Adown the west a golden glow
Sinks burning in the sea,
And all the dreams of long ago
Come flooding back to me.
The past has writ a story strange
Upon my aching heart,
But time has wrought a subtle change,
My wounds have ceased to smart.

No more the quick delight of youth,
No more the sudden pain,
I look no more for trust or truth
Where greed may compass gain.
What, was it I who bared my heart
Through unrelenting years,
And knew the sting of misery's dart,
The tang of sorrow's tears?

'Tis better now, I do not weep,
I do not laugh nor care;
My soul and spirit half asleep
Drift aimless everywhere.
We float upon a sluggish stream,
We ride no rapids mad,
While life is all a tempered dream
And every joy half sad.

He needs must leave the trapping and the chase,
    For mating game his arrows ne'er despoil,
And from the hunter's heaven turn his face,
    To wring some promise from the dormant soil.

He needs must leave the lodge that wintered him,
    The enervating fires, the blanket bed -
The women's dulcet voices, for the grim
    Realities of labouring for bread.

So goes he forth beneath the planter's moon
    With sack of seed that pledges large increase,
His simple pagan faith knows night and noon,
    Heat, cold, seedtime and harvest shall not cease.

And yielding to his needs, this honest sod,
    Brown as the hand that tills it, moist with rain,
Teeming with ripe fulfilment, true as God,
    With fostering richness, mothers every grain.

We who are lovers sit by the fire,
Cradled warm 'twixt thought and will,
Sit and drowse like sleeping dogs
In the equipoise of all desire,
Sit and listen to the still
Small hiss and whisper of green logs
That burn away, that burn away
With the sound of a far-off falling stream
Of threaded water blown to steam,
Grey ghost in the mountain world of grey.
Vapours blue as distance rise
Between the hissing logs that show
A glimpse of rosy heat below;
And candles watch with tireless eyes
While we sit drowsing here. I know,
Dimly, that there exists a world,
That there is time perhaps, and space
Other and wider than this place,
Where at the fireside drowsily curled
We hear the whisper and watch the flame
Burn blinkless and inscrutable.
And then...

I know a thing that’s most uncommon;
(Envy, be silent and attend!)
I know a reasonable woman,
Handsome and witty, yet a friend.

Not warp’d by passion, awed by rumour;
Not grave through pride, nor gay through folly;
An equal mixture of good-humour
And sensible soft melancholy.

‘Has she no faults then (Envy says), Sir?’
Yes, she has one, I must aver:
When all the world conspires to praise her,
The woman’s deaf, and does not hear.

[1]

A man that loved, - and loved his wife, -
Still led an almost joyless life.
No tender look, nor gracious word,
Nor smile, that, coming from a bride,
Its object would have deified,
E'er told her doting lord
The love with which he burn'd
Was in its kind return'd.
Still unrepining at his lot,
This man, thus tied in Hymen's knot,
Thank'd God for all the good he got.
But why? If love doth fail to season
Whatever pleasures Hymen gives,
I'm sure I cannot see the reason
Why one for him the happier lives.
However, since his wife
Had ne'er caress'd him in her life,
He made complaint of it one night.
The entrance of a thief
Cut short his tale of grief,
And gave the lady such a fright,
She shrunk from dreaded harms
W...

Chaotic crags are huddled east and west
Dark, heavy crags, against a straitened sea
That cometh, like a troubled soul in quest
Of voiceless rest where never dwelleth rest,
With noise “like thunder everlasting.”
But here, behold a silent space of sand!
Oh, pilgrim, halt! it even seems to be
Asleep in other years. How still! How grand!
How awful in its wild solemnity!
This is the spot on which the Chief did land,
And there, perchance, he stood what time a band
Of yelling strangers scoured the savage lea.
Dear friend, with thoughtful eyes look slowly round
By all the sacred Past ’tis sacred ground.

    Peace in thy hands,
    Peace in thine eyes,
    Peace on thy brow;
Flower of a moment in the eternal hour,
    Peace with me now.

    Not a wave breaks,
    Not a bird calls,
    My heart, like a sea,
Silent after a storm that hath died,
    Sleeps within me.

    All the night's dews,
    All the world's leaves,
    All winter's snow
Seem with their quiet to have stilled in life's dream
    All sorrowing now.

"Sweetheart, take this," a soldier said,
"And bid me brave good-by;
It may befall we ne'er shall wed,
But love can never die.
Be steadfast in thy troth to me,
And then, whate'er my lot,
'My soul to God, my heart to thee,'--
Sweetheart, forget me not!"

The maiden took the tiny flower
And nursed it with her tears:
Lo! he who left her in that hour
Came not in after years.
Unto a hero's death he rode
'Mid shower of fire and shot;
But in the maiden's heart abode
The flower, forget-me-not.

And when he came not with the rest
From out the years of blood,
Closely unto her widowed breast
She pressed a faded bud;
Oh, there is love and there is pain,
And there is peace, God wot,--
And these dear three do live again
In ...

From false assumption rose, and, fondly hailed
By superstition, spread the Papal power;
Yet do not deem the Autocracy prevailed
Thus only, even in error's darkest hour.
She daunts, forth-thundering from her spiritual tower,
Brute rapine, or with gentle lure she tames.
Justice and Peace through Her uphold their claims;
And Chastity finds many a sheltering bower.
Realm there is none that if controlled or swayed
By her commands partakes not, in degree,
Of good, o'er manners arts and arms, diffused:
Yes, to thy domination, Roman See,
Tho' miserably, oft monstrously, abused
By blind ambition, be this tribute paid.

Though a wise man all pressures can sustain,
His virtue still is sensible of pain:
Large shoulders though he has, and well can bear,
He feels when packs do pinch him, and the where.

I give to you these verses, that if in
Some future time my name lands happily
To bring brief pleasure to humanity,
The craft supported by a great north wind,

Your memory, like tales from ancient times,
Will bore the reader like a dulcimer,
And by a strange fraternal chain live here
As if suspended in my lofty rhymes.

From deepest pit into the highest sky
Damned being, only I can bear you now.
0 shadow, barely present to the eye,

You lightly step, with a serene regard
On mortal fools who've judged you mean and hard
Angel with eyes of jet, great burnished brow!

Se voi poteste per turbati segni.

HE ENTREATS LAURA NOT TO HATE THE HEART FROM WHICH SHE CAN NEVER BE ABSENT.


    If, but by angry and disdainful sign,
By the averted head and downcast sight,
By readiness beyond thy sex for flight,
Deaf to all pure and worthy prayers of mine,
Thou canst, by these or other arts of thine,
'Scape from my breast--where Love on slip so slight
Grafts every day new boughs--of such despite
A fitting cause I then might well divine:
For gentle plant in arid soil to be
Seems little suited: so it better were,
And this e'en nature dictates, thence to stir.
But since thy destiny prohibits thee
Elsewhere to dwell, be this at least thy care
Not always to sojourn in hatred there.

MACGREGOR.

    Two men were born the self-same hour:
    The one was heir to untold wealth,
    To pride of birth and love of power;
    The other's heritage was health.

    A sturdy frame, an honest heart,
    Of human sympathy a store,
    A strength and will to do his part,
    A nature wholesome to the core.

    The two grew up to man's estate,
    And took their places in the strife:
    One found a sphere both wide and great,
    One found the toil and stress of life.

    Fate is a partial jade, I trow;
    She threw the rich man gold and frame,
    The laurel wreath to deck his brow,
    High place, the multitude's acclaim.

    The common things the other had -
    The common hopes to thrill him deep,
    The common joys to make h...

"Who would himself with shadows entertain,
Or gild his life with lights that shine in vain,
Or nurse false hopes that do but cheat the true?
Though with my dream my heaven should be resigned
Though the free-pinioned soul that once could dwell
In the large empire of the possible,
This workday life with iron chains may bind,
Yet thus the mastery o'er ourselves we find,
And solemn duty to our acts decreed,
Meets us thus tutored in the hour of need,
With a more sober and submissive mind!
How front necessity yet bid thy youth
Shun the mild rule of life's calm sovereign, truth."

So speakest thou, friend, how stronger far than I;
As from experience that sure port serene
Thou lookest; and straight, a coldness wraps the sky,
The summer glory withers from the scen...

    March 13, 1881.

As one who feels the breathless nightmare grip
His heart-strings, and through visioned horrors fares,
Now on a thin-ledged chasm's rock-crumbling lip,
Now on a tottering pinnacle that dare
The front of heaven, while always unawares
Weird monsters start above, around, beneath,
Each glaring from some uglier mask of death,


So the White Czar imperial progress made
Through terror-haunted days.    A shock, a cry
Whose echoes ring the globe - the spectre's laid.
Hurled o'er the abyss, see the crowned martyr lie
Resting in peace - fear, change, and death gone by.
Fit end for nightmare - mist of blood and tears,
Red climax to the slow, abortive years.


The world draws breath - one long, deep-shuddering sigh,
At that whic...

"Never shall a young man,
Thrown into despair
By those great honey-coloured
Ramparts at your ear,
Love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.'
"But I can get a hair-dye
And set such colour there,
Brown, or black, or carrot,
That young men in despair
May love me for myself alone
And not my yellow hair.'
"I heard an old religious man
But yesternight declare
That he had found a text to prove
That only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair."

MARION! why that pensive brow?
What disgust to life hast thou?
Change that discontented air;
Frowns become not one so fair.
'Tis not Love disturbs thy rest,
Love's a stranger to thy breast:
He, in dimpling smiles, appears,
Or mourns in sweetly timid tears;
Or bends the languid eyelid down,
But shuns the cold forbidding 'frown'.
Then resume thy former fire,
Some will love, and all admire!
While that icy aspect chills us,
Nought but cool Indiff'rence thrills us.
Would'st thou wand'ring hearts beguile,
Smile, at least, or seem to smile;
Eyes like thine were never meant
To hide their orbs in dark restraint;
Spite of all thou fain wouldst say,
Still in truant beams they play.
Thy lips - but here my modest Muse
Her impulse chaste must needs ...

        [A stands with a row of girls (her daughters) behind her; B, a suitor, advances.]

    B.    Trip trap over the grass: If you please will you let one of
                        your [eldest] daughters come,
                Come and dance with me?
                I will give you pots and pans, I will give you brass,
                I will give you anything for a pretty lass.
    A.    says, "No."
    B.    I will give you gold and silver, I will give you pearl,
                I will give you anything for a pretty girl.
    A.    Take one, take one, the fairest you may see.
    B.    The fairest one that I can see
                Is pretty Nancy, - come to me.

        [B carries one off, and says:]

                You shall have a duck, my dear,
...