Tune - "Let me in this ae night."



I.

    Forlorn, my love, no comfort near,
    Far, far from thee, I wander here;
    Far, far from thee, the fate severe
        At which I most repine, love.
            O wert thou, love, but near me;
            But near, near, near me;
            How kindly thou wouldst cheer me,
                And mingle sighs with mine, love

II.

    Around me scowls a wintry sky,
    That blasts each bud of hope and joy;
    And shelter, shade, nor home have I,
        Save in those arms of thine, love.

III.

    Cold, alter'd friendship's cruel part,
    To poison Fortune's ruthless dart,
    Let me not break thy faithful heart,
        And say that fate is mine, lov...

Dull to myself, and almost dead to these
My many fresh and fragrant mistresses;
Lost to all music now, since everything
Puts on the semblance here of sorrowing.
Sick is the land to th' heart, and doth endure
More dangerous faintings by her desp'rate cure.
But if that golden age would come again
And Charles here rule, as he before did reign;
If smooth and unperplex'd the seasons were
As when the sweet Maria lived here;
I should delight to have my curls half drown'd
In Tyrian dews, and head with roses crown'd.
And once more yet (ere I am laid out dead)
Knock at a star with my exalted head.

How darkly o'er yon far-off mountain frowns
    The gather'd tempest! from that lurid cloud
    The deep-voiced thunders roll, aweful and loud
Tho' distant; while upon the misty downs
Fast falls in shadowy streaks the pelting rain.
    I never saw so terrible a storm!
Perhaps some way-worn traveller in vain
    Wraps his torn raiment round his shivering form
Cold even as Hope within him! I the while
Pause me in sadness tho' the sunbeams smile
    Cheerily round me. Ah that thus my lot
Might be with Peace and Solitude assign'd,
    Where I might from some little quiet cot,
Sigh for the crimes and miseries of mankind!

Late autumns, winters, spring-times steeped in mud,
anaesthetizing seasons! You I praise, and love
for so enveloping my heart and brain
in vaporous shrouds, in sepulchres of rain.


In this vast landscape where chill south winds play,
where long nights hoarsen the shrill weather-vane,
it opens wide its raven’s wings, my soul,
freer than in times of mild renewal.


Nothing’s sweeter to my heart, full of sorrows,
on which the hoar-frost fell in some past time,
O pallid seasons, queens of our clime,


than the changeless look of your pale shadows,
except, two by two, to lay our grief to rest
in some moonless night, on a perilous bed.

I will be short, and having quickly hurl'd
This line about, live thou throughout the world;
Who art a man for all scenes; unto whom,
What's hard to others, nothing's troublesome.
Can'st write the comic, tragic strain, and fall
From these to pen the pleasing pastoral:
Who fli'st at all heights: prose and verse run'st through;
Find'st here a fault, and mend'st the trespass too:
For which I might extol thee, but speak less,
Because thyself art coming to the press:
And then should I in praising thee be slow,
Posterity will pay thee what I owe.

Enough of garlands, of the Arcadian crook,
And all that Greece and Italy have sung
Of Swains reposing myrtle groves among!
'Ours' couch on naked rocks, will cross a brook
Swoln with chill rains, nor ever cast a look
This way or that, or give it even a thought
More than by smoothest pathway may be brought
Into a vacant mind. Can written book
Teach what 'they' learn? Up, hardy Mountaineer!
And guide the Bard, ambitious to be One
Of Nature's privy council, as thou art,
On cloud-sequestered heights, that see and hear
To what dread Powers He delegates his part
On earth, who works in the heaven of heavens, alone.

Leaden skies and a lonesome shadow
    Where summer has passed with her gorgeous train;
Snow on the mountain, and frost on the meadow -
    A white face pressed to the window pane;
A cold mist falling, a bleak wind calling,
    And oh! but life seems vain.

Rain is better than golden weather,
    When the heart is dulled with a dumb despair.
Dead leaves lie where they walked together,
    The hammock is gone, and the rustic chair.
Let bleak snows cover the whole world over -
    It will never again seem fair.

Time laughs lightly at youth's sad 'Never,'
    Summer shall come again, smiling once more,
High o'er the cold world the sun shines for ever,
    Hearts that seemed dead are alive at the core.
Oh, but the pain of it -oh, but the gain of it,

I.

    Sweet fa's the eve on Craigie-burn,
        And blithe awakes the morrow;
    But a' the pride o' spring's return
        Can yield me nocht but sorrow.

II.

    I see the flowers and spreading trees
        I hear the wild birds singing;
    But what a weary wight can please,
        And care his bosom wringing?

III.

    Fain, fain would I my griefs impart,
        Yet dare na for your anger;
    But secret love will break my heart,
        If I conceal it langer.

IV.

    If thou refuse to pity me,
        If thou shall love anither,
    When yon green leaves fade frae the tree,
        Around my grave they'll wither.

Here’s my case. Of old I used to love him,
This same unseen friend, before I knew:
Dream there was none like him, none above him,
Wake to hope and trust my dream was true.

Loved I not his letters full of beauty?
Not his actions famous far and wide?
Absent, he would know I vowed him duty;
Present, he would find me at his side.

Pleasant fancy! for I had but letters,
Only knew of actions by hearsay:
He himself was busied with my betters;
What of that? My turn must come some day.

“Some day” proving, no day! Here’s the puzzle.
Passed and passed my turn is. Why complain?
He’s so busied! If I could but muzzle
People’s foolish mouths that give me pain!

“Letters?” (hear them!) “You a judge of writing?
Ask the experts! How they shake the hea...

Falling upon the frozen world last
I heard the slow beat of the Winter rain -
Poor foolish drops, down-dripping all in vain;
The ice-bound Earth but mocked their puny might,
Far better had the fixedness of white
And uncomplaining snows - which make no sign,
But coldly smile, when pitying moonbeams shine -
Concealed its sorrow from all human sight.
Long, long ago, in blurred and burdened years,
I learned the uselessness of uttered woe.
Though sinewy Fate deals her most skilful blow,
    I do not waste the gall now of my tears,
    But feed my pride upon its bitter, while
I look straight in the world's bold eyes, and smile.

The hoar-frost hisses 'neath the feet,
And the worm-fence's straggling length,
Smote by the morning's slanted strength,
Sparkles one rib of virgin sleet.

To withered fields the crisp breeze talks,
And silently and sadly lifts
The bronz'd leaves from the beech and drifts
Them wadded down the woodland walks.

Reluctantly and one by one
The worthless leaves sift slowly down,
And thro' the mournful vistas blown
Drop rustling, and their rest is won.

Where stands the brook beneath its fall,
Thin-scaled with ice the pool is bound,
And on the pebbles scattered 'round
The ooze is frozen; one and all

White as rare crystals shining fair.
There stirs no life: the faded wood
Mourns sighing, and the solitude
Seems shaken with a mighty c...

Go I must; when I am gone,
Write but this upon my stone:
Chaste I lived, without a wife,
That's the story of my life.
Strewings need none, every flower
Is in this word, bachelour.

Thou Winter, thou art keen, intensely keen;
Thy cutting frowns experience bids me know,
For in thy weather days and days I've been,
As grinning north-winds horribly did blow,
And pepper'd round my head their hail and snow:
Throughout thy reign 'tis mine each year to prove thee;
And, spite of every storm I've beetled in,
With all thy insults, Winter, I do love thee,
Thou half enchantress, like to pictur'd Sin!
Though many frowns thy sparing smiles deform,
Yet when thy sunbeam shrinketh from its shroud,
And thy bright rainbow gilds the purple storm,
I look entranced on thy painted cloud:
And what wild eye with nature's beauties charm'd,
That hang enraptur'd o'er each 'witching spell,
Can see thee, Winter, then, and not be warm'd
To breathe thy praise, and say, "...

I was very cold
    In the summer weather;
The sun shone all his gold,
But I was very cold--
Alas, we were grown old,
    Love and I together!
Oh, but I was cold
    In the summer weather!

Sudden I grew warmer
    Though the brooks were frozen:
"Truly, scorn did harm her!"
I said, and I grew warmer;
"Better men the charmer
    Knows at least a dozen!"
I said, and I grew warmer
    Though the brooks were frozen.

Spring sits on her nest,
    Daisies and white clover;
And my heart at rest
Lies in the spring's young nest:
My love she loves me best,
    And the frost is over!
Spring sits on her nest,
    Daisies and white clover!

'Tis time, I think by Wenlock town
The golden broom should blow;
The hawthorn sprinkled up and down
Should charge the land with snow.

Spring will not wait the loiterer's time
Who keeps so long away;
So others wear the broom and climb
The hedgerows heaped with may.

Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge,
Gold that I never see;
Lie long, high snowdrifts in the hedge
That will not shower on me.

The figure that thou here seest . . . Tut!
Was it for gentle Shakespeare put?
- B. JORSON. (Adapted.)



I “next poet?” No, my hearties,
I nor am nor fain would be!
Choose your chiefs and pick your parties,
Not one soul revolt to me!
I, forsooth, sow song-sedition?
I, a schism in verse provoke?
I, blown up by bard’s ambition,
Burst, your bubble-king? You joke.

Come, be grave! The sherris mantling
Still about each mouth, mayhap,
Breeds you insight, just a scantling,
Brings me truth out, just a scrap.
Look and tell me! Written, spoken,
Here’s my life-long work: and where
Where’s your warrant or my token
I’m the dead king’s son and heir?

Here’s my work: does work discover,
What was rest from work, my life?

The embankment lies as heavy
edges on our lives.
The shadows of the rock,
piled drifts huge monotony's ledge,
accumulations by the side of the tree
wear thin visages;
the breath of summer eclipsed.

Snow reigns supreme;
teeters about the rim
of the city's existence.
Pettiness of man's realm - pretty
foliage of the transient,
wrappings upon our lives
brittle near the storm.

The reply of the eternal,
fire on stone
blazons reality
the peaked remains
of snow streaked sun.

Immensity governs us;
clarity of the temporal
fire set by the staccato
of man's rhythm.

He loved the brook's soft sound,
The swallow swimming by.
He loved the daisy-covered ground,
The cloud-bedappled sky.
To him the dismal storm appeared
The very voice of God;
And when the evening rack was reared
Stood Moses with his rod.
And everything his eyes surveyed,
The insects in the brake,
Were creatures God Almighty made,
He loved them for His sake--
A silent man in life's affairs,
A thinker from a boy,
A peasant in his daily cares,
A poet in his joy.