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Oh! it is not just the men who face the guns,
Not the fighters at the Front alone, to-day
Who will bring the longed-for close to the bloody fray, for those
Could not carry on that fray without the ones...

A wonderful Way is The King's High Way;
It runs through the Nightlands up to the Day;
From the wonderful WAS, by the wonderful IS,
To the still more wonderful IS TO BE,--
Runs The King's High Way.
...

Why do you break upon this old, cool peace,
This painted peace of ours,
With harsh dress hissing like a flock of geese,
With garish flowers?
Why do you churn smooth waters rough again,...

Venus, take my votive glass:
Since I am not what I was,
What from this day I shall be,
Venus, let me never see.

The Text of this mutilated ballad is taken from the Skene MS., where it was written down from recitation in the North of Scotland about 1802.

...

My love he built me a bonny bower,
And clad it a' wi' a lilye flower,
A brawer bower ye ne'er did see,
Than my true love he built for me.

There came a man, by middle day,...

The Text is given from Scott's Minstrelsy (1803), vol. iii. pp. 83-4. His introduction states that it was obtained from recitation in the Forest of Ettrick, and that it relates to the execution of a Border freebooter, named Cok...

Like some gaunt ghost the tempest wails
Outside my door; its icy nails
Beat on the pane: and Night and Storm
Around the house, with furious flails
Of wind, from which the slant sleet hails,...

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
...

THE RHYME OF SIR CHRISTOPHER

It was Sir Christopher Gardiner,
Knight of the Holy Sepulchre,
From Merry England over the sea,
Who stepped upon this continent
As if his august presence lent...

Do you know the way that goes
Over fields of rue and rose,
Warm of scent and hot of hue,
Roofed with heaven's bluest blue,
To the Vale of Dreams Come True?

Do you know the path that twines,...

I glory in the sages
Who, in the days of yore,
In combat met the foemen,
And drove them from our shore.
Who flung our banner's starry field
In triumph to the breeze,...

Land of the gentle and brave!
Our love is as wide as thy woe;
It deepens beside every grave
Where the heart of a hero lies low.

Land of the sunniest skies!
Our love glows the more for thy gloom;...

[1]

"Depend upon yourself alone,"
Has to a common proverb grown.
'Tis thus confirm'd in Aesop's way: -
The larks to build their nests are seen
Among the wheat-crops young and green;...

In the air why such a ringing?
On the earth why such a droning?

In the air the lark is singing;
On the earth the wind is moaning.

"I am blest, in sunlight swinging!"...

Timid and smiling, beautiful and shy,
She drops her head at every passer bye.
Afraid of praise she hurries down the streets
And turns away from every smile she meets.
The forward clown has many things to say...

Though o'er the darksome northern hill
Old ambush'd winter frowning flies,
And faintly drifts his threatenings still
In snowy sweet and blackening skies;
Yet here the willow leaning lies...

I.

O'er the bare woods, whose outstretched hands
Plead with the leaden heavens in vain,
I see, beyond the valley lands,
The sea's long level dim with rain.
Around me all things, stark and dumb,...

Comrades, comrades, have me buried
Like a warrior of the sea,
With a flag across my breast
And my sword upon my knee.

Steering out from vanished headlands
For a harbor on no chart,...

"O lat me in, my bonny lass!
It's a lang road ower the hill,
And the flauchterin snaw begud to fa'
On the brig ayont the mill!"

"Here's nae change-hoose, John Munro!"
"I'll ken that to my cost...