Death

    "A land without ruins is a land without memories --
    a land without memories is a land without history.
    A land that wears a laurel crown may be fair to see;
    but twine a few sad cypress leaves around the brow of any land,
    and be that land barren, beautiless and bleak, it becomes lovely
    in its consecrated coronet of sorrow, and it wins the sympathy of the heart
    and of history.    Crowns of roses fade -- crowns of thorns endure.
    Calvaries and crucifixions take deepest hold of humanity --
    the triumphs of might are transient -- they pass and are forgotten --
    the sufferings of right are graven deepest on the chronicle of nations."



Yes give me the land where the ruins are spread,
And the living tread light on the hearts of the dead;

My sister, my child
Imagine how sweet
To live there as lovers do!
To kiss as we choose
To love and to die
In that land resembling you!
The misty suns
Of shifting skies
To my spirit are as dear
As the evasions
Of your eyes
That shine behind their tears.

There, all is order and leisure,
Luxury, beauty, and pleasure.

The tables would glow
With the lustre of years
To ornament our room.
The rarest of blooms
Would mingle their scents
With amber's vague perfume.
The ceilings, rich
The mirrors, deep
The splendour of the East
All whisper there
To the silent soul
Her sweet familiar speech.

There, all is order and leisure,
Luxury, beauty, and pleasure.

And these canals
Bear ships at ...

Oh the snow, - the bright fleecy snow!
Isn't it grand when the north breezes blow?
Isn't it bracing the ice to skim o'er,
With a jovial friend or the one you adore?
How the ice crackles, and how the skates ring,
How friends flit past you like birds on the wing.
How the gay laugh ripples through the clear air,
How bloom the roses on cheeks of the fair!
Few are the pleasures that life can bestow,
To equal the charms of the beautiful snow.

Oh, the snow,-the pitiless snow!
Cruel and cold, as the shelterless know;
Huddled in nooks on the mud or the flags,
Wrapp'd in a few scanty, fluttering rags.
Gently it rests on the roof and the spire,
And filling the streets with its slush and the mire,
Freezing the life out of poor, starving souls,
Wild whirling and...

Ye little flowrets, wild an free,
Yo're welcome, aye as onny!
Ther's but few seets 'at meet mi ee
'At ivver seem as bonny.
Th' furst gift 'at Lizzie gave to me,
Wor a bunch o' bloomin heather,
Shoo pluckt it off o'th' edge o'th' lea,
Whear we'd been set together.

An when shoo put it i' mi hand,
A silent tear wor wellin
Within her ee; - it fell to th' graand,
A doleful stooary tellin.
"It is a little gift," shoo sed,
"An sooin will fade an wither,
Yet, still, befooar its bloom is shed,
We two mun pairt for ivver."

I tried to cheer her trubbled mind,
Wi' tender words endearin;
An raand her neck mi arms entwined,
But grief her breast wor tearin.
"Why should mi parents sell for gold,
Ther dowter's life-long pleasure?
Noa c...

The pine-trees bend to listen to the autumn wind as it mutters
Something which sets the black poplars ashake with hysterical laughter;
While slowly the house of day is closing its eastern shutters.

Further down the valley the clustered tombstones recede,
Winding about their dimness the mist's grey cerements, after
The street lamps in the darkness have suddenly started to bleed.

The leaves fly over the window and utter a word as they pass
To the face that leans from the darkness, intent, with two dark-filled eyes
That watch for ever earnestly from behind the window glass.

On the damp margin of the sea-beat shore
    Lonely at eve to wander; - or reclin'd
    Beneath a rock, what time the rising wind
    Mourns o'er the waters, and, with solemn roar,
Vast billows into caverns surging pour,
    And back recede alternate; while combin'd
    Loud shriek the sea-fowls, harbingers assign'd,
    Clamorous and fearful, of the stormy hour;
To listen with deep thought those awful sounds;
    Gaze on the boiling, the tumultuous waste,
    Or promontory rude, or craggy mounds
Staying the furious main, delight has cast
    O'er my rapt spirit, and my thrilling heart,
    Dear as the softer joys green vales impart.

Since shunning pain, I ease can never find;
Since bashful dread seeks where he knows me harmed;
Since will is won, and stopped ears are charmed;
Since force doth faint, and sight doth make me blind;
Since loosing long, the faster still I bind;
Since naked sense can conquer reason armed;
Since heart, in chilling fear, with ice is warmed;
In fine, since strife of thought but mars the mind,
I yield, O Love, unto thy loathed yoke,
Yet craving law of arms, whose rule doth teach,
That, hardly used, who ever prison broke,
In justice quit, of honour made no breach:
Whereas, if I a grateful guardian have,
Thou art my lord, and I thy vowed slave.


When Love puffed up with rage of high disdain,
Resolved to make me pattern of his might,
Like foe, whose wits inc...

I am growing old and weary
Ere yet my locks are gray;
Before me lies eternity,
Behind me but a day.
How fast the years are vanishing!
They melt like April snow:
It seems to me but yesterday
Twenty years ago.

There's the school-house on the hill-side,
And the romping scholars all;
Where we used to con our daily tasks,
And play our games of ball.
They rise to me in visions
In sunny dreams and ho'
I sport among the boys and girls
Twenty years ago.

We played at ball in summer time
We boys with hearty will;
With merry shouts in winter time
We coasted on the hill.
We would choose our chiefs, divide in bands,
And build our forts of snow,
And storm those forts right gallantly
Twenty years ago.

Last year in June...

Beyond the north wind lay the land of old
Where men dwelt blithe and blameless, clothed and fed
With joy’s bright raiment and with love’s sweet bread,
The whitest flock of earth’s maternal fold.
None there might wear about his brows enrolled
A light of lovelier fame than rings your head,
Whose lovesome love of children and the dead
All men give thanks for: I far off behold
A dear dead hand that links us, and a light
The blithest and benignest of the night,
The night of death’s sweet sleep, wherein may be
A star to show your spirit in present sight
Some happier island in the Elysian sea
Where Rab may lick the hand of Marjorie.

How shall I paint thee? Be this naked stone
My seat, while I give way to such intent;
Pleased could my verse, a speaking monument,
Make to the eyes of men thy features known.
But as of all those tripping lambs not one
Outruns his fellows, so hath Nature lent
To thy beginning nought that doth present
Peculiar ground for hope to build upon.
To dignify the spot that gives thee birth,
No sign of hoar Antiquity's esteem
Appears, and none of modern Fortune's care;
Yet thou thyself hast round thee shed a gleam
Of brilliant moss, instinct with freshness rare;
Prompt offering to thy Foster-mother, Earth!

I am a cloud in the heaven’s height,
The stars are lit for my delight,
Tireless and changeful, swift and free,
I cast my shadow on hill and sea
But why do the pines on the mountain’s crest
Call to me always, “Rest, rest”?

I throw my mantle over the moon
And I blind the sun on his throne at noon,
Nothing can tame me, nothing can bind,
I am a child of the heartless wind
But oh the pines on the mountain’s crest
Whispering always, “Rest, rest.”

Sometimes, slow moving through unlovely days,
The need to look on beauty falls on me
As on the blind the anguished wish to see,
As on the dumb the urge to rage or praise;
Beauty of marble where the eyes may gaze
Till soothed to peace by white serenity,
Or canvas where one master hand sets free
Great colours that like angels blend and blaze.

O, there be many starved in this strange wise--
For this diviner food their days deny,
Knowing beyond their vision beauty stands
With pitying eyes--with tender, outstretched hands,
Eager to give to every passer-by
The loveliness that feeds a soul's demands.

I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young
And weep because I know all things now:
I have been a hazel tree and they hung
The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough
Among my leaves in times out of mind:
I became a rush that horses tread:
I became a man, a hater of the wind,
Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head
Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the hair
Of the woman that he loves, until he dies;
Although the rushes and the fowl of the air
Cry of his love with their pitiful cries.

    Musician, with the bent and brooding face,
    White brow and thunderous eyes: you are not playing
    Merely the music that dead hand did trace.

    Musician, with the lifted resolute face,
    And scornful smile about your closed mouth straying,
    And hand that moves with swift or fluttering grace,
    It is not that man's music you are playing.

    The grave and merry tunes he made you are playing,
    Each march and dirge and dance he made endures,
    But changed and mastered, and these things you're saying,
    These joys and sorrows are not his but yours.

    You take those notes of his: you seize and fling
    His music as a dancer flings her veil,
    Toss it and twist it, mould it, make it sing,
    Whisper, shout savagely, lament and w...

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam round the Pole God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that he'd "sooner live in hell."

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, the...

One silent night of late,
When every creature rested,
Came one unto my gate,
And knocking, me molested.

Who's that, said I, beats there,
And troubles thus the sleepy?
Cast off; said he, all fear,
And let not locks thus keep ye.

For I a boy am, who
By moonless nights have swerved;
And all with showers wet through,
And e'en with cold half starved.

I pitiful arose,
And soon a taper lighted;
And did myself disclose
Unto the lad benighted.

I saw he had a bow,
And wings too, which did shiver;
And looking down below,
I spied he had a quiver.

I to my chimney's shine
Brought him, as Love professes,
And chafed his hands with mine,
And dried his dropping tresses.

But when he felt him warm'd,

I have lost, and lately, these
Many dainty mistresses:
Stately Julia, prime of all;
Sapho next, a principal:
Smooth Anthea, for a skin
White, and heaven-like crystalline:
Sweet Electra, and the choice
Myrha, for the lute and voice.
Next, Corinna, for her wit,
And the graceful use of it;
With Perilla: All are gone;
Only Herrick's left alone,
For to number sorrow by
Their departures hence, and die.

The Text is given from Scott's Minstrelsy (1803), vol. iii. pp. 83-4. His introduction states that it was obtained from recitation in the Forest of Ettrick, and that it relates to the execution of a Border freebooter, named Cokburne, by James V., in 1529.


The Story referred to above may have once existed in the ballad, but the lyrical dirge as it now stands is obviously corrupted with a broadside-ballad, The Lady turned Serving-man, given with 'improvements' by Percy (Reliques, 1765, vol. iii. p. 87, etc.). Compare the first three stanzas of the Lament with stanzas 3, 4, and 5 of the broadside:--

    3.
    And then my love built me a bower,
    Bedeckt with many a fragrant flower;
    A braver bower you never did see
    Than my true-love did build for me.
<...