John Bannister Tabb Poems

'I tell you, if you don't obey,
I'll run right up your snout.'
'Well, I will do whate'er you say-
But, man alive! keep out.'
...

What pleading passion of the dark
Hath left the Morning pale?
She listens! ''T is, alas, the Lark,
...

As Israel, in days of old,
Beneath the prophet's rod,
Amid the waters, backward rolled,
A path triumphant trod;
...

There was an old maid of Algeria
Whose lungs were but cells of bacteria;
So she cut them both out,
Exclaiming, no doubt,
...

The night that bore me to my dead,
Along the dreary way
The meadow-frogs in chorus said,
'We sing the vanished day;
...

I had no God but these,
The sacerdotal Trees,
And they uplifted me.
...

You look, like Grandpa, very old;
And that is why, no doubt,
Your skin is shrivelled by the cold,
And all your teeth are out.
...

O God, the cleanest offering
Of tainted earth below,
Unblushing to thy feet we bring-
...

Time shut the door, and turned the key;
And here in darkness (woe is me!)
I wait and call in vain:
He will not come again!
...

Out of the dusk a shadow,
Then, a spark;
Out of the cloud a silence,
Then, a lark;
...