Works

My mouth to thy mouth
Ah never, ah never!
My breast from thy breast
Eternities sever;
But my soul to thy soul
For ever and ever.

Two stars once on their lonely way
Met in the heavenly height,
And they dreamed a dream they might shine alway
With undivided light;
Melt into one with a breathless throe,
And beam as one in the night....

Yea, let me be 'thy bachelere,'
'Tis sweeter than thy lord;
How should I envy him, my dear,
The lamp upon his board.
Still make his little circle bright
With boon of dear domestic light,...

Why did she marry him? Ah, say why!
How was her fancy caught?
What was the dream that he drew her by,
Or was she only bought?
Gave she her gold for a girlish whim,
A freak of a foolish mood?...

'The daffodils are fine this year,' I said;
'O yes, but see my crocuses,' said she.
And so we entered in and sat at talk
Within a little parlour bowered about
With garden-noises, filled with garden scent,...

Down where the unconquered river still flows on,
One strong free thing within a prison's heart,
I drew me with my sacred grief apart,
That it might look that spacious joy upon:...

God gave us an hour for our tears,
One hour out of all the years,
For all the years were another's gold,
Given in a cruel troth of old.

And how did we spend his boon?
That sweet miraculous flower...

O Lady, I have looked on thee once more,
Thou too hast looked on me, as thou hadst said,
And though the joy was pain, the pain was bliss,
Bliss that more happy lovers well may miss:...

[The poet dramatises his Lady's loneliness]

Alone! once more alone! how like a tomb
My little parlour sounds which only now
Yearned like some holy chancel with his voice....

Yea, love, I know, and I would have it thus,
I know that not for us
Is springtide Passion with his fire and flowers,
I know this love of ours
Lives not, nor yet may live,...

So many days that keep us still apart?
Ah, canst thou live upon remembered smiles,
And ask no warmer comfort for thy heart?

I call thy name right up into the sky,...

Love, art thou lonely to-day?
Lost love that I never see,
Love that, come noon or come night,
Comes never to me;
Love that I used to meet
In the hidden past, in the land
Of forbidden sweet.
...

One asked of regret,
And I made reply:
To have held the bird,
And let it fly;
To have seen the star
For a moment nigh,
And lost it
Through a slothful eye;
To have plucked the flower...

Young men and women, strong and sound,
Adorn with beautiful excess
Of play and song and flower-dress
Our fatherland's ancestral ground.
They dream great deeds of ages older,...

Tune - "Last time I cam o'er the muir."


I.

Young Peggy blooms our bonniest lass,
Her blush is like the morning,
The rosy dawn, the springing grass,
With early gems adorning:...

I.

With a look and a laugh where the stream was flowing,
September led me along the land;
Where the golden-rod and lobelia, glowing,
Seemed burning torches within her hand....

About Yule, when the wind blew cool;
And the round tables began,
A' there is come to our king's court
Mony a well-favoured man.

The queen looked o'er the castle wa',
Beheld baith dale and down,...

The Text is that of a copy mentioned by Percy, 'printed not long since at Glasgow, in one sheet 8vo. The world was indebted for its publication to the lady Jean Hume, sister to the Earle of Hume, who died lately at Gibraltar.' ...

I

"You on the tower of my factory -

What do you see up there?
Do you see Enjoyment with wide wings
Advancing to reach me here?"
- "Yea; I see Enjoyment with wide wings...

You played and sang a snatch of song,
A song that all-too well we knew;
But whither had flown the ancient wrong;
And was it really I and you?
O, since the end of life's to live...