Death

I
Love and praise, and a length of days whose shadow cast upon time is light,
Days whose sound was a spell shed round from wheeling wings as of doves in flight,
Meet in one, that the mounting sun to-day may triumph, and cast out night.
Two years more than the full fourscore lay hallowing hands on a sacred head,
Scarce one score of the perfect four uncrowned of fame as they smiled and fled:
Still and soft and alive aloft their sunlight stays though the suns be dead.
Ere we were or were thought on, ere the love that gave us to life began,
Fame grew strong with his crescent song, to greet the goal of the race they ran,
Song with fame, and the lustrous name with years whose changes acclaimed the man.

II
Soon, ere time in the rounding rhyme of choral seasons had hailed us men,
W...

To An Unknowing God



Much wonder I - here long low-laid -
That this dead wall should be
Betwixt the Maker and the made,
Between Thyself and me!

For, say one puts a child to nurse,
He eyes it now and then
To know if better 'tis, or worse,
And if it mourn, and when.

But Thou, Lord, giv'st us men our clay
In helpless bondage thus
To Time and Chance, and seem'st straightway
To think no more of us!

That some disaster cleft Thy scheme
And tore us wide apart,
So that no cry can cross, I deem;
For Thou art mild of heart,

And would'st not shape and shut us in
Where voice can not he heard:
'Tis plain Thou meant'st that we should win
Thy succour by a word.

Might but Thy sense flash down the skies

These two ballads must be considered together, as the last six verses (18-23) of The Clerk's Twa Sons, as here given, are a variant of The Wife of Usher's Well.


Texts.--The Clerk's Twa Sons is taken from Kinloch's MSS., in the handwriting of James Chambers, as it was sung to his grandmother by an old woman.

The Wife of Usher's Well is from Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and however incomplete, may well stand alone.


The Story has a fairly close parallel in the well-known German ballad, 'Das Schloss in Oesterreich'; and a ballad found both in Spain and Italy has resemblances to each. But in these two ballads, especially in The Wife of Usher's Well, the interest lies rather in the impressiveness of the verses than in the story.

Amor che nel pensier mio vive e regna.

THE COURAGE AND TIMIDITY OF LOVE.


    The long Love that in my thought I harbour,
And in my heart doth keep his residence,
Into my face pressèth with bold pretence,
And there campèth displaying his bannèr.
She that me learns to love and to suffèr,
And wills that my trust, and lust's negligence
Be rein'd by reason, shame, and reverence,
With his hardiness takes displeasure.
Wherewith Love to the heart's forest he fleeth,
Leaving his enterprise with pain and cry,
And there him hideth, and not appearèth.
What may I do, when my master fearèth,
But in the field with him to live and die?
For good is the life, ending faithfully.

WYATT.


    Love, that liveth and reigneth in my thoug...

Two doves once cherish'd for each other
The love that brother hath for brother.
But one, of scenes domestic tiring,
To see the foreign world aspiring,
Was fool enough to undertake
A journey long, o'er land and lake.
'What plan is this?' the other cried;
'Wouldst quit so soon thy brother's side?
This absence is the worst of ills;
Thy heart may bear, but me it kills.
Pray, let the dangers, toil, and care,
Of which all travellers tell,
Your courage somewhat quell.
Still, if the season later were -
O wait the zephyrs! - hasten not -
Just now the raven, on his oak,
In hoarser tones than usual spoke.
My heart forebodes the saddest lot, -
The falcons, nets - Alas, it rains!
My brother, are thy wants supplied -
Provisions, shelter, pocket-guide,

    When the warm sun, that brings
Seed-time and harvest, has returned again,
'Tis sweet to visit the still wood, where springs
    The first flower of the plain.

    I love the season well,
When forest glades are teeming with bright forms,
Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell
    The coming-on of storms.

    From the earth's loosened mould
The sapling draws its sustenance, and thrives;
Though stricken to the heart with winter's cold,
    The drooping tree revives.

    The softly-warbled song
Comes from the pleasant woods and coloured wings
Glance quick in the bright sun, that moves along
    The forest openings.

    When the bright sunset fills
The silver woods with light, the green slope throws
Its shadows in the hollows...

The Text.--There are two texts available for this ballad, of which the second one, here given, was said to have been taken down from the singing of an old woman by James Telfer of Liddesdale, and was so printed in Richardson's Borderers' Table Book (1846). It preserves almost the whole of the other version, taken from Robert White's papers, who recorded it in 1829; but it obviously bears marks of having been tampered with by Telfer. However, it contains certain stanzas which Child says may be regarded as traditional, and it is therefore preferred here.


The Story.--Percival or Parcy Reed was warden of the district round Troughend, a high tract of land in Redesdale. In the discharge of his duties he incurred the enmity of the family of Hall of Girsonsfield (two miles east of Troughend) and of some moss-troopers named...

I left you in the morning,
And in the morning glow,
You walked a way beside me
To make me sad to go.
Do you know me in the gloaming,
Gaunt and dusty gray with roaming?
Are you dumb because you know me not,
Or dumb because you know?

All for me And not a question
For the faded flowers gay
That could take me from beside you
For the ages of a day?
They are yours, and be the measure
Of their worth for you to treasure,
The measure of the little while
That I've been long away.

On the barren hillside lone he sat;
On his head he wore a tattered hat;
In his hand he bore a crooked staff;
Never heard I laughter like his laugh,
On the barren hillside, thistle-hoar.

Cracked his laughter sounded, harsh as woe,
As the croaking, thinned, of a crow:
At his back hung, pinned, a wallet old,
Bulged with roots and simples caked with mould:
On the barren hillside in the wind.

Roots of twisted twin-leaf; sassafras;
Bloodroot, tightly whipped 'round with grass;
Adder's-tongue; and, tipped brown and black,
Yellowroot and snakeroot filled his pack,
On the barren hillside, winter-stripped.

There is nothing sadder than old age;
Nothing saddens more than that stage
When, forlornly poor, bent with toil,
One must starve or wring ...

In o'er-strict calyx lingering,
Lay music's bud too long unblown,
Till thou, Beethoven, breathed the spring:
Then bloomed the perfect rose of tone.

O Psalmist of the weak, the strong,
O Troubadour of love and strife,
Co-Litanist of right and wrong,
Sole Hymner of the whole of life,

I know not how, I care not why, -
Thy music sets my world at ease,
And melts my passion's mortal cry
In satisfying symphonies.

It soothes my accusations sour
'Gainst thoughts that fray the restless soul:
The stain of death; the pain of power;
The lack of love 'twixt part and whole;

The yea-nay of Freewill and Fate,
Whereof both cannot be, yet are;
The praise a poet wins too late
Who starves from earth into a star;

The lies that serve...

Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not:
I am no summer friend, but wintry cold,
A silly sheep benighted from the fold,
A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot.
Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot,
Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold;
Lest you with me should shiver on the wold,
Athirst and hungering on a barren spot.

For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge,
I live alone, I look to die alone:
Yet sometimes when a wind sighs through the sedge,
Ghosts of my buried years and friends come back,
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown
On sometime summer's unreturning track.

Why doe I speake of ioy, or write of loue,
When my hart is the very Den of horror,
And in my soule the paynes of hell I proue,
With all his torments and infernall terror?
Myne eyes want teares thus to bewayle my woe,
My brayne is dry with weeping all too long;
My sighes be spent with griefe and sighing so,
And I want words for to expresse my wrong.
But still, distracted in loues lunacy,
And Bedlam like thus rauing in my griefe,
Now rayle vpon her hayre, now on her eye,
Now call her Goddesse, then I call her thiefe;
    Now I deny her, then I doe confesse her,
    Now I doe curse her, then againe I blesse her.

Air--The Wheelwright.


I.

Oh! weep those days, the penal days,
When Ireland hopelessly complained.
Oh! weep those days, the penal days,
When godless persecution reigned;
When year by year,
For serf and peer,
Fresh cruelties were made by law,
And filled with hate,
Our senate sate
To weld anew each fetter's flaw.
Oh! weep those days, those penal days--
Their memory still on Ireland weighs.


II.

They bribed the flock, they bribed the son,
To sell the priest and rob the sire;
Their dogs were taught alike to run
Upon the scent of wolf and friar.
Among the poor,
Or on the moor,
Were hid the pious and the true--
While traitor knave,
And recreant slave,
Had riches, rank, and retinue;

My friend the Sun--like all my friends
Inconstant, lovely, far away -
Is out, and bright, and condescends
To glory in our holiday.

A furious march with him I'll go
And race him in the Western train,
And wake the hills of long ago
And swim the Devon sea again.

I have done foolishly to head
The footway of the false moonbeams,
To light my lamp and call the dead
And read their long black printed dreams.

I have done foolishly to dwell
With Fear upon her desert isle,
To take my shadowgraph to Hell,
And then to hope the shades would smile.

And since the light must fail me soon
(But faster, faster, Western train!)
Proud meadows of the afternoon,
I have remembered you again.

And I'll go seek through moor and dale
A...

An Incident Of 1883



"Sir, will you let me give you a ride?
Nox Venit, and the heath is wide."
- My phaeton-lantern shone on one
Young, fair, even fresh,
But burdened with flesh:
A leathern satchel at his side,
His breathings short, his coat undone.

'Twas as if his corpulent figure slopped
With the shake of his walking when he stopped,
And, though the night's pinch grew acute,
He wore but a thin
Wind-thridded suit,
Yet well-shaped shoes for walking in,
Artistic beaver, cane gold-topped.

"Alas, my friend," he said with a smile,
"I am daily bound to foot ten mile -
Wet, dry, or dark - before I rest.
Six months to live
My doctors give
Me as my prospect here, at best,
Unless I vamp my sturdiest!"

His...