Shoulders of upland brown laid dark to the sunset's bosom,
Living amber of wheat, and copper of new-ploughed loam,
Downs where the white sheep wander, little gardens in blossom,
Roads that wind through the twilight up to the lights of home.

Good Tidings; Or News From The Farm

© Robert Bloomfield

Where's the Blind Child, so admirably fair,

With guileless dimples, and with flaxen hair

Rites of Passage II

© Robert Duncan

Peace, peace. Ive had enough. What can I say
when songs demanded? Ive had my fill of song?
My longing to sing grows full. Times emptied me.

Song of The Stream-Drops

© Archibald Lampman

By silent forest and field and mossy stone,
We come from the wooden hill, and we go to the sea.
We labour, and sing sweet songs, but we never moan,
For our mother, the sea, is calling us cheerily.
We have heard her calling us many and many a day
From the cool grey stones and the white sands far away.

America's Welcome Home

© Henry Van Dyke

Oh, gallantly they fared forth in khaki and in blue,
America's crusading host of warriors bold and true;
They battled for the rights of man beside our brave Allies,
And now they're coming home to us with glory in their eyes.

A Colloquy: (For M. W.)

© Katharine Tynan

"When you get to Heaven, seek and find my boy.
Mother him!" "Until you come?" "I shall never come.
Earth was good enough for me who had all my joy
In my Love, my Light of home.

A Dead Letter

© Henry Austin Dobson

I DREW it from its china tomb;

It came out feebly scented

The Isles Of Greece

© George Gordon Byron

The mountains look on Marathon-
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
For standing on the Persians' grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.

August

© Algernon Charles Swinburne

THERE WERE four apples on the bough,
Half gold half red, that one might know
The blood was ripe inside the core;
The colour of the leaves was more
Like stems of yellow corn that grow
Through all the gold June meadows floor.

The Tree

IN the dim woods, one tree
Was by the cunning seasons builded fair
With the rain's masonry
And delicate craft of air.

Georgic 2

Thus far the tilth of fields and stars of heaven;

Now will I sing thee, Bacchus, and, with thee,

The Woman In The Rye

© Thomas Hardy

'Why do you stand in the dripping rye,
Cold-lipped, unconscious, wet to the knee,
When there are firesides near?' said I.
'I told him I wished him dead,' said she.

The Men Who Made Bad Matches

© Henry Lawson

Oh, the men who made bad matches, and the Great Misunderstood,
Are through all the world a mighty and a silent brotherhood.
If a wife is discontented, every other woman knows
But the men who made bad matches keep the cruel secret close.