Coldly we spake. The Saxons, overpowered
By wrong triumphant through its own excess,
From fields laid waste, from house and home devoured
By flames, look up to heaven and crave redress
From God's eternal justice. Pitiless
Though men be, there are angels that can feel
For wounds that death alone has power to heal,
For penitent guilt, and innocent distress.
And has a Champion risen in arms to try
His Country's virtue, fought, and breathes no more;
Him in their hearts the people canonize;
And far above the mine's most precious ore
The least small pittance of bare mould they prize
Scooped from the sacred earth where his dear relics lie.

        Einst ziert' ich, den Aether durchspähend,
        Als Spitze des Urgebirg's Stock,
        Ruhm, Hoheit und Stellung verschmähend,
        Ward ich zum erratischen Block.


Once high on the mountain-peak rising,
    In sunlight I shone like a flame;
But height and position despising,
    A wandering boulder became.

They say of a thinker's bold sallies,
    He goes where the ice will not bear;
I was beckoned to false hollow valleys,
    By snow maids, seductive and fair.

Thus driven by furious fancies,
    I went down the hill with a shout;
But atoned for my youthful romances
    By a thousand years rolling about.

Cried the Glacier, his teeth sharply showing,
    Here, my blade, you'll be polished right well,
And f...

"You see those mothers squabbling there?"
Remarks the man of the cemetery.
One says in tears, ''Tis mine lies here!'
Another, 'Nay, mine, you Pharisee!'
Another, 'How dare you move my flowers
And put your own on this grave of ours!'
But all their children were laid therein
At different times, like sprats in a tin.

"And then the main drain had to cross,
And we moved the lot some nights ago,
And packed them away in the general foss
With hundreds more. But their folks don't know,
And as well cry over a new-laid drain
As anything else, to ease your pain!"

My father left a park to me,
But it is wild and barren,
A garden too with scarce a tree,
And waster than a warren:
Yet say the neighbours when they call,
It is not bad but good land,
And in it is the germ of all
That grows within the woodland.

O had I lived when song was great
In days of old Amphion,
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,
Nor cared for seed or scion!
And had I lived when song was great,
And legs of trees were limber,
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,
And fiddled in the timber!

'Tis said he had a tuneful tongue,
Such happy intonation,
Wherever he sat down and sung
He left a small plantation;
Wherever in a lonely grove
He set up his forlorn pipes,
The gouty oak began to move,
And flounder into hornpipes.

Sweetheart, that thou art fair I know,
    More fair to me
Than flowers that make the loveliest show
    To tempt the bee.

When other girls, whose faces are,
    Beside thy face,
As rushlights to the evening star,
    Deny thy grace,

I silent sit and let them speak,
    As men of strength
Allow the impotent and weak
    To rail at length.

If they should tell me Love is blind,
    And so doth miss
The faults which they are quick to find,
    I'd answer this:

Envy is blind; not Love, whose eyes
    Are purged and clear
Through gazing on the perfect skies
    Of thine, my dear.

I.

    My Lord, I know your noble ear
        Woe ne'er assails in vain;
    Embolden'd thus, I beg you'll hear
        Your humble slave complain,
    How saucy Phoebus' scorching beams
        In flaming summer-pride,
    Dry-withering, waste my foamy streams,
        And drink my crystal tide.

II.

    The lightly-jumpin' glowrin' trouts,
        That thro' my waters play,
    If, in their random, wanton spouts,
        They near the margin stray;
    If, hapless chance! they linger lang,
        I'm scorching up so shallow,
    They're left the whitening stanes amang,
        In gasping death to wallow.

III.

    Last day I grat wi' spite and teen,
        As Poet Burns came by,
    That to a bard I shou...

Pastoral Sung To The King

MON.Bad are the times.    SIL.    And worse than they are we.
MON.Troth, bad are both; worse fruit, and ill the tree:
The feast of shepherds fail.SIL.    None crowns the cup
Of wassail now, or sets the quintel up:
And he, who used to lead the country-round,
Youthful Mirtillo, here he comes, grief-drown'd.
AMBO.Let's cheer him up.    SIL. Behold him weeping-ripe.
MIRT. Ah, Amarillis!farewell mirth and pipe;
Since thou art gone, no more I mean to play
To these smooth lawns, my mirthful roundelay.
Dear Amarillis!MON.    Hark!    SIL.    Mark!    MIRT.    This
earth grew sweet
Where, Amarillis, thou didst set thy feet.
AMBOPoor pitied youth!    MIRT.    And here the breath
of kine
And sheep grew more sweet by that breath of thine.

I

Let others sing of gold and gear, the joy of being rich;
But oh, the days when I was poor, a vagrant in a ditch!
When every dawn was like a gem, so radiant and rare,
And I had but a single coat, and not a single care;
When I would feast right royally on bacon, bread and beer,
And dig into a stack of hay and doze like any peer;
When I would wash beside a brook my solitary shirt,
And though it dried upon my back I never took a hurt;
When I went romping down the road contemptuous of care,
And slapped Adventure on the back - by Gad! we were a pair;
When, though my pockets lacked a coin, and though my coat was old,
The largess of the stars was mine, and all the sunset gold;
When time was only made for fools, and free as air was I,
And hard I hit and hard I lived bene...

Tune - "Robin Adair."



I.

    While larks with little wing
        Fann'd the pure air,
    Tasting the breathing spring,
        Forth I did fare:
    Gay the sun's golden eye
    Peep'd o'er the mountains high;
    Such thy morn! did I cry,
        Phillis the fair.

II.

    In each bird's careless song,
        Glad I did share;
    While yon wild flowers among,
        Chance led me there:
    Sweet to the opening day,
    Rosebuds bent the dewy spray;
    Such thy bloom! did I say,
        Phillis the fair.

III.

    Down in a shady walk
        Doves cooing were,
    I mark'd the cruel hawk,
        Caught in a snare:
    So kind may fortune be,
    Such make...

A grey, bald hillside, bristling here and there
With leprous-looking grass, that, knobbed with stones,
Slopes to a valley where a wild stream moans,
And every bush seems tortured to despair
And shows its teeth of thorns as if to tear
All things to pieces: where the skull and bones
Of some dead beast protrude, like visible groans,
From one bleak place the winter rains washed bare.
Amid the desolation, in decay,
Like some half-rotted fungus, grey as slag,
A hut of lichened logs; and near it, old,
Unspeakably old, a man, the colour of clay,
Sorting damp roots and herbs into a bag
With trembling hands purple and stiff with cold.

'Tis May morning,
All-adorning,
No cloud warning
Of rain to-day.
Where shall I go to,
Go to, go to? -
Can I say No to
Lyonnesse-way?

Well what reason
Now at this season
Is there for treason
To other shrines?
Tristram is not there,
Isolt forgot there,
New eras blot there
Sought-for signs!

Stratford-on-Avon -
Poesy-paven -
I'll find a haven
There, somehow! -
Nay I'm but caught of
Dreams long thought of,
The Swan knows nought of
His Avon now!

What shall it be, then,
I go to see, then,
Under the plea, then,
Of votary?
I'll go to Lakeland,
Lakeland, Lakeland,
Certainly Lakeland
Let it be.

But why to that place,
That place, that place,
Such a hard come-a...

I'll tell thee everything I can:
There's little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.

'Who are you, aged man?' I said.
'And how is it you live?'
And his answer trickled through my head,
Like water through a sieve.
He said, 'I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.

I sell them unto men,' he said,
'Who sail on stormy seas;
And that's the way I get my bread,
A trifle, if you please.'
But I was thinking of a plan
To dye one's whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
That they could not be seen.

So having no reply to give
To what the old man said, I cried
'Come, tell me how you live!'
And thumped him on the head.
His ...

Where is that country? The unresting mind
Like a lapwing nears and leaves it and returns.
I know those unknown hill-springs where they rise,
I know the answer of the elms to the wind
When the wind on their heaving bosom lies
And sleeps. I know the grouping pines that crown
The long green hill and fling their darkness down,
A never-dying shadow; and well I know
How in the late months the whole wide woodland burns
Unsmoking, and the earth hangs still as still.
I know the town, the hamlets and the lone
Shelterless cottage where the wind's least tone
Is magnified, and his far-flung thundering shout
Brings near the incredible end of the world. I know!
Even in sleep-walk I should linger about
Those lanes, those streets sure-footed, and by the unfenced stream go,
Hea...

I opened a long closed drawer to-day,
And among the souvenirs stored away
Were the faded leaves of an old bouquet.

Those faded leaves were as white as snow,
With a background of green, to make them show,
When you gave them to me long years ago.

They carried me back in a flash of light
To a perfumed, perfect summer night,
And a rider who came on a steed of white.

I can see it all -how you rode down
Like a knight of old, from the dusty town,
With a passionate glow in your eyes of brown.

Again I stand by the garden gate,
While the golden sun slips low, and wait
And watch your coming, my love, my fate.

Young and handsome and debonair
You leap to my side in the garden there,
And I take your flowers, and call them fair.

...

Loue, borne in Greece, of late fled from his natiue place,
Forc't, by a tedious proof, that Turkish hardned heart
Is not fit mark to pierce with his fine-pointed dart,
And pleas'd with our soft peace, staide here his flying race:
But, finding these north clymes too coldly him embrace,
Not vsde to frozen clips, he straue to find some part
Where with most ease and warmth he might employ his art;
At length he perch'd himself in Stellaes ioyful face,
Whose faire skin, beamy eyes, like morning sun on snow,
Deceiu'd the quaking boy, who thought, from so pure light,
Effects of liuely heat must needs in nature grow:
But she, most faire, most cold, made him thence take his flight
To my close heart, where, while some firebrands he did lay,
He burnt vn'wares his wings, and cannot flie ...

Adown the track that skirts the shallow stream
I wandered with blank mind; a bypath drew
My aimless steps aside, and, ere I knew,
The forest closed around me like a dream.
The gold-strewn sward, the horizontal gleam
Of the low sun, pouring its splendors through
The far-withdrawing vistas, filled the view,
And everlasting beauty was supreme.

I knew not past or future; 'twas a mood
Transcending time and taking in the whole.
I was both young and old; my lost childhood,
Years yet unlived, were gathered round one goal;
And death was there familiar. Long I stood,
And in eternity renewed my soul.

Others may need new life in Heaven,
Man, Nature, Art, made new, assume!
Man with new mind old sense to leaven,
Nature, new light to clear old gloom,
Art that breaks bounds, gets soaring-room.

I shall pray: “Fugitive as precious,
Minutes which passed, return, remain!
Let earth’s old life once more enmesh us,
You with old pleasure, me, old, pain,
So we but meet nor part again!”

When the clouds shake their hyssops, and the rain
Like holy water falls upon the plain,
'Tis sweet to gaze upon the springing grain
And see your harvest born.

And sweet the little breeze of melody
The blackbird puffs upon the budding tree,
While the wild poppy lights upon the lea
And blazes 'mid the corn.

The skylark soars the freshening shower to hail,
And the meek daisy holds aloft her pail,
And Spring all radiant by the wayside pale
Sets up her rock and reel.

See how she weaves her mantle fold on fold,
Hemming the woods and carpeting the wold.
Her warp is of the green, her woof the gold,
The spinning world her wheel.