Works

To sit and dream in a shady nook
While the phantom clouds roll by;
To con some long-remembered book
When the pulse of youth beats high.

To thrill when the dying sunset glows...

I've ben thinkin' back, of late,
S'prisin'! - And I'm here to state
I'm suspicious it's a sign
Of age, maybe, or decline
Of my faculties, - and yit
I'm not feelin' old a bit -...

Think of the Soul;
I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your Soul somehow to live in other spheres;
I do not know how, but I know it is so.

Think of loving and being loved;...

Be void of feeling!
A heart that soon is stirr'd,
Is a possession sad
Upon this changing earth.

Behrisch, let spring's sweet smile
Never gladden thy brow!
Then winter's gloomy tempests...

To-night the clouds hang very low,
They take the Hill-tops to their breast,
And lay their arms about the fields.
The wind that fans me lying low,
Restless with great desire for rest,...

We thirst at first, -- 't is Nature's act;
And later, when we die,
A little water supplicate
Of fingers going by.

It intimates the finer want,
Whose adequate supply...

O hapless day! O wretched day!
I hoped you'd pass me by--
Alas, the years have sneaked away
And all is changed but I!
Had I the power, I would remand
You to a gloom condign,...

Two old St. Andrews men, after a separation of nearly thirty years, meet by chance at a wayside inn. They interchange experiences; and at length one of them, who is an admirer of Mr. Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, speaks as ...

God hath this world for many made, 'tis true:
But He hath made the World to Come for few.

Something startles me where I thought I was safest;
I withdraw from the still woods I loved;
I will not go now on the pastures to walk;
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea;...

This crosstree here
Doth Jesus bear,
Who sweet'ned first
The death accurs'd.
Here all things ready are, make haste, make haste away;...

This day, O Soul, I give you a wondrous mirror;
Long in the dark, in tarnish and cloud it lay But the cloud has pass'd, and the tarnish gone;
Behold, O Soul! it is now a clean and bright mirror,...

This dust was once the Man,
Gentle, plain, just and resolute under whose cautious hand,
Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age,
Was saved the Union of These States.

At midnight, in the room where he lay dead
Whom in his life I had never clearly read,
I thought if I could peer into that citadel
His heart, I should at last know full and well
...

This heart that flutters near my heart
My hope and all my riches is,
Unhappy when we draw apart
And happy between kiss and kiss:
My hope and all my riches, yes!
And all my happiness.
...

When the whole world resounds with rude alarms
Of warring arms,
When God's good earth, from border unto border
Shows man's disorder,
Let me not waste my dower of mortal might...

Tune - "This is no my ain house."



I.

O this is no my ain lassie,
Fair tho' the lassie be;
O weel ken I my ain lassie,
Kind love is in her e'e.
I see a form, I see a face,...

This Lawn, a carpet all alive
With shadows flung from leaves, to strive
In dance, amid a press
Of sunshine, an apt emblem yields
Of Worldlings reveling in the fields
Of strenuous idleness;
...

This life is all checkered with pleasures and woes,
That chase one another like waves of the deep,--
Each brightly or darkly, as onward it flows,
Reflecting our eyes, as they sparkle or weep....

This Life, which seems so fair,
Is like a bubble blown up in the air
By sporting children's breath,
Who chase it everywhere
And strive who can most motion it bequeath....