Family

Much may be done with the world we are in,
Much with the race to better it;
We can unfetter it,
Free it from chains of the old traditions;
Broaden its viewpoint of virtue and sin;
Change its conditions
Of labour and wealth;
And open new roadways to knowledge and health.
Yet some things ever must stay as they are
While the sea has its tide and the sky has its star.
A man and a woman with love between,
Loyal and tender and true and clean,
Nothing better has been or can be
Than just those three.

Woman may alter the first great plan.
Daughters and sisters and mothers
May stalk with their brothers
Forth from their homes into noisy places
Fit (and fit only) for masculine man.
Marring their graces
With conflict and strife
To widen the o...

Among the dwellings framed by birds
In field or forest with nice care,
Is none that with the little Wren's
In snugness may compare.

No door the tenement requires,
And seldom needs a laboured roof;
Yet is it to the fiercest sun
Impervious, and storm-proof.

So warm, so beautiful withal,
In perfect fitness for its aim,
That to the Kind by special grace
Their instinct surely came.

And when for their abodes they seek
An opportune recess,
The hermit has no finer eye
For shadowy quietness.

These find, 'mid ivied abbey-walls,
A canopy in some still nook;
Others are pent-housed by a brae
That overhangs a brook.

There to the brooding bird her mate
Warbles by fits his low clear song;
And by the busy streamlet bo...

Sing; how 'a would sing!
How 'a would raise the tune
When we rode in the waggon from harvesting
By the light o' the moon!

Dance; how 'a would dance!
If a fiddlestring did but sound
She would hold out her coats, give a slanting glance,
And go round and round.

Laugh; how 'a would laugh!
Her peony lips would part
As if none such a place for a lover to quaff
At the deeps of a heart.

Julie, O girl of joy,
Soon, soon that lover he came.
Ah, yes; and gave thee a baby-boy,
But never his name . . .

- Tolling for her, as you guess;
And the baby too . . . 'Tis well.
You knew her in maidhood likewise? - Yes,
That's her burial bell.

"I suppose," with a laugh, she said,
"I should blush that I'm not a wife;
But how ...

Where each one expressed some sentiment.


        In this album you may trace,
        If not the lineaments of face,
        There at least you will find
        Photographs of the mind.

        Some in earnest some in fun,
        Some do lecture some do pun,
        Here the maiden and the youth,
        Each proclaim some precious truth.

        And there is here some fine pages,
        Written by maturer ages,
        Where they show that time is brief,
        That soon comes sere and yellow leaf.

As Hermes once took to his feathers light,
When lulled Argus, baffled, swooned and slept,
So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright
So played, so charmed, so conquered, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;
And seeing it asleep, so fled away
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day;
But to that second circle of sad Hell,
Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kissed, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

The Thing must End. I am no boy! I am
No BOY! I being twenty-one. Uncle, you make
A great mistake, a very great mistake,
In chiding me for letting slip a "Damn!"
What's more, you called me "Mother's one ewe lamb,"
Bade me "refrain from swearing, for her sake,
Till I'm grown up" . . . By God! I think you take
Too much upon you, Uncle William!

You say I am your brother's only son.
I know it. And, "What of it?" I reply.
My heart's resolved. Something must be done.
So shall I curb, so baffle, so suppress
This too avuncular officiousness,
Intolerable consanguinity.

What is there in those distant hills
My fancy longs to see,
That many a mood of joy instils?
Say what can fancy be?

Do old oaks thicken all the woods,
With weeds and brakes as here?
Does common water make the floods,
That's common everywhere?

Is grass the green that clothes the ground?
Are springs the common springs?
Daisies and cowslips dropping round,
Are such the flowers she brings?

*    *    *    *    *

Are cottages of mud and stone,
By valley wood and glen,
And their calm dwellers little known
Men, and but common men,

That drive afield with carts and ploughs?
Such men are common here,
And pastoral maidens milking cows
Are dwelling everywhere.

If so my fancy idly clings
To notions far away,<...

The Spring's bright tints no more are seen,
And Summer's ample robe of green
Is russet-gold and brown;
When flowers fall to every breeze
And, shed reluctant from the trees,
The leaves drop down.

A sadness steals about the heart,
--And is it thus from youth we part,
And life's redundant prime?
Must friends like flowers fade away,
And life like Nature know decay,
And bow to time?

And yet such sadness meets rebuke,
From every copse in every nook
Where Autumn's colours glow;
How bright the sky! How full the sheaves!
What mellow glories gild the leaves
Before they go.

Then let us sing the jocund praise,
In this bright air, of these bright days,
When years our friendships crown;
The love that's loveliest when 'tis old--

The spare-room windows wide were raised,
And you could look that summer day
On pastures green, and sunny hills,
And low rills wandering away.
Near by, the square front yard was sweet
With rose and caraway.

Upon a couch drawn near the light,
The Deacon's only daughter lay,
Bending upon the distant hills
Her eyes of dark and thoughtful gray;
The blue veins on her forehead shone
'Twas wasted so away.

She moved, and from her slender hand
Fell off her mother's wedding-ring;
She smiled into her father's face -
"So drops from me each earthly thing;
My hands are free to hold the flowers
Of the eternal spring."

She had ever walked in quiet ways,
Not over beds of flowery ease,
But Sundays in the village choir
She sweetly sang o...

As indignation mastered grief, my tongue
Spake bitter words; words that did ill agree
With those rich stores of Nature's imagery,
And divine Art, that fast to memory clung
Thy gifts, magnificent Region, ever young
In the sun's eye, and in his sister's sight
How beautiful! how worthy to be sung
In strains of rapture, or subdued delight!
I feign not; witness that unwelcome shock
That followed the first sound of German speech,
Caught the far-winding barrier Alps among.
In that announcement, greeting seemed to mock
Parting; the casual word had power to reach
My heart, and filled that heart with conflict strong.

Sweet Memory! thou faculty divine--
Triumphant o'er the cruel hand of Time!
On thy tablets we may trace
The lines his fingers ne'er efface,
And take with us till latest day
The images that light our way,
And picture thus in a shadowy form
The loved and lost he's from us torn--
Their lids by Death so early sealed--
Life's crimson tide by him congealed--
The tyrant has not all concealed--
They in thy mirror still revealed!

Before the morning sunbeams kissed
The face of Nature--veiled in mist--
And heralded with golden ray
The opening of the perfect day--
Ere yet the sable shades of night
At dawn's approach had winged their flight--
We've listed to the whispering breeze
That's wafted o'er the trembling trees,
And seemed to hear the voice...

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF HER LATE ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCESS DOWAGER OF WALES.

OVERTURE A SOLEMN DIRGE. AIR TRIO.

Arise, ye sons of worth, arise,
And waken every note of woe;
When truth and virtue reach the skies,
'Tis ours to weep the want below!

CHORUS.
When truth and virtue, etc.

MAN SPEAKER.
The praise attending pomp and power,
The incense given to kings,
Are but the trappings of an hour
Mere transitory things!
The base bestow them: but the good agree
To spurn the venal gifts as flattery.
But when to pomp and power are join'd
An equal dignity of mind
When titles are the smallest claim
When wealth and rank and noble blood,
But aid the power of doing good
Then all their trophies last; and flattery turns to fame.

The beauty of this rainy day,
All silver-green and dripping gray,
Has stolen quite my heart away
From all the tasks I meant to do,
Made me forget the resolute blue
And energetic gold of things . . .
So soft a song the rain-bird sings.

Yet am I glad to miss awhile
The sun's huge domineering smile,
The busy spaces mile on mile,
Shut in behind this shimmering screen
Of falling pearls and phantom green;
As in a cloister walled with rain,
Safe from intrusions, voices vain,
And hurry of invading feet,
Inviolate in my retreat:
Myself, my books, my pipe, my fire -
So runs my rainy-day desire.

Or I old letters may con o'er,
And dream on faces seen no more,
The buried treasure of the years,
Too visionary now for tears;
Open old ...

"Hign bliss is only for a higher state,"
But, surely, if severe afflictions borne
With patience merit the reward of peace,
Peace ye deserve; and may the solid good,
Sought by a wise though late exchange, and here
With bounteous hand beneath a cottage-roof
To you accorded, never be withdrawn,
Nor for the world's best promises renounced.
Most soothing was it for a welcome Friend,
Fresh from the crowded city, to behold
That lonely union, privacy so deep,
Such calm employments, such entire content.
So when the rain is over, the storm laid,
A pair of herons oft-times have I seen,
Upon a rocky islet, side by side,
Drying their feathers in the sun, at ease;
And so, when night with grateful gloom had fallen,
Two glow-worms in such nearness that they shared,
...

Her mist of primroses within her breast
Twilight hath folded up, and o'er the west,
Seeking remoter valleys long hath gone,
Not yet hath come her sister of the dawn.
Silence and coolness now the earth enfold:
Jewels of glittering green, long mists of gold,
Hazes of nebulous silver veil the height,
And shake in tremors through the shadowy night.
Heard through the stillness, as in whispered words,
The wandering God-guided wings of birds
Ruffle the dark. The little lives that lie
Deep hid in grass join in a long-drawn sigh
More softly still; and unheard through the blue
The falling of innumerable dew,
Lifts with grey fingers all the leaves that lay
Burned in the heat of the consuming day.
The lawns and lakes lie in this night of love,
Admitted to the majesty...

Earnest and sad the solemn tale
    That the sighing winds give back,
Scatt'ring the leaves with mournful wail
    O'er the forest's faded track;
Gay summer birds have left us now
    For a warmer, brighter clime,
Where no leaden sky or leafless bough
    Tell of change and winter-time.

Reapers have gathered golden store
    Of maize and ripened grain,
And they'll seek the lonely fields no more
    Till the springtide comes again.
But around the homestead's blazing hearth
    Will they find sweet rest from toil,
And many an hour of harmless mirth
    While the snow-storm piles the soil.

Then, why should we grieve for summer skies -
    For its shady trees - its flowers,
Or the thousand light and pleasant ties
    That endeared the su...

The sparrows wake beneath the convent eaves;
I think I have not slept the whole night through.
But I am old; the aged scarcely know
The times they wake and sleep, for life burns down;
They breathe the calm of death before they die.
The long night ends, the day comes creeping in,
Showing the sorrows that the darkness hid,
The bended head of Christ, the blood, the thorns,
The wall's gray stains of damp, the pallet bed
Where little Sister Marta dreams of saints,
Waking with arms outstretched imploringly
That seek to stay a vision's vanishing.
I never had a vision, yet for me
Our Lady smiled while all the convent slept
One winter midnight hushed around with snow,
I thought she might be kinder than the rest,
And so I came to kneel before her feet,
Sick with lo...

Tune. - "Johnny's grey breeks."


I.

    Again rejoicing nature sees
        Her robe assume its vernal hues,
    Her leafy locks wave in the breeze,
        All freshly steep'd in morning dews.
            And maun I still on Menie doat,
                And bear the scorn that's in her e'e?
            For it's jet, jet black, an' it's like a hawk,
                An' it winna let a body be.

II.

    In vain to me the cowslips blaw,
        In vain to me the vi'lets spring;
    In vain to me, in glen or shaw,
        The mavis and the lintwhite sing.

III.

    The merry plough-boy cheers his team,
        Wi' joy the tentie seedsman stalks;
    But life to me's a weary dream,
        A dream of ane t...