Heartbreak

Weary, oh, so weary
With it all!
Sunny days or dreary--
How they pall!
Why should we be heroes,
Launa Dee,
Striving to no winning?
Let the world be Zero's!
As in the beginning
Let it be!

What good comes of toiling,
When all's done?
Frail green sprays for spoiling
Of the sun;
Laurel leaf or myrtle,
Love or fame--
Ah, what odds what spray, sweet?
Time, that makes life fertile,
Makes its blooms decay, sweet,
As they came.

Lie here with me dreaming,
Cheek to cheek,
Lithe limbs twined and gleaming,
Brown and sleek;
Like two serpents coiling
In their lair.
Where's the good of wreathing
Sprays for Time's despoiling?
Let me feel your breathing
In my hair.

You and I together--
...

        I

    Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us . . .
    Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . .
    Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . .
    Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
            But nothing happens.

    Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.
    Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
    Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,
    Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
            What are we doing here?

    The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow . . .
    We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.
    Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
    Attacks once more in ranks on shive...

Fair flower! that fall'n beneath the angry blast,
Which marks with wither'd sweets its fearful way,
I grieve to see thee on the low earth cast,
While beauty's trembling tints fade fast away.
But who is she, that from the mountain's head
Comes gaily on, cheering the child of earth;
The walks of woe bloom bright beneath her tread,
And nature smiles with renovated mirth?
'Tis Health! she comes, and hark! the vallies ring.
And hark! the echoing hills repeat the sound;
She sheds the new-blown blossoms of the spring,
And all their fragrance floats her footsteps round.
And hark! she whispers in the zephyr's voice,
Lift up thy head, fair flower! rejoice! rejoice!

I.

This is the place where visions come to dance,
Dreams of the trees and flowers, glimmeringly;
Where the white moon and the pale stars can see,
Sitting with Legend and with dim Romance.
This is the place where all the silvery clans
Of Music meet: music of bird and bee;
Music of falling water; melody
Mated with magic, with her golden lance.
This is the place made holy by Love's feet,
And dedicate to wonder and to dreams,
The ministers of Beauty. 'Twas with these
Love filled the place, making all splendours meet
And all despairs, as once in woods and streams
Of Ida and the gold Hesperides.

II.

Here is the place where Loveliness keeps house,
Between the river and the wooded hills,
Within a valley where the Springtime spills
Her ...

Evening is grey on the hills. The
north wind resounds through the
woods. White clouds rise on the sky: the
trembling snow descends. The river howls
afar, along its winding course. Sad,
by a hollow rock, the grey-hair'd Carryl
sat. Dry fern waves over his head; his
seat is in an aged birch. Clear to the
roaring winds he lifts his voice of woe.

Tossed on the wavy ocean is He,
the hope of the isles; Malcolm, the
support of the poor; foe to the proud
in arms! Why hast thou left us behind?
why live we to mourn thy fate? We
might have heard, with thee, the voice
of the deep; have seen the oozy rock.

Sad on the sea-beat shore thy spouse
looketh for thy return. The time of
thy promise is come; the night is gathering
around. But no white sail...

The heart asks pleasure first,
And then, excuse from pain;
And then, those little anodynes
That deaden suffering;

And then, to go to sleep;
And then, if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor,
The liberty to die.

There never was success so nobly gained,
    Or victory so free from selfish dross,
But in the winning some one had been pained
    Or some one suffered loss.

There never was so nobly planned a fete,
    Or festal throng with hearts on pleasure bent,
But some neglected one outside the gate
    Wept tears of discontent.

There never was a bridal morning fair
    With hope's blue skies and love's unclouded sun
For two fond hearts, that did not bring despair
    To some sad other one.

There is a warm and gentle atmosphere
About the form of one we love, and thus
As in a tender mist our spirits are
Wrapped in the ... of that which is to us
The health of life's own life -

'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...

In an old world garden dreaming,
Where the flowers had human names,
Methought, in fantastic seeming,
They disported as squires and dames.

Of old in Rosamond's Bower,
With it's peacock hedges of yew,
One could never find the flower
Unless one was given the clue;
So take the key of the wicket,
Who would follow my fancy free,
By formal knot and clipt thicket,
And smooth greensward so fair to see

And while Time his scythe is whetting,
Ere the dew from the grass has gone,

The Four Seasons' flight forgetting,
As they dance round the dial stone;

With a leaf from an old English book,
A Jonquil will serve for a pen.

Let us note from the green arbour's nook,
Flowers masking like women and men.


FIRST in VENUS'...

Cold, my dear, - cold and quiet.
    In their cups on yonder lea,
Cowslips fold the brown bee's diet;
    So the moss enfoldeth thee.
"Plant me, plant me, O love, a lily flower -
    Plant at my head, I pray you, a green tree;
And when our children sleep," she sighed, "at the dusk hour,
    And when the lily blossoms, O come out to me!"

        Lost, my dear? Lost! nay deepest
    Love is that which loseth least;
        Through the night-time while thou sleepest,
    Still I watch the shrouded east.
Near thee, near thee, my wife that aye liveth,
    "Lost" is no word for such a love as mine;
Love from her past to me a present giveth,
    And love itself doth comfort, making pain divine.
        Rest, my dear, rest. Fair showeth
    That which was, ...

Midnight; bells toll, and along the cloud-high towers
The golden lights go out . . .
The yellow windows darken, the shades are drawn,
In thousands of rooms we sleep, we await the dawn,
We lie face down, we dream,
We cry aloud with terror, half rise, or seem
To stare at the ceiling or walls . . .
Midnight . . . the last of shattering bell-notes falls.
A rush of silence whirls over the cloud-high towers,
A vortex of soundless hours.

‘The bells have just struck twelve: I should be sleeping.
But I cannot delay any longer to write and tell you.
The woman is dead.
She died, you know the way. Just as we planned.
Smiling, with open sunlit eyes.
Smiling upon the outstretched fatal hand . . .’

He folds his letter, steps softly down the stairs.
The doors...

How sweet it is, when mother Fancy rocks
The wayward brain, to saunter through a wood!
An old place, full of many a lovely brood,
Tall trees, green arbours, and ground-flowers in flocks;
And wild rose tip-toe upon hawthorn stocks,
Like a bold Girl, who plays her agile pranks
At Wakes and Fairs with wandering Mountebanks,
When she stands cresting the Clown's head, and mocks
The crowd beneath her. Verily I think,
Such place to me is sometimes like a dream
Or map of the whole world: thoughts, link by link,
Enter through ears and eyesight, with such gleam
Of all things, that at last in fear I shrink,
And leap at once from the delicious stream.

What is there in the vale of life
Half so delightful as a wife,
When friendship, love, and peace combine
To stamp the marriage-bond divine?
The stream of pure and genuine love
Derives its current from above;
And earth a second Eden shows,
Where’er the healing water flows:
But ah, if from the dykes and drains
Of sensual nature’s feverish veins,
Lust, like a lawless headstrong flood,
Impregnated with ooze and mud,
Descending fast on every side,
Once mingles with the sacred tide,
Farewell the soul-enlivening scene!
The banks that wore a smiling green,
With rank defilement overspread,
Bewail their flowery beauties dead.
The stream polluted, dark, and dull,
Diffused into a Stygian pool,
Through life’s last melancholy years
Is fed with overf...

Shall one be sorrowful because of love,
Which hath no earthly crown,
Which lives and dies, unknown?
Because no words of his shall ever move
Her maiden heart to own
Him lord and destined master of her own:
Is Love so weak a thing as this,
Who can not lie awake,
Solely for his own sake,
For lack of the dear hands to hold, the lips to kiss,
A mere heart-ache?

Nay, though love's victories be great and sweet,
Nor vain and foolish toys,
His crowned, earthly joys,
Is there no comfort then in love's defeat?
Because he shall defer,
For some short span of years all part in her,
Submitting to forego
The certain peace which happier lovers know;
Because he shall be utterly disowned,
Nor length of service bring
Her least awakening:
Foiled...

Up from the South come the birds that were banished,
    Frightened away by the presence of frost.
Back to the vale comes the verdure that vanished,
    Back to the forest the leaves that were lost.
Over the hillside the carpet of splendour,
    Folded through Winter, Spring spreads down again;
Along the horizon, the tints that were tender,
    Lost hues of Summer-time, burn bright as then.

Only the mountains' high summits are hoary,
    To the ice-fettered river the sun gives a key.
Once more the gleaming shore lists to the story
    Told by an amorous Summer-kissed sea.
All things revive that in Winter time perished,
    The rose buds again in the light o' the sun,
All that was beautiful, all that was cherished,
    Sweet things and dear things and all thin...

Rose-colour
Rose Pink am I, the colour gleams and glows
    In many a flower; her lips, those tender doors
By which, in time of love, love's essence flows
    From him to her, are dyed in delicate Rose.
Mine is the earliest Ruby light that pours
    Out of the East, when day's white gates unclose.

On downy peach, and maiden's downier cheek
    I, in a flush of radiant bloom, alight,
Clinging, at sunset, to the shimmering peak
    I veil its snow in floods of Roseate light.

Azure
Mine is the heavenly hue of Azure skies,
    Where the white clouds lie soft as seraphs' wings,
Mine the sweet, shadowed light in innocent eyes,
    Whose lovely looks light only on lovely things.

Mine the Blue Distance, delicate and clear,
    Mine...

Thou hast constrained mine eyes, unholy Death,
To watch my dear child breathe her dying breath:
To watch thee shake the fruit unripe and clinging
While fear and grief her parents' hearts were wringing.
Ah, never, never could my well-loved child
Have died and left her father reconciled:
Never but with a heart like heavy lead
Could I have watched her go, abandoned.
And yet at no time could her death have brought
More cruel ache than now, nor bitterer thought;
For had God granted to her ample days
I might have walked with her down flowered ways
And left this life at last, content, descending
To realms of dark Persephone, the all-ending,
Without such grievous sorrow in my heart,
Of which earth holdeth not the counterpart.
I marvel not that Niobe, alone
Amid h...