Or only look across the lawn, Look out below your bower-eaves, Look down, and let your blue eyes dawn Upon me through the jasmine-leaves. THE BLACKBIRD. O BLACKBIRD! sing me something well: While all the neighbors shoot thee round, I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground, Where thou may'st warble, eat and dwell. The espaliers and the standards all Are thine; the range of lawn and park: All thine, against the garden wall. Yet, though I spared thee kith and kin, To fret the summer jennetin. A golden bill! the silver tongue, That made thee famous once, when young: And in the sultry garden-squares, Now thy flute-notes are changed to coarse, I hear thee not at all, or hoarse As when a hawker hawks his wares. Take warning! he that will not sing THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR. I. FULL knee-deep lies the winter snow, Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow, And tread softly and speak low, Old year, you must not die ; You came to us so readily, II. He lieth still: he doth not move : He will not see the dawn of day. He hath no other life above. He gave me a friend, and a true true-love, And the New-year will take 'em away. Old year, you must not go; So long as you have been with us, III. He frothed his bumpers to the brim; But though his eyes are waxing dim, He was a friend to me. We did so laugh and cry with you, He was full of joke and jest, To see him die, across the waste His son and heir doth ride post-haste, But he'll be dead before. Every one for his own. The night is starry and cold, my friend, And the New-year, blithe and bold, my friend, Come's to take his own. up |