Ah! what a weary race my feet have run
Since first I trod thy banks with alders crowned,
And thought my way was all through fairy ground
Beneath thy azure sky and golden sun,
Where first my muse to lisp her notes begun.
While pensive memory traces back the round
Which fills the varied interval between,
Much pleasure, more of sorrow, marks the scene.
Sweet native stream, those skies and suns so pure
No more return to cheer my evening road;
Yet still one joy remains — that not obscure,
Nor useless, all my vacant days have flowed,

Ah, wake up mama: wake up and don't sleep so sound
Gimme what you promised me: before you lay down
I been getting my 'tuni:
only thing I love
Make you weep like a willow,
sling snot like a turkle-dove

Now I've got a gal, and the kid: lives out on the hill
She got good doin': serve to the one she may will
She got good 'tuni
I'm a fool about my yam yam yam
Get my yam yam yam
I'm going back down in Alabam'

Now come-a here, baby, and sit down in my lap
Sit one side: I forgot to tell you I had the clap your hands together Charlie,

Gunhilda, lady of my love and theme,
Sister of kings, and daughter of the Dane,
Was by her brother Hardicanute betrothed
To him of France, the monarch of his time:
Henry the First of France, Niger surnamed,
A prince not overwise, and in his mood
Weak, passionate, superfluous, and proud;
But fond of honor, loving justice too,
If holding hard by cruel law be just,
Whose aim in his tumultuous reign had been
To keep his kingdom; to beat back the Hun
When from their fastnesses across the Rhine
Hand over head they came; to dine and sup;

Ah, take these lips away; no more,
No more such kisses give to me.
My spirit faints for joy; I see
Through mists of death the dreamy shore,
And meadows by the water-side,
Where all about the Hollow Land
Fare the sweet singers that have died,
With their lost-ladies, hand in hand;
Ah, Love, how fireless are their eyes,
How pale their lips that kiss and smile.
So mine must be in little while
If thou wilt kiss me in such wise.

Ah , sweet is Tipperary in the springtime of the year,
— When the hawthorn's whiter than the snow,
When the feathered folk assemble and the air is all a-tremble
— With their singing and their winging to and fro;
When queenly Slievenamon puts her verdant vesture on,
— And smiles to hear the news the breezes bring;
When the sun begins to glance on the rivulets that dance —
— Ah, sweet is Tipperary in the spring!

Ah, sweet is Tipperary in the springtime of the year,
— When the mists are rising from the lea,

Ah stay thy treacherous hand, forbear to trace
Those faultless forms of elegance and grace!
Ah, cease to spread the bright transparent mass,
With Titian's pencil, o'er the speaking glass!
Nor steal, by strokes of art with truth combin'd,
The fond illusions of my wayward mind!
For long, enamour'd of a barbarous age,
A faithless truant to the classic page;
Long have I loved to catch the simple chime
Of minstrel-harps, and spell the fabling rhyme;
To view the festive rites, the knightly play,
That deck'd heroic Albion's elder day;

Kashmir shrinks into my mailbox,
my home a neat four by six inches.

I always loved neatness. Now I hold
the half-inch Himalayas in my hand.

This is home. And this the closest
I'll ever be to home. When I return,
the colors won't be so brilliant,
the Jhelum's waters so clean,
so ultramarine. My love
so overexposed.

And my memory will be a little
out of focus, in it
a giant negative, black
and white, still undeveloped.

Ah, spring comes from afar, smoky,
under puffy swollen willow buds,
eager to press its gentle lips close,
and suck in a virgin's kiss,
spring comes from afar riding a rubber -wheeled rickshaw.
In the absent-minded landscape,
the white rickshawman's legs hurry,
but going, going, the wheels turn backward,
gradually the shafts begin to lift away from the ground,
then too, the good passenger is oddly unsteady about his waist,
all of which looks much too precarious — so saying,
at the least expected moment the spring gives a snow-white yawn.

Ah, see the fair chivalry come, the companions of Christ!
White Horsemen, who ride on white horses, the Knights of God!
They, for their Lord and their Lover who sacrificed
All, save the sweetness of treading, where he first trod!

These, through the darkness of death, the dominion of night,
Swept, and they woke in white places at morning tide:
They saw with their eyes, and sang for joy of the sight,
They saw with their eyes the Eyes of the Crucified.

Now, whithersoever He goeth, with Him they go:

Ah poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats,
Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me,
(For what is my life or any man's life but a conflict with foes, the old, the incessant war?)
You degradations, you tussle with passions and appetites,
You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds the sharpest of all!)
You toil of painful and choked articulations, you meannesses,
You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest of any;)
You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you smother'd ennuis!