Works

Brother of all, with generous hand,
Of thee, pondering on thee, as o'er thy tomb, I and my Soul,
A thought to launch in memory of thee,
A burial verse for thee.
...

Not to the sober and staid,
Leading a quiet life,
But to men whose paths are laid
Ever through storm and strife,
Here is a song from me,
Sent to the tragic West,
Message of sympathy...

Tune - "Hey, tuttie taitie."



I.

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led;
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victorie!

II.
...

We praise not now the poet's art,
The rounded beauty of his song;
Who weighs him from his life apart
Must do his nobler nature wrong.

Not for the eye, familiar grown...

The stamp of Scotland is on his face,
But he sailed to the South a lad,
And he does not think of the black bleak hills
And the bitter hard youth he had;
He thinks of a nearer and dearer past...

But in the Wine-presses the human grapes sing not nor dance:
They howl and writhe in shoals of torment, in fierce flames consuming,
In chains of iron and in dungeons circled with ceaseless fires,...

By a blest Husband guided, Mary came
From nearest kindred, Vernon her new name;
She came, though meek of soul, in seemly pride
Of happiness and hope, a youthful Bride....

From early youth I ploughed the restless Main,
My mind as restless and as apt to change;
Through every clime and ocean did I range,
In hope at length a competence to gain;...

Why go the east road now? . . .
That way a youth went on a morrow
After mirth, and he brought back sorrow
Painted upon his brow
Why go the east road now?

Why go the north road now?...

By her white bed I muse a little space:
She fell asleep - not very long ago, -
And yet the grass was here and not the snow -
The leaf, the bud, the blossom, and - her face! -...

By hut, homestead and shearing shed,
By railroad, coach and track,
By lonely graves where rest the dead,
Up-Country and Out-Back:
To where beneath the clustered stars
The dreamy plains expand.
...

By the hearth-stone
She sits alone,
The long night bearing:
With eyes that gleam
Into the dream
Of the firelight staring.

Low and more low
The dying glow
Burns in the embers;...

"To Be Filed For Reference", Plain Tales From the Hills



By the Hoof of the Wild Goat uptossed
From the cliff where she lay in the Sun
Fell the Stone
To the Tarn where the daylight is lost,...

Far, far from here,
The Adriatic breaks in a warm bay
Among the green Illyrian hills; and there
The sunshine in the happy glens is fair,
And by the sea, and in the brakes....

The diggings were just in their glory when Alister Cameron came,
With recommendations, he told me, from friends and a parson `at hame';
He read me his recommendations, he called them a part of his plant,...

Some Homes are where flowers for ever blow,
The sun shining hotly the whole year round;
But our Home glistens with six months of snow,
Where frost without wind heightens every sound....

The following response to Canada our home was given at a banquet of the Caledonian Society, Ingersoll:
...

Of Kentucky's great hunter bold
Old Daniel Boone oft tales are told,
Of wild beasts he had no fear,
But dangers loved that pioneer.

Canada has hunters many,
Yet perhaps there is not any...

Poltergeist activity
- the sun winding like a staircase
onto the pavement,
rickety afternoon
shooting back thru
shawls of the city.

Tippy-toe. Curtains...

The press of the Spoon River Clarion was wrecked,
And I was tarred and feathered,
For publishing this on the day the
Anarchists were hanged in Chicago:
"l saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes...