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+Project Gutenberg's Etext of New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson
+#19 in our series by Robert Louis Stevenson
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+New Poems
+
+by Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+February, 1996  [Etext #441]
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Etext of New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson
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+New Poems - Robert Louis Stevenson - 1918 edition
+Scanned and proofed by David Price, email
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+
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+
+
+
+New Poems
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PRAYER
+LO! IN THINE HONEST EYES I READ
+THOUGH DEEP INDIFFERENCE SHOULD DROWSE
+MY HEART, WHEN FIRST THE BLACKBIRD SINGS
+I DREAMED OF FOREST ALLEYS FAIR
+ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER
+DEDICATION
+THE OLD CHIMAERAS, OLD RECEIPTS
+PRELUDE
+THE VANQUISHED KNIGHT
+TO THE COMMISSIONERS OF NORTHERN LIGHTS
+THE RELIC TAKEN, WHAT AVAILS THE SHRINE?
+ABOUT THE SHELTERED GARDEN GROUND
+AFTER READING "ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA"
+I KNOW NOT HOW, BUT AS I COUNT
+SPRING SONG
+THE SUMMER SUN SHONE ROUND ME
+YOU LOOKED SO TEMPTING IN THE PEW
+LOVE'S VICISSITUDES
+DUDDINGSTONE
+STOUT MARCHES LEAD TO CERTAIN ENDS
+AWAY WITH FUNERAL MUSIC
+TO SYDNEY
+HAD I THE POWER THAT HAVE THE WILL
+O DULL COLD NORTHERN SKY
+APOLOGETIC POSTSCRIPT OF A YEAR LATER
+TO MARCUS
+TO OTTILIE
+THIS GLOOMY NORTHERN DAY
+THE WIND IS WITHOUT THERE AND HOWLS IN THE TREES
+A VALENTINE'S SONG
+HAIL!  CHILDISH SLAVES OF SOCIAL RULES
+SWALLOWS TRAVEL TO AND FRO
+TO MESDAMES ZASSETSKY AND GARSCHINE
+TO MADAME GARSCHINE
+MUSIC AT THE VILLA MARINA
+FEAR NOT, DEAR FRIEND, BUT FREELY LIVE YOUR DAYS
+LET LOVE GO, IF GO SHE WILL
+I DO NOT FEAR TO OWN ME KIN
+I AM LIKE ONE THAT FOR LONG DAYS HAD SATE
+VOLUNTARY
+ON NOW, ALTHOUGH THE YEAR BE DONE
+IN THE GREEN AND GALLANT SPRING
+DEATH, TO THE DEAD FOR EVERMORE
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+I WHO ALL THE WINTER THROUGH
+LOVE, WHAT IS LOVE?
+SOON OUR FRIENDS PERISH
+AS ONE WHO HAVING WANDERED ALL NIGHT LONG
+STRANGE ARE THE WAYS OF MEN
+THE WIND BLEW SHRILL AND SMART
+MAN SAILS THE DEEP AWHILE
+THE COCK'S CLEAR VOICE INTO THE CLEARER AIR
+NOW WHEN THE NUMBER OF MY YEARS
+WHAT MAN MAY LEARN, WHAT MAN MAY DO
+SMALL IS THE TRUST WHEN LOVE IS GREEN
+KNOW YOU THE RIVER NEAR TO GREZ
+IT'S FORTH ACROSS THE ROARING FOAM
+AN ENGLISH BREEZE
+AS IN THEIR FLIGHT THE BIRDS OF SONG
+THE PIPER
+TO MRS. MACMARLAND
+TO MISS CORNISH
+TALES OF ARABIA
+BEHOLD, AS GOBLINS DARK OF MIEN
+STILL I LOVE TO RHYME
+LONG TIME I LAY IN LITTLE EASE
+FLOWER GOD, GOD OF THE SPRING
+COME, MY BELOVED, HEAR FROM ME
+SINCE YEARS AGO FOR EVERMORE
+ENVOY FOR "A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES"
+FOR RICHMOND'S GARDEN WALL
+HAIL, GUEST, AND ENTER FREELY!
+LO, NOW, MY GUEST
+SO LIVE, SO LOVE, SO USE THAT FRAGILE HOUR
+AD SE IPSUM
+BEFORE THIS LITTLE GIFT WAS COME
+GO, LITTLE BOOK - THE ANCIENT PHRASE
+MY LOVE WAS WARM
+DEDICATORY POEM FOR "UNDERWOODS"
+FAREWELL
+THE FAR-FARERS
+COME, MY LITTLE CHILDREN, HERE ARE SONGS FOR YOU
+HOME FROM THE DAISIED MEADOWS
+EARLY IN THE MORNING I HEAR ON YOUR PIANO
+FAIR ISLE AT SEA
+LOUD AND LOW IN THE CHIMNEY
+I LOVE TO BE WARM BY THE RED FIRESIDE
+AT LAST SHE COMES
+MINE EYES WERE SWIFT TO KNOW THEE
+FIXED IS THE DOOM
+MEN ARE HEAVEN'S PIERS
+THE ANGLER ROSE, HE TOOK HIS ROD
+SPRING CAROL
+TO WHAT SHALL I COMPARE HER
+WHEN THE SUN COMES AFTER RAIN
+LATE, O MILLER
+TO FRIENDS AT HOME
+I, WHOM APOLLO SOMETIME VISITED
+TEMPEST TOSSED AND SORE AFFLICTED
+VARIANT FORM OF THE PRECEDING POEM
+I NOW, O FRIEND, WHOM NOISELESSLY THE SNOWS
+SINCE THOU HAST GIVEN ME THIS GOOD HOPE, O GOD
+GOD GAVE TO ME A CHILD IN PART
+OVER THE LAND IS APRIL
+LIGHT AS THE LINNET ON MY WAY I START
+COMIC, HERE IS ADIEU TO THE CITY
+IT BLOWS A SNOWING GALE
+NE SIT ANCILLAE TIBI AMOR PUDOR
+TO ALL THAT LOVE THE FAR AND BLUE
+THOU STRAINEST THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN FERN
+TO ROSABELLE
+NOW BARE TO THE BEHOLDER'S EYE
+THE BOUR-TREE DEN
+SONNETS
+FRAGMENTS
+AIR OF DIABELLI'S
+EPITAPHIUM EROTII
+DE M. ANTONIO
+AD MAGISTRUM LUDI
+AD NEPOTEM
+IN CHARIDEMUM
+DE LIGURRA
+IN LUPUM
+AD QUINTILIANUM
+DE HORTIS JULII MARTIALIS
+AD MARTIALEM
+IN MAXIMUM
+AD OLUM
+DE COENATIONE MICAE
+DE EROTIO PUELLA
+AD PISCATOREM
+
+
+
+
+
+New Poems
+
+
+
+
+PRAYER
+
+
+I ASK good things that I detest,
+With speeches fair;
+Heed not, I pray Thee, Lord, my breast,
+But hear my prayer.
+
+I say ill things I would not say -
+Things unaware:
+Regard my breast, Lord, in Thy day,
+And not my prayer.
+
+My heart is evil in Thy sight:
+My good thoughts flee:
+O Lord, I cannot wish aright -
+Wish Thou for me.
+
+O bend my words and acts to Thee,
+However ill,
+That I, whate'er I say or be,
+May serve Thee still.
+
+O let my thoughts abide in Thee
+Lest I should fall:
+Show me Thyself in all I see,
+Thou Lord of all.
+
+
+LO! IN THINE HONEST EYES I READ
+
+
+LO! in thine honest eyes I read
+The auspicious beacon that shall lead,
+After long sailing in deep seas,
+To quiet havens in June ease.
+
+Thy voice sings like an inland bird
+First by the seaworn sailor heard;
+And like road sheltered from life's sea
+Thine honest heart is unto me.
+
+
+THOUGH DEEP INDIFFERENCE SHOULD DROWSE
+
+
+THOUGH deep indifference should drowse
+The sluggish life beneath my brows,
+And all the external things I see
+Grow snow-showers in the street to me,
+Yet inmost in my stormy sense
+Thy looks shall be an influence.
+
+Though other loves may come and go
+And long years sever us below,
+Shall the thin ice that grows above
+Freeze the deep centre-well of love?
+No, still below light amours, thou
+Shalt rule me as thou rul'st me now.
+
+Year following year shall only set
+Fresh gems upon thy coronet;
+And Time, grown lover, shall delight
+To beautify thee in my sight;
+And thou shalt ever rule in me
+Crowned with the light of memory.
+
+
+MY HEART, WHEN FIRST THE BLACK-BIRD SINGS
+
+
+MY heart, when first the blackbird sings,
+My heart drinks in the song:
+Cool pleasure fills my bosom through
+And spreads each nerve along.
+
+My bosom eddies quietly,
+My heart is stirred and cool
+As when a wind-moved briar sweeps
+A stone into a pool
+
+But unto thee, when thee I meet,
+My pulses thicken fast,
+As when the maddened lake grows black
+And ruffles in the blast.
+
+
+I DREAMED OF FOREST ALLEYS FAIR
+
+
+I.
+
+I DREAMED of forest alleys fair
+And fields of gray-flowered grass,
+Where by the yellow summer moon
+My Jenny seemed to pass.
+
+I dreamed the yellow summer moon,
+Behind a cedar wood,
+Lay white on fields of rippling grass
+Where I and Jenny stood.
+
+I dreamed - but fallen through my dream,
+In a rainy land I lie
+Where wan wet morning crowns the hills
+Of grim reality.
+
+II.
+
+I am as one that keeps awake
+All night in the month of June,
+That lies awake in bed to watch
+The trees and great white moon.
+
+For memories of love are more
+Than the white moon there above,
+And dearer than quiet moonshine
+Are the thoughts of her I love.
+
+III.
+
+Last night I lingered long without
+My last of loves to see.
+Alas! the moon-white window-panes
+Stared blindly back on me.
+
+To-day I hold her very hand,
+Her very waist embrace -
+Like clouds across a pool, I read
+Her thoughts upon her face.
+
+And yet, as now, through her clear eyes
+I seek the inner shrine -
+I stoop to read her virgin heart
+In doubt if it be mine -
+
+O looking long and fondly thus,
+What vision should I see?
+No vision, but my own white face
+That grins and mimics me.
+
+IV.
+
+Once more upon the same old seat
+In the same sunshiny weather,
+The elm-trees' shadows at their feet
+And foliage move together.
+
+The shadows shift upon the grass,
+The dial point creeps on;
+The clear sun shines, the loiterers pass,
+As then they passed and shone.
+
+But now deep sleep is on my heart,
+Deep sleep and perfect rest.
+Hope's flutterings now disturb no more
+The quiet of my breast.
+
+
+ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER
+
+
+AS swallows turning backward
+When half-way o'er the sea,
+At one word's trumpet summons
+They came again to me -
+The hopes I had forgotten
+Came back again to me.
+
+I know not which to credit,
+O lady of my heart!
+Your eyes that bade me linger,
+Your words that bade us part -
+I know not which to credit,
+My reason or my heart.
+
+But be my hopes rewarded,
+Or be they but in vain,
+I have dreamed a golden vision,
+I have gathered in the grain -
+I have dreamed a golden vision,
+I have not lived in vain.
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+
+MY first gift and my last, to you
+I dedicate this fascicle of songs -
+The only wealth I have:
+Just as they are, to you.
+
+I speak the truth in soberness, and say
+I had rather bring a light to your clear eyes,
+Had rather hear you praise
+This bosomful of songs
+
+Than that the whole, hard world with one consent,
+In one continuous chorus of applause
+Poured forth for me and mine
+The homage of ripe praise.
+
+I write the finis here against my love,
+This is my love's last epitaph and tomb.
+Here the road forks, and I
+Go my way, far from yours.
+
+
+THE OLD CHIMAERAS, OLD RECEIPTS
+
+
+THE old Chimaeras, old receipts
+For making "happy land,"
+The old political beliefs
+Swam close before my hand.
+
+The grand old communistic myths
+In a middle state of grace,
+Quite dead, but not yet gone to Hell,
+And walking for a space,
+
+Quite dead, and looking it, and yet
+All eagerness to show
+The Social-Contract forgeries
+By Chatterton - Rousseau -
+
+A hundred such as these I tried,
+And hundreds after that,
+I fitted Social Theories
+As one would fit a hat!
+
+Full many a marsh-fire lured me on,
+I reached at many a star,
+I reached and grasped them and behold -
+The stump of a cigar!
+
+All through the sultry sweltering day
+The sweat ran down my brow,
+The still plains heard my distant strokes
+That have been silenced now.
+
+This way and that, now up, now down,
+I hailed full many a blow.
+Alas! beneath my weary arm
+The thicket seemed to grow.
+
+I take the lesson, wipe my brow
+And throw my axe aside,
+And, sorely wearied, I go home
+In the tranquil eventide.
+
+And soon the rising moon, that lights
+The eve of my defeat,
+Shall see me sitting as of yore
+By my old master's feet.
+
+
+PRELUDE
+
+
+BY sunny market-place and street
+Wherever I go my drum I beat,
+And wherever I go in my coat of red
+The ribbons flutter about my head.
+
+I seek recruits for wars to come -
+For slaughterless wars I beat the drum,
+And the shilling I give to each new ally
+Is hope to live and courage to die.
+
+I know that new recruits shall come
+Wherever I beat the sounding drum,
+Till the roar of the march by country and town
+Shall shake the tottering Dagons down.
+
+For I was objectless as they
+And loitering idly day by day;
+But whenever I heard the recruiters come,
+I left my all to follow the drum.
+
+
+THE VANQUISHED KNIGHT
+
+
+I HAVE left all upon the shameful field,
+Honour and Hope, my God, and all but life;
+Spurless, with sword reversed and dinted shield,
+Degraded and disgraced, I leave the strife.
+
+From him that hath not, shall there not be taken
+E'en that he hath, when he deserts the strife?
+Life left by all life's benefits forsaken,
+O keep the promise, Lord, and take the life.
+
+
+TO THE COMMISSIONERS OF NORTHERN LIGHTS
+
+
+I SEND to you, commissioners,
+A paper that may please ye, sirs
+(For troth they say it might be worse
+An' I believe't)
+And on your business lay my curse
+Before I leav't.
+
+I thocht I'd serve wi' you, sirs, yince,
+But I've thocht better of it since;
+The maitter I will nowise mince,
+But tell ye true:
+I'll service wi' some ither prince,
+An' no wi' you.
+
+I've no been very deep, ye'll think,
+Cam' delicately to the brink
+An' when the water gart me shrink
+Straucht took the rue,
+An' didna stoop my fill to drink -
+I own it true.
+
+I kent on cape and isle, a light
+Burnt fair an' clearly ilka night;
+But at the service I took fright,
+As sune's I saw,
+An' being still a neophite
+Gaed straucht awa'.
+
+Anither course I now begin,
+The weeg I'll cairry for my sin,
+The court my voice shall echo in,
+An' - wha can tell? -
+Some ither day I may be yin
+O' you mysel'.
+
+
+THE RELIC TAKEN, WHAT AVAILS THE SHRINE?
+
+
+THE relic taken, what avails the shrine?
+The locket, pictureless?  O heart of mine,
+Art thou not worse than that,
+Still warm, a vacant nest where love once sat?
+
+Her image nestled closer at my heart
+Than cherished memories, healed every smart
+And warmed it more than wine
+Or the full summer sun in noon-day shine.
+
+This was the little weather gleam that lit
+The cloudy promontories - the real charm was
+That gilded hills and woods
+And walked beside me thro' the solitudes.
+
+The sun is set.  My heart is widowed now
+Of that companion-thought.  Alone I plough
+The seas of life, and trace
+A separate furrow far from her and grace.
+
+
+ABOUT THE SHELTERED GARDEN GROUND
+
+
+ABOUT the sheltered garden ground
+The trees stand strangely still.
+The vale ne'er seemed so deep before,
+Nor yet so high the hill.
+
+An awful sense of quietness,
+A fulness of repose,
+Breathes from the dewy garden-lawns,
+The silent garden rows.
+
+As the hoof-beats of a troop of horse
+Heard far across a plain,
+A nearer knowledge of great thoughts
+Thrills vaguely through my brain.
+
+I lean my head upon my arm,
+My heart's too full to think;
+Like the roar of seas, upon my heart
+Doth the morning stillness sink.
+
+
+AFTER READING "ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA"
+
+
+AS when the hunt by holt and field
+Drives on with horn and strife,
+Hunger of hopeless things pursues
+Our spirits throughout life.
+
+The sea's roar fills us aching full
+Of objectless desire -
+The sea's roar, and the white moon-shine,
+And the reddening of the fire.
+
+Who talks to me of reason now?
+It would be more delight
+To have died in Cleopatra's arms
+Than be alive to-night.
+
+
+I KNOW NOT HOW, BUT AS I COUNT
+
+
+I KNOW not how, but as I count
+The beads of former years,
+Old laughter catches in my throat
+With the very feel of tears.
+
+
+SPRING SONG
+
+
+THE air was full of sun and birds,
+The fresh air sparkled clearly.
+Remembrance wakened in my heart
+And I knew I loved her dearly.
+
+The fallows and the leafless trees
+And all my spirit tingled.
+My earliest thought of love, and Spring's
+First puff of perfume mingled.
+
+In my still heart the thoughts awoke,
+Came lone by lone together -
+Say, birds and Sun and Spring, is Love
+A mere affair of weather?
+
+
+THE SUMMER SUN SHONE ROUND ME
+
+
+THE summer sun shone round me,
+The folded valley lay
+In a stream of sun and odour,
+That sultry summer day.
+
+The tall trees stood in the sunlight
+As still as still could be,
+But the deep grass sighed and rustled
+And bowed and beckoned me.
+
+The deep grass moved and whispered
+And bowed and brushed my face.
+It whispered in the sunshine:
+"The winter comes apace."
+
+
+YOU LOOKED SO TEMPTING IN THE PEW
+
+
+YOU looked so tempting in the pew,
+You looked so sly and calm -
+My trembling fingers played with yours
+As both looked out the Psalm.
+
+Your heart beat hard against my arm,
+My foot to yours was set,
+Your loosened ringlet burned my cheek
+Whenever they two met.
+
+O little, little we hearkened, dear,
+And little, little cared,
+Although the parson sermonised,
+The congregation stared.
+
+
+LOVE'S VICISSITUDES
+
+
+AS Love and Hope together
+Walk by me for a while,
+Link-armed the ways they travel
+For many a pleasant mile -
+Link-armed and dumb they travel,
+They sing not, but they smile.
+
+Hope leaving, Love commences
+To practise on the lute;
+And as he sings and travels
+With lingering, laggard foot,
+Despair plays obligato
+The sentimental flute.
+
+Until in singing garments
+Comes royally, at call -
+Comes limber-hipped Indiff'rence
+Free stepping, straight and tall -
+Comes singing and lamenting,
+The sweetest pipe of all.
+
+
+DUDDINGSTONE
+
+
+WITH caws and chirrupings, the woods
+In this thin sun rejoice.
+The Psalm seems but the little kirk
+That sings with its own voice.
+
+The cloud-rifts share their amber light
+With the surface of the mere -
+I think the very stones are glad
+To feel each other near.
+
+Once more my whole heart leaps and swells
+And gushes o'er with glee;
+The fingers of the sun and shade
+Touch music stops in me.
+
+Now fancy paints that bygone day
+When you were here, my fair -
+The whole lake rang with rapid skates
+In the windless winter air.
+
+You leaned to me, I leaned to you,
+Our course was smooth as flight -
+We steered - a heel-touch to the left,
+A heel-touch to the right.
+
+We swung our way through flying men,
+Your hand lay fast in mine:
+We saw the shifting crowd dispart,
+The level ice-reach shine.
+
+I swear by yon swan-travelled lake,
+By yon calm hill above,
+I swear had we been drowned that day
+We had been drowned in love.
+
+
+STOUT MARCHES LEAD TO CERTAIN ENDS
+
+
+STOUT marches lead to certain ends,
+We seek no Holy Grail, my friends -
+That dawn should find us every day
+Some fraction farther on our way.
+
+The dumb lands sleep from east to west,
+They stretch and turn and take their rest.
+The cock has crown in the steading-yard,
+But priest and people slumber hard.
+
+We two are early forth, and hear
+The nations snoring far and near.
+So peacefully their rest they take,
+It seems we are the first awake!
+
+- Strong heart! this is no royal way,
+A thousand cross-roads seek the day;
+And, hid from us, to left and right,
+A thousand seekers seek the light.
+
+
+AWAY WITH FUNERAL MUSIC
+
+
+AWAY with funeral music - set
+The pipe to powerful lips -
+The cup of life's for him that drinks
+And not for him that sips.
+
+
+TO SYDNEY
+
+
+NOT thine where marble-still and white
+Old statues share the tempered light
+And mock the uneven modern flight,
+But in the stream
+Of daily sorrow and delight
+To seek a theme.
+
+I too, O friend, have steeled my heart
+Boldly to choose the better part,
+To leave the beaten ways of art,
+And wholly free
+To dare, beyond the scanty chart,
+The deeper sea.
+
+All vain restrictions left behind,
+Frail bark! I loose my anchored mind
+And large, before the prosperous wind
+Desert the strand -
+A new Columbus sworn to find
+The morning land.
+
+Nor too ambitious, friend.  To thee
+I own my weakness.  Not for me
+To sing the enfranchised nations' glee,
+Or count the cost
+Of warships foundered far at sea
+And battles lost.
+
+High on the far-seen, sunny hills,
+Morning-content my bosom fills;
+Well-pleased, I trace the wandering rills
+And learn their birth.
+Far off, the clash of sovereign wills
+May shake the earth.
+
+The nimble circuit of the wheel,
+The uncertain poise of merchant weal,
+Heaven of famine, fire and steel
+When nations fall;
+These, heedful, from afar I feel -
+I mark them all.
+
+But not, my friend, not these I sing,
+My voice shall fill a narrower ring.
+Tired souls, that flag upon the wing,
+I seek to cheer:
+Brave wines to strengthen hope I bring,
+Life's cantineer!
+
+Some song that shall be suppling oil
+To weary muscles strained with toil,
+Shall hearten for the daily moil,
+Or widely read
+Make sweet for him that tills the soil
+His daily bread.
+
+Such songs in my flushed hours I dream
+(High thought) instead of armour gleam
+Or warrior cantos ream by ream
+To load the shelves -
+Songs with a lilt of words, that seem
+To sing themselves.
+
+
+HAD I THE POWER THAT HAVE THE WILL
+
+
+HAD I the power that have the will,
+The enfeebled will - a modern curse -
+This book of mine should blossom still
+A perfect garden-ground of verse.
+
+White placid marble gods should keep
+Good watch in every shadowy lawn;
+And from clean, easy-breathing sleep
+The birds should waken me at dawn.
+
+- A fairy garden; - none the less
+Throughout these gracious paths of mine
+All day there should be free access
+For stricken hearts and lives that pine;
+
+And by the folded lawns all day -
+No idle gods for such a land -
+All active Love should take its way
+With active Labour hand in hand.
+
+
+O DULL COLD NORTHERN SKY
+
+
+O DULL cold northern sky,
+O brawling sabbath bells,
+O feebly twittering Autumn bird that tells
+The year is like to die!
+
+O still, spoiled trees, O city ways,
+O sun desired in vain,
+O dread presentiment of coming rain
+That cloys the sullen days!
+
+Thee, heart of mine, I greet.
+In what hard mountain pass
+Striv'st thou?  In what importunate morass
+Sink now thy weary feet?
+
+Thou run'st a hopeless race
+To win despair.  No crown
+Awaits success, but leaden gods look down
+On thee, with evil face.
+
+And those that would befriend
+And cherish thy defeat,
+With angry welcome shall turn sour the sweet
+Home-coming of the end.
+
+Yea, those that offer praise
+To idleness, shall yet
+Insult thee, coming glorious in the sweat
+Of honourable ways.
+
+
+APOLOGETIC POSTSCRIPT OF A YEAR LATER
+
+
+IF you see this song, my dear,
+And last year's toast,
+I'm confoundedly in fear
+You'll be serious and severe
+About the boast.
+
+Blame not that I sought such aid
+To cure regret.
+I was then so lowly laid
+I used all the Gasconnade
+That I could get.
+
+Being snubbed is somewhat smart,
+Believe, my sweet;
+And I needed all my art
+To restore my broken heart
+To its conceit.
+
+Come and smile, dear, and forget
+I boasted so,
+I apologise - regret -
+It was all a jest; - and - yet -
+I do not know.
+
+
+TO MARCUS
+
+
+YOU have been far, and I
+Been farther yet,
+Since last, in foul or fair
+An impecunious pair,
+Below this northern sky
+Of ours, we met.
+
+Now winter night shall see
+Again us two,
+While howls the tempest higher,
+Sit warmly by the fire
+And dream and plan, as we
+Were wont to do.
+
+And, hand in hand, at large
+Our thoughts shall walk
+While storm and gusty rain,
+Again and yet again,
+Shall drive their noisy charge
+Across the talk.
+
+The pleasant future still
+Shall smile to me,
+And hope with wooing hands
+Wave on to fairy lands
+All over dale and hill
+And earth and sea.
+
+And you who doubt the sky
+And fear the sun -
+You - Christian with the pack -
+You shall not wander back
+For I am Hopeful - I
+Will cheer you on.
+
+Come - where the great have trod,
+The great shall lead -
+Come, elbow through the press,
+Pluck Fortune by the dress -
+By God, we must - by God,
+We shall succeed.
+
+
+TO OTTILIE
+
+
+YOU remember, I suppose,
+How the August sun arose,
+And how his face
+Woke to trill and carolette
+All the cages that were set
+About the place.
+
+In the tender morning light
+All around lay strange and bright
+And still and sweet,
+And the gray doves unafraid
+Went their morning promenade
+Along the street.
+
+
+THIS GLOOMY NORTHERN DAY
+
+
+THIS gloomy northern day,
+Or this yet gloomier night,
+Has moved a something high
+In my cold heart; and I,
+That do not often pray,
+Would pray to-night.
+
+And first on Thee I call
+For bread, O God of might!
+Enough of bread for all, -
+That through the famished town
+Cold hunger may lie down
+With none to-night.
+
+I pray for hope no less,
+Strong-sinewed hope, O Lord,
+That to the struggling young
+May preach with brazen tongue
+Stout Labour, high success,
+And bright reward.
+
+And last, O Lord, I pray
+For hearts resigned and bold
+To trudge the dusty way -
+Hearts stored with song and joke
+And warmer than a cloak
+Against the cold.
+
+If nothing else he had,
+He who has this, has all.
+This comforts under pain;
+This, through the stinging rain,
+Keeps ragamuffin glad
+Behind the wall.
+
+This makes the sanded inn
+A palace for a Prince,
+And this, when griefs begin
+And cruel fate annoys,
+Can bring to mind the joys
+Of ages since.
+
+
+THE WIND IS WITHOUT THERE AND HOWLS IN THE TREES
+
+
+THE wind is without there and howls in the trees,
+And the rain-flurries drum on the glass:
+Alone by the fireside with elbows on knees
+I can number the hours as they pass.
+Yet now, when to cheer me the crickets begin,
+And my pipe is just happily lit,
+Believe me, my friend, tho' the evening draws in,
+That not all uncontested I sit.
+
+Alone, did I say?  O no, nowise alone
+With the Past sitting warm on my knee,
+To gossip of days that are over and gone,
+But still charming to her and to me.
+With much to be glad of and much to deplore,
+Yet, as these days with those we compare,
+Believe me, my friend, tho' the sorrows seem more
+They are somehow more easy to bear.
+
+And thou, faded Future, uncertain and frail,
+As I cherish thy light in each draught,
+His lamp is not more to the miner - their sail
+Is not more to the crew on the raft.
+For Hope can make feeble ones earnest and brave,
+And, as forth thro' the years I look on,
+Believe me, my friend, between this and the grave,
+I see wonderful things to be done.
+
+To do or to try; and, believe me, my friend,
+If the call should come early for me,
+I can leave these foundations uprooted, and tend
+For some new city over the sea.
+To do or to try; and if failure be mine,
+And if Fortune go cross to my plan,
+Believe me, my friend, tho' I mourn the design
+I shall never lament for the man.
+
+
+A VALENTINE'S SONG
+
+
+MOTLEY I count the only wear
+That suits, in this mixed world, the truly wise,
+Who boldly smile upon despair
+And shake their bells in Grandam Grundy's eyes.
+Singers should sing with such a goodly cheer
+That the bare listening should make strong like wine,
+At this unruly time of year,
+The Feast of Valentine.
+
+We do not now parade our "oughts"
+And "shoulds" and motives and beliefs in God.
+Their life lies all indoors; sad thoughts
+Must keep the house, while gay thoughts go abroad,
+Within we hold the wake for hopes deceased;
+But in the public streets, in wind or sun,
+Keep open, at the annual feast,
+The puppet-booth of fun.
+
+Our powers, perhaps, are small to please,
+But even negro-songs and castanettes,
+Old jokes and hackneyed repartees
+Are more than the parade of vain regrets.
+Let Jacques stand Wert(h)ering by the wounded deer -
+We shall make merry, honest friends of mine,
+At this unruly time of year,
+The Feast of Valentine.
+
+I know how, day by weary day,
+Hope fades, love fades, a thousand pleasures fade.
+I have not trudged in vain that way
+On which life's daylight darkens, shade by shade.
+And still, with hopes decreasing, griefs increased,
+Still, with what wit I have shall I, for one,
+Keep open, at the annual feast,
+The puppet-booth of fun.
+
+I care not if the wit be poor,
+The old worn motley stained with rain and tears,
+If but the courage still endure
+That filled and strengthened hope in earlier years;
+If still, with friends averted, fate severe,
+A glad, untainted cheerfulness be mine
+To greet the unruly time of year,
+The Feast of Valentine.
+
+Priest, I am none of thine, and see
+In the perspective of still hopeful youth
+That Truth shall triumph over thee -
+Truth to one's self - I know no other truth.
+I see strange days for thee and thine, O priest,
+And how your doctrines, fallen one by one,
+Shall furnish at the annual feast
+The puppet-booth of fun.
+
+Stand on your putrid ruins - stand,
+White neck-clothed bigot, fixedly the same,
+Cruel with all things but the hand,
+Inquisitor in all things but the name.
+Back, minister of Christ and source of fear -
+We cherish freedom - back with thee and thine
+From this unruly time of year,
+The Feast of Valentine.
+
+Blood thou mayest spare; but what of tears?
+But what of riven households, broken faith -
+Bywords that cling through all men's years
+And drag them surely down to shame and death?
+Stand back, O cruel man, O foe of youth,
+And let such men as hearken not thy voice
+Press freely up the road to truth,
+The King's highway of choice.
+
+
+HAIL! CHILDISH SLAVES OF SOCIAL RULES
+
+
+HAIL!  Childish slaves of social rules
+You had yourselves a hand in making!
+How I could shake your faith, ye fools,
+If but I thought it worth the shaking.
+I see, and pity you; and then
+Go, casting off the idle pity,
+In search of better, braver men,
+My own way freely through the city.
+
+My own way freely, and not yours;
+And, careless of a town's abusing,
+Seek real friendship that endures
+Among the friends of my own choosing.
+I'll choose my friends myself, do you hear?
+And won't let Mrs. Grundy do it,
+Tho' all I honour and hold dear
+And all I hope should move me to it.
+
+I take my old coat from the shelf -
+I am a man of little breeding.
+And only dress to please myself -
+I own, a very strange proceeding.
+I smoke a pipe abroad, because
+To all cigars I much prefer it,
+And as I scorn your social laws
+My choice has nothing to deter it.
+
+Gladly I trudge the footpath way,
+While you and yours roll by in coaches
+In all the pride of fine array,
+Through all the city's thronged approaches.
+O fine religious, decent folk,
+In Virtue's flaunting gold and scarlet,
+I sneer between two puffs of smoke, -
+Give me the publican and harlot.
+
+Ye dainty-spoken, stiff, severe
+Seed of the migrated Philistian,
+One whispered question in your ear -
+Pray, what was Christ, if you be Christian?
+If Christ were only here just now,
+Among the city's wynds and gables
+Teaching the life he taught us, how
+Would he be welcome to your tables?
+
+I go and leave your logic-straws,
+Your former-friends with face averted,
+Your petty ways and narrow laws,
+Your Grundy and your God, deserted.
+From your frail ark of lies, I flee
+I know not where, like Noah's raven.
+Full to the broad, unsounded sea
+I swim from your dishonest haven.
+
+Alone on that unsounded deep,
+Poor waif, it may be I shall perish,
+Far from the course I thought to keep,
+Far from the friends I hoped to cherish.
+It may be that I shall sink, and yet
+Hear, thro' all taunt and scornful laughter,
+Through all defeat and all regret,
+The stronger swimmers coming after.
+
+
+SWALLOWS TRAVEL TO AND FRO
+
+
+SWALLOWS travel to and fro,
+And the great winds come and go,
+And the steady breezes blow,
+Bearing perfume, bearing love.
+Breezes hasten, swallows fly,
+Towered clouds forever ply,
+And at noonday, you and I
+See the same sunshine above.
+
+Dew and rain fall everywhere,
+Harvests ripen, flowers are fair,
+And the whole round earth is bare
+To the moonshine and the sun;
+And the live air, fanned with wings,
+Bright with breeze and sunshine, brings
+Into contact distant things,
+And makes all the countries one.
+
+Let us wander where we will,
+Something kindred greets us still;
+Something seen on vale or hill
+Falls familiar on the heart;
+So, at scent or sound or sight,
+Severed souls by day and night
+Tremble with the same delight -
+Tremble, half the world apart.
+
+
+
+TO MESDAMES ZASSETSKY AND GARSCHINE
+
+
+THE wind may blaw the lee-gang way
+And aye the lift be mirk an' gray,
+An deep the moss and steigh the brae
+Where a' maun gang -
+There's still an hoor in ilka day
+For luve and sang.
+
+And canty hearts are strangely steeled.
+By some dikeside they'll find a bield,
+Some couthy neuk by muir or field
+They're sure to hit,
+Where, frae the blatherin' wind concealed,
+They'll rest a bit.
+
+An' weel for them if kindly fate
+Send ower the hills to them a mate;
+They'll crack a while o' kirk an' State,
+O' yowes an' rain:
+An' when it's time to take the gate,
+Tak' ilk his ain.
+
+- Sic neuk beside the southern sea
+I soucht - sic place o' quiet lee
+Frae a' the winds o' life.  To me,
+Fate, rarely fair,
+Had set a freendly company
+To meet me there.
+
+Kindly by them they gart me sit,
+An' blythe was I to bide a bit.
+Licht as o' some hame fireside lit
+My life for me.
+- Ower early maun I rise an' quit
+This happy lee.
+
+
+TO MADAME GARSCHINE
+
+
+WHAT is the face, the fairest face, till Care,
+Till Care the graver - Care with cunning hand,
+Etches content thereon and makes it fair,
+Or constancy, and love, and makes it grand?
+
+
+MUSIC AT THE VILLA MARINA
+
+
+FOR some abiding central source of power,
+Strong-smitten steady chords, ye seem to flow
+And, flowing, carry virtue.  Far below,
+The vain tumultuous passions of the hour
+Fleet fast and disappear; and as the sun
+Shines on the wake of tempests, there is cast
+O'er all the shattered ruins of my past
+A strong contentment as of battles won.
+
+And yet I cry in anguish, as I hear
+The long drawn pageant of your passage roll
+Magnificently forth into the night.
+To yon fair land ye come from, to yon sphere
+Of strength and love where now ye shape your flight,
+O even wings of music, bear my soul!
+
+Ye have the power, if but ye had the will,
+Strong-smitten steady chords in sequence grand,
+To bear me forth into that tranquil land
+Where good is no more ravelled up with ill;
+Where she and I, remote upon some hill
+Or by some quiet river's windless strand,
+May live, and love, and wander hand in hand,
+And follow nature simply, and be still.
+
+From this grim world, where, sadly, prisoned, we
+Sit bound with others' heart-strings as with chains,
+And, if one moves, all suffer, - to that Goal,
+If such a land, if such a sphere, there be,
+Thither, from life and all life's joys and pains,
+O even wings of music, bear my soul!
+
+
+FEAR NOT, DEAR FRIEND, BUT FREELY LIVE YOUR DAYS
+
+
+FEAR not, dear friend, but freely live your days
+Though lesser lives should suffer.  Such am I,
+A lesser life, that what is his of sky
+Gladly would give for you, and what of praise.
+Step, without trouble, down the sunlit ways.
+We that have touched your raiment, are made whole
+From all the selfish cankers of man's soul,
+And we would see you happy, dear, or die.
+Therefore be brave, and therefore, dear, be free;
+Try all things resolutely, till the best,
+Out of all lesser betters, you shall find;
+And we, who have learned greatness from you, we,
+Your lovers, with a still, contented mind,
+See you well anchored in some port of rest.
+
+
+LET LOVE GO, IF GO SHE WILL
+
+
+LET love go, if go she will.
+Seek not, O fool, her wanton flight to stay.
+Of all she gives and takes away
+The best remains behind her still.
+
+The best remains behind; in vain
+Joy she may give and take again,
+Joy she may take and leave us pain,
+If yet she leave behind
+The constant mind
+To meet all fortunes nobly, to endure
+All things with a good heart, and still be pure,
+Still to be foremost in the foremost cause,
+And still be worthy of the love that was.
+Love coming is omnipotent indeed,
+But not Love going.  Let her go.  The seed
+Springs in the favouring Summer air, and grows,
+And waxes strong; and when the Summer goes,
+Remains, a perfect tree.
+
+Joy she may give and take again,
+Joy she may take and leave us pain.
+O Love, and what care we?
+For one thing thou hast given, O Love, one thing
+Is ours that nothing can remove;
+And as the King discrowned is still a King,
+The unhappy lover still preserves his love.
+
+
+I DO NOT FEAR TO OWN ME KIN
+
+
+I DO not fear to own me kin
+To the glad clods in which spring flowers begin;
+Or to my brothers, the great trees,
+That speak with pleasant voices in the breeze,
+Loud talkers with the winds that pass;
+Or to my sister, the deep grass.
+
+Of such I am, of such my body is,
+That thrills to reach its lips to kiss.
+That gives and takes with wind and sun and rain
+And feels keen pleasure to the point of pain.
+
+Of such are these,
+The brotherhood of stalwart trees,
+The humble family of flowers,
+That make a light of shadowy bowers
+Or star the edges of the bent:
+They give and take sweet colour and sweet scent;
+They joy to shed themselves abroad;
+And tree and flower and grass and sod
+Thrill and leap and live and sing
+With silent voices in the Spring.
+
+Hence I not fear to yield my breath,
+Since all is still unchanged by death;
+Since in some pleasant valley I may be,
+Clod beside clod, or tree by tree,
+Long ages hence, with her I love this hour;
+And feel a lively joy to share
+With her the sun and rain and air,
+To taste her quiet neighbourhood
+As the dumb things of field and wood,
+The clod, the tree, and starry flower,
+Alone of all things have the power.
+
+
+I AM LIKE ONE THAT FOR LONG DAYS HAD SATE
+
+
+I AM like one that for long days had sate,
+With seaward eyes set keen against the gale,
+On some lone foreland, watching sail by sail,
+The portbound ships for one ship that was late;
+And sail by sail, his heart burned up with joy,
+And cruelly was quenched, until at last
+One ship, the looked-for pennant at its mast,
+Bore gaily, and dropt safely past the buoy;
+And lo! the loved one was not there - was dead.
+Then would he watch no more; no more the sea
+With myriad vessels, sail by sail, perplex
+His eyes and mock his longing.  Weary head,
+Take now thy rest; eyes, close; for no more me
+Shall hopes untried elate, or ruined vex.
+
+For thus on love I waited; thus for love
+Strained all my senses eagerly and long;
+Thus for her coming ever trimmed my song;
+Till in the far skies coloured as a dove,
+A bird gold-coloured flickered far and fled
+Over the pathless waterwaste for me;
+And with spread hands I watched the bright bird flee
+And waited, till before me she dropped dead.
+O golden bird in these dove-coloured skies
+How long I sought, how long with wearied eyes
+I sought, O bird, the promise of thy flight!
+And now the morn has dawned, the morn has died,
+The day has come and gone; and once more night
+About my lone life settles, wild and wide.
+
+
+VOLUNTARY
+
+
+HERE in the quiet eve
+My thankful eyes receive
+The quiet light.
+I see the trees stand fair
+Against the faded air,
+And star by star prepare
+The perfect night.
+
+And in my bosom, lo!
+Content and quiet grow
+Toward perfect peace.
+And now when day is done,
+Brief day of wind and sun,
+The pure stars, one by one,
+Their troop increase.
+
+Keen pleasure and keen grief
+Give place to great relief:
+Farewell my tears!
+Still sounds toward me float;
+I hear the bird's small note,
+Sheep from the far sheepcote,
+And lowing steers.
+
+For lo! the war is done,
+Lo, now the battle won,
+The trumpets still.
+The shepherd's slender strain,
+The country sounds again
+Awake in wood and plain,
+On haugh and hill.
+
+Loud wars and loud loves cease.
+I welcome my release;
+And hail once more
+Free foot and way world-wide.
+And oft at eventide
+Light love to talk beside
+The hostel door.
+
+
+ON NOW, ALTHOUGH THE YEAR BE DONE
+
+
+ON now, although the year be done,
+Now, although the love be dead,
+Dead and gone;
+Hear me, O loved and cherished one,
+Give me still the hand that led,
+Led me on.
+
+
+IN THE GREEN AND GALLANT SPRING
+
+
+IN the green and gallant Spring,
+Love and the lyre I thought to sing,
+And kisses sweet to give and take
+By the flowery hawthorn brake.
+
+Now is russet Autumn here,
+Death and the grave and winter drear,
+And I must ponder here aloof
+While the rain is on the roof.
+
+
+DEATH, TO THE DEAD FOR EVERMORE
+
+
+DEATH, to the dead for evermore
+A King, a God, the last, the best of friends -
+Whene'er this mortal journey ends
+Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door;
+Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shore
+Where neither piping bird nor peeping dawn
+Disturbs the eternal sleep,
+But in the stillness far withdrawn
+Our dreamless rest for evermore we keep.
+
+For as from open windows forth we peep
+Upon the night-time star beset
+And with dews for ever wet;
+So from this garish life the spirit peers;
+And lo! as a sleeping city death outspread,
+Where breathe the sleepers evenly; and lo!
+After the loud wars, triumphs, trumpets, tears
+And clamour of man's passion, Death appears,
+And we must rise and go.
+
+Soon are eyes tired with sunshine; soon the ears
+Weary of utterance, seeing all is said;
+Soon, racked by hopes and fears,
+The all-pondering, all-contriving head,
+Weary with all things, wearies of the years;
+And our sad spirits turn toward the dead;
+And the tired child, the body, longs for bed.
+
+
+TO CHARLES BAXTER
+
+
+ON THE DEATH OF THEIR COMMON FRIEND, MR. JOHN ADAM, CLERK OF COURT.
+
+OUR Johnie's deid.  The mair's the pity!
+He's deid, an' deid o' Aqua-vitae.
+O Embro', you're a shrunken city,
+Noo Johnie's deid!
+Tak hands, an' sing a burial ditty
+Ower Johnie's heid.
+
+To see him was baith drink an' meat,
+Gaun linkin' glegly up the street.
+He but to rin or tak a seat,
+The wee bit body!
+Bein' aye unsicken on his feet
+Wi' whusky toddy.
+
+To be aye tosh was Johnie's whim,
+There's nane was better teut than him,
+Though whiles his gravit-knot wad clim'
+Ahint his ear,
+An' whiles he'd buttons oot or in
+The less ae mair.
+
+His hair a' lang about his bree,
+His tap-lip lang by inches three -
+A slockened sort 'mon,' to pree
+A' sensuality -
+A droutly glint was in his e'e
+An' personality.
+
+An' day an' nicht, frae daw to daw,
+Dink an' perjink an' doucely braw,
+Wi' a kind o' Gospel ower a',
+May or October,
+Like Peden, followin' the Law
+An' no that sober.
+
+Whusky an' he were pack thegether.
+Whate'er the hour, whate'er the weather,
+John kept himsel' wi' mistened leather
+An' kindled spunk.
+Wi' him, there was nae askin' whether - 
+John was aye drunk.
+
+The auncient heroes gash an' bauld
+In the uncanny days of auld,
+The task ance fo(u)nd to which th'were called,
+Stack stenchly to it.
+His life sic noble lives recalled,
+Little's he knew it.
+
+Single an' straucht, he went his way.
+He kept the faith an' played the play.
+Whusky an' he were man an' may
+Whate'er betided.
+Bonny in life - in death - this twae
+Were no' divided.
+
+An' wow! but John was unco sport.
+Whiles he wad smile about the Court
+Malvolio-like - whiles snore an' snort
+Was heard afar.
+The idle winter lads' resort
+Was aye John's bar.
+
+What's merely humorous or bonny
+The Worl' regairds wi' cauld astony.
+Drunk men tak' aye mair place than ony;
+An' sae, ye see,
+The gate was aye ower thrang for Johnie -
+Or you an' me.
+
+John micht hae jingled cap an' bells,
+Been a braw fule in silks an' pells,
+In ane o' the auld worl's canty hells
+Paris or Sodom.
+I wadnae had him naething else
+But Johnie Adam.
+
+He suffered - as have a' that wan
+Eternal memory frae man,
+Since e'er the weary worl' began -
+Mister or Madam,
+Keats or Scots Burns, the Spanish Don
+Or Johnie Adam.
+
+We leuch, an' Johnie deid.  An' fegs!
+Hoo he had keept his stoiterin' legs
+Sae lang's he did's a fact that begs
+An explanation.
+He stachers fifty years - syne plegs
+To's destination.
+
+
+I WHO ALL THE WINTER THROUGH
+
+
+I WHO all the winter through
+Cherished other loves than you,
+And kept hands with hoary policy in marriage-bed and pew;
+Now I know the false and true,
+For the earnest sun looks through,
+And my old love comes to meet me in the dawning and the dew.
+
+Now the hedged meads renew
+Rustic odour, smiling hue,
+And the clean air shines and tinkles as the world goes wheeling through;
+And my heart springs up anew,
+Bright and confident and true,
+And my old love comes to meet me in the dawning and the dew.
+
+
+LOVE, WHAT IS LOVE?
+
+
+LOVE - what is love?  A great and aching heart;
+Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair.
+Life - what is life?  Upon a moorland bare
+To see love coming and see love depart.
+
+
+SOON OUR FRIENDS PERISH
+
+
+SOON our friends perish,
+Soon all we cherish
+Fades as days darken - goes as flowers go.
+Soon in December
+Over an ember,
+Lonely we hearken, as loud winds blow.
+
+
+AS ONE WHO HAVING WANDERED ALL NIGHT LONG
+
+
+AS one who having wandered all night long
+In a perplexed forest, comes at length
+In the first hours, about the matin song,
+And when the sun uprises in his strength,
+To the fringed margin of the wood, and sees,
+Gazing afar before him, many a mile
+Of falling country, many fields and trees,
+And cities and bright streams and far-off Ocean's smile:
+
+I, O Melampus, halting, stand at gaze:
+I, liberated, look abroad on life,
+Love, and distress, and dusty travelling ways,
+The steersman's helm, the surgeon's helpful knife,
+On the lone ploughman's earth-upturning share,
+The revelry of cities and the sound
+Of seas, and mountain-tops aloof in air,
+And of the circling earth the unsupported round:
+
+I, looking, wonder: I, intent, adore;
+And, O Melampus, reaching forth my hands
+In adoration, cry aloud and soar
+In spirit, high above the supine lands
+And the low caves of mortal things, and flee
+To the last fields of the universe untrod,
+Where is no man, nor any earth, nor sea,
+And the contented soul is all alone with God.
+
+
+STRANGE ARE THE WAYS OF MEN
+
+
+STRANGE are the ways of men,
+And strange the ways of God!
+We tread the mazy paths
+That all our fathers trod.
+
+We tread them undismayed,
+And undismayed behold
+The portents of the sky,
+The things that were of old.
+
+The fiery stars pursue
+Their course in heav'n on high;
+And round the 'leaguered town,
+Crest-tossing heroes cry.
+
+Crest-tossing heroes cry;
+And martial fifes declare
+How small, to mortal minds,
+Is merely mortal care.
+
+And to the clang of steel
+And cry of piercing flute
+Upon the azure peaks
+A God shall plant his foot:
+
+A God in arms shall stand,
+And seeing wide and far
+The green and golden earth,
+The killing tide of war,
+
+He, with uplifted arm,
+Shall to the skies proclaim
+The gleeful fate of man,
+The noble road to fame!
+
+
+THE WIND BLEW SHRILL AND SMART
+
+
+THE wind blew shrill and smart,
+And the wind awoke my heart
+Again to go a-sailing o'er the sea,
+To hear the cordage moan
+And the straining timbers groan,
+And to see the flying pennon lie a-lee.
+
+O sailor of the fleet,
+It is time to stir the feet!
+It's time to man the dingy and to row!
+It's lay your hand in mine
+And it's empty down the wine,
+And it's drain a health to death before we go!
+
+To death, my lads, we sail;
+And it's death that blows the gale
+And death that holds the tiller as we ride.
+For he's the king of all
+In the tempest and the squall,
+And the ruler of the Ocean wild and wide!
+
+
+MAN SAILS THE DEEP AWHILE
+
+
+MAN sails the deep awhile;
+Loud runs the roaring tide;
+The seas are wild and wide;
+O'er many a salt, o'er many a desert mile,
+The unchained breakers ride,
+The quivering stars beguile.
+
+Hope bears the sole command;
+Hope, with unshaken eyes,
+Sees flaw and storm arise;
+Hope, the good steersman, with unwearying hand,
+Steers, under changing skies,
+Unchanged toward the land.
+
+O wind that bravely blows!
+O hope that sails with all
+Where stars and voices call!
+O ship undaunted that forever goes
+Where God, her admiral,
+His battle signal shows!
+
+What though the seas and wind
+Far on the deep should whelm
+Colours and sails and helm?
+There, too, you touch that port that you designed -
+There, in the mid-seas' realm,
+Shall you that haven find.
+
+Well hast thou sailed: now die,
+To die is not to sleep.
+Still your true course you keep,
+O sailor soul, still sailing for the sky;
+And fifty fathom deep
+Your colours still shall fly.
+
+
+THE COCK'S CLEAR VOICE INTO THE CLEARER AIR
+
+
+THE cock's clear voice into the clearer air
+Where westward far I roam,
+Mounts with a thrill of hope,
+Falls with a sigh of home.
+
+A rural sentry, he from farm and field
+The coming morn descries,
+And, mankind's bugler, wakes
+The camp of enterprise.
+
+He sings the morn upon the westward hills
+Strange and remote and wild;
+He sings it in the land
+Where once I was a child.
+
+He brings to me dear voices of the past,
+The old land and the years:
+My father calls for me,
+My weeping spirit hears.
+
+Fife, fife, into the golden air, O bird,
+And sing the morning in;
+For the old days are past
+And new days begin.
+
+
+NOW WHEN THE NUMBER OF MY YEARS
+
+
+NOW when the number of my years
+Is all fulfilled, and I
+From sedentary life
+Shall rouse me up to die,
+Bury me low and let me lie
+Under the wide and starry sky.
+Joying to live, I joyed to die,
+Bury me low and let me lie.
+
+Clear was my soul, my deeds were free,
+Honour was called my name,
+I fell not back from fear
+Nor followed after fame.
+Bury me low and let me lie
+Under the wide and starry sky.
+Joying to live, I joyed to die,
+Bury me low and let me lie.
+
+Bury me low in valleys green
+And where the milder breeze
+Blows fresh along the stream,
+Sings roundly in the trees -
+Bury me low and let me lie
+Under the wide and starry sky.
+Joying to live, I joyed to die,
+Bury me low and let me lie.
+
+
+WHAT MAN MAY LEARN, WHAT MAN MAY DO
+
+
+WHAT man may learn, what man may do,
+Of right or wrong of false or true,
+While, skipper-like, his course he steers
+Through nine and twenty mingled years,
+Half misconceived and half forgot,
+So much I know and practise not.
+
+Old are the words of wisdom, old
+The counsels of the wise and bold:
+To close the ears, to check the tongue,
+To keep the pining spirit young;
+To act the right, to say the true,
+And to be kind whate'er you do.
+
+Thus we across the modern stage
+Follow the wise of every age;
+And, as oaks grow and rivers run
+Unchanged in the unchanging sun,
+So the eternal march of man
+Goes forth on an eternal plan.
+
+
+SMALL IS THE TRUST WHEN LOVE IS GREEN
+
+
+SMALL is the trust when love is green
+In sap of early years;
+A little thing steps in between
+And kisses turn to tears.
+
+Awhile - and see how love be grown
+In loveliness and power!
+Awhile, it loves the sweets alone,
+But next it loves the sour.
+
+A little love is none at all
+That wanders or that fears;
+A hearty love dwells still at call
+To kisses or to tears.
+
+Such then be mine, my love to give,
+And such be yours to take:-
+A faith to hold, a life to live,
+For lovingkindness' sake:
+
+Should you be sad, should you be gay,
+Or should you prove unkind,
+A love to hold the growing way
+And keep the helping mind:-
+
+A love to turn the laugh on care
+When wrinkled care appears,
+And, with an equal will, to share
+Your losses and your tears.
+
+
+KNOW YOU THE RIVER NEAR TO GREZ
+
+
+KNOW you the river near to Grez,
+A river deep and clear?
+Among the lilies all the way,
+That ancient river runs to-day
+From snowy weir to weir.
+
+Old as the Rhine of great renown,
+She hurries clear and fast,
+She runs amain by field and town
+From south to north, from up to down,
+To present on from past.
+
+The love I hold was borne by her;
+And now, though far away,
+My lonely spirit hears the stir
+Of water round the starling spur
+Beside the bridge at Grez.
+
+So may that love forever hold
+In life an equal pace;
+So may that love grow never old,
+But, clear and pure and fountain-cold,
+Go on from grace to grace.
+
+
+IT'S FORTH ACROSS THE ROARING FOAM
+
+
+IT'S forth across the roaring foam, and on towards the west,
+It's many a lonely league from home, o'er many a mountain crest,
+From where the dogs of Scotland call the sheep around the fold,
+To where the flags are flying beside the Gates of Gold.
+
+Where all the deep-sea galleons ride that come to bring the corn,
+Where falls the fog at eventide and blows the breeze at morn;
+It's there that I was sick and sad, alone and poor and cold,
+In yon distressful city beside the Gates of Gold.
+
+I slept as one that nothing knows; but far along my way,
+Before the morning God rose and planned the coming day;
+Afar before me forth he went, as through the sands of old,
+And chose the friends to help me beside the Gates of Gold.
+
+I have been near, I have been far, my back's been at the wall,
+Yet aye and ever shone the star to guide me through it all:
+The love of God, the help of man, they both shall make me bold
+Against the gates of darkness as beside the Gates of Gold.
+
+
+AN ENGLISH BREEZE
+
+
+UP with the sun, the breeze arose,
+Across the talking corn she goes,
+And smooth she rustles far and wide
+Through all the voiceful countryside.
+
+Through all the land her tale she tells;
+She spins, she tosses, she compels
+The kites, the clouds, the windmill sails
+And all the trees in all the dales.
+
+God calls us, and the day prepares
+With nimble, gay and gracious airs:
+And from Penzance to Maidenhead
+The roads last night He watered.
+
+God calls us from inglorious ease,
+Forth and to travel with the breeze
+While, swift and singing, smooth and strong
+She gallops by the fields along.
+
+
+AS IN THEIR FLIGHT THE BIRDS OF SONG
+
+
+AS in their flight the birds of song
+Halt here and there in sweet and sunny dales,
+But halt not overlong;
+The time one rural song to sing
+They pause; then following bounteous gales
+Steer forward on the wing:
+Sun-servers they, from first to last,
+Upon the sun they wait
+To ride the sailing blast.
+
+So he awhile in our contested state,
+Awhile abode, not longer, for his Sun -
+Mother we say, no tenderer name we know -
+With whose diviner glow
+His early days had shone,
+Now to withdraw her radiance had begun.
+Or lest a wrong I say, not she withdrew,
+But the loud stream of men day after day
+And great dust columns of the common way
+Between them grew and grew:
+And he and she for evermore might yearn,
+But to the spring the rivulets not return
+Nor to the bosom comes the child again.
+
+And he (O may we fancy so!),
+He, feeling time forever flow
+And flowing bear him forth and far away
+From that dear ingle where his life began
+And all his treasure lay -
+He, waxing into man,
+And ever farther, ever closer wound
+In this obstreperous world's ignoble round,
+From that poor prospect turned his face away.
+
+
+THE PIPER
+
+
+AGAIN I hear you piping, for I know the tune so well, -
+You rouse the heart to wander and be free,
+Tho' where you learned your music, not the God of song can tell,
+For you pipe the open highway and the sea.
+O piper, lightly footing, lightly piping on your way,
+Tho' your music thrills and pierces far and near,
+I tell you you had better pipe to someone else to-day,
+For you cannot pipe my fancy from my dear.
+
+You sound the note of travel through the hamlet and the town;
+You would lure the holy angels from on high;
+And not a man can hear you, but he throws the hammer down
+And is off to see the countries ere he die.
+But now no more I wander, now unchanging here I stay;
+By my love, you find me safely sitting here:
+And pipe you ne'er so sweetly, till you pipe the hills away,
+You can never pipe my fancy from my dear.
+
+
+TO MRS.  MACMARLAND
+
+
+IN Schnee der Alpen - so it runs
+To those divine accords - and here
+We dwell in Alpine snows and suns,
+A motley crew, for half the year:
+A motley crew, we dwell to taste -
+A shivering band in hope and fear -
+That sun upon the snowy waste,
+That Alpine ether cold and clear.
+
+Up from the laboured plains, and up
+From low sea-levels, we arise
+To drink of that diviner cup
+The rarer air, the clearer skies;
+For, as the great, old, godly King
+From mankind's turbid valley cries,
+So all we mountain-lovers sing:
+I to the hills will lift mine eyes.
+
+The bells that ring, the peaks that climb,
+The frozen snow's unbroken curd
+Might yet revindicate in rhyme
+The pauseless stream, the absent bird.
+In vain - for to the deeps of life
+You, lady, you my heart have stirred;
+And since you say you love my life,
+Be sure I love you for the word.
+
+Of kindness, here I nothing say -
+Such loveless kindnesses there are
+In that grimacing, common way,
+That old, unhonoured social war.
+Love but my dog and love my love,
+Adore with me a common star -
+I value not the rest above
+The ashes of a bad cigar.
+
+
+TO MISS CORNISH
+
+
+THEY tell me, lady, that to-day
+On that unknown Australian strand -
+Some time ago, so far away -
+Another lady joined the band.
+She joined the company of those
+Lovelily dowered, nobly planned,
+Who, smiling, still forgive their foes
+And keep their friends in close command.
+
+She, lady, as I learn, was one
+Among the many rarely good;
+And destined still to be a sun
+Through every dark and rainy mood:-
+She, as they told me, far had come,
+By sea and land, o'er many a rood:-
+Admired by all, beloved by some,
+She was yourself, I understood.
+
+But, compliment apart and free
+From all constraint of verses, may
+Goodness and honour, grace and glee,
+Attend you ever on your way -
+Up to the measure of your will,
+Beyond all power of mine to say -
+As she and I desire you still,
+Miss Cornish, on your natal day.
+
+
+TALES OF ARABIA
+
+
+YES, friend, I own these tales of Arabia
+Smile not, as smiled their flawless originals,
+Age-old but yet untamed, for ages
+Pass and the magic is undiminished.
+
+Thus, friend, the tales of the old Camaralzaman,
+Ayoub, the Slave of Love, or the Calendars,
+Blind-eyed and ill-starred royal scions,
+Charm us in age as they charmed in childhood.
+
+Fair ones, beyond all numerability,
+Beam from the palace, beam on humanity,
+Bright-eyed, in truth, yet soul-less houris
+Offering pleasure and only pleasure.
+
+Thus they, the venal Muses Arabian,
+Unlike, indeed, the nobler divinities,
+Greek Gods or old time-honoured muses,
+Easily proffer unloved caresses.
+
+Lost, lost, the man who mindeth the minstrelsy;
+Since still, in sandy, glittering pleasances,
+Cold, stony fruits, gem-like but quite in-
+Edible, flatter and wholly starve him.
+
+
+BEHOLD, AS GOBLINS DARK OF MIEN
+
+
+BEHOLD, as goblins dark of mien
+And portly tyrants dyed with crime
+Change, in the transformation scene,
+At Christmas, in the pantomime,
+
+Instanter, at the prompter's cough,
+The fairy bonnets them, and they
+Throw their abhorred carbuncles off
+And blossom like the flowers in May.
+
+- So mankind, to angelic eyes,
+So, through the scenes of life below,
+In life's ironical disguise,
+A travesty of man, ye go:
+
+But fear not: ere the curtain fall,
+Death in the transformation scene
+Steps forward from her pedestal,
+Apparent, as the fairy Queen;
+
+And coming, frees you in a trice
+From all your lendings - lust of fame,
+Ungainly virtue, ugly vice,
+Terror and tyranny and shame.
+
+So each, at last himself, for good
+In that dear country lays him down,
+At last beloved and understood
+And pure in feature and renown.
+
+
+STILL I LOVE TO RHYME
+
+
+STILL I love to rhyme, and still more, rhyming, to wander
+Far from the commoner way;
+Old-time trills and falls by the brook-side still do I ponder,
+Dreaming to-morrow to-day.
+
+Come here, come, revive me, Sun-God, teach me, Apollo,
+Measures descanted before;
+Since I ancient verses, I emulous follow,
+Prints in the marbles of yore.
+
+Still strange, strange, they sound in old-young raiment invested,
+Songs for the brain to forget -
+Young song-birds elate to grave old temples benested
+Piping and chirruping yet.
+
+Thoughts?  No thought has yet unskilled attempted to flutter
+Trammelled so vilely in verse;
+He who writes but aims at fame and his bread and his butter,
+Won with a groan and a curse.
+
+
+LONG TIME I LAY IN LITTLE EASE
+
+
+LONG time I lay in little ease
+Where, placed by the Turanian,
+Marseilles, the many-masted, sees
+The blue Mediterranean.
+
+Now songful in the hour of sport,
+Now riotous for wages,
+She camps around her ancient port,
+As ancient of the ages.
+
+Algerian airs through all the place
+Unconquerably sally;
+Incomparable women pace
+The shadows of the alley.
+
+And high o'er dark and graving yard
+And where the sky is paler,
+The golden virgin of the guard
+Shines, beckoning the sailor.
+
+She hears the city roar on high,
+Thief, prostitute, and banker;
+She sees the masted vessels lie
+Immovably at anchor.
+
+She sees the snowy islets dot
+The sea's immortal azure,
+And If, that castellated spot,
+Tower, turret, and embrasure.
+
+
+FLOWER GOD, GOD OF THE SPRING
+
+
+FLOWER god, god of the spring, beautiful, bountiful,
+Cold-dyed shield in the sky, lover of versicles,
+Here I wander in April
+Cold, grey-headed; and still to my
+Heart, Spring comes with a bound, Spring the deliverer,
+Spring, song-leader in woods, chorally resonant;
+Spring, flower-planter in meadows,
+Child-conductor in willowy
+Fields deep dotted with bloom, daisies and crocuses:
+Here that child from his heart drinks of eternity:
+O child, happy are children!
+She still smiles on their innocence,
+She, dear mother in God, fostering violets,
+Fills earth full of her scents, voices and violins:
+Thus one cunning in music
+Wakes old chords in the memory:
+Thus fair earth in the Spring leads her performances.
+One more touch of the bow, smell of the virginal
+Green - one more, and my bosom
+Feels new life with an ecstasy.
+
+
+COME, MY BELOVED, HEAR FROM ME
+
+
+COME, my beloved, hear from me
+Tales of the woods or open sea.
+Let our aspiring fancy rise
+A wren's flight higher toward the skies;
+Or far from cities, brown and bare,
+Play at the least in open air.
+In all the tales men hear us tell
+Still let the unfathomed ocean swell,
+Or shallower forest sound abroad
+Below the lonely stars of God;
+In all, let something still be done,
+Still in a corner shine the sun,
+Slim-ankled maids be fleet of foot,
+Nor man disown the rural flute.
+Still let the hero from the start
+In honest sweat and beats of heart
+Push on along the untrodden road
+For some inviolate abode.
+Still, O beloved, let me hear
+The great bell beating far and near-
+The odd, unknown, enchanted gong
+That on the road hales men along,
+That from the mountain calls afar,
+That lures a vessel from a star,
+And with a still, aerial sound
+Makes all the earth enchanted ground.
+Love, and the love of life and act
+Dance, live and sing through all our furrowed tract;
+Till the great God enamoured gives
+To him who reads, to him who lives,
+That rare and fair romantic strain
+That whoso hears must hear again.
+
+
+SINCE YEARS AGO FOR EVERMORE
+
+
+SINCE years ago for evermore
+My cedar ship I drew to shore;
+And to the road and riverbed
+And the green, nodding reeds, I said
+Mine ignorant and last farewell:
+Now with content at home I dwell,
+And now divide my sluggish life
+Betwixt my verses and my wife:
+In vain; for when the lamp is lit
+And by the laughing fire I sit,
+Still with the tattered atlas spread
+Interminable roads I tread.
+
+
+ENVOY FOR "A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES"
+
+
+WHETHER upon the garden seat
+You lounge with your uplifted feet
+Under the May's whole Heaven of blue;
+Or whether on the sofa you,
+No grown up person being by,
+Do some soft corner occupy;
+Take you this volume in your hands
+And enter into other lands,
+For lo! (as children feign) suppose
+You, hunting in the garden rows,
+Or in the lumbered attic, or
+The cellar - a nail-studded door
+And dark, descending stairway found
+That led to kingdoms underground:
+There standing, you should hear with ease
+Strange birds a-singing, or the trees
+Swing in big robber woods, or bells
+On many fairy citadels:
+
+There passing through (a step or so -
+Neither mamma nor nurse need know!)
+From your nice nurseries you would pass,
+Like Alice through the Looking-Glass
+Or Gerda following Little Ray,
+To wondrous countries far away.
+Well, and just so this volume can
+Transport each little maid or man
+Presto from where they live away
+Where other children used to play.
+As from the house your mother sees
+You playing round the garden trees,
+So you may see if you but look
+Through the windows of this book
+Another child far, far away
+And in another garden play.
+But do not think you can at all,
+By knocking on the window, call
+That child to hear you.  He intent
+Is still on his play-business bent.
+He does not hear, he will not look,
+Nor yet be lured out of this book.
+For long ago, the truth to say,
+He has grown up and gone away;
+And it is but a child of air
+That lingers in the garden there.
+
+
+FOR RICHMOND'S GARDEN WALL
+
+
+WHEN Thomas set this tablet here,
+Time laughed at the vain chanticleer;
+And ere the moss had dimmed the stone,
+Time had defaced that garrison.
+Now I in turn keep watch and ward
+In my red house, in my walled yard
+Of sunflowers, sitting here at ease
+With friends and my bright canvases.
+But hark, and you may hear quite plain
+Time's chuckled laughter in the lane.
+
+
+HAIL, GUEST, AND ENTER FREELY!
+
+
+HAIL, guest, and enter freely!  All you see
+Is, for your momentary visit, yours; and we
+Who welcome you are but the guests of God,
+And know not our departure.
+
+
+LO, NOW, MY GUEST
+
+
+LO, now, my guest, if aught amiss were said,
+Forgive it and dismiss it from your head.
+For me, for you, for all, to close the date,
+Pass now the ev'ning sponge across the slate;
+And to that spirit of forgiveness keep
+Which is the parent and the child of sleep.
+
+
+SO LIVE, SO LOVE, SO USE THAT FRAGILE HOUR
+
+
+SO live, so love, so use that fragile hour,
+That when the dark hand of the shining power
+Shall one from other, wife or husband, take,
+The poor survivor may not weep and wake.
+
+
+AD SE IPSUM
+
+
+DEAR sir, good-morrow!  Five years back,
+When you first girded for this arduous track,
+And under various whimsical pretexts
+Endowed another with your damned defects,
+Could you have dreamed in your despondent vein
+That the kind God would make your path so plain?
+Non nobis, domine!  O, may He still
+Support my stumbling footsteps on the hill!
+
+
+BEFORE THIS LITTLE GIFT WAS COME
+
+
+BEFORE this little gift was come
+The little owner had made haste for home;
+And from the door of where the eternal dwell,
+Looked back on human things and smiled farewell.
+O may this grief remain the only one!
+O may our house be still a garrison
+Of smiling children, and for evermore
+The tune of little feet be heard along the floor!
+
+
+GO, LITTLE BOOK - THE ANCIENT PHRASE
+
+
+GO, little book - the ancient phrase
+And still the daintiest - go your ways,
+My Otto, over sea and land,
+Till you shall come to Nelly's hand.
+
+How shall I your Nelly know?
+By her blue eyes and her black brow,
+By her fierce and slender look,
+And by her goodness, little book!
+
+What shall I say when I come there?
+You shall speak her soft and fair:
+See - you shall say - the love they send
+To greet their unforgotten friend!
+
+Giant Adulpho you shall sing
+The next, and then the cradled king:
+And the four corners of the roof
+Then kindly bless; and to your perch aloof,
+Where Balzac all in yellow dressed
+And the dear Webster of the west
+Encircle the prepotent throne
+Of Shakespeare and of Calderon,
+Shall climb an upstart.
+
+There with these
+You shall give ear to breaking seas
+And windmills turning in the breeze,
+A distant undetermined din
+Without; and you shall hear within
+The blazing and the bickering logs,
+The crowing child, the yawning dogs,
+And ever agile, high and low,
+Our Nelly going to and fro.
+
+There shall you all silent sit,
+Till, when perchance the lamp is lit
+And the day's labour done, she takes
+Poor Otto down, and, warming for our sakes,
+Perchance beholds, alive and near,
+Our distant faces reappear.
+
+
+MY LOVE WAS WARM
+
+
+MY love was warm; for that I crossed
+The mountains and the sea,
+Nor counted that endeavour lost
+That gave my love to me.
+
+If that indeed were love at all,
+As still, my love, I trow,
+By what dear name am I to call
+The bond that holds me now
+
+
+DEDICATORY POEM FOR "UNDERWOODS"
+
+
+TO her, for I must still regard her
+As feminine in her degree,
+Who has been my unkind bombarder
+Year after year, in grief and glee,
+Year after year, with oaken tree;
+And yet betweenwhiles my laudator
+In terms astonishing to me -
+To the Right Reverend The Spectator
+I here, a humble dedicator,
+Bring the last apples from my tree.
+
+In tones of love, in tones of warning,
+She hailed me through my brief career;
+And kiss and buffet, night and morning,
+Told me my grandmamma was near;
+Whether she praised me high and clear
+Through her unrivalled circulation,
+Or, sanctimonious insincere,
+She damned me with a misquotation -
+A chequered but a sweet relation,
+Say, was it not, my granny dear?
+
+Believe me, granny, altogether
+Yours, though perhaps to your surprise.
+Oft have you spruced my wounded feather,
+Oft brought a light into my eyes -
+For notice still the writer cries.
+In any civil age or nation,
+The book that is not talked of dies.
+So that shall be my termination:
+Whether in praise or execration,
+Still, if you love me, criticise!
+
+
+FAREWELL
+
+
+FAREWELL, and when forth
+I through the Golden Gates to Golden Isles
+Steer without smiling, through the sea of smiles,
+Isle upon isle, in the seas of the south,
+Isle upon island, sea upon sea,
+Why should I sail, why should the breeze?
+I have been young, and I have counted friends.
+A hopeless sail I spread, too late, too late.
+Why should I from isle to isle
+Sail, a hopeless sailor?
+
+
+THE FAR-FARERS
+
+
+THE broad sun,
+The bright day:
+White sails
+On the blue bay:
+The far-farers
+Draw away.
+
+Light the fires
+And close the door.
+To the old homes,
+To the loved shore,
+The far-farers
+Return no more.
+
+
+HOME, MY LITTLE CHILDREN, HERE ARE SONGS FOR YOU
+
+
+COME, my little children, here are songs for you;
+Some are short and some are long, and all, all are new.
+You must learn to sing them very small and clear,
+Very true to time and tune and pleasing to the ear.
+
+Mark the note that rises, mark the notes that fall,
+Mark the time when broken, and the swing of it all.
+So when night is come, and you have gone to bed,
+All the songs you love to sing shall echo in your head.
+
+
+COME FROM THE DAISIED MEADOWS
+
+
+HOME from the daisied meadows, where you linger yet -
+Home, golden-headed playmate, ere the sun is set;
+For the dews are falling fast
+And the night has come at last.
+Home with you, home and lay your little head at rest,
+Safe, safe, my little darling, on your mother's breast.
+Lullaby, darling; your mother is watching you;
+   she'll be your guardian and shield.
+Lullaby, slumber, my darling, till morning be
+   bright upon mountain and field.
+Long, long the shadows fall.
+All white and smooth at home your little bed is laid.
+All round your head be angels.
+
+
+EARLY IN THE MORNING I HEAR ON YOUR PIANO
+
+
+EARLY in the morning I hear on your piano
+You (at least, I guess it's you) proceed to learn to play.
+Mostly little minds should take and tackle their piano
+While the birds are singing in the morning of the day.
+
+
+FAIR ISLE AT SEA
+
+
+FAIR Isle at Sea - thy lovely name
+Soft in my ear like music came.
+That sea I loved, and once or twice
+I touched at isles of Paradise.
+
+
+LOUD AND LOW IN THE CHIMNEY
+
+
+LOUD and low in the chimney
+The squalls suspire;
+Then like an answer dwindles
+And glows the fire,
+And the chamber reddens and darkens
+In time like taken breath.
+Near by the sounding chimney
+The youth apart
+Hearkens with changing colour
+And leaping heart,
+And hears in the coil of the tempest
+The voice of love and death.
+Love on high in the flute-like
+And tender notes
+Sounds as from April meadows
+And hillside cotes;
+But the deep wood wind in the chimney
+Utters the slogan of death.
+
+
+I LOVE TO BE WARM BY THE RED FIRESIDE
+
+
+I LOVE to be warm by the red fireside,
+I love to be wet with rain:
+I love to be welcome at lamplit doors,
+And leave the doors again.
+
+
+AT LAST SHE COMES
+
+
+AT last she comes, O never more
+In this dear patience of my pain
+To leave me lonely as before,
+Or leave my soul alone again.
+
+
+MINE EYES WERE SWIFT TO KNOW THEE
+
+
+MINE eyes were swift to know thee, and my heart
+As swift to love.  I did become at once
+Thine wholly, thine unalterably, thine
+In honourable service, pure intent,
+Steadfast excess of love and laughing care:
+And as she was, so am, and so shall be.
+I knew thee helpful, knew thee true, knew thee
+And Pity bedfellows: I heard thy talk
+With answerable throbbings.  On the stream,
+Deep, swift, and clear, the lilies floated; fish
+Through the shadows ran.  There, thou and I
+Read Kindness in our eyes and closed the match.
+
+
+FIXED IS THE DOOM
+
+
+FIXED is the doom; and to the last of years
+Teacher and taught, friend, lover, parent, child,
+Each walks, though near, yet separate; each beholds
+His dear ones shine beyond him like the stars.
+We also, love, forever dwell apart;
+With cries approach, with cries behold the gulph,
+The Unvaulted; as two great eagles that do wheel in air
+Above a mountain, and with screams confer,
+Far heard athwart the cedars.
+Yet the years
+Shall bring us ever nearer; day by day
+Endearing, week by week, till death at last
+Dissolve that long divorce.  By faith we love,
+Not knowledge; and by faith, though far removed,
+Dwell as in perfect nearness, heart to heart.
+We but excuse
+Those things we merely are; and to our souls
+A brave deception cherish.
+So from unhappy war a man returns
+Unfearing, or the seaman from the deep;
+So from cool night and woodlands to a feast
+May someone enter, and still breathe of dews,
+And in her eyes still wear the dusky night.
+
+
+MEN ARE HEAVEN'S PIERS
+
+
+MEN are Heaven's piers; they evermore
+Unwearying bear the skyey floor;
+Man's theatre they bear with ease,
+Unfrowning cariatides!
+I, for my wife, the sun uphold,
+Or, dozing, strike the seasons cold.
+She, on her side, in fairy-wise
+Deals in diviner mysteries,
+By spells to make the fuel burn
+And keep the parlour warm, to turn
+Water to wine, and stones to bread,
+By her unconquered hero-head.
+A naked Adam, naked Eve,
+Alone the primal bower we weave;
+Sequestered in the seas of life,
+A Crusoe couple, man and wife,
+With all our good, with all our will,
+Our unfrequented isle we fill;
+And victor in day's petty wars,
+Each for the other lights the stars.
+Come then, my Eve, and to and fro
+Let us about our garden go;
+And, grateful-hearted, hand in hand
+Revisit all our tillage land,
+And marvel at our strange estate,
+For hooded ruin at the gate
+Sits watchful, and the angels fear
+To see us tread so boldly here.
+Meanwhile, my Eve, with flower and grass
+Our perishable days we pass;
+Far more the thorn observe - and see
+How our enormous sins go free -
+Nor less admire, beside the rose,
+How far a little virtue goes.
+
+
+THE ANGLER ROSE, HE TOOK HIS ROD
+
+
+THE angler rose, he took his rod,
+He kneeled and made his prayers to God.
+The living God sat overhead:
+The angler tripped, the eels were fed
+
+
+SPRING CAROL
+
+
+WHEN loud by landside streamlets gush,
+And clear in the greenwood quires the thrush,
+With sun on the meadows
+And songs in the shadows
+Comes again to me
+The gift of the tongues of the lea,
+The gift of the tongues of meadows.
+
+Straightway my olden heart returns
+And dances with the dancing burns;
+It sings with the sparrows;
+To the rain and the (grimy) barrows
+Sings my heart aloud -
+To the silver-bellied cloud,
+To the silver rainy arrows.
+
+It bears the song of the skylark down,
+And it hears the singing of the town;
+And youth on the highways
+And lovers in byways
+Follows and sees:
+And hearkens the song of the leas
+And sings the songs of the highways.
+
+So when the earth is alive with gods,
+And the lusty ploughman breaks the sod,
+And the grass sings in the meadows,
+And the flowers smile in the shadows,
+Sits my heart at ease,
+Hearing the song of the leas,
+Singing the songs of the meadows.
+
+
+TO WHAT SHALL I COMPARE HER?
+
+
+TO what shall I compare her,
+That is as fair as she?
+For she is fairer - fairer
+Than the sea.
+What shall be likened to her,
+The sainted of my youth?
+For she is truer - truer
+Than the truth.
+
+As the stars are from the sleeper,
+Her heart is hid from me;
+For she is deeper - deeper
+Than the sea.
+Yet in my dreams I view her
+Flush rosy with new ruth -
+Dreams!  Ah, may these prove truer
+Than the truth.
+
+
+WHEN THE SUN COMES AFTER RAIN
+
+
+WHEN the sun comes after rain
+And the bird is in the blue,
+The girls go down the lane
+Two by two.
+
+When the sun comes after shadow
+And the singing of the showers,
+The girls go up the meadow,
+Fair as flowers.
+
+When the eve comes dusky red
+And the moon succeeds the sun,
+The girls go home to bed
+One by one.
+
+And when life draws to its even
+And the day of man is past,
+They shall all go home to heaven,
+Home at last.
+
+
+LATE, O MILLER
+
+
+LATE, O miller,
+The birds are silent,
+The darkness falls.
+In the house the lights are lighted.
+See, in the valley they twinkle,
+The lights of home.
+Late, O lovers,
+The night is at hand;
+Silence and darkness
+Clothe the land.
+
+
+TO FRIENDS AT HOME
+
+
+TO friends at home, the lone, the admired, the lost
+The gracious old, the lovely young, to May
+The fair, December the beloved,
+These from my blue horizon and green isles,
+These from this pinnacle of distances I,
+The unforgetful, dedicate.
+
+
+I, WHOM APOLLO SOMETIME VISITED
+
+
+I, WHOM Apollo sometime visited,
+Or feigned to visit, now, my day being done,
+Do slumber wholly; nor shall know at all
+The weariness of changes; nor perceive
+Immeasurable sands of centuries
+Drink of the blanching ink, or the loud sound
+Of generations beat the music down.
+
+
+TEMPEST TOSSED AND SORE AFFLICTED
+
+
+TEMPEST tossed and sore afflicted, sin defiled and care oppressed,
+Come to me, all ye that labour; come, and I will give ye rest.
+Fear no more, O doubting hearted; weep no more, O weeping eye!
+Lo, the voice of your redeemer; lo, the songful morning near.
+
+Here one hour you toil and combat, sin and suffer, bleed and die;
+In my father's quiet mansion soon to lay your burden by.
+Bear a moment, heavy laden, weary hand and weeping eye.
+Lo, the feet of your deliverer; lo, the hour of freedom here.
+
+
+VARIANT FORM OF THE PRECEDING POEM
+
+
+COME to me, all ye that labour; I will give your spirits rest;
+Here apart in starry quiet I will give you rest.
+Come to me, ye heavy laden, sin defiled and care opprest,
+In your father's quiet mansions, soon to prove a welcome guest.
+But an hour you bear your trial, sin and suffer, bleed and die;
+But an hour you toil and combat here in day's inspiring eye.
+See the feet of your deliverer; lo, the hour of freedom nigh.
+
+
+I NOW, O FRIEND, WHOM NOISELESSLY THE SNOWS
+
+
+I NOW, O friend, whom noiselessly the snows
+Settle around, and whose small chamber grows
+Dusk as the sloping window takes its load:
+
+* * * * *
+
+The kindly hill, as to complete our hap,
+Has ta'en us in the shelter of her lap;
+Well sheltered in our slender grove of trees
+And ring of walls, we sit between her knees;
+A disused quarry, paved with rose plots, hung
+With clematis, the barren womb whence sprung
+The crow-stepped house itself, that now far seen
+Stands, like a bather, to the neck in green.
+A disused quarry, furnished with a seat
+Sacred to pipes and meditation meet
+For such a sunny and retired nook.
+There in the clear, warm mornings many a book
+Has vied with the fair prospect of the hills
+That, vale on vale, rough brae on brae, upfills
+Halfway to the zenith all the vacant sky
+To keep my loose attention. . . .
+Horace has sat with me whole mornings through:
+And Montaigne gossiped, fairly false and true;
+And chattering Pepys, and a few beside
+That suit the easy vein, the quiet tide,
+The calm and certain stay of garden-life,
+Far sunk from all the thunderous roar of strife.
+There is about the small secluded place
+A garnish of old times; a certain grace
+Of pensive memories lays about the braes:
+The old chestnuts gossip tales of bygone days.
+Here, where some wandering preacher, blest Lazil,
+Perhaps, or Peden, on the middle hill
+Had made his secret church, in rain or snow,
+He cheers the chosen residue from woe.
+All night the doors stood open, come who might,
+The hounded kebbock mat the mud all night.
+Nor are there wanting later tales; of how
+Prince Charlie's Highlanders . . .
+
+* * * * *
+
+I have had talents, too.  In life's first hour
+God crowned with benefits my childish head.
+Flower after flower, I plucked them; flower by flower
+Cast them behind me, ruined, withered, dead.
+Full many a shining godhead disappeared.
+From the bright rank that once adorned her brow
+The old child's Olympus
+
+* * * * *
+
+Gone are the fair old dreams, and one by one,
+As, one by one, the means to reach them went,
+As, one by one, the stars in riot and disgrace,
+I squandered what . . .
+
+There shut the door, alas! on many a hope
+Too many;
+My face is set to the autumnal slope,
+Where the loud winds shall . . .
+
+There shut the door, alas! on many a hope,
+And yet some hopes remain that shall decide
+My rest of years and down the autumnal slope.
+
+* * * * *
+
+Gone are the quiet twilight dreams that I
+Loved, as all men have loved them; gone!
+I have great dreams, and still they stir my soul on high -
+Dreams of the knight's stout heart and tempered will.
+Not in Elysian lands they take their way;
+Not as of yore across the gay champaign,
+Towards some dream city, towered . . .
+and my . . .
+The path winds forth before me, sweet and plain,
+Not now; but though beneath a stone-grey sky
+November's russet woodlands toss and wail,
+Still the white road goes thro' them, still may I,
+Strong in new purpose, God, may still prevail.
+
+* * * * *
+
+I and my like, improvident sailors!
+
+* * * * *
+
+At whose light fall awaking, all my heart
+Grew populous with gracious, favoured thought,
+And all night long thereafter, hour by hour,
+The pageant of dead love before my eyes
+Went proudly, and old hopes with downcast head
+Followed like Kings, subdued in Rome's imperial hour,
+Followed the car; and I . . .
+
+
+SINCE THOU HAST GIVEN ME THIS GOOD HOPE, O GOD
+
+
+SINCE thou hast given me this good hope, O God,
+That while my footsteps tread the flowery sod
+And the great woods embower me, and white dawn
+And purple even sweetly lead me on
+From day to day, and night to night, O God,
+My life shall no wise miss the light of love;
+But ever climbing, climb above
+Man's one poor star, man's supine lands,
+Into the azure steadfastness of death,
+My life shall no wise lack the light of love,
+My hands not lack the loving touch of hands;
+But day by day, while yet I draw my breath,
+And day by day, unto my last of years,
+I shall be one that has a perfect friend.
+Her heart shall taste my laughter and my tears,
+And her kind eyes shall lead me to the end.
+
+
+GOD GAVE TO ME A CHILD IN PART
+
+
+GOD gave to me a child in part,
+Yet wholly gave the father's heart:
+Child of my soul, O whither now,
+Unborn, unmothered, goest thou?
+
+You came, you went, and no man wist;
+Hapless, my child, no breast you kist;
+On no dear knees, a privileged babbler, clomb,
+Nor knew the kindly feel of home.
+
+My voice may reach you, O my dear-
+A father's voice perhaps the child may hear;
+And, pitying, you may turn your view
+On that poor father whom you never knew.
+
+Alas! alone he sits, who then,
+Immortal among mortal men,
+Sat hand in hand with love, and all day through
+With your dear mother wondered over you.
+
+
+OVER THE LAND IS APRIL
+
+
+OVER the land is April,
+Over my heart a rose;
+Over the high, brown mountain
+The sound of singing goes.
+Say, love, do you hear me,
+Hear my sonnets ring?
+Over the high, brown mountain,
+Love, do you hear me sing?
+
+By highway, love, and byway
+The snows succeed the rose.
+Over the high, brown mountain
+The wind of winter blows.
+Say, love, do you hear me,
+Hear my sonnets ring?
+Over the high, brown mountain
+I sound the song of spring,
+I throw the flowers of spring.
+Do you hear the song of spring?
+Hear you the songs of spring?
+
+
+LIGHT AS THE LINNET ON MY WAY I START
+
+
+LIGHT as the linnet on my way I start,
+For all my pack I bear a chartered heart.
+Forth on the world without a guide or chart,
+Content to know, through all man's varying fates,
+The eternal woman by the wayside waits.
+
+
+COME, HERE IS ADIEU TO THE CITY
+
+
+COME, here is adieu to the city
+And hurrah for the country again.
+The broad road lies before me
+Watered with last night's rain.
+The timbered country woos me
+With many a high and bough;
+And again in the shining fallows
+The ploughman follows the plough.
+
+The whole year's sweat and study,
+And the whole year's sowing time,
+Comes now to the perfect harvest,
+And ripens now into rhyme.
+For we that sow in the Autumn,
+We reap our grain in the Spring,
+And we that go sowing and weeping
+Return to reap and sing.
+
+
+IT BLOWS A SNOWING GALE
+
+
+IT blows a snowing gale in the winter of the year;
+The boats are on the sea and the crews are on the pier.
+The needle of the vane, it is veering to and fro,
+A flash of sun is on the veering of the vane.
+Autumn leaves and rain,
+The passion of the gale.
+
+
+NE SIT ANCILLAE TIBI AMOR PUDOR
+
+
+THERE'S just a twinkle in your eye
+That seems to say I MIGHT, if I
+Were only bold enough to try
+An arm about your waist.
+I hear, too, as you come and go,
+That pretty nervous laugh, you know;
+And then your cap is always so
+Coquettishly displaced.
+
+Your cap! the word's profanely said.
+That little top-knot, white and red,
+That quaintly crowns your graceful head,
+No bigger than a flower,
+Is set with such a witching art,
+Is so provocatively smart,
+I'd like to wear it on my heart,
+An order for an hour!
+
+O graceful housemaid, tall and fair,
+I love your shy imperial air,
+And always loiter on the stair
+When you are going by.
+A strict reserve the fates demand;
+But, when to let you pass I stand,
+Sometimes by chance I touch your hand
+And sometimes catch your eye.
+
+
+TO ALL THAT LOVE THE FAR AND BLUE
+
+
+TO all that love the far and blue:
+Whether, from dawn to eve, on foot
+The fleeing corners ye pursue,
+Nor weary of the vain pursuit;
+Or whether down the singing stream,
+Paddle in hand, jocund ye shoot,
+To splash beside the splashing bream
+Or anchor by the willow root:
+
+Or, bolder, from the narrow shore
+Put forth, that cedar ark to steer,
+Among the seabirds and the roar
+Of the great sea, profound and clear;
+Or, lastly if in heart ye roam,
+Not caring to do else, and hear,
+Safe sitting by the fire at home,
+Footfalls in Utah or Pamere:
+
+Though long the way, though hard to bear
+The sun and rain, the dust and dew;
+Though still attainment and despair
+Inter the old, despoil the new;
+There shall at length, be sure, O friends,
+Howe'er ye steer, whate'er ye do -
+At length, and at the end of ends,
+The golden city come in view.
+
+
+THOU STRAINEST THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN FERN
+(A FRAGMENT)
+
+
+THOU strainest through the mountain fern,
+A most exiguously thin Burn.
+For all thy foam, for all thy din,
+Thee shall the pallid lake inurn,
+With well-a-day for Mr. Swin-Burne!
+Take then this quarto in thy fin
+And, O thou stoker huge and stern,
+The whole affair, outside and in,
+Burn!
+But save the true poetic kin,
+The works of Mr. Robert Burn'
+And William Wordsworth upon Tin-Tern!
+
+
+TO ROSABELLE
+
+
+WHEN my young lady has grown great and staid,
+And in long raiment wondrously arrayed,
+She may take pleasure with a smile to know
+How she delighted men-folk long ago.
+For her long after, then, this tale I tell
+Of the two fans and fairy Rosabelle.
+Hot was the day; her weary sire and I
+Sat in our chairs companionably nigh,
+Each with a headache sat her sire and I.
+
+Instant the hostess waked: she viewed the scene,
+Divined the giants' languor by their mien,
+And with hospitable care
+Tackled at once an Atlantean chair.
+Her pigmy stature scarce attained the seat -
+She dragged it where she would, and with her feet
+Surmounted; thence, a Phaeton launched, she crowned
+The vast plateau of the piano, found
+And culled a pair of fans; wherewith equipped,
+Our mountaineer back to the level slipped;
+And being landed, with considerate eyes,
+Betwixt her elders dealt her double prize;
+The small to me, the greater to her sire.
+As painters now advance and now retire
+Before the growing canvas, and anon
+Once more approach and put the climax on:
+So she awhile withdrew, her piece she viewed -
+For half a moment half supposed it good -
+Spied her mistake, nor sooner spied than ran
+To remedy; and with the greater fan,
+In gracious better thought, equipped the guest.
+
+From ill to well, from better on to best,
+Arts move; the homely, like the plastic kind;
+And high ideals fired that infant mind.
+Once more she backed, once more a space apart
+Considered and reviewed her work of art:
+Doubtful at first, and gravely yet awhile;
+Till all her features blossomed in a smile.
+And the child, waking at the call of bliss,
+To each she ran, and took and gave a kiss.
+
+
+NOW BARE TO THE BEHOLDER'S EYE
+
+
+NOW bare to the beholder's eye
+Your late denuded bindings lie,
+Subsiding slowly where they fell,
+A disinvested citadel;
+The obdurate corset, Cupid's foe,
+The Dutchman's breeches frilled below.
+Those that the lover notes to note,
+And white and crackling petticoat.
+
+From these, that on the ground repose,
+Their lady lately re-arose;
+And laying by the lady's name,
+A living woman re-became.
+Of her, that from the public eye
+They do enclose and fortify,
+Now, lying scattered as they fell,
+An indiscreeter tale they tell:
+Of that more soft and secret her
+Whose daylong fortresses they were,
+By fading warmth, by lingering print,
+These now discarded scabbards hint.
+
+A twofold change the ladies know:
+First, in the morn the bugles blow,
+And they, with floral hues and scents,
+Man their beribboned battlements.
+But let the stars appear, and they
+Shed inhumanities away;
+And from the changeling fashion see,
+Through comic and through sweet degree,
+In nature's toilet unsurpassed,
+Forth leaps the laughing girl at last.
+
+
+THE BOUR-TREE DEN
+
+
+CLINKUM-CLANK in the rain they ride,
+Down by the braes and the grey sea-side;
+Clinkum-clank by stane and cairn,
+Weary fa' their horse-shoe-airn!
+
+Loud on the causey, saft on the sand,
+Round they rade by the tail of the land;
+Round and up by the Bour-Tree Den,
+Weary fa' the red-coat men!
+
+Aft hae I gane where they hae rade
+And straigled in the gowden brooms -
+Aft hae I gane, a saikless maid,
+And O! sae bonny as the bour-tree blooms!
+
+Wi' swords and guns they wanton there,
+Wi' red, red coats and braw, braw plumes.
+But I gaed wi' my gowden hair,
+And O! sae bonny as the bour-tree blooms!
+
+I ran, a little hempie lass,
+In the sand and the bent grass,
+Or took and kilted my small coats
+To play in the beached fisher-boats.
+
+I waded deep and I ran fast,
+I was as lean as a lugger's mast,
+I was as brown as a fisher's creel,
+And I liked my life unco weel.
+
+They blew a trumpet at the cross,
+Some forty men, both foot and horse.
+A'body cam to hear and see,
+And wha, among the rest, but me.
+My lips were saut wi' the saut air,
+My face was brown, my feet were bare
+The wind had ravelled my tautit hair,
+And I thought shame to be standing there.
+
+Ae man there in the thick of the throng
+Sat in his saddle, straight and strong.
+I looked at him and he at me,
+And he was a master-man to see.
+. . . And who is this yin? and who is yon
+That has the bonny lendings on?
+That sits and looks sae braw and crouse?
+. . . Mister Frank o' the Big House!
+
+I gaed my lane beside the sea;
+The wind it blew in bush and tree,
+The wind blew in bush and bent:
+Muckle I saw, and muckle kent!
+
+Between the beach and the sea-hill
+I sat my lane and grat my fill -
+I was sae clarty and hard and dark,
+And like the kye in the cow park!
+
+There fell a battle far in the north;
+The evil news gaed back and forth,
+And back and forth by brae and bent
+Hider and hunter cam and went:
+The hunter clattered horse-shoe-airn
+By causey-crest and hill-top cairn;
+The hider, in by shag and shench,
+Crept on his wame and little lench.
+
+The eastland wind blew shrill and snell,
+The stars arose, the gloaming fell,
+The firelight shone in window and door
+When Mr. Frank cam here to shore.
+He hirpled up by the links and the lane,
+And chappit laigh in the back-door-stane.
+My faither gaed, and up wi' his han'!
+. . . Is this Mr. Frank, or a beggarman?
+
+I have mistrysted sair, he said,
+But let me into fire and bed;
+Let me in, for auld lang syne,
+And give me a dram of the brandy wine.
+
+They hid him in the Bour-Tree Den,
+And I thought it strange to gang my lane;
+I thought it strange, I thought it sweet,
+To gang there on my naked feet.
+In the mirk night, when the boats were at sea,
+I passed the burn abune the knee;
+In the mirk night, when the folks were asleep,
+I had a tryst in the den to keep.
+
+Late and air', when the folks were asleep,
+I had a tryst, a tryst to keep,
+I had a lad that lippened to me,
+And bour-tree blossom is fair to see!
+
+O' the bour-tree leaves I busked his bed,
+The mune was siller, the dawn was red:
+Was nae man there but him and me -
+And bour-tree blossom is fair to see!
+
+Unco weather hae we been through:
+The mune glowered, and the wind blew,
+And the rain it rained on him and me,
+And bour-tree blossom is fair to see!
+
+Dwelling his lane but house or hauld,
+Aft he was wet and aft was cauld;
+I warmed him wi' my briest and knee -
+And bour-tree blossom is fair to see!
+
+There was nae voice of beast ae man,
+But the tree soughed and the burn ran,
+And we heard the ae voice of the sea:
+Bour-tree blossom is fair to see!
+
+
+SONNETS
+
+I.
+
+NOR judge me light, tho' light at times I seem,
+And lightly in the stress of fortune bear
+The innumerable flaws of changeful care -
+Nor judge me light for this, nor rashly deem
+(Office forbid to mortals, kept supreme
+And separate the prerogative of God!)
+That seaman idle who is borne abroad
+To the far haven by the favouring stream.
+Not he alone that to contrarious seas
+Opposes, all night long, the unwearied oar,
+Not he alone, by high success endeared,
+Shall reach the Port; but, winged, with some light breeze
+Shall they, with upright keels, pass in before
+Whom easy Taste, the golden pilot, steered.
+
+II.
+
+So shall this book wax like unto a well,
+Fairy with mirrored flowers about the brim,
+Or like some tarn that wailing curlews skim,
+Glassing the sallow uplands or brown fell;
+And so, as men go down into a dell
+(Weary with noon) to find relief and shade,
+When on the uneasy sick-bed we are laid,
+We shall go down into thy book, and tell
+The leaves, once blank, to build again for us
+Old summer dead and ruined, and the time
+Of later autumn with the corn in stook.
+So shalt thou stint the meagre winter thus
+Of his projected triumph, and the rime
+Shall melt before the sunshine in thy book.
+
+III.
+
+I have a hoard of treasure in my breast;
+The grange of memory steams against the door,
+Full of my bygone lifetime's garnered store -
+Old pleasures crowned with sorrow for a zest,
+Old sorrow grown a joy, old penance blest,
+Chastened remembrance of the sins of yore
+That, like a new evangel, more and more
+Supports our halting will toward the best.
+Ah! what to us the barren after years
+May bring of joy or sorrow, who can tell?
+O, knowing not, who cares?  It may be well
+That we shall find old pleasures and old fears,
+And our remembered childhood seen thro' tears,
+The best of Heaven and the worst of Hell.
+
+IV.
+
+As starts the absent dreamer when a train,
+Suddenly disengulphed below his feet,
+Roars forth into the sunlight, to its seat
+My soul was shaken with immediate pain
+Intolerable as the scanty breath
+Of that one word blew utterly away
+The fragile mist of fair deceit that lay
+O'er the bleak years that severed me from death.
+Yes, at the sight I quailed; but, not unwise
+Or not, O God, without some nervous thread
+Of that best valour, Patience, bowed my head,
+And with firm bosom and most steadfast eyes,
+Strong in all high resolve, prepared to tread
+The unlovely path that leads me toward the skies.
+
+V.
+
+Not undelightful, friend, our rustic ease
+To grateful hearts; for by especial hap,
+Deep nested in the hill's enormous lap,
+With its own ring of walls and grove of trees,
+Sits, in deep shelter, our small cottage - nor
+Far-off is seen, rose carpeted and hung
+With clematis, the quarry whence she sprung,
+O mater pulchra filia pulchrior,
+Whither in early spring, unharnessed folk,
+We join the pairing swallows, glad to stay
+Where, loosened in the hills, remote, unseen,
+From its tall trees, it breathes a slender smoke
+To heaven, and in the noon of sultry day
+Stands, coolly buried, to the neck in green.
+
+VI.
+
+As in the hostel by the bridge I sate,
+Nailed with indifference fondly deemed complete,
+And (O strange chance, more sorrowful than sweet)
+The counterfeit of her that was my fate,
+Dressed in like vesture, graceful and sedate,
+Went quietly up the vacant village street,
+The still small sound of her most dainty feet
+Shook, like a trumpet blast, my soul's estate.
+Instant revolt ran riot through my brain,
+And all night long, thereafter, hour by hour,
+The pageant of dead love before my eyes
+Went proudly; and old hopes, broke loose again
+From the restraint of wisely temperate power,
+With ineffectual ardour sought to rise.
+
+VII.
+
+The strong man's hand, the snow-cool head of age,
+The certain-footed sympathies of youth -
+These, and that lofty passion after truth,
+Hunger unsatisfied in priest or sage
+Or the great men of former years, he needs
+That not unworthily would dare to sing
+(Hard task!) black care's inevitable ring
+Settling with years upon the heart that feeds
+Incessantly on glory.  Year by year
+The narrowing toil grows closer round his feet;
+With disenchanting touch rude-handed time
+The unlovely web discloses, and strange fear
+Leads him at last to eld's inclement seat,
+The bitter north of life - a frozen clime.
+
+VIII.
+
+As Daniel, bird-alone, in that far land,
+Kneeling in fervent prayer, with heart-sick eyes
+Turned thro' the casement toward the westering skies;
+Or as untamed Elijah, that red brand
+Among the starry prophets; or that band
+And company of Faithful sanctities
+Who in all times, when persecutions rise,
+Cherish forgotten creeds with fostering hand:
+Such do ye seem to me, light-hearted crew,
+O turned to friendly arts with all your will,
+That keep a little chapel sacred still,
+One rood of Holy-land in this bleak earth
+Sequestered still (our homage surely due!)
+To the twin Gods of mirthful wine and mirth.
+
+About my fields, in the broad sun
+And blaze of noon, there goeth one,
+Barefoot and robed in blue, to scan
+With the hard eye of the husbandman
+My harvests and my cattle.  Her,
+When even puts the birds astir
+And day has set in the great woods,
+We seek, among her garden roods,
+With bells and cries in vain: the while
+Lamps, plate, and the decanter smile
+On the forgotten board.  But she,
+Deaf, blind, and prone on face and knee,
+Forgets time, family, and feast,
+And digs like a demented beast.
+
+Tall as a guardsman, pale as the east at dawn,
+Who strides in strange apparel on the lawn?
+Rails for his breakfast? routs his vassals out
+(Like boys escaped from school) with song and shout?
+Kind and unkind, his Maker's final freak,
+Part we deride the child, part dread the antique!
+See where his gang, like frogs, among the dew
+Crouch at their duty, an unquiet crew;
+Adjust their staring kilts; and their swift eyes
+Turn still to him who sits to supervise.
+He in the midst, perched on a fallen tree,
+Eyes them at labour; and, guitar on knee,
+Now ministers alarm, now scatters joy,
+Now twangs a halting chord, now tweaks a boy.
+Thorough in all, my resolute vizier
+Plays both the despot and the volunteer,
+Exacts with fines obedience to my laws,
+And for his music, too, exacts applause.
+
+The Adorner of the uncomely - those
+Amidst whose tall battalions goes
+Her pretty person out and in
+All day with an endearing din,
+Of censure and encouragement;
+And when all else is tried in vain
+See her sit down and weep again.
+She weeps to conquer;
+She varies on her grenadiers
+From satire up to girlish tears!
+
+Or rather to behold her when
+She plies for me the unresting pen,
+And when the loud assault of squalls
+Resounds upon the roof and walls,
+And the low thunder growls and I
+Raise my dictating voice on high.
+
+What glory for a boy of ten
+Who now must three gigantic men
+And two enormous, dapple grey
+New Zealand pack-horses array
+And lead, and wisely resolute
+Our day-long business execute
+In the far shore-side town.  His soul
+Glows in his bosom like a coal;
+His innocent eyes glitter again,
+And his hand trembles on the rein.
+Once he reviews his whole command,
+And chivalrously planting hand
+On hip - a borrowed attitude -
+Rides off downhill into the wood.
+
+I meanwhile in the populous house apart
+Sit snugly chambered, and my silent art
+Uninterrupted, unremitting ply
+Before the dawn, by morning lamplight, by
+The glow of smelting noon, and when the sun
+Dips past my westering hill and day is done;
+So, bending still over my trade of words,
+I hear the morning and the evening birds,
+The morning and the evening stars behold;
+So there apart I sit as once of old
+Napier in wizard Merchiston; and my
+Brown innocent aides in home and husbandry
+Wonder askance.  What ails the boss? they ask.
+Him, richest of the rich, an endless task
+Before the earliest birds or servants stir
+Calls and detains him daylong prisoner?
+He whose innumerable dollars hewed
+This cleft in the boar and devil-haunted wood,
+And bade therein, from sun to seas and skies,
+His many-windowed, painted palace rise
+Red-roofed, blue-walled, a rainbow on the hill,
+A wonder in the forest glade: he still,
+
+Unthinkable Aladdin, dawn and dark,
+Scribbles and scribbles, like a German clerk.
+We see the fact, but tell, O tell us why?
+My reverend washman and wise butler cry.
+Meanwhile at times the manifold
+Imperishable perfumes of the past
+And coloured pictures rise on me thick and fast:
+And I remember the white rime, the loud
+Lamplitten city, shops, and the changing crowd;
+And I remember home and the old time,
+The winding river, the white moving rhyme,
+The autumn robin by the river-side
+That pipes in the grey eve.
+
+The old lady (so they say), but I
+Admire your young vitality.
+Still brisk of foot, still busy and keen
+In and about and up and down.
+
+I hear you pass with bustling feet
+The long verandahs round, and beat
+Your bell, and "Lotu!  Lotu!" cry;
+Thus calling our queer company,
+In morning or in evening dim,
+To prayers and the oft mangled hymn.
+
+All day you watch across the sky
+The silent, shining cloudlands ply,
+That, huge as countries, swift as birds,
+Beshade the isles by halves and thirds,
+Till each with battlemented crest
+Stands anchored in the ensanguined west,
+An Alp enchanted.  All the day
+You hear the exuberant wind at play,
+In vast, unbroken voice uplift,
+In roaring tree, round whistling clift.
+
+
+AIR OF DIABELLI'S
+
+
+CALL it to mind, O my love.
+Dear were your eyes as the day,
+Bright as the day and the sky;
+Like the stream of gold and the sky above,
+Dear were your eyes in the grey.
+We have lived, my love, O, we have lived, my love!
+Now along the silent river, azure
+Through the sky's inverted image,
+Softly swam the boat that bore our love,
+Swiftly ran the shallow of our love
+Through the heaven's inverted image,
+In the reedy mazes round the river.
+See along the silent river,
+
+See of old the lover's shallop steer.
+Berried brake and reedy island,
+Heaven below and only heaven above.
+Through the sky's inverted image
+Swiftly swam the boat that bore our love.
+Berried brake and reedy island,
+Mirrored flower and shallop gliding by.
+All the earth and all the sky were ours,
+Silent sat the wafted lovers,
+Bound with grain and watched by all the sky,
+Hand to hand and eye to . . . eye.
+
+Days of April, airs of Eden,
+Call to mind how bright the vanished angel hours,
+Golden hours of evening,
+When our boat drew homeward filled with flowers.
+O darling, call them to mind; love the past, my love.
+Days of April, airs of Eden.
+How the glory died through golden hours,
+And the shining moon arising;
+How the boat drew homeward filled with flowers.
+Age and winter close us slowly in.
+
+Level river, cloudless heaven,
+Islanded reed mazes, silver weirs;
+How the silent boat with silver
+Threads the inverted forest as she goes,
+Broke the trembling green of mirrored trees.
+O, remember, and remember
+How the berries hung in garlands.
+
+Still in the river see the shallop floats.
+Hark!  Chimes the falling oar.
+Still in the mind
+Hark to the song of the past!
+Dream, and they pass in their dreams.
+
+Those that loved of yore, O those that loved of yore!
+Hark through the stillness, O darling, hark!
+Through it all the ear of the mind
+
+Knows the boat of love.  Hark!
+Chimes the falling oar.
+
+O half in vain they grew old.
+
+Now the halcyon days are over,
+Age and winter close us slowly round,
+And these sounds at fall of even
+Dim the sight and muffle all the sound.
+And at the married fireside, sleep of soul and sleep of fancy,
+Joan and Darby.
+Silence of the world without a sound;
+And beside the winter faggot
+
+Joan and Darby sit and dose and dream and wake -
+Dream they hear the flowing, singing river,
+See the berries in the island brake;
+Dream they hear the weir,
+See the gliding shallop mar the stream.
+Hark! in your dreams do you hear?
+
+Snow has filled the drifted forest;
+Ice has bound the . . . stream.
+Frost has bound our flowing river;
+Snow has whitened all our island brake.
+
+Berried brake and reedy island,
+Heaven below and only heaven above azure
+Through the sky's inverted image
+Safely swam the boat that bore our love.
+Dear were your eyes as the day,
+Bright ran the stream, bright hung the sky above.
+Days of April, airs of Eden.
+How the glory died through golden hours,
+And the shining moon arising,
+How the boat drew homeward filled with flowers.
+Bright were your eyes in the night:
+We have lived, my love;
+O, we have loved, my love.
+Now the . . . days are over,
+Age and winter close us slowly round.
+
+Vainly time departs, and vainly
+Age and winter come and close us round.
+
+Hark the river's long continuous sound.
+
+Hear the river ripples in the reeds.
+
+Lo, in dreams they see their shallop
+Run the lilies down and drown the weeds
+Mid the sound of crackling faggots.
+So in dreams the new created
+Happy past returns, to-day recedes,
+And they hear once more,
+
+From the old years,
+Yesterday returns, to-day recedes,
+And they hear with aged hearing warbles
+
+Love's own river ripple in the weeds.
+And again the lover's shallop;
+Lo, the shallop sheds the streaming weeds;
+And afar in foreign countries
+In the ears of aged lovers.
+
+And again in winter evens
+Starred with lilies . . . with stirring weeds.
+In these ears of aged lovers
+Love's own river ripples in the reeds.
+
+
+EPITAPHIUM EROTII
+
+
+HERE lies Erotion, whom at six years old
+Fate pilfered.  Stranger (when I too am cold,
+Who shall succeed me in my rural field),
+To this small spirit annual honours yield!
+Bright be thy hearth, hale be thy babes, I crave
+And this, in thy green farm, the only grave.
+
+
+DE M. ANTONIO
+
+
+NOW Antoninus, in a smiling age,
+Counts of his life the fifteenth finished stage.
+The rounded days and the safe years he sees,
+Nor fears death's water mounting round his knees.
+To him remembering not one day is sad,
+Not one but that its memory makes him glad.
+So good men lengthen life; and to recall
+The past is to have twice enjoyed it all.
+
+
+AD MAGISTRUM LUDI
+(UNFINISHED DRAFT.)
+
+
+NOW in the sky
+And on the hearth of
+Now in a drawer the direful cane,
+That sceptre of the . . . reign,
+And the long hawser, that on the back
+Of Marsyas fell with many a whack,
+Twice hardened out of Scythian hides,
+Now sleep till the October ides.
+
+In summer if the boys be well.
+
+
+AD NEPOTEM
+
+
+O NEPOS, twice my neigh(b)our (since at home
+We're door by door, by Flora's temple dome;
+And in the country, still conjoined by fate,
+Behold our villas standing gate by gate),
+Thou hast a daughter, dearer far than life -
+Thy image and the image of thy wife.
+Thy image and thy wife's, and be it so!
+
+But why for her, { neglect the flowing } can
+                 { O Nepos, leave the }
+
+And lose the prime of thy Falernian?
+Hoard casks of money, if to hoard be thine;
+But let thy daughter drink a younger wine!
+Let her go rich and wise, in silk and fur;
+
+Lay down a { bin that shall }  grow old with her;
+           { vintage to }
+
+But thou, meantime, the while the batch is sound,
+With pleased companions pass the bowl around;
+Nor let the childless only taste delights,
+For Fathers also may enjoy their nights.
+
+
+IN CHARIDEMUM
+
+
+YOU, Charidemus, who my cradle swung,
+And watched me all the days that I was young;
+You, at whose step the laziest slaves awake,
+And both the bailiff and the butler quake;
+The barber's suds now blacken with my beard,
+And my rough kisses make the maids afeared;
+But with reproach your awful eyebrows twitch,
+And for the cane, I see, your fingers itch.
+If something daintily attired I go,
+Straight you exclaim: "Your father did not so."
+And fuming, count the bottles on the board
+As though my cellar were your private hoard.
+Enough, at last: I have done all I can,
+And your own mistress hails me for a man.
+
+
+DE LIGURRA
+
+
+YOU fear, Ligurra - above all, you long -
+That I should smite you with a stinging song.
+This dreadful honour you both fear and hope -
+Both all in vain: you fall below my scope.
+The Lybian lion tears the roaring bull,
+He does not harm the midge along the pool.
+
+Lo! if so close this stands in your regard,
+From some blind tap fish forth a drunken barn,
+Who shall with charcoal, on the privy wall,
+Immortalise your name for once and all.
+
+
+IN LUPUM
+
+
+BEYOND the gates thou gav'st a field to till;
+I have a larger on my window-sill.
+A farm, d'ye say?  Is this a farm to you,
+Where for all woods I spay one tuft of rue,
+And that so rusty, and so small a thing,
+One shrill cicada hides it with a wing;
+Where one cucumber covers all the plain;
+And where one serpent rings himself in vain
+To enter wholly; and a single snail
+Eats all and exit fasting to the pool?
+Here shall my gardener be the dusty mole.
+My only ploughman the . . . mole.
+Here shall I wait in vain till figs be set,
+And till the spring disclose the violet.
+Through all my wilds a tameless mouse careers,
+And in that narrow boundary appears,
+Huge as the stalking lion of Algiers,
+Huge as the fabled boar of Calydon.
+And all my hay is at one swoop impresst
+By one low-flying swallow for her nest,
+Strip god Priapus of each attribute
+Here finds he scarce a pedestal to foot.
+The gathered harvest scarcely brims a spoon;
+And all my vintage drips in a cocoon.
+Generous are you, but I more generous still:
+Take back your farm and stand me half a gill!
+
+
+AD QUINTILIANUM
+
+
+O CHIEF director of the growing race,
+Of Rome the glory and of Rome the grace,
+Me, O Quintilian, may you not forgive
+Before from labour I make haste to live?
+Some burn to gather wealth, lay hands on rule,
+Or with white statues fill the atrium full.
+The talking hearth, the rafters sweet with smoke,
+Live fountains and rough grass, my line invoke:
+A sturdy slave, not too learned wife,
+Nights filled with slumber, and a quiet life.
+
+
+DE HORTIS JULII MARTIALIS
+
+
+MY Martial owns a garden, famed to please,
+Beyond the glades of the Hesperides;
+Along Janiculum lies the chosen block
+Where the cool grottos trench the hanging rock.
+The moderate summit, something plain and bare,
+Tastes overhead of a serener air;
+And while the clouds besiege the vales below,
+Keeps the clear heaven and doth with sunshine glow.
+To the June stars that circle in the skies
+The dainty roofs of that tall villa rise.
+Hence do the seven imperial hills appear;
+And you may view the whole of Rome from here;
+Beyond, the Alban and the Tuscan hills;
+And the cool groves and the cool falling rills,
+Rubre Fidenae, and with virgin blood
+Anointed once Perenna's orchard wood.
+Thence the Flaminian, the Salarian way,
+Stretch far broad below the dome of day;
+And lo! the traveller toiling towards his home;
+And all unheard, the chariot speeds to Rome!
+For here no whisper of the wheels; and tho'
+The Mulvian Bridge, above the Tiber's flow,
+Hangs all in sight, and down the sacred stream
+The sliding barges vanish like a dream,
+The seaman's shrilling pipe not enters here,
+Nor the rude cries of porters on the pier.
+And if so rare the house, how rarer far
+The welcome and the weal that therein are!
+So free the access, the doors so widely thrown,
+You half imagine all to be your own.
+
+
+AD MARTIALEM
+
+
+GO(D) knows, my Martial, if we two could be
+To enjoy our days set wholly free;
+To the true life together bend our mind,
+And take a furlough from the falser kind.
+No rich saloon, nor palace of the great,
+Nor suit at law should trouble our estate;
+On no vainglorious statues should we look,
+But of a walk, a talk, a little book,
+Baths, wells and meads, and the veranda shade,
+Let all our travels and our toils be made.
+Now neither lives unto himself, alas!
+And the good suns we see, that flash and pass
+And perish; and the bell that knells them cries:
+"Another gone: O when will ye arise?"
+
+
+IN MAXIMUM
+
+
+WOULDST thou be free?  I think it not, indeed;
+But if thou wouldst, attend this simple rede:
+When quite contented    }thou canst dine at home
+Thou shall be free when }
+And drink a small wine of the march of Rome;
+When thou canst see unmoved thy neighbour's plate,
+And wear my threadbare toga in the gate;
+When thou hast learned to love a small abode,
+And not to choose a mistress A LA MODE:
+When thus contained and bridled thou shalt be,
+Then, Maximus, then first shalt thou be free.
+
+
+AD OLUM
+
+
+CALL me not rebel, though { here at every word
+                          {in what I sing
+If I no longer hail thee  { King and Lord
+                          { Lord and King
+I have redeemed myself with all I had,
+And now possess my fortunes poor but glad.
+With all I had I have redeemed myself,
+And escaped at once from slavery and pelf.
+The unruly wishes must a ruler take,
+Our high desires do our low fortunes make:
+Those only who desire palatial things
+Do bear the fetters and the frowns of Kings;
+Set free thy slave; thou settest free thyself.
+
+
+DE COENATIONE MICAE
+
+
+LOOK round: You see a little supper room;
+But from my window, lo! great Caesar's tomb!
+And the great dead themselves, with jovial breath
+Bid you be merry and remember death.
+
+
+DE EROTIO PUELLA
+
+
+THIS girl was sweeter than the song of swans,
+And daintier than the lamb upon the lawns
+Or Curine oyster.  She, the flower of girls,
+Outshone the light of Erythraean pearls;
+The teeth of India that with polish glow,
+The untouched lilies or the morning snow.
+Her tresses did gold-dust outshine
+And fair hair of women of the Rhine.
+Compared to her the peacock seemed not fair,
+The squirrel lively, or the phoenix rare;
+Her on whose pyre the smoke still hovering waits;
+Her whom the greedy and unequal fates
+On the sixth dawning of her natal day,
+My child-love and my playmate - snatcht away.
+
+
+AD PISCATOREM
+
+
+FOR these are sacred fishes all
+Who know that lord that is the lord of all;
+Come to the brim and nose the friendly hand
+That sways and can beshadow all the land.
+Nor only so, but have their names, and come
+When they are summoned by the Lord of Rome.
+Here once his line an impious Lybian threw;
+And as with tremulous reed his prey he drew,
+Straight, the light failed him.
+He groped, nor found the prey that he had ta'en.
+Now as a warning to the fisher clan
+Beside the lake he sits, a beggarman.
+Thou, then, while still thine innocence is pure,
+Flee swiftly, nor presume to set thy lure;
+Respect these fishes, for their friends are great;
+And in the waters empty all thy bait.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson
+