Identity

    I knew her for a little ghost
        That in my garden walked;
    The wall is high--higher than most--
        And the green gate was locked.

    And yet I did not think of that
        Till after she was gone--
    I knew her by the broad white hat,
        All ruffled, she had on.

    By the dear ruffles round her feet,
        By her small hands that hung
    In their lace mitts, austere and sweet,
        Her gown's white folds among.

    I watched to see if she would stay,
        What she would do--and oh!
    She looked as if she liked the way
        I let my garden grow!

    She bent above my favourite mint
        With conscious garden grace,
    She smiled and smiled--there was no hint
        Of sadness ...

I took my power in my hand.
And went against the world;
'T was not so much as David had,
But I was twice as bold.

I aimed my pebble, but myself
Was all the one that fell.
Was it Goliath was too large,
Or only I too small?

"But if any old Lady, Knight, Priest, or Physician,
Should condemn me for printing a second edition;
If good Madam Squintum my work should abuse,
May I venture to give her a smack of my muse?"

Anstey's 'New Bath Guide', p. 169.


Candour compels me, BECHER! to commend
The verse, which blends the censor with the friend;
Your strong yet just reproof extorts applause
From me, the heedless and imprudent cause;
For this wild error, which pervades my strain,
I sue for pardon, - must I sue in vain?
The wise sometimes from Wisdom's ways depart;
Can youth then hush the dictates of the heart?
Precepts of prudence curb, but can't controul,
The fierce emotions of the flowing soul.
When Love's delirium haunts the glowing mind,
Limping Decorum lingers far be...

High on her speculative tower
Stood Science waiting for the hour
When Sol was destined to endure
'That' darkening of his radiant face
Which Superstition strove to chase,
Erewhile, with rites impure.

Afloat beneath Italian skies,
Through regions fair as Paradise
We gaily passed, till Nature wrought
A silent and unlooked-for change,
That checked the desultory range
Of joy and sprightly thought.

Where'er was dipped the toiling oar,
The waves danced round us as before,
As lightly, though of altered hue,
'Mid recent coolness, such as falls
At noontide from umbrageous walls
That screen the morning dew.

No vapour stretched its wings; no cloud
Cast far or near a murky shroud;
The sky an azure field displayed;
'Twas sunlight s...

I heard an old, familiar air
    Strummed idly by a careless hand,
Yet in the melody were rare,
    Sweet echoings from childhood land.

The well-remembered mother touch,
    The wise denials and consents,
The trivial sorrows that were much,
    Small pleasures that were large events;

The fancies, dreams, strange wonderings,
    The daily problems unexplained,
Momentous as the cares of kings
    That on unhappy thrones have reigned,

Came back with each unstudied tone;
    And came that song remembered best,
Which, with a sweetness all its own,
    Once lulled the play-worn child to rest.

And there, secure as Tarik's height,
    He slumbered, shielded from alarms,
Safe from the mystery of night,
    Close folded in the moth...

"Come, surly fellow, come!    A song!"
    What, madmen?    Sing to you?
Choose from the clouded tales of wrong
    And terror I bring to you.

Of a night so torn with cries,
    Honest men sleeping
Start awake with glaring eyes,
    Bone-chilled, flesh creeping.

Of spirits in the web hung room
    Up above the stable,
Groans, knockings in the gloom,
    The dancing table.

Of demons in the dry well
    That cheep and mutter,
Clanging of an unseen bell,
    Blood choking the gutter.

Of lust frightful, past belief,
    Lurking unforgotten,
Unrestrainable endless grief
    From breasts long rotten.

A song?    What laughter or what song
    Can this house remember?
Do flowers and butterflies belong
  ...

Voices out of the shade that cried,
And long noon in the hot calm places,
And children's play by the wayside,
And country eyes, and quiet faces,
All these were round my steady paces.

Those that I could have loved went by me;
Cool gardened homes slept in the sun;
I heard the whisper of water nigh me,
Saw hands that beckoned, shone, were gone
In the green and gold. And I went on.

For if my echoing footfall slept,
Soon a far whispering there'd be
Of a little lonely wind that crept
From tree to tree, and distantly
Followed me, followed me. . . .

But the blue vaporous end of day
Brought peace, and pursuit baffled quite,
Where between pine-woods dipped the way.
I turned, slipped in and out of sight.
I trod as quiet as the night.

Shall the Harp then be silent, when he who first gave
    To our country a name, is withdrawn from all eyes?
Shall a Minstrel of Erin stand mute by the grave,
    Where the first--where the last of her Patriots lies?

No--faint tho' the death-song may fall from his lips,
    Tho' his Harp, like his soul, may with shadows be crost,
Yet, yet shall it sound, mid a nation's eclipse,
    And proclaim to the world what a star hath been lost;--[1]

What a union of all the affections and powers
    By which life is exalted, embellished, refined,
Was embraced in that spirit--whose centre was ours,
    While its mighty circumference circled mankind.

Oh, who that loves Erin, or who that can see,
    Thro' the waste of her annals, that epoch sublime--
Lik...

'T was a vision of childhood that came with its dawn,
Ere the curtain that covered life's day-star was drawn;
The nurse told the tale when the shadows grew long,
And the mother's soft lullaby breathed it in song.

"There flows a fair stream by the hills of the West," -
She sang to her boy as he lay on her breast;
"Along its smooth margin thy fathers have played;
Beside its deep waters their ashes are laid."

I wandered afar from the land of my birth,
I saw the old rivers, renowned upon earth,
But fancy still painted that wide-flowing stream
With the many-hued pencil of infancy's dream.

I saw the green banks of the castle-crowned Rhine,
Where the grapes drink the moonlight and change it to wine;
I stood by the Avon, whose waves as they glide
Still wh...

Of what she said to me that night, no matter.
The strange thing came next day.
My brain was full of music, something she played me;
I couldn’t remember it all, but phrases of it
Wreathed and wreathed among faint memories,
Seeking for something, trying to tell me something,
Urging to restlessness: verging on grief.
I tried to play the tune, from memory,
But memory failed: the chords and discords climbed
And found no resolution, only hung there,
And left me morbid . . . Where, then, had I heard it? . . .
What secret dusty chamber was it hinting?
‘Dust’, it said, ‘dust . . . and dust . . . and sunlight . .
A cold clear April evening . . . snow, bedraggled,
Rain-worn snow, dappling the hideous grass . . .
And someone walking alone; and someone saying
That all must...

Not a line of her writing have I,
Not a thread of her hair,
No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby
I may picture her there;
And in vain do I urge my unsight
To conceive my lost prize
At her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light,
And with laughter her eyes.

What scenes spread around her last days,
Sad, shining, or dim?
Did her gifts and compassions enray and enarch her sweet ways
With an aureate nimb?
Or did life-light decline from her years,
And mischances control
Her full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fears
Disennoble her soul?

Thus I do but the phantom retain
Of the maiden of yore
As my relic; yet haply the best of her fined in my brain
It maybe the more
That no line...

All night I lay on Devil's Edge,
Along an overhanging ledge
Between the sky and sea:
And as I rested 'waiting sleep,
The windless sky and soundless deep
In one dim, blue infinity
Of starry peace encompassed me.

And I remembered, drowsily,
How 'mid the hills last night I'd lain
Beside a singing moorland burn;
And waked at dawn, to feel the rain
Fall on my face, as on the fern
That drooped about my heather-bed;
And how by noon the wind had blown
The last grey shred from out the sky,
And blew my homespun jacket dry,
As I stood on the topmost stone
That crowns the cairn on Hawkshaw Head,
And caught a gleam of far-off sea;
And heard the wind sing in the bent
Like those far waters calling me:
When, my heart answering to the call,
...

A while we wandered (thus it is I dream!)
Through a long, sandy track of No Man's Land,
Where only poppies grew among the sand,
The which we, plucking, cast with scant esteem,
And ever sadlier, into the sad stream,
Which followed us, as we went, hand in hand,
Under the estranged stars, a road unplanned,
Seeing all things in the shadow of a dream.

And ever sadlier, as the stars expired,
We found the poppies rarer, till thine eyes
Grown all my light, to light me were too tired,
And at their darkening, that no surmise
Might haunt me of the lost days we desired,
After them all I flung those memories!

    My father who owned the wagon-shop
    And grew rich shoeing horses
    Sent me to the University of Montreal.
    I learned nothing and returned home,
    Roaming the fields with Bert Kessler,
    Hunting quail and snipe.
    At Thompson's Lake the trigger of my gun
    Caught in the side of the boat
    And a great hole was shot through my heart.
    Over me a fond father erected this marble shaft,
    On which stands the figure of a woman
    Carved by an Italian artist.
    They say the ashes of my namesake
    Were scattered near the pyramid of Caius Cestius
    Somewhere near Rome.

Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,
Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those
Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,
Or in the wine vat, dwell beyond the stir
And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep
Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep
Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold
The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold
Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes
Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise
In druid vapour and make the torches dim;
Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him
Who met Fand walking among flaming dew
By a gray shore where the wind never blew,
And lost the world and Emer for a kiss;
And him who drove the gods out of their liss,
And till a hundred morns had flowered red,
Feasted and wept the barrows of his d...

Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,
Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.
You said, "Through glory and ecstasy we pass;
Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still,
When we are old, are old. . . ." "And when we die
All's over that is ours; and life burns on
Through other lovers, other lips," said I,
"Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!"

"We are Earth's best, that learnt her lesson here.
Life is our cry. We have kept the faith!" we said;
"We shall go down with unreluctant tread
Rose-crowned into the darkness!" . . . Proud we were,
And laughed, that had such brave true things to say.
And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.

The fervent, pale-faced Mother ere she sleep,
Looks out upon the zigzag-lighted square,
The beautiful bare trees, the blue night-air,
The revelation of the star-strewn deep,
World above world, and heaven over heaven.
Between the tree-tops and the skies, her sight
Rests on a steadfast, ruddy-shining light,
High in the tower, an earthly star of even.
Hers is the faith in saints' and angels' power,
And mediating love - she breathes a prayer
For yon tired watcher in the gray old tower.
He the shrewd, skeptic poet unaware
Feels comforted and stilled, and knows not whence
Falls this unwonted peace on heart and sense.

    As I was walkin on the strand,
        I spied ane auld man sit
    On ane auld black rock; and aye the waves
        Cam washin up its fit.
    His lips they gaed as gien they wad lilt,
        But o' liltin, wae's me, was nane!
    He spak but an owercome, dreary and dreigh,
        A burden wha's sang was gane:
"Robbie and Jeanie war twa bonnie bairns;
    They playt thegither i' the gloamin's hush:
Up cam the tide and the mune and the sterns,
    And pairtit the twa wi' a glint and a gush."

    "What can the auld man mean," quod I,
        "Sittin o' the auld black rock?
    The tide creeps up wi' a moan and a cry,
        And a hiss 'maist like a mock!
    The words he mutters maun be the en'
        O' some weary auld-warl' sang--
   ...