La sera desiar, odiar l' aurora.

CONTRARY TO THE WONT OF LOVERS, HE PREFERS MORN TO EVE.


    Tranquil and happy loves in this agree,
The evening to desire and morning hate:
On me at eve redoubled sorrows wait--
Morning is still the happier hour for me.
For then my sun and Nature's oft I see
Opening at once the orient's rosy gate,
So match'd in beauty and in lustre great,
Heaven seems enamour'd of our earth to be!
As when in verdant leaf the dear boughs burst
Whose roots have since so centred in my core,
Another than myself is cherish'd more.
Thus the two hours contrast, day's last and first:
Reason it is who calms me to desire,
And fear and hate who fiercer feed my fire.

MACGREGOR.

I
FATHER AND CHILD
She hears me strike the board and say
That she is under ban
Of all good men and women,
Being mentioned with a man
That has the worst of all bad names;
And thereupon replies
That his hair is beautiful,
Cold as the March wind his eyes.

II
BEFORE THE WORLD WAS MADE

IF I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.
What if I look upon a man
As though on my beloved,
And my blood be cold the while
And my heart unmoved?
Why should he think me cruel
Or that he is betrayed?
I'd have him love the thing that was
Before the world wa...

Poet, a truce to your song!
Have you heard the heart sing?
Like a brook among trees,
Like the humming of bees,
Like the ripple of wine:
Had you heard, would you stay
Blowing bubbles so long?
You have ears for the spheres -
Have you heard the heart sing?

*            *            *            *            *

Have you loved the good books of the world, -
And written none?
Have you loved the great poet, -
And burnt your little rhyme?
'O be my friend, and teach me to be thine.'

*            *            *            *            *

By many hands the work of God is done,
Swart toil, pale thought, flushed dream, he spurneth none:
Yea! and the weaver of a little rhyme
Is seen his worker in his own full time.

        The year has but one June, dear friend;
    The year has but one June;
        And when that perfect month doth end,
        The robin's song, though loud, though long,
    Seems never quite in tune.

        The rose, though still its blushing face
    By bee and bird is seen,
        May yet have lost that subtle grace -
        That nameless spell the winds know
    Which makes it garden's queen.

        Life's perfect June, love's red, red rose,
    Have burned and bloomed for me.
        Though still youth's summer sunlight glows;
        Though thou art kind, dear friend, I find
    I have no heart for thee.

Dedicated To The Rev. J. Knowles Holland.

The beating snow-clad bell, with sounding dead,
Hath clanked four--the woodman's wak'd again;
And, as he leaves his comfortable bed,
Dithers to view the rimy feather'd pane,
And shrugs, and wishes--but 'tis all in vain:
The bed's warm comforts he must now forego;
His family that oft till eight hath lain,
Without his labour's wage could not do so,
And glad to make them blest he shuffles through the snow.

The early winter's morn is dark as pitch,
The wary wife from tinder brought at night,
With flint and steel, and many a sturdy twitch,
Sits up in bed to strike her man a light;
And as the candle shows the rapturous sight,
Aside his wife his rosy sleeping boy,
He smacks his lips with exquisite delight,
Wi...

1.

One morn before me were three figures seen,
I With bowed necks, and joined hands, side-faced;
And one behind the other stepp'd serene,
In placid sandals, and in white robes graced;
They pass'd, like figures on a marble urn,
When shifted round to see the other side;
They came again; as when the urn once more
Is shifted round, the first seen shades return;
And they were strange to me, as may betide
With vases, to one deep in Phidian lore.

2.

How is it, Shadows! that I knew ye not?
How came ye muffled in so hush a masque?
Was it a silent deep-disguised plot
To steal away, and leave without a task
My idle days? Ripe was the drowsy hour;
The blissful cloud of summer-indolence
Benumb'd my eyes; my pulse grew less and less;
Pain ha...

Long are the days, and three times long the nights.
The weary hours are a heavy chain
Upon the feet of all Earth's dear delights,
Holding them ever prisoners to pain.
What shall beguile me to believe again
In hope, that faith within her parable writes
Of life, care reads with eyes whose tear-drops stain?
Shall such assist me to subdue the heights?
Long is the night, and over long the day. -
The burden of all being! - is it worse
Or better, lo! that they who toil and pray
May win not more than they who toil and curse?
A little sleep, a little love, ah me!
And the slow weigh up the soul's Calvary!

The knell of WHITEHEAD tolls! - his cares are past,
    The hapless tribute of his purchas'd lays,
    His servile, his Egyptian tasks of praise! -
    If not sublime his strains, Fame justly plac'd
Their power above their work. - Now, with wide gaze
Of much indignant wonder, she surveys
    To the life-labouring oar assiduous haste
    A glowing Bard, by every Muse embrac'd. -
O, WARTON! chosen Priest of Phoebus' choir!
    Shall thy rapt song be venal? hymn the THRONE,
    Whether its edicts just applause inspire,
Or PATRIOT VIRTUE view them with a frown?
    What needs for this the golden-stringed Lyre,
    The snowy Tunic, and the Sun-bright Zone[1]!

1: Ensigns of Apollo's Priesthood.

He's the man from Eldorado, and he's just arrived in town,
In moccasins and oily buckskin shirt.
He's gaunt as any Indian, and pretty nigh as brown;
He's greasy, and he smells of sweat and dirt.
He sports a crop of whiskers that would shame a healthy hog;
Hard work has racked his joints and stooped his back;
He slops along the sidewalk followed by his yellow dog,
But he's got a bunch of gold-dust in his sack.

He seems a little wistful as he blinks at all the lights,
And maybe he is thinking of his claim
And the dark and dwarfish cabin where he lay and dreamed at nights,
(Thank God, he'll never see the place again!)
Where he lived on tinned tomatoes, beef embalmed and sourdough bread,
On rusty beans and bacon furred with mould;
His stomach's out of kilter and his s...

The struggling Rill insensibly is grown
Into a Brook of loud and stately march,
Crossed ever and anon by plank or arch;
And, for like use, lo! what might seem a zone
Chosen for ornament, stone matched with stone
In studied symmetry, with interspace
For the clear waters to pursue their race
Without restraint. How swiftly have they flown,
Succeeding, still succeeding! Here the Child
Puts, when the high-swoln Flood runs fierce and wild,
His budding courage to the proof; and here
Declining Manhood learns to note the sly
And sure encroachments of infirmity,
Thinking how fast time runs, life's end how near!

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáawn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

I see the ghost of a perished day;
I know his face, and the feel of his dawn:
'Twas he who took me far away
To a spot strange and gray:
Look at me, Day, and then pass on,
But come again: yes, come anon!

Enters another into view;
His features are not cold or white,
But rosy as a vein seen through:
Too soon he smiles adieu.
Adieu, O ghost-day of delight;
But come and grace my dying sight.

Enters the day that brought the kiss:
He brought it in his foggy hand
To where the mumbling river is,
And the high clematis;
It lent new colour to the land,
And all the boy within me manned.

Ah, this one. Yes, I know his name,
He is the day that wrought a shine
Even on a precinct common and tame,
As 'twere of purposed aim.
He show...

City of swarming, city full of dreams
Where ghosts in daylight tug the stroller's sleeve!
Mysteries everywhere run like the sap
That fills this great colossus' conduits.

One morning, while along the sombre street
The houses, rendered taller by the mist,
Seemed to be towering wharves at riverside,
And while (our stage-set like the actor's soul)

A dirty yellow steam filled all the space,
I followed, with a hero's iron nerve
To set against my spirit's lassitude,
The district streets shaken by rumbling carts.

Then, an old man whose yellowed rags
Were imitations of the rainy sky,
At whose sight charity might have poured down,
Without the evil glitter in his eyes,

Appeared quite suddenly to me. I'd say
His eye was steeped in gall; his gl...

The sultry day it wears away,
And o'er the distant leas
The mist again, in purple stain,
Falls moist on flower and trees:
His home to find, the weary hind
Glad leaves his carts and ploughs;
While maidens fair, with bosoms bare,
Go coolly to their cows.

The red round sun his work has done,
And dropp'd into his bed;
And sweetly shin'd the oaks behind
His curtains fringed with red:
And step by step the night has crept,
And day, as loth, retires;
But clouds, more dark, night's entrance mark.
Till day's last spark expires.

Pride of the vales, the nightingales
Now charm the oaken grove;
And loud and long, with amorous tongue,
They try to please their love:
And where the rose reviving blows
Upon the swelter'd bower,
I'll take...

I see before me now, a traveling army halting;
Below, a fertile valley spread, with barns, and the orchards of summer;
Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt in places, rising high;
Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes, dingily seen;
The numerous camp-fires scatter'd near and far, some away up on the mountain;
The shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized flickering;
And over all, the sky, the sky! far, far out of reach, studded, breaking out, the eternal stars.

Who will not honour noble numbers, when
Verses out-live the bravest deeds of men?

Something tapped on the pane of my room
When there was never a trace
Of wind or rain, and I saw in the gloom
My weary Beloved's face.

"O I am tired of waiting," she said,
"Night, morn, noon, afternoon;
So cold it is in my lonely bed,
And I thought you would join me soon!"

I rose and neared the window-glass,
But vanished thence had she:
Only a pallid moth, alas,
Tapped at the pane for me.

August 1913.

    Of specious weight like tissue freight
The snowflakes are - in sparkle pure
    As the rich parure
A lovely queen were proud to wear;
As volatile, as fine and rare
As thistle-down dispersed in air,
    Or bits of filmy lace;
Like nature's tear-drops strewn around
That beautify and warm the ground,
    But melt upon my face.

    A ton or more against my door
They lie, and look, in form and tint,
    Like piles of lint,
When war's alarum roused the land,
Wrought out by woman's loyal hand
From linen rag, and robe, and band -
    From garments cast aside -
In hospital, on battle-field
The shattered limb that bound and healed,
    Or stanched life's ebbing tide.

    I see the gleam of lake and stream,
The silver glint...