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,...

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,...

If a pleasant lawn there grow
By the showers caressed,
Where in all the seasons blow
Flowers gaily dressed,
Where by handfuls one may win
Lilies, woodbine, jessamine,
I will make a path therein...

As those who hear a sweet bird sing,
And love each song it sings the best,
Grieve when they see it taking wing
And flying to another nest:

We, who have heard your voice so oft,...

Fickle Summer's fled away,
Shall we see her face again?
Hearken to the weeping rain,
Never sunbeam greets the day.

More inconstant than the May,
She cares nothing for our pain,...

Oh, will the footsteps never be done?
The insolent feet
Thronging the street,
Forsaken now of the only one.

The only one out of all the throng,
Whose footfall I knew,...

Crimson and cream and white--
My room is a garden of roses!
Centre and left and right,
Three several splendid posies.

As the sender is, they are sweet,
These lovely gifts of your sending,...

Beyond the Cheviots and the Tweed,
Beyond the Firth of Forth,
My memory returns at speed
To Scotland and the North.

For still I keep, and ever shall,
A warm place in my heart for Scotland,...

He brought a team from Inversnaid
To play our Third Fifteen,
A man whom none of us had played
And very few had seen.

He weighed not less than eighteen stone,
And to a practised eye...

Ye who will help me in my dying pain,
Speak not a word: let all your voices cease.
Let me but hear some soft harmonious strain,
And I shall die at peace.

Music entrances, soothes, and grants relief...

Love, when the present is become the past,
And dust has covered all that now is new,
When many a fame has faded out of view,
And many a later fame is fading fast--
...

Sleep flies me like a lover
Too eagerly pursued,
Or like a bird to cover
Within some distant wood,
Where thickest boughs roof over
Her secret solitude.

The nets I spread to snare her,...

As through the street at eve we went
(It might be half-past ten),
We fell out, my friend and I,
About the cube of x+y,
And made it up again.
And blessings on the falling out...

I loved a little maiden
In the golden years gone by;
She lived in a mill, as they all do
(There is doubtless a reason why).
But she faded in the autumn
When the leaves began to fade,...

In the oldest of our alleys,
By good bejants tenanted,
Once a man whose name was Wallace--
William Wallace--reared his head.
Rowdy Bejant in the college
He was styled:...

There's a fiddler in the street,
And the children all are dancing:
Two dozen lightsome feet
Springing and prancing.

Pleasure he gives to you,
Dance then, and spare not!...

Last night for the first time, O Heart's Delight,
I held your hand a moment in my own,
The dearest moment which my soul has known,
Since I beheld and loved you at first sight.
...

The sun is banished,
The daylight vanished,
No rosy traces
Are left behind.
Here in the meadow
I watch the shadow
Of forms and faces
Upon your blind.

Through swift transitions,...

I love to see the swallows come
At my window twittering,
Bringing from their southern home
News of the approaching spring.
'Last year's nest,' they softly say,
'Last year's love again shall see;...