My greatest grief is not my own;
That often proves a blessing,
For in my grief God's care is shown,
And as I am not left alone,
It never proves distressing;

But when my brother's grief I bear
The weight then seems excessive;
His heavy load I inly share,
And loaded down by double care,
My burden feels oppressive.

Yet I remember Him who bore
The world's great load of sorrow,
And know that He on me will pour
The needed grace to bear the more,
To-day and on the morrow.

    No doubt to-morrow I will hide
    My face from you, my King.
    Let me rejoice this Sunday noon,
    And kneel while gray priests sing.

    It is not wisdom to forget.
    But since it is my fate
    Fill thou my soul with hidden wine
    To make this white hour great.

    My God, my God, this marvelous hour
    I am your son I know.
    Once in a thousand days your voice
    Has laid temptation low.

To finish what's begun, was my intent,
My thoughts and my endeavours thereto bent;
Essays I many made but still gave out,
The more I mus'd, the more I was in doubt:
The subject large my mind and body weak,
With many moe discouragements did speak.
All thoughts of further progress laid aside,
Though oft perswaded, I as oft deny'd,
At length resolv'd, when many years had past,
To prosecute my story to the last;
And for the same, I hours not few did spend,
And weary lines (though lanke) I many pen'd:
But 'fore I could accomplish my desire,
My papers fell a prey to th' raging fire.
And thus my pains (with better things) I lost,
Which none had cause to wail, nor I to boast.
No more I'le do sith I have suffer'd wrack,
Although my Monarchies their legs do lack:

Giunto m' ha Amor fra belle e crude braccia.

HE CANNOT END HER CRUELTY, NOR SHE HIS HOPE.


    Me Love has left in fair cold arms to lie,
Which kill me wrongfully: if I complain,
My martyrdom is doubled, worse my pain:
Better in silence love, and loving die!
For she the frozen Rhine with burning eye
Can melt at will, the hard rock break in twain,
So equal to her beauty her disdain
That others' pleasure wakes her angry sigh.
A breathing moving marble all the rest,
Of very adamant is made her heart,
So hard, to move it baffles all my art.
Despite her lowering brow and haughty breast,
One thing she cannot, my fond heart deter
From tender hopes and passionate sighs for her.

MACGREGOR.

Lasso! quante fiate Amor m' assale.

WHEN LOVE DISTURBS HIM, HE CALMS HIMSELF BY THINKING OF THE EYES AND WORDS OF LAURA.


    Alas! how ceaselessly is urged Love's claim,
By day, by night, a thousand times I turn
Where best I may behold the dear lights burn
Which have immortalized my bosom's flame.
Thus grow I calm, and to such state am brought,
At noon, at break of day, at vesper-bell,
I find them in my mind so tranquil dwell,
I neither think nor care beside for aught.
The balmy air, which, from her angel mien,
Moves ever with her winning words and wise,
Makes wheresoe'er she breathes a sweet serene
As 'twere a gentle spirit from the skies,
Still in these scenes some comfort brings to me,
Nor elsewhere breathes my harass'd heart so free.

BARINE, to thy always broken vows
    Were slightest punishment ordain'd;
    Hadst thou less charming been
By one grey hair upon thy polish'd brows;
    If but a single tooth were stain'd,
    A nail discolour'd seen,
Then might I nurse the hope that, faithful grown,
The FUTURE might, at length, the guilty PAST atone.

But ah! no sooner on that perjur'd head,
    With pomp, the votive wreaths are bound,
    In mockery of truth,
Than lovelier grace thy faithless beauties shed;
    Thou com'st, with new-born conquest crown'd,
    The care of all our Youth,
Their public care; - and murmur'd praises rise
Where'er the beams are shot of those resistless eyes.

Thy Mother's buried dust; - the midnight train,
    Of silent stars, - the rolling s...

Peoples of the world, together
Join to serve the common cause!
So it feeds us all for ever
See to it that it's now yours.

Forward, without forgetting
Where our strength can be seen now to be!
When starving or when eating
Forward, not forgetting
Our solidarity!

Black or white or brown or yellow
Leave your old disputes behind.
Once start talking with your fellow
Men, you'll soon be of one mind.

Forward, without forgetting
Where our strength can be seen now to be!
When starving or when eating
Forward, not forgetting
Our solidarity!

If we want to make this certain
We'll need you and your support.
It's yourselves you'll be deserting
if you rat your own sort.

Forward, without forgetting
Where our stren...

Thank God, bless God, all ye who suffer not
More grief than ye can weep for. That is well
That is light grieving! lighter, none befell
Since Adam forfeited the primal lot.
Tears! what are tears? The babe weeps in its cot,
The mother singing, at her marriage-bell
The bride weeps, and before the oracle
Of high-faned hills the poet has forgot
Such moisture on his cheeks. Thank God for grace,
Ye who weep only! If, as some have done,
Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place
And touch but tombs, look up I those tears will run
Soon in long rivers down the lifted face,
And leave the vision clear for stars and sun

All the night in woe
Lyca's parents go
Over valleys deep,
While the deserts weep.

Tired and woe-begone,
Hoarse with making moan,
Arm in arm, seven days
They traced the desert ways.

Seven nights they sleep
Among shadows deep,
And dream they see their child
Starved in desert wild.

Pale through pathless ways
The fancied image strays,
Famished, weeping, weak,
With hollow piteous shriek.

Rising from unrest,
The trembling woman pressed
With feet of weary woe;
She could no further go.

In his arms he bore
Her, armed with sorrow sore;
Till before their way
A couching lion lay.

Turning back was vain:
Soon his heavy mane
Bore them to the ground,
Then he stalked around,

S...

In darkness the loud sea makes moan;
And earth is shaken, and all evils creep
About her ways.
Oh, now to know you sleep!
Out of the whirling blinding moil, alone,
Out of the slow grim fight,
One thought to wing, to you, asleep,
In some cool room that's open to the night
Lying half-forward, breathing quietly,
One white hand on the white
Unrumpled sheet, and the ever-moving hair
Quiet and still at length! . . .

Your magic and your beauty and your strength,
Like hills at noon or sunlight on a tree,
Sleeping prevail in earth and air.

In the sweet gloom above the brown and white
Night benedictions hover; and the winds of night
Move gently round the room, and watch you there.
And through the dreadful hours
The trees and waters and the hill...

Cercato ho sempre solitaria vita.

THINKING ALWAYS OF LAURA, IT PAINS HIM TO REMEMBER WHERE SHE IS LEFT.


    Still have I sought a life of solitude;
The streams, the fields, the forests know my mind;
That I might 'scape the sordid and the blind,
Who paths forsake trod by the wise and good:
Fain would I leave, were mine own will pursued,
These Tuscan haunts, and these soft skies behind,
Sorga's thick-wooded hills again to find;
And sing and weep in concert with its flood.
But Fortune, ever my sore enemy,
Compels my steps, where I with sorrow see
Cast my fair treasure in a worthless soil:
Yet less a foe she justly deigns to prove,
For once, to me, to Laura, and to love;
Favouring my song, my passion, with her smile.

NOTT.

Why, my heart, do we love her so?
(Geraldine, Geraldine!)
Why does the great sea ebb and flow? -
Why does the round world spin?
Geraldine, Geraldine,
Bid me my life renew:
What is it worth unless I win,
Love - love and you?

Why, my heart, when we speak her name
(Geraldine, Geraldine!)
Throbs the word like a flinging flame? -
Why does the Spring begin?
Geraldine, Geraldine,
Bid me indeed to be:
Open your heart, and take us in,
Love - love and me.

Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest,
With single rites the common debt to pay?
On some green headland fronting to the East
Our fairest boy shall kneel at break of day.
Naked, uplifting in a laden tray
New milk and honey and sweet-tinctured wine,
Not without twigs of clustering apple-spray
To wreath a garland for Our Lady's shrine.
The morning planet poised above the sea
Shall drop sweet influence through her drowsing lid;
Dew-drenched, his delicate virginity
Shall scarce disturb the flowers he kneels amid,
That, waked so lightly, shall lift up their eyes,
Cushion his knees, and nod between his thighs.

    Hypocrisy will serve as well
To propagate a church, as zeal;
As persecution and promotion
Do equally advance devotion:
So round white stones will serve, they say,
As well as eggs to make hens lay.

    1

    I won't envy the heat this August.
    The fall (English say autumn)
    burrowing like urinating dogs
    thru trees,
    carrying winter woolies
    with sniff of air
    crisscrossing the lion's tamer's
    path I must trod
    when snow hits.

    2
    No, I won't envy searing blasts
    be they inclement
    weather or lost souls
    bargaining with rain.
    Acceptance . . . they say
    is the key
    and the word clangs like chimes
    into my biology, a grandfather clock
    to my own chamber music, a
    little something to cheer and
    serenade the buffeted spirit.

    3
    Think still thoughts in gloomy houses
    when petals cry burst in springtime.
    This is done in prep...

Three things make earth unquiet
And four she cannot brook
The godly Agur counted them
And put them in a book,
Those Four Tremendous Curses
With which mankind is cursed;
But a Servant when He Reigneth
Old Agur entered first.
An Handmaid that is Mistress
We need not call upon.
A Fool when he is full of Meat
Will fall asleep anon.
An Odious Woman Married
May bear a babe and mend;
But a Servant when He Reigneth
Is Confusion to the end.

His feet are swift to tumult,
His hands are slow to toil,
His ears are deaf to reason,
His lips are loud in broil.
He knows no use for power
Except to show his might.
He gives no heed to judgment
Unless it prove him right.

Because he served a master
Before his Kingship came,

O say, dear sister, are you coming
    Forth to the fields with me?
The very air is gaily ringing
    With hum of bird and bee,
And crowds of swallows now are chirping
    Up in our ancient thorn,
And earth and air are both rejoicing,
    On this gay summer morn.

Shall we hie unto the streamlet's side
    To seek our little boat,
And, plying our oars with right good will,
    Over its bright waves float?
Or shall we loll on the grassy bank
    For hours dreamy, still,
To draw from its depths some silv'ry prize,
    Reward of angler's skill?

I do not talk of the tempting game
    The forest covers hide,
So dear to the sportsman - plovers shy,
    Pheasants with eye of pride,
For I know your timid nature shrinks
    From flas...

I.

A plague upon the people fell,
A famine after laid them low;
Then thorpe and byre arose in fire,
For on them brake the sudden foe;
So thick they died the people cried,
‘The Gods are moved against the land.’
The Priest in horror about his altar
To Thor and Odin lifted a hand:
‘Help us from famine
And plague and strife!
What would you have of us?
Human life?
Were it our nearest,
Were it our dearest,–
Answer, O answer!–
We give you his life.’


II.

But still the foeman spoil’d and burn’d,
And cattle died, and deer in wood,
And bird in air, and fishes turn’d
And whiten’d all the rolling flood;
And dead men lay all over the way,
Or down in a furrow scathed with flame;
And ever and aye the Priesthood m...