Charles Kingsley

A floating, a
Across the sleeping sea,
All night I heard a singing
Upon the topmost tree

There stood a low and ivied roof,
As gazing rustics tell,
In times of chivalry and song'Yclept the holy well
Above the ivies' branchlets

And should she die, her grave should
Upon the bare top of a sunny hill,
Among the moorlands of her own fair land,
Amid a ring of old and moss-grown

Oh, forth she went like a braw, braw
To meet her winsome groom,
When she was aware of twa bonny
Sat biggin' in the broom

See the land, her Easter keeping,
Rises as her Maker rose
Seeds, so long in darkness sleeping,
Burst at last from winter snows

Over the
Drank I with heroes,
Under the Donau bank,
Warm in the snow trench:

I would have loved: there are no mates in heaven;
I would be great: there is no pride in heaven;
I would have sung, as doth the
The summer's night beneath the moone pale,

A harper came over the Danube so wide,
And he came into Alaric's hall,
And he sang the song of the little
To him and his heroes all

(Written for music to be sung at a parish industrial exhibition)See the land, her Easter keeping,
Rises as her Maker rose
Seeds, so long in darkness sleeping,
Burst at last from winter snows

Clear and cool, clear and cool,
By laughing shallow and dreaming pool;
Cool and clear, cool and clear,
By shining shingle and foaming weir;

The swevens came up round Harold the Earl,
Like motes in the sunnes beam;
And over him stood the Weird Lady,
In her charmed castle over the sea,

A gay young knight in Burley stood,
Beside him pawed his steed so good,
His hands he wrung as he were
With waiting for his love O

Oh,
I wadna be a yeoman, mither, to follow my father's trade,
To bow my back in miry banks, at pleugh and hoe and spade
Stinting wife, and bairns, and kye, to fat some courtier lord,—Let them die o' rent wha like, mither, and I'll d...

Wearily stretches the sand to the surge, and the surge to the cloudland;
Wearily onward I ride, watching the water alone
Not as of old, like Homeric Achilles,
de

My fairest child,
I have no song to give you;
No lark could pipe in skies so dull and gray;
Yet, if you will, one quiet hint I'll leave you,

My parents bow, and lead them forth,
For all the crowd to see—Ah well
the people might not
To cheer a dwarf like me