In your mother's apple-orchard
It is grown too dark to stray,
There is none to chide you, Yvonne!
You are over far away.
There is dew on your grave grass, Yvonne!
But your feet it shall not wet:
No, you never remember, Yvonne!
And I shall soon forget.

'Cherries, ripe cherries!'
    The old woman cried,
In her snowy white apron,
    And basket beside;
And the little boys came,
    Eyes shining, cheeks red,
To buy a bag of cherries,
To eat with their bread.

Crimson and cream and white--
    My room is a garden of roses!
Centre and left and right,
    Three several splendid posies.

As the sender is, they are sweet,
    These lovely gifts of your sending,
With the stifling summer heat
    Their delicate fragrance blending.

What more can my heart desire?
    Has it lost the power to be grateful?
Is it only a burnt-out fire,
    Whose ashes are dull and hateful?

Yet still to itself it doth say,
    'I should have loved far better
To have found, coming in to-day,
    The merest scrap of a letter.'

Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on its state
Of gold and purple in the marbled west,
Thou comest forth like some embodied trait,
Or dim conceit, a lily bud confessed;
Or of a rose the visible wish; that, white,
Goes softly messengering through the night,
Whom each expectant flower makes its guest.

All day the primroses have thought of thee,
Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat;
All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly
Veiled snowy faces, - that no bee might greet,
Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed; -
Keeping Sultana charms for thee, at last,
Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet.

Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day's
Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks
The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays
Nocturnes of ...

Lost manor where I walk continually
A ghost, while yet in woman's flesh and blood;
Up your broad stairs mounting with outspread fingers
And gliding steadfast down your corridors
I come by nightly custom to this room,
And even on sultry afternoons I come
Drawn by a thread of time-sunk memory.

Empty, unless for a huge bed of state
Shrouded with rusty curtains drooped awry
(A puppet theatre where malignant fancy
Peoples the wings with fear). At my right hand
A ravelled bell-pull hangs in readiness
To summon me from attic glooms above
Service of elder ghosts; here at my left
A sullen pier-glass cracked from side to side
Scorns to present the face as do new mirrors
With a lying flush, but shows it melancholy
And pale, as faces grow that look in mirrors.<...

When twilight dews are falling soft
    Upon the rosy sea, love,
I watch the star, whose beam so oft
    Has lighted me to thee, love.
And thou too, on that orb so dear,
    Dost often gaze at even,
And think, tho' lost for ever here,
    Thou'lt yet be mine in heaven.

There's not a garden walk I tread,
    There's not a flower I see, love,
But brings to mind some hope that's fled,
    Some joy that's gone with thee, Love.
And still I wish that hour was near,
    When, friends and foes forgiven,
The pains, the ills we've wept thro' here
    May turn to smiles in heaven.

O Cloud so golden, stealing o'er the sky,
Like pensive thought across a virgin mind,
Scarce sadder than the sunshine left behind;
Would that o'er heaven with thee my soul could fly,
Scanning Earth's beauty with a lover's eye,
Tracing the waving waters and the woods,
Their sleepy shades and silent solitudes,
Where all the summer through I long to lie.
O Cloud so golden stealing o'er the sky,
Sail'd I within thy bosom o'er heaven's main,
Methinks that, gazing downward on the glory,
The liquid loveliness of sea and plain,
Of mountain, isle, and leafy promontory,
My soul would melt and fall again in rain.

Tune--"Invercald's Reel."


Chorus.

    O Tibbie, I hae seen the day,
        Ye wad na been sae shy;
    For lack o' gear ye lightly me,
        But, trowth, I care na by.

I.

    Yestreen I met you on the moor,
    Ye spak na, but gaed by like stoure;
    Ye geck at me because I'm poor,
        But fient a hair care I.

II.

    I doubt na, lass, but ye may think,
    Because ye hae the name o' clink,
    That ye can please me at a wink,
        Whene'er ye like to try.

III.

    But sorrow tak him that's sae mean,
    Altho' his pouch o' coin were clean,
    Wha follows ony saucy quean,
        That looks sae proud and high.

IV.

    Altho' a lad were e'er sae sm...

"Miserrimus," and neither name nor date,
Prayer, text, or symbol, graven upon the stone;
Nought but that word assigned to the unknown,
That solitary word, to separate
From all, and cast a cloud around the fate
Of him who lies beneath. Most wretched one,
'Who' chose his epitaph? Himself alone
Could thus have dared the grave to agitate,
And claim, among the dead, this awful crown;
Nor doubt that He marked also for his own
Close to these cloistral steps a burial-place,
That every foot might fall with heavier tread,
Trampling upon his vileness. Stranger, pass
Softly! To save the contrite, Jesus bled.

When Love was a child, and went idling round,
    'Mong flowers the whole summer's day,
One morn in the valley a bower he found,
    So sweet, it allured him to stay.

O'erhead, from the trees, hung a garland fair,
    A fountain ran darkly beneath;--
'Twas Pleasure had hung up the flowerets there;
    Love knew it, and jumped at the wreath.

But Love didn't know--and, at his weak years,
    What urchin was likely to know?--
That Sorrow had made of her own salt tears
    The fountain that murmured below.

He caught at the wreath--but with too much haste,
    As boys when impatient will do--
It fell in those waters of briny taste,
    And the flowers were all wet through.

This garland he now wears night and day;
    And, tho' it...

I.

The years have passed in ceaseless round
    Since first they laid her here to rest
In dreamless sleep beneath the silent mound,
    With folded hands upon her gentle breast.


II.

The ivy twines about the crumbling stone,
    And Springtime's scented blossoms fling
Their incense o'er the peaceful home
    That knows no more of suffering.


III.

Full many a Summer's sun has shed
    Its brightest smile upon the hallowed spot,
And sobered Autumn and wild Winter spread
    Their garments here--she heeds them not!


IV.

The feathered wildlings of the wood and field
    Their untaught melody around it make,
But she who sleeps with eyes so softly sealed
    Their gladsome songs can never more a...

O bitter sprig! Confession sprig!
In the bouquet I give you place also - I bind you in,
Proceeding no further till, humbled publicly,
I give fair warning, once for all.

I own that I have been sly, thievish, mean, a prevaricator, greedy, derelict,
And I own that I remain so yet.

What foul thought but I think it - or have in me the stuff out of which it is thought?
What in darkness in bed at night, alone or with a companion?

We know the Rocket’s upward whizz;
We know the Boom before the Bust.
We know the whistling Wail which is
The Stick returning to the Dust.
We know how much to take on trust
Of any promised Paradise.
We know the Pie, likewise the Crust.
We know the Bonfire on the Ice.

We know the Mountain and the Mouse.
We know Great Cry and Little Wool.
We know the purseless Ears of Sows.
We know the Frog that aped the Bull.
We know, whatever Trick we pull,
(Ourselves have gambled once or twice)
A Bobtailed Flush is not a Full.
We know the Bonfire on the Ice.

We know that Ones and Ones make Twos,
Till Demos votes them Three or Nought.
We know the Fenris Wolf is loose.
We know what Fight has not been fought.
We know the Father to the Thought
...

Long have I framed weak phantasies of Thee,
O Willer masked and dumb!
Who makest Life become, -
As though by labouring all-unknowingly,
Like one whom reveries numb.

How much of consciousness informs Thy will
Thy biddings, as if blind,
Of death-inducing kind,
Nought shows to us ephemeral ones who fill
But moments in Thy mind.

Perhaps Thy ancient rote-restricted ways
Thy ripening rule transcends;
That listless effort tends
To grow percipient with advance of days,
And with percipience mends.

For, in unwonted purlieus, far and nigh,
At whiles or short or long,
May be discerned a wrong
Dying as of self-slaughter; whereat I
Would raise my voice in song.

Though the winds be dank,
And the sky be sober,
And the grieving Day
In a mantle gray
Hath let her waiting maiden robe her,--
All the fields along
I can hear the song
Of the meadow lark,
As she flits and flutters,
And laughs at the thunder when it mutters.
O happy bird, of heart most gay
To sing when skies are gray!

When the clouds are full,
And the tempest master
Lets the loud winds sweep
From his bosom deep
Like heralds of some dire disaster,
Then the heart alone
To itself makes moan;
And the songs come slow,
While the tears fall fleeter,
And silence than song by far seems sweeter.
Oh, few are they along the way
Who sing when skies are gray!

Now that of absence the most irksom night
With darkest shade doth ouercome my day;
Since Stellaes eyes, wont to giue me my day,
Leauing my hemisphere, leaue me in night;
Each day seemes long, and longs for long-staid night;
The night, as tedious, wooes th' approch of day:
Tired with the dusty toiles of busie day,
Languisht with horrors of the silent night,
Suff'ring the euils both of day and night,
While no night is more darke then is my day,
Nor no day hath lesse quiet then my night:
With such bad-mixture of my night and day,
That liuing thus in blackest Winter night,
I feele the flames of hottest Sommer day.

What recks the sun, how weep the heavy flowers
    All the sad night, when he is far away?
What recks he, how they mourn, through those dark hours,
    Till back again he leads the smiling day?

As lifts each watery bloom its tearful eye,
    And blesses from its lowly seat, the god,
In his great glory he goes through the sky,
    And recks not of the blessing from the sod.

And what is it to thee, oh, thou, my fate!
    That all my hope, and joy, remains with thee?
That thy departing, leaves me desolate,
    That thy returning, brings back life to me?

I blame not thee, for all the strife, and woe,
    That for thy sake daily disturbs my life;
I blame not thee, that Heaven has made me so,
    That all the love I can, is woe, and strife.

I...

Heart, thou must learn to do without--
    That is the riches of the poor,
    Their liberty is to endure;
Wrap thou thine old cloak thee about,
And carol loud and carol stout;
    Let thy rags fly, nor wish them fewer;
Thou too must learn to do without,
    Must earn the riches of the poor!

Why should'st thou only wear no clout?
    Thou only walk in love-robes pure?
    Why should thy step alone be sure?
Thou only free of fortune's flout?
Nay, nay! but learn to go without,
    And so be humbly, richly poor.