Andrew Lang
Britannia
Thy mouth is fresh as cherries on the bough,
Red cherries in the dawning, and more white
Than milk or white camellias is thy brow;
And as the golden corn thy hair is bright,
The corn that drinks the Sun’s less fair than thou;
While through thine eyes the child-soul gazeth now–
Eyes like the flower that was Rousseau’s delight.
Sister of sad Ophelia, say, shall these
Thy pearly teeth grow like piano keys
Yellow and long; while thou, all skin and bone,
Angles and morals, in a sky-blue veil,
Shalt hosts of children to the sermon hale,
Before the Snow
The winter is upon us, not the snow,
The hills are etched on the horizon bare,
The skies are iron grey, a bitter air,
The meagre cloudlets shudder to and fro.
One yellow leaf the listless wind doth blow,
Like some strange butterfly, unclassed and rare.
Your footsteps ring in frozen alleys, where
The black trees seem to shiver as you go.
Beyond lie church and steeple, with their old
And rusty vanes that rattle as they veer,
A sharper gust would shake them from their hold,
Yet up that path, in summer of the year,
And past that melancholy pile we strolled
Rhyme of Oxford Cockney Rhymes
Though Keats rhymed “ear” to “Cytherea,”
And Morris “dawn” to “morn,”
A worse example, it is clear,
By Oxford Dons is “shorn.”
G-y, of Magdalen, goes beyond
These puny Cockneys far,
And to “Magrath” rhymes–Muse despond!–
“Magrath” he rhymes to “star”!
Another poet, X. Y. Z.,
Employs the word “researcher,”
And then,–his blood be on his head,–
He makes it rhyme to “nurture.”
Ah, never was the English tongue
So flayed, and racked, and tortured,
Since one I love (who should be hung)
Made “tortured” rhyme to “orchard.”
Unkindly G-y’s raging pen
