Identity

At court I met it, in clothes brave enough
To be a courtier, and looks grave enough
To seem a statesman: as I near it came,
It made me a great face. I asked the name.
"A lord," it cried, "buried in flesh and blood,
And such from whom let no man hope least good,
For I will do none; and as little ill,
For I will dare none." Good lord, walk dead still.

Tune - "My tocher's the jewel."


I.

    O Meikle thinks my luve o' my beauty,
        And meikle thinks my luve o' my kin;
    But little thinks my luve I ken brawlie
        My tocher's the jewel has charms for him.
    It's a' for the apple he'll nourish the tree;
        It's a' for the hiney he'll cherish the bee;
    My laddie's sae meikle in luve wi' the siller,
        He canna hae lure to spare for me.

II.

    Your proffer o' luve's an airl-penny,
        My tocher's the bargain ye wad buy;
    But an ye be crafty, I am cunnin',
        Sae ye wi' anither your fortune maun try.
    Ye're like to the timmer o' yon rotten tree,
        Ye'll slip frae me like a knotless thread,
    And ye'll crack your credit wi' ...

Bells of the Past, whose long-forgotten music
Still fills the wide expanse,
Tingeing the sober twilight of the Present
With color of romance!

I hear your call, and see the sun descending
On rock and wave and sand,
As down the coast the Mission voices, blending,
Girdle the heathen land.

Within the circle of your incantation
No blight nor mildew falls;
Nor fierce unrest, nor lust, nor low ambition
Passes those airy walls.

Borne on the swell of your long waves receding,
I touch the farther Past;
I see the dying glow of Spanish glory,
The sunset dream and last!

Before me rise the dome-shaped Mission towers,
The white Presidio;
The swart commander in his leathern jerkin,
The priest in stole of snow.

Once more I see ...

'Lady Jane, O Lady Jane!
Your hound hath broken bounds again,
    And chased my timorous deer, O;
    If him I see,
    That hour he'll dee;
    My brakes shall be his bier, O.'

'Lord Aërie, Lord Aërie,
My hound, I trow, is fleet and free,
    He's welcome to your deer, O;
    Shoot, shoot you may,
    He'll gang his way,
    Your threats we nothing fear, O.'

He's fetched him in, he's fetched him in,
Gone all his swiftness, all his din,
    White fang, and glowering eye, O:
    'Here is your beast,
    And now at least
    My herds in peace shall lie, O.'

"In peace!" my lord, O mark me well!
For what my jolly hound befell
    You shall sup twenty-fold, O!
    For every tooth
    Of his, i'sooth,
    A stag i...

Well I remember how you smiled
To see me write your name upon
The soft sea-sand--'_O! what a child!_
_You think you're writing upon stone!_'
I have since written what no tide
Shall ever wash away, what men
Unborn shall read o'er ocean wide
And find Ianthe's name again.

Come, Anthea, let us two
Go to feast, as others do:
Tarts and custards, creams and cakes,
Are the junkets still at wakes;
Unto which the tribes resort,
Where the business is the sport:
Morris-dancers thou shalt see,
Marian, too, in pageantry;
And a mimic to devise
Many grinning properties.
Players there will be, and those
Base in action as in clothes;
Yet with strutting they will please
The incurious villages.
Near the dying of the day
There will be a cudgel-play,
Where a coxcomb will be broke,
Ere a good word can be spoke:
But the anger ends all here,
Drench'd in ale, or drown'd in beer.
Happy rusticks!best content
With the cheapest merriment;
And possess no other fear,
Than to want the Wake next year.

We held the book together timidly,
Whose antique music in an alien tongue
Once rose among the dew-drenched vines that hung
Beneath a high Castilian balcony.
I felt the lute strings' ancient ecstasy,
And while he read, my love-filled heart was stung,
And throbbed, as where an ardent bird has clung
The branches tremble on a blossomed tree.
Oh lady for whose sake the song was made,
Laid long ago in some still cypress shade,
Divided from the man who longed for thee,
Here in a land whose name he never heard,
His song brought love as April brings the bird,
And not a breath divides my love from me!

By the old tavern door on the causey there lay
A hogshead of stingo just rolled from a dray,
And there stood the blacksmith awaiting a drop
As dry as the cinders that lay in his shop;
And there stood the cobbler as dry as a bun,
Almost crackt like a bucket when left in the sun.
He'd whetted his knife upon pendil and hone
Till he'd not got a spittle to moisten the stone;
So ere he could work--though he'd lost the whole day--
He must wait the new broach and bemoisten his clay.

The cellar was empty, each barrel was drained
To its dregs--and Sir John like a rebel remained
In the street--for removal too powerful and large
For two or three topers to take into charge.
Odd zooks, said a gipsey, with bellows to mend,
Had I strength I would just be for helping a friend...

I

Mother, mother, what is that gazing through the darkness?
What is that that looks at me with its awful eyes?
Tell me, mother, what it is, freezing me to starkness?
Through the house it seems to go with its icy sighs,
What is that, oh, what is that, mother, in the darkness?

II

Child, my child! my little child! 'tis a waving willow,
That the night wind bows and sways near the window-pane:
Here's my breast, my little son. Let it be your pillow.
Have no fear, love, in my arms. Go to sleep again.
Go to sleep and turn your face from the windy willow.

III

Mother, mother, what is that? going round and round there?
Round the house and at the door stops and turns the knob.
Hold me close, O mother love! keep me from that sound there!
Hear ...

The bed of flowers

Loosens amain,
The beauteous snowdrops

Droop o'er the plain.
The crocus opens

Its glowing bud,
Like emeralds others,

Others, like blood.
With saucy gesture

Primroses flare,
And roguish violets,

Hidden with care;
And whatsoever

There stirs and strives,
The Spring's contented,

If works and thrives.

'Mongst all the blossoms

That fairest are,
My sweetheart's sweetness

Is sweetest far;
Upon me ever

Her glances light,
My song they waken,

My words make bright,
An ever open

And blooming mind,
In sport, unsullied,

In earnest, kind.
Though roses and lilies

By Summer are brought,
Against m...

...Unrestrained, imaginative writing.
Brown's magic is the vibrating universe,
his sympathy is his ability to receive these vibrations.
Sympathetic Magic captures the movement of life in its intervals -
his poems resemble stopped action
photographs from a film.

        O weak and weary world
        Forever struggling on,
    When will thy toils in comfort be impearled,
        When will thy sorrows and thy cares be gone?
    When shall the races, all ambition dead,
        Forsake the stony slope and rocky steep,
    And in contentment sweetly wed
        The joys that never sleep?

        O, weak and weary world,
        Long hast thou toiled in vain;
    The smoky fumes of woe are darkly curled
        With endless troubles and enduring pain;
    When will thy bosom, faint and helpless grown,
        Rest sweetly in the balmy bowers of ease?
    Avoid the woes that constant groan
        And follow shapes that please?

        O, weak and weary world,
        Why search the hills and seas?
   ...

The Genius of the Augustan age
His head among Rome’s ruins rear’d,
And, bursting with heroic rage,
When literary Heron appear’d;


Thou hast, he cried, like him of old
Who set the Ephesian dome on fire,
By being scandalously bold,
Attain’d the mark of thy desire.


And for traducing Virgil’s name
Shalt share his merited reward;
A perpetuity of fame,
That rots, and stinks, and is abhorr’d.

Thro' grief and thro' danger thy smile hath cheered my way,
Till hope seemed to bud from each thorn that round me lay;
The darker our fortune, the brighter our pure love burned,
Till shame into glory, till fear into zeal was turned;
Yes, slave as I was, in thy arms my spirit felt free,
And blest even the sorrows that made me more dear to thee.

Thy rival was honored, while thou wert wronged and scorned,
Thy crown was of briers, while gold her brows adorned;
She wooed me to temples, while thou lay'st hid in caves,
Her friends were all masters, while thine, alas! were slaves;
Yet cold in the earth, at thy feet, I would rather be,
Than wed what I loved not, or turn one thought from thee.

They slander thee sorely, who say thy vows are frail--
Hadst thou been a false o...

(1904)


The sunset lingered in the pale green West:
    In rosy wastes the low soft evening star
Woke; while the last white sea-mew sought for rest;
    And tawny sails came stealing o'er the bar.

But, in the hillside cottage, through the panes
    The light streamed like a thin far trumpet-call,
And quickened, as with quivering battle-stains,
    The printed ships that decked the parlour wall.

From oaken frames old admirals looked down:
    They saw the lonely slumberer at their feet:
They saw the paper, headed Talk from Town;
    Our rusting trident, and our phantom fleet:

And from a neighbouring tavern surged a song
    Of England laughing in the face of war,
With eyes unconquerably proud and strong,
    And lips triumpha...

How green and strange the light is,
Creeping through the window.
Lying alone in bed,
How strange the night is!

How still and chill the air is.
It seems no sound could live
Here in my room
That now so bare is.

All bright and still the room is,
But easeless here am I.
Deep in my heart
Cold lonely gloom is!

The Text was derived from Mr. Biot Edmondston's memory of a ballad sung to him by an old man in Unst, Shetland. In the version sung, he notes, there were no stanzas to fill the obvious gap in the story after the first; but that after the fourth and the eighth stanzas, there had been certain verses which he had forgotten. In the first instance, these related that the lady had been carried off by fairies, and that the king, going in search of her, saw her one day among a company that passed into a castle on the hillside. After the eighth stanza, the ballad related that a messenger appeared behind the grey stone, and invited the king in.

The refrain is a startling instance of phonetic tradition, the words being repeated by rote long after the sense has been forgotten. It appears that the two lines are Unst pronunciation of Danish,...

When the wind works against us in the dark,
And pelts with snow
The lowest chamber window on the east,
And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
The beast,
'Come out! Come out!'
It costs no inward struggle not to go,
Ah, no!
I count our strength,
Two and a child,
Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,
How drifts are piled,
Dooryard and road ungraded,
Till even the comforting barn grows far away
And my heart owns a doubt
Whether 'tis in us to arise with day
And save ourselves unaided.