I.

    By Allan stream I chanced to rove
        While Phoebus sank beyond Benledi;
    The winds were whispering through the grove,
        The yellow corn was waving ready;
    I listened to a lover's sang,
        And thought on youthfu' pleasures mony:
    And aye the wild wood echoes rang
        O dearly do I lo'e thee, Annie!

II.

    O happy be the woodbine bower,
        Nae nightly bogle make it eerie;
    Nor ever sorrow stain the hour,
        The place and time I met my dearie!
    Her head upon my throbbing breast,
        She, sinking, said, "I'm thine for ever?"
    While mony a kiss the seal imprest,
        The sacred vow, we ne'er should sever.

III.

    The haunt o' Spring's the primrose brae,

My heart is like a singing bird
    Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
    Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
    That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
    Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
    Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves, and pomegranates,
    And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
    In leaves, and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
    Is come, my love is come to me.

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud, and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,<...

Meseems thine eyes are two still-folded lakes
Wherein deep water reflects the guardian sky,
Searching wherein I see how Heaven is nigh
And our broad Earth at peace. So my Love takes
My soul's thin hands and, chafing them, she makes
My life's blood lusty and my life's hope high
For the strong lips and eyes of Poesy,
To hold the world well squandered for their sakes.

I looked thee full this day: thine unveiled eyes
Rayed their swift-searching magic forth; and then
I felt all strength that love can put in men
Whenas they know that loveliness is wise.
For love can be content with no less prize,
To lift us up beyond our mortal ken.

Tune - "Here's a health to them that's awa."



I.

    Here's a health to ane I lo'e dear;
        Here's a health to ane I lo'e dear;
    Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet,
        And soft as their parting tear - Jessy!

II.

    Altho' thou maun never be mine,
        Altho' even hope is denied;
    'Tis sweeter for thee despairing,
        Then aught in the world beside - Jessy!

III.

    I mourn through the gay, gaudy day,
        As, hopeless, I muse on thy charms:
    But welcome the dream o' sweet slumber,
        For then I am lockt in thy arms - Jessy!

IV.

    I guess by the dear angel smile,
        I guess by the love rolling e'e;
    But why urge the tender...

And because you love me
think you you do not hate me?
Ha, since you love me to ecstasy
it follows you hate me to ecstasy.

Because when you hear me
go down the road outside the house
you must come to the window to watch me go,
do you think it is pure worship?

Because, when I sit in the room,
here, in my own house,
and you want to enlarge yourself with this friend of mine,
such a friend as he is,
yet you cannot get beyond your awareness of me
you are held back by my being in the same world with you,
do you think it is bliss alone?
sheer harmony?

No doubt if I were dead, you must
reach into death after me,
but would not your hate reach even more madly than your love?
your impassioned, unfinished hate?

Since you have a p...

There is no magic any more,
We meet as other people do,
You work no miracle for me
Nor I for you.

You were the wind and I the sea,
There is no splendor any more,
I have grown listless as the pool
Beside the shore.

But though the pool is safe from storm
And from the tide has found surcease,
It grows more bitter than the sea,
For all its peace.

Oh, why for us the blighted bloom!
The blossom that lies withering!
The Master of Life's changeless loom
Hath wrought for us no changeless thing.

Where grows the rose of fadeless Grace?
Wherethrough the Spirit manifests
The fact of an immortal race,
The dream on which religion rests.

Where buds the lily of our Faith?
That grows for us in unknown wise,
Out of the barren dust of death,
The pregnant bloom of Paradise.

In Heaven! so near that flowers know!
That flowers see how near! - and thus
Reflect the knowledge here below
Of love and life unknown to us.

Tell me the witching tale again,
    For never has my heart or ear
Hung on so sweet, so pure a strain,
    So pure to feel, so sweet to hear.

Say, Love, in all thy prime of fame,
    When the high heaven itself was thine;
When piety confest the flame,
    And even thy errors were divine;

Did ever Muse's hand, so fair,
    A glory round thy temple spread?
Did ever lip's ambrosial air
    Such fragrance o'er thy altars shed?

One maid there was, who round her lyre
    The mystic myrtle wildly wreathed;--
But all her sighs were sighs of fire,
    The myrtle withered as she breathed.

Oh! you that love's celestial dream,
    In all its purity, would know,
Let not the senses' ardent beam
    Too strongly through the visio...

I dedicate these verses to one whom I hold dear,
One who in the dark days drew in Christian kindness near
May He who led me all my life do so and more to me
If ever I forget the debt of love I owe to thee.

By red-ripe mouth and brown, luxurious eyes
Of her I love, by all your sweetness shed
In far, fair days, on one whose memory flies
To faithless lights, and gracious speech gainsaid,
I pray you, when yon river-path I tread,
Make with the woodlands some soft compromise,
Lest they should vex me into fruitless sighs
With visions of a woman’s gleaming head!
For every green and golden-hearted thing
That gathers beauty in that shining place,
Beloved of beams and wooed by wind and wing,
Is rife with glimpses of her marvellous face;
And in the whispers of the lips of Spring
The music of her lute-like voice I trace.

She will not smile;
    She will not stir;
I marvel while
    I look on her.
    The lips are chilly
        And will not speak;
    The ghost of a lily
        In either cheek.

Her hair - ah me!
    Her hair - her hair!
How helplessly
    My hands go there!
    But my caresses
        Meet not hers,
    O golden tresses
        That thread my tears!

I kiss the eyes
    On either lid,
Where her love lies
    Forever hid.
    I cease my weeping
        And smile and say:
    I will be sleeping
        Thus, some day!

(To Miss E E.)


I cannot write, my tears are flowing fast,
    Yet weeping is unnatural to me;
Oh! that this hour of bitterness was past--
    The parting hour with all I love and thee

If I had never met or loved thee so,
    To part would not have caused me this sharp pain;
Parting so oft occurring here below,
    And they who part so seldom meet again.

Yet over land or sea, where'er I go,
    My home, my friends, shall flit before my eyes--
And oft I anxiously shall wish to know,
    If in thy bosom thoughts of me arise.

Oh, I will think of bygone days of glee,
    Though on each point of bitter sorrow driven;
I will not bid thee to remember me,
    But oh! see to it that we meet in Heaven.

1844.

When I am buried, all my thoughts and acts
Will be reduced to lists of dates and facts,
And long before this wandering flesh is rotten
The dates which made me will be all forgotten;
And none will know the gleam there used to be
About the feast days freshly kept by me,
But men will call the golden hour of bliss
'About this time,' or 'shortly after this.'

Men do not heed the rungs by which men climb
Those glittering steps, those milestones upon time,
Those tombstones of dead selves, those hours of birth,
Those moments of the soul in years of earth.
They mark the height achieved, the main result,
The power of freedom in the perished cult,
The power of boredom in the dead man's deeds
Not the bright moments of the sprinkled seeds.

By many waters and on ...

    O Dorothy, sweet Dorothy,
        You make my heart rejoice;
    Your presence is like Arcady,
        There's music in your voice;
    Heaven's purity is on your brow,
        Its light is in your eyne;
    I love you, and I ask you now
        To be my Valentine.

    Your face is like the lily in
        The morning's ruddy light;
    Your dimpled cheeks and tiny chin
        Are blessings to my sight;
    Your lips are fairer than the rose
        And redder far than wine;
    Your teeth are whiter than the snows:
        You'll be my Valentine!

    You are not quite so old as I,
        You've seen but summers three;
    And that's no doubt the reason why
        You are not coy with me.
    I'll come to you to-morrow,

Above our dear Romancer’s dust
Grief takes the place of praise,
Because of sudden cypress thrust
Amid the old-earned bays.

Ah! when shall such another friend
By England’s fireside sit,
To tell her of her faults, yet blend
Sage words with kindly wit?

He brings no pageants of the past
To wile our hearts away;
But wins our love for those who cast
Their lot with ours to-day.

He gives us laughter glad and long;
He gives us tears as pure;
He shames us with the published wrong
We meted to the poor.

Through webs and dust and weather-stains,
His sunlike genius paints,
On life’s transfigured chancel-panes,
The angels and the saints.

He bade us to a lordly feast,
And gave us of his best;
And vanished, while the ...

I know it is early morning,
    And hope is calling aloud,
And your heart is afire with Youth's desire
    To hurry along with the crowd.
But linger a bit by the roadside,
    And lend a hand by the way,
'Tis a curious fact that a generous act
Brings leisure and luck to a day.

I know it is only the noontime -
    There is chance enough to be kind;
But the hours run fast when noon has passed,
    And the shadows are close behind.
So think while the light is shining,
    And act ere the set of the sun,
For the sorriest woe that a soul can know
    Is to think what it might have done.

I know it is almost evening,
    But the twilight hour is long.
If you listen and heed each cry of need
    You can right full many a wrong.
For when...

Violets and leaves of vine,
Into a frail, fair wreath
We gather and entwine:
A wreath for Love to wear,
Fragrant as his own breath,
To crown his brow divine,
All day till night is near.
Violets and leaves of vine
We gather and entwine.

Violets and leaves of vine
For Love that lives a day,
We gather and entwine.
All day till Love is dead,
Till eve falls, cold and gray,
These blossoms, yours and mine,
Love wears upon his head,
Violets and leaves of vine
We gather and entwine.

Violets and leaves of vine,
For Love when poor Love dies
We gather and entwine.
This wreath that lives a day
Over his pale, cold eyes,
Kissed shut by Proserpine,
At set of sun we lay:
Violets and leaves of vine
We gather and entw...