Wae worth thy power, thou cursed leaf,
        Fell source o' a' my woe an' grief;
        For lack o' thee I've lost my lass,
        For lack o' thee I scrimp my glass.
        I see the children of affliction
        Unaided, through thy cursed restriction
        I've seen the oppressor's cruel smile
        Amid his hapless victim's spoil:
        And for thy potence vainly wished,
        To crush the villain in the dust.
    For lack o' thee, I leave this much-lov'd shore,
    Never, perhaps, to greet old Scotland more.

R. B.

From the cool and dark-lipped furrow breathes a dim delight
Through the woodland's purple plumage to the diamond night.
Aureoles of joy encircle every blade of grass
Where the dew-fed creatures silent and enraptured pass.
And the restless ploughman pauses, turns, and wondering,
Deep beneath his rustic habit finds himself a king;
For a fiery moment looking with the eyes of God
Over fields a slave at morning bowed him to the sod.
Blind and dense with revelation every moment flies.
And unto the mighty mother, gay, eternal, rise
All the hopes we hold, the gladness, dreams of things to be.
One of all thy generations, mother, hails to thee.
Hail, and hail, and hail for ever, though I turn again
From thy joy unto the human vestiture of pain.
I, thy child who went forth radiant...

    I.

    O night, send up the harvest moon
    To walk about the fields,
    And make of midnight magic noon
    On lonely tarns and wealds.

    In golden ranks, with golden crowns,
    All in the yellow land,
    Old solemn kings in rustling gowns,
    The shocks moon-charmed stand.

    Sky-mirror she, afloat in space,
    Beholds our coming morn:
    Her heavenly joy hath such a grace,
    It ripens earthly corn;

    Like some lone saint with upward eyes,
    Lost in the deeps of prayer:
    The people still their prayers and sighs,
    And gazing ripen there.

    II.

    So, like the corn moon-ripened last,
    Would I, weary and gray,
    On golden memories ripen fast,
    And ripening pass awa...

Look how the lark soars upward and is gone,
Turning a spirit as he nears the sky!
His voice is heard, but body there is none
To fix the vague excursions of the eye.
So, poets' songs are with us, tho' they die
Obscured, and hid by death's oblivious shroud,
And Earth inherits the rich melody
Like raining music from the morning cloud.
Yet, few there be who pipe so sweet and loud
Their voices reach us through the lapse of space:
The noisy day is deafen'd by a crowd
Of undistinguished birds, a twittering race;
But only lark and nightingale forlorn
Fill up the silences of night and morn.

Thy hill leave not, O Spring,
Nor longer leap down to the new-green'd Plain.
Thy western cliff-caves keep
O Wind, nor branch-borne Echo after thee complain
With grumbling wild and deep.
Let Blossom cling
Sudden and frozen round the eyes of trees,
Nor fall, nor fall.
Be still each Wing,
Hushed each call.

So was it ordered, so
Hung all things silent, still;
Only Time earless moved on, stepping slow
Up the scarped hill,
And even Time in a long twilight stayed
And, for a whim, that whispered whim obeyed.

There was no breath, no sigh,
No wind lost in the sky
Roamed the horizon round.
The harsh dead leaf slept noiseless on the ground,
By unseen mouse nor insect stirred
Nor beak of hungry bird.

Then were voices heard

The King of Yellow Butterflies,
The King of Yellow Butterflies,
The King of Yellow Butterflies,
Now orders forth his men.
He says "The time is almost here
When violets bloom again."
Adown the road the fickle rout
Goes flashing proud and bold,
Adown the road the fickle rout
Goes flashing proud and bold,
Adown the road the fickle rout
Goes flashing proud and bold,
They shiver by the shallow pools,
They shiver by the shallow pools,
They shiver by the shallow pools,
And whimper of the cold.
They drink and drink. A frail pretense!
They love to pose and preen.
Each pool is but a looking glass,
Where their sweet wings are seen.
Each pool is but a looking glass,
Where their sweet wings are seen.
Each pool is but a looking glass,
Wher...

Soon as the spring its earliest visit pays,
And buds with March and April's lengthen'd days
Of mingled suns and shades, and snow, and rain,
Forcing the crackling frost to melt again;
Oft sprinkling from their bosoms, as they come,
A dwindling daisy here and there to bloom;
I mark the widow, and her orphan boy,
In preparation for their old employ.
The cloak and hat that had for seasons past
Repell'd the rain and buffeted the blast,
Though worn to shreddings, still are occupied
In make-shift way their nakedness to hide;
For since her husband died her hopes are few,
When time's worn out the old, to purchase new.
Upon the green they're seen by rising sun,
To sharp winds croodling they would vainly shun,
With baskets on their arm and hazel crooks
Dragging the ...

This mortal body of a thousand days
Now fills, O Burns, a space in thine own room,
Where thou didst dream alone on budded bays,
Happy and thoughtless of thy day of doom!
My pulse is warm with thine old barley-bree,
My head is light with pledging a great soul,
My eyes are wandering, and I cannot see,
Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal;
Yet can I stamp my foot upon thy floor,
Yet can I ope thy window-sash to find
The meadow thou hast tramped o'er and o'er,
Yet can I think of thee till thought is blind,
Yet can I gulp a bumper to thy name,
O smile among the shades, for this is fame!

Is it not fine to walk in spring,
When leaves are born, and hear birds sing?
And when they lose their singing powers,
In summer, watch the bees at flowers?
Is it not fine, when summer's past,
To have the leaves, no longer fast,
Biting my heel where'er I go,
Or dancing lightly on my toe?
Now winter's here and rivers freeze;
As I walk out I see the trees,
Wherein the pretty squirrels sleep,
All standing in the snow so deep:
And every twig, however small,
Is blossomed white and beautiful.
Then welcome, winter, with thy power
To make this tree a big white flower;
To make this tree a lovely sight,
With fifty brown arms draped in white,
While thousands of small fingers show
In soft white gloves of purest snow.

        September came and with it frost
        The season's pasture it seemed lost,
        And the wondrous yield of corn
        Of its green beauty it was shorn.

        Frost it came like early robber,
        But gentle rains came in October,
        Which were absorbed by grateful soil;
        With green once more the pastures smile.

        And cows again are happy seen
        Enjoying of the pastures green,
        And flow of milk again they yield
        From the sweet feed of grassy field.

        And we have now a fine November,
        Warmer far than in September;
        The apple, which is queen of fruits,
        Was a good crop and so is roots.

        The rains they did replenish springs,
        And it grati...

I.

    When I think on the happy days
        I spent wi' you, my dearie;
    And now what lands between us lie,
        How can I be but eerie!

II.

    How slow ye move, ye heavy hours,
        As ye were wae and weary!
    It was na sae ye glinted by,
        When I was wi' my dearie.

TO ALFRED TENNYSON

Poet! I come to touch thy lance with mine;
    Not as a knight, who on the listed field
    Of tourney touched his adversary's shield
    In token of defiance, but in sign
Of homage to the mastery, which is thine,
    In English song; nor will I keep concealed,
    And voiceless as a rivulet frost-congealed,
    My admiration for thy verse divine.
Not of the howling dervishes of song,
    Who craze the brain with their delirious dance,
    Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart!
Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong,
    To thee our love and our allegiance,
    For thy allegiance to the poet's art.

Something is dead . . .
The grace of sunset solitudes, the march
Of the solitary moon, the pomp and power
Of round on round of shining soldier-stars
Patrolling space, the bounties of the sun -
Sovran, tremendous, unimaginable -
The multitudinous friendliness of the sea,
Possess no more - no more.

Something is dead . . .
The Autumn rain-rot deeper and wider soaks
And spreads, the burden of Winter heavier weighs,
His melancholy close and closer yet
Cleaves, and those incantations of the Spring
That made the heart a centre of miracles
Grow formal, and the wonder-working bours
Arise no more - no more.

Something is dead . . .
'Tis time to creep in close about the fire
And tell grey tales of what we were, and dream
Old dreams and faded, an...

Autumn, thy rushing blast
    Sweeps in wild eddies by,
Whirling the sear leaves past,
    Beneath my feet, to die.
Nature her requiem sings
    In many a plaintive tone,
As to the wind she flings
    Sad music, all her own.

The murmur of the rill
    Is hoarse and sullen now,
And the voice of joy is still
    In grove and leafy bough.
There's not a single wreath,
    Of all Spring's thousand flowers,
To strew her bier in death,
    Or deck her faded bowers.

I hear a spirit sigh
    Where the meeting pines resound,
Which tells me all must die,
    As the leaf dies on the ground.
The brightest hopes we cherish,
    Which own a mortal trust,
But bloom awhile to perish
    And moulder in the dust.

Sweep on...

Ant-like city, city full of dreams,
where the passer-by, at dawn, meets the spectre!
Mysteries everywhere are the sap that streams
through the narrow veins of this great ogre.


One morning, when, on the dreary street,
the buildings all seemed heightened, cold
a swollen river’s banks carved out to greet,
(their stage-set mirroring an actor’s soul),


the dirty yellow fog that flooded space,
arguing with my already weary soul,
steeling my nerves like a hero, I paced
suburbs shaken by the carts’ drum-roll.


Suddenly, an old man in rags, their yellow
mirroring the colour of the rain-filled sky,
whose looks alone prompted alms to flow,
except for the evil glittering of his eye,


appeared. You’d have thought his eyeballs

They brought me rubies from the mine,
And held them to the sun;
I said, they are drops of frozen wine
From Eden's vats that run.

I looked again,--I thought them hearts
Of friends to friends unknown;
Tides that should warm each neighboring life
Are locked in sparkling stone.

But fire to thaw that ruddy snow,
To break enchanted ice,
And give love's scarlet tides to flow,--
When shall that sun arise?

Grudgings turns bread to stones, when to the poor
He gives an alms, and chides them from his door.

So easy 'tis to make a rhyme,
That did the world but know it,
Your coachman might Parnassus climb,
Your butler be a poet.

Then, oh, how charming it would be
If, when in haste hysteric
You called the page, you learned that he
Was grappling with a lyric.

Or else what rapture it would yield,
When cook sent up the salad,
To find within its depths concealed
A touching little ballad.

Or if for tea and toast you yearned,
What joy to find upon it
The chambermaid had coyly laid
A palpitating sonnet.

Your baker could the fashion set;
Your butcher might respond well;
With every tart a triolet,
With every chop a rondel.

Your tailor's bill . . . well, I'll be blowed!
Dear chap! I never knowed him . . .
He's gone a...