Inspirational

The circle is broken, one seat is forsaken,
One bud from the tree of our friendship is shaken;
One heart from among us no longer shall thrill
With joy in our gladness, or grief in our ill.

Weep! lonely and lowly are slumbering now
The light of her glances, the pride of her brow;
Weep! sadly and long shall we listen in vain
To hear the soft tones of her welcome again.

Give our tears to the dead! For humanity's claim
From its silence and darkness is ever the same;
The hope of that world whose existence is bliss
May not stifle the tears of the mourners of this.

For, oh! if one glance the freed spirit can throw
On the scene of its troubled probation below,
Than the pride of the marble, the pomp of the dead,
To that glance will be dearer the tears whic...

I.

    While winds frae aff Ben-Lomond blaw,
    And bar the doors wi' driving snaw,
        And hing us owre the ingle,
    I set me down to pass the time,
    And spin a verse or twa o' rhyme,
        In hamely westlin jingle.
    While frosty winds blaw in the drift,
        Ben to the chimla lug,
    I grudge a wee the great folks' gift,
        That live sae bien an' snug:
            I tent less and want less
                Their roomy fire-side;
            But hanker and canker
                To see their cursed pride.

II.

    It's hardly in a body's power
    To keep, at times, frae being sour,
        To see how things are shar'd;
    How best o' chiels are whiles in want.
    While coofs on countless thousands...

We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies.

The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king.

    "Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are
    That bide the pelting of the pitiless storm!
    How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
    Your looped and widow'd raggedness defend you
    From seasons such as these?"

Shakspeare.


    When biting Boreas, fell and doure,
    Sharp shivers thro' the leafless bow'r;
    When Phoebus gies a short-liv'd glow'r
        Far south the lift,
    Dim-darkening through the flaky show'r,
        Or whirling drift:

    Ae night the storm the steeples rocked,
    Poor labour sweet in sleep was locked,
    While burns, wi' snawy wreeths up-choked,
        Wild-eddying swirl.
    Or through the mining outlet bocked,
        Down headlong hurl.

    Listening, the doors an' win...

Friend whom I never saw, yet dearest friend,
    Be with me travelling on the byeway now
In April's month and mood: our steps shall bend
    By the shut smithy with its penthouse brow
    Armed round with many a felly and crackt plough:
And we will mark in his white smock the mill
    Standing aloof, long numbed to any wind,
That in his crannies mourns, and craves him still;
    But now there is not any grain to grind,
    And even the master lies too deep for winds to find.

Grieve not at these: for there are mills amain
    With lusty sails that leap and drop away
On further knolls, and lads to fetch the grain.
    The ash-spit wickets on the green betray
    New games begun and old ones put away.
Let us fare on, dead friend, O deathless friend,
    Whe...

Lives there who, with unhallow'd hand, would tear,
One leaf from that immortal wreath which shades
The Hero's living brow, or decks his urn?
Breathes there who does not triumph in the thought
That "Nelson's language is his mother tongue,"
And that St. Vincent's country is his own?
Oh! these bright guerdons of renown are won
By means most palpable to sense and sight;
By days of peril and by nights of toil;
By Valour's long probation, closed at last
In Victory's arms--consummated and seal'd
In deathless Glory and immortal Fame.

Musing I stand upon his lowly grave,
Who, though he fought no battle--though he pour'd
No hostile thunders on his country's foes,
Achieved for Britain triumphs, less array'd
"In pomp and circumstance," nor visible
To vul...

HE

Let us be friends.    My life is sad and lonely,
While yours with love is beautiful and bright.
Be kind to me:    I ask your friendship only.
No Star is robbed by lending darkness light.

SHE

I give you friendship as I understand it,
A sentiment I feel for all mankind.

HE

Oh, give me more; may not one friend command it?

SHE

Look in the skies, 'tis there the star you'll find;
It casts its beams on all with equal favour.

HE

I would have more than what all men may claim.

SHE

Then your ideas of friendship strongly savour
Of sentiments which wear another name.

HE

May not one friend receive more than another?

SHE

Not man from woman and still remain a ...

Up soared the lark into the air,
A shaft of song, a winged prayer,
As if a soul, released from pain,
Were flying back to heaven again.

St. Francis heard; it was to him
An emblem of the Seraphim;
The upward motion of the fire,
The light, the heat, the heart's desire.

Around Assisi's convent gate
The birds, God's poor who cannot wait,
From moor and mere and darksome wood
Came flocking for their dole of food.

"O brother birds," St. Francis said,
"Ye come to me and ask for bread,
But not with bread alone to-day
Shall ye be fed and sent away.

"Ye shall be fed, ye happy birds,
With manna of celestial words;
Not mine, though mine they seem to be,
Not mine, though they be spoken through me.

"O, doubly are ye bound to p...

    Great natures live apart; the mountain gray
        May call no comrade to his lonely side;
    The giant ocean, wrapped in storm and spray,
        Has no companion for her endless tide;
        The forest monarch, where his parents died,
    Can find no brother in his lofty sway,
        And mighty rivers chafe their margins wide
    Where infant rills and childish fountains play.

    So heroes live; no raptured blossoms start
        Where rugged heights of human glory end;
        No tender songs of loving beauty blend
    Their chorus in the great man's peerless heart;
    Fate fills their souls with magnitude, and art
        Supplies their lives with no congenial friend.

Where Hudson's wave o'er silvery sands
Winds through the hills afar,
Old Cronest like a monarch stands,
Crowned with a single star!
And there, amid the billowy swells
Of rock-ribbed, cloud-capped earth,
My fair and gentle Ida dwells,
A nymph of mountain-birth.

The snow-flake that the cliff receives,
The diamonds of the showers,
Spring's tender blossoms, buds, and leaves,
The sisterhood of flowers,
Morn's early beam, eve's balmy breeze,
Her purity define;
Yet Ida's dearer far than these
To this fond breast of mine.

My heart is on the hills.    The shades
Of night are on my brow;
Ye pleasant haunts and quiet glades,
My soul is with you now!
I bless the star-crowned highlands where
My Ida's footsteps roam:
O for a falcon'...

Whose Timidity frequently agitated her, when pressed to gratify her Friends by her Musical Talents.


'Tis said (and I believe it too)
That genuine merit seeks the shade;
Blushing to think what is her due,
As of her own sweet pow'rs afraid: -

Thus, lovely maid! on fluttering wings,
Thy pow'rs a thousand fears pursue,
Which, like thy own harmonious strings,
When press'd enchant, and tremble too!

The pity, which we give, you owe,
For mutual fears on both attend;
While anxious thus you joy bestow,
We fear too soon that joy will end!

How shall she know the worship we would do her?
The walls are high, and she is very far.
How shall the woman's message reach unto her
Above the tumult of the packed bazaar?
Free wind of March, against the lattice blowing,
Bear thou our thanks, lest she depart unknowing.

Go forth across the fields we may not roam in,
Go forth beyond the trees that rim the city,
To whatsoe'er fair place she hath her home in,
Who dowered us with walth of love and pity.
Out of our shadow pass, and seek her singing,
"I have no gifts but Love alone for bringing."

Say that we be a feeble folk who greet her,
But old in grief, and very wise in tears;
Say that we, being desolate, entreat her
That she forget us not in after years;
For we have seen the light, and it were griev...

I saw her twins of eyelids listless swoon
    Mesmeric eyes,
Like the mild lapsing of a lulling tune
    On wide surprise,
While slow the graceful presence of a moon
    Mellowed the purple skies.

And had she dreamed or had in fancy gone
    As one who sought
To hail the influx of a godly dawn
    Of heavenly thought,
Trod trembling o'er old sainted hill and lawn
    With intense angels fraught?

Sailed thro' majestic domes of the deep night
    By isles of stars,
Wand'ring like some pure blessing warm with light
    From worldly jars
To the high halls of morning, pearly white,
    And heaped with golden bars.

Past temples vast, deluged with sandy seas,
    Whose ruins stand
Like bleaching bones of dead monstrosities
 ...

’Tis said that when
The hands of men
Tamed this primeval wood,
And hoary trees with groans of woe,
Like warriors by an unknown foe,
Were in their strength subdued,
The virgin Earth
Gave instant birth
To springs that ne’er did flow
That in the sun
Did rivulets run,
And all around rare flowers did blow
The wild rose pale
Perfumed the gale
And the queenly lily adown the dale
(Whom the sun and the dew
And the winds did woo),
With the gourd and the grape luxuriant grew.

So when in tears
The love of years
Is wasted like the snow,
And the fine fibrils of its life
By the rude wrong of instant strife
Are broken at a blow
Within the heart
Do springs upstart
Of which it doth now know,
And strange, sweet dreams,...

Black trees against an orange sky,
Trees that the wind shook terribly,
Like a harsh spume along the road,
Quavering up like withered arms,
Writhing like streams, like twisted charms
Of hot lead flung in snow. Below
The iron ice stung like a goad,
Slashing the torn shoes from my feet,
And all the air was bitter sleet.

And all the land was cramped with snow,
Steel-strong and fierce and glimmering wan,
Like pale plains of obsidian.
-- And yet I strove -- and I was fire
And ice -- and fire and ice were one
In one vast hunger of desire.
A dim desire, of pleasant places,
And lush fields in the summer sun,
And logs aflame, and walls, and faces,
-- And wine, and old ambrosial talk,
A golden ball in fountains dancing,
And unforgotten hands. (A...

I.

"And where now, Bayard, will thy footsteps tend?"
My sister asked our guest one winter's day.
Smiling he answered in the Friends' sweet way
Common to both: "Wherever thou shall send!
What wouldst thou have me see for thee?" She laughed,
Her dark eyes dancing in the wood-fire's glow
"Loffoden isles, the Kilpis, and the low,
Unsetting sun on Finmark's fishing-craft."
"All these and more I soon shall see for thee!"
He answered cheerily: and he kept his pledge
On Lapland snows, the North Cape's windy wedge,
And Tromso freezing in its winter sea.
He went and came. But no man knows the    track
Of his last journey, and he comes not back!

II.

He brought us wonders of the new and old;
We shared all climes with him. The Arab's tent
To him...

I have brought no store from the field now the day is ended,
    The harvest moon is up and I bear no sheaves;
When the toilers carry the fruits hanging gold and splendid,
I have but leaves.

When the saints pass by in the pride of their stainless raiment,
    Their brave hearts high with the joy of the gifts they bring,
I have saved no whit from the sum of my daily payment
For offering.

Not there is my place where the workman his toil delivers,
    I scarce can see the ground where the hero stands,
I must wait as the one poor fool in that host of givers,
With empty hands.

There was no time lent to me that my skill might fashion
    Some work of praise, some glory, some thing of light,
For the swarms of hell came on in their power and passion,
I co...

Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault
was, had I not been made of common clay
I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed
yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day.

From the wildness of my wasted passion I had
struck a better, clearer song,
Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled
with some Hydra-headed wrong.

Had my lips been smitten into music by the
kisses that but made them bleed,
You had walked with Bice and the angels on
that verdant and enamelled mead.

I had trod the road which Dante treading saw
the suns of seven circles shine,
Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening,
as they opened to the Florentine.

And the mighty nations would have crowned
me, who am crownless now and without name,
And some orient dawn...