PATRIOTIC, NAVAL, AND MILITARY. HUMOROUS POEMS. [We beg to thank Mr. Browning for permission to insert Nos. 33, 111, 121, and 128; -Miss Ingelow for leave (per Messrs. Longman & Co.) to use No. 110;-Messrs. Smith, CHOICE POEMS AND LYRICS. INTRODUCTION. PIPING down the valleys wild, And he laughing said to me :— So I piped with merry cheer. "Piper, pipe that song again :" So I piped; he wept to hear. Sing thy songs of happy cheer :" While he wept with joy to hear. In a book that all may read—” And I stain'd the water clear, William Blake: 1757-1827. William Blake was an artist as well as a poet. He illustrated his own works, and many others, by hand-coloured etchings and copper-plate engravings of weird and fanciful design. There was a touch of insanity in his nature which showed itself in nearly all his work. His poems, though couched in simple language, are sometimes difficult to understand. But they are sweet and wild, and linger long in the mind; and their tendency is always elevating by reason of their purity, and protest against worldliness and all the meaner passions of men, B |