As they who, tossing midst the storm at night,
While turning shoreward, where a beacon shone,
Meet the walled blackness of the heaven alone,
So, on the turbulent waves of party tossed,
In gloom and tempest, men have seen thy light
Quenched in the darkness. At thy hour of noon,
While life was pleasant to thy undimmed sight,
And, day by day, within thy spirit grew
A holier hope than young Ambition knew,
As through thy rural quiet, not in vain,
Pierced the sharp thrill of Freedom's cry of pain,
Man of the millions, thou art lost too soon!
Portents at which the bravest stand aghast,
The birth-throes of a Future, strange and vast,
Alarm the land; yet thou, so wise and strong,
Suddenly summoned to the burial bed,
Lapped in its slumbers deep and ever long,
Hear'...

Love, dearest Lady, such as I would speak,
Lives not within the humor of the eye; -
Not being but an outward phantasy,
That skims the surface of a tinted cheek, -
Else it would wane with beauty, and grow weak,
As if the rose made summer, - and so lie
Amongst the perishable things that die,
Unlike the love which I would give and seek:
Whose health is of no hue - to feel decay
With cheeks' decay, that have a rosy prime.
Love is its own great loveliness alway,
And takes new lustre from the touch of time;
Its bough owns no December and no May,
But bears its blossom into Winter's clime.

Yon nightingale who mourns so plaintively
Perchance his fledglings or his darling mate,
Fills sky and earth with sweetness, warbling late,
Prophetic notes of melting melody.
All night, he, as it were, companions me,
Reminding me of my so cruel fate,
Mourning no other grief save mine own state,
Who knew not Death reigned o'er divinity.
How easy 't is to dupe the soul secure!
Those two fair lamps, even than the sun more bright,
Who ever dreamed to see turn clay obscure?
But Fortune has ordained, I now am sure,
That I, midst lifelong tears, should learn aright,
Naught here can make us happy, or endure.

I glimpsed a woman's muslined form
Sing-songing airily
Against the moon; and still she sang,
And took no heed of me.

Another trice, and I beheld
What first I had not scanned,
That now and then she tapped and shook
A timbrel in her hand.

So late the hour, so white her drape,
So strange the look it lent
To that blank hill, I could not guess
What phantastry it meant.

Then burst I forth: "Why such from you?
Are you so happy now?"
Her voice swam on; nor did she show
Thought of me anyhow.

I called again: "Come nearer; much
That kind of note I need!"
The song kept softening, loudening on,
In placid calm unheed.

"What home is yours now?" then I said;
"You seem to have no care."
But the wild wavering tune went...

Past life, past tears, far past the grave,
    The tryst is set for me,
Since, for our all, your all you gave
    On the slopes of Picardy.

On Angus, in the autumn nights,
    The ice-green light shall lie,
Beyond the trees the Northern Lights
    Slant on the belts of sky.

But miles on miles from Scottish soil
    You sleep, past war and scaith,
Your country's freedman, loosed from toil,
    In honour and in faith.

For Angus held you in her spell,
    Her Grampians, faint and blue,
Her ways, the speech you knew so well,
    Were half the world to you.

Yet rest, my son; our souls are those
    Nor time nor death can part,
And lie you proudly, folded close
    To France's deathless heart.

I saw thee once--once only--years ago:
I must not say how many--but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness and slumber,
Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe--
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That gave out, in return for the love-light,
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death--
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.

Clad all in white, upon a violet bank
I saw thee h...

In the youth of the year, when the birds were building,
    When the green was showing on tree and hedge,
And the tenderest light of all lights was gilding
    The world from zenith to outermost edge,
My soul grew sad and longingly lonely!
    I sighed for the season of sun and rose,
And I said, "In the Summer and that time only
    Lies sweet contentment and blest repose."

With bee and bird for her maids of honor
    Came Princess Summer in robes of green.
And the King of day smiled down upon her
    And wooed her, and won her, and made her queen.
Fruit of their union and true love's pledges,
    Beautiful roses bloomed day by day,
And rambled in gardens and hid in hedges
    Like royal children in sportive play.

My restless soul for a little seas...

    Sweet flow'ret, pledge o' meikle love,
        And ward o' mony a pray'r,
    What heart o' stane wad thou na move,
        Sae helpless, sweet, and fair!

    November hirples o'er the lea,
        Chill on thy lovely form;
    And gane, alas! the shelt'ring tree,
        Should shield thee frae the storm.

    May He who gives the rain to pour,
        And wings the blast to blaw,
    Protect thee frae the driving show'r,
        The bitter frost and snaw!

    May He, the friend of woe and want,
        Who heals life's various stounds,
    Protect and guard the mother-plant,
        And heal her cruel wounds!

    But late she flourish'd, rooted fast,
        Fair on the summer-morn:
    Now feebly bends she in the blast,<...

Farewell thou thing, time past so known, so dear
To me as blood to life and spirit; near,
Nay, thou more near than kindred, friend, man, wife,
Male to the female, soul to body; life
To quick action, or the warm soft side
Of the resigning, yet resisting bride.
The kiss of virgins, first fruits of the bed,
Soft speech, smooth touch, the lips, the maidenhead:
These and a thousand sweets could never be
So near or dear as thou wast once to me.
O thou, the drink of gods and angels! wine
That scatter'st spirit and lust, whose purest shine
More radiant than the summer's sunbeams shows;
Each way illustrious, brave, and like to those
Comets we see by night, whose shagg'd portents
Foretell the coming of some dire events,
Or some full flame which with a pride aspires,

Far-Off the lily-statues stand white-ranked in the garden at home.
Would God they were shattered quickly, the cattle would tread them out in the loam.
I wish the elder trees in flower could suddenly heave, and burst
The walls of the house, and nettles puff out from the hearth at which I was nursed.

It stands so still in the hush composed of trees and inviolate peace,
The home of my fathers, the place that is mine, my fate and my old increase.
And now that the skies are falling, the world is spouting in fountains of dirt,
I would give my soul for the homestead to fall with me, go with me, both in one hurt.

I


Beyond the Northern Lights, in regions haunted
Of twilight, where the world is glacier planted,
And pale as Loki in his cavern when
The serpent's slaver burns him to the bones,
I saw the phantasms of gigantic men,
The prototypes of vastness, quarrying stones;
Great blocks of winter, glittering with the morn's
And evening's colors,--wild prismatic tones
Of boreal beauty.--Like the three gray Norns,
Silence and solitude and terror loomed
Around them where they labored. Walls arose,
Vast as the Andes when creation boomed
Insurgent fire; and through the rushing snows
Enormous battlements of tremendous ice,
Bastioned and turreted, I saw arise.


II


But who can sing the workmanship gigantic
That reared within its corusca...

Qual paura ho, quando mi torna a mente.

MELANCHOLY RECOLLECTIONS AND PRESAGES.


    O Laura! when my tortured mind
The sad remembrance bears
Of that ill-omen'd day,
When, victim to a thousand doubts and fears,
I left my soul behind,
That soul that could not from its partner stray;
In nightly visions to my longing eyes
Thy form oft seems to rise,
As ever thou wert seen,
Fair like the rose, 'midst paling flowers the queen,
But loosely in the wind,
Unbraided wave the ringlets of thy hair,
That late with studious care,
I saw with pearls and flowery garlands twined:
On thy wan lip, no cheerful smile appears;
Thy beauteous face a tender sadness wears;
Placid in pain thou seem'st, serene in grief,
As conscious of thy fate, and h...

To Mr Lawrence

Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,
Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,
Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire
Help waste a sullen day, what may be won
From the hard season gaining? Time will run
On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire
The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire
The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun.
What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise
To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice
Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?
He who of those delights can judge, and spare
To interpose them oft, is not unwise.

"Considerabam ad dexteram, et videbam; et non erat qui cognosceret me
. . . Non est qui requirat animam meam." - Ps. cxli.

When the clouds' swoln bosoms echo back the shouts of the many and strong
That things are all as they best may be, save a few to be right ere long,
And my eyes have not the vision in them to discern what to these is so clear,
The blot seems straightway in me alone; one better he were not here.

The stout upstanders say, All's well with us: ruers have nought to rue!
And what the potent say so oft, can it fail to be somewhat true?
Breezily go they, breezily come; their dust smokes around their career,
Till I think I am one horn out of due time, who has no calling here.

Their dawns bring lusty joys, it seems; their eves exultance sweet;
Our ti...

    The week before Easter, the days long and clear,
    So bright shone the sun and so cool blew the air,
    I went in the meadow some flowers to find there,
    But the meadow would yield me no posies.

    The weather, like love, did deceitful appear,
    And I wandered alone when my sorrow was near,
    For the thorn that wounds deeply doth bide the whole year,
    When the bush it is naked of roses.

    I courted a girl that was handsome and gay,
    I thought her as constant and true as the day,
    Till she married for riches and said my love "Nay,"
    And so my poor heart got requited.

    I was bid to the bridal; I could not say "No:"
    The bridemen and maidens they made a fine show;
    I smiled like the rest but my heart it was low,
...

The days that clothed white limbs with heat,
And rocked the red rose on their breast,
Have passed with amber-sandaled feet
Into the ruby-gated west.

These were the days that filled the heart
With overflowing riches of
Life, in whose soul no dream shall start
But hath its origin in love.

Now come the days gray-huddled in
The haze; whose foggy footsteps drip;
Who pin beneath a gypsy chin
The frosty marigold and hip.

The days, whose forms fall shadowy
Athwart the heart: whose misty breath
Shapes saddest sweets of memory
Out of the bitterness of death.

The days that clothed white limbs with heat,
And rocked the red rose on their breast,
Have passed with amber-sandaled feet
Into the ruby-gated west.

These were the days that filled the heart
With overflowing riches of
Life, in whose soul no dream shall start
But hath its origin in love.

Now come the days gray-huddled in
The haze; whose foggy footsteps drip;
Who pin beneath a gypsy chin
The frosty marigold and hip.

The days, whose forms fall shadowy
Athwart the heart: whose misty breath
Shapes saddest sweets of memory
Out of the bitterness of death.

Tune - "Deil tak the Wars."


I.

    Sleep'st thou, or wak'st thou, fairest creature?
            Rosy Morn now lifts his eye,
    Numbering ilka bud which nature
            Waters wi' the tears o' joy:
            Now through the leafy woods,
            And by the reeking floods,
    Wild nature's tenants freely, gladly stray;
            The lintwhite in his bower
            Chants o'er the breathing flower;
            The lav'rock to the sky
            Ascends wi' sangs o' joy,
    While the sun and thou arise to bless the day.

II.

    Phoebus gilding the brow o' morning,
            Banishes ilk darksome shade,
    Nature gladdening and adorning;
            Such to me my lovely maid.
            When ...