Family

Welcome, red and roundy sun,
Dropping lowly in the west;
Now my hard day's work is done,
I'm as happy as the best.

Joyful are the thoughts of home,
Now I'm ready for my chair,
So, till morrow-morning's come,
Bill and mittens, lie ye there!

Though to leave your pretty song,
Little birds, it gives me pain,
Yet to-morrow is not long,
Then I'm with you all again.

If I stop, and stand about,
Well I know how things will be,
Judy will be looking out
Every now-and-then for me.

So fare ye well! and hold your tongues,
Sing no more until I come;
They're not worthy of your songs
That never care to drop a crumb.

All day long I love the oaks,
But, at nights, yon little cot,
Where I see the chimney smokes,
Is b...

I.

Morning

Her rain-kissed face is fresh as rain,
Is cool and fresh as a rain-wet leaf;
She glimmers at my window-pane,
And all my grief
Becomes a feeble rushlight, seen no more
When the gold of her gown sweeps in my door.

II.

Forenoon

Great blurs of woodland waved with wind;
Gray paths, down which October came,
That now November's blasts have thinned
And flecked with fiercer flame,
Are her delight. She loves to lie
Regarding with a gray-blue eye
The far-off hills that hold the sky:
And I I lie and gaze with her
Beyond the autumn woods and ways
Into the hope of coming days,
The spring that nothing shall deter,
That puts my soul in unison
With what's to do and what is done.

III.

N...

Vain is the chiming of forgotten bells
    That the wind sways above a ruined shrine.
Vainer his voice in whom no longer dwells
    Hunger that craves immortal Bread and Wine.

Light songs we breathe that perish with our breath
    Out of our lips that have not kissed the rod.
They shall not live who have not tasted death.
    They only sing who are struck dumb by God.

Young Love sat in a rosy bower,
Towards the close of a summer day;
At the evening's dusky hour,
Truth bent her blessed steps that way;
        Over her face
        Beaming a grace
Never bestowed on child of clay.

Truth looked on with an ardent joy,
Wondering Love could grow so tired;
Hovering o'er him she kissed the boy,
When, with a sudden impulse fired,
        Exquisite pains
        Burning his veins,
Wildly he woke, as one inspired.

Eagerly Truth embraced the god,
Filling his soul with a sense divine;
Rightly he knew the paths she trod,
Springing from heaven's royal line;
        Far had he strayed
        From his guardian maid,
Perilling all for his rash design.

Still as they went, the tricksy youth
Wande...

Hear me, O beeches! You
That have with ageless anguish slowly risen
From earth's still secret prison
Into the ampler prison of aery blue.
Your voice I hear, flowing the valleys through
After the wind that tramples from the west.
After the wind your boughs in new unrest
Shake, and your voice--one voice uniting voices
A thousand or a thousand thousand--flows
Like the wind's moody; glad when he rejoices
In swift-succeeding and diminishing blows,
And drooping when declines death's ardour in his breast;
Then over him exhausted weaving the soft fan-like noises
Of gentlest creaking stems and soothing leaves
Until he rest,
And silent too your easied bosom heaves.

That high and noble wind is rootless nor
From stable earth sucks nurture, but roams on
Chi...

(J. M. D.)


I thank Thee Father that I feel Thee near,
    That it is hand of Thine that s raised to smite,
Oh, make Thy loving kindness to appear,
    Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right!

Poor woe-worn watchers! he is going home;
    No skill can save him, and no love can keep;
He served his generation--he is gone,
    And gathered to his fathers, falls asleep.

We've bitter cups to drain--but his is dry;
    Burdens of care--but care has left his breast;
Tears--but they never more shall dim his eye;
    Labour,--but he has entered into rest.

Oh, to be with him, toil and care all past,
    Sleeping, dear mother earth, within thy breast,
I, too, could lay my hand in thine, O death,
    And gladly enter where the weary rest...

Bland as the morning breath of June
The southwest breezes play;
And, through its haze, the winter noon
Seems warm as summer’s day.
The snow-plumed Angel of the North
Has dropped his icy spear;
Again the mossy earth looks forth,
Again the streams gush clear.

The fox his hillside cell forsakes,
The muskrat leaves his nook,
The bluebird in the meadow brakes
Is singing with the brook.
“Bear up, O Mother Nature!” cry
Bird, breeze, and streamlet free;
“Our winter voices prophesy
Of summer days to thee!”

So, in those winters of the soul,
By bitter blasts and drear
O’erswept from Memory’s frozen pole,
Will sunny days appear.
Reviving Hope and Faith, they show
The soul its living powers,
And how beneath the winter’s snow
L...

Scarcely a breath about the rocky stair
Moved, but the growing tide from verge to verge,
Heaving salt fragrance on the midnight air,
Climbed with a murmurous and fitful surge.
A hoary mist rose up and slowly sheathed
The dripping walls and portal granite-stepped,
And sank into the inner court, and crept
From column unto column thickly wreathed.

In that dead hour of darkness before dawn,
When hearts beat fainter, and the hands of death
Are strengthened, - with lips white and drawn
And feverish lids and scarcely moving breath,
The hapless mother, tender Chione,
Beside the earth-cold figure of her child,
After long bursts of weeping sharp and wild
Lay broken, silent in her agony.
At first in waking horror racked and bound
She lay, and then a gradual st...

'Ouvre ta port', Germin', c'est moi qu'est ton mari.'
'Donnez-moi des indic's de la première nuit,
    Et par là je croirai que vous et's mon mari.'

        --Germaine.


The Text is Fraser Tytler's, taken down from the recitation of Mrs. Brown in 1800, who had previously (1783) recited a similar version to Jamieson. The later recitation, which was used by Scott, with others, seems to contain certain improvisations of Mrs. Brown's which do not appear in the earlier form.

The Story.--A mother, who feigns to be her own son and demands tokens of the girl outside the gate, turns her son's love away, and is cursed by him. Similar ballads exist in France, Germany, and Greece.

There is an early eighteenth-century MS. (Elizabeth Cochrane's Song-Book) of this ballad, which giv...

THE FOLLOWING LITTLE POEM WAS SUGGESTED BY A PASSAGE IN THE MEMOIRS OF THE LATE MRS. SUSAN HUNTINGTON OF BOSTON, NEW ENGLAND.


Ah! cold at my feet thou art sleeping, my boy,
    And I press on thy pale lips, in vain, the fond kiss;
Earth opens her arms to receive thee, my joy!
    And all I have suffered was nothing to this:
The day-star of hope 'neath thine eyelids is sleeping,
No more to arise at the voice of my weeping.

Oh, how art thou changed!--since the light breath of morning
    Dispelled the soft dew-drops in showers from the tree,
Like a beautiful bud, my lone dwelling adorning,
    Thy smiles called up feelings of rapture in me;
I thought not the sunbeams all brightly that shone
On thy waking, at eve would behold me alone.

The joy that flash...

This book is not about heroes.    English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.    Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, dominion or power,

                        except War.
            Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.
            The subject of it is War, and the pity of War.
            The Poetry is in the pity.
            Yet these elegies are not to this generation,
                        This is in no sense consolatory.

            They may be to the next.
            All the poet can do to-day is to warn.
            That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
            If I thought the letter of this book would last,
        I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives Prussia,--my ambition ...

"Poet by the grace of God."


    You sing of winter gray and chill,
    Of silent stream and frozen lake,
    Of naked woods, and winds that wake
    To shriek and sob o'er vale and hill.

    And straight we breathe the bracing air,
    And see stretched out before our eyes
    A white world spanned by brooding skies,
    And snowflakes drifting everywhere.

    You sing of tender things and sweet,
    Of field, of brook, of flower, of bush,
    The lilt of bird, the sunset flush,
    The scarlet poppies in the wheat.

    Until we feel the gleam and glow
    Of summer pulsing through our veins,
    And hear the patter of the rains,
    And watch the green things sprout and grow.

    You sing of joy, and we do mark<...

        Quand l'homme commence à raissonner,
        il cesse de sentir.--J. J. ROUSSEAU.


'Twas in the summer time so sweet,
    When hearts and flowers are both in season,
That--who, of all the world, should meet,
    One early dawn, but Love and Reason!

Love told his dream of yesternight,
    While Reason talked about the weather;
The morn, in sooth, was fair and bright,
    And on they took their way together.

The boy in many a gambol flew,
    While Reason, like a Juno, stalked,
And from her portly figure threw
    A lengthened shadow, as she walked.

No wonder Love, as on they past,
    Should find that sunny morning chill,
For still the shadow Reason cast
Fell o'er the boy, and cooled him still.

In vain...

                    to a brook near the village of Corston.

    As thus I bend me o'er thy babbling stream
        And watch thy current, Memory's hand pourtrays
        The faint form'd scenes of the departed days,
    Like the far forest by the moon's pale beam
    Dimly descried yet lovely. I have worn
        Upon thy banks the live-long hour away,
        When sportive Childhood wantoned thro' the day,
    Joy'd at the opening splendour of the morn,
    Or as the twilight darken'd, heaved the sigh
        Thinking of distant home; as down my cheek
        At the fond thought slow stealing on, would speak
    The silent eloquence of the full eye.
    Dim are the long past days, yet still they please
As thy soft sounds half heard, borne on the inconstant breeze...

My soul is like a prisoned lark,
    That sings and dreams of liberty,
The nights are long, the days are dark,
    Away from home, away from thee!

My only joy is in my dreams,
    When I thy loving face can see.
How dreary the awakening seems,
    Away from home, away from thee!

At dawn I hasten to the shore,
    To gaze across the sparkling sea--
The sea is bright to me no more,
    Which parts me from my home and thee.

At twilight, when the air grows chill,
    And cold and leaden is the sea,
My tears like bitter dews distil,
    Away from home, away from thee.

I could not live, did I not know
    That thou art ever true to me,
I could not bear a doubtful woe,
    Away from home, away from thee.

I could not l...

(A Scholar is musing on his want of success.)


To strive - and fail. Yes, I did strive and fail;
I set mine eyes upon a certain night
To find a certain star - and could not hail
    With them its deep-set light.

Fool that I was! I will rehearse my fault:
I, wingless, thought myself on high to lift
Among the winged - I set these feet that halt
    To run against the swift.

And yet this man, that loved me so, can write -
That loves me, I would say, can let me see;
Or fain would have me think he counts but light
    These Honors lost to me.

    (The letter of his friend.)
"What are they? that old house of yours which gave
Such welcome oft to me, the sunbeams fall
Yet, down the squares of blue and white which pave
  ...

We walked beside the sea,
After a day which perished silently
Of its own glory, like the Princess weird
Who, combating the Genius, scorched and seared,
Uttered with burning breath, "Ho! victory!"
And sank adown, an heap of ashes pale;
So runs the Arab tale.

The sky above us showed
An universal and unmoving cloud,
On which, the cliffs permitted us to see
Only the outline of their majesty,
As master-minds, when gazed at by the crowd!
And, shining with a gloom, the water grey
Swang in its moon-taught way.

Nor moon nor stars were out.
They did not dare to tread so soon about,
Though trembling, in the footsteps of the sun.
The light was neither night's nor day's, but one
Which, life-like, had a beauty in its doubt;
And Silence's impassion...

Sweetheart, where all the dancing joys compete
Take now your choice; the world is at your feet,
All turned into a gay and shining pleasance,
And every face has smiles to greet your presence.
    Treading on air,
    Yourself you look more fair;
And the dear Birthday-elves unseen conspire
To flush your cheeks and set your eyes on fire.

Mayhap they whisper what a birthday means
That sets you spinning through your pretty teens.
A slim-grown shape adorned with golden shimmers
Of tossing hair that streams and waves and glimmers,
    Lo, how you run
    In mere excess of fun,
Or change to silence as you stand and hear
Some kind old tale that moves you to a tear.

And, since this is your own bright day, my dear,
Of all the days that gem the sparkling ...