Family

When sycamore leaves wer a-spreaden
Green-ruddy in hedges,
Bezide the red doust o' the ridges,
A-dried at Woak Hill;

I packed up my goods, all a-sheenen
Wi' long years o' handlen,
On dousty red wheels ov a waggon,
To ride at Woak Hill.

The brown thatchen ruf o' the dwellen
I then wer a-leaven,
Had sheltered the sleek head o' Meary,
My bride at Woak Hill.

But now vor zome years, her light voot-vall
'S a-lost vrom the vlooren.
To soon vor my jay an' my childern
She died at Woak Hill.

But still I do think that, in soul,
She do hover about us;
To ho vor her motherless childern,
Her pride at Woak Hill.

Zoo -lest she should tell me hereafter
I stole off 'ithout her,
An' left her, uncalled at house-ridden,

High the vanes of Shrewsbury gleam
Islanded in Severn stream;
The bridges from the steepled crest
Cross the water east and west.

The flag of morn in conqueror's state
Enters at the English gate:
The vanquished eve, as night prevails,
Bleeds upon the road to Wales.

Ages since the vanquished bled
Round my mother's marriage-bed;
There the ravens feasted far
About the open house of war:

When Severn down to Buildwas ran
Coloured with the death of man,
Couched upon her brother's grave
The Saxon got me on the slave.

The sound of fight is silent long
That began the ancient wrong;
Long the voice of tears is still
That wept of old the endless ill.

In my heart it has not died,
The war that sleeps on Severn side;

"Come hither, little brothers,
    And listen now to me,
And I will read a story
    To both, while at my knee."

Then Johnnie's flag hung idly,
    And Charlie hushed his drum;
To hear sweet Mary's story
    The mimic soldiers come.

"'Tis of a boy no larger,
    My little Charles, than you;
But he had been in battle,
    And all its terrors knew.

"His father was a captain;
    He had no child beside;
And while he was an infant
    His mother dear had died.

"And so from camp to battle,
    From fight to camp again,
Had lived, this little hero,
    On many a bloody plain.

"One day, when shouts were loudest
    Upon the reddened field,--
When came the victor's war-cry,
    'See! see! they fly! they ...

Fair is the castle up on the hill--
Hushaby, sweet my own!
The night is fair, and the waves are still,
And the wind is singing to you and to me
In this lowly home beside the sea--
Hushaby, sweet my own!

On yonder hill is store of wealth--
Hushaby, sweet my own!
And revellers drink to a little one's health;
But you and I bide night and day
For the other love that has sailed away--
Hushaby, sweet my own!

See not, dear eyes, the forms that creep
Ghostlike, O my own!
Out of the mists of the murmuring deep;
Oh, see them not and make no cry
Till the angels of death have passed us by--
Hushaby, sweet my own!

Ah, little they reck of you and me--
Hushaby, sweet my own!
In our lonely home beside the sea;
They seek the castle up...

Oh, the old wall here! How I could pass
Life in a long midsummer day,
My feet confined to a plot of grass,
My eyes from a wall not once away!

And lush and lithe, do the creepers clothe
Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green:
Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loth,
In lappets of tangle they laugh between.

Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe?
Why tremble the sprays? What life o’er brims
The body, the house, no eye can probe,
Divined as, beneath a robe, the limbs?

And there again! But my heart may guess
Who tripped behind; and she sang perhaps:
So, the old wall throbbed, and its life’s excess
Died out and away in the leafy wraps!

Wall upon wall are between us: life
And song should away from heart to heart!
I, prison bird, ...

The cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!

Like an army defeated
The snow hath retreated,
And now doth fare ill
On the top of the bare hill;
The plowboy is whooping- anon-anon:
There's joy in the mountains;
There's life in the fountains;
Small clouds are sailing,
Blue sky prevailing;
The rain is over and gone!

When Memory, with gentle hand,
Has led me to that foreign land
Of childhood days, I long to be
Again the boy on bended knee,
With head a-bow, and drowsy smile
Hid in a mother's lap the while,
With tender touch and kindly care,
She bends above and combs my hair.

Ere threats of Time, or ghosts of cares
Had paled it to the hue it wears,
Its tangled threads of amber light
Fell o'er a forehead, fair and white,
That only knew the light caress
Of loving hands, or sudden press
Of kisses that were sifted there
The times when mother combed my hair.

But its last gleams of gold have slipped
Away; and Sorrow's manuscript
Is fashioned of the snowy brow -
So lined and underscored now
That you, to see it, scarce would guess
It e'er had fel...

The Text is taken from Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, and, like nearly all Buchan's versions, exhibits traces of vulgar remoulding. This ballad in particular has lost much of the original features. Kinloch called his version Hynde Etin, Allingham his compilation Etin the Forester.


The Story is given in a far finer style in romantic Scandinavian ballads. Prior translated two of them, The Maid and the Dwarf-King, and Agnes and the Merman, both Danish. The Norse ballads on this subject, which may still be heard sung, are exceptionally beautiful. Child says, 'They should make an Englishman's heart wring for his loss.'

In the present version we may with some confidence attribute to Buchan the stanzas from 48 to the end, as well as 15 and 16. The preference is given to B...

Dim dreams it hath of singing ways,
Of far-off woodland water-heads,
And shining ends of April days
Amongst the yellow runnel-beds.

Stoop closer to the ruined wall,
Whereon the wilful wilding sleeps,
As if its home were waterfall
By dripping clefts and shadowy steeps.

A little waif, whose beauty takes
A touching tone because it dwells
So far away from mountain lakes,
And lily leaves, and lightening fells.

Deep hidden in delicious floss
It nestles, sister, from the heat
A gracious growth of tender moss
Whose nights are soft, whose days are sweet.

Swift gleams across its petals run
With winds that hum a pleasant tune,
Serene surprises of the sun,
And whispers from the lips of noon.

The evening-coloured apple-tree...

He said he loved me! Then he called my hair
    Silk threads wherewith sly Cupid strings his bow,
    My cheek a rose leaf fallen on new snow;
And swore my round, full throat would bring despair
To Venus or to Psyche.

    Time and care
    Will fade these locks; the merry god, I trow,
    Uses no grizzled cords upon his bow.
How will it be when I, no longer fair,
    Plead for his kiss with cheeks whence long ago
The early snowflakes melted quite away,
The rose leaf died -and in whose sallow clay
    Lie the deep sunken tracks of life's gaunt crow?

When this full throat shall wattle fold on fold,
    Like some ripe peach left drying on a wall,
    Or like a spent accordion, when all
Its music has exhaled -will love grow cold?

A hundred times the bells of Brown
    Have rung to sleep the idle summers,
And still to-day clangs clamouring down
    A greeting to the welcome comers.

And far, like waves of morning, pours
    Her call, in airy ripples breaking,
And wanders to the farthest shores,
    Her children's drowsy hearts awaking.

The wild vibration floats along,
    O'er heart-strings tense its magic plying,
And wakes in every breast its song
    Of love and gratitude undying.

My heart to meet the summons leaps
    At limit of its straining tether,
Where the fresh western sunlight steeps
    In golden flame the prairie heather.

And others, happier, rise and fare
    To pass within the hallowed portal,
And see the glory shining there
    Shrine...

I have a life that did not become,
that turned aside and stopped,
astonished:
I hold it in me like a pregnancy or
as on my lap a child
not to grow old but dwell on

it is to his grave I most
frequently return and return
to ask what is wrong, what was
wrong, to see it all by
the light of a different necessity
but the grave will not heal
and the child,
stirring, must share my grave
with me, an old man having
gotten by on what was left

when I go back to my home country in these
fresh far-away days, its convenient to visit
everybody, aunts and uncles, those who used to say,
look how hes shooting up, and the
trinket aunts who always had a little
something in their pocketbooks, cinnamon bark
or a penny or nickel, and uncles w...

She laid it where the sunbeams fall
Unscann'd upon the broken wall.
Without a tear, without a groan,
She laid it near a mighty stone,
Which some rude swain had haply cast
Thither in sport, long ages past,
And Time with mosses had o'erlaid,
And fenced with many a tall grassblade,
And all about bid roses bloom
And violets shed their soft perfume.
There, in its cool and quiet bed,
She set her burden down and fled:
Nor flung, all eager to escape,
One glance upon the perfect shape
That lay, still warm and fresh and fair,
But motionless and soundless there.

No human eye had mark'd her pass
Across the linden-shadow'd grass
Ere yet the minster clock chimed seven:
Only the innocent birds of heaven -
The magpie, and the rook whose nest
Swi...

I

Sleep, little eyes
That brim with childish tears amid thy play,
Be comforted!No grief of night can weigh
Against the joys that throng thy coming day.

Sleep, little heart!
There is no place in Slumberland for tears:
Life soon enough will bring its chilling fears
And sorrows that will dim the after years.
Sleep, little heart!


II

Ah, little eyes
Dead blossoms of a springtime long ago,
That life's storm crushed and left to lie below
The benediction of the falling snow!

Sleep, little heart
That ceased so long ago its frantic beat!
The years that come and go with silent feet
Have naught to tell save this, that rest is sweet.
Dear little heart.

Once more, then, we meet
In the circles of yore;
Let our song be as sweet
In its wreaths as before,
Who claims the first place
In the tribute of song?
The God to whose grace
All our pleasures belong.
Though Ceres may spread
All her gifts on the shrine,
Though the glass may be red
With the blush of the vine,
What boots if the while
Fall no spark on the hearth;
If the heart do not smile
With the instinct of mirth?
From the clouds, from God's breast
Must our happiness fall,
'Mid the blessed, most blest
Is the moment of all!
Since creation began
All that mortals have wrought,
All that's godlike in man
Comes the flash of a thought!
For ages the stone
In the quarry may lurk,
An instant alone
Can suffice to the w...

Sad is old Ben Thistlewaite,
Now his day is done,
And all his children
Far away are gone.

He sits beneath his jasmined porch,
His stick between his knees,
His eyes fixed vacant
On his moss-grown trees.

Grass springs in the green path,
His flowers are lean and dry,
His thatch hangs in wisps against
The evening sky.

He has no heart to care now,
Though the winds will blow
Whistling in his casement,
And the rain drip thro'.

He thinks of his old Bettie,
How she'd shake her head and say,
'You'll live to wish my sharp old tongue
Could scold - some day,'

But as in pale high autumn skies
The swallows float and play,
His restless thoughts pass to and fro,
But nowhere stay.

Soft, on the morrow, t...

Brother belov'd if health shall smile again,
Upon this wasted form and fever'd cheek:
If e'er returning vigour bid these weak
And languid limbs their gladsome strength regain,
Well may thy brow the placid glow retain
Of sweet content and thy pleas'd eye may speak
The conscious self applause, but should I seek
To utter what this heart can feel, Ah! vain
Were the attempt! Yet kindest friends while o'er
My couch ye bend, and watch with tenderness
The being whom your cares could e'en restore,
From the cold grasp of Death, say can you guess
The feelings which these lips can ne'er express;
Feelings, deep fix'd in grateful memory's store.

Dear is that valley to the murmuring bees.
The small birds build there; and, at summer-noon,
Oft have I heard a child, gay among flowers,
As in the shining grass she sate conceal'd,
Sing to herself.

*            *            *            *            *

There is a streamlet issuing from a rock.
The village-girls, singing wild madrigals,
Dip their white vestments in its waters clear,
And hang them to the sun. There first I saw her.
Her dark and eloquent eyes, mild, full of fire,
'Twas heav'n to look upon; and her sweet voice,
As tuneable as harp of many strings,
At once spoke joy and sadness to my soul!