Allan Cunningham

A wet sheet and a flowing sea, A wind that follows fast And fills the white and rustling sail, And bends the gallant mast!

And bends the gallant mast, my boys, While, like the eagle free, Away the good ship flies, and leaves Old England on the lee.

"O for a soft and gentle wind!"

I heard a fair one cry; But give to me the swelling breeze, And white waves heaving high: The white waves heaving high, my lads, The good ship tight and free;

LYRICS

The world of waters is our home.

And merry men are we.

There's tempest in yon horned moon, And lightning in yon cloud; And hark the music, mariners!

The wind is wakening loud.

The wind is wakening loud, my boys, The lightning flashes free-- The hollow oak our palace is, Our heritage the sea.

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD

William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they Outdid the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay In such a jocund company: I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

THE RHODORA ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook.

The purple petals, fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array.

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being: Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

I never thought to ask, I never knew; But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The selfsame Power that brought me there brought you.

TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN

William Cullen Bryant

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, And colored with the heaven's own blue, That openest when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when violets lean O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, Or columbines, in purple drest, Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.

Thou waitest late, and com'st alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frosts and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue--blue--as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see The hour of death draw near to me, Hope, blossoming within my heart, May look to heaven as I depart.

THE EAGLE

Alfred Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.

ON THE GRa.s.sHOPPER AND CRICKET

John Keats

The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead; That is the gra.s.shopper's--he takes the lead In summer luxury,--he has never done With his delights; for, when tired out with fun, He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.

The poetry of earth is ceasing never.

On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one, in drowsiness half lost, The gra.s.shopper's among some gra.s.sy hills.

LESSONS FROM NATURE

TO A WATERFOWL

William Cullen Bryant