Hope Was but a timid friend;
She sat without the grated den,
Watching how my fate would tend,
Even as selfish-hearted men.

She was cruel in her fear;
Through the bars one dreary day,
I looked out to see her there,
And she turned her face away!

Like a false guard, false watch keeping,
Still, in strife, she whispered peace;
She would sing while I was weeping;
If I listened, she would cease.

False she was, and unrelenting;
When my last joys strewed the ground,
Even Sorrow saw, repenting,
Those sad relics scattered round;

Hope, whose whisper would have given
Balm to all my frenzied pain,
Stretched her wings, and soared to heaven,
Went, and ne'er returned again!

God hath laid his hand on me:
He hath taken all my glee,
And my spirit's emptied cup
Soon must give its life-blood up.

If the sun doth wake and rise,
If it sink in gilded skies,
All alike my heart doth ache,
Comfort it can never take.

From my eyelids there do flow
Tears, and I must weep e'en so
Ever, ever. Lord of Light,
Who can hide him from thy sight!

Though we shun the stormy sea,
Though from war's affray we flee,
Yet misfortune shows her face
Howsoe'er concealed our place.

Mine a life so far from fame
Few there were could know my name;
Evil hap and jealousy
Had no way of harming me.

But the Lord, who doth disdain
Flimsy safeguards raised by man,
Struck a blow more swift and sure
In that I was...

Lay but a finger on
That pallid petal sweet,
It trembles gray and wan
Beneath the passing feet.

But soft! blown rose, we know
A merriment of bloom,
A life of sturdy glow, -
But no such dear perfume.

As some good bard, whose page
Of life with beauty's fraught,
Grays on to ripe old age
Sweet-mellowed through with thought.

So when his hoary head
Is wept into the tomb,
The mind, which is not dead,
Sheds round it rare perfume.

A poor torn heart, a tattered heart,
That sat it down to rest,
Nor noticed that the ebbing day
Flowed silver to the west,
Nor noticed night did soft descend
Nor constellation burn,
Intent upon the vision
Of latitudes unknown.

The angels, happening that way,
This dusty heart espied;
Tenderly took it up from toil
And carried it to God.
There, -- sandals for the barefoot;
There, -- gathered from the gales,
Do the blue havens by the hand
Lead the wandering sails.

Tune - "An Gille dubh ciar dhubh."


I.

    Stay, my charmer, can you leave me?
    Cruel, cruel, to deceive me!
    Well you know how much you grieve me;
        Cruel charmer, can you go?
        Cruel charmer, can you go?

II.

    By my love so ill requited;
    By the faith you fondly plighted;
    By the pangs of lovers slighted;
        Do not, do not leave me so!
        Do not, do not leave me so!

There was a young fellow named Hall,
Who fell in the spring in the fall;
    'Twould have been a sad thing
    If he'd died in the spring,
But he didn't - he died in the fall.

"And wept to see the paths of life divide." - Shenstone.

Here the companions of our careless prime,
Whom fortune's various ways have severed long,
Since that fair dawn when Hope her vernal song
Sang blithe, with features marked by stealing time
At these restoring springs are met again!
We, young adventurers on life's opening road,
Set out together; to their last abode
Some have sunk silent, some a while remain,
Some are dispersed; of many, growing old
In life's obscurer bourne, no tale is told.
Here, ere the shades of the long night descend,
And all our wanderings in oblivion end,
The parted meet once more, and pensive trace
(Marked by that hand unseen, whose iron pen
Writes "mortal change" upon the fronts of men)
The creeping furrows in each other's fac...

JOHN:

I'VE worked in the field all day, a-plowin' the "stony streak;"
I've scolded my team till I'm hoarse; I've tramped till my legs are weak;
I've choked a dozen swears (so's not to tell Jane fibs)
When the plow-p'int struck a stone and the handles punched my ribs.

I've put my team in the barn, and rubbed their sweaty coats;
I've fed 'em a heap of hay and half a bushel of oats;
And to see the way they eat makes me like eatin' feel,
And Jane won't say to-night that I don't make out a meal.

Well said! the door is locked! but here she's left the key,
Under the step, in a place known only to her and me;
I wonder who's dyin' or dead, that she's hustled off pell-mell:
But here on the table's a note, and probably this will tell.

Good God! my wife is gone! ...

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

In crime and enmity they lie
Who sin and tell us love can die,
Who say to us in slander's breath
That love belongs to sin and death.
From heaven it came on angel's wing
To bloom on earth, eternal spring;
In falsehood's enmity they lie
Who sin and tell us love can die.

Twas born upon an angel's breast.
The softest dreams, the sweetest rest,
The brightest sun, the bluest sky,
Are love's own home and canopy.
The thought that cheers this heart of mine
Is that of love; love so divine
They sin who say in slander's breath
That love belongs to sin and death.

The sweetest voice that lips contain,
The sweetest thought that leaves the brain,
The sweetest feeling of the heart--
There's pleasure in its very smart.
The scent of rose and cinna...

For mocking on men's faces
He only sees instead
The hidden, hundred traces
Of tears their eyes have shed.

Above their lips denying,
Through all their boasting dares,
He hears the anguished crying
Of old unanswered prayers.

And through the will's reliance
He only sees aright
A frightened child's defiance
Left lonely in the night.

    Farewell, fair Armida, my joy and my grief,
    In vain I have loved you, and hope no relief;
    Undone by your virtue, too strict and severe,
    Your eyes gave me love, and you gave me despair;
    Now call'd by my honour, I seek with content
    The fate which in pity you would not prevent:
    To languish in love, were to find by delay
    A death that's more welcome the speediest way.
    On seas and in battles, in bullets and fire,
    The danger is less than in hopeless desire;
    My death's-wound you give, though far off I bear
    My fall from your sight--not to cost you a tear:
    But if the kind flood on a wave should convey,
    And under your window my body should lay,
    The wound on my breast when you happen to see,
    You'll say with a sigh...

Strew on her roses, roses,
And never a spray of yew!
In quiet she reposes;
Ah, would that I did too!

Her mirth the world required;
She bathed it in smiles of glee.
But her heart was tired, tired,
And now they let her be.

Her life was turning, turning,
In mazes of heat and sound.
But for peace her soul was yearning,
And now peace laps her round.

Her cabin'd, ample spirit,
It flutter'd and fail'd for breath.
To-night it doth inherit
The vasty hall of death.

"Thou hast been to the forest, thou sorrowing maiden,
    Where Summer reigns Queen in her fairest array,
Where the green earth with sunshine and fragrance is laden,
    And birds make sweet music throughout the long day.
Each step thou hast taken has been over flowers,
    Of forms full of beauty - of perfumes most rare,
Why comest thou home, then, with footsteps so weary,
    No smiles on thy lip, and no buds in thy hair?"

"Ah! my walk through the wild-wood has been full of sadness,
    My thoughts were with him who there oft used to rove,
That stranger with bright eyes and smiles full of gladness
    Who first taught my young heart the power of love.
He had promised to come to me ere the bright summer
    With roses and sunshine had decked hill and lea.
I, simp...

1.
Thus to be lost and thus to sink and die,
Perchance were death indeed! - Constantia, turn!
In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie,
Even though the sounds which were thy voice, which burn
Between thy lips, are laid to sleep;
Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like odour, it is yet,
And from thy touch like fire doth leap.
Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet.
Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not forget!

2.
A breathless awe, like the swift change
Unseen, but felt in youthful slumbers,
Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange,
Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers.
The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven
By the enchantment of thy strain,
And on my shoulders wings are woven,
To follow its sublime career
Beyond ...

I will tell you when they met:
In the limpid days of Spring;
Elder boughs were budding yet,
Oaken boughs looked wintry still,
But primrose and veined violet
In the mossful turf were set,
While meeting birds made haste to sing
And build with right good will.

I will tell you when they parted:
When plenteous Autumn sheaves were brown,
Then they parted heavy-hearted;
The full rejoicing sun looked down
As grand as in the days before;
Only they had lost a crown;
Only to them those days of yore
Could come back nevermore.

When shall they meet? I cannot tell,
Indeed, when they shall meet again,
Except some day in Paradise:
For this they wait, one waits in pain.
Beyond the sea of death love lies
For ever, yesterday, to-day;
Ange...

My thoughts, my grief! are without strength
My spirit is journeying towards death
My eyes are as a frozen sea
My tears my daily food;
There is nothing in life but only misery.
My poor heart is torn
And my thoughts are sharp wounds within me,
Mourning the miserable state of Ireland.

Misfortune has come upon us all together
The poor, the rich, the weak and the strong
The great lord by whom hundreds were maintained
The powerful strong man, and the man that holds the plough;
And the cross laid on the bare shoulder of every man.

Our feasts are without any voice of priests
And none at them but women lamenting
Tearing their hair with troubled minds
Keening miserably after the Fenians.

The pipes of our organs are broken
Our harps have lost ...

I

Its roots are bristling in the air
Like some mad Earth-god's spiny hair;
The loud south-wester's swell and yell
Smote it at midnight, and it fell.
Thus ends the tree
Where Some One sat with me.

II

Its boughs, which none but darers trod,
A child may step on from the sod,
And twigs that earliest met the dawn
Are lit the last upon the lawn.
Cart off the tree
Beneath whose trunk sat we!

III

Yes, there we sat: she cooed content,
And bats ringed round, and daylight went;
The gnarl, our seat, is wrenched and sunk,
Prone that queer pocket in the trunk
Where lay the key
To her pale mystery.

IV

"Years back, within this pocket-hole
I found, my Love, a hurried scrawl
Meant not for me," at ...