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When the busy day is done,
And my weary little one
Rocketh gently to and fro;
When the night winds softly blow,
And the crickets in the glen
Chirp and chirp and chirp again;...

The Text is taken from Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, where it is entitled The Gowans sae gay. This ballad is much better known in another form, May Colvin (Collin, Collean).

...

How clear a strife of light and shade is spread!
The face how touched with nature's loveliest red!
The eye, how eloquent, and yet how meek!
The glow subdued, yet mantling on thy cheek!...

Lady of England--o'er the seas
Thy name was borne on every breeze,
Till all this sunset clime became
Familiar with Victoria's name.

Though seas divide us many miles,...

The sand was heavy on our feet,
A Christmas sky was o'er us,
And half a mile through dust and heat
Lake 'Liza lay before us.
'You'll have a long and heavy tramp',
So said the last adviser,...

I.

The wind blew hollow frae the hills,
By fits the sun's departing beam
Look'd on the fading yellow woods
That wav'd o'er Lugar's winding stream:
Beneath a craggy steep, a bard,...

I.

"Did they dare, did they dare, to slay Eoghan Ruadh O'Neill?"
"Yes, they slew with poison him they feared to meet with steel."
"May God wither up their hearts! May their blood cease to flow!...

Oh, I want to win me hame
To my ain countrie,
The land frae whence I came
Far away across the sea;
Bit I canna find it there, on the atlas anywhere,
And I greet and wonder sair...

1.

Why should my anxious breast repine,
Because my youth is fled?
Days of delight may still be mine;
Affection is not dead.
In tracing back the years of youth,...

Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
High in her chamber up a tower to the east
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot;...

The air is gray. Who knows something good for soot?
Next to an ox grazing on the ground
Stands an astonished deeply serious mountaineer.
Soon there is a powerful downpour of rain....

TO LITTLE JEANNE.

("Vous e'tes donc hier un an.")

[September, 1870.]


You've lived a year, then, yesterday, sweet child,
Prattling thus happily! So fledglings wild,...

The engineer who drives the train,
From scalds he oft doth suffer pain,
And they are more noble scars,
Than hirelings gain in foreign wars.

Our hero's name should live forever,...

Curled up and sitting on her feet,
Within the window's deep embrasure,
Is Lydia; and across the street,
A lad, with eyes of roguish azure,
Watches her buried in her book.
In vain he tries to win a look,...

At the dark and melancholy period when Don Roderick the Goth and his chivalry were overthrown on the banks of the Guadalete, and all Spain was overrun by the Moors, great was the devastation of churches and convents throughout ...

'Whose heart was breaking for a little love.'


Downstairs I laugh, I sport and jest with all;
But in my solitary room above
I turn my face in silence to the wall;...

There is no length of days
But yours, boys who were children once. Of old
The past beset you in your childish ways,
With sense of Time untold!

What have you then forgone?...

God willed, who never needed speech,
"Let all things be:"
And, lo, the starry firmament
And land and sea
And his first thought of life that lives
In you and me.

His circle of eternity...

Ye voices, that arose
After the Evening's close,
And whispered to my restless heart repose!

Go, breathe it in the ear
Of all who doubt and fear,
And say to them, "Be of good cheer!"
...

The Return of the Sire de Nesle.
A.D. 16

My towers at last! These rovings end,
Their thirst is slaked in larger dearth:
The yearning infinite recoils,
For terrible is earth.
...