Identity

There is no thing we cannot overcome
    Say not thy evil instinct is inherited,
Or that some trait inborn makes thy whole life forlorn,
    And calls down punishment that is not merited.

Back of thy parents and grandparents lies
    The Great Eternal Will.    That, too, is thine
    Inheritance; strong, beautiful, divine,
Sure lever of success for one who tries.

Pry up thy faults with this great lever, Will.
    However deeply bedded in propensity,
However firmly set, I tell thee firmer yet
    Is that vast power that comes from Truth's immensity.

Thou art a part of that strange world, I say.
    Its forces lie within thee, stronger far
    Than all thy mortal sins and frailties are,
Believe thyself divine, and watch, and pray.

There i...

    Has the last farewell been spoken?
    Have I ta'en the parting token
        From thy lips so sweet?
    Has their last soft word been spoken
        Till again we meet?

    Why is not thy hand extended?
    Is my maiden queen offended?
        Or does she forget?
    No! my queen is not offended,
        She is kindly yet.

    For her eye is softly beaming,
    And with tenderness is teeming,
        Gentle as the dove's:
    With a holy light is beaming -
        Dare I call it love's?

    But the time is fast advancing;
    From the heaven of its glancing
        I must rend my heart:
    Treacherous Time is fast advancing,
        And I must depart.

    Ah! the pain the parting brings me!
    As a serpe...

1.

Old Meg she was a gypsy;
And liv'd upon the moors:
Her bed it was the brown heath turf,
And her house was out of doors.

2.

Her apples were swart blackberries,
Her currants, pods o' broom;
Her wine was dew of the wild white rose,
Her book a church-yard tomb.

3.

Her brothers were the craggy hills,
Her sisters larchen trees;
Alone with her great family
She liv'd as she did please.

4.

No breakfast had she many a morn,
No dinner many a noon,
And 'stead of supper she would stare
Full hard against the moon.

5.

But every morn, of woodbine fresh
She made her garlanding,
And every night the dark glen yew
She wove, and she would sing.

6.

And with her fin...

Thou who shalt stop, where Thames' translucent wave
Shines a broad Mirror thro' the shadowy Cave;
Where ling'ring drops from min'ral Roofs distill,
And pointed Crystals break the sparkling Rill,
Unpolish'd Gems no ray on Pride bestow,
And latent Metals innocently glow.
Approach! Great Nature studiously behold;
And eye the Mine without a wish for Gold.
Approach; but awful! Lo! th' Egerian Grot,
Where, nobly-pensive, St. John sate and thought;
Where British sighs from dying Wyndham stole,
And the bright flame was shot thro' Marchmont's Soul.
Let such, such only tread this sacred Floor,
Who dare to love their Country, and be poor.

When o'er the chords thy fingers stray,
My spirit leaves its mortal clay,
A statue there I stand;
Thy spell controls e'en life and death,
As when the nerves a living breath
Receive by Love's command! [1]

More gently zephyr sighs along
To listen to thy magic song;
The systems formed by heavenly love
To sing forever as they move,
Pause in their endless-whirling round
To catch the rapture-teeming sound;
'Tis for thy strains they worship thee,
Thy look, enchantress, fetters me!

From yonder chords fast-thronging come
Soul-breathing notes with rapturous speed,
As when from out their heavenly home
The new-born seraphim proceed;
The strains pour forth their magic might,
As glittering suns burst through the night,
When, by Cre...

Though mighty in Love's favor still,
Though cruel yet, my boy,
When the unwelcome dawn shall chill
Your pride and youthful joy,
The hair which round your shoulder grows
Is rudely cut away,
Your color, redder than the rose,
Is changed by youth's decay,--

Then, Ligurinus, in the glass
Another you will spy.
And as the shaggy face, alas!
You see, your grief will cry:
"Why in my youth could I not learn
The wisdom men enjoy?
Or why to men cannot return
The smooth cheeks of the boy?"

It is nothing to me, the beauty said,
With a careless toss of her pretty head;
The man is weak if he can't refrain
From the cup you say is fraught with pain.
It was something to her in after years,
When her eyes were drenched with burning tears,
And she watched in lonely grief and dread,
And startled to hear a staggering tread.

It is nothing to me, the mother said;
I have no fear that my boy will tread
In the downward path of sin and shame,
And crush my heart and darken his name.
It was something to her when that only son
From the path of right was early won,
And madly cast in the flowing bowl
A ruined body and sin-wrecked soul.

It is nothing to me, the young man cried:
In his eye was a flash of scorn and pride;
I heed not the dreadful th...

Love and forgetting might have carried them
A little further up the mountain side
With night so near, but not much further up.
They must have halted soon in any case
With thoughts of a path back, how rough it was
With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness;
When they were halted by a tumbled wall
With barbed-wire binding. They stood facing this,
Spending what onward impulse they still had
In One last look the way they must not go,
On up the failing path, where, if a stone
Or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself;
No footstep moved it. 'This is all,' they sighed,
Good-night to woods.' But not so; there was more.
A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall, as near the wall as they.
She saw them in their field, they her in hers.
T...

I.

The suns of eighteen centuries have shone
Since the Redeemer walked with man, and made
The fisher's boat, the cavern's floor of stone,
And mountain moss, a pillow for His head;
And He, who wandered with the peasant Jew,
And broke with publicans the bread of shame,
And drank with blessings, in His Father's name,
The water which Samaria's outcast drew,
Hath now His temples upon every shore,
Altar and shrine and priest; and incense dim
Evermore rising, with low prayer and hymn,
From lips which press the temple's marble floor,
Or kiss the gilded sign of the dread cross He bore.

II.

Yet as of old, when, meekly "doing good,"
He fed a blind and selfish multitude,
And even the poor companions of His lot
With their dim earthly vision knew...

Tune - "Yon wild mossy mountains."


I.

    Yon wild mossy mountains sae lofty and wide,
    That nurse in their bosom the youth o' the Clyde,
    Where the grouse lead their coveys thro' the heather to feed,
    And the shepherd tents his flock as he pipes on his reed.
        Where the grouse lead their coveys thro' the heather to feed,
        And the shepherd tents his flock as he pipes on his reed.

II.

    Not Gowrie's rich valleys, nor Forth's sunny shores,
    To me hae the charms o' yon wild, mossy moors;
    For there, by a lanely and sequester'd stream,
    Resides a sweet lassie, my thought and my dream.
        For there, by a lanely and sequester'd stream,
        Resides a sweet lassie, my thought and my dream.

To nothing fitter can I thee compare
Than to the son of some rich penny-father,
Who having now brought on his end with care,
Leaves to his son all he had heaped together.
    This new rich novice, lavish of his chest,
To one man gives, doth on another spend;
Then here he riots; yet amongst the rest,
Haps to lend some to one true honest friend.
    Thy gifts thou in obscurity dost waste:
False friends, thy kindness born but to deceive thee;
Thy love that is on the unworthy placed;
Time hath thy beauty which with age will leave thee.
    Only that little which to me was lent,
    I give thee back when all the rest is spent.

A Fact Literally Rendered.[60]

I stood beside the grave of him who blazed
The Comet of a season, and I saw
The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed
With not the less of sorrow and of awe
On that neglected turf and quiet stone,
With name no clearer than the names unknown,
Which lay unread around it; and I asked
The Gardener of that ground, why it might be
That for this plant strangers his memory tasked,
Through the thick deaths of half a century;
And thus he answered - "Well, I do not know
Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so;
He died before my day of Sextonship,
And I had not the digging of this grave."
And is this all? I thought, - and do we rip
The veil of Immortality, and crave
I know not what of honour and of light
Throug...

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.
Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.
But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.
That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

Farewell, false Friend! - our scenes of kindness close!
    To cordial looks, to sunny smiles farewell!
    To sweet consolings, that can grief expel,
    And every joy soft sympathy bestows!
For alter'd looks, where truth no longer glows,
    Thou hast prepar'd my heart; - and it was well
    To bid thy pen th' unlook'd for story tell,
    Falsehood avow'd, that shame, nor sorrow knows. -
O! when we meet, - (to meet we're destin'd, try
    To avoid it as thou may'st) on either brow,
    Nor in the stealing consciousness of eye,
Be seen the slightest trace of what, or how
    We once were to each other; - nor one sigh
    Flatter with weak regret a broken vow!

Amor, che vedi ogni pensiero aperto.

HE CARES NOT FOR SUFFERINGS, SO THAT HE DISPLEASE NOT LAURA.


    Love, thou who seest each secret thought display'd,
And the sad steps I take, with thee sole guide;
This throbbing breast, to thee thrown open wide,
To others' prying barr'd, thine eyes pervade.
Thou know'st what efforts, following thee, I made,
While still from height to height thy pinions glide;
Nor deign'st one pitying look to turn aside
On him who, fainting, treads a trackless glade.
I mark from far the mildly-beaming ray
To which thou goad'st me through the devious maze;
Alas! I want thy wings, to speed my way--
Henceforth, a distant homager, I'll gaze,
Content by silent longings to decay,
So that my sighs for her in her no anger raise...

Let us now take time and play,
Love, and live here while we may;
Drink rich wine, and make good cheer,
While we have our being here;
For once dead and laid i' th' grave,
No return from thence we have.

You are all that is lovely and light,
    Aziza whom I adore,
And, waking, after the night,
    I am weary with dreams of you.
Every nerve in my heart is tense and sore
    As I rise to another morning apart from you.

I dream of your luminous eyes,
    Aziza whom I adore!
Of the ruffled silk of your hair,
I dream, and the dreams are lies.
But I love them, knowing no more
    Will ever be mine of you
Aziza, my life's despair.

I would burn for a thousand days,
Aziza whom I adore,
Be tortured, slain, in unheard of ways
    If you pitied the pain I bore.
You pity!    Your bright eyes, fastened on other things,
Are keener to sting my soul, than scorpion stings!

You are all that is lovely to me,
    All that is light,
One w...

And Ellen, when the graybeard years
Have brought us to life's evening hour,
And all the crowded Past appears
A tiny scene of sun and shower,

Then, if I read the page aright
Where Hope, the soothsayer, reads our lot,
Thyself shalt own the page was bright,
Well that we loved, woe had we not,

When Mirth is dumb and Flattery's fled,
And mute thy music's dearest tone,
When all but Love itself is dead
And all but deathless Reason gone.