O fair and stately maid, whose eyes
Were kindled in the upper skies
At the same torch that lighted mine;
For so I must interpret still
Thy sweet dominion o'er my will,
A sympathy divine.

Ah! let me blameless gaze upon
Features that seem at heart my own;
Nor fear those watchful sentinels,
Who charm the more their glance forbids,
Chaste-glowing, underneath their lids,
With fire that draws while it repels.

    "As friend," she said, "I will be kind,
    My sympathy will rarely fail,
    My eyes to many faults be blind -
    As wife, I'll lecture, scold, and rail,

    "Be full of moods, a shrew one day,
    A thing of tenderness the next,
    Will kiss and wound - a woman's way
    That long the soul of man has vext.

    "You've been a true, unselfish man,
    Have thought upon my good alway,
    Been strong to shield, and wise to plan,
    But ah! there is a change to-day.

    "There's mastery in your 'Be my wife!'
    For self stands up and eagerly
    Claims all my love, and all my life,
    The body and the soul of me.

    "Come, call me friend, and own me such,
    Nor count it such a wondrous thing
    To hold me close, thr...

The breathing freshness of the shining Morn,
    Whose beams glance yellow on the distant fields,
    A sweet, unutterable pleasure yields
    To my dejected sense, that turns with scorn
From the light joys of Dissipation born.
    Sacred Remembrance all my bosom shields
    Against each glittering lance she gaily wields,
    Warring with fond Regrets, that silent mourn
The Heart's dear comforts lost. - But, NATURE, thou,
    Thou art resistless still; - and yet I ween
    Thy present balmy gales, and vernal blow,
To MEMORY owe the magic of their scene;
    For with such fragrant breath, such orient rays,
    Shone the soft mornings of my youthful days.

ON HIS SUCCESSES IN IRELAND


To purchase kingdoms and to buy renown,
    Are arts peculiar to dissembling France;
You, mighty monarch, nobler actions crown,
    And solid virtue does your name advance.

Your matchless courage with your prudence joins,
    The glorious structure of your fame to raise;
With its own light your dazzling glory shines,
    And into adoration turns our praise.

Had you by dull succession gain'd your crown,
    (Cowards are monarchs by that title made,)
Part of your merit Chance would call her own,
    And half your virtues had been lost in shade.

But now your worth its just reward shall have:
    What trophies and what triumphs are your due!
Who could so well a dying nation save,
    At once deserve a crown...

A Young fig-tree its form lifts high

Within a beauteous garden;
And see, a goat is sitting by.

As if he were its warden.

But oh, Quirites, how one errs!

The tree is guarded badly;
For round the other side there whirrs

And hums a beetle madly.

The hero with his well-mail'd coat

Nibbles the branches tall so;
A mighty longing feels the goat

Gently to climb up also.

And so, my friends, ere long ye see

The tree all leafless standing;
It looks a type of misery,

Help of the gods demanding.

Then listen, ye ingenuous youth,

Who hold wise saws respected:
From he-goat and from beetles-tooth

A tree should be protected!

Storm had been on the hills. The day had worn
As if a sleep upon the hours had crept;
And the dark clouds that gather'd at the morn
In dull, impenetrable masses slept,
And the wept leaves hung droopingly, and all
Was like the mournful aspect of a pall.
Suddenly on the horizon's edge, a blue
And delicate line, as of a pencil, lay,
And, as it wider and intenser grew,
The darkness removed silently away,
And, with the splendor of a God, broke through
The perfect glory of departing day -
So, when his stormy pilgrimage is o'er,
Will light upon the dying Christian pour.

Oh! could I hope the wise and pure in heart
Might hear my song without a frown, nor deem
My voice unworthy of the theme it tries,
I would take up the hymn to Death, and say
To the grim power: The world hath slandered thee
And mocked thee. On thy dim and shadowy brow
They place an iron crown, and call thee king
Of terrors, and the spoiler of the world,
Deadly assassin, that strik'st down the fair,
The loved, the good, that breathest on the lights
Of virtue set along the vale of life,
And they go out in darkness. I am come,
Not with reproaches, not with cries and prayers,
Such as have stormed thy stern, insensible ear
from the beginning. I am come to speak
Thy praises. True it is, that I have wept
Thy conquests, and may weep them yet again:
And thou from so...

    As I stand waiting in the rain
    For the foggy hoot of the London train,
    Gazing at silent wall and lamp
    And post and rail and platform damp,
    What is this power that comes to my sight
    That I see a night without the night,
    That I see them clear, yet look them through,
    The silvery things and the darkly blue,
    That the solid wall seems soft as death,
    A wavering and unanchored wraith,
    And rails that shine and stones that stream
    Unsubstantial as a dream?
    What sudden door has opened so,
    What hand has passed, that I should know
    This moving vision not a trance
    That melts the globe of circumstance,
    This sight that marks not least or most
    And makes a stone a passing ghost?
    Is it that a yea...

Muse, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite,
Who wakens with her smile the lulled delight
Of sweet desire, taming the eternal kings
Of Heaven, and men, and all the living things
That fleet along the air, or whom the sea,
Or earth, with her maternal ministry,
Nourish innumerable, thy delight
All seek ... O crowned Aphrodite!
Three spirits canst thou not deceive or quell: -
Minerva, child of Jove, who loves too well
Fierce war and mingling combat, and the fame
Of glorious deeds, to heed thy gentle flame.
Diana ... golden-shafted queen,
Is tamed not by thy smiles; the shadows green
Of the wild woods, the bow, the...
And piercing cries amid the swift pursuit
Of beasts among waste mountains, - such delight
Is hers, and men who know and do the right.
Nor Satu...

(in Memoriam F. W. G.)



Orion swung southward aslant
Where the starved Egdon pine-trees had thinned,
The Pleiads aloft seemed to pant
With the heather that twitched in the wind;
But he looked on indifferent to sights such as these,
Unswayed by love, friendship, home joy or home sorrow,
And wondered to what he would march on the morrow.

The crazed household-clock with its whirr
Rang midnight within as he stood,
He heard the low sighing of her
Who had striven from his birth for his good;
But he still only asked the spring starlight, the breeze,
What great thing or small thing his history would borrow
From that Game with Death he would play on the morrow.

When the heath wore the robe of late summer,
And the fuchsia-bells, hot in the s...

With beams December planets dart
His cold eye truth and conduct scanned,
July was in his sunny heart,
October in his liberal hand.

Air and sky are swathed in gold
    Fold on fold,
Light glows through the trees like wine.
Earth, sun-quickened, swoons for bliss
    'Neath his kiss,
Breathless in a trance divine.


Nature pauses from her task,
    Just to bask
In these lull'd transfigured hours.
The green leaf nor stays nor goes,
    But it grows
Royaler than mid-June's flowers.


Such impassioned silence fills
    All the hills
Burning with unflickering fire -
Such a blood-red splendor stains
    The leaves' veins,
Life seems one fulfilled desire.


While earth, sea, and heavens shine,
    Heart of mine,
Say, what art thou waiting for?
Shall the cup ne'er reach the lip,
    But still slip
Till the life-long thirst give o'er?<...

In the merry month of May,
In a morn by break of day,
With a troop of damsels playing
Forth I rode, forsooth, a-maying,
When anon by a woodside,
Where as May was in his pride,
I espied, all alone,
Phyllida and Corydon.

Much ado there was, God wot!
He would love, and she would not:
She said, never man was true;
He says, none was false to you.
He said, he had loved her long:
She says, Love should have no wrong.

Corydon would kiss her then,
She says, maids must kiss no men,
Till they do for good and all.
Then she made the shepherd call
All the heavens to witness, truth
Never loved a truer youth.
Thus with many a pretty oath,
Yea, and nay, and faith and troth! -
Such as silly shepherds use
When they will not love abus...

Crouched in the terrible land,
The circle of pitiless ice,
With frozen bloody feet
And her pestilential summer's
Fever-throb in her brow,
Look, in her deep slow eyes
The mists of her sleep of faith
Stir, and a gleam of light,
The ray of a blood-red sun,
Beams out into the dusk.
From far away, from the west,
From the east, from the south, there come
Faint sweet breaths of the breeze
Of plenteous warmth and light.
And she moves, and around her neck
She feels the iron-scaled Snake
Whose fangs suck at the heart
Hid by her tattered dress,
By her lean and hanging teat.
Russia, O land of faith,
O realm of the ageless Slav,
O oppressed one of eternity,
This darkest hour is the hour,
The hour of the coming dawn!
Europe the rank, ...

A set of phrases learn'd by rote;
A passion for a scarlet coat;
When at a play, to laugh or cry,
Yet cannot tell the reason why;
Never to hold her tongue a minute,
While all she prates has nothing in it;
Whole hours can with a coxcomb sit,
And take his nonsense all for wit;
Her learning mounts to read a song,
But half the words pronouncing wrong;
Has every repartee in store
She spoke ten thousand times before;
Can ready compliments supply
On all occasions cut and dry;
Such hatred to a parson's gown,
The sight would put her in a swoon;
For conversation well endued,
She calls it witty to be rude;
And, placing raillery in railing,
Will tell aloud your greatest failing;
Nor make a scruple to expose
Your bandy leg, or crooked nose;
Can...

    With Pegasus upon a day,
        Apollo weary flying,
    Through frosty hills the journey lay,
        On foot the way was plying,

    Poor slip-shod giddy Pegasus
        Was but a sorry walker;
    To Vulcan then Apollo goes,
        To get a frosty calker.

    Obliging Vulcan fell to work,
        Threw by his coat and bonnet,
    And did Sol's business in a crack;
        Sol paid him with a sonnet.

    Ye Vulcan's sons of Wanlockhead,
        Pity my sad disaster;
    My Pegasus is poorly shod,
        I'll pay you like my master.

ROBERT BURNS.

Ramages, 3 o'clock, (no date.)

Clouds, lingering yet, extend in solid bars
Through the grey west; and lo! these waters, steeled
By breezeless air to smoothest polish, yield
A vivid repetition of the stars;
Jove, Venus, and the ruddy crest of Mars
Amid his fellows beauteously revealed
At happy distance from earth's groaning field,
Where ruthless mortals wage incessant wars.
Is it a mirror? or the nether Sphere
Opening to view the abyss in which she feeds                        
Her own calm fires? But list! a voice is near;
Great Pan himself low-whispering through the reeds,
"Be thankful, thou; for, if unholy deeds
Ravage the world, tranquillity is here!"

There was a morrice on the moonlight plain,
And music echoed in the woody glade,
For fay-like forms, as of Titania's train,
Upon a summer eve, beneath the shade
Of Netley's ivied ruins, to the sound
Of sprightly minstrelsy did beat the ground:
Come, take hands! and lightly move,
While our boat, in yonder cove,
Rests upon the darkening sea;
Come, take hands, and follow me!

Netley! thy dim and desolated fane
Hath heard, perhaps, the spirits of the night
Shrieking, at times, amid the wind and rain;
Or haply, when the full-orbed moon shone bright,
Thy glimmering aisles have echoed to the song
Of fairy Mab, who led her shadowy masque along.
Now, as to the sprightly sound
Of moonlight minstrelsy we beat the ground;
From the pale nooks, in accent clea...