Heartbreak

DONAL' CAMPBELL
Donal' Bane sailed away across the ocean
With the tartans of Clan Gordon, to the Indies' distant shore,
But on Dargai's lonely hill-side, Donal' Campbell met the foeman,
And the glen of Athol
Moray will never see him more!

O! the wailing of the women, O! the storm of bitter sorrow
Sweeping like the wintry torrent thro' Athol Moray's glen
When the black word reached the clansmen, that young Donal' Bane had fallen
In the red glare of the battle, with the gallant Gordon men!

Far from home and native sheiling, with the sun of India o'er him
Blazingdown its cruel hatred on the white-faced men below
Stood young Donal' with his comrades, like the hound of ghostly Fingal
Eager, waiting for the summons to leap up against the foe

Hark! at last! t...

On the far hill the cloud of thunder grew
And sunlight blurred below; but sultry blue
Burned yet on the valley water where it hoards
Behind the miller's elmen floodgate boards,
And there the wasps, that lodge them ill-concealed
In the vole's empty house, still drove afield
To plunder touchwood from old crippled trees
And build their young ones their hutched nurseries;
Still creaked the grasshoppers' rasping unison
Nor had the whisper through the tansies run
Nor weather-wisest bird gone home.
                How then
Should wry eels in the pebbled shallows ken
Lightning coming? troubled up they stole
To the deep-shadowed sullen water-hole,
Among whose warty snags the quaint perch lair.
As cunning stole the boy to angle there,
Muffling least tread, with no ...

"Won't you look out of your window, Mrs. Gill?"
    Quoth the Fairy, nidding, nodding in the garden;
" Can't you look out of your window, Mrs. Gill?"
    Quoth the Fairy, laughing softly in the garden;
But the air was still, the cherry boughs were still,
And the ivy-tod 'neath the empty sill,
And never from her window looked out Mrs. Gill
    On the Fairy shrilly mocking in the garden.

"What have they done with you, you poor Mrs. Gill?"
    Quoth the Fairy, brightly glancing in the garden;
"Where have they hidden you, you poor old Mrs. Gill?"
    Quoth the Fairy dancing lightly in the garden;
But night's faint veil now wrapped the hill,
Stark 'neath the stars stood the dead-still Mill,
And out of her cold cottage never answered Mrs. Gill
    The Fairy ...

Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,
With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned
Albeit labouring for a scanty band
Of white-robed Scholars only, this immense
And glorious Work of fine intelligence!
Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely-calculated less or more;
So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense
These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells,
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering—and wandering on as loth to die;
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.

My Army, O, my army! The time I dreamed of comes!
I want to see your colours; I want to hear your drums!
I heard them in my boyhood when all men’s hearts seemed cold;
I heard them as a Young Man, and I am growing old!
My army, O, my army! The signs are manifold!

My army, O, my army! My army and my Queen!
I used to sing your battle-songs when I was seventeen!
They came to me from ages, they came from far and near;
They came to me from Paris, they came to me from Here!,
They came when I was marching with the Army of the Rear.

My Queen’s dark eyes were flashing (oh, she was younger then!);
My Queen’s Red Cap was redder than the reddest blood of men!
My Queen marched like an Amazon, with anger manifest,
Her dark hair darkly matted from a knifegash in her breast
...

'Twas a Funny Little Fellow
Of the very purest type,
For he had a heart as mellow
As an apple over-ripe;
And the brightest little twinkle
When a funny thing occurred,
And the lightest little tinkle
Of a laugh you ever heard!

His smile was like the glitter
Of the sun in tropic lands,
And his talk a sweeter twitter
Than the swallow understands;
Hear him sing - and tell a story -
Snap a joke - ignite a pun, -
'Twas a capture - rapture - glory,
And explosion - all in one!

Though he hadn't any money -
That condiment which tends
To make a fellow "honey"
For the palate of his friends; -
Sweet simples he compounded -
Sovereign antidotes for sin
Or taint, - a faith unbounded
That his friends were genuine.

He was...

I

But our Great Turks in wit must reign alone
And ill can bear a Brother on the Throne.


II

Wit is like faith by such warm Fools profest
Who to be saved by one, must damn the rest.


III

Some who grow dull religious strait commence
And gain in morals what they lose in sence.


IV

Wits starve as useless to a Common weal
While Fools have places purely for their Zea.

V

Now wits gain praise by copying other wits
As one Hog lives on what another sh---.


VI

Wou'd you your writings to some Palates fit
Purged all you verses from the sin of wit
For authors now are so conceited grown
They praise no works but what are like their own.

It is the year's high noon,
The earth sweet incense yields,
And o'er the fresh, green fields
Bends the clear sky of June.

I leave the crowded streets,
The hum of busy life,
Its clamor and its strife,
To breathe thy perfumed sweets.

O rare and golden hours!
The bird's melodious song,
Wavelike, is borne along
Upon a strand of flowers.

I wander far away,
Where, through the forest trees,
Sports the cool summer breeze,
In wild and wanton play.

A patriarchal elm
Its stately form uprears,
Which twice a hundred years
Has ruled this woodland realm.

I sit beneath its shade,
And watch, with careless eye,
The brook that babbles by,
And cools the leafy glade.

In truth I wonder not,
That in the...

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
    And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
    I heard the first wave of the rising tide
    Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
    A sound mysteriously multiplied
    As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
    Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
    And inaccessible solitudes of being,
    The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
    Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
    Of things beyond our reason or control.

As thou deserv'st, be proud; then gladly let
The Muse give thee the Delphic coronet.

The Text is given here from Kinloch's MSS. He gives also three other versions and various fragments. The tale is also found amongst the Roxburghe Ballads, as The Beautifull Shepherdesse of Arcadia, in two broadsides printed about 1655 and 1680. This is the only English version extant. But earlier than any text of the ballad is a quotation from it in John Fletcher's The Pilgrim, iv. 2 (1621). The Scots versions, about a dozen in number, are far more lively than the broadside. Buchan printed two, of sixty and sixty-three stanzas respectively. Another text is delightfully inconsequent:--

    '"Some ca' me Jack, some ca' me John,
        Some ca' me Jing-ga-lee,
    But when I am in the queen's court
        Earl Hitchcock they ca' me."

    "Hitchcock, Hitchcock," Jo Janet she said,
        ...