Joseph Skipsey Poems

The butterfly from flower to flower
The urchin chas’d; and, when at last
He caught it in my lady’s bower,
He cried, “Ha, ha!” and held it fast.
...

Mother wept, and father sigh’d;
With delight a-glow
Cried the lad, “To-morrow,” cried,
“To the pit I go.”
...

AH, be not vain. In yon flower-bell,
As rare a pearl, did I appear,
As ever grew in ocean shell,
To dangle at a Helen’s ear.
...

The Hartley men are noble, and
Ye'll hear a tale of woe;
I'll tell the doom of the Hartley men -
The year of sixty two.
...

Get up!" the caller calls, "Get up!"
And in the dead of night,
To win the bairns their bite and sup,
I rise a weary wight.
...

Misfortune is a darling, ever
Most faithful to the minstrel race;
Let low-bred wretches shun them, never
Yet acted she a part so base.
...

FROM the pipe-end off it glides,
Many hued appearing;
What, if cynic harsh derides,
Sets the boys a-staring.
...

'I HATE outlandish things, and own
I've little liking for the sonnet;
'Tis for a lazy Muse, and one
Who hath a bumler in her bonnet.
...

OUR revels now are ended, so good night, so good night,
And each unto our chamber let us hie,
And there lose ourselves in visions till the broad daylight
Again has bid adieu unto the sky.
...

LAST night at the fair I met light-footed Polly,
And Nanny from Earsdon and bothersome Nell,
And yellow-hair'd Bessy and hazel-eyed Dolly;
But Rosy for sweetness did bear off the bell.
...