At A Birthday Festival - To J. R. Lowell

"The house was crammed from roof to floor,     Heads piled on heads at every door;     Half dead with August's seething heat     I crowded on an"

"Yon whey-faced brother, who delights to wear     A weedy flux of ill-conditioned hair,     Seems of the sort that in a crowded place     One el"

""How many have gone?" was the question of old     Ere Time our bright ring of its jewels bereft;     Alas! for too often the death-bell has toll"

"We count the broken lyres that rest     Where the sweet wailing singers slumber,     But o'er their silent sister's breast     The wild-flowers"

"Here morning in the ploughman's songs is met     Ere yet one footstep shows in all the sky,     And twilight in the east, a doubt as yet,     S"

"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"