Works

Merrily rang out the midnight bells,
Glad tidings of joy for all;
As crouched a little shiv'ring child,
Close by the churchyard wall.
The snow and sleet were pitiless,
The wind played with her rags,...

Mari Magno
or
Tales on Board
The Mate's Story


'I've often wondered how it is, at times
Good people do what are as bad as crimes.
A common person would have been ashamed...

I.

If souls could sing to heaven's high King
As blackbirds pipe on earth,
How those delicious courts would ring
With gusts of lovely mirth!
What white-robed throng could lift a song...

I wooed her with a steeplechase, I won her with a fall,
I made her heartstrings quiver on the flat
When the pony missed his take-off, and we crashed into the wall;
Well, she simply had to have me after that!...

Tune - "I had a horse, I had nae mair."


When first I came to Stewart Kyle,
My mind it was nae steady;
Where'er I gaed, where'er I rade,
A mistress still I had ay:...

Sad Mayflower! watched by winter stars,
And nursed by winter gales,
With petals of the sleeted spars,
And leaves of frozen sails

What had she in those dreary hours,
Within her ice-rimmed bay,...

May is Mary's month, and I
Muse at that and wonder why:
Her feasts follow reason,
Dated due to season -

Candlemas, Lady Day;
But the Lady Month, May,
Why fasten that upon her,...

MUSE.
Give me a kiss, my poet, take thy lyre;
The buds are bursting on the wild sweet-briar.
To-night the Spring is born - the breeze takes fire.
Expectant of the dawn behold the thrush,...

I hold a token in my hand,
A very tiny thing;
And yet within its golden band
A thousand memories cling.

Aye! thrice ten thousand memories cling
Of signal victories won,...

The May-pole is up,
Now give me the cup;
I'll drink to the garlands around it;
But first unto those
Whose hands did compose
The glory of flowers that crown'd it.

A health to my girls,...

You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;
To-morrow 'ill be the happiest time of all the glad New-year;
Of all the glad New-year, mother, the maddest merriest day,...

Like flights of singing-birds went by
The cheerful hours of girlhood's day,
When, in my native bowers,
Of simple buds and flowers
They wove a crown, and hailed me Queen of May!
...

Mille venit variis florum Dea nexa coronis:
Scena ioci morem liberioris habet.

OV. FAST. IV. 945, 946.


I wish that the May Term were over,
That its wearisome pleasures were o'er,...

Sleep is a pathless labyrinth,
Dark to the gaze of moons and suns,
Through which the colored clue of dreams,
A gossamer thread, obscurely runs.

Here when the cloudless April days begin,
And the quaint crows flock thicker day by day,
Filling the forests with a pleasant din,
And the soiled snow creeps secretly away,...

Though the winds be dank,
And the sky be sober,
And the grieving Day
In a mantle gray
Hath let her waiting maiden robe her,--
All the fields along
I can hear the song
Of the meadow lark,...

I.

It led adown the sloping hill, and through the valley wound,
And where the blooming clover shed its fragrance all around,
And then between the maple trees, across the little brook,...

Come with the spring-time forth, fair maid, and be
This year again the meadow's deity.
Yet ere ye enter give us leave to set
Upon your head this flowery coronet;
To make this neat distinction from the rest,...

Imparity doth ever discord bring;
The mean the music makes in everything.

I think that look of Christ might seem to say
'Thou Peter! art thou then a common stone
Which I at last must break my heart upon
For all God's charge to his high angels may...