Loneliness

    'Hurry up!'
No lingering by old doors of doubt -
    No loitering by the way,
No waiting a To-morrow car,
    When you can board To-day.
Success is somewhere down the track;
    Before the chance is gone
Accelerate your laggard pace,
    Swing on, I say, swing on -
    Hurry up!

    'Step lively!'
Belated souls are following fast,
    They shout and signal, 'Wait.'
Conductor Time brooks no delay,
    He rings the bell of Fate.
But you can give the man behind,
    With one hand on the bar,
A final chance to brook defeat,
    And board the moving car.
    Step lively!

    'Move up!'
Make way for others as you sit
    Or stand.    This crowded earth
Has room for every journeying soul
    En route to higher b...

Where be the temples which, in Britain's Isle,
For his paternal Gods, the Trojan raised?
Gone like a morning dream, or like a pile
Of clouds that in cerulean ether blazed!
Ere Julius landed on her white-cliffed shore,
They sank, delivered o'er
To fatal dissolution; and, I ween,
No vestige then was left that such had ever been.

Nathless, a British record (long concealed
In old Armorica, whose secret springs
No Gothic conqueror ever drank) revealed
The marvellous current of forgotten things;
How Brutus came, by oracles impelled,
And Albion's giants quelled,
A brood whom no civility could melt,
"Who never tasted grace, and goodness ne'er had felt."

By brave Corineus aided, he subdued,
And rooted out the intolerable kind;
And this too-long-po...

Morpheus, the liuely sonne of deadly Sleepe,
Witnesse of life to them that liuing die,
A prophet oft, and oft an historie,
A poet eke, as humours fly or creepe;
Since thou in me so sure a pow'r dost keepe,
That neuer I with clos'd-vp sense do lie,
But by thy worke my Stella I descrie,
Teaching blind eyes both how to smile and weepe;
Vouchsafe, of all acquaintance, this to tell,
Whence hast thou ivory, rubies, pearl, and gold,
To shew her skin, lips, teeth, and head so well?
Foole! answers he; no Indes such treasures hold;
But from thy heart, while my sire charmeth thee,
Sweet Stellas image I do steal to mee.

"We think that we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love."

"The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander."

"We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier."

"Consult duty not events."

"A man's vanity tells him what is honor, a man's conscience what is justice."

"Every sect is a moral check on its neighbour. Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce."

"In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always."

"An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof."

"Truth, like the juice of the poppy, in small quantities, calms men; in larger, heats and irritates them, and is attended by fatal consequences in excess."

"I warmed both ha...

Most Holy Night, that still dost keep
The keys of all the doors of sleep,
To me when my tired eyelids close
Give thou repose.

And let the far lament of them
That chaunt the dead day’s requiem
Make in my ears, who wakeful lie,
Soft lullaby.

Let them that guard the hornàed Moon
By my bedside their memories croon.
So shall I have new dreams and blest
In my brief rest.

Fold thy great wings about my face,
Hide day-dawn from my resting-place,
And cheat me with thy false delight,
Most Holy Night.

I.

There is no flower of wood or lea,
No April flower, as fair as she:
O white anemone, who hast
The wind's wild grace,
Know her a cousin of thy race,
Into whose face
A presence like the wind's hath passed.


II.

There is no flower of wood or lea,
No Maytime flower, as fair as she:
O bluebell, tender with the blue
Of limpid skies,
Thy lineage hath kindred ties
In her, whose eyes
The heav'n's own qualities imbue.


III.

There is no flower of wood or lea,
No Juneday flower, as fair as she:
Rose, odorous with beauty of
Life's first and best,
Behold thy sister here confessed!
Whose maiden breast
Is fragrant with the dreams of love.

        [Imitated from a pigeon.]

    Curr dhoo, curr dhoo,
    Love me, and I'll love you!

Two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still,
Ten fishermen waiting--they discover a thick school of mossbonkers--
they drop the join'd seine-ends in the water,
The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the
beach, enclosing the mossbonkers,
The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,
Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand ankle-deep
in the water, pois'd on strong legs,
The boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them,
Strew'd on the sand in heaps and windrows, well out from the water,
the green-back'd spotted mossbonkers.

The diggings were just in their glory when Alister Cameron came,
With recommendations, he told me, from friends and a parson `at hame';
He read me his recommendations, he called them a part of his plant,
The first one was signed by an Elder, the other by Cameron's aunt.
The meenister called him `ungodly, a stray frae the fauld o' the Lord',
And his aunt set him down as a spendthrift, `a rebel at hame and abroad'.

He got drunk now and then and he gambled (such heroes are often the same);
That's all they could say in connection with Alister Cameron's name.
He was straight and he stuck to his country and spoke with respect of his kirk;
He did his full share of the cooking, and more than his share of the work.
And many a poor devil then, when his strength and his money were spent,
W...

Gently fall the shadows gray,
    Daylight softly veiling;
Now to Dreamland we'll away,
    Sailing, sailing, sailing.

Little eyes were made for sleeping,
    Little heads were made for rest,
Golden locks were made for keeping
    Close to mother's breast;
Little hands were made for folding,
    Little lips should never sigh;
What dear mother's arms are holding,
    Love alone can buy.

Gently fall the shadows gray,
    Daylight softly veiling;
Now to Dreamland we'll away,
    Sailing, sailing, sailing.

    Toward the last
    The truth of others was untruth to me;
    The justice of others injustice to me;
    Their reasons for death, reasons with me for life;
    Their reasons for life, reasons with me for death;
    I would have killed those they saved,
    And save those they killed.
    And I saw how a god, if brought to earth,
    Must act out what he saw and thought,
    And could not live in this world of men
    And act among them side by side
    Without continual clashes.
    The dust's for crawling, heaven's for flying -
    Wherefore, O soul, whose wings are grown,
    Soar upward to the sun!

"0, was it on that awful road,
The way of death, you came?"
"It was a little road," he said,
"I never knew its name."

"Is it not rough along that road?"
"I cannot tell," said he,
"Up to your gate, in her two arms.
My mother carried me."

"And will you show me Christ?" he said,
"And must we seek Him far?"
"That is our Lord, with children round.
Where little blue-bells are."

"Why, so my mother sits at night,
When all the lights are dim!
0, would He mind, would it be right
If I should sit by Him?"

The houseful that we were then, you could count us by the dozens,
The wonder was that sometimes the old walls wouldn't burst:
Herself (the Lord be good to her!), the aunts and rafts of cousins,
The young folks and the children,--but Himself came first.

Master of the House he was, and well for them that knew it:
His cheeks like winter apples and his head like snow;
Eyes as blue as water when the sun of March shines through it.
And steppin' like a soldier with his stick held so.

Faith, but he could tell a tale would serve a man for wages,
Sing a song would put the joy of dancin' in two sticks;
But Saints between themselves and harm that saw him in his rages,
Blazin' and oratin' over chess and politics.

Master of the House he was, and...