Works

Great cities seldom rest; if there be none
T' invade from far, they'll find worse foes at home.

When I am dead.
Then lay my head
In some lone, distant dell,
Where voices ne'er
Shall stir the air,
Or break its silent spell.

If any sound
Be heard around,...

Peace should not come along this foul, earth way.
Peace should not come, until we cleanse the path.
God waited for us; now in awful wrath
He pours the blood of men out day by day...

Peace to the slumberers!
They lie on the battle-plain.
With no shroud to cover them;
The dew and the summer rain
Are all that weep over them.
Peace to the slumberers!
...

From his cradle in the glamourie
They have stolen my wee brother,
Roused a changeling in his swaddlings
For to fret mine own poor mother.
Pules it in the candle light
Wi' a cheek so lean and white,...

Baroque, but beautiful, between the lunes,
The valves of nacre of a mussel-shell,
Behold, a pearl! shaped like the burnished bell
Of some strange blossom that long afternoons...

I
Though the Clerk of the Weather insist,
And lay down the weather-law,
Pintado and gannet they wist
That the winds blow whither they list
In tempest or flaw.

II...

O Power to whom this earthly clime
Is but an atom in the whole,
O Poet-heart of Space and Time,
O Maker and Immortal Soul,
Within whose glowing rings are bound,
Out of whose sleepless heart had birth...

As if every living thing lived, breathed
its existence
explained why water took the shape
of a container,
studied sharpened awareness of cold,
broke night spots onto a peculiar morning.

When at first in foreign parts
Was her flag unfurled,
England was a Gipsy lass
Peddling round the world.
Sailing on the Spanish Main,
Everywhere you roam,
Peddling in the Persian Gulf...

"Peek-a-boo!" say little Olaf.
"Yu can't find me. Ay ban hid."
Den ay used to look all over
For my little blue-eyed kid.
Op in attic, down in cellar,
Back of chairs on parlor floor;...

The cunningest thing that a baby can do
Is the very first time it plays peek-a-boo;

When it hides its pink little face in its hands,
And crows, and shows that it understands
...

Aw've heeard ov Mary Mischief,
An aw've read ov Natterin Nan;
An aw've known a Grumlin Judy,
An a cross-grained Sarah Ann;
But wi' all ther faults an failins,
They still seem varry tame,...

Tune - "Cauld is the e'enin blast."



I.

Cauld is the e'enin' blast
O' Boreas o'er the pool,
And dawin' it is dreary
When birks are bare at Yule.

II.
...

The ancients made no end of fuss
About a horse named Pegasus,
A famous flyer of his time,
Who often soared to heights sublime,
When backed by some poetic chap
For the Parnassus Handicap....

Once to a horse-fair, it may perhaps have been
Where other things are bought and sold, I mean
At the Haymarket, there the muses' horse
A hungry poet brought to sell, of course.
...

Once into a quiet village,
Without haste and without heed,
In the golden prime of morning,
Strayed the poet's winged steed.

It was Autumn, and incessant
Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves,...

Peggy said good morning and I said good bye,
When farmers dib the corn and laddies sow the rye.
Young Peggy's face was common sense and I was rather shy
When I met her in the morning when the farmers sow the rye....

I.

Now westlin winds and slaughtering guns
Bring autumn's pleasant weather;
The moor-cock springs, on whirring wings,
Amang the blooming heather:
Now waving grain, wide o'er the plain,...

O it was a lorn and a dismal night,
And the storm beat loud and high;
Not a friendly light to guide me right
Was there shining in the sky,
When a lonely hut my wanderings met,
Lost in a foreign land,...