Classic and Contemporary PoetryRhyming Dictionary Search
GIPSIES, by HORACE SMITH Poet's Biography First Line: Whether from india's burning plains Last Line: And both may laugh at fortune. Alternate Author Name(s): Smith, Horatio Subject(s): Gypsies; Life; Gipsies | ||||||||
WHETHER from India's burning plains, Or wild Bohemia's domains, Your steps were first directed; Or whether ye be Egypt's sons, Whose stream, like Nile's, for ever runs With sources undetected: Arabs of Europe! Gipsy race! Your Eastern manners, garb, and face, Appear a strange chimaera; None, none but you can now be styled Romantic, picturesque, and wild, In this prosaic aera. Ye sole freebooters of the wood, Since Adam Bell and Robin Hood: Kept everywhere asunder From other tribes -- King, Church, and State Spurning, and only dedicate To freedom, sloth, and plunder; Your forest-camp -- the forms one sees Banditti-like amid the trees, The ragged donkeys grazing, The Sybil's eye prophetic, bright With flashes of the fitful light Beneath the caldron blazing, -- O'er my young mind strange terrors threw: Thy History gave me, Moore Carew! A more exalted notion Of Gipsy life; nor can I yet Gaze on your tents, and quite forget My former deep emotion. For "auld lang syne" I'll not maltreat Yon pseudo-tinker, though the cheat, As sly as thievish Reynard, Instead of mending kettles, prowls, To make foul havoc of my fowls, And decimate my hen-yard. Come thou, too, black-eyed lass, and try That potent skill in palmistry, Which sixpences can wheedle; Mine is a friendly cottage -- here No snarling mastiff need you fear, No Constable or Beadle. 'Tis yours, I know, to draw at will Upon futurity a bill, And Plutus to importune; -- Discount the bill -- take half yourself, Give me the balance of the pelf, And both may laugh at fortune. | Other Poems of Interest...COLERIDGE CROSSING THE PLAIN OF JARS by NORMAN DUBIE THE ASSIMILATION OF THE GYPSIES by LARRY LEVIS THE SCHOLAR GIPSY by MATTHEW ARNOLD THE GYPSY by PHILIP EDWARD THOMAS TO A GIPSY CHILD BY THE SEA-SHORE by MATTHEW ARNOLD THE GYPSIES [OR, GIPSIES] by HENRY HOWARTH BASHFORD ADDRESS TO THE MUMMY AT BELZONI'S EXHIBITION by HORACE SMITH |
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