I cling and swing
        On a branch, or sing
    Through the cool, clear hush of Morning, O:
        Or fling my wing
        On the air, and bring
    To sleepier birds a warning, O:
        That the night's in flight,
        And the sun's in sight,
    And the dew is the grass adorning, O:
        And the green leaves swing
        As I sing, sing, sing,
            Up by the river,
                Down the dell,
            To the little wee nest,
                Where the big tree fell,
            So early in the morning, O.

        I flit and twit
        In the sun for a bit
    When his light so bright is shining, O:
        Or sit and fit
        My plumes, or knit
    Straw plaits for the nest's nice lining, ...

The snow-flakes were softly falling
    Adown on the landscape white,
When the violet eyes of my first born
    Opened unto the light;
And I thought as I pressed him to me,
    With loving, rapturous thrill,
He was pure and fair as the snow-flakes
    That lay on the landscape still.

I smiled when they spoke of the weary
    Length of the winter's night,
Of the days so short and so dreary,
    Of the sun's cold cheerless light -
I listened, but in their murmurs
    Nor by word nor thought took part,
For the smiles of my gentle darling
    Brought light to my home and heart.

Oh! quickly the joyous springtime
    Came back to our ice-bound earth,
Filling meadows and woods with sunshine,
    And hearts with gladsome mirth,
But, ah!...

Say! You've struck a heap of trouble -
Bust in business, lost your wife;
No one cares a cent about you,
You don't care a cent for life;
Hard luck has of hope bereft you,
Health is failing, wish you'd die -
Why, you've still the sunshine left you,
And the big, blue sky.

Sky so blue it makes you wonder
If it's heaven shining through;
Earth so smiling 'way out yonder,
Sun so bright it dazzles you;
Birds a-singing, flowers a-flinging
All their fragrance on the breeze;
Dancing shadows, green, still meadows -
Don't you mope, you've still got these.

These, and none can take them from you;
These, and none can weigh their worth.
What! you're tired and broke and beaten? -
Why, you're rich - you've got the earth!
Yes, if you're a tramp in ...

A Whirl-Blast from behind the hill
Rushed o'er the wood with startling sound;
Then, all at once the air was still,
And showers of hailstones pattered round.
Where leafless oaks towered high above,
I sat within an undergrove
Of tallest hollies, tall and green;
A fairer bower was never seen.
From year to year the spacious floor
With withered leaves is covered o'er,
And all the year the bower is green.
But see! where'er the hailstones drop
The withered leaves all skip and hop;
There's not a breeze, no breath of air,
Yet here, and there, and everywhere
Along the floor, beneath the shade
By those embowering hollies made,
The leaves in myriads jump and spring,
As if with pipes and music rare
Some Robin Good-fellow were there,
And all those leaves...

Fight through ignorance, want, and care,
Through the griefs that crush the spirit;
Push your way to a fortune fair,
And the smiles of the world you’ll merit.
Long, as a boy, for the chance to learn,
For the chance that Fate denies you;
Win degrees where the Life-lights burn,
And scores will teach and advise you.

My cultured friends! you have come too late
With your bypath nicely graded;
I’ve fought thus far on my track of Fate,
And I’ll follow the rest unaided.
Must I be stopped by a college gate
On the track of Life encroaching?
Be dumb to Love, and be dumb to Hate,
For the lack of a college coaching?

You grope for Truth in a language dead,
In the dust ’neath tower and steeple!
What know you of the tracks we tread?
And what know you...

As a bad orator, badly o'er-book-skilled,
Doth overflow his purpose with made heat,
And, like a clock, winds with withoutness willed
What should have been an inner instinct's feat;
Or as a prose-wit, harshly poet turned,
Lacking the subtler music in his measure,
With useless care labours but to be spurned,
Courting in alien speech the Muse's pleasure;
I study how to love or how to hate,
Estranged by consciousness from sentiment,
With a thought feeling forced to be sedate
Even when the feeling's nature is violent;
    As who would learn to swim without the river,
    When nearest to the trick, as far as ever.

The mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel,
And the former called the latter 'Little Prig;
Bun replied,
'You are doubtless very big;
But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together,
To make up a year
And a sphere.
And I think it no disgrace
To occupy my place.
If I'm not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry.
I'll not deny you make
A very pretty squirrel track;
Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut.'

By J. M. Barrie and H. B. Marriott Watson, Criterion Theatre, April 16, 1891.

To other boards for pun and song and dance!
Our purpose is an essay in romance:
An old-world story where such old-world facts
As hate and love and death, through four swift acts -
Not without gleams and glances, hints and cues,
From the dear bright eyes of the Comic Muse! -
So shine and sound that, as we fondly deem,
They may persuade you to accept our dream:
Our own invention, mainly - though we take,
Somewhat for art but most for interest's sake
One for our hero who goes wandering still
In the long shadow of PARNASSUS HILL;
Scarce within eyeshot; but his tragic shade
Compels that recognition due be made,
When he comes knocking at the student's door,
Something as poet, if as b...

Well, you shall have that song which Leonard wrote:
It was last summer on a tour in Wales:
Old James was with me: we that day had been
Up Snowdon; and I wish’d for Leonard there,
And found him in Llanberis: then we crost
Between the lakes, and clamber’d half way up
The counter side; and that same song of his
He told me; for I banter’d him, and swore
They said he lived shut up within himself,
A tongue-tied Poet in the feverous days,
That, setting the how much before the how,
Cry, like the daughters of the horseleech, ‘Give,
Cram us with all,’ but count not me the herd!


To which ‘They call me what they will,’ he said:
‘But I was born too late: the fair new forms,
That float about the threshold of an age,
Like truths of Science waiting to be caught–

If there were in my kalendar
No Emma, Florence, Mary,
What would be my existence now -
A hermit's? - wanderer's weary? -
How should I live, and how
Near would be death, or far?

Could it have been that other eyes
Might have uplit my highway?
That fond, sad, retrospective sight
Would catch from this dim byway
Prized figures different quite
From those that now arise?

With how strange aspect would there creep
The dawn, the night, the daytime,
If memory were not what it is
In song-time, toil, or pray-time. -
O were it else than this,
I'd pass to pulseless sleep!

    We rode, we rode against the wind.
    The countless lights along the town
    Made the town blacker for their fire,
    And you were always looking down.

    To 'scape the blustering breath of March,
    Or was it for your mind's disguise?
    Still I could shut my eyes and see
    The turquoise color of your eyes.

    Surely your ermine furs were warm,
    And warm your flowing cloak of red;
    Was it the wild wind kept you thus
    Pensive and with averted head?

    I scarcely spoke, my words were swept
    Like winged things in the wind's despite.
    We rode, and with what shadow speed
    Across the darkness of the night!

    Without a word, without a look.
    What was the charm and what the spell
    That made one...

D' un bel, chiaro, polito e vivo ghiaccio.

THOUGH RACKED BY AGONY, HE DOES NOT COMPLAIN OF HER.


    The flames that ever on my bosom prey
From living ice or cold fair marble pour,
And so exhaust my veins and waste my core,
Almost insensibly I melt away.
Death, his stern arm already rear'd to slay,
As thunders angry heaven or lions roar,
Pursues my life that vainly flies before,
While I with terror shake, and mute obey.
And yet, were Love and Pity friends, they might
A double column for my succour throw
Between my worn soul and the mortal blow:
It may not be; such feelings in the sight
Of my loved foe and mistress never stir;
The fault is in my fortune, not in her.

MACGREGOR.

1828-1909



Forty years back, when much had place
That since has perished out of mind,
I heard that voice and saw that face.

He spoke as one afoot will wind
A morning horn ere men awake;
His note was trenchant, turning kind.

He was of those whose wit can shake
And riddle to the very core
The counterfeits that Time will break . . .

Of late, when we two met once more,
The luminous countenance and rare
Shone just as forty years before.

So that, when now all tongues declare
His shape unseen by his green hill,
I scarce believe he sits not there.

No matter. Further and further still
Through the world's vaporous vitiate air
His words wing on - as live words will.

May 1909.

    "I mean to build a hall anon,
    And shape two turrets there,
    And a broad newelled stair,
And a cool well for crystal water;
    Yes; I will build a hall anon,
    Plant roses love shall feed upon,
    And apple trees and pear."

    He set to build the manor-hall,
    And shaped the turrets there,
    And the broad newelled stair,
And the cool well for crystal water;
    He built for me that manor-hall,
    And planted many trees withal,
    But no rose anywhere.

    And as he planted never a rose
    That bears the flower of love,
    Though other flowers throve
A frost-wind moved our souls to sever
    Since he had planted never a rose;
    And misconceits raised horrid shows,
    And agonies came thereof.

...

("Il neigeait.")

[Bk. V. xiii., Nov. 25-30, 1852.]


It snowed. A defeat was our conquest red!
For once the eagle was hanging its head.
Sad days! the Emperor turned slowly his back
On smoking Moscow, blent orange and black.
The winter burst, avalanche-like, to reign
Over the endless blanched sheet of the plain.
Nor chief nor banner in order could keep,
The wolves of warfare were 'wildered like sheep.
The wings from centre could hardly be known
Through snow o'er horses and carts o'erthrown,
Where froze the wounded. In the bivouacs forlorn
Strange sights and gruesome met the breaking morn:
Mute were the bugles, while the men bestrode
Steeds turned to marble, unheeding the goad.
The shells and bullets came down with the snow
As though ...

From the German of Herder.



All faintly through my soul to-day,
As from a bell that far away
Is tinkled by some frolic fay,
Floateth a lovely chiming.
Thou magic bell, to many a fell
And many a winter-saddened dell
Thy tongue a tale of Spring doth tell,
Too passionate-sweet for rhyming.

Chime out, thou little song of Spring,
Float in the blue skies ravishing.
Thy song-of-life a joy doth bring
That's sweet, albeit fleeting.
Float on the Spring-winds e'en to my home:
And when thou to a rose shalt come
That hath begun to show her bloom,
Say, I send her greeting!


Point Lookout Prison, 1864.

He squats by the fire
    On his three-legged stool,
When all in the house
    With slumber are full.

And he warms his great hands,
    Hanging loose from each knee.
And he whistles as soft
    As the night wind at sea.

For his work now is done;
    All the water is sweet;
He has turned each brown loaf,
    And breathed magic on it.

The milk in the pan,
    And the bacon on beam
He has "spelled" with his thumb,
    And bewitched has the dream.

Not a mouse, not a moth,
    Not a spider but sat,
And quaked as it wondered
    What next he'd be at.

But his heart, O, his heart -
    It belies his great nose;
And at gleam of his eye
    Not a soul would suppose

He had stooped with great thum...

(To James McNeill Whistler)


Under a stagnant sky,
Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom,
The River, jaded and forlorn,
Welters and wanders wearily, wretchedly, on;
Yet in and out among the ribs
Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles
Of some dead lake-built city, fall of skulls,
Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories,
Lingers to babble, to a broken tune
(Once, O the unvoiced music of my heart!)
So melancholy a soliloquy
It sounds as it might tell
The secret of the unending grief-in-grain,
The terror of Time and Change and Death,
That wastes this floating, transitory world.

What of the incantation
That forced the huddled shapes on yonder short
To take and wear the night
Like a material majesty?
That touched the ...