Life's pathway is full o' deep ruts,
An we mun tak gooid heed lest we stumble;
Man is made up of "ifs" and of "buts,"
It seems pairt ov his natur to grumble.

But if we'd all anxiously tak
To makkin things smooth as we're able,
Ther'd be monny a better clooath'd back,
An' monny a better spread table.

It's a sad state o' things when a man
Cannot put ony faith in his brother,
An fancies he'll chait if he can,
An rejoice ovver th' fall ov another.

An it's sad when yo see some at stand
High in social position an power,
To know at ther fortuns wor plann'd,
An built, aght oth' wrecks o' those lower.

It's sad to see luxury rife,
An fortuns being thowtlessly wasted;
While others are wearin out life,
With the furst drops o' pleasur...

A morning crowns the Western hill,
A day begins to reign,
A sun awakes o’er distant seas
Shall never sleep again.
The world is growing old,
And men are waxing wise;
A mist has cleared a something falls
Like scales from off their eyes.

Too long the “Dark of Ignorance”
Has brooded on their way;
Too long Oppression ’s stood before,
Excluding light of day.
But now they’ve found the track
And now they’ve seen the dawn,
A “beacon lamp” is pointing on,
Where stronger glows the morn.

Since Adam lived, the mighty ones
Have ever ruled the weak;
Since Noah’s flood, the fettered slave
Has seldom dared to speak.
’Tis time a voice was heard,
’Tis time a voice was spoken
So in the chain of tyranny
A link or two be broken.
<...

Aloft on the brow of a mountain,
And hard by a clear running fountain,
In neat little cot,
Content with her lot,
Retired, there lives a sweet maiden.

Her father is dead, and her brother,
And now she alone with her mother
Will spin on her wheel,
And sew, knit, and reel,
And cheerfully work for their living.

To gossip she never will roam,
She loves, and she stays at, her home,
Unless when a neighbour
In sickness does labour,
Then, kindly, she pays her a visit.

With Bible she stands by her bed,
And when some blest passage is read,
In prayer and in praises
Her sweet voice she raises
To Him who for sinners once died.

Well versed in her Bible is she,
Her language is artless and free,
Imparting pure joy,
That...

Were I a skilful painter,
My pencil, not my pen,
Should try to teach thee hope and fear,
And who would blame me then?--
Fear of the tide of darkness
That floweth fast behind,
And hope to make thee journey on
In the journey of the mind.

Were I a skilful painter,
What should I paint for thee?--
A tiny spring-bud peeping out
From a withered wintry tree;
The warm blue sky of summer
O'er jagged ice and snow,
And water hurrying gladsome out
From a cavern down below;

The dim light of a beacon
Upon a stormy sea,
Where a lonely ship to windward beats
For life and liberty;
A watery sun-ray gleaming
Athwart a sullen cloud
And falling on some grassy flower
The rain had earthward bowed;

Morn peeping o'er a mountain,...

Veggio nel tuo bel viso.


From thy fair face I learn, O my loved lord,
        That which no mortal tongue can rightly say;
        The soul, imprisoned in her house of clay,
        Holpen by thee to God hath often soared:
And though the vulgar, vain, malignant horde
        Attribute what their grosser wills obey,
        Yet shall this fervent homage that I pay,
        This love, this faith, pure joys for us afford.
Lo, all the lovely things we find on earth,
        Resemble for the soul that rightly sees,
        That source of bliss divine which gave us birth:
Nor have we first-fruits or remembrances
        Of heaven elsewhere. Thus, loving loyally,
        I rise to God and make death sweet by thee.

God knows it, I am with you. If to prize
Those virtues, priz'd and practis'd by too few,
But priz'd, but lov'd, but eminent in you,
Man's fundamental life: if to despise
The barren optimistic sophistries
Of comfortable moles, whom what they do
Teaches the limit of the just and true
And for such doing have no need of eyes:
If sadness at teh long heart-wasting show
Wherein earth's great ones are disquieted:
If thoughts, not idle, while before me flow
The armies of the homeless and unfed:
If these are yours, if this is what you are,
Then am I yours, and what you feel, I share.

I KNEW that age was enriched with the hard-earned wages of knowledge,
And I saw that hoary wisdom was bred in the school of disappointment:
I noted that the wisest of youth, though provident and cautious of evil,
Yet sailed along misteadily, as lacking some ballast of the mind:
And the cause seemed to lie in this, that while they considered around them,
And warded off all dangers from without, they forgat their own weakness within.
So steer they in self-confidence, until, from the multitude of perils,
They begin to be wary of themselves, and learn the first lesson of Experience.
I knew that in the morning of life, before its wearisome Journey,
The youthful soul doth expand, in the simple luxury of being;
It hath not contracted its wishes, nor set a limit to its hopes;
The wing of fanc...

What though the Accused, upon his own appeal
To righteous Gods when man has ceased to feel,
Or at a doubting Judge's stern command,
Before the Stone of Power no longer stand
To take his sentence from the balanced Block,
As, at his touch, it rocks, or seems to rock;
Though, in the depths of sunless groves, no more
The Druid-priest the hallowed Oak adore;
Yet, for the Initiate, rocks and whispering trees
Do still perform mysterious offices!
And functions dwell in beast and bird that sway
The reasoning mind, or with the fancy play,
Inviting, at all seasons, ears and eyes
To watch for undelusive auguries:
Not uninspired appear their simplest ways;
Their voices mount symbolical of praise
To mix with hymns that Spirits make and hear;
And to fallen man their inn...

        Sometimes I feel so passionate a yearning
    For spiritual perfection here below,
        This vigorous frame, with healthful fervor burning,
    Seems my determined foe,

        So actively it makes a stern resistance,
    So cruelly sometimes it wages war
        Against a wholly spiritual existence
    Which I am striving for.

        It interrupts my soul's intense devotions;
    Some hope it strangles, of divinest birth,
        With a swift rush of violent emotions
    Which link me to the earth.

        It is as if two mortal foes contended
    Within my bosom in a deadly strife,
        One for the loftier aims for souls intended,
    One for the earthly life.

        And yet I know this very war within me,
    Whi...

Gleaming folds of read and gold linger in the western sky;
Fleecy clouds of purest tint, mingle with the purple dye.

Faintly to the dreamy mind comes the sound of earthly life;
Far beyond the shining banks, cometh rest from worldly strife.

Through the sunset's misty veil, now we look with longing eyes,
To behold more beauteous sight than the evening's glor'ous skies.

Slowly now the red banks part, showing what is hidden there;
Flushing hills of shadowy light, piercing through the dark'ning air.

Like the rainbow's promise clear, God has placed His emblem there,
Giving life and trust to all, love unbounded, rich and rare.

Glimpses of a life beyond come to each faint, weary heart,
And we long for that bright shore where the loved ones ne'er shall part.
...

Light words they were, and lightly, falsely said:
She heard them, and she started, and she rose,
As in the act to speak; the sudden thought
And unconsidered impulse led her on.
In act to speak she rose, but with the sense
Of all the eyes of that mixed company
Now suddenly turned upon her, some with age
Hardened and dulled, some cold and critical;
Some in whom vapours of their own conceit,
As moist malarious mists the heavenly stars,
Still blotted out their good, the best at best
By frivolous laugh and prate conventional
All too untuned for all she thought to say
With such a thought the mantling blood to her cheek
Flushed-up, and o’er-flushed itself, blank night her soul
Made dark, and in her all her purpose swooned.
She stood as if for sinking. Yet anon
W...

There never was a valley without a faded flower,
There never was a heaven without some little cloud;
The face of day may flash with light in any morning hour,
But evening soon shall come with her shadow-woven shroud.

There never was a river without its mists of gray,
There never was a forest without its fallen leaf;
And joy may walk beside us down the windings of our way,
When, lo! there sounds a footstep, and we meet the face of grief.

There never was a seashore without its drifting wreck,
There never was an ocean without its moaning wave;
And the golden gleams of glory the summer sky that fleck,
Shine where dead stars are sleeping in their azure-mantled grave.

There never was a streamlet, however crystal clear,
Without a shadow resting in the ripples of i...

Into that good old Hebrew’s soul sublime
The spirit of the wilderness had passed;
For where the thunders of imperial Storm
Rolled over mighty hills; and where the caves
Of cloud-capt Horeb rang with hurricane;
And where wild-featured Solitude did hold
Supreme dominion; there the prophet saw
And heard and felt that large mysterious life
Which lies remote from cities, in the woods
And rocks and waters of the mountained Earth.
And so it came to pass, Elijah caught
That scholarship which gave him power to see
And solve the deep divinity that lies
With Nature, under lordly forest-domes,
And by the seas; and so his spirit waxed,
Made strong and perfect by its fellowship
With God’s authentic world, until his eyes
Became a splendour, and his face was as
A gl...

Pass, pass, you fiery spirit! Never bland
And halting never! Hosted round to-night,
At the great wall, with spears of lifted light,
Held by embattled seraphim, who stand
To greet their friend, their comrade, and their own!
Doubtless, spirit made for burning war.
Doubtless your God has need of you afar.
To lead, for Him, some heav'nly fight and lone.
And therefore knights you, thus, before the throne!

God bless ye, brothers! in the fight
Ye 're waging now, ye cannot fail,
For better is your sense of right
Than king-craft's triple mail.
Than tyrant's law, or bigot's ban,
More mighty is your simplest word;
The free heart of an honest man
Than crosier or the sword.
Go, let your blinded Church rehearse
The lesson it has learned so well;
It moves not with its prayer or curse
The gates of heaven or hell.
Let the State scaffold rise again;
Did Freedom die when Russell died?
Forget ye how the blood of Vane
From earth's green bosom cried?
The great hearts of your olden time
Are beating with you, full and strong;
All holy memories and sublime
And glorious round ye throng.
The bluff, bold men of Runnymede
Are with ye still in times like these;...

I.

Pessimist

There is never a thing we dream or do
But was dreamed and done in the ages gone;
Everything's old; there is nothing that's new,
And so it will be while the world goes on.

The thoughts we think have been thought before;
The deeds we do have long been done;
We pride ourselves on our love and lore
And both are as old as the moon and sun.

We strive and struggle and swink and sweat,
And the end for each is one and the same;
Time and the sun and the frost and wet
Will wear from its pillar the greatest name.

No answer comes for our prayer or curse,
No word replies though we shriek in air;
Ever the taciturn universe
Stretches unchanged for our curse or prayer.

With our mind's small light in the dark we crawl,<...

Where the sinister sun of the Syrians beat
On the brittle, bright stubble,
And the camels fell back from the swords of the heat,
Came Saul, with a fire in the soles of his feet,
And a forehead of trouble.

And terrified faces to left and to right,
Before and behind him,
Fled away with the speed of a maddening fright
To the cloughs of the bat and the chasms of night,
Each hoping the zealot would fail in his flight
To find him and bind him.

For, behold you! the strong man of Tarsus came down
With breathings of slaughter,
From the priests of the city, the chiefs of the town
(The lords with the sword, and the sires with the gown),
To harry the Christians, and trample, and drown,
And waste them like water.

He was ever a fighter, this son of th...

Nature, to him no message dost thou bear
Who in thy beauty findeth not the power
To gird himself more strongly for the hour
Of night and darkness. Oh, what colours rare
The woods, the valleys, and the mountains wear
To him who knows thy secret, and, in shower,
And fog, and ice-cloud, hath a secret bower
Where he may rest until the heavens are fair!
Not with the rest of slumber, but the trance
Of onward movement steady and serene,
Where oft, in struggle and in contest keen,
His eyes will opened be, and all the dance
Of life break on him, and a wide expanse
Roll upward through the void, sunny and green.