Song.

    Life with the sun in it -
        Shaded by gloom!
    Life with the fun in it -
        Shadowed by Doom!

Life with its Love ever haunted by Hate!
Life's laughing morrows frowned over by Fate!
Young Life's wild gladness still waylaid by Age!
All its sweet badness still mocking the sage!
What can e'er measure the joy of its strife?

    What boundless leisure
    Count the heaped treasure
    Of woe, that's the pleasure
    And beauty of Life?

Thomas Runciman

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Thomas Runciman

What though my voice cease like a moan o' the wind?

Thomas Runciman, Simple Poetry

Sonnet.

Thomas Runciman, Simple Poetry

Song. A Gurly Breeze in Scotland.

Thomas Runciman, Simple Poetry

Song.

Thomas Runciman, Simple Poetry

English

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Song.

                Once as the aureole
                Day left the earth,
                Faded, a twilight soul,
                Memory, had birth:
Young were her sister souls, Sorrow and Mirth.

                Dark mirrors are her eyes:
                Wherein who gaze
                See wan effulgencies
                Flicker and blaze -
Lorn fleeting shadows of beautiful days.

                Scan those deep mirrors well
                After long years:
                Lo! what aforetime fell
                In rain of tears,
In radiant glamour-mist now reappears.

                See old wild gladness
                Tamed now and coy;
                Grief that was madness
                Turned into joy.
Fate cannot harr...

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An Afternoon Soliloquy.

How good some years of life may be!
Ah, once it was not guessed by me,
Past years would shine, like some bright sea,
In golden dusks of memory.

Ere then the music of the dawn
From me had long since surged away;
And in the disillusioned day
Of chill mid-life I plodded on.

Anon a fuller music thrilled
My world with meaning undertones,
That elegized our vanished ones,
And told how Lethe's banks are filled

With wordless calm, and wistful rest,
And sweet large silence, solemn sleep,
And brooding shadows cool and deep,
And grand oblivions, undistressed.

No more 'twas "Lethe rolling doom,"
But Lethe calling, "Come to me,
And wash away all memory
And taint of what precedes the tomb;

And know the changeless afterthought...

Thomas Runciman

Shadow And Shine.

    They will find in this life who are grieved with its gladness
        No songs for the heart and no hopes for the soul,
    But will faint in the glooms where the dirges of sadness
        In tremulous murmurs of wretchedness roll;
    For the sweets of this earth never lavish their kisses
        Where lives in the valleys of rapture repine;
    In the tortures they mourn who denounce all the blisses,--
        They weep in the shadow that rail at the shine.

    In the fields that are fair with the blooms of the clover,
        No garlands are grown for the arbors of shade
    Where the woes of the wood in their darkness hang over
        The grasses that wave with the winds of the glade;
    From the chimes of the breezes there echo no measures
        That gladd...

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Merely Suburban.

Dry light reverberates, colour withdrawing
Into a sky so white, sight cannot follow it.
While in the shadows cast, rich hues, intenser
Far than in light spaces, offer me gladness.
Sun reigns triumphantly, thinning all vapour
Into translucency, through which the foliage
Bears out in sparkles of full golden greenery.
O'er this, short dashes of keen grey-green masses lie;
Even the cooler tints, pitched in this higher key -
Purpling and greening greys - are fierce as fires.
All the vast universe lives in one beautiful
Summer - made lambent light, offering gladness.
Who can accept of it? Hearts where no echo rings
Wildly recalling deeds done by old Destiny -
Deeds of finality, darkening the spirit -
Rousing the echoes of thought to reverberate
Ever and ever "Alas!"...

Thomas Runciman

What is Life?

And what is Life?--An hour-glass on the run,
A mist retreating from the morning sun,
A busy, bustling, still repeated dream;
Its length?--A minute's pause, a moment's thought;
And happiness?-A bubble on the stream,
That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought.

What are vain Hopes?--The puffing gale of morn,
That of its charms divests the dewy lawn,
And robs each floweret of its gem,--and dies;
A cobweb hiding disappointment's thorn,
Which stings more keenly through the thin disguise.

And thou, O Trouble?--Nothing can suppose,
(And sure the power of wisdom only knows,)
What need requireth thee:
So free and liberal as thy bounty flows,
Some necessary cause must surely be;
But disappointments, pains, and every woe
Devoted wretches feel,
The ...

John Clare

What though my voice cease like a moan o' the wind?

What though my voice cease like a moan o' the wind?
Not the less shall I
Cast on this life a kindly eye,
Glad if through its mystery
Faint gleams of love and truth glance o'er my mind.

What though I end like a spring leaf shed on the wind?
Restrained by pure-eyed Sorrow's hand,
Lithe Joy through this wondrous land
Leads me; nothing have I scanned
Unmixed with good. Fate's sharpest stroke is kind.

To me, thoughts lived of old anew are born
From glances at the unsullied sea,
Or breath of morning purity,
From cloud or blown grass tossing free,
Or frail dew quivering on leaf, rose or thorn.

What though behind me all is mist and shade,
Yet warmth of afterglow bathes all.
Hallowed spirits move and call
Each to me, a willing thrall,
W...

Thomas Runciman