He wor a poor hard workin lad,
An shoo a workin lass,
An hard they tew'd throo day to day,
For varry little brass.
An oft they tawk'd o'th' weddin day,
An lang'd for th' happy time,
When poverty noa moor should part,
Two lovers i' ther prime.

But wark wor scarce, an wages low,
An mait an drink wor dear,
They did ther best to struggle on,
As year crept after year.
But they wor little better off,
Nor what they'd been befoor;
It tuk 'em all ther time to keep
Grim Want aghtside o'th' door.

Soa things went on, wol Hope at last,
Gave place to dark despair;
They felt they'd nowt but lovin hearts,
An want an toil to share.
At length he screw'd his courage up
To leeav his native shore;
An goa where wealth wor worshipped less,

(CLARISSA HARLOW)


Seek not to calm my grief,
    To stay the falling tear;
Have pity on me, ye my friends,
    The hand of God is here.

She was my only one,
    Oh, then my love how great!
Now she is gone, my heart and home
    Are empty desolate

I thought not, in my love
    That we were doomed to part,
Now I am childless, and my fate
    Falls heavy on my heart

O Thou who gave the gift,
    Who took the gift away,
Who only can heal up the wound,
    Give answer while I pray!

Do Thou send comfort down,
    All goodness as Thou art,
Even in Thy last passion, Thou
    Didst soothe a mother's heart.

I would not take her back,
    From Thee, from Heaven and bliss,
Though yearning for her...

We were apart: yet, day by day,
I bade my heart more constant be;
I bade it keep the world away,
And grow a home for only thee:
Nor fear’d but thy love likewise grew,
Like mine, each day more tried, more true.

The fault was grave: I might have known,
What far too soon, alas, I learn’d
The heart can bind itself alone,
And faith is often unreturn’d.
Self-sway’d our feelings ebb and swell:
Thou lov’est no more: Farewell! Farewell!

Farewell! and thou, thou lonely heart,
Which never yet without remorse
Even for a moment didn’t depart
From thy remote and spherèd course
To haunt the place where passions reign,
Back to thy solitude again!

Back, with the conscious thrill of shame
Which Luna felt, that summer night,
Flash through he...

Beside the open window she is lying,
    Through which comes softly in the balmy air,
And fans her wasted cheek; but slowly dying,
    She seeth not that autumn's finger fair
    Tinges the golden landscape everywhere.

She seeth not the glory of the maples,
    That in their crimson robes surround her home;
Nor the rich red of the ripe clustering apples
    In the old orchard, where can never come
    Her flying feet to stoop and gather some.

That is her home where in life's young May morning,
    She careless sung the joyful hours away;
A happy-hearted child, to whom no warning
    Came of the future shipwreck by the way,
    Or of the worshipped idol turned to clay.

The place has passed to strangers; unregretting,
    She looks upon the hom...

"Your eyes that once were never weary of mine
Are bowed in sotrow under pendulous lids,
Because our love is waning."
And then She:
"Although our love is waning, let us stand
By the lone border of the lake once more,
Together in that hour of gentleness
When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.
How far away the stars seem, and how far
Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!"
Pensive they paced along the faded leaves,
While slowly he whose hand held hers replied:
"Passion has often worn our wandering hearts."
The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves
Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once
A rabbit old and lame limped down the path;
Autumn was over him: and now they stood
On the lone border of the lake once more:
Turning, he s...

The snow-flakes were softly falling
    Adown on the landscape white,
When the violet eyes of my first born
    Opened unto the light;
And I thought as I pressed him to me,
    With loving, rapturous thrill,
He was pure and fair as the snow-flakes
    That lay on the landscape still.

I smiled when they spoke of the weary
    Length of the winter's night,
Of the days so short and so dreary,
    Of the sun's cold cheerless light -
I listened, but in their murmurs
    Nor by word nor thought took part,
For the smiles of my gentle darling
    Brought light to my home and heart.

Oh! quickly the joyous springtime
    Came back to our ice-bound earth,
Filling meadows and woods with sunshine,
    And hearts with gladsome mirth,
But, ah!...

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
And all that famous harmony of leaves,
Had blotted out man's image and his cry.

A girl arose that had red mournful lips
And seemed the greatness of the world in tears,
Doomed like Odysseus and the laboring ships
And proud as Priam murdered with his peers,

Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves,
A climbing moon upon an empty sky,
And all that lamentation leaves,
Could but compose man's image and his cry.

Stern, stern is the voice of fate's fearful command,
When accents of horror it breathes in our ear,
Or compels us for aye bid adieu to the land,
Where exists that loved friend to our bosom so dear,

'Tis sterner than death o'er the shuddering wretch bending,
And in skeleton grasp his fell sceptre extending,
Like the heart-stricken deer to that loved covert wending,
Which never again to his eyes may appear -

And ah! he may envy the heart-stricken quarry,
Who bids to the friend of affection farewell,
He may envy the bosom so bleeding and gory,
He may envy the sound of the drear passing knell,

Not so deep is his grief on his death couch reposing,
When on the last vision his dim eyes are closing!
As the outcast whose love-raptured senses are losing,
Th...

    One day, when Love and Summer both were young,
        Love in a garden found my lady weeping;
    Whereat, when he to kiss her would have sprung,
        I stayed his childish leaping.

    "Forbear," said I, "she is not thine to-day;
        Subdue thyself in silence to await her;
    If thou dare call her from Death's side away
        Thou art no Love, but traitor.

    Yet did he run, and she his kiss received,
        "She is twice mine," he cried, "since she is troubled;
    I knew but half, and now I see her grieved
        My part in her is doubled."

I know a cliff, whose steep and craggy brow
O'erlooks the troubled ocean, and spurns back
The advancing billow from its rugged base;
Yet many a goodly rood of land lies deep
Beneath the wild wave buried, which rolls on
Its course exulting o'er the prostrate towers
Of high cathedral--church--and abbey fair,--
Lifting its loud and everlasting voice
Over the ruins, which its depths enshroud,
As if it called on Time, to render back
The things that were, and give to life again
All that in dark oblivion sleeps below:--
Perched on the summit of that lofty cliff
A time-worn edifice o'erlooks the wave,
"Which greets the fisher's home-returning bark,"
And the young seaman checks his blithesome song
To hail the lonely ruin from the deep.

    Majestic in decay,...

Tears in the moonlight,
You know why,
Have marred the flowers
On my rose sleeve.
Ask why.

From the Japanese of Hide-Yoshi.

1.
O world! O life! O time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more - Oh, never more!

2.
Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight;
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more - Oh, never more!

    "It is good-bye," she said; "the world is wide,
    There's space for you and me to walk apart.
    Though we have walked together side by side,
    My thoughts all yours, my resting-place your heart,
    We now will go our different ways. Forget
    The happy past. I would not have you keep
    One thought of me. Ah, yes, my eyes are wet;
    My love is great, my grief must needs be deep.

    "Yet I have strength to look at you, and say:
    Forget it all, forget our souls were stirred,
    Forget the sweetness of each dear, dead day,
    The warm, impassioned kiss, the tender word,
    The clinging handclasp, and the love-filled eyes -
    Forget all these; but, when we walk apart
    Remember this, though wilful and unwise,
    No word of mine did ever...

I did not say, "Yes, we had better part
Since love is over or must be suppressed."
I did not say, "I'll hold you in my heart
Saint-like, and in the thought of your thought rest,
And pray for you and wish you happiness
In a better love than mine."

I was another man to another woman,
Tears falling or burnt dry were nothing then.
I struck your heart, I struck your mind; inhuman,
Future and past I stabbed and stabbed again,
Cursing the very thought of your happiness
In another love than mine:

--Then left you sick to death, and I like death.
It was a broken body bore me away--
A broken mind--poisoned by my own breath,
And love self-poisoned.... Was it but yesterday?
--Forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive,
Forgive!

They are so sad to say: no poem tells
The agony of hearts that dwells
In lone and last farewells.

They are like deaths: they bring a wintry chill
To summer's roses, and to summer's rill;
And yet we breathe them still.

For pure as altar-lights hearts pass away;
Hearts! we said to them, "Stay with us! stay!"
And they said, sighing as they said it, "Nay."

The sunniest days are shortest; darkness tells
The starless story of the night that dwells
In lone and last farewells.

Two faces meet here, there, or anywhere:
Each wears the thoughts the other face may wear;
Their hearts may break, breathing, "Farewell fore'er."

Dearest of all, whose tenderness could rise
    To share all sorrow and to soothe all pain;
The blessings breathed for thee with weeping eyes
    Will come to thee as sunshine after rain.

My spirit clings to thine, dear, in this hour;
    Thy sorrow touches me as though 'twere mine;
And pleading prayers for thee shall have the power
    To draw down comfort from my Lord and thine.

For thou hast felt the sorrow and the care
    Of other lives, as though they were thine own;
And grateful prayers, for a memorial are
    Laid up for thee before the great white throne.

You sit bereaved, and I sit with you there
    In sympathy, my soul and yours can meet;
Missing the face that was so very fair,
    Missing the voice that was so very sweet.

I...

All stupor of surprise hath passed away;
    She sees, with clearer vision than before,
A world far off of light and laughter gay,
    Herself alone and lonely evermore.
Folk come and go, and reach her in no wise,
Mere flitting phantoms to her heavy eyes.


All outward things, that once seemed part of her,
    Fall from her, like the leaves in autumn shed.
She feels as one embalmed in spice and myrrh,
    With the heart eaten out, a long time dead;
Unchanged without, the features and the form;
Within, devoured by the thin red worm.


By her own prowess she must stand or fall,
    This grief is to be conquered day by day.
Who could befriend her? who could make this small,
    Or her strength great? she meets it as she may.
A weary struggle a...

I cannot tell what change hath come to you
To vex your splendid hair. I only know
One grief. The passion left betwixt us two,
Like some forsaken watchfire, burneth low.
’Tis sad to turn and find it dying so,
Without a hope of resurrection! Yet,
O radiant face that found me tired and lone!
I shall not for the dear, dead past forget
The sweetest looks of all the summers gone.
Ah! time hath made familiar wild regret;
For now the leaves are white in last year’s bowers,
And now doth sob along the ruined leas
The homeless storm from saddened southern seas,
While March sits weeping over withered flowers.