Works

(To F. E. D.)



Come again to the place
Where your presence was as a leaf that skims
Down a drouthy way whose ascent bedims
The bloom on the farer's face.

Come again, with the feet...

Oh fly! 'tis dire Suspicion's mien;
And, meditating plagues unseen,
The sorceress hither bends:
Behold her torch in gall imbrued:
Behold'her garment drops with blood
Of lovers and of friends....

[19]


Head-board and foot-board duly placed -
Grassed in the mound between;
Daniel Drouth is the slumberer's name -
Long may his grave be green!

Quick was his way - a flash and a blow,...

Oh, the hobo's life is a roving life;
It robs pretty maids of their heart's delight -
It causes them to weep and it causes them to mourn
For the life of a hobo, never to return.
...

Sea-born goddess, let me be
By thy son thus graced, and thee,
That whene'er I woo, I find
Virgins coy, but not unkind.
Let me, when I kiss a maid,
Taste her lips, so overlaid...

Not a breath of air
Ruffles the bosom of this leafy glen.
From the brook's margin, wide around, the trees
Are steadfast as the rocks; the brook itself,
Old as the hills that feed it from afar,...

Genius of Raphael! if thy wings
Might bear thee to this glen,
With faithful memory left of things
To pencil dear and pen,
Thou would'st forego the neighbouring Rhine,
And all his majesty...

"Come, come," said Tom's father, "at your time of life,
"There's no longer excuse for thus playing the rake--
"It is time you should think, boy, of taking a wife"--
"Why, so it is, father--whose wife shall I take?"

When Eve had led her lord away,
And Cain had killed his brother,
The stars and flowers, the poets say,
Agreed with one another.

To cheat the cunning tempter's art,
And teach the race its duty,...

PART I

Away up on the River aux Lievres,
That is foaming and surging always,
And from rock to rock leaping through rapids,
Which are curtained by showers of spray;
...

Come! Why, halloa, that you, Jack?
How's the world been using you?
Want your pipe? it's in the jar
Think I might be looking blue.
Maud's been breaking off with me,
Fact see here I've got the ring....

Since hired for life, thy servile Muse must sing
Successive conquests and a glorious King;
Must of a man immortal vainly boast,
And bring him laurels whatsoe'er they cost,...

Next, then, the peacock, gilt
With all its feathers. Look, what gorgeous dyes
Flow in the eyes!
And how deep, lustrous greens are splashed and spilt
Along the back, that like a sea-wave's crest...

I saw a certain sailorman who sat beside the sea,
And in the manner of his tribe he yawned this yarn to me:
"'Twere back in eighteen-fifty-three, or mebbe fifty-four,...

Only a breath - hardly a breath! The shore
Is still a huddled alabaster floor
Of shelving ice and shattered slabs of cold,
Stern wreckage of the fiercely frozen wave,...

i.

O thou refulgent essence of all grace!
O thou that with the witchery of thy face
Hast made of me thy servant unto death,
I pray thee pause, ere, musical of breath,...

i.

Vouchsafe, my Lady! by the passion-flower,
And by the glamour of a moonlit hour,
And by the cries and sighs of all the birds
That sing o'nights, to heed again the words...

Scenes of love and days of pleasure,
I must leave them all, lassie.
Scenes of love and hours of leisure,
All are gone for aye, lassie.
No more thy velvet-bordered dress...

I.

Winds that cavern heaven and the clouds
And canyon with cerulean blue,
Great rifts down which the stormy sunlight crowds
Like some bright seraph, who,
Mailed in intensity of silver mail,...

Inner not outer, without gnash of teeth
Or weeping, save quiet sobs of some who pray
And feel the Everlasting Arms beneath, -
Blackness of darkness this, but not for aye;...