1
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?
And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?
And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?
Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
first drafted in summer 1895, following the trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde
Collected Poems
(1939) "Additional Poems" no. 18
2
The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild;
He has devoured the infant child.
The infant child is not aware
He has been eaten by the bear.
"Infant Innocence" (1938)
3
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
Last Poems
(1922) no. 12
4
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.
Last Poems
(1922) no. 37 "Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries"
5
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.
More Poems
(1936) no. 36
6
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
A Shropshire Lad
(1896) no. 2
7
And naked to the hangman's noose
The morning clocks will ring
A neck God made for other use
Than strangling in a string.
A Shropshire Lad
(1896) no. 9
8
In summertime on Bredon
The bells they sound so clear;
Round both the shires they ring them
In steeples far and near,
A happy noise to hear.
Here of a Sunday morning
My love and I would lie,
And see the coloured counties,
And hear the larks so high
About us in the sky.
A Shropshire Lad
(1896) no. 21
9
On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves.
A Shropshire Lad
(1896) no. 31
10
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.
A Shropshire Lad
(1896) no. 31
11
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
A Shropshire Lad
(1896) no. 40
12
Clunton and Clunbury,
Clungunford and Clun,
Are the quietest places
Under the sun.
A Shropshire Lad
(1896) no. 50 (epigraph)
13
By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid.
A Shropshire Lad
(1896) no. 54
14
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
A Shropshire Lad
(1896) no. 62.
15
Mithridates, he died old.
A Shropshire Lad
(1896) no. 62