Autumn's last days, winters and mud-soaked spring
I praise the stupefaction that you bring
By so enveloping my heart and brain
In shroud of vapours, tomb of mist and rain.

In this great flatness where the chill winds course,
Where through the nights the weather-cock grows hoarse,
My soul, more than in springtime's tepid sky,
Will open out her raven's wings to fly.

O blankest seasons, queens of all my praise,
Nothing is sweet to the funereal breast
That has been steeped in frost and wintriness

But the continuous face of your pale shades
- Except we two, where moonlight never creeps
Daring in bed to put our griefs to sleep.

Dogmatic Teachers, of the snow-white fur!
Ye wrangling Schoolmen, of the scarlet hood!
Who, with a keenness not to be withstood,
Press the point home, or falter and demur,
Checked in your course by many a teasing burr;
These natural council-seats your acrid blood
Might cool; and, as the Genius of the flood
Stoops willingly to animate and spur
Each lighter function slumbering in the brain,
Yon eddying balls of foam, these arrowy gleams
That o'er the pavement of the surging streams
Welter and flash, a synod might detain
With subtle speculations, haply vain,
But surely less so than your far-fetched themes!

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth,
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth,
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?
If design govern in a thing so small.

My wind is turned to bitter north,
That was so soft a south before;
My sky, that shone so sunny bright,
With foggy gloom is clouded o’er
My gay green leaves are yellow-black,
Upon the dank autumnal floor;
For love, departed once, comes back
No more again, no more.
A roofless ruin lies my home,
For winds to blow and rains to pour;
One frosty night befell, and lo,
I find my summer days are o’er:
The heart bereaved, of why and how
Unknowing, knows that yet before
It had what e’en to Memory now
Returns no more, no more.

No wind there is that either pipes or moans;
The fields are cold and still; the sky
Is covered with a blue-gray sheet
Of motionless cloud; and at my feet
The river, curling softly by,
Whispers and dimples round its quiet gray stones.

Along the chill green slope that dips and heaves
The road runs rough and silent, lined
With plum-trees, misty and blue-gray,
And poplars pallid as the day,
In masses spectral, undefined,
Pale greenish stems half hid in dry gray leaves.

And on beside the river's sober edge
A long fresh field lies black. Beyond,
Low thickets gray and reddish stand,
Stroked white with birch; and near at hand,
Over a little steel-smooth pond,
Hang multitudes of thin and withering sedge.

Across a waste and solitary rise

One hundred years have come and gone,
Since thy brave spirit came to earth,
Since Scotland saw thy genius dawn,
And had the joy to give thee birth.

There was no proud and brilliant throng,
To celebrate thine advent here,
And but the humble heard the song,
Which first proclaim'd a poet near.

But genius will assert its right
To speak a word, or chant a lay,
And thou, with independent might,
Asserted it from day to day.

No fawning, sycophantic whine,
Marr'd the clear note thy spirit blew,
Thy stirring words, thy gift divine,
Were to thyself and country true.

Tho' heir to naught of wealth, or land,
Thy soaring mind, with fancy fir'd,
Saw, in Creation's lavish hand,
The gifts display'd, thy soul desir'd.

The field, ...

The hills and leafless forests slowly yield
To the thick-driving snow. A little while
And night shall darken down. In shouting file
The woodmen's carts go by me homeward-wheeled,
Past the thin fading stubbles, half concealed,
Now golden-grey, sowed softly through with snow,
Where the last ploughman follows still his row,
Turning black furrows through the whitening field.

Far off the village lamps begin to gleam,
Fast drives the snow, and no man comes this way;
The hills grow wintery white, and bleak winds moan
About the naked uplands. I alone
Am neither sad, nor shelterless, nor grey,
Wrapped round with thought, content to watch and dream.

Air - "My lodging is on the cold ground."


I.

    My Chloris, mark how green the groves,
        The primrose banks how fair:
    The balmy gales awake the flowers,
        And wave thy flaxen hair.

II.

    The lav'rock shuns the palace gay,
        And o'er the cottage sings;
    For nature smiles as sweet, I ween,
        To shepherds as to kings

III.

    Let minstrels sweep the skilfu' string
        In lordly lighted ha':
    The shepherd stops his simple reed,
        Blythe, in the birken shaw.

IV.

    The princely revel may survey
        Our rustic dance wi' scorn;
    But are their hearts as light as ours,
        Beneath the milk-white thorn?

V.

    ...

[One of the Bearers soliloquizes:]

. . . Room in your heart for him, O Mother Earth,
Who loved each flower and leaf that made you fair,
And sang your praise in verses manifold
And delicate, with here and there a line
From end to end in blossom like a bough
The May breathes on, so rich it was.    Some thought
The workmanship more costly than the thing
Moulded or carved, as in those ornaments
Found at Mycaene.    And yet Nature's self
Works in this wise; upon a blade of grass,
Or what small note she lends the woodland thrush,
Lavishing endless patience.    He was born
Artist, not artisan, which some few saw
And many dreamed not.    As he wrote no odes
When Croesus wedded or Maecenas died,
And gave no breath to civic feasts and shows,
He missed the gla...

With my breath so keen and chilling,
    I have stripped the branches bare;
And my snow-flakes white are filling,
    Feather-like, the frosty air.

Coming o'er the lofty mountains,
    There I left a robe of white;
I have locked the sparkling fountains,
    I have chained the river bright.

O'er the quiet valley winging,
    There I left my traces, too;
Hark! the merry sleigh-bells ringing,
    With their music call on you.

I have come! The school-boy shouting,
    Joyfully brings out his sled;
He has seen me, nothing doubting,
    As across the fields he sped.

I have come; but shall I find you
    Better than the former year?
If you've cast your faults behind you,
    I shall gladly greet you here.

Here by the baring bough
Raking up leaves,
Often I ponder how
Springtime deceives, -
I, an old woman now,
Raking up leaves.

Here in the avenue
Raking up leaves,
Lords' ladies pass in view,
Until one heaves
Sighs at life's russet hue,
Raking up leaves!

Just as my shape you see
Raking up leaves,
I saw, when fresh and free,
Those memory weaves
Into grey ghosts by me,
Raking up leaves.

Yet, Dear, though one may sigh,
Raking up leaves,
New leaves will dance on high -
Earth never grieves! -
Will not, when missed am I
Raking up leaves.

1901.

From gray, bleak hills 'neath steely skies
Thro' beards of ice the forests roar;
Along the river's humming shore
The skimming skater bird-like flies.

On windy meads where wave white breaks,
Where fettered briers' glist'ning hands
Reach to the cold moon's ghastly lands,
Hoots the lorn owl, and crouching quakes.

With frowsy snow blanched is the world;
Stiff sweeps the wind thro' murmuring pines,
Then fiend-like deep-entangled whines
Thro' the dead oak, that vagrant twirled

Phantoms the cliff o'er the wild wold:
Ghost-vested willows rim the stream,
Low hang lank limbs where in a dream
The houseless hare leaps o'er the cold

On snow-tressed crags that twinkling flash,
Like champions mailed for clanking war,
Glares down large Phosph...

The Autumn day now fades away,
The fields are wet and dreary;
The rude storm takes the flowers of May,
And Nature seemeth weary;
The partridge coveys, shunning fate,
Hide in the bleaching stubble,
And many a bird, without its mate,
Mourns o'er its lonely trouble.

On hawthorns shine the crimson haw,
Where Spring brought may-day blossoms:
Decay is Nature's cheerless law--
Life's Winter in our bosoms.
The fields are brown and naked all,
The hedges still are green,
But storms shall come at Autumn's fall,
And not a leaf be seen.

Yet happy love, that warms the heart
Through darkest storms severe,
Keeps many a tender flower to start
When Spring shall re-appear.
Affection's hope shall roses meet,
Like those of Summer bloom,
An...

Tune - "Neil Gow's Lamentations for Abercairny."


I.

    Where, braving angry winter's storms,
        The lofty Ochels rise,
    Far in their shade my Peggy's charms
        First blest my wondering eyes;
    As one who by some savage stream,
        A lonely gem surveys,
    Astonish'd, doubly marks its beam,
        With art's most polish'd blaze.

II.

    Blest be the wild, sequester'd shade,
        And blest the day and hour,
    Where Peggy's charms I first survey'd,
        When first I felt their power!
    The tyrant Death, with grim control,
        May seize my fleeting breath;
    But tearing Peggy from my soul
        Must be a stronger death.

Some, too fragile for winter winds,
The thoughtful grave encloses, --
Tenderly tucking them in from frost
Before their feet are cold.

Never the treasures in her nest
The cautious grave exposes,
Building where schoolboy dare not look
And sportsman is not bold.

This covert have all the children
Early aged, and often cold, --
Sparrows unnoticed by the Father;
Lambs for whom time had not a fold.

I.

I know a Mount, the gracious Sun perceives
First, when he visits, last, too, when he leaves
The world; and, vainly favoured, it repays
The day-long glory of his steadfast gaze
By no change of its large calm front of snow.
And underneath the Mount, a Flower I know,
He cannot have perceived, that changes ever
At his approach; and, in the lost endeavour
To live his life, has parted, one by one,
With all a flower’s true graces, for the grace
Of being but a foolish mimic sun,
With ray-like florets round a disk-like face.
Men nobly call by many a name the Mount
As over many a land of theirs its large
Calm front of snow like a triumphal targe
Is reared, and still with old names, fresh names vie,
Each to its proper praise and own account:
Men call t...

Best and brightest, come away!
Fairer far than this fair Day,
Which, like thee to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough Year just awake
In its cradle on the brake.
The brightest hour of unborn Spring,
Through the winter wandering,
Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn
To hoar February born,
Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,
It kissed the forehead of the Earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free,
And waked to music all their fountains,
And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May
Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.

Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs -

Lone Flower, hemmed in with snows and white as they
But hardier far, once more I see thee bend
Thy forehead, as if fearful to offend,
Like an unbidden guest. Though day by day,
Storms, sallying from the mountain-tops, waylay
The rising sun, and on the plains descend;
Yet art thou welcome, welcome as a friend
Whose zeal outruns his promise! Blue-eyed May
Shall soon behold this border thickly set
With bright jonquils, their odours lavishing
On the soft west-wind and his frolic peers;
Nor will I then thy modest grace forget,
Chaste Snowdrop, venturous harbinger of Spring,
And pensive monitor of fleeting years!