Tune - "Jockey's ta'en the parting kiss."


I.

    Jockey's ta'en the parting kiss,
        O'er the mountains he is gane;
    And with him is a' my bliss,
        Nought but griefs with me remain.
    Spare my luve, ye winds that blaw,
        Plashy sleets and beating rain!
    Spare my luve, thou feathery snaw,
        Drifting o'er the frozen plain.

II.

    When the shades of evening creep
        O'er the day's fair, gladsome e'e,
    Sound and safely may he sleep,
        Sweetly blithe his waukening be!
    He will think on her he loves,
        Fondly he'll repeat her name;
    For where'er he distant roves,
        Jockey's heart is still at hame.

Meg yesterday was troubled with a pose,
Which, this night harden'd, sodders up her nose.

(Grandpapa Loquitur.)


You don't know Froissart now, young folks.
This age, I think, prefers recitals
Of high-spiced crime, with "slang" for jokes,
And startling titles;

But, in my time, when still some few
Loved "old Montaigne," and praised Pope's Homer
(Nay, thought to style him "poet" too,
Were scarce misnomer),

Sir John was less ignored. Indeed,
I can re-call how Some-one present
(Who spoils her grandson, Frank!) would read
And find him pleasant;

For,--by this copy,--hangs a Tale.
Long since, in an old house in Surrey,
Where men knew more of "morning ale"
Than "Lindley Murray,"

In a dim-lighted, whip-hung hall,
'Neath Hogarth's "Midnight Conversation,"
It stood; and oft 'twixt spring and fall,
With fon...

Stay near me, do not take thy flight!
A little longer stay in sight!
Much converse do I find I thee,
Historian of my infancy!
Float near me; do not yet depart!
Dead times revive in thee:
Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art!
A solemn image to my heart,
My father's family!

Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,
The time, when, in our childish plays,
My sister Emmeline and I
Together chased the butterfly!
A very hunter did I rush
Upon the prey: with leaps and spring
I followed on from brake to bush;
But she, God love her, feared to brush
The dust from off its wings.

(The exile Meliboeus finds Tityrus in possession of his own farm, restored to him by the emperor Augustus, and a conversation ensues. The poem is in praise of Augustus, peace and pastoral life.)


Meliboeus--
Tityrus, all in the shade of the wide-spreading beech tree reclining,
Sweet is that music you've made on your pipe that is oaten and slender;
Exiles from home, you beguile our hearts from their hopeless repining,
As you sing Amaryllis the while in pastorals tuneful and tender.

Tityrus--
A god--yes, a god, I declare--vouchsafes me these pleasant conditions,
And often I gayly repair with a tender white lamb to his altar,
He gives me the leisure to play my greatly admired compositions,
While my heifers go browsing all day, unhampered of bell and halter.

The twilight o'er Italia's sky
Had spread a shadowy veil,
And one by one the solemn stars
Looked forth, serene and pale;
As quietly the waning light
Through a high casement stole,
And fell on one with silver hair,
Who shrived a passing soul.

No costly pomp or luxury
Relieved that chamber's gloom,
But glowing forms, by limner's art
Created, thronged the room:
And as the low winds carried far
The chime for evening prayer,
The dying painter's earnest tones
Fell on the languid air.

"The spectral form of Death is nigh,
The thread of life is spun:
Ave Maria! I have looked
Upon my latest sun.
And yet 't is not with pale disease
This frame is worn away;
Nor yet - nor yet with length of years; -
A child but yesterday,"

My new-cut ashlar takes the light
Where crimson-blank the windows flare;
By my own work, before the night,
Great Overseer I make my prayer.

If there be good in that I wrought,
Thy hand compelled it, Master, Thine;
Where I have failed to meet Thy thought
I know, through Thee, the blame is mine.

One instant's toil to Thee denied
Stands all Eternity's offence,
Of that I did with Thee to guide
To Thee, through Thee, be excellence.

Who, lest all thought of Eden fade,
Bring'st Eden to the craftsman's brain,
Godlike to muse o'er his own trade
And Manlike stand with God again.

The depth and dream of my desire,
The bitter paths wherein I stray,
Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire,
Thou knowest Who hast made the Clay!

On...

Darkly falls the autumn twilight, rustles by the crisp leaf sere,
Sadly wail the lonely night-winds, sweeping sea-ward, chill and drear,
Sullen dash the restless waters 'gainst a bleak and rock-bound shore,
While the sea-birds' weird voices mingle with their surging roar.

Vainly seeks the eye a flow'ret 'mid the desolation drear,
Or a spray of pleasant verdure which the gloomy scene might cheer;
Nought but frowning crags and boulders, and long sea-weeds, ghastly, dank,
With the mosses and pale lichens, to the wet rocks clinging rank.

See, the fog clouds thickly rolling o'er the landscape far and wide,
Till the tall cliffs look like phantoms, seeking 'mid their shrouds to hide;
On they come, the misty masses of the wreathing vapour white,
Filling hill and mead and valley, b...

A gift of Silence, sweet!
Who may not ever hear:
To lay down at your unobservant feet,
Is all the gift I bear.

I have no songs to sing,
That you should heed or know:
I have no lilies, in full hands, to fling
Across the path you go.

I cast my flowers away,
Blossoms unmeet for you!
The garland I have gathered in my day:
My rosemary and rue.

I watch you pass and pass,
Serene and cold: I lay
My lips upon your trodden, daisied grass,
And turn my life away.

Yea, for I cast you, sweet!
This one gift, you shall take:
Like ointment, on your unobservant feet,
My silence, for your sake.

View of the Lake of Geneva from the Jura.[1]--Anxious to reach it before the Sun went down.--Obliged to proceed on Foot.--Alps.--Mont Blanc.--Effect of the Scene.


'Twas late--the sun had almost shone
His last and best when I ran on
Anxious to reach that splendid view
Before the daybeams quite withdrew
And feeling as all feel on first
    Approaching scenes where, they are told,
Such glories on their eyes will burst
    As youthful bards in dreams behold.

'Twas distant yet and as I ran
    Full often was my wistful gaze
Turned to the sun who now began
    To call in all his out-posts rays,
And form a denser march of light,
Such as beseems a hero's flight.
Oh, how I wisht for JOSHUA'S power,
To stay the brightness of that hour...

At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time,
When far within the spirit's hearing rolls
The great soft rumble of the course of things -
A bulk of silence in a mask of sound, -
When darkness clears our vision that by day
Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl
For truth and flitteth here and there about
Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft
Is minded for to sit upon a bough,
Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree
And muse in that gaunt place, - 'twas then my heart,
Deep in the meditative dark, cried out:

"Ye companies of governor-spirits grave,
Bards, and old bringers-down of flaming news
From steep-wall'd heavens, holy malcontents,
Sweet seers, and stellar visionaries, all
That brood about the skies of poesy,
Full bright ye shine, i...

    I.

    An afternoon as ripe with heat
        As might the golden pippin be
    With mellowness if at my feet
        It dropped now from the apple-tree
        My hammock swings in lazily.


    II.

    The boughs about me spread a shade
        That shields me from the sun, but weaves
        With breezy shuttles through the leaves
    Blue rifts of skies, to gleam and fade
        Upon the eyes that only see
        Just of themselves, all drowsily.


    III.

    Above me drifts the fallen skein
        Of some tired spider, looped and blown,
    As fragile as a strand of rain,
        Across the air, and upward thrown
        By breaths of hayfields newly mown -
    So glimmering it is and fine,

[From Farmer Harrington's Calendar.]

FEBRUARY 5, 18 - .

        Want - want - want - want! O God! forgive the crime,
        If I, asleep, awake, at any time,
        Upon my bended knees, my back, my feet,
        In church, on bed, on treasure-lighted street,
        Have ever hinted, or, much less, have pleaded
        That I hadn't ten times over all I needed!
        Lord save my soul! I never knew the way
        That people starve along from day to day;
        May gracious Heaven forgive me, o'er and o'er,
        That I have never found these folks before!

        Of course some news of it has come my way,
        Like a faint echo on a drowsy day;
        At home I "gave," whene'er by suffering grieved,
        And called i...

Sì amico al freddo sasso.


So friendly is the fire to flinty stone,
        That, struck therefrom and kindled to a blaze,
        It burns the stone, and from the ash doth raise
        What lives thenceforward binding stones in one:
Kiln-hardened this resists both frost and sun,
        Acquiring higher worth for endless days--
        As the purged soul from hell returns with praise,
        Amid the heavenly host to take her throne.
E'en so the fire struck from my soul, that lay
        Close-hidden in my heart, may temper me,
        Till burned and slaked to better life I rise.
If, made mere smoke and dust, I live to-day,
        Fire-hardened I shall live eternally;
        Such gold, not iron, my spirit strikes and tries.

Sweet summer is gone; they have laid her away -
The last sad hours that were touched with her grace -
In the hush where the ghosts of the dead flowers play;
The sleep that is sweet of her slumbering space
Let not a sight or a sound erase
Of the woe that hath fallen on all the lands:
Gather ye, dreams, to her sunny face,
Shadow her head with your golden hands.

The woods that are golden and red for a day
Girdle the hills in a jewelled case,
Like a girl's strange mirth, ere the quick death slay
The beautiful life that he hath in chase.
Darker and darker the shadows pace
Out of the north to the southern sands,
Ushers bearing the winter's mace:
Keep them away with your woven hands.

The yellow light lies on the wide wastes gray,
More bitter and cold...

WHEN tender Rose-trees first receive
On half-expanded Leaves, the Shower;
Hope's gayest pictures we believe,
And anxious watch each coining flower.

Then, if beneath the genial Sun
That spreads abroad the full-blown May,
Two infant Stems the rest out-run,
Their buds the first to meet the day,

With joy their op'ning tints we view,
While morning's precious moments fly:
My pretty Maids, 'tis thus with you;
The fond admiring gazer, I.

Preserve, sweet Buds, where'er you be;
The richest gem that decks a Wife;
The charm of female modesty:
And let sweet Music give it life.

Still may the favouring Muse be found:
Still circumspect the paths ye tread:
Plant moral truths in Fancy's ground;
And meet old Age without...

Afar my loyal spirit stirred
    At mention of his name;
Afar in ringing notes I heard
    The clarion voice of fame;
So to his tomb, hope long deferred,
    With reverent step I came.

The pilgrim muse revivified
    A half-forgotten day:
A slow procession, tearful-eyed,
    In funeral array,
And from MacGregor's lonely side
    A hero borne away.

Here sleeps he now, where long ago
    Hath nature raised his mound:
A mighty channel far below,
    Divided hills around,
Where countless thousands come and go
    As to a shrine renowned.

With awe do strangers' eyes discern
    A casket mid the green
Luxuriance of flower and fern;
    Airy and cool and clean,
Unchanged from spring to spring's return,
    This cha...

I took the road again last night
On which my boyhood's hills look down;
The old road leading from the town,
The village there below the height,
Its cottage homes, all huddled brown,
Each with its blur of light.

The old road, full of ruts, that leads,
A winding streak of limestone-grey,
Over the hills and far away;
That's crowded here by arms of weeds
And elbows of railfence, asway
With flowers that no one heeds:

That's dungeoned here by rocks and trees
And maundered to by waters; there
Lifted into the free wild air
Of meadow-land serenities:
The old road, stretching far and fair
To where my tired heart sees.

That says, "Come, take me for a mile;
And let me show you mysteries:
The things the yellow moon there sees,
And...