Family

Of love that never found his earthly close,
What sequel? Streaming eyes and breaking hearts?
Or all the same as if he had not been?
Not so. Shall Error in the round of time
Still father Truth? O shall the braggart shout
For some blind glimpse of freedom work itself
Thro’ madness, hated by the wise, to law
System and empire? Sin itself be found
The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun?
And only he, this wonder, dead, become
Mere highway dust? or year by year alone
Sit brooding in the ruins of a life,
Nightmare of youth, the spectre of himself!
If this were thus, if this, indeed, were all,
Better the narrow brain, the stony heart,
The staring eye glazed o’er with sapless days,
The long mechanic pacings to and fro,
The set gray life, and apathetic end.
B...

One that is ever kind said yesterday:
"Your well-beloved's hair has threads of grey,
And little shadows come about her eyes;
Time can but make it easier to be wise
Though now it seems impossible, and so
All that you need is patience."
Heart cries, "No,
I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain.
Time can but make her beauty over again:
Because of that great nobleness of hers
The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,
Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways
When all the wild Summer was in her gaze."
Heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head,
You'd know the folly of being comforted.

I
Here in the self is all that man can know
Of Beauty, all the wonder, all the power,
All the unearthly colour, all the glow,
Here in the self which withers like a flower;
Here in the self which fades as hours pass,
And droops and dies and rots and is forgotten
Sooner, by ages, than the mirroring glass
In which it sees its glory still unrotten.
Here in the flesh, within the flesh, behind,
Swift in the blood and throbbing on the bone,
Beauty herself, the universal mind,
Eternal April wandering alone;
The God, the holy Ghost, the atoning Lord,
Here in the flesh, the never yet explored.

II
What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt
Held in cohesion by unresting cells
Which work they know not why, which never halt,
Myself unwitting where their ma...

It was late in mild October, and the long autumnal rain
Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with grass again;
The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the woodlands gay
With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the meadow flowers of May.
Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the sun rose broad and red,
At first a rayless disk of fire, he brightened as he sped;
Yet, even his noontide glory fell chastened and subdued,
On the cornfields and the orchards, and softly pictured wood.
And all that quiet afternoon, slow sloping to the night,
He wove with golden shuttle the haze with yellow light;
Slanting through the painted beeches, he glorified the hill;
And, beneath it, pond and meadow lay brighter, greener still.
And shouting boys in woodland haunts caught glimpses of tha...

If to Tradition faith be due,
And echoes from old verse speak true,
Ere the meek Saint, Columba, bore
Glad tidings to Iona's shore,
No common light of nature blessed
The mountain region of the west,
A land where gentle manners ruled
O'er men in dauntless virtues schooled,
That raised, for centuries, a bar
Impervious to the tide of war;
Yet peaceful Arts did entrance gain
Where haughty Force had striven in vain,
And, 'mid the works of skilful hands,
By wanderers brought from foreign lands
And various climes, was not unknown
The clasp that fixed the Roman Gown;
The Fibula, whose shape, I ween,
Still in the Highland Broach is seen,
Worn at the breast of some grave Dame
On road or path, or at the door
Of fern-thatched Hut on heathy moor:
B...

The Text is that of Scott's Minstrelsy, 'chiefly from the recitation of an old woman.' Scott names the ballad 'Lord Thomas and Fair Annie,' adding to the confusion already existing with 'Lord Thomas and Fair Annet.'

The Story.--Fair Annie, stolen from the home of her father, the Earl of Wemyss, by 'a knight out o'er the sea,' has borne seven sons to him. He now bids her prepare to welcome home his real bride, and she meekly obeys, suppressing her tears with difficulty. Lord Thomas and his new-come bride hear, through the wall of their bridal chamber, Annie bewailing her lot, and wishing her seven sons had never been born. The bride goes to comfort her, discovers in her a long-lost sister, and departs, thanking heaven she goes a maiden home.

Of this ballad, Herd printed a fragment in 1769, some stanzas being in...

When I am dead a few poor souls shall grieve
As I grieved for my brother long ago.
Scarce did my eyes grow dim,
I had forgotten him;
I was far-off hearing the spring winds blow,
And many summers burned
When, though still reeling with my eyes aflame,
I heard that faded name
Whispered one Spring amid the hurrying world
From which, years gone, he turned.

I looked up at my windows and I saw
The trees, thin spectres sucked forth by the moon.
The air was very still
Above a distant hill;
It was the hour of night's full silver moon.
'O are thou there my brother?' my soul cried;
And all the pale stars down bright rivers wept,
As my heart sadly crept
About the empty hills, bathed in that light
That lapped him when he died.

Ah! it was cold...

They mock my toil the nymphs and am'rous swains
And whence this fond attempt to write, they cry,
Love-songs in language that thou little know'st?
How dar'st thou risque to sing these foreign strains?
Say truly. Find'st not oft thy purpose cross'd,
And that thy fairest flow'rs, Here, fade and die?
Then with pretence of admiration high
Thee other shores expect, and other tides,
Rivers on whose grassy sides
Her deathless laurel-leaf with which to bind
Thy flowing locks, already Fame provides;
Why then this burthen, better far declin'd?
Speak, Canzone! for me. The Fair One said who guides
My willing heart, and all my Fancy's flights,
"This is the language in which Love delights."

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.

I.

We have no castles,
We have no vassals,
We have no riches, no gems and no gold;
Nothing to ponder,
Nothing to squander
Let us go wander
As minstrels of old.


II.

You with your lute, love,
I with my flute, love,
Let us make music by mountain and sea;
You with your glances,
I with my dances,
Singing romances
Of old chivalry.


III.

"Derry down derry!
Good folk, be merry!
Hither, and hearken where happiness is!
Never go borrow
Care of to-morrow,
Never go sorrow
While life hath a kiss."


IV.

Let the day gladden
Or the night sadden,
We will be merry in sunshine or snow;
You with your rhyme, love,
I with my chime, love,
We will make time, ...

Stay yet awhile, oh flowers!--oh wandering grasses,
    And creeping ferns, and climbing, clinging vines;--
Bend down and cover with lush odorous masses
        My darling's couch, where he in sleep reclines.

Stay yet awhile;--let not the chill October
    Plant spires of glinting frost about his bed;
Nor shower her faded leaves, so brown and sober,
    Among the tuberoses above his head.

I would have all things fair, and sweet, and tender,--
    The daisy's pearl, the cowslip's shield of snow,
And fragrant hyacinths in purple splendour,
    About my darling's grassy couch to grow.

Oh birds!--small pilgrims of the summer weather,
    Come hither, for my darling loved ye well;--
Here floats the thistle down for you to gather,
    And bearded grasse...

The wind it blew cold, and the ice was thick,
Deeper and deeper the snowdrifts grew;
A young mother lay in her cottage, sick, -
Her needs were many, her comforts few.
Clasped to her breast was a newborn child,
Unknowing, unmindful of weal or woe;
And away, far away, in the tempest wild,
Was a husband and father, kneedeep in the snow.
All on a Christmas morning, long ago.

The lamp burned low, and the fire was dead,
And the snow sifted in through each crevice and crack:
As she tossed and turned in her lowly bed,
And murmured, "Good Lord, bring my husband back."
The clocks in the city had told the hour
With a single stroke, for young was the day
But no swelling note from the loftiest tower,
Could reach that lone cot where a mother lay.
All on a Christm...

Day! Faster and more fast,
O'er night's brim, day boils at last:
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim.
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.

All service ranks the same with God:
If now, as formerly He trod
Paradise, His presence fills
Our earth, each only as God wills
Can work God's puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first.

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn:
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pea...

She has laughed as softly as if she sighed,
She has counted six, and over,
Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried,
Oh, each a worthy lover!
They "give her time"; for her soul must slip
Where the world has set the grooving;
She will lie to none with her fair red lip:
But love seeks truer loving.

She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb,
As her thoughts were beyond recalling;
With a glance for one, and a glance for some,
From her eyelids rising and falling;
Speaks common words with a blushful air,
Hears bold words, unreproving;
But her silence says, what she never will swear,
And love seeks better loving.

Go, lady! lean to the night-guitar,
And drop a smile to the bringer;
Then smile as sweetly, when he is far,
At the voice of ...

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...

And doth not a meeting like this make amends,
    For all the long years I've been wandering away--
To see thus around me my youth's early friends,
    As smiling and kind as in that happy day?
Tho' haply o'er some of your brows, as o'er mine,
    The snow-fall of time may be stealing--what then?
Like Alps in the sunset, thus lighted by wine,
    We'll wear the gay tinge of youth's roses again.

What softened remembrances come o'er the heart,
    In gazing on those we've been lost to so long!
The sorrows, the joys, of which once they were part,
    Still round them, like visions of yesterday, throng,
As letters some hand hath invisibly traced,
    When held to the flame will steal out on the sight,
So many a feeling, that long seemed effaced,
    The warmth of...

The Child.

I hear you weeping, mother, dear,--
    I hear you wake and weep;
What brings the tears into your eyes
    When you should be asleep?
I hear my name upon your lips;
    What is it that you say
Of one who broke a trusting heart,
    But now is far away?


The Mother.

I weep for you, my pretty lass,
    Frail flower of love unblessed,
Because I can not always hold
    You close unto my breast;
I weep that you some day must go
    Alone your way to find,
For, oh, you have your mother's eyes,
    And men are seldom kind!

Over the hills and far away,
A little boy steals from his morning play
And under the blossoming apple-tree
He lies and he dreams of the things to be:
Of battles fought and of victories won,
Of wrongs o'erthrown and of great deeds done -
Of the valor that he shall prove some day,
Over the hills and far away -
Over the hills, and far away!

Over the hills and far away
It's, oh, for the toil the livelong day!
But it mattereth not to the soul aflame
With a love for riches and power and fame!
On, 0 man! while the sun is high -
On to the certain joys that lie
Yonder where blazeth the noon of day,
Over the hills and far away -
Over the hills, and far away!

Over the hills and far away,
An old man lingers at close of day;
Now that his jou...