Best Ballad Poems

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
...

The ring is on my hand,
And the wreath is on my brow;
Satin and jewels grand
Are all at my command,
...

translated by Will Kirkland

The moon came into the forge
in her bustle of flowering nard.
...

Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
They took my lover's tallness off to war,
Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess
What I can use an empty heart-cup for.
...

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.
...

From the first it had been like a
Ballad. It had the beat inevitable. It had the blood.
A wildness cut up, and tied in little bunches,
Like the four-line stanzas of the ballads she had never quite
...

I hid my heart in a nest of roses,
Out of the sun's way, hidden apart;
In a softer bed than the soft white snow's is,
Under the roses I hid my heart.
...

Rudolph Reed was oaken.
His wife was oaken too.
And his two good girls and his good little man
Oakened as they grew.
...

Two knights rode forth at early dawn
A-seeking maids to wed,
Said one, "My lady must be fair,
With gold hair on her head."
...

I speak of love that comes to mind:
The moon is faithful, although blind;
She moves in thought she cannot speak.
Perfect care has made her bleak.
...

Landlord, landlord,
My roof has sprung a leak.
Don't you 'member I told you about it
Way last week?
...

The firste stock-father of gentleness,
What man desireth gentle for to be,
Must follow his trace, and all his wittes dress,
Virtue to love, and vices for to flee;
...

Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
Upon the sides of mirth,
Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
...

TO get betimes in Boston town, I rose this morning early;
Here's a good place at the corner--I must stand and see the show.

...

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere-
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
...

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
...

If down here I chance to die,
Solemnly I beg you take
All that is left of "I"
To the Hills for old sake's sake,
...

This, no song of an ingénue,
This, no ballad of innocence;
This, the rhyme of a lady who
Followed ever her natural bents.
...

Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
...

The bows glided down, and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.
...

For God, our God is a gallant foe
That playeth behind the veil.

I have loved my God as a child at heart
...

ENDYMION.

A Poetic Romance.
...

Ha' we lost the goodliest fere o' all
For the priests and the gallows tree?
Aye lover he was of brawny men,
O' ships and the open sea.
...

When we were girl and boy together,
We toss'd about the flowers
And wreath'd the blushing hours
Into a posy green and sweet.
...

"Son," said my mother,
When I was knee-high,
"you've need of clothes to cover you,
and not a rag have I.
...

I'll tell thee everything I can;
There's little to relate.
I saw an aged, aged man,
...

Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,
With the old Moon in her arms ;
And I fear, I fear, My Master dear !
We shall have a deadly storm.
...

Slowly I smoke and hug my knee,
The while a witless masquerade
Of things that only children see
Floats in a mist of light and shade:
...

A faithless shepherd courted me,
He stole away my liberty.
When my poor heart was strange to men,
He came and smiled and stole it then.
...

So rough the goat will scratch, it cannot sleep.
So often goes the pot to the well that it breaks.
So long you heat iron, it will glow;
so heavily you hammer it, it shatters.
...

The old priest Peter Gilligan
Was weary night and day
For half his flock were in their beds
Or under green sods lay.
...

AT Flores, in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,
And a pinnace, like a flutter’d bird, came flying from far away;
...

I have walked through tougher Harlem where few strangers dare to go
And I've been in London City in the rain and in the snow
And I've worked in inner Melbourne in the searing summer heat
And believe me if I tell you I have earned the bread I eat.
...

As we the withered ferns
By the roadway lying,
Time, the jester, spurns
All our prayers and prying --
...

The railway rattled and roared and swung
With jolting and bumping trucks.
The sun, like a billiard red ball, hung
In the Western sky: and the tireless tongue
...

Secret from the river
Carried by the endless waves
Flowing to return to the sea
And then hide in the ocean depth
...

March, march, Ettrick and Teviotdale,
Why the deil dinna ye march forward in order!
March, march, Eskdale and Liddesdale,
All the Blue Bonnets are bound for the Border.
...

Give to barrows, trays, and pans
Grace and glimmer of romance;
Bring the moonlight into noon
...

The sun rises in south east corner of things
To look on the tall house of the Shin
For they have a daughter named Rafu,
...

Tell me where, in what country,
Is Flora the beautiful Roman,
Archipiada or Thais
Who was first cousin to her once,
...

A fleet with flags arrayed
Sailed from the port of Brest,
And the Admiral's ship displayed
...

These tales of old disguisings, are they not
Strange myths of souls that found themselves among
Unwonted folk that spake an hostile tongue,
Some soul from all the rest who'd not forgot
...

We had slaughtered a hundred white whales,
civilization was quite forgotten,
...

In dreams I crossed a barren land,
A land of ruin, far away;
Around me hung on every hand
A deathful stillness of decay;
...

Author Note: In Finland there is a Castle which is called the New Rock, moated about with a river of unfounded depth, the water black and the fish therein
very distateful to the palate. In this are spectres often seen, which
foreshew either the death of the Governor, or some prime officer
belonging to the place; and most commonly it appeareth in the shape of
...

Oh the green glimmer of apples in the orchard,
Lamps in a wash of rain!
Oh the wet walk of my brown hen through the stackyard,
Oh tears on the window pane!
...

Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me
As I gaze upon the sea!
All the old romantic legends,
All my dreams, come back to me.
...

I came home and found a lion in my room...
[First draft of "The Lion for Real" CP 174-175]
...

Down by the flash of the restless water
The dim White Ship like a white bird lay;
Laughing at life and the world they sought her,
And out she swung to the silvering bay.
...

'Why does your sword so drip with blood,
Edward, Edward?
Why does your sword so drip with blood?
...

AROUND me the images of thirty years:
An ambush; pilgrims at the water-side;
Casement upon trial, half hidden by the bars,
Guarded; Griffith staring in hysterical pride;
...

A Pathetic Ballad

Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war's alarms;
...

Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
High in her chamber up a tower to the east
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot;
...

Repeat that, repeat,
Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delightfully sweet,
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound
Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground, hollow hollow hollow ground:
...

'A letter from my love to-day!
Oh, unexpected, dear appeal!'
She struck a happy tear away,
And broke the crimson seal.
...

The flower, scattered
The leaves, old
The riverbed, iced
You not yet appeared
...

The dew was falling fast, the stars began to blink;
I heard a voice; it said, "Drink, pretty creature, drink!"
And, looking o'er the hedge, before me I espied
A snow-white mountain-lamb with a Maiden at its side.
...

I

On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping
White Ophelia floats like a great lily ;
...

There was three kings unto the east,
Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
...

Version II

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
...

AS oftentimes the too resplendent sun
Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon
Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won
A single ballad from the nightingale,
So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,
And all my sweetest singing out of tune.
...

SCENE: 'En ce bourdel ou tenons nostre estat.'

It being remembered that there were six of us with Master
...

Strawberries that in gardens grow
Are plump and juicy fine,
But sweeter far as wise men know
Spring from the woodland vine.
...

DEDICATION

Of great limbs gone to chaos,
A great face turned to night--
...

No man hath dared to write this thing as yet,
And yet I know, how that the souls of all men great
At times pass athrough us,
And we are melted into them, and are not
...

(For Aline)

From what old ballad, or from what rich frame
Did you descend to glorify the earth?
...

The burden of hard hitting. Slug away
Like Honus Wagner or like Tyrus Cobb.
Else fandom shouteth: "Who said you could play?
Back to the jasper league, you minor slob!"
...

A Ballad of Burdens

The burden of fair women. Vain delight,
And love self-slain in some sweet shameful way,
...

No man hath dared to write this thing as yet,
And yet I know, how that the souls of all men great
At times pass athrough us,
And we are melted into them, and are not
...

.


O that 'twere possible
...

Sometime this world was so steadfast and stable,
That man's word was held obligation;
And now it is so false and deceivable,
That word and work, as in conclusion,
...

What is song's eternity?
Come and see.
Can it noise and bustle be?
Come and see.
...

Jesus, He loves one and all,
Jesus, He loves children small,
Their souls are waiting round His feet
On high, before His mercy-seat.
...

'Lay me in a cushioned chair;
Carry me, ye four,
With cushions here and cushions there,
To see the world once more.
...

No! never such a draught was poured
Since Hebe served with nectar
...

OH, enter old minstrel, thou time-honour'd one!
We children are here in the hall all alone,

The portals we straightway will bar.
...

The end of the affair is always death.
She's my workshop. Slippery eye,
out of the tribe of myself my breath
...

It fell in the year of Mutiny,
At darkest of the night,
John Nicholson by Jalándhar came,
On his way to Delhi fight.
...

The Honourable M. T. Nutt
About the bush did jog.
Till, passing by a settler's hut,
He stopped and bought a dog.
...

COME round me, little childer;
There, don't fling stones at me
Because I mutter as I go;
But pity Moll Magee.
...

Dog waits in and out of shadows.

Dog dives around chairs and feet.
...

The first flower of the spring is not so fair
Or bright, as one the ripe midsummer brings.
The first faint note the forest warbler sings
Is not as rich with feeling, or so rare
...

Across the stony ridges,
Across the rolling plain,
Young Harry Dale, the drover,
...

GOOD Father John O'Hart
In penal days rode out
To a Shoneen who had free lands
And his own snipe and trout.
...

Those who sailed at dawn
but will never return
left their trace on a wave--
...

The Raven croak'd as she sate at her meal,
And the Old Woman knew what he said,
And she grew pale at the Raven's tale,
...

(Non-commissioned Officers in Charge of Prisoners)


When by the labor of my 'ands
...

1 All in the Downs the fleet was moor'd,
2 The streamers waving in the wind,
3 When black-ey'd Susan came aboard.
4 Oh! where shall I my true love find!
...

The morning sun touched lightly on
The eyes of Lucy Jordan
In her white suburban bedroom
In a white suburban town,
...

Echoes of empty houses, empty rooms,
Empty caravans, empty tables, empty stables,
The extreme void of their high spirited appeal,
Eventually we all have to leave,
...

BALLAD FOR THE TIMES' SPECIAL SILVER NUMBER

Sez the Times a silver lining
Is what has set us pining,
...

It plays to my heartstrings...
It is the music to my ears-
...It is the tender love song of my life-
And the refelections of my years...
...

Scene--A spacious drawing-room, with music-room adjoining.

Katharine. What are the words ?

...

forgive me if i laugh
you are so sure of love
you are so young
and i too old to learn of love.
...

'T was Fultah Fisher's boarding-house,
Where sailor-men reside,
And there were men of all the ports
From Mississip to Clyde,
...

(A BALLAD IN THE ANGLO-SAXON TONGUE)

When to the dreary greenwood gloam
Winfreda's husband strode that day,
...

Tell me now in what hidden way is
Lady Flora the lovely Roman?
Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais,
Neither of them the fairer woman?
...

Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun
Up to the people: thither flocked at noon
His tenants, wife and child, and thither half
...

Hail, Muse! et cetera.--We left Juan sleeping,
Pillow'd upon a fair and happy breast,
And watch'd by eyes that never yet knew weeping,
And loved by a young heart, too deeply blest
...

Prudence Mears hath an old blue plate
Hid away in an oaken chest,
And a Franklin platter of ancient date
Beareth Amandy Baker's crest;
...