Wayside Flowers by William Allingham

Wayside Flowers by William Allingham Pluck not the wayside flower, It is the traveller’s dower; A thousand passers-by Its beauties may espy, May win a touch of blessing From Nature’s mild caressing. The sad of heart perceives A violet under leaves Like sonic fresh-budding hope; The primrose on the slope A spot of sunshine dwells, […]

These Little Songs by William Allingham

These Little Songs by William Allingham These little Songs, Found here and there, Floating in air By forest and lea, Or hill-side heather, In houses and throngs, Or down by the sea; Have come together, How, I can’t tell: But I know full well No witty goose-wing On an inkstand begot ’em; Remember each place […]

The Touchstone by William Allingham

The Touchstone by William Allingham A man there came, whence none could tell, Bearing a Touchstone in his hand; And tested all things in the land By its unerring spell. Quick birth of transmutation smote The fair to foul, the foul to fair; Purple nor ermine did he spare, Nor scorn the dusty coat. Of […]

The Little Dell by William Allingham

The Little Dell by William Allingham Doleful was the land, Dull on, every side, Neither soft n’or grand, Barren, bleak, and wide; Nothing look’d with love; All was dingy brown; The very skies above Seem’d to sulk and frown. Plodding sick and sad, Weary day on day; Searching, never glad, Many a miry way; Poor […]

The Fairies by William Allingham

The Fairies by William Allingham Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren’t go a-hunting For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, And white owl’s feather! Down along the rocky shore Some make their home, They live on crispy pancakes Of yellow tide-foam; Some […]

The Eviction by William Allingham

The Eviction by William Allingham In early morning twilight, raw and chill, Damp vapours brooding on the barren hill, Through miles of mire in steady grave array Threescore well-arm’d police pursue their way; Each tall and bearded man a rifle swings, And under each greatcoat a bayonet clings: The Sheriff on his sturdy cob astride […]

The Boy by William Allingham

The Boy by William Allingham The Boy from his bedroom-window Look’d over the little town, And away to the bleak black upland Under a clouded moon. The moon came forth from her cavern, He saw the sudden gleam Of a tarn in the swarthy moorland; Or perhaps the whole was a dream. For I never […]

Robin Redbreast by William Allingham

Robin Redbreast by William Allingham Good-bye, good-bye to Summer! For Summer’s nearly done; The garden smiling faintly, Cool breezes in the sun; Our Thrushes now are silent, Our Swallows flown away, — But Robin’s here, in coat of brown, With ruddy breast-knot gay. Robin, Robin Redbreast, O Robin dear! Robin singing sweetly In the falling […]

Places and Men by William Allingham

Places and Men by William Allingham In Sussex here, by shingle and by sand, Flat fields and farmsteads in their wind-blown trees, The shallow tide-wave courses to the land, And all along the down a fringe one sees Of ducal woods. That ‘dim discovered spire’ Is Chichester, where Collins felt a fire Touch his sad […]

On a Forenoon of Spring by William Allingham

On a Forenoon of Spring by William Allingham I’m glad I am alive, to see and feel The full deliciousness of this bright day, That’s like a heart with nothing to conceal; The young leaves scarcely trembling; the blue-grey Rimming the cloudless ether far away; Brairds, hedges, shadows; mountains that reveal Soft sapphire; this great […]

Meadowsweet by William Allingham

Meadowsweet by William Allingham Through grass, through amber’d cornfields, our slow Stream– Fringed with its flags and reeds and rushes tall, And Meadowsweet, the chosen of them all By wandering children, yellow as the cream Of those great cows–winds on as in a dream By mill and footbridge, hamlet old and small (Red roofs, gray […]

Lepracaun or Fairy Shoemaker, The by William Allingham

Lepracaun or Fairy Shoemaker, The by William Allingham Little Cowboy, what have you heard, Up on the lonely rath’s green mound? Only the plaintive yellow bird Sighing in sultry fields around, Chary, chary, chary, chee-ee! – Only the grasshopper and the bee? – “Tip-tap, rip-rap, Tick-a-tack-too! Scarlet leather, sewn together, This will make a shoe. […]

Late Autumn by William Allingham

Late Autumn by William Allingham October; and the skies are cool and gray O’er stubbles emptied of their latest sheaf, Bare meadow, and the slowly falling leaf. The dignity of woods in rich decay Accords full well with this majestic grief That clothes our solemn purple hills to-day, Whose afternoon is hush’d, and wintry brief […]

William Allingham – William Allingham

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In Snow by William Allingham

In Snow by William Allingham O English mother, in the ruddy glow Hugging your baby closer when outside You see the silent, soft, and cruel snow Falling again, and think what ills betide Unshelter’d creatures,–your sad thoughts may go Where War and Winter now, two spectre-wolves, Hunt in the freezing vapour that involves Those Asian […]

In a Spring Grove by William Allingham

In a Spring Grove by William Allingham Here the white-ray’d anemone is born, Wood-sorrel, and the varnish’d buttercup; And primrose in its purfled green swathed up, Pallid and sweet round every budding thorn, Gray ash, and beech with rusty leaves outworn. Here, too the darting linnet hath her nest In the blue-lustred holly, never shorn, […]

Half-waking by William Allingham

Half-waking by William Allingham I thought it was the little bed I slept in long ago; A straight white curtain at the head, And two smooth knobs below. I thought I saw the nursery fire, And in a chair well-known My mother sat, and did not tire With reading all alone. If I should make […]

Down on the Shore by William Allingham

Down on the Shore by William Allingham Down on the shore, on the sunny shore! Where the salt smell cheers the land; Where the tide moves bright under boundless light, And the surge on the glittering strand; Where the children wade in the shallow pools, Or run from the froth in play; Where the swift […]

Autumnal Sonnet by William Allingham

Autumnal Sonnet by William Allingham Now Autumn’s fire burns slowly along the woods, And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt, And night by night the monitory blast Wails in the key-hold, telling how it pass’d O’er empty fields, or upland solitudes, Or grim wide wave; and now the power is felt Of […]

An Evening by William Allingham

An Evening by William Allingham A sunset’s mounded cloud; A diamond evening-star; Sad blue hills afar; Love in his shroud. Scarcely a tear to shed; Hardly a word to say; The end of a summer day; Sweet Love dead. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic […]

Amy Margaret’s Five Year Old by William Allingham

Amy Margaret’s Five Year Old by William Allingham Amy Margaret’s five years old, Amy Margaret’s hair is gold, Dearer twenty-thousand-fold Than gold, is Amy Margaret. “Amy” is friend, is “Margaret” The pearl for crown or carkanet? Or peeping daisy, summer’s pet? Which are you, Amy Margaret? A friend, a daisy, and a pearl, A kindly, […]

After Sunset by William Allingham

After Sunset by William Allingham The vast and solemn company of clouds Around the Sun’s death, lit, incarnadined, Cool into ashy wan; as Night enshrouds The level pasture, creeping up behind Through voiceless vales, o’er lawn and purpled hill And hazéd mead, her mystery to fulfil. Cows low from far-off farms; the loitering wind Sighs […]

Aeolian Harp by William Allingham

Aeolian Harp by William Allingham O pale green sea, With long, pale, purple clouds above; What lies in me like weight of love ? What dies in me With utter grief, because there comes no sign Through the sun-raying West, or the dim sea-line ? O salted air, Blown round the rocky headland still, What […]

Adieu to Belshanny by William Allingham

Adieu to Belshanny by William Allingham Adieu to Belashanny! where I was bred and born; Go where I may, I’ll think of you, as sure as night and morn. The kindly spot, the friendly town, where every one is known, And not a face in all the place but partly seems my own; There’s not […]

Abbey Assaroe by William Allingham

Abbey Assaroe by William Allingham Gray, gray is Abbey Assaroe, by Belashanny town, It has neither door nor window, the walls are broken down; The carven-stones lie scatter’d in briar and nettle-bed! The only feet are those that come at burial of the dead. A little rocky rivulet runs murmuring to the tide, Singing a […]

A Singer by William Allingham

A Singer by William Allingham That which he did not feel, he would not sing; What most he felt, religion it was to hide In a dumb darkling grotto, where the spring Of tremulous tears, arising unespied, Became a holy well that durst not glide Into the day with moil or murmuring; Whereto, as if […]

A Seed by William Allingham

A Seed by William Allingham See how a Seed, which Autumn flung down, And through the Winter neglected lay, Uncoils two little green leaves and two brown, With tiny root taking hold on the clay As, lifting and strengthening day by day, It pushes red branchless, sprouts new leaves, And cell after cell the Power […]

A Memory by William Allingham

A Memory by William Allingham Four ducks on a pond, A grass-bank beyond, A blue sky of spring, White clouds on the wing; What a little thing To remember for years- To remember with tears! ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster […]

A Gravestone by William Allingham

A Gravestone by William Allingham Far from the churchyard dig his grave, On some green mound beside the wave; To westward, sea and sky alone, And sunsets. Put a mossy stone, With mortal name and date, a harp And bunch of wild flowers, carven sharp; Then leave it free to winds that blow, And patient […]

A Dream by William Allingham

A Dream by William Allingham I heard the dogs howl in the moonlight night; I went to the window to see the sight; All the Dead that ever I knew Going one by one and two by two. On they pass’d, and on they pass’d; Townsfellows all, from first to last; Born in the moonlight […]

A Day-Dream’s Reflection by William Allingham

A Day-Dream’s Reflection by William Allingham Chequer’d with woven shadows as I lay Among the grass, blinking the watery gleam, I saw an Echo-Spirit in his bay Most idly floating in the noontide beam. Slow heaved his filmy skiff, and fell, with sway Of ocean’s giant pulsing, and the Dream, Buoyed like the young moon […]