Works

Early on Christmas Day,
Love, as awake I lay,
And heard the Christmas bells ring sweet and clearly,
My heart stole through the gloom
Into your silent room,...

Every critic in the town
Runs the minor poet down;
Every critic--don't you know it?
Is himself a minor poet.

I

When one is young and eager,
A bejant and a boy,
Though his moustache be meagre,
That cannot mar his joy
When at the Competition
He takes a fair position,
And feels he has a mission,...

How often have the critics, trained
To look upon the sky
Through telescopes securely chained,
Forgot the naked eye.

Within the compass of their glass
Each smallest star they knew,...

When people tell me they have loved
But once in youth,
I wonder, are they always moved
To speak the truth?

Not that they wilfully deceive:
They fondly cherish...

It was many and many a year ago,
In a city by the sea,
That a man there lived whom I happened to know
By the name of Andrew M'Crie;
And this man he slept in another room,...

How many the troubles that wait
On mortals!--especially those
Who endeavour in eloquent prose
To expound their views, and orate.

Did you ever attempt to speak
When you hadn't a word to say?...

Here, where the thoroughfares meet at an angle
Of ninety degrees (this angle is right),
You may hear the loafers that jest and wrangle
Through the sun-lit day and the lamp-lit night;...

Not the proudest damsel here
Looks so well as doth my dear.
All the borrowed light of dress
Outshining not her loveliness,

A loveliness not born of art,
But growing outwards from her heart,...

As I, with hopeless love o'erthrown,
With love o'erthrown, with love o'erthrown,
And this is truth I tell,
As I, with hopeless love o'erthrown,
Was sadly walking all alone,
...

Through many lands and over many seas
I come, my Brother, to thine obsequies,
To pay thee the last honours that remain,
And call upon thy voiceless dust, in vain.
Since cruel fate has robbed me even of thee,...

Come back to St. Andrews! Before you went away
You said you would be wretched where you could not see the Bay,
The East sands and the West sands and the castle in the sea...

I had a plant which would not thrive,
Although I watered it with care,
I could not save the blossoms fair,
Nor even keep the leaves alive.

I strove till it was vain to strive....

Brown was my friend, and faithful--but so fat!
He came to see me in the twilight dim;
I rose politely and invited him
To take a seat--how heavily he sat!

He sat upon the sofa, where my hat,...

Oh, who may this dead warrior be
That to his grave they bring?
'Tis William, Duke of Normandy,
The conqueror and king.

Across the sea, with fire and sword,
The English crown he won;...

Alas for the bird who was born to sing!
They have made him a cage; they have clipped his wing;
They have shut him up in a dingy street,
And they praise his singing and call it sweet....

Would you like to see a city given over,
Soul and body, to a tyrannising game?
If you would, there's little need to be a rover,
For St. Andrews is the abject city's name.
...

The Session's over. We must say farewell
To these east winds and to this eastern sea,
For summer comes, with swallow and with bee,
With many a flower and many a golfing swell.
...

Years grow and gather--each a gem
Lustrous with laughter and with tears,
And cunning Time a crown of years
Contrives for her who weareth them.

No chance can snatch this diadem,...

Life is a house where many chambers be,
And all the doors will yield to him who tries,
Save one, whereof men say, behind it lies
The haunting secret. He who keeps the key,
...