One very rough day on the Pride of the Fray
In the scuppers a poor little cabin-boy lay,
When the Bosun drew nigh with wrath in his eye
And gave him a kick to remember him by,
As he cried with a sneer: “What good are you here?
Go home to your mammy, my bold buccaneer.”

Now the Captain beheld, and his pity upwelled:
With a plug in the peeper the Bosun he felled.
With humility grand he extended his hand
And helped the poor lad, who was weeping, to stand,
As he cried: “Have no fear; I’m the manager here.
Take heart, and you’ll yet be a bold buccaneer.”

But how he did flare when the lad then and there
Doffed his cap and shook down a gold banner of hair.
Though his movements were shy, he’d a laugh in his eye,
And he sank on the Captain’s broad breast with a ...

If dead, we cease to be; if total gloom
Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare
As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom,
Whose sound and motion not alone declare,
But are their whole of being! If the breath
Be Life itself, and not its task and tent,
If even a soul like Milton's can know death;
O Man! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant,
Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes!
Surplus of Nature's dread activity,
Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finished vase,
Retreating slow, with meditative pause,
She formed with restless hands unconsciously.
Blank accident! nothing's anomaly!
If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,
Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears,
The counter-weights! Thy laughter and thy tears
Mean but themselves, eac...

Tune - "I had a horse."



I.

    O poortith cauld, and restless love,
        Ye wreck my peace between ye;
    Yet poortith a' I could forgive,
            An' twere na' for my Jeanie.
                O why should fate sic pleasure have,
                    Life's dearest bands untwining?
                Or why sae sweet a flower as love
                    Depend on fortune's shining?

II.

    This warld's wealth when I think on,
        It's pride, and a' the lave o't
    Fie, fie on silly coward man,
        That he should be the slave o't!

III.

    Her een sae bonnie blue betray
        How she repays my passion;
    But prudence is her o'erword ay,
        She talks of rank and fashion.

Old John, if I could sit with you a day
At Abram’s feet upon the asphodel,
There, while the grand old patriarch dreamed away,
To you my life’s whole progress I would tell;
To you would give accompt of what is well,
What ill performed; how used the trusted talents,
Since last we heard the sound of Braddan bell,
    "A wheen bit callants."

You were not of our kin nor of our race,
Old John, nor of our church, nor of our speech;
Yet what of strength, or truth, or tender grace
I owe, ‘twas you that taught me. Born to teach
All nobleness, whereof divines may preach,
And pedagogues may wag their tongues of iron,
I have no doubt you could have taught the leech
    That taught old Chiron.

For so it is, the nascent souls may wait,
And lose the flexile a...

Why does she so long delay?
    Night is waning fast away;
Thrice have I my lamp renewed,
    Watching here in solitude,
Where can she so long delay?
    Where, so long delay?

Vainly now have two lamps shone;
    See the third is nearly gone:
Oh that Love would, like the ray
    Of that weary lamp, decay!
But no, alas, it burns still on,
    Still, still, burns on.

Gods, how oft the traitress dear
    Swore, by Venus, she'd be here!
But to one so false as she
    What is man or deity?
Neither doth this proud one fear,--
    No, neither doth she fear.

I mind it was but yesterday:
The sun was dim, the air was chill;
Below the town, below the hill,
The sails of my son’s ship did fill,
My Jacob, who was cast away.

He said, “God keep you, mother dear,”
But did not turn to kiss his wife;
They had some foolish, idle strife;
Her tongue was like a two-edged knife,
And he was proud as any peer.

Howbeit that night I took no note
Of sea nor sky, for all was drear;
I marked not that the hills looked near,
Nor that the moon, though curved and clear,
Through curd-like scud did drive and float.

For with my darling went the joy
Of autumn woods and meadows brown;
I came to hate the little town;
It seemed as if the sun went down
With him, my only darling boy.

It was the middle of t...

'Mid crowded obelisks and urns
I sought the untimely grave of Burns;
Sons of the Bard, my heart still mourns
With sorrow true;
And more would grieve, but that it turns
Trembling to you!

Through twilight shades of good and ill
Ye now are panting up life's hill,
And more than common strength and skill
Must ye display;
If ye would give the better will
Its lawful sway.

Hath Nature strung your nerves to bear
Intemperance with less harm, beware!
But if the Poet's wit ye share,
Like him can speed
The social hour, of tenfold care
There will be need;

For honest men delight will take
To spare your failings for his sake,
Will flatter you, and fool and rake
Your steps pursue;
And of your Father's name will make
A snare ...

One by one, like leaves from a tree,
All my faiths have forsaken me;
But the stars above my head
Burn in white and delicate red,
And beneath my feet the earth
Brings the sturdy grass to birth.
I who was content to be
But a silken-singing tree,
But a rustle of delight
In the wistful heart of night
I have lost the leaves that knew
Touch of rain and weight of dew.
Blinded by a leafy crown
I looked neither up nor down
But the little leaves that die
Have left me room to see the sky;
Now for the first time I know
Stars above and earth below.

        Oh, I can jest with Margaret
            And laugh a gay good-night,
        But when I take my Helen's hand
            I dare not clasp it tight.

        I dare not hold her dear white hand
            More than a quivering space,
        And I should bless a breeze that blew
            Her hair into my face.

        'T is Margaret I call sweet names:
            Helen is too, too dear
        For me to stammer little words
            Of love into her ear.

        So now, good-night, fair Margaret,
            And kiss me e'er we part!
        But one dumb touch of Helen's hand,
            And, oh, my heart, my heart!

An open country.
LAURENCE RABY and FORREST, BRIAN AYLMER and PRESCOT.

Forrest:
I’ve won the two tosses from Prescot;
Now hear me, and hearken and heed,
And pull that vile flower from your waistcoat,
And throw down that beast of a weed;
I’m going to give you the signal
I gave Harry Hunt at Boulogne,
The morning he met Major Bignell,
And shot him as dead as a stone;
For he must look round on his right hand
To watch the white flutter, that stops
His aim, for it takes off his sight, and
I cough while the handkerchief drops.
And you keep both eyes on his figure,
Old fellow, and don’t take them off.
You’ve got the sawhandled hair trigger,
You sight him and shoot when I cough.

Laurence (aside):
Though God will never forgive me,
Th...

A gentle boy, with soft and silken locks
    A dreamy boy, with brown and tender eyes,
A castle-builder, with his wooden blocks,
    And towers that touch imaginary skies.

A fearless rider on his father's knee,
    An eager listener unto stories told
At the Round Table of the nursery,
    Of heroes and adventures manifold.

There will be other towers for thee to build;
    There will be other steeds for thee to ride;
There will be other legends, and all filled
    With greater marvels and more glorified.

Build on, and make thy castles high and fair,
    Rising and reaching upward to the skies;
Listen to voices in the upper air,
    Nor lose thy simple faith in mysteries.

(Chorus.) Come praise Colonus' horses, and come praise
The wine-dark of the wood's intricacies,
The nightingale that deafens daylight there,
If daylight ever visit where,
Unvisited by tempest or by sun,
Immortal ladies tread the ground
Dizzy with harmonious sound,
Semele's lad a gay companion.
And yonder in the gymnasts' garden thrives
The self-sown, self-begotten shape that gives
Athenian intellect its mastery,
Even the grey-leaved olive-tree
Miracle-bred out of the living stone;
Nor accident of peace nor war
Shall wither that old marvel, for
The great grey-eyed Athene stareS thereon.
Who comes into this countty, and has come
Where golden crocus and narcissus bloom,
Where the Great Mother, mourning for her daughter
And beauty-drunken by the wat...

La ragion meco si lamenta.


Reason laments and grieves full sore with me,
        The while I hope by loving to be blest;
        With precepts sound and true philosophy
        My shame she quickens thus within my breast:
'What else but death will that sun deal to thee--
        Nor like the phoenix in her flaming nest?'
        Yet nought avails this wise morality;
        No hand can save a suicide confessed.
I know my doom; the truth I apprehend:
        But on the other side my traitorous heart
        Slays me whene'er to wisdom's words I bend.
Between two deaths my lady stands apart:
        This death I dread; that none can comprehend.
        In this suspense body and soul must part.

Take these rhymes into thy grace,
Since they are of thy begetting,
Lady, that dost make each place
Where thou art a jewel's setting.

Some such glamour lend this Book:
Let it be thy poet's wages
That henceforth thy gracious look
Lies reflected on its pages.

I am older than Nature and her Time
By all the timeless age of Consciousness,
And my adult oblivion of the clime
Where I was born makes me not countryless.
Ay, and dim through my daylight thoughts escape
Yearnings for that land where my childhood dreamed,
Which I cannot recall in colour or shape
But haunts my hours like something that hath gleamed
And yet is not as light remembered,
Nor to the left or to the right conceived;
And all round me tastes as if life were dead
And the world made but to be disbelieved.
    Thus I my hope on unknown truth lay; yet
    How but by hope do I the unknown truth get?

Like some weak lords neighbord by mighty kings,
To keep themselues and their chief cities free,
Do easily yeeld that all their coasts may be
Ready to store their campes of needfull things;
So Stellas heart, finding what power Loue brings
To keep it selfe in life and liberty,
Doth willing graunt that in the frontiers he
Vse all to helpe his other conquerings.
And thus her heart escapes; but thus her eyes
Serue him with shot, her lips his heralds are,
Her breasts his tents, legs his triumphall car,
Her flesh his food, her skin his armour braue.
And I, but for because my prospect lies
Vpon that coast, am given vp for slaue.

    "Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are
    That bide the pelting of the pitiless storm!
    How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
    Your looped and widow'd raggedness defend you
    From seasons such as these?"

Shakspeare.


    When biting Boreas, fell and doure,
    Sharp shivers thro' the leafless bow'r;
    When Phoebus gies a short-liv'd glow'r
        Far south the lift,
    Dim-darkening through the flaky show'r,
        Or whirling drift:

    Ae night the storm the steeples rocked,
    Poor labour sweet in sleep was locked,
    While burns, wi' snawy wreeths up-choked,
        Wild-eddying swirl.
    Or through the mining outlet bocked,
        Down headlong hurl.

    Listening, the doors an' win...

The woman singeth at her spinning-wheel
A pleasant chant, ballad or barcarole;
She thinketh of her song, upon the whole,
Far more than of her flax; and yet the reel
Is full, and artfully her fingers feel
With quick adjustment, provident control,
The lines, too subtly twisted to unroll
Out to a perfect thread. I hence appeal
To the dear Christian Church, that we may do
Our Father's business in these temples mirk,
Thus swift and steadfast, thus intent and strong;
While thus, apart from toil, our souls pursue
Some high calm spheric tune, and prove our work
The better for the sweetness of our song.