, my beloved one,
Sit here by my side,
.....

Robert Browning

The Twa Herds; Or, The Holy Tulyie

O A' ye pious godly flocks,
Weel fed on pastures orthodox,
Wha now will keep you frae the fox,
Or worrying tykes?
.....

Robert Burns

Youth And Art

1 It once might have been, once only:
2 We lodged in a street together,
3 You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely,
4 I, a lone she-bird of his feather.
.....

Robert Browning

The Witch Of Wenham

I.
Along Crane River's sunny slopes
Blew warm the winds of May,
And over Naumkeag's ancient oaks
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Belles Of Mauchline

IN Mauchline there dwells six proper young belles,
The pride of the place and its neighbourhood a';
Their carriage and dress, a stranger would guess,
In Lon'on or Paris, they'd gotten it a'.
.....

Robert Burns

Epitaph For James Smith

LAMENT him, Mauchline husbands a',
He aften did assist ye;
For had ye staid hale weeks awa,
Your wives they ne'er had miss'd ye.
.....

Robert Burns

The Sundays Of Satin-legs Smith

Inamoratas, with an approbation,
Bestowed his title. Blessed his inclination.

He wakes, unwinds, elaborately: a cat
.....

Gwendolyn Brooks

The Deserted Village

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visits paid,
And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed:
.....

Oliver Goldsmith

Tam O'shanter

A Tale

“Of Brownyis and of Bogilis full is this Buke.”
-Gawin Douglas.
.....

Robert Burns

The Odyssey: Book 03

But as the sun was rising from the fair sea into the firmament of
heaven to shed Blight on mortals and immortals, they reached Pylos the
city of Neleus. Now the people of Pylos were gathered on the sea shore
to offer sacrifice of black bulls to Neptune lord of the Earthquake.
.....

Homer

The Leveller

Near Martinpuisch that night of hell
Two men were struck by the same shell,
Together tumbling in one heap
Senseless and limp like slaughtered sheep.
.....

Robert Graves

Preface

A book which needs to be written is one dealing
with the childhood of authors. It would be
not only interesting, but instructive; not merely
profitable in a general way, but practical in a
.....

Hilda Conkling

The Two Windmills

Two neighbors, living on a hill,
Had each-and side by side-a mill.
The one was Jones,-a thrifty wight-
Whose mill in every wind went right.
.....

Sam G. Goodrich

The Grief Of A Girl's Heart

O Donall og, if you go across the sea, bring myself with you and do not forget it; and you will have a sweetheart for fair days and market days, and the daughter of the King of Greece beside you at night. It is late last night the dog was speaking of you; the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh. It is you are the lonely bird through the woods; and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

You promised me, and you said a lie to me, that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked; I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you, and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

.....

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory

Bruadar And Smith And Glinn

Bruadar and Smith and Glinn,
Amen, dear God, I pray,
May they lie low in waves of woe,
And tortures slow each day!
.....

Douglas Hyde

Epitaph On A Pessimist

I'm Smith of Stoke aged sixty odd
I've lived without a dame all my life
And wish to God
My dad had done the same.
.....

Thomas Hardy

The Iliad: Book 15

But when their flight had taken them past the trench and the set
stakes, and many had fallen by the hands of the Danaans, the Trojans
made a halt on reaching their chariots, routed and pale with fear.
Jove now woke on the crests of Ida, where he was lying with
.....

Homer

Driver Smith

'Twas Driver Smith of Battery A was anxious to see a fight;
He thought of the Transvaal all the day, he thought of it all the night --
"Well, if the battery's left behind, I'll go to the war," says he,
"I'll go a-driving and ambulance in the ranks of the A.M.C.
.....

Banjo Paterson

Saltbush Bill's Second Flight

The news came down on the Castlereagh, and went to the world at large,
That twenty thousand travelling sheep, with Saltbush Bill in charge,
Were drifting down from a dried-out run to ravage the Castlereagh;
And the squatters swore when they heard the news, and wished they were well away:
.....

Banjo Paterson

Gilderoy

THE smith who made the manacles,
With bar and bolt, and link and ring,
Sang out above his hearty blows
'I can't have grief for everything.'
.....

Padraic Colum

The Great God Guff

There was once a Simple People - (you, of course, will understand
This is just a little fable of a non-existent land)
There was once a Simple People, and they had a Simple King,
And his name - well, SMITH the First will do as well as anything
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

Big Smith.

Are you a Giant, great big man, or is your real name Smith?
Nurse says you've got a hammer that you hit bad children with.
I'm good to-day, and so I've come to see if it is true
That you can turn a red-hot rod into a horse's shoe.
.....

Juliana Horatia Ewing

The Wee Drap

He's a muckle man, Sandy, he's mair nor sax fit
A size that's no' handy for wark i' the pit,
But frae a' bad mis-chanters he'd aye keepit free
Excep'in' that nicht he'd a fire in his e'e.
.....

David Rorie

Out O' The Fire.

[As Told in 1880.]

Year of '71, children, middle of the fall,
On one fearful night, children, we well-nigh lost our all.
.....

Will Carleton

Longevity

Said Brown: ‘I can't afford to die
For I have bought annuity,
And every day of living I
Have money coming in to me:
.....

Robert Service

Mary Smith

Away down East where I was reared amongst my Yankee kith,
There used to live a pretty girl whose name was Mary Smith;
And though it's many years since last I saw that pretty girl,
And though I feel I'm sadly worn by Western strife and whirl;
.....

Eugene Field

Don Juan: Canto The Seventh

O Love! O Glory! what are ye who fly
Around us ever, rarely to alight?
There's not a meteor in the polar sky
Of such transcendent and more fleeting flight.
.....

George Gordon Byron

You And You

TO THE AMERICAN PRIVATE IN THE GREAT WAR

Every one of you won the warâ??
You and you and youâ??
.....

Edith Wharton

To James Smith.

"Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul!
Sweet'ner of life and solder of society!
I owe thee much!"

.....

Robert Burns

The Home-coming

My boy's come back; he's here at last;
He came home on a special train.
My longing and my ache are past,
My only son is back again.
.....

Robert Service

Little Ballads Of Timely Warning; Iii: On Laziness And Its Resultant Ills

There was a man in New York City
(His name was George Adolphus Knight)
So soft of heart he wept with pity
To see our language and its plight.
.....

Ellis Parker Butler

The Witches' Brew

Perched on a dead volcanic pile,
Now charted as a submerged peak,
Near to a moon-washed coral isle,
A hundred leagues from Mozambique,
.....

E. J. Pratt

The Cottage

Here in turn succeed and rule
Carter, smith, and village fool,
Then again the place is known
As tavern, shop, and Sunday-school;
.....

Robert Graves

The Legend Of St. Sophia Of Kioff

I.

[The Poet describes the city and spelling of Kiow, Kioff, or Kiova.]

.....

William Makepeace Thackeray

A Silence

past parentage or gender
beyond sung vocables
the slipped-between
the so infinitesimal
.....

Amy Clampitt

War

By the Nile, the sacred river,
I can see the captive hordes,
Strain beneath the lash and quiver
At the long papyrus cords,
.....

Archibald Lampman

A Summons

MEN of the North-land! where's the manly spirit
Of the true-hearted and the unshackled gone?
Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit
Their names alone?
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

Legends

CLOWNS DYINGFIVE circus clowns dying this year, morning newspapers told their lives, how each one horizontal in a last gesture of hands arranged by an undertaker, shook thousands into convulsions of laughter from behind rouge-red lips and powder-white face.

STEAMBOAT BILLWhen the boilers of the Robert E. Lee exploded, a steamboat winner of many races on the Mississippi went to the bottom of the river and never again saw the wharves of Natchez and New Orleans.
And a legend lives on that two gamblers were blown toward the sky and during their journey laid bets on which of the two would go higher and which would be first to set foot on the turf of the earth again.
.....

Carl Sandburg

Tale X

THE LOVER'S JOURNEY.

It is the Soul that sees: the outward eyes
Present the object, but the Mind descries;
.....

George Crabbe

The Listener

Why, certainly. Let's listen to the cricket.
Oh, I'm quite keen. Test match, I understand.
At... What's that? Oh, Australia's at the wicket.
South Africa - a most intriguing land.
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

Ode To Tobacco

Thou, who when fears attack
Bidst them avaunt, and Black
Care, at the horseman's back
Perching, unseatest;
.....

Charles Stuart Calverley

Songs Set To Music: 8. Set By Mr. Smith

Still, Dorinda, I adore;
Think I mean not to deceive you,
For I loved you much before,
And, alas! now love you more
.....

Matthew Prior

Palinodia

TO THE MARQUIS GINO CAPPONI.


I was mistaken, my dear Gino. Long
.....

Count Giacomo Leopardi

A Friendly Game Of Football

We were challenged by The Dingoes - they're the pride of Squatter's Gap-
To a friendly game of football on the flat by Devil's Trap.
And we went along on horses, sworn to triumph in the game,
For the honour of Gyp's Diggings, and the glory of the same.
.....

Edward George Dyson

In Memory Of Radio

Who has ever stopped to think of the divinity of Lamont Cranston?
(Only jack Kerouac, that I know of: & me.
The rest of you probably had on WCBS and Kate Smith,
Or something equally unattractive.)
.....

Amiri Baraka

Maying; Or, A Love Of Flowers

Upon a day, a merry day,
When summer in her best,
Like Sunday belles, prepares for play,
And joins each merry guest,
.....

John Clare

Antichrist, Or The Reunion Of Christendom: An Ode

‘A Bill which has shocked the conscience of every Christian
community in Europe.' -Mr. F.E. Smith, on the Welsh
Disestablishment Bill.

.....

G. K. Chesterton

A Tale Of Polypheme.

"There's nothing new"--Not that I go so far
As he who also said "There's nothing true,"
Since, on the contrary, I hold there are
Surviving still a verity or two;
.....

Henry Austin Dobson