(See Note 23)

High memories with power
Shine through the wintry North
On every peak's white tower,
On Kattegat so swarth.
All is so still and spacious, `
The Northern Lights flow free,
Creating bright and gracious
A day of memory.

Each deed the North defending,
Each thought for greater might,
A star-like word is sending
Down through the frosty night!
To hope they call and boldness,
And call with double cheer
To him, defying coldness,
On guard the Eider near.

No anxious shadows clouding,
No languid, lukewarm mist
Our heaven of mem'ries shrouding,
This eve of battle-tryst!
May, as of yore, while ringing
The bells unseen loud swelled,
Come leaders vict'ry bringing,
Whom th' army ne'er beheld.

(See Note 23)

High memories with power
Shine through the wintry North
On every peak's white tower,
On Kattegat so swarth.
All is so still and spacious, `
The Northern Lights flow free,
Creating bright and gracious
A day of memory.

Each deed the North defending,
Each thought for greater might,
A star-like word is sending
Down through the frosty night!
To hope they call and boldness,
And call with double cheer
To him, defying coldness,
On guard the Eider near.

No anxious shadows clouding,
No languid, lukewarm mist
Our heaven of mem'ries shrouding,
This eve of battle-tryst!
May, as of yore, while ringing
The bells unseen loud swelled,
Come leaders vict'ry bringing,
Whom th' army ne'er beheld.

The storm and peril overpast,
The hounding hatred shamed and still,
Go, soul of freedom! take at last
The place which thou alone canst fill.
Confirm the lesson taught of old
Life saved for self is lost, while they
Who lose it in His service hold
The lease of God's eternal day.
Not for thyself, but for the slave
Thy words of thunder shook the world;
No selfish griefs or hatred gave
The strength wherewith thy bolts were hurled.
From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew
We heard a tender under song;
Thy very wrath from pity grew,
From love of man thy hate of wrong.
Now past and present are as one;
The life below is life above;
Thy mortal years have but begun
Thy immortality of love.
With somewhat of thy lofty faith
We lay thy outworn garment by...

'... O she,
To me myself, for some three careless moons,
The summer pilot of an empty heart
Unto the shores of Nothing.' - Tennyson.


'Tis the hour when golden slumbers
Through th' Hesperian portals creep,
And the youth who lisps in numbers
Dreams of novel rhymes to 'sleep';
I shall merely note, at starting,
That responsive Nature thrills
To the twilight hour of parting
From my Lady of the Hills.

Lady, 'neath the deepening umbrage
We have wandered near and far,
To the ludicrously dumb rage
Of your truculent Mamma;
We have urged the long-tailed gallop;
Lightly danced the still night through;
Smacked the ball, and oared the shallop
(In a vis-à-vis canoe);

We have walked this fair Oasis,
Keeping...

Inscribed to the Memory of John Keats.



Dear uplands, Chester's favorable fields,
My large unjealous Loves, many yet one -
A grave good-morrow to your Graces, all,
Fair tilth and fruitful seasons!
        Lo, how still!
The midmorn empties you of men, save me;
Speak to your lover, meadows! None can hear.
I lie as lies yon placid Brandywine,
Holding the hills and heavens in my heart
For contemplation.
        'Tis a perfect hour.
From founts of dawn the fluent autumn day
Has rippled as a brook right pleasantly
Half-way to noon; but now with widening turn
Makes pause, in lucent meditation locked,
And rounds into a silver pool of morn,
Bottom'd with clover-fields. My heart just hears
Eight lingering strokes of some far village-bell,

Upon the mossed rock by the spring
She sits, forgetful of her pail,
Lost in remote remembering
Of that which may no more avail.

Her thin, pale hair is dimly dressed
Above a brow lined deep with care,
The color of a leaf long pressed,
A faded leaf that once was fair.

You may not know her from the stone
So still she sits who does not stir,
Thinking of this one thing alone
The love that never came to her.

He dreamed away his hours in school;
He sat with such an absent air,
The master reckoned him a fool,
And gave him up in dull despair.

When other lads were making hay
You'd find him loafing by the stream;
He'd take a book and slip away,
And just pretend to fish . . . and dream.

His brothers passed him in the race;
They climbed the hill and clutched the prize.
He did not seem to heed, his face
Was tranquil as the evening skies.

He lived apart, he spoke with few;
Abstractedly through life he went;
Oh, what he dreamed of no one knew,
And yet he seemed to be content.

I see him now, so old and gray,
His eyes with inward vision dim;
And though he faltered on the way,
Somehow I almost envied him.

At last beside his bed...

Time sets his footprints on our little Earth,
    And, walk he ne'er so softly, some sweet thing
Falls 'neath each foot-fall, crush'd amid its mirth,
    Tracking the course of Life's short wandering,
With fallen remnants of its mortal part,
    Freeing the soul, but weighing down the heart.

Thou flower of Love! thou little treasury
    Of gentleness, and purity, and grace!
What hidden virtue hath Death reft from thee--
    What unseen essence melted into space?
For now thou liest like a sinless child,
    Whom God hath homeward to his bosom smiled.

The dew-shower fell on thee, the sunbeam play'd,
    As Life is ever made of smiles and tears;
And ofttimes has the breeze of summer sway'd,
    And with its mellow music mock'd thy fears;
But now, O wo...

Come through the gloom of clouded skies,
    The slow dim rain and fog athwart;
Through east winds keen with wrong and lies
    Come and lift up my hopeless heart.

Come through the sickness and the pain,
    The sore unrest that tosses still;
Through aching dark that hides the gain
    Come and arouse my fainting will.

Come through the prate of foolish words,
    The science with no God behind;
Through all the pangs of untuned chords
    Speak wisdom to my shaken mind.

Through all the fears that spirits bow
    Of what hath been, or may befall,
Come down and talk with me, for thou
    Canst tell me all about them all.

Hear, hear my sad lone heart entreat,
    Heart of all joy, below, above!
Come near and let me kiss thy feet,<...

    As there is music uninform'd by art
    In those wild notes, which, with a merry heart,
    The birds in unfrequented shades express,
    Who, better taught at home, yet please us less:
    So in your verse a native sweetness dwells,
    Which shames composure, and its art excels.
    Singing no more can your soft numbers grace,
    Than paint adds charms unto a beauteous face.
    Yet as, when mighty rivers gently creep,
    Their even calmness does suppose them deep;
    Such is your muse: no metaphor swell'd high
    With dangerous boldness lifts her to the sky:
    Those mounting fancies, when they fall again,
    Show sand and dirt at bottom do remain.
    So firm a strength, and yet withal so sweet,
    Did never but in Samson's riddle meet.
    'Tis...

Laugh, my Friends, and without blame
Lightly quit what lightly came:
Rich to-morrow as to-day
Spend as madly as you may.
I, with little land to stir,
Am the exacter labourer.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

But my Youth reminds me ‘Thou
Hast liv’d light as these live now:
As these are, thou too wert such:
Much hast had, hast squander’d much.’
Fortune’s now less frequent heir,
Ah! I husband what’s grown rare.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

Young, I said: ‘A face is gone
If too hotly mus’d upon:
And our best impressions are
Those that do themselves repair.’
Many a face I then let by,
Ah! is faded utterly.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

Tune - "Robie donna Gorach."


I.

    The Thames flows proudly to the sea,
        Where royal cities stately stand;
    But sweeter flows the Nith, to me,
        Where Comyns ance had high command:
    When shall I see that honour'd land,
        That winding stream I love so dear!
    Must wayward Fortune's adverse hand
        For ever, ever keep me here?

II.

    How lovely, Nith, thy fruitful vales,
        Where spreading hawthorns gaily bloom!
    How sweetly wind thy sloping dales,
        Where lambkins wanton thro' the broom!
    Tho' wandering now, must be my doom,
        Far from thy bonnie banks and braes,
    May there my latest hours consume,
        Amang the friends of early days!

Mere living wears the most of life away:
Even the lilies take thought for many things,
For frost in April and for drought in May,
And from no careless heart the skylark sings.

Those cheap utilities of rain and sun
Describe the foolish circle of our years,
Until death takes us, doing all undone,
And there's an end at last to hopes and fears.

Though song be hollow and no dreams come true,
Still songs and dreams are better than the truth:
But there's so much to get, so much to do,
Mary must drudge like Martha, dainty Ruth

Forget the morning music in the corn,
And Rachel grudge when Leah's boys are born.

Here is the height of land:
The watershed on either hand
Goes down to Hudson Bay
Or Lake Superior;
The stars are up, and far away
The wind sounds in the wood, wearier
Than the long Ojibway cadence
In which Potàn the Wise
Declares the ills of life
And Chees-que-ne-ne makes a mournful sound
Of acquiescence. The fires burn low
With just sufficient glow
To light the flakes of ash that play
At being moths, and flutter away
To fall in the dark and die as ashes:
Here there is peace in the lofty air,
And Something comes by flashes
Deeper than peace; -
The spruces have retired a little space
And left a field of sky in violet shadow
With stars like marigolds in a water-meadow.

Now the Indian guides are dead asleep;
There is no sound u...

I went out on an April morning
All alone, for my heart was high,
I was a child of the shining meadow,
I was a sister of the sky.

There in the windy flood of morning
Longing lifted its weight from me,
Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering,
Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.

What a pretty tale you told me
Once upon a time
Said you found it somewhere (scold me!)
Was it prose or was it rhyme,
Greek or Latin? Greek, you said,
While your shoulder propped my head.

Anyhow there's no forgetting
This much if no more,
That a poet (pray, no petting!)
Yes, a bard, sir, famed of yore,
Went where suchlike used to go,
Singing for a prize, you know.

Well, he had to sing, nor merely
Sing but play the lyre;
Playing was important clearly
Quite as singing: I desire,
Sir, you keep the fact in mind
For a purpose that's behind.

There stood he, while deep attention
Held the judges round,
Judges able, I should mention,
To detect the slightest sound
Sung or played amiss: such ears
Had old judges, it app...

Last night, without a voice, that Vision spake
Fear to my Soul, and sadness which might seem
Wholly dissevered from our present theme;
Yet, my beloved Country! I partake
Of kindred agitations for thy sake;
Thou, too, dost visit oft my midnight dream;
Thy glory meets me with the earliest beam
Of light, which tells that Morning is awake.
If aught impair thy beauty or destroy,
Or but forebode destruction, I deplore
With filial love the sad vicissitude;
If thou hast fallen, and righteous Heaven restore
The prostrate, then my spring-time is renewed,
And sorrow bartered for exceeding joy.

What days await this woman, whose strange feet
Breathe spells, whose presence makes men dream like wine,
Tall, free and slender as the forest pine,
Whose form is moulded music, through whose sweet
Frank eyes I feel the very heart's least beat,
Keen, passionate, full of dreams and fire:
How in the end, and to what man's desire
Shall all this yield, whose lips shall these lips meet?

One thing I know: if he be great and pure,
This love, this fire, this beauty shall endure;
Triumph and hope shall lead him by the palm:
But if not this, some differing thing he be,
That dream shall break in terror; he shall see
The whirlwind ripen, where he sowed the calm.