"There dwelt a nun in Dryburgh bower
Who ne'er beheld the day."


Twilight o'er the East is stealing,
And the sun is in the vale:
'T is a fitting moment, stranger,
To relate a wondrous tale.

'Neath this moss-grown rock and hoary
We will pause awhile to rest;
See, the drowsy surf no longer
Beats against its aged breast.

Years ago, traditions tell us,
When rebellion stirred the land,
And the fiery cross was carried
O'er the hills from band to band,--

And the yeoman at its summons
Left his yet unfurrowed field,
And the leader from his fortress
Sallied forth with sword and shield,--

Where the iron cross is standing
On yon rude and crumbling wall,
Dwelt a chieftain's orphan daughter,
In her broad ancestral ...

Golden lights and lengthening shadows,
Flings the splendid sun declining,
O'er the monastery garden
Rich in flower, fruit and foliage.


Through the avenue of nut trees,
Pace two grave and ghostly friars,
Snowy white their gowns and girdles,
Black as night their cowls and mantles.


Lithe and ferret-eyed the younger,
Black his scapular denoting
A lay brother; his companion
Large, imperious, towers above him.


'T is the abbot, great Fra Pedro,
Famous through all Saragossa
For his quenchless zeal in crushing
Heresy amidst his townfolk.


Handsome still with hood and tonsure,
E'en as when the boy Pedrillo,
Insolent with youth and beauty,
Who reviled the gentle Rabbi.


Lo, the level sun strike...

Fera stella (se 'l cielo ha forza in noi).

TO PINE FOR HER IS BETTER THAN TO ENJOY HAPPINESS WITH ANY OTHER.


    Ill-omen'd was that star's malignant gleam
That ruled my hapless birth; and dim the morn
That darted on my infant eyes the beam;
And harsh the wail, that told a man was born;
And hard the sterile earth, which first was worn
Beneath my infant feet; but harder far,
And harsher still, the tyrant maid, whose scorn,
In league with savage Love, inflamed the war
Of all my passions.--Love himself more tame,
With pity soothes my ills; while that cold heart,
Insensible to the devouring flame
Which wastes my vitals, triumphs in my smart.
One thought is comfort--that her scorn to bear,
Excels e'er prosperous love, with other earthly fair.

I.

    As wand'ring late on Albion's shore
        That chains the rude tempestuous deep,
    I heard the hollow surges roar
        And vainly beat her guardian steep;
I heard the rising sounds of woe
    Loud on the storm's wild pinion flow;
And still they vibrate on the mournful lyre,
That tunes to grief its sympathetic wire.


II.

    From shores the wide Atlantic laves,
        The spirit of the ocean bears
    In moans, along his western waves,
        Afflicted nature's hopeless cares:
    Enchanting scenes of young delight,
    How chang'd since first ye rose to sight;
Since first ye rose in infant glories drest
Fresh from the wave, and rear'd your ample breast.


III.

    Her crested serpents, disco...

The world was in its day of peril dark
Wont to believe the dotage of fond love
From the fair Cyprian deity, who rolls
In her third epicycle, shed on men
By stream of potent radiance: therefore they
Of elder time, in their old error blind,
Not her alone with sacrifice ador'd
And invocation, but like honours paid
To Cupid and Dione, deem'd of them
Her mother, and her son, him whom they feign'd
To sit in Dido's bosom: and from her,
Whom I have sung preluding, borrow'd they
The appellation of that star, which views,
Now obvious and now averse, the sun.

I was not ware that I was wafted up
Into its orb; but the new loveliness
That grac'd my lady, gave me ample proof
That we had entered there. And as in flame
A sparkle is distinct, or voice in voice

To mute and to material things
New life revolving summer brings;
The genial call dead Nature hears,
And in her glory reappears.
But oh, my Country’s wintry state
What second spring shall renovate?
What powerful call shall bid arise
    The buried warlike and the wise;

The mind that thought for Britain’s weal,
The hand that grasp’d the victor steel?
The vernal sun new life bestows
Even on the meanest flower that blows;
But vainly, vainly may he shine
Where glory weeps o’er Nelson’s shrine;
And vainly pierce the solemn gloom
That shrouds, O Pitt, thy hallow’d tomb!

Deep graved in every British heart,
O never let those names depart!
Say to your sons, Lo, here his grave,
Who victor died on Gadite wave!
To him, as to the burning levi...

In the silent watches of the night, calm night that breedeth thoughts.
When the task-weary mind disporteth in the careless play-hours of sleep,
I dreamed; and behold, a valley, green and sunny and well watered.
And thousands moving across it, thousands and tens of thousands:
And though many seemed faint and toil worn, and stumbled often, and fell,
Yet moved they on unresting, as the ever-flowing cataract.
Then I noted adders in the grass, and pitfalls under the flowers,
And chasms yawned among the hills, and the ground was cracked and slippery:
But Hope and her brother Fear suffered not a foot to linger;
Bright phantoms of false joys beckoned alluringly forward.
While yelling grisly shapes of dread came hunting on behind:
And ceaselessly, like Lapland swarms, that miserable crowd sped...

How long had I sat there and had not beheld
The gleam of the glow-worm till something compelled!...

The heaven was starless, the forest was deep,
And the vistas of darkness stretched silent in sleep.

And late 'mid the trees had I lingered until
No thing was awake but the lone whippoorwill.

And haunted of thoughts for an hour I sat
On a lichen-gray rock where the moss was a mat.

And thinking of one whom my heart had held dear,
Like terrible waters, a gathering fear.

Came stealing upon me with all the distress
Of loss and of yearning and powerlessness:

Till the hopes and the doubts and the sleepless unrest
That, swallow-like, built in the home of my breast,

Now hither, now thither, now heavenward flew,
Wild-winged as the wind...

Calm resignation meets a happy end;
And Providence, long-trusted, brings a friend.
God's will be done, be patient and be good;
Elisha was, and ravens brought him food:
And so wast thou, my father,--fate's decree
Doom'd many evils should encompass thee;
And, like Elisha, though it met thee late,
Patience unwearied did not vainly wait.
Thou hast, my father, long been us'd to pine,
And patient borne thy pain; great pain was thine.
Thou hast submitted, ah, and thou hast known
The roughest storms that life has ever blown,
Yet met them like a lamb: thou wert resign'd,
And though thou pray'dst a better place to find,
'Twas nought presumptuous--meekly wouldst thou crave,
When pains rack'd sore, some easement in the grave;
To lay thy aching body down in peace,
Whe...

I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.

So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
So like, so very like, was day to day!
Whene’er I looked, thy Image still was there;
It trembled, but it never passed away.

How perfect was the calm! it seemed no sleep;
No mood, which season takes away, or brings:
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.

Ah! then , if mine had been the Painter’s hand,
To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the Poet’s dream;

I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile
Amid a world h...

Nothing remains of unrecorded ages
    That lie in the silent cemetery of time;
Their wisdom may have shamed our wisest sages,
    Their glory may have been indeed sublime.
How weak do seem our strivings after power,
    How poor the grandest efforts of our brains,
If out of all we are, in one short hour
        Nothing remains.

Nothing remains but the Eternal Spaces,
    Time and decay uproot the forest trees.
Even the mighty mountains leave their places,
    And sink their haughty heads beneath strange seas;
The great earth writhes in some convulsive spasm
    And turns the proudest cities into plains.
The level sea becomes a yawning chasm -
        Nothing remains.

Nothing remains but the Eternal Forces,
    The sad seas cease complaining a...

What is there left for us to say,
Now it has come to say good-by?
And all our dreams of yesterday
Have vanished in the sunset sky -
What is there left for us to say,
Now different ways before us lie?

A word of hope, a word of cheer,
A word of love, that still shall last,
When we are far to bring us near
Through memories of the happy past;
A word of hope, a word of cheer,
To keep our sad hearts true and fast.

What is there left for us to do,
Now it has come to say farewell?
And care, that bade us once adieu,
Returns again with us to dwell -
What is there left for us to do,
Now different ways our fates compel?

Clasp hands and sigh, touch lips and smile,
And look the love that shall remain -
When severed so by many a mile -

He with body waged a fight,
But body won; it walks upright.
Then he struggled with the heart;
Innocence and peace depart.
Then he struggled with the mind;
His proud heart he left behind.
Now his wars on God begin;
At stroke of midnight God shall win.

O reverend sir, I do declare
    It drives me most to frenzy,
To think of you a-lying there
    Down sick with influenzy.

A body'd thought it was enough
    To mourn your wife's departer,
Without sich trouble as this ere
    To come a-follerin' arter.

But sickness and affliction
    Are sent by a wise creation,
And always ought to be underwent
    By patience and resignation.

O, I could to your bedside fly,
    And wipe your weeping eyes,
And do my best to cure you up,
    If 'twouldn't create surprise.

It's a world of trouble we tarry in,
    But, Elder, don't despair;
That you may soon be movin' again
    Is constantly my prayer.

Both sick and well, you may depend
    You'll never be forgot
By your ...

As leaves are to the tree whereon they grow
And wither, every human generation
Is, to the Being of a mighty nation,
Locked in our world's embrace through weal and woe;
Thought that should teach the zealot to forego
Rash schemes, to abjure all selfish agitation,
And seek through noiseless pains and moderation
The unblemished good they only can bestow.
Alas! with most, who weigh futurity
Against time present, passion holds the scales:
Hence equal ignorance of both prevails,
And nations sink; or, struggling to be free,
Are doomed to flounder on, like wounded whales
Tossed on the bosom of a stormy sea.

Up to the little grave, with blossoms kept,
They went together; and one hid her face,
And spoke aloud the boy's dear name, and wept.
The other woman stood apart a space.
And prayed to God. "If only I," she said,
"Might keep a grave, and mourn my little dead!"

Art thou alive?    Nay, not too soon reply,
Tho' hand, and foot, and lip, and ear, and eye,
Respond, and do thy bidding yet may be
Grim death has done his direst work with thee.
Life, as God gives it, is a thing apart
From active body and from beating heart.
It is the vital spark, the unseen fire,
That moves the mind to reason and aspire;
It is the force that bids emotion roll,
In mighty billows from the surging soul.

It is the light that grows from hour to hour,
And floods the brain with consciousness of power;
It is the spirit dominating all,
And reaching God with its imperious call,
Until the shining glory of His face
Illuminates each sorrowful, dark place;

It is the truth that sets the bondsman free,
Knowing he will be what he wills to be....

I have beheld two lovers in a night
Hatched o'er with moonshine from their stolen delight
(When this to that, and that to this, had given
A kiss to such a jewel of the heaven,
Or while that each from other's breath did drink
Health to the rose, the violet, or pink),
Call'd on the sudden by the jealous mother,
Some stricter mistress or suspicious other,
Urging divorcement (worse than death to these)
By the soon jingling of some sleepy keys,
Part with a hasty kiss; and in that show
How stay they would, yet forced they are to go.
Even such are we, and in our parting do
No otherwise than as those former two
Natures like ours, we who have spent our time
Both from the morning to the evening chime.
Nay, till the bellman of the night had tolled
Past noon of night...