Friendship

For that old love I once adored
I decked my halls and spread my board
            At Christmas time.
With all the winter’s flowers that grow
I wreathed my room, and mistletoe
Hung in the gloom of my doorway,
Wherein my dear lost love might stray
            When joy-bells chime.

What phantom was it entered there
And drank his wine and took his chair
            At Christmas time?
With holly boughs and mistletoe
He crowned his head, and at my woe
And tears I shed laughed long and loud;
“Get back, O phantom! to thy shroud
            When joy-bells chime.”

Se 'l dolce sguardo di costei m' ancide.

HE IS CONTINUALLY IN FEAR OF DISPLEASING HER.


    If thus the dear glance of my lady slay,
On her sweet sprightly speech if dangers wait,
If o'er me Love usurp a power so great,
Oft as she speaks, or when her sun-smiles play;
Alas! what were it if she put away,
Or for my fault, or by my luckless fate,
Her eyes from pity, and to death's full hate,
Which now she keeps aloof, should then betray.
Thus if at heart with terror I am cold,
When o'er her fair face doubtful shadows spring,
The feeling has its source in sufferings old.
Woman by nature is a fickle thing,
And female hearts--time makes the proverb sure--
Can never long one state of love endure.

MACGREGOR.


    If the sof...

Aw've travelled East, West, North, an South,
An led a rooamin' life;
Aw've met wi things ov stirlin' worth,
Aw've shared wi joy an strife;
Aw've kept a gooid stiff upper lip,
Whativver's come to pass:
But th' captain of mi Fortun's ship,
Has been mi Yorksher Lass.

Storm-tossed, sails rent, an reckonin' lost,
A toy for wind an wave;
Mid blindin' fog an snow an frost,
Aw've thowt noa power could save;
But ivver in the darkest day,
Wi muscles strong as brass,
To some safe port shoo's led the way, -
Mi honest Yorksher Lass.

Shoo's fair, - all Yorksher lasses are, -
Shoo's bonny as the rest,
Her brow ne'er shows a line o' care,
Shoo thinks what is, is best.
Shoo's lovin', true, an full o' pluck,
An it seems as clear as glass,

Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm,
Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions,
(Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st,
And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,)
Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating,
As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee,
(Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast.)

Far, far at sea,
After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shores with wrecks,
With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene,
The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun,
The limpid spread of air cerulean,
Thou also re-appearest.

Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,)
To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane,
Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails,
Days, even weeks untir...

In Memory of Mrs. Thellusson.


Forth of our ways and woes,
Forth of the winds and snows,
A white soul soaring goes,
Winged like a dove:
So sweet, so pure, so clear,
So heavenly tempered here,
Love need not hope or fear her changed above:

Ere dawned her day to die,
So heavenly, that on high
Change could not glorify
Nor death refine her:
Pure gold of perfect love,
On earth like heaven’s own dove,
She cannot wear, above, a smile diviner.

Her voice in heaven’s own quire
Can sound no heavenlier lyre
Than here no purer fire
Her soul can soar:
No sweeter stars her eyes
In unimagined skies
Beyond our sight can rise than here before,

Hardly long years had shed
Their shadows on her head:
Hardly ...

He'd a breet ruddy face an a laffin e'e,
An his shoolders wer brooad as brooad need be;
For each one he met he'd a sally o' wit,
For a jovjal soul wor this same Tom Grit.
He climb'd up to his waggon's heigh seeat wi' pride,
For he'd bowt a new horse 'at he'd nivver tried;
But he had noa fear, for he knew he could drive
As weel, if net better, nor th' best man alive.
Soa he sed, as he gethered his reins in his hand,
An prepared to start off on a journey he'd planned;
But some 'at stood by shook ther heeads an lukt grave,
For they'd daats ha that mettlesum horse might behave.
It set off wi' a jerk when Tom touched it wi' th' whip,
But his arms they wor strong, an like iron his grip,
An he sooin browt it daan to a nice steady gait,
But it tax'd all his skill to mak it...

Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine
In even monochrome and curving line
Of imperturbable serenity.

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry
With the torn troubled form I know as thine,
That profile, placid as a brow divine,
With continents of moil and misery?

And can immense Mortality but throw
So small a shade, and Heaven's high human scheme
Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,
Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,
Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?

Her eyes under their lashes were blue pools
Fringed round with lilies; her bright hair unfurled
Clothed her as sunshine clothes the summer world.
Her robes were gauzes - gold and green and gules,
All furry things flocked round her, from her hand
Nibbling their foods and fawning at her feet.
Two peacocks watched her where she made her seat
Beside a fountain in Broceliande.
Sometimes she sang. . . . Whoever heard forgot
Errand and aim, and knights at noontide here,
Riding from fabulous gestes beyond the seas,
Would follow, tranced, and seek . . . and find her not . . .
But wake that night, lost, by some woodland mere,
Powdered with stars and rimmed with silent trees.

On southern winds shot through with amber light,
Breeding soft balm, and clothed in cloudy white,
The lily-fingered Spring came o'er the hills
Waking the crocus and the daffodils.
O'er the cold earth she breathed a tender sigh, -
The maples sang and flung their banners high,
Their crimson-tasseled pennons, and the elm
Bound his dark brows with a green-crested helm.
Beneath the musky rot of Autumn's leaves,
Under the forest's myriad naked eaves,
Life woke and rose in gold and green and blue,
Robed in the star-light of the twinkling dew.
With timid tread adown the barren wood
Spring held her way, when, lo! before her stood
White-mantled Winter wagging his white head,
Stormy his brow, and stormily he said: -
"Sole lord of terror, and the fiend of storm,
Crow...

    Yes, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush
    In a forgotten place near the fence
    Where the thickets from Siever's woods
    Have crept over, growing sparsely.
    And you, you are a leader in New York,
    The wife of a noted millionaire,
    A name in the society columns,
    Beautiful, admired, magnified perhaps
    By the mirage of distance.
    You have succeeded,
    I have failed In the eyes of the world.
    You are alive, I am dead.
    Yet I know that I vanquished your spirit;
    And I know that lying here far from you,
    Unheard of among your great friends
    In the brilliant world where you move,
    I am really the unconquerable power over your life
    That robs it of complete triumph.

Muse, bid the Morne awake,
    Sad Winter now declines,
Each Bird doth chuse a Make,
    This day 's Saint VALENTINE'S;
For that good Bishop's sake
Get vp, and let vs see,
What Beautie it shall bee,
    That Fortune vs assignes.

But lo, in happy How'r,
    The place wherein she lyes,
In yonder climbing Tow'r,
    Gilt by the glitt'ring Rise;
O IOVE! that in a Show'r,
As once that Thund'rer did,
When he in drops lay hid,
    That I could her surprize.

Her Canopie Ile draw,
    With spangled Plumes bedight,
No Mortall euer saw
    So rauishing a sight;
That it the Gods might awe,
And pow'rfully trans-pierce
The Globie Vniuerse,
    Out-shooting eu'ry Light.

My Lips Ile softly lay
    Vpon her heau'nl...

    She wears a cat encrusted T-shirt
    & panties with L*O*V*E
    guarding the Paradise door
    & when balm of night
    casts shadows,
    her face is moonrock
    distant to mysterious
    down storybook crags;
    her darling form cloaked
    in twilight garments
    of an inky earth.

    Gates of Venus,
    . . . as if feline whiskers
    whispered, wan cat eyes
    in amber dark glowed pale honey
    in alchemy or blur of soft movement
    was caress to stars' elopement
    with the sky.

    This woman summons fire,
    stokes furnaces to quicken parchment leaves
    of flame-thick desire,
    honed soft on ripples
    skin tones were curvaceous
    drift of oars, vivacious breast on buttock's

        [Taken from MS. Douce, 357, fol. 124. See Echard's 'History of England,' book iii, chap. 1.]

    See saw, sack-a-day;
    Monmouth is a pretie boy,
        Richmond is another,
    Grafton is my onely joy,
    And why should I these three destroy,
        To please a pious brother!

I hid the love within my heart,
And lit the laughter in my eyes,
That when we meet he may not know
My love that never dies.

But sometimes when he dreams at night
Of fragrant forests green and dim,
It may be that my love crept out
And brought the dream to him.

And sometimes when his heart is sick
And suddenly grows well again,
It may be that my love was there
To free his life of pain.

If sunset clouds could grow on trees
It would but match the may in flower;
And skies be underneath the seas
No topsyturvier than a shower.

If mountains rose on wings to wander
They were no wilder than a cloud;
Yet all my praise is mean as slander,
Mean as these mean words spoken aloud.

And never more than now I know
That man's first heaven is far behind;
Unless the blazing seraph's blow
Has left him in the garden blind.

Witness, O Sun that blinds our eyes,
Unthinkable and unthankable King,
That though all other wonder dies
I wonder at not wondering.

When hostile elements with rage resound,
And fury blindly fans war's lurid flame,
When in the strife of party quarrel drowned,
The voice of justice no regard can claim,
When crime is free, and impious hands are found
The sacred to pollute, devoid of shame,
And loose the anchor which the state maintains,
No subject there we find for joyous strains.

But when a nation, that its flocks still feeds
With calm content, nor other's wealth desires
Throws off the cruel yoke 'neath which it bleeds,
Yet, e'en in wrath, humanity admires,
And, e'en in triumph, moderation heeds,
That is immortal, and our song requires.
To show thee such an image now is mine;
Thou knowest it well, for all that's great is thine!

    Dark fir-tops foot the moony sky,
    Blue moonlight bars the drive;
    Here at the open window I
    Sit smoking and alive.

    Wind in the branches swells and breaks
    Like ocean on a beach;
    Deep in the sky and my heart there wakes
    A thought I cannot reach.

O Ary Scheffer! when beneath thine eye,
Touched with the light that cometh from above,
Grew the sweet picture of the dear Lord's love,
No dream hadst thou that Christian hands would tear
Therefrom the token of His equal care,
And make thy symbol of His truth a lie!
The poor, dumb slave whose shackles fall away
In His compassionate gaze, grubbed smoothly out,
To mar no more the exercise devout
Of sleek oppression kneeling down to pray
Where the great oriel stains the Sabbath day!
Let whoso can before such praying-books
Kneel on his velvet cushion; I, for one,
Would sooner bow, a Parsee, to the sun,
Or tend a prayer-wheel in Thibetar brooks,
Or beat a drum on Yedo's temple-floor.
No falser idol man has bowed before,
In Indian groves or islands of the sea,