Then some they rade, and some they ran,

Out o'er the grass and bent;

But ere the foremost could win up,
Both lady and babes were brent.

And after the Gordon he is gane,

Sae fast as he might dri'e;

And soon i' the Gordon's foul heart's blood
He's wroken his fair ladye.

Unknown

ARIEL'S SONGS

WHERE the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip's bell I lie ;

There I couch when owls do cry:

On the bat's back I do fly

After summer merrily.

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now,

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough!

COME unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands:
Courtsied when you have, and kissed,

(The wild waves whist)

Foot it featly here and there;

And, sweet Sprites, the burthen bear.

Hark, hark!

Bow-wow.

The watchdogs bark:

Bow-wow.

Hark, hark! I hear

The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow!

Shakespeare

BREAK, BREAK, BREAK

BREAK, break, break,

On thy cold, gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

Oh, well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play! Oh, well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But oh, for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.

Alfred Tennyson.

SHAMEFUL DEATH

THERE were four of us about that bed;
The mass-priest knelt at the side,
I and his mother stood at the head,
Over his feet lay the bride;
We were quite sure that he was dead,
Though his eyes were open wide.

He did not die in the night,
He did not die in the day,
But in the morning twilight
His spirit passed away;

When neither sun nor moon was bright,
And the trees were merely gray.

He was not slain with the sword,

Knight's axe, or the knightly spear,

Yet spoke he never a word

After he came in here;

I cut away the cord

From the neck of my brother dear.

He did not strike one blow,

For the recreants came behind,

In a place where the hornbeams grow, A path right hard to find,

For the hornbeam boughs swing so

That the twilight makes it blind.

They lighted a great torch then,

When his arms were pinioned fast;
Sir John, the Knight of the Fen,
Sir Guy of the Dolorous Blast,
With knights threescore and ten,
Hung brave Sir Hugh at last.

I am threescore and ten,

And my hair is all turned gray,
But I met Sir John of the Fen
Long ago on a summer day,

And am glad to think of the moment when
I took his life away.

I am threescore and ten,

And my strength is mostly passed,

But long ago I and my men,

When the sky was overcast,

And the smoke rolled over the reeds of the fen, Slew Sir Guy of the Dolorous Blast.

And now, knights, all of you,

I

pray you, pray for Sir Hugh,

A good knight and a true,

And for Alice, his wife, pray too.

William Morris.

TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY

WEE, modest, crimson-tippèd flower,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;

For I maun crush amang the stour
Thy slender stem;

To spare thee now is past my power,
Thou bonnie gem.

Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet,
The bonnie lark, companion meet!
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet
Wi' spreckled breast,

When upward springing, blythe, to greet
The purpling east.

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north
Upon thy early, humble birth;
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm;

Scarce reared above the parent earth
Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield
High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield,
But thou beneath the random bield

O' clod or stane

Adorns the histie stibble-field,
Unseen, alane.

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawy bosom sunward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
In humble guise;

But now the share uptears thy bed,
And low thou lies!

Robert Burns.