Wanderer! that stoop'st so low, and com'st so near
To human life's unsettled atmosphere;
Who lov'st with Night and Silence to partake,
So might it seem, the cares of them that wake;
And, through the cottage-lattice softly peeping,
Dost shield from harm the humblest of the sleeping;
What pleasure once encompassed those sweet names
Which yet in thy behalf the Poet claims,
An idolizing dreamer as of yore!
I slight them all; and, on this sea-beat shore
Sole-sitting, only can to thoughts attend
That bid me hail thee as the Sailor's friend;
So call thee for heaven's grace through thee made known
By confidence supplied and mercy shown,
When not a twinkling star or beacon's light
Abates the perils of a stormy night;
And for less obvious benefits, that find
Their ...

There was a Boy, long years ago,
Who hour by hour awake would lie,
And watch the white moon gliding slow
Along her pathway in the sky.

And every night as thus he lay
Entranced in lonely fantasy,
Borne swiftly on a bright moon-ray
There came to him a Golden Key.

And with that Golden Key the Boy
Oped every night a magic door
That to a melody of Joy
Turned on its hinges evermore.

Then, trembling with delight and awe,
When he the charmèd threshold crossed,
A radiant corridor he saw,
Its end in dazzling distance lost.

Great windows shining in a row
Lit up the wondrous corridor,
And each its own rich light did throw
In stream resplendent on the floor.

One window showed the Boy a scene
Within a forest old and dim...

Why is the nameless sorrowing look
So often thought a whim?
God-willed, the willow shades the brook,
The gray owl sings a hymn;

Sadly the winds change, and the rain
Comes where the sunlight fell:
Sad is our story, told again,
Which past years told so well!

Why not love sorrow and the glance
That ends in silent tears?
If we count up the world's mischance,
Grieving is in arrears.

Why should I know why I could weep?
The old urns cannot read
The names they wear of kings they keep
In ashes; both are dead.

And like an urn the heart must hold
Aims of an age gone by:
What the aims were we are not told;
We hold them, who knows why?

You very fine Miss Molly,
What will the daisies say,
If you carry home so many
Of their little friends to-day?

Perhaps you take a sister,
Perhaps you take a brother,
Or two little daisies who
Were fond of one another.

I never looked upon thy face;
I never saw thy dwelling-place;
My home is by Lake Erie's shore,
Beyond Niagara's distant roar;
And thine where ships at anchor ride,
By fair St. Lawrence's rolling tide,
With half a continent between
Its seas of blue, and isles of green,
And many a mountain's nodding crest,
And many a valley's jewelled breast.
Thou in the east, I in the west;
Yet in this book thou hast to me
An individuality;
Something more tangible and fair
Than any dream or shape of air,
With more than an ideal grace,
And sweeter than a pictured face:
For in this book my thought recalls
The garden quaint, the convent walls.
And thou beneath their shadow set,
A blue-eyed fragrant violet.
So for the maiden of the tale,
Whose brave tr...

The far moon maketh lovers wise
In her pale beauty trembling down,
Lending curved cheeks, dark lips, dark eyes,
A strangeness not her own.
And, though they shut their lids to kiss,
In starless darkness peace to win,
Even on that secret world from this
Her twilight enters in.

Ere with cold beads of midnight dew
Had mingled tears of thine,
I grieved, fond Youth! that thou shouldst sue
To haughty Geraldine.

Immoveable by generous sighs,
She glories in a train
Who drag, beneath our native skies,
An oriental chain.

Pine not like them with arms across,
Forgetting in thy care
How the fast-rooted trees can toss
Their branches in mid air.

The humblest rivulet will take
Its own wild liberties;
And, every day, the imprisoned lake
Is flowing in the breeze.

Then, crouch no more on suppliant knee,
But scorn with scorn outbrave;
A Briton, even in love, should be
A subject, not a slave!

    How cold is that bosom which folly once fired,
        How pale is that cheek where the rouge lately glisten'd!
    How silent that tongue which the echoes oft tired,
        How dull is that ear which to flattery so listen'd!

    If sorrow and anguish their exit await,
        From friendship and dearest affection remov'd;
    How doubly severer, Maria, thy fate,
        Thou diest unwept as thou livedst unlov'd.

    Loves, Graces, and Virtues, I call not on you;
        So shy, grave, and distant, ye shed not a tear:
    But come, all ye offspring of Folly so true,
        And flowers let us cull for Maria's cold bier.

    We'll search through the garden for each silly flower,
        We'll roam through the forest for each idle weed;
    But chie...

    I

    There lay in a vale 'twixt lone mountains
        A garden entangled with flowers,
    Where the whisper of echoing fountains
        Stirred softly the musk-breathing bowers.
    Where torrents cast down from rock-masses,
        From caverns of red-granite steeps,
    With thunders sonorous clove passes
        And maddened dark gulfs with rash leaps,
        With the dolorous foam of their leaps.


    II

    And, oh, when the sunrays came heaping
        The foam of those musical chasms,
    With a scintillant dust as of diamonds,
    It seemed that white spirits were sweeping
        Down, down thro' those voluble chasms,
        Wild weeping in resonant spasms.
    And the wave from the red-hearted granite
      ...

In spring and summer winds may blow,
And rains fall after, hard and fast;
The tender leaves, if beaten low,
Shine but the more for shower and blast

But when their fated hour arrives,
When reapers long have left the field,
When maidens rifle turn'd-up hives,
And their last juice fresh apples yield,

A leaf perhaps may still remain
Upon some solitary tree,
Spite of the wind and of the rain . . .
A thing you heed not if you see.

At last it falls. Who cares? Not one:
And yet no power on earth can ever
Replace the fallen leaf upon
Its spray, so easy to dissever.

If such be love, I dare not say.
Friendship is such, too well I know:
I have enjoyed my summer day;
'Tis past; my leaf now lies below.

            All night a slow soft rain,
A shadowy stranger from a cloudy land,
Sighing and sobbing, with unsteady hand
    Beat at the lattice, ceased, and beat again,
And fled like some wild startled thing pursued
By demons of the night and solitude,
    Returning ever--wistful--timid--fain--
            The intermittent rain.

            And still the sad hours crept
Within uncounted, the while hopes and fears
Swayed our full hearts, and overflowed in tears
    That fell in silence, as she waked or slept,
Still drawing nearer to that unknown shore
Whence foot of mortal cometh nevermore,
    And still the rain was as a pulse that kept
            Time as the slow hours crept.

            The plummet of the night
Sank through the hollow dark t...

SCENE. - A sad-coloured landscape, Waddon Vale



I

"O Time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours,
As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves?
Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors,
With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face,
As of angel fallen from grace?"

II

- "Her look is but her story: construe not its symbols keenly:
In her wonderworks yea surely has she wounded where she loves.
The sense of ills misdealt for blisses blanks the mien most queenly,
Self-smitings kill self-joys; and everywhere beneath the sun
Such deeds her hands have done."

III

- "And how explains thy Ancient Mind her crimes upon her creatures,
These fallings from her fair beginnings,...

TO serve the shop as 'prentice was the lot;
Of one who had the name of Nicaise got;
A lad quite ignorant beyond his trade,
And what arithmetick might lend him aid;
A perfect novice in the wily art,
That in amours is used to win the heart.
Good tradesmen formerly were late to learn
The tricks that soon in friars we discern;
They ne'er were known those lessons to begin,
Till more than down appeared upon the chin.
But now-a-days, in practice, 'tis confessed,
These shopkeepers are knowing as the best.

OUR lad of ancient date was less advanced;
At scenes of love his eyes had never glanced;
Be that as 'twill, he now was in the way,
And naught but want of wit produced delay:
A belle indeed had on him set her heart
His master's daughter felt LOVE'S poignant...

The smallest flower beside my path,
    In loveliness of bloom,
Some element of comfort hath
    To rid my heart of gloom;
But these, of spotless purity,
    And fragrant as the rose,
As sad a sight recall to me
    As time shall e'er disclose.

Oh, there are pictures on the brain
    Sometimes by shadows made,
Till dust is blent with dust again,
    That never, never fade;
And things supremely bright and fair
    As ever known in life
Suggest the darkness of despair,
    And sanguinary strife.

I shut my eyes; 'tis all in vain -
    The battle-field appears,
And one among the thousands slain
    In manhood's brilliant years;
An elbow pillowing his head,
    And on the crimson sand
Syringa-blooms, distained and dead,

There is no joy of earth that thrills
My bosom like the far-off hills!
Th' unchanging hills, that, shadowy,
Beckon our mutability
To follow and to gaze upon
Foundations of the dusk and dawn.
Meseems the very heavens are massed
Upon their shoulders, vague and vast
With all the skyey burden of
The winds and clouds and stars above.
Lo, how they sit before us, seeing
The laws that give all Beauty being!
Behold! to them, when dawn is near,
The nomads of the air appear,
Unfolding crimson camps of day
In brilliant bands; then march away;
And under burning battlements
Of twilight plant their tinted tents.
The truth of olden myths, that brood
By haunted stream and haunted wood,
They see; and feel the happiness
Of old at which we only guess:

"I was walking, dearest mother,
    This morning, by the brook,
And tired at last I rested me
    Within a shady nook.

"There all was still and lonely,
    And suddenly I heard
A little voice,--a sweeter one
    Than note of any bird.

"I looked above, around me,
    I saw not whence it came;
And yet that tone of music
    Was calling me by name.

"The violet beside me
    Bloomed with its purple cup,
And a tiny face, so lovely,
    Amidst its leaves peeped up.

"Again the silver music,--
    The voice I loved to hear,--
Upon its sweet breath floated,
    And bade me not to fear.

"'I am the elf,' it whispered,
    'Who in the violet dwells,
And every blossom hides one
    Within its fragrant cells.<...

When Death, or adverse Fortune's ruthless gale,
    Tears our best hopes away, the wounded Heart
    Exhausted, leans on all that can impart
    The charm of Sympathy; her mutual wail
How soothing! never can her warm tears fail
    To balm our bleeding grief's severest smart;
    Nor wholly vain feign'd Pity's solemn art,
    Tho' we should penetrate her sable veil.
Concern, e'en known to be assum'd, our pains
    Respecting, kinder welcome far acquires
    Than cold Neglect, or Mirth that Grief profanes.
Thus each faint Glow-worm of the Night conspires,
    Gleaming along the moss'd and darken'd lanes,
    To cheer the Gloom with her unreal fires.

June 1780.

Let no man pray that he know not sorrow,
    Let no soul ask to be free from pain,
For the gall of to-day is the sweet of to-morrow,
    And the moment's loss is the lifetime's gain.

Through want of a thing does its worth redouble,
    Through hunger's pangs does the feast content,
And only the heart that has harboured trouble
    Can fully rejoice when joy is sent.

Let no man shrink from the bitter tonics
    Of grief, and yearning, and need, and strife,
For the rarest chords in the soul's harmonics
    Are found in the minor strains of life.