William Allingham

Chequer'd with woven shadows as I lay
Among the grass, blinking the watery gleam,
I saw an Echo-Spirit in his bay
Most idly floating in the noontide beam.…

Is always Age severe?
Is never Youth austere?
Spring-fruits are sour to eat;
Autumn's the mellow time.

Pluck not the wayside flower,
It is the traveller's dower;
A thousand passers-by Its beauties may espy,
May win a touch of blessing From Nature's mild caressing.

Ring-Ting!
I wish I were a Primrose,
A bright yellow Primrose, blowing in the spring!
The stooping boughs above me

По небу облака идут лавиной,
Вкруг солнца накаляясь докрасна.
Бледнеют, остывая, над равниной,
Где ночь плетется в ожиданье сна,…

Amy Margaret's five years old,
Amy Margaret's hair is gold,
Dearer twenty-thousand-fold
Than gold, is Amy Margaret.…

The Abbot of Innisfallen
awoke ere dawn of day;
Under the dewy green leaves
went he forth to pray.

Down on the shore, on the sunny shore!
Where the salt smell cheers the land;
Where the tide moves bright under boundless light,
And the surge on the glittering strand;…

In early morning twilight, raw and chill,
Damp vapours brooding on the barren hill,
Through miles of mire in steady grave array Threescore well-arm'd police pursue their way;
Each tall and bearded man a rifle swings,

See the pretty planet!
Floating sphere!
Faintest breeze will fan it
Far or near;

Up the airy mountain,  Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting   For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,   Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,   And white owl’s feather!

These little Songs,
Found here and there,
Floating in air By forest and lea,
Or hill-side heather,

Gray, gray is Abbey Assaroe, by Belashanny town,
It has neither door nor window, the walls are broken down;
The carven-stones lie scatter'd in briar and nettle-bed!
The only feet are those that come at burial of the dead.…

By the shore, a plot of ground
Clips a ruined chapel round,
Buttressed with a grassy mound;
Where Day and Night and Day go by

October - and the skies are cool and gray O'er stubbles emptied of their latest sheaf,
Bare meadow, and the slowly falling leaf.
The dignity of woods in rich decay Accords full well with this majestic grief That clothes our solemn…

Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing;…

Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods,
And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt,
And night by night the monitory blast
Wails in the key-hold, telling how it pass'd…

FAR-SPREAD below doth London wear
Its cloud by day, its fire by night,—
Yet scarce with heavenly presence there
Shrined in the smoke or pallid light.Incessant troops from that vast throng…

Within a budding grove,
In April's ear sang every bird his best,
But not a song to pleasure my unrest,
Or touch the tears unwept of bitter love;

A man who keeps a diary, pays Due toll to many tedious days;
But life becomes eventful—then His busy hand forgets the pen.
Most books, indeed, are records less Of fulness than of emptiness.

Hayrick some do spell thy name,
And thy verse approves the same;
For 'tis like fresh-scented hay,—-With country lasses in't at play.
A tribute to Robert Herrick.

I thought it was the little bed
I slept in long ago; A straight white curtain at the head,
And two smooth knobs below. I thought I saw the nursery fire,
And in a chair well-known My mother sat, and did not tire

WHERE those green mounds o’erlook the mingling Erne
And salt Atlantic, clay that walked as Man
A thousand years ago, Oster or Kerne,
May still repose: and thither, if ye can,…

Far from the churchyard dig his grave,
On some green mound beside the wave;
To westward, sea and sky alone,
And sunsets.