Last night, above the whistling wind,
I heard the welcome rain,
A fusillade upon the roof,
A tattoo on the pane:
The keyhole piped; the chimney-top
A warlike trumpet blew;
Yet, mingling with these sounds of strife,
A softer voice stole through.

“Give thanks, O brothers!” said the voice,
“That He who sent the rains
Hath spared your fields the scarlet dew
That drips from patriot veins:
I’ve seen the grass on Eastern graves
In brighter verdure rise;
But, oh! the rain that gave it life
Sprang first from human eyes.

“I come to wash away no stain
Upon your wasted lea;
I raise no banners, save the ones
The forest waves to me:
Upon the mountain side, where Spring
Her farthest picket sets,
My reveille awakes a host
Of gras...

Aye! heartbreak of the tattered hills,
And mourning of the raining sky!
Heartbreak and mourning, since God wills,
    Are mine, and God knows why!

The brutal wind that herds the storm
In hail-big clouds that freeze along,
As this gray heart are doubly warm
    With thrice the joy of song.

I held one dearer than each day
Of life God sets in limpid gold
What thief hath stole that gem away
    To leave me poor and old!

The heartbreak of the hills be mine,
Of trampled twig and mired leaf,
Of rain that sobs through thorn and pine
    An unavailing grief!

The sorrow of the childless skies'
Good-nights, long said, yet never said,
As when I kissed my child's blue eyes
    And lips ice-dumb and dead.

Jest as atween the awk'ard lines a hand we love has penn'd
Appears a meanin' hid from other eyes,
So, in your simple, homespun art, old honest Yankee friend,
A power o' tearful, sweet seggestion lies.
We see it all--the pictur' that our mem'ries hold so dear--
The homestead in New England far away,
An' the vision is so nat'ral-like we almost seem to hear
The voices that were heshed but yesterday.

Ah, who'd ha' thought the music of that distant childhood time
Would sleep through all the changeful, bitter years
To waken into melodies like Chris'mas bells a-chime
An' to claim the ready tribute of our tears!
Why, the robins in the maples an' the blackbirds round the pond,
The crickets an' the locusts in the leaves,
The brook that chased the trout adown the hillside ju...

Sighing above,
    Rustling below,
Thorough the woods
    The winds go.
Beneath, dead crowds;
    Above, life bare;
And the besom tempest
    Sweeps the air:
Heart, leave thy woe:
Let the dead things go.

Through the brown
    Gold doth push;
Misty green
    Veils the bush.
Here a twitter,
    There a croak!
They are coming--
    The spring-folk!
Heart, be not numb;
Let the live things come.

Through the beech
    The winds go,
With gentle speech,
    Long and slow.
The grass is fine,
    And soft to lie in:
The sun doth shine
    The blue sky in:
Heart, be alive;
Let the new things thrive.

Round again!
    Here art thou,
A rimy fruit
    O...

Gone is the long, long winter night;
Look, my beloved one!
How glorious, through his depths of light,
Rolls the majestic sun!
The willows, waked from winter's death,
Give out a fragrance like thy breath,
The summer is begun!

Ay, 'tis the long bright summer day:
Hark, to that mighty crash!
The loosened ice-ridge breaks away,
The smitten waters flash.
Seaward the glittering mountain rides,
While, down its green translucent sides,
The foamy torrents dash.

See, love, my boat is moored for thee,
By ocean's weedy floor,
The petrel does not skim the sea
More swiftly than my oar.
We'll go, where, on the rocky isles,
Her eggs the screaming sea-fowl piles
Beside the pebbly shore.

Or, bide thou where the poppy blows,
With w...

Some act of Love's bound to reherse,
I thought to bind him, in my verse:
Which when he felt, Away (quoth he)
Can Poets hope to fetter me?
It is enough, they once did get
Mars, and my Mother, in their net:
I weare not these my wings in vaine.
With which he fled me: and againe,
Into my rimes could ne're be got
By any art. Then wonder not,
That since, my numbers are so cold,
When Love is fled, and I grow old.

Tune - "Cauld is the e'enin blast."



I.

    Cauld is the e'enin' blast
        O' Boreas o'er the pool,
    And dawin' it is dreary
        When birks are bare at Yule.

II.

    O bitter blaws the e'enin' blast
        When bitter bites the frost,
    And in the mirk and dreary drift
        The hills and glens are lost.

III.

    Ne'er sae murky blew the night
        That drifted o'er the hill,
    But a bonnie Peg-a-Ramsey
        Gat grist to her mill.

Quando 'l sol bagna in mur l' aurato carro.

HIS NIGHTS ARE, LIKE HIS DAYS, PASSED IN TORMENT.


    When in the sea sinks the sun's golden light,
And on my mind and nature darkness lies,
With the pale moon, faint stars and clouded skies
I pass a weary and a painful night:
To her who hears me not I then rehearse
My sad life's fruitless toils, early and late;
And with the world and with my gloomy fate,
With Love, with Laura and myself, converse.
Sleep is forbid me: I have no repose,
But sighs and groans instead, till morn returns,
And tears, with which mine eyes a sad heart feeds;
Then comes the dawn, the thick air clearer grows,
But not my soul; the sun which in it burns
Alone can cure the grief his fierce warmth breeds.

NOTT.
...

An old man planted and dug and tended,
Toiling in joy from dew to dew;
The sun was kind, and the rain befriended;
Fine grew his orchard and fair to view.
Then he said: "I will quiet my thrifty fears,
For here is fruit for my failing years."

But even then the storm-clouds gathered,
Swallowing up the azure sky;
The sweeping winds into white foam lathered
The placid breast of the bay, hard by;
Then the spirits that raged in the darkened air
Swept o'er his orchard and left it bare.

The old man stood in the rain, uncaring,
Viewing the place the storm had swept;
And then with a cry from his soul despairing,
He bowed him down to the earth and wept.
But a voice cried aloud from the driving rain;
"Arise, old man, and plant again!"

    Hail, thairm-inspirin', rattlin' Willie!
    Though fortune's road be rough an' hilly
    To every fiddling, rhyming billie,
        We never heed,
    But tak' it like the unback'd filly,
        Proud o' her speed.

    When idly goavan whyles we saunter
    Yirr, fancy barks, awa' we canter
    Uphill, down brae, till some mishanter,
        Some black bog-hole,
    Arrests us, then the scathe an' banter
        We're forced to thole.

    Hale be your heart! Hale be your fiddle!
    Lang may your elbuck jink and diddle,
    To cheer you through the weary widdle
        O' this wild warl',
    Until you on a crummock driddle
        A gray-hair'd carl.

    Come wealth, come poortith, late or soon,
    Heaven send your hear...

"Mitte sectari ROSA quo locorum
Sera moretur."
--Hor. i. 38.


I had a vacant dwelling--
Where situated, I,
As naught can serve the telling,
Decline to specify;--
Enough 'twas neither haunted,
Entailed, nor out of date;
I put up "Tenant Wanted,"
And left the rest to Fate.

Then, Rose, you passed the window,--
I see you passing yet,--
Ah, what could I within do,
When, Rose, our glances met!
You snared me, Rose, with ribbons,
Your rose-mouth made me thrall,
Brief--briefer far than Gibbon's,
Was my "Decline and Fall."

I heard the summons spoken
That all hear--king and clown:
You smiled--the ice was broken;
You stopped--the bill was down.
How blind we are! It never
Occurred to me to seek
If you had ...

To build a house, with love for architect,
Ranks first and foremost in the joys of life.
And in a tiny cabin, shaped for two,
The space for happiness is just as great
As in a palace.    What a world were this
If each soul born received a plot of ground;
A little plot, whereon a home might rise,
And beauteous green things grow!
        We give the dead,
The idle vagrant dead, the Potter's Field;
Yet to the living not one inch of soil.
Nay, we take from them soil, and sun, and air,
To fashion slums and hell-holes for the race.
And to our poor we say, 'Go starve and die
As beggars die; so gain your heritage.'

II

That was a most uncanny dream; I thought the wraiths of those
Long buried in the Potter's Field, in shredded shrouds arose;
    The...

I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afar
From rail-track and from highway, and I heard
In field and farmstead many an ancient word
Of local lineage like "Thu bist," "Er war,"

"Ich woll," "Er sholl," and by-talk similar,
Nigh as they speak who in this month's moon gird
At England's very loins, thereunto spurred
By gangs whose glory threats and slaughters are.

Then seemed a Heart crying: "Whosoever they be
At root and bottom of this, who flung this flame
Between kin folk kin tongued even as are we,

"Sinister, ugly, lurid, be their fame;
May their familiars grow to shun their name,
And their brood perish everlastingly."

April 1915.

How beautiful a new sun is when it rises,
flashing out its greeting, like an explosion!
Happy, whoever hails with sweet emotion
its descent, nobler than a dream, to our eyes!


I remember! I’ve seen all, flower, furrow, fountain,
swoon beneath its look, like a throbbing heart
Let’s run quickly, it’s late, towards the horizon,
to catch at least one slanting ray as it departs!


But I pursue the vanishing God in vain:
irresistible Night establishes its sway,
full of shudders, black, dismal, cold:


an odour of the tomb floats in the shadow,
at the swamp’s edge, feet faltering I go,
bruising damp slugs, and unexpected toads.

    I

    Oh, how good it is to be
    Foot-loose and heart-free!
    Just my dog and pipe and I, underneath the vast sky;
    Trail to try and goal to win, white road and cool inn;
    Fields to lure a lad afar, clear spring and still star;
    Lilting feet that never tire, green dingle, fagot fire;
    None to hurry, none to hold, heather hill and hushed fold;
    Nature like a picture book, laughing leaf and bright brook;
    Every day a jewel bright, set serenely in the night;
    Every night a holy shrine, radiant for a day divine.

    Weathered cheek and kindly eye, let the wanderer go by.
    Woman-love and wistful heart, let the gipsy one depart.
    For the farness and the road are his glory and his goad.
    Oh, the lilt of youth and Spring! Eyes l...

And passing here through evening dew,
He hastened happy to her door,
But found the old folk only two
With no more footsteps on the floor
To walk again below the skies
Where beaten paths do fall and rise.

For she wer gone from earthly eyes
To be a-kept in darksome sleep
Until the good again do rise
A joy to souls they left to weep.
The rose were dust that bound her brow;
The moth did eat her Sunday cape;
Her frock were out of fashion now;
Her shoes were dried up out of shape.

Quand' io veggio dal ciel scender l' Aurora.

MORN RENDERS HIS GRIEF MORE POIGNANT.


    When from the heavens I see Aurora beam,
With rosy-tinctured cheek and golden hair,
Love bids my face the hue of sadness wear:
"There Laura dwells!" I with a sigh exclaim.
Thou knowest well the hour that shall redeem,
Happy Tithonus, thy much-valued fair;
But not to her I love can I repair,
Till death extinguishes this vital flame.
Yet need'st thou not thy separation mourn;
Certain at evening's close is the return
Of her, who doth not thy hoar locks despise;
But my nights sad, my days are render'd drear,
By her, who bore my thoughts to yonder skies,
And only a remember'd name left here.

NOTT.


    When from the east appears the ...

Youth rambles on life’s arid mount,
And strikes the rock, and finds the vein,
And brings the water from the fount,
The fount which shall not flow again.

The man mature with labour chops
For the bright stream a channel grand,
And sees not that the sacred drops
Ran off and vanish’d out of hand.

And then the old man totters nigh
And feebly rakes among the stones.
The mount is mute, the channel-dry;
And down he lays his weary bones