Come hither, child, who gifted thee
With power to touch that string so well?
How darest thou rouse up thoughts in me,
Thoughts that I would, but cannot quell?

Nay, chide not, lady; long ago
I heard those notes in Ula's hall,
And had I known they'd waken woe
I'd weep their music to recall.

But thus it was: one festal night
When I was hardly six years old
I stole away from crowds and light
And sought a chamber dark and cold.

I had no one to love me there,
I knew no comrade and no friend;
And so I went to sorrow where
Heaven, only heaven saw me bend.

Loud blew the wind; 'twas sad to stay
From all that splendour barred away.
I imaged in the lonely room
A thousand forms of fearful gloom.

And with my wet eyes raised ...

Hark, hearer, hear what I do; lend a thought now, make believe
We are leafwhelmed somewhere with the hood
Of some branchy bunchy bushybowered wood,
Southern dene or Lancashire clough or Devon cleave,
That leans along the loins of hills, where a candycoloured, where a gluegold-brown
Marbled river, boisterously beautiful, between
Roots and rocks is danced and dandled, all in froth and water- blowballs, down.
We are there, when we hear a shout
That the hanging honeysuck, the dogeared hazels in the cover
Makes dither, makes hover
And the riot of a rout
Of, it must be, boys from the town
Bathing: it is summer's sovereign good.

By there comes a listless stranger: beckoned by the noise
He drops towards the river: unseen
Sees the bevy of them, how the boys
With ...

The mist has left the greening plain,
The dew-drops shine like fairy rain,
The coquette rose awakes again
Her lovely self adorning.
The Wind is hiding in the trees,
A sighing, soothing, laughing tease,
Until the rose says "Kiss me, please,"
'Tis morning, 'tis morning.

With staff in hand and careless-free,
The wanderer fares right jauntily,
For towns and houses are, thinks he,
For scorning, for scorning.
My soul is swift upon the wing,
And in its deeps a song I bring;
Come, Love, and we together sing,
"'Tis morning, 'tis morning."

!Full Chorus.
To Him Who bade the Heavens abide, yet cease not from their motion,
To Him Who tames the moonstruck tide twice a day round Ocean,
Let His Names be magnified in all poor folks’ devotion!

Powers and Gifts.
Not for Prophecies or Powers, Visions, Gifts, or Graces,
But the unregardful hours that grind us in our places
With the burden on our backs, the weather in our faces.

Toils.
Not for any Miracle of easy Loaves and Fishes,
But for doing, ’gainst our will, work against our wishes,
Such as finding food to fill daily-emptied dishes.

Glories.
Not for Voices, Harps or Wings or rapt illumination,
But the grosser Self that springs of use and occupation,
Unto which the Spirit clings as her last salvation.

Powers, Glories, Toils, and...

All hail, once pleasing, once inspiring shade,
Scene of my youthful loves, and happier hours!
Where the kind Muses met me as I stray'd,
And gently press'd my hand, and said, 'Be ours!--
Take all thou e'er shalt have, a constant Muse:
At Court thou mayst be liked, but nothing gain;
Stocks thou mayst buy and sell, but always lose;
And love the brightest eyes, but love in vain.'

That is work of waste and ruin
Do as Charles and I are doing!
Strawberry-blossoms, one and all,
We must spare them here are many:
Look at it the flower is small,
Small and low, though fair as any:
Do not touch it! summers two
I am older, Anne, than you.

Pull the primrose, sister Anne!
Pull as many as you can.
Here are daisies, take your fill;
Pansies, and the cuckoo-flower:
Of the lofty daffodil
Make your bed, or make your bower;
Fill your lap, and fill your bosom;
Only spare the strawberry-blossom!

Primroses, the Spring may love them
Summer knows but little of them:
Violets, a barren kind,
Withered on the ground must lie;
Daisies leave no fruit behind
When the pretty flowerets die;
Pluck them, and another year
As...

For ever, since my childish looks
Could rest on Nature's pictured books;
For ever, since my childish tongue
Could name the themes our bards have sung;
So long, the sweetness of their singing
Hath been to me a rapture bringing!
Yet ask me not the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.

I know that much whereof I sing,
Is shapen but for vanishing;
I know that summer's flower and leaf
And shine and shade are very brief,
And that the heart they brighten, may,
Before them all, be sheathed in clay!
I do not know the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.

A few there are, whose smile and praise
My minstrel hope, would kindly raise:
But, of those few, Death may impress
The lips of some with silentness;
While some may friendship's fai...

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty’s orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more where those stars ‘light
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become as in their sphere.

Ask me no more if east or west
The Phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.

I have experienc'd
The worst, the World can wreak on me, the worst
That can make Life indifferent, yet disturb
With whisper'd Discontents the dying prayer,
I have beheld the whole of all, wherein
My Heart had any interest in this Life,
To be disrent and torn from off my Hopes
That nothing now is left. Why then live on?
That Hostage, which the world had in it's keeping
Given by me as a Pledge that I would live,
That Hope of Her, say rather, that pure Faith
In her fix'd Love, which held me to keep truce
With the Tyranny of Life, is gone ah! whither?
What boots it to reply? 'tis gone! and now
Well may I break this Pact, this League of Blood
That ties me to myself, and break I shall!

HANS CARVEL took, when weak and late in life;
A girl, with youth and beauteous charms to wife;
And with her, num'rous troubles, cares and fears;
For, scarcely one without the rest appears.
Bab (such her name, and daughter of a knight)
Was airy, buxom: formed for am'rous fight.
Hans, holding jeers and cuckoldom in dread,
Would have his precious rib with caution tread,
And nothing but the Bible e'er peruse;
All other books he daily would abuse;
Blamed secret visits; frowned at loose attire;
And censured ev'ry thing gallants admire.
The dame, howe'er, was deaf to all he said;
No preaching pleased but what to pleasure led,
Which made the aged husband hold his tongue.
And wish for death, since all round went wrong.
Some easy moments he perhaps might get;
A ful...

Tune - "Rothemurche."


I.

    Fairest maid on Devon banks,
        Crystal Devon, winding Devon,
    Wilt thou lay that frown aside,
        And smile as thou were wont to do?
    Full well thou know'st I love thee, dear!
    Could'st thou to malice lend an ear!
    O! did not love exclaim "Forbear,
        Nor use a faithful lover so."

II.

    Then come, thou fairest of the fair,
    Those wonted smiles, O let me share;
    And by thy beauteous self I swear,
        No love but thine my heart shall know.
            Fairest maid on Devon banks,
                Crystal Devon, winding Devon,
            Wilt thou lay that frown aside,
                And smile as thou were wont to do?

Sweet Spring, thou turn’st with all thy goodly train,
Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flow’rs:
The zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain,
The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their show’rs.
Thou turn’st, sweet youth, but ah! my pleasant hours
And happy days with thee come not again;
The sad memorials only of my pain
Do with thee turn, which turn my sweets in sours.
Thou art the same which still thou wast before,
Delicious, wanton, amiable, fair;
But she, whose breath embalm’d thy wholesome air,
Is gone, nor gold nor gems her can restore.
Neglected virtue, seasons go and come,

The world to-day is radiant, as I ne'er
Could picture it in wildest dreaming, when
For long, long hours I lay in flowery glen
Or wooded copse, and tried in vain to tear
The glamour from my eyes, and face the glare
And tumult of the busy world of men.
I staked my all, and won! and ne'er again
Can my blest spirit know a heart's despair.

And yet - and yet - why should it be that now,
When all my heart has longed for is at last
    Within my grasp, and I should be at rest,
A ghostly Something rising in the glow
    Of Love's own fire, an uninvited guest,
Taunts me with just one memory of the past!

After the earthquake shock or lightning dart
Comes a recoil of silence o'er the lands,
And then, with pulses hot and quivering hands,
Earth calls up courage to her mighty heart,
Plies every tender, compensating art,
Draws her green, flowery veil above the scar,
Fills the shrunk hollow, smooths the riven plain,
And with a century's tendance heals again
The seams and gashes which her fairness mar.
So we, when sudden woe like lightning sped,
Finds us and smites us in our guarded place,
After one brief, bewildered moment's space,
By the same heavenly instinct taught and led,
Adjust our lives to loss, make friends with pain,
Bind all our shattered hopes and bid them bloom again.

A golden cradle under you, and you young;
A right mother and a strong kiss.

A lively horse, and you a boy;
A school and learning and close companions.

A beautiful wife, and you a man;
A wide house and everything that is good.

A fine wife, children, substance;
Cattle, means, herds and flocks.

A place to sit, a place to lie down;
Plenty of food and plenty of drink.
After that, an old man among old men;
Respect on you and honour on you.

Head of the court, of the jury, of the meeting,
And the counsellors not the worse for having you.

At the end of your days death, and then
Hiding away; the boards and the church.

What are you better after to-night
Than Ned the beggar or Seaghan the fool?

Gold or silver, every day,
Dies to gray.
There are knots in every skein.
Hours of work and hours of play
Fade away
Into one immense Inane.
Shadow and substance, chaff and grain,
Are as vain
As the foam or as the spray.
Life goes crooning, faint and fain,
One refrain:
'If it could be always May!'

Though the earth be green and gay,
Though, they say,
Man the cup of heaven may drain;
Though, his little world to sway,
He display
Hoard on hoard of pith and brain:
Autumn brings a mist and rain
That constrain

Him and his to know decay,
Where undimmed the lights that wane
Would remain,
If it could be always May.

YEA, alas, must turn to NAY,
Flesh to clay.
Chance and Time are ever twain.
Men may sc...

I curst thee oft, I pitie now thy case,
Blind-hitting Boy, since she that thee and me
Rules with a becke, so tyranniseth thee,
That thou must want or food or dwelling-place,
For she protests to banish thee her face.
Her face! O Loue, a roge thou then shouldst be,
If Loue learne not alone to loue and see,
Without desire to feed of further grace.
Alas, poor wag, that now a scholler art
To such a schoolmistresse, whose lessons new
Thou needs must misse, and so thou needs must smart.
Yet, deare, let me his pardon get of you,
So long, though he from book myche to desire,
Till without fewell you can make hot fire.

I wonder what he is thinking
    In the ploughing field all day.
He watches the heads of his oxen,
    And never looks this way.

And the furrows grow longer and longer,
    Around the base of the hill,
And the valley is bright with the sunset,
    Yet he ploughs and whistles still.

I am tired of counting the ridges,
    Where the oxen come and go,
And of thinking of all the blossoms
    That are trampled down below.

I wonder if ever he guesses
    That under the ragged brim
Of his torn straw hat I am peeping
    To steal a look at him.

The spire of the church and the windows
    Are all ablaze in the sun.
He has left the plough in the furrow,
    His summer day's work is done.

And I hear him carolling softly