Letters

Dear Rhona, It has already been hard for me to find the time, between the long jaunts afoot and the chilled night under the stars, to...

Now I am six and twenty And the last ten years I see From my five to five a plenty Of much a revelry And now the line is crossed And I...

Eleven-year-old Léopoldine, Victor Hugo’s daughter, whom this poem of grief is about. Painted 1835. She drowned in the Seine aged...

Fired nostrils fume, Besotted eyes gloom; Daring young in the square, They have forced the dare. Hoof marks the sand With a flick and...

Lest I begin to fade as a wintry glade At the warmth of early spring, Or quietly quiver like a summer’s river As drought sands the...

Can there be but a sweeter thing To see, to touch, to hear, to taste? Will life again drink the same spring That had still the gracious...

Where whither’d the wagon! From off the Avon went the wagon, Straw dallied the air. Farewell the Avon wheeled the wheels, And whinny’d...

'Twas brief rays that did entrance Thistledown over the swell. I cannot glance Nor see the dance; Even now, down the Chalabriel. Those...

I met a lass called Tibby, She bought bottles of fizzy; She drank them down, With one large frown And toppled over dizzy. And by...

Weep a tear, oh sorrowing soul, Pray a psalm upon the toll. Tomorrow in ashes we will see Brothers, sisters, in arms retrieve The...