Victorian Women Writers Project

A Roadside Harp: a Book of Verses. Guiney, Louise Imogen, 1861–1920.

TO DORA AND HESTER SIGERSON

There in the Druid brake If the cuckoo be awake Again, O take my rhyme! And keep it long for the sake Of a bygone primrose‐time; You of the star‐bright head That twilight thoughts sequester, You to your native fountains led Like to a young Muse garlanded: Dora, and Hester.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• PETER RUGG the Bostonian 1
• A Ballad of Kenelm 8
• Vergniaud in the Tumbril 10
• Winter Boughs 13
• M.A. 1822‐1888 13
• W.H. 1778‐1830 14
• The Vigil‐at‐Arms 14
• A Madonna of Domenico Ghirlandajo 15
• Spring Nightfall 15
• A Friend’s Song for Simoisius 16
• Athassel Abbey 17
• Florentin 18
• Friendship Broken 19
• A Song of the Lilac 20
• In a Ruin, after a Thunder‐Storm 21
• The Cherry Bough 21
• Two Irish Peasant Songs 23
• The Japanese Anemone 25
• Tryste Noel 26
• A Talisman 27
• Heathenesse 27
• For Izaak Walton 28
• Sherman: “An Horatian Ode” 29
• When on the Marge of Evening 32
• Rooks in New College Gardens 32
• Open, Time 33
• The Knight Errant (Donatello’s Saint George) 34
• To a Dog’s Memory 35
• A Seventeenth‐Century Song 36
• page: vi
• On the Pre‐Reformation Churches about Oxford 37
• The Still of the Year 38
• A Foot‐note to a Famous Lyric 39
• T.W.P. 1819‐1892 41
• Summum Bonum 41
• Saint Florent‐le‐Vieil 42
• Hylas 42
• Nocturne 43
• The Kings 44
• Alexandriana 47
• London: Twelve Sonnets.
  • On First Entering Westminster Abbey 55
  • Fog 55
  • St. Peter‐ad‐Vincula 56
  • Strikers in Hyde Park 56
  • Changes in the Temple 57
  • The Lights of London 58
  • Doves 58
  • In the Reading‐Room of the British Museum 59
  • Sunday Chimes in the City 59
  • A Porch in Belgravia 60
  • York Stairs 61
  • In the Docks 61