Give Want her welcome if she comes; we find
Riches to be but burdens to the mind.

What shall I be?--I will be a knight
    Walled up in armour black,
With a sword of sharpness, a hammer of might.
    And a spear that will not crack--
So black, so blank, no glimmer of light
    Will betray my darkling track.

Saddle my coal-black steed, my men,
    Fittest for sunless work;
Old Night is steaming from her den,
    And her children gather and lurk;
Bad things are creeping from the fen,
    And sliding down the murk.

Let him go!--let him go! Let him plunge!--Keep away!
    He's a foal of the third seal's brood!
Gaunt with armour, in grim array
    Of poitrel and frontlet-hood,
Let him go, a living castle, away--
    Right for the evil wood.

I and Ravenwing on the course,
    Heavy in fighting gear--
Woe to t...

Farewell, thou little Nook of mountain-ground,
Thou rocky corner in the lowest stair
Of that magnificent temple which doth bound
One side of our whole vale with grandeur rare;
Sweet garden-orchard, eminently fair,
The loveliest spot that man hath ever found,
Farewell! we leave thee to Heaven's peaceful care,
Thee, and the Cottage which thou dost surround.

Our boat is safely anchored by the shore,
And there will safely ride when we are gone;
The flowering shrubs that deck our humble door
Will prosper, though untended and alone:
Fields, goods, and far-off chattels we have none:
These narrow bounds contain our private store
Of things earth makes, and sun doth shine upon;
Here are they in our sight we have no more.

Sunshine and shower be with you, bud ...

I' piansi, or canto; che 'l celeste lume.

AT HER RETURN, HIS SORROWS VANISH.


    I wept, but now I sing; its heavenly light
That living sun conceals not from my view,
But virtuous love therein revealeth true
His holy purposes and precious might;
Whence, as his wont, such flood of sorrow springs
To shorten of my life the friendless course,
Nor bridge, nor ford, nor oar, nor sails have force
To forward mine escape, nor even wings.
But so profound and of so full a vein
My suff'ring is, so far its shore appears,
Scarcely to reach it can e'en thought contrive:
Nor palm, nor laurel pity prompts to gain,
But tranquil olive, and the dark sky clears,
And checks my grief and wills me to survive.

MACGREGOR.

I

Upon your hearse this flower I lay.
Brief be your sleep!    You shall be known
When lesser men have had their day:
Fame blossoms where true seed is sown,
Or soon or late, let Time wrong what it may.


II

Unvext by any dream of fame,
You smiled, and bade the world pass by:
But I--I turned, and saw a name
Shaping itself against the sky--
White star that rose amid the battle's flame!


III

Brief be your sleep, for I would see
Your laurels--ah, how trivial now
To him must earthly laurel be
Who wears the amaranth on his brow!
How vain the voices of mortality!

Roving, roving, as it seems,
Una lights my clouded dreams;
Still for journeys she is dressed;
We wander far by east and west.

In the homestead, homely thought,
At my work I ramble not;

If from home chance draw me wide,
Half-seen Una sits beside.

In my house and garden-plot,
Though beloved, I miss her not;
But one I seek in foreign places,
One face explore in foreign faces.

At home a deeper thought may light
The inward sky with chrysolite,
And I greet from far the ray,
Aurora of a dearer day.

But if upon the seas I sail,
Or trundle on the glowing rail,
I am but a thought of hers,
Loveliest of travellers.

So the gentle poet's name
To foreign parts is blown by fame,
Seek him in his native town,

He stood among a crowd at Dromahair;
His heart hung all upon a silken dress,
And he had known at last some tenderness,
Before earth took him to her stony care;
But when a man poured fish into a pile,
It Seemed they raised their little silver heads,
And sang what gold morning or evening sheds
Upon a woven world-forgotten isle
Where people love beside the ravelled seas;
That Time can never mar a lover's vows
Under that woven changeless roof of boughs:
The singing shook him out of his new ease.
He wandered by the sands of Lissadell;
His mind ran all on money cares and fears,
And he had known at last some prudent years
Before they heaped his grave under the hill;
But while he passed before a plashy place,
A lug-worm with its grey and muddy mouth
Sang tha...

O Stiffly shapen houses that change not,
    What conjuror's cloth was thrown across you, and raised
To show you thus transfigured, changed,
    Your stuff all gone, your menace almost rased?

Such resolute shapes, so harshly set
    In hollow blocks and cubes deformed, and heaped
In void and null profusion, how is this?
    In what strong aqua regia now are you steeped?

That you lose the brick-stuff out of you
    And hover like a presentment, fading faint
And vanquished, evaporate away
    To leave but only the merest possible taint!

Over the hills and far away,
A little boy steals from his morning play
And under the blossoming apple-tree
He lies and he dreams of the things to be:
Of battles fought and of victories won,
Of wrongs o'erthrown and of great deeds done -
Of the valor that he shall prove some day,
Over the hills and far away -
Over the hills, and far away!

Over the hills and far away
It's, oh, for the toil the livelong day!
But it mattereth not to the soul aflame
With a love for riches and power and fame!
On, 0 man! while the sun is high -
On to the certain joys that lie
Yonder where blazeth the noon of day,
Over the hills and far away -
Over the hills, and far away!

Over the hills and far away,
An old man lingers at close of day;
Now that his jou...

Soleasi nel mio cor star bella e viva.

SINCE HER DEATH, NOTHING IS LEFT TO HIM BUT GRIEF.


    She stood within my heart, warm, young, alone,
As in a humble home a lady bright;
By her last flight not merely am I grown
Mortal, but dead, and she an angel quite.
A soul whence every bliss and hope is flown,
Love shorn and naked of its own glad light,
Might melt with pity e'en a heart of stone:
But none there is to tell their grief or write;
These plead within, where deaf is every ear
Except mine own, whose power its griefs so mar
That nought is left me save to suffer here.
Verily we but dust and shadows are!
Verily blind and evil is our will!
Verily human hopes deceive us still!

MACGREGOR.


    'Mid life's bright glow ...

I.

Thou who stealest fire,
From the fountains of the past,
To glorify the present, O, haste,
Visit my low desire!
Strengthen me, enlighten me!
I faint in this obscurity,
Thou dewy dawn of memory.


II.

Come not as thou camest of late,
Flinging the gloom of yesternight
On the white day, but robed in soften’d light
Of orient state.
Whilome thou camest with the morning mist,
Even as a maid, whose stately brow
The dew-impearled winds of dawn have kiss’d,
When she, as thou,
Stays on her floating locks the lovely freight
Of overflowing blooms, and earliest shoots
Of orient green, giving safe pledge of fruits,
Which in wintertide shall star
The black earth with brilliance rare.


III.

Whilome th...

O lyrist of the lowly and the true,
    The song I sought for you
Hides yet unsung. What hope for me to find,
    Lost in the dædal mind,
The living utterance with lovely tongue!
    To say, as erst was sung
By Ariosto of Knight-errantry,
    Through lands of Poesy,
Song's Paladin, knight of the dream and day,
    The wizard shield you sway
Of that Atlantes power, sweet and terse,
    The skyey-builded verse:
The shield that dazzles, brilliant with surprise,
    Our unanointed eyes.
Oh, had I written as 't were worthy you,
    Each line, a spark of dew,
As once Ferdusi shone in Persia,
    Had strung each rosy spray
Of the unfolding flower of each song;
    And Iran's bulbul tongue
Had sobbed its heart out o'er the fountain's slab
 ...