Now when dun Night her shadowy veil has spread,
See want and infamy, as forth they come,
Lead their wan daughter from her branded home,
To woo the stranger for unhallow'd bread.
Poor outcast! o'er thy sickly-tinted cheek
And half-clad form, what havoc want hath made;
And the sweet lustre of thine eye doth fade,
And all thy soul's sad sorrow seems to speak.
O! miserable state! compell'd to wear
The wooing smile, as on thy aching breast
Some wretch reclines, who feeling ne'er possess'd;
Thy poor heart bursting with the stifled tear!
Oh! GOD OF MERCY! bid her woes subside,
And be to her a friend, who hath no friend beside.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
Of me you shall not win renown:
You thought to break a country heart
For pastime, ere you went to town.
At me you smiled, but unbeguiled
I saw the snare, and I retired;
The daughter of a hundred earls,
You are not one to be desired.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
I know you proud to bear your name,
Your pride is yet no mate for mine,
Too proud to care from whence I came.
Nor would I break for your sweet sake
A heart that dotes on truer charms.
A simple maiden in her flower
Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
Some meeker pupil you must find,
For, were you queen of all that is,
I could not stoop to such a mind.
You sought to prove how I could love,
And my disdain is my reply.
The...

Bards of Passion and of Mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new?
Yes, and those of heaven commune
With the spheres of sun and moon;
With the noise of fountains wond’rous,
And the parle of voices thund’rous;
With the whisper of heaven’s trees
And one another, in soft ease
Seated on Elysian lawns
Brows’d by none but Dian’s fawns;
Underneath large blue-bells tented,
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And the rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not;
Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But divine melodious truth;
Philosophic numbers smooth;
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.

Thus ye live on high, and then
On...

I heard the trailing garments of the Night
    Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
    From the celestial walls!

I felt her presence, by its spell of might,
    Stoop o'er me from above;
The calm, majestic presence of the Night,
    As of the one I love.

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,
    The manifold, soft chimes,
That fill the haunted chambers of the Night,
    Like some old poet's rhymes.

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air
    My spirit drank repose;
The fountain of perpetual peace flows there -
    From those deep cisterns flows.

O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear
    What man has borne before!
Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,
    And they co...

Raze these long blocks of brick and stone,
These huge mill-monsters overgrown;
Blot out the humbler piles as well,
Where, moved like living shuttles, dwell
The weaving genii of the bell;
Tear from the wild Cocheco's track
The dams that hold its torrents back;
And let the loud-rejoicing fall
Plunge, roaring, down its rocky wall;
And let the Indian's paddle play
On the unbridged Piscataqua!
Wide over hill and valley spread
Once more the forest, dusk and dread,
With here and there a clearing cut
From the walled shadows round it shut;
Each with its farm-house builded rude,
By English yeoman squared and hewed,
And the grim, flankered block-house bound
With bristling palisades around.
So, haply shall before thine eyes
The dusty veil of centuries ...

We never meet; yet we meet day by day
    Upon those hills of life, dim and immense:
    The good we love, and sleep-our innocence.
O hills of life, high hills! And higher than they,

Our guardian spirits meet at prayer and play.
    Beyond pain, joy, and hope, and long suspense,
    Above the summits of our souls, far hence,
An angel meets an angel on the way.

Beyond all good I ever believed of thee
    Or thou of me, these always love and live.
And though I fail of thy ideal of me,

My angel falls not short. They greet each other.
    Who knows, they may exchange the kiss we give,
Thou to thy crucifix, I to my mother.

Hew hard the marble from the mountain’s heart
Where hardest night holds fast in iron gloom
Gems brighter than an April dawn in bloom,
That his Memnoniah likeness thence may start
Revealed, whose hand with high funereal art
Carved night, and chiselled shadow: be the tomb
That speaks him famous graven with signs of doom
Intrenched inevitably in lines athwart,
As on some thunder-blasted Titan’s brow
His record of rebellion. Not the day
Shall strike forth music from so stern a chord,
Touching this marble: darkness, none knows how,
And stars impenetrable of midnight, may.
So locms the likeness of thy soul, John Ford.

I.

He stood where the mountain moss outspread
    Its smoothness beneath his dusky foot;
The chestnut boughs above his head,
    Hung motionless and mute.
There came not a voice from the wooded hill,
    Nor a sound from the shadowy glen,
Save the plaintive song of the whip-poor-will,[2]
    And the waterfall's dash, and now and then,
        The night-bird's mournful cry.
Deep silence hung round him; the misty light
Of the young moon silvered the brow of Night,
    Whose quiet spirit had flung her spell
O'er the valley's depth, and the mountain's height,
    And breathed on the air, till its gentle swell
Arose on the ear like some loved one's call;
And the wide blue sky spread over all
        Its starry canopy.
And he seemed as the spirit of ...

Heaven weeps above the earth all night till morn,
In darkness weeps as all ashamed to weep,
Because the earth hath made her state forlorn
With self-wrought evil of unnumbered years,
And doth the fruit of her dishonor reap.
And all the day heaven gathers back her tears
Into her own blue eyes so clear and deep,
And showering down the glory of lightsome day,
Smiles on the earth’s worn brow to win her if she may.

Here on the pale beach, in the darkness;
With the full moon just to rise;
They sit alone, and look over the sea,
Or into each other’s eyes. . .
She pokes her parasol into the sleepy sand,
Or sifts the lazy whiteness through her hand.
‘A lovely night,’ he says, ‘the moon,
Comes up for you and me.
Just like a blind old spotlight there,
Fizzing across the sea!’
She pays no heed, nor even turns her head:
He slides his arm around her waist instead.
‘Why don’t we do a sketch together,
Those songs you sing are swell.
Where did you get them, anyway?
They suit you awfully well.’
She will not turn to him, will not resist.
Impassive, she submits to being kissed.
‘My husband wrote all four of them.
You know, my husband drowned.
He was always sickly, so...

Greitna, father, that I'm gauin,
    For fu' well ye ken the gaet;
I' the winter, corn ye're sawin,
    I' the hairst again ye hae't.

I'm gauin hame to see my mither;
    She'll be weel acquant or this!
Sair we'll muse at ane anither
    'Tween the auld word an' new kiss!

Love I'm doobtin may be scanty
    Roun ye efter I'm awa:
Yon kirkyard has happin plenty
    Close aside me, green an' braw!

An' abune there's room for mony;
    'Twasna made for ane or twa,
But was aye for a' an' ony
    Countin love the best ava.

There nane less ye'll be my father;
    Auld names we'll nor tyne nor spare!
A' my sonship I maun gather
    For the Son is king up there.

Greitna, father, that I'm gauin,
    For ye ken fu' we...

Lovely Spring,
A brief sweet thing,
Is swift on the wing;
Gracious Summer,
A slow sweet comer,
Hastens past;
Autumn while sweet
Is all incomplete
With a moaning blast, -
Nothing can last,
Can be cleaved unto,
Can be dwelt upon;
It is hurried through,
It is come and gone,
Undone it cannot be done,
It is ever to do,
Ever old, ever new,
Ever waxing old
And lapsing to Winter cold.

S' una fede amorosa, un cor non finto.

THE MISERY OF HIS LOVE.


    If faith most true, a heart that cannot feign,
If Love's sweet languishment and chasten'd thought,
And wishes pure by nobler feelings taught,
If in a labyrinth wanderings long and vain,
If on the brow each pang pourtray'd to bear,
Or from the heart low broken sounds to draw,
Withheld by shame, or check'd by pious awe,
If on the faded cheek Love's hue to wear,
If than myself to hold one far more dear,
If sighs that cease not, tears that ever flow,
Wrung from the heart by all Love's various woe,
In absence if consumed, and chill'd when near,--
If these be ills in which I waste my prime,
Though I the sufferer be, yours, lady, is the crime.

DACRE.


   ...

        A lad brought up in Highland vale
        Who did believe each fairy tale,
        Which his grannie oft' to him told,
        And of witches and of warlocks bold,
        And he himself would often pour
        For hours reading wizard lore.
        One night his mother to the town
        In a hurry sent him down,
        So o'er his pony he did stride,
        And to the town did fearful ride,
        He thought that demons they would rush
        On him from every rock and bush,
        And as he rode through the quarry
        It did great increase his flurry,
        He felt that fiends with fiercest hate
        Would surely there seal fast his fate.

        But town he reached and 'neath his vest
        He parcel pressed close to hi...

He knows the sweet vexation in the strife
Of Love with Time, this bard who fain would stray
To fairer place beyond the storms of life,
With astral faces near him day by day.
In deep-mossed dells the mellow waters flow
Which best he loves; for there the echoes, rife
With rich suggestions of his long ago,
Astarte, pass with thee! And, far away,
Dear southern seasons haunt the dreamy eye:
Spring, flower-zoned, and Summer, warbling low
In tasselled corn, alternate come and go,
While gypsy Autumn, splashed from heel to thigh
With vine-blood, treads the leaves; and, halting nigh,
Wild Winter bends across a beard of snow.

It was stiller, dimmer twilight
amber toornin’ into gold,
Like young maidens’ hairs get yellow
und more dark as dey crow old;
Und dere shtood a high ruine
vhere de Donau rooshed along,
All lofely, yet neclected
like an oldt und silent song.

Out shpoke der Ritter Breitmann,
“Ven I hafe not forgot,
Ich kenn an anciendt shtory
of dis inderesdin shpot,
Of the Deutscher Middleolter
vot de Minnesingers sung,
Ven dot olt ruine oben
vas a-bloomin, fair, und yung.

“Vonce dere lifed a noble fräulein
fery peautiful vas she,
More ash twendy dimes goot lookin
it is in de historie;
Und mit more ash forty quarters
on her woppenshield, dot men
Might beholdt mitout a discount
she vas of de upper ten.

“But dough lofely a...

Were I that wandering citizen whose city is the world,
I would not weep for all that fell before the flags were furled;
I would not let one murmur mar the trumpets volleying forth
How God grew weary of the kings, and the cold hell in the north.
But we whose hearts are homing birds have heavier thoughts of home,
Though the great eagles burn with gold on Paris or on Rome,
Who stand beside our dead and stare, like seers at an eclipse,
At the riddle of the island tale and the twilight of the ships.

For these were simple men that loved with hands and feet and eyes,
Whose souls were humbled to the hills and narrowed to the skies,
The hundred little lands within one little land that lie,
Where Severn seeks the sunset isles or Sussex scales the sky.

And what is theirs, though...

One memory trembles on our lips;
It throbs in every breast;
In tear-dimmed eyes, in mirth's eclipse,
The shadow stands confessed.

O silent voice, that cheered so long
Our manhood's marching day,
Without thy breath of heavenly song,
How weary seems the way!

Vain every pictured phrase to tell
Our sorrowing heart's desire, -
The shattered harp, the broken shell,
The silent unstrung lyre;

For youth was round us while he sang;
It glowed in every tone;
With bridal chimes the echoes rang,
And made the past our own.

Oh blissful dream! Our nursery joys
We know must have an end,
But love and friendship's broken toys
May God's good angels mend!

The cheering smile, the voice of mirth
And laughter's gay surprise
T...