Tune - "Neil Gow's Lamentations for Abercairny."


I.

    Where, braving angry winter's storms,
        The lofty Ochels rise,
    Far in their shade my Peggy's charms
        First blest my wondering eyes;
    As one who by some savage stream,
        A lonely gem surveys,
    Astonish'd, doubly marks its beam,
        With art's most polish'd blaze.

II.

    Blest be the wild, sequester'd shade,
        And blest the day and hour,
    Where Peggy's charms I first survey'd,
        When first I felt their power!
    The tyrant Death, with grim control,
        May seize my fleeting breath;
    But tearing Peggy from my soul
        Must be a stronger death.

Celebration Of The Mercantile Library Association, February 22, 1856

Welcome to the day returning,
Dearer still as ages flow,
While the torch of Faith is burning,
Long as Freedom's altars glow!
See the hero whom it gave us
Slumbering on a mother's breast;
For the arm he stretched to save us,
Be its morn forever blest!

Hear the tale of youthful glory,
While of Britain's rescued band
Friend and foe repeat the story,
Spread his fame o'er sea and land,
Where the red cross, proudly streaming,
Flaps above the frigate's deck,
Where the golden lilies, gleaming,
Star the watch-towers of Quebec.

Look! The shadow on the dial
Marks the hour of deadlier strife;
Days of terror, years of trial,
Scourge a nation into life.
Lo, the yo...

Mary, ah me! gentle Mary,
    Can it be you're lying there,
Pale and still, and cold as marble,
    You that was so young and fair.

Seemeth it as yestereven,
    When the golden autumn smiled,
On our meeting, gentle Mary,
    You were then a very child.

Busy fingers, flitting footsteps,
    Never resting all day long;
Shy and bashful, and the sweet voice
    Ever breaking into song

Always gentle, kind and thoughtful,
    Blameless and so free from art,
'Twas no wonder one so lovely
    Found a place within my heart.

You, while life was in its spring time,
    Made the Scripture Mary's choice;
Jesus saw you, loved you, called you,
    And you listened to His voice.

Ever patient and rejoicing,
    Shielded t...

(Time, Noon.)


HUMPHREY:

See'st thou not William that the scorching Sun
By this time half his daily race has run?
The savage thrusts his light canoe to shore
And hurries homeward with his fishy store.
Suppose we leave awhile this stubborn soil
To eat our dinner and to rest from toil!


WILLIAM:

Agreed. Yon tree whose purple gum bestows
A ready medicine for the sick-man's woes,
Forms with its shadowy boughs a cool retreat
To shield us from the noontide's sultry heat.
Ah Humphrey! now upon old England's shore
The weary labourer's morning work is o'er:
The woodman now rests from his measur'd stroke
Flings down his axe and sits beneath the oak,
Savour'd with hunger there he eats his food,
There drinks the cooling streamle...

They spoke of Progress spiring round,
Of Light and Mrs. Humphry Ward,
It is not true to say I frowned,
Or ran about the room and roared;
I might have simply sat and snored,
I rose politely in the club
And said, "I feel a little bored;
Will someone take me to a pub?"

The new world's wisest did surround
Me; and it pains me to record
I did not think their views profound,
Or their conclusions well assured;
The simple life I can't afford,
Besides, I do not like the grub,
I want a mash and sausage, "scored"
Will someone take me to a pub?

I know where Men can still be found,
Anger and clamorous accord,
And virtues growing from the ground,
And fellowship of beer and board,
And song, that is a sturdy cord,
And hope, that is a hardy ...

"On the east coast, towards Tunis, the Moors still preserve the key of their ancestors' houses in Spain; to which country they still express the hopes of one day returning and again planting the crescent on the ancient walls of the Alhambra." - SCOTT'S Travels in Morocco and Algiers.

"Is Spain cloven in such a manner as to want closing?"
            SANCHO PANZA.


The Moor leans on his cushion,
With the pipe between his lips;
And still at frequent intervals
The sweet sherbét he sips;
But, spite of lulling vapor
And the sober cooling cup,
The spirit of the swarthy Moor
Is fiercely kindling up!

One hand is on his pistol,
On its ornamented stock,
While his finger feels the trigger
And is busy with the lock -
The other seeks his ataghan,

Vauvenargues says that in public gardens there are alleys haunted principally by thwarted ambition, by unfortunate inventors, by aborted glories and broken hearts, and by all those tumultuous and contracted souls in whom the last sighs of the storm mutter yet again, and who thus betake themselves far from the insolent and joyous eyes of the well-to-do. These shadowy retreats are the rendezvous of life's cripples. To such places above all others do the poet and philosopher direct their avid conjectures. They find there an unfailing pasturage, for if there is one place they disdain to visit it is, as I have already hinted, the place of the joy of the rich. A turmoil in the void has no attractions for them. On the contrary they feel themselves irresistibly drawn towards all that' is feeble, ruined, sorrowing, and bereft.
An experienced ...

FROM THE CITY OF WASHINGTON.


'Tis evening now; beneath the western star
Soft sighs the lover through his sweet cigar,
And fills the ears of some consenting she
With puffs and vows, with smoke and constancy.

The patriot, fresh from Freedom's councils come,
Now pleased retires to lash his slaves at home;
Or woo, perhaps, some black Aspasia's charms,
And dream of freedom in his bondsmaid's arms.

    In fancy now, beneath the twilight gloom,
Come, let me lead thee o'er this "second Rome!"[1]
Where tribunes rule, where dusky Davi bow,
And what was Goose-Creek once is Tiber now:[2]--
This embryo capital, where Fancy sees
Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees;
Which second-sighted seers, even now, adorn
With shrines unbu...

Wide lies Australia! The seas that surround her
Flow for her unity, all states in one.
Never has Custom nor Tyranny bound her,
Never was conquest so peacefully won.
Fair lies Australia! with all things within her
Meet for a Nation, the greatest to be:
Free to the White Man to woo and to win her:
Those who'd be happy and those who'd be free.

Free to live fully and free to live cleanly,
Free to give learning to daughter and son;
Free to act nobly but not to act meanly,
Free to forget what the old lands had done.
Free to be Brothers! Our hymn and our sermon
To keep for the White World the balance of Power,
Welcoming all, be they British or German,
All come to help us, we'll wait for the hour.

Out in the West where the flood-water gathers,
Out in ...

The same old story told again -
    The maiden droops her head,
The ripening glow of her crimson cheek
    Is answering in her stead.
The pleading tone of a trembling voice
    Is telling her the way
He loved her when his heart was young
    In Youth's sunshiny day:
The trembling tongue, the longing tone,
    Imploringly ask why
They can not be as happy now
    As in the days gone by.
And two more hearts, tumultuous
    With overflowing joy,
Are dancing to the music
    Which that dear, provoking boy
Is twanging on his bowstring,
    As, fluttering his wings,
He sends his love-charged arrows
    While merrily be sings:
"Ho! ho! my dainty maiden,
    It surely can not be
You are thinking you are master
    Of your heart, when ...

The cherry-coloured velvet of your cloak
Time hath not soiled: its fair embroideries
Gleam as when centuries ago they spoke
To what bright gallant of Her Daintiness,
Whose slender fingers, long since dust and dead,
For love or courtesy embroidered
The cherry-coloured velvet of this cloak.

Ah! cunning flowers of silk and silver thread,
That mock mortality? the broidering dame,
The page they decked, the kings and courts are dead:
Gone the age beautiful; Lorenzo's name,
The Borgia's pride are but an empty sound;
But lustrous still upon their velvet ground,
Time spares these flowers of silk and silver thread.

Gone is that age of pageant and of pride:
Yet don your cloak, and haply it shall seem,
The curtain of old time is set aside;
As through the ...

Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, Night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the roses blown.

For a breeze of morning moves,
And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
On a bed of daffodil sky,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
To faint in his light, and to die.

All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd
To the dancers dancing in tune:
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.

I said to the lily, "There is but one
With whom she has heart to be gay.
When will the dancers leave her...

I had a dream, a strange, wild dream,
Said a dear voice at early light;
And even yet its shadows seem
To linger in my waking sight.

Earth, green with spring, and fresh with dew,
And bright with morn, before me stood;
And airs just wakened softly blew
On the young blossoms of the wood.

Birds sang within the sprouting shade,
Bees hummed amid the whispering grass,
And children prattled as they played
Beside the rivulet's dimpling glass

Fast climbed the sun: the flowers were flown,
There played no children in the glen;
For some were gone, and some were grown
To blooming dames and bearded men.

'Twas noon, 'twas summer: I beheld
Woods darkening in the flush of day,
And that bright rivulet spread and swelled,
A mighty stream, wi...

Do the dancing leaves of summer
    To the time of buds look back? -
Does the river moan regretful
    For the brooklet's mountain-track?
Does the ripened sheaf of summer,
    Heavy with precious grain,
Ask for its hour of blossom,
    And the breath of Spring again?

Does the golden goblet, brimming
    With the precious, ruby wine,
Look back with weary longing
    To the damp and dusky mine?
Is the sparkling coin, that beareth
    A monarch's image, fain
To seek the glowing furnace,
    Where they purged its dross again?

Would the chiselled marble gather
    Its rubbish back once more.
And lie down, undistinguished,
    In the rough rock as before?
Does the costly diamond, blazing
    On that crowned and queenly one,
...

Thus Kitty, beautiful and young,
And wild as colt untamed,
Bespoke the fair from whence she sprung,
With little rage inflamed.

Inflamed with rage at sad restraint
Which wise mamma ordain'd,
And sorely vex'd to play the saint
Whilst wit and beauty reign'd.

Shall I thumb holy books, confined
With Abigails, forsaken?
Kitty's for other things design'd,
Or I am much mistaken.

Must Lady Jenny frisk about,
And visit with her cousins?
At balls must she make all the rout,
And bring home hearts by dozens?

What has she better, pray, than I?
What hidden charms to boast,
That all mankind for her should die,
Whilst I am scarce a toast?

Dearest mamma, for once let me
Unchain'd my fortune try:
I'll have my earl as we...

Monastic and time-consecrated fane!
Thou hast put on thy shapely state again,
Almost august as in thy early day,
Ere ruthless Henry rent thy pomp away.
No more the mass on holidays is sung,
The Host high raised, or fuming censer swung;
No more, in amice white, the fathers, slow,
With lighted tapers, in long order go;
Yet the tall window lifts its arched height,
As to admit heaven's pale, but purer light;
Those massy clustered columns, whose long rows,
Even at noonday, in shadowy pomp repose,
Amid the silent sanctity of death,
Like giants seem to guard the dust beneath.
Those roofs re-echo (though no altars blaze)
The prayer of penitence, the hymn of praise;
Whilst meek Religion's self, as with a smile,
Reprints the tracery of the holy pile,
Worthy it...

1.
Swifter far than summer's flight -
Swifter far than youth's delight -
Swifter far than happy night,
Art thou come and gone -
As the earth when leaves are dead,
As the night when sleep is sped,
As the heart when joy is fled,
I am left lone, alone.

2.
The swallow summer comes again -
The owlet night resumes her reign -
But the wild-swan youth is fain
To fly with thee, false as thou. -
My heart each day desires the morrow;
Sleep itself is turned to sorrow;
Vainly would my winter borrow
Sunny leaves from any bough.

3.
Lilies for a bridal bed -
Roses for a matron's head -
Violets for a maiden dead -
Pansies let MY flowers be:
On the living grave I bear
Scatter them without a tear -
Let no friend, however d...

Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
    And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
    Alternate come and go;

Or where the denser grove receives
    No sunlight from above,
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
    The shadows hardly move.

Beneath some patriarchal tree
    I lay upon the ground;
His hoary arms uplifted he,
And all the broad leaves over me
Clapped their little hands in glee,
    With one continuous sound--

A slumberous sound,--a sound that brings
    The feelings of a dream--
As of innumerable wings,
As, when a bell no longer swings,
Paint the holl...