Thomas Cooper

HAIL, awful pile! Child of Time's midnight age,
Now Mother in its youth renewed! The tomb
Of regal priests who banqueted on joys
...

ARE dreams a portion of our active life?
Are they the living movements of the soul,
Which grows more wakeful while the body sleeps;
...

TRUTH is growing—hearts are glowing
With the flame of Liberty:
Light is breaking—Thrones are quaking—
Hark!—the trumpet of the Free!
...

A SONG for the Free—the brave and the free—
Who feareth no tyrant's frown:
Who scorneth to bow, in obeisance low,
...

THE time shall come when Wrong shall end,
When peasant to peer no more shall bend—
...

WHAT meant that glancing of thine eye,
That softly hushed, yet struggling sigh?
Hast thou a thought of woe or weal,
...

SIR Raymond de Clifford, a gallant band
Hath gathered to fight in the Holy Land;
And his lady's heart is sinking in sorrow,
...

'Tis midnight, and the broad full moon
Pours on the earth her silver noon;
Sheeted in white, like spectres of fear,
...

ROMARA'S skiff is on the Trent,
And the stream is in its strength,—
For a surge, from its ocean-fountain sent,
Pervades its giant length:
...

PLANTAGENET hath dungeons deep
Beneath his castled halls;—
Plantagenet awakes from sleep
To count his dungeoned thralls.
...

O CHOOSE thou the maid with the gentle blue eye,
That speaketh so softly, and looketh so shy;
Who weepeth for pity,
To hear a love ditty,
...

THE winter's sun beams bright, as if 'twere spring,
Gladdening the waters of the lonely sea:
Lonely as death: not even a bird on wing:
...

FULL fleetly, thirty years of strife have flown
Since I—the dreamer—in yon prison-hold,
Struck my lone harp of rude and cheerless tone,
...

O FAIR young Moon, if there were nought but thy
Bright crescent to attract men's gaze from earth,
It were enough to make them bless God's sky!
...

COME forth, my Love! Old Winter, harsh and frore,
Flees the young vernal Sun! Come forth, my Love!
Let us renew sweet childhood's joys once more
...

I LOOK, once more, upon the awful sea!
I may not sing of it as lordly Childe—
Albeit with heart-throes—sang exultantly,
...

I DEDICATE this book to you who sought
Me out, when you had read my Prison-Rhyme—
...

I SING of a swineherd, in Lindsey, so bold,
Who tendeth his flock in the wide forest-fold:
He sheareth no wool from his snouted sheep:
...

I WOULD not be a crownèd king,
For all his gaudy gear;
I would not be that pampered thing,
His gew-gaw gold to wear:
...

OH, cleave more closely to my breast,
And I will closer cleave to thine:
Thy bosom is my sweetest rest—
Oh, rest thy weary head on mine!
...