The Gipsy's Tent. (From The Villager's Verse-Book.)

When now cold winter's snows are fled,
And birds sing blithe again,
Look where the gipsy's tent is spread,
In the green village lane.

Oft by the old park pales, beneath
The branches of the oak,
The watchdog barks, when, in slow wreath,
Curls o'er the woods the smoke.

No home receives the wandering race;
The panniered ass is nigh,
Which patient bears from place to place
Their infant progeny.

Lo! houseless o'er the world they stray,
But I at home will dwell,
Where I may read my book and pray,
And hear the Sabbath-bell.

William Lisle Bowles

William Lisle Bowles was an English cleric, poet, and critic who was born on 24th September 1762 and died on 7th April 1850. He is best known for his sonnets, which were highly praised by the Romantic poets. Bowles's work significantly influenced Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Besides his poetry, he wrote extensively on literary criticism and editing. Bowles spent much of his clerical career in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire.

William Lisle Bowles

On A Beautiful Landscape

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

Picture Of A Young Lady

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

The April Shower. (From The Villager's Verse-Book.)

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

Market-Day - Calcot. (Exhibition, 1807.)

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Gipsy's Song

    The gipsy's life is a merry life,
    And ranting boys we be;
    We pay to none or rent or tax,
    And live untith'd and free.
    None care for us, for none care we,
    And where we list we roam,
    And merry boys we gipsies be,
    Though the wild woods are our home.

    And come what will brings no dismay;
    Our minds are ne'er perplext;
    For if to-day is a swaly day,
    We meet with luck the next.
    And thus we sing and kiss our mates,
    While our chorus still shall be,--
    Bad luck to tyrant magistrates,
    And the gipsies' camp still free.

    To mend old pans and bottom chairs
    Around the towns we tramp,
    Then a day or two our purse repairs,
    And plenty fills our camp;
    And our song we sin...

John Clare

Gipsies

The snow falls deep; the forest lies alone;
The boy goes hasty for his load of brakes,
Then thinks upon the fire and hurries back;
The gipsy knocks his hands and tucks them up,
And seeks his squalid camp, half hid in snow,
Beneath the oak which breaks away the wind,
And bushes close in snow-like hovel warm;
There tainted mutton wastes upon the coals,
And the half-wasted dog squats close and rubs,
Then feels the heat too strong, and goes aloof;
He watches well, but none a bit can spare,
And vainly waits the morsel thrown away.
Tis thus they live--a picture to the place,
A quiet, pilfering, unprotected race.

John Clare

Gipsies

Yet are they here the same unbroken knot
Of human Beings, in the self-same spot!
Men, women, children, yea the frame
Of the whole spectacle the same!
Only their fire seems bolder, yielding light,
Now deep and red, the colouring of night;
That on their Gipsy-faces falls,
Their bed of straw and blanket-walls.
Twelve hours, twelve bounteous hours are gone, while I
Have been a traveller under open sky,
Much witnessing of change and cheer,
Yet as I left I find them here!
The weary Sun betook himself to rest;
Then issued Vesper from the fulgent west,
Outshining like a visible God
The glorious path in which he trod.
And now, ascending, after one dark hour
And one night's diminution of her power,
Behold the mighty Moon! this way
She looks as if at them ...

William Wordsworth

Gypsying

Gypsying, gypsying, through the world together,
Never mind the way we go, never mind what port.
Follow trails, or fashion sails, start in any weather:
While we journey hand in hand, everything is sport.

Gypsying, gypsying, leaving care and worry:
Never mind the 'if' and 'but' (words for coward lips).
Put them out with 'fear' and 'doubt,' in the pack with 'hurry,'
While we stroll like vagabonds forth to trails, or ships.

Gypsying, gypsying, just where fancy calls us;
Never mind what others say, or what others do.
Everywhere or foul or fair, liking what befalls us:
While you have me at your side, and while I have you.

Gypsying, gypsying, camp by hill or hollow;
Never mind the why of it, since it suits our mood.
Go or stay, and pay our way, and let those ...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Gipsy Too

If they missed my face in Farmers Arms
When the landlord lit the lamp,
They would grin and say in their country way,
Oh! hes down at the Gipsy camp!
But theyd read of things in the Daily Mail
That the wild Australians do,
And I cared no day what the world might say,
For I came of the Gipsies too.
Oh! the Gipsy crowd are a mongrel lot,
And a thieving lot and sly!
But Id dined on fowls in the far-off south,
And a mongrel lot was I.
Oh! the Gipsy crowd are a roving gang,
And a sulky, silent crew!
But they managed a smile and a word for me,
For I came of the Gipsies too.

And the old queen looked in my palm one day,
And a shrewd old dame was she:
My pretty young gent, you may say your say,
You may laugh your laugh at me;
But...

Henry Lawson

The Gypsying

I wish we might go gypsying one day the while we're young--
On a blue October morning
Beneath a cloudless sky,
When all the world's a vibrant harp
The winds o' God have strung,
And gay as tossing torches the maples light us by;
The rising sun before us--a golden bubble swung--
I wish we might go gypsying one day the while we're young.

I wish we might go gypsying one day before we're old--
To step it with the wild west wind
And sing the while we go,
Through far forgotten orchards
Hung with jewels red and gold;
Through cool and fragrant forests where never sun may show,
To stand upon a high hill and watch the mist unfold--
I wish we might go gypsying one day before we're old.

I wish we might go gypsying, dear lad, the while we care--
The while w...

Theodosia Garrison