Works

Fool, to put up four crosses at your door,
Put up your wife, she's CROSSER than all four.

So witches bent on bad pursuits,
Assume the shapes of filthy brutes.

High as Longinus to the stars ascends,
So deeply Carthy to the centre tends.


RATIO INTER LONGINUM ET CARTHIUM COMPUTATA

Aethereas quantum Longinus surgit in auras,...

Late on Christmas Eve, in the street alone,
Outside a house, on the pavement-stone,
I sang to her, as we'd sung together
On former eves ere I felt her tether. -
Above the door of green by me...

Silent are the woods, and the dim green boughs are
Hushed in the twilight: yonder, in the path through
The apple orchard, is a tired plough-boy
Calling the cows home.
...

Epitaphs I

Wouldst thou hear what Man can say
In a little? Reader, stay.
Underneath this stone doth lie
As much Beauty as could die:
Which in life did harbour give...

O thou, whom poesy abhors,
Whom prose has turned out of doors,
Heard'st thou that groan? proceed no further;
'Twas laurell'd Martial roaring murther!

The feudal Keep, the bastions of Cohorn,
Even when they rose to check or to repel
Tides of aggressive war, oft served as well
Greedy ambition, armed to treat with scorn...

Languid, and sad, and slow, from day to day
I journey on, yet pensive turn to view,
Where the rich landscape gleams with softer hue,
The streams, and vales, and hills, that steal away....

Love happened at last,
And we entered God's paradise,
Sliding
Under the skin of the water
Like fish.
We saw the precious pearls of the sea
And were amazed.
Love happened at last...

On Ettrick Forest's mountains dun
'Tis blithe to hear the sportsman's gun,
And seek the heath-frequenting brood
Far through the noonday solitude;
By many a cairn and trenched mound,...

To my ninth decade I have tottered on,
And no soft arm bends now my steps to steady;
She, who once led me where she would, is gone,
So when he calls me, Death shall find me ready.

While man and woman still are incomplete,
I prize that soul where man and woman meet,
Which types all Nature's male and female plan,
But, friend, man-woman is not woman-man.

Prat he writes satires, but herein's the fault,
In no one satire there's a mite of salt.

Know thou, O stranger to the fame
Of this much lov'd, much honour'd name!
(For none that knew him need be told)
A warmer heart death ne'er made cold.

Sad thy tale, thou idle page,
And rueful thy alarms:
Death tears the brother of her love
From Isabella's arms.

Sweetly deck'd with pearly dew
The morning rose may blow;...

Down all the lanterned Bagdad of our youth
He steals, with golden justice for the poor:
Within his palace you shall know the truth!
A blood-smeared headsman hides behind each door.

All day the darkness and the cold
Upon my heart have lain,
Like shadows on the winter sky,
Like frost upon the pane;

But now my torpid fancy wakes,
And, on thy Eagle's plume,...

6.
No trump tells thy virtues - the grave where they rest
With thy dust shall remain unpolluted by fame,
Till thy foes, by the world and by fortune caressed,...

Frowns are on every Muse's face,
Reproaches from their lips are sent,
That mimicry should thus disgrace
The noble Instrument.

A very Harp in all but size!
Needles for strings in apt gradation!...