POEMS: 
 
 J. LOGIE ROBERTSON. 
 
 PRINTED BY JOHN LENG & CO., BANK STREET. 
 1878. 
 
LOAN STACK 
 
PRsan 
 
 * * * 
 
 These from the marshes and meadows, 
 
 And those from the marge of the main, 
 And some from the waste 
 Gathered in haste, 
 
 And a few from a garden old 
 Pilfered with pain : 
 
 And many were culled when the shadows 
 Came shuddering down on the plain, 
 
 And a few when the morning outroll'd 
 His banner and blazon of gold, 
 But most in the mist and the rain. 
 
 IT. 
 
 Bluebell and wildrose and heather, 
 A lonely exotic or two, 
 
 And grasses and weeds 
 Nobody heeds, 
 
 With forgot-nie-nots, once so brave, 
 Pallid of hue: 
 
iv. PREFACE. 
 
 So crushed in a handful together 
 
 And stained with the soil where they grew, 
 That I hardly have courage to crave 
 But yet they are all that I have ! 
 You'll take them ? I pluckt them for you. 
 
 III. 
 
 Splendid I know are the garlands 
 
 That others more tastefully twine, 
 As bids for a name 
 Sacred to Fame, 
 
 To he hung in the sounding dome 
 Own'd by the Nine : 
 And I who have been to the far lands, 
 The lands of the myrtle and vine, 
 
 In the gardens of Greece and of Eome, 
 And dreamed through our gardens at home, 
 Am bold to present you with mine. 
 
 September 1878. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SONNETS : Page 
 
 Idleness, ..... 9 
 
 The Hours, . . . . .10 
 
 Change, . . . . . 11 
 
 Hope, ..... 12 
 
 Fancy, . . . . . 13 
 
 Morning on Morven, . . . .14 
 
 Friendship, . . . . 15 
 
 Northern Student, . . . .16 
 
 Above the Stars, . . . . 17 
 
 In Imitation of the "Name Unknown" by Campbell, . 18 
 
 "A Back-lying Farm," . . . 19 
 
 To-morrow and To-morrow and To-morrow, . . 20 
 
 Epicurean, ..... 21 
 
 Ambition: In " Ercles' Vein," . . .22 
 
 Youth, ..... 23 
 
 Love, . . . . . .24 
 
 Two Sonnets 
 
 I. Sleep, .... 25 
 
 II. Death, . . . .26 
 
vi. CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 SONNETS : 
 
 The Knife-Grinder, .... 27 
 
 Faith, . . . . .28 
 
 In the Shadows : 
 
 I., ..... 29 
 
 II., . . . 30 
 
 III., ..... 31 
 
 October Winds, . . . . .32 
 
 Beauty, ..... 33 
 
 A Retrospect, . . . . .34 
 
 Arcadia, ..... 35 
 
 Michael Bruce : a Poem in Sonnets, . . 36 
 On the Decadence of the Scots Language, Manners, and 
 
 Customs, .... 42 
 
 The Spectre of the Amazon, . . .63 
 
 Tammas Wilson, or the Fortunes of a Scottish Ploughman, 76 
 
 The Flower of Airlie, . 95 
 
 Rab, the Scottish Ploughman, . . .97 
 
 The Menstril : a Ballad, ... 99 
 
 A Ballad, . . . . . .103 
 
 May Morning : a Ballad, . . . 106 
 
 A Dog-day's Petition, . . . .110 
 
 Horace in Hoggers, . . . . 114 
 
 The Mountain Maid, . . . .116 
 
 Hesperus, . . . . . 119 
 
 Heart-Sorrow, . . . . .120 
 
 Chaucer, . . . . . 121 
 
CONTENTS. Vll. 
 
 Page 
 
 A Fragment, . . . . .126 
 
 Anti-Studious, .... 131 
 
 By Lochleven, . . . . .134 
 
 Boat Song: Up with the Sail ! " . . . 136 
 
 Winds of April, . . . .138 
 
 An Ancient City, .... 140 
 
 A Farewell (Byronic), . . , .143 
 
 A Lost Treasure, . . . . 145 
 
 A Real Queen, . . . . .147 
 
 Ancient Mexico, .... 149 
 
 Pat of Tralee ; an Irish Song, . . . .151 
 
 Echoes, ..... 154 
 
 Last Look of Scotland ; a Song, . . .158 
 
 To Lesbia ; Catullus, Ode V., . . 160 
 
 The Marriage of Peleus ; a Lay of Ancient Grreece, . 162 
 
 The Old Roman Galley (after Catullus), . . 167 
 
 The Cold Light of Stars, . 170 
 
 Lochleven Castle, . . . . 173 
 
 Pat-Luck, . . . . . .182 
 
 Nos Mutamur ! ..... 185 
 
 ToujoursGai, . . . . .189 
 
 lo Bacche ! . . . . . 192 
 
 Stella ; a Song, . . . . .194 
 
 From Chaos to Cosmos, . . . . 196 
 
 Note, . 200 
 
SONNETS, 
 
 IDLENESS. 
 
 And slow and slower still, day after day, 
 
 Come the sad Hours, with beauteous upturned eyes 
 
 Gleaming with hopes I may not realise, 
 And seeming in their earnestness to say 
 Entreatingly send us not away 
 
 All empty-handed as we came ! Arise, 
 
 Give us at least some promise we shall prize, 
 To be fulfilled, though after long delay. 
 And I, although I weep to see them pass 
 
 With lingering pace and disappointed look, 
 Am lifeless as a statue bound with brass, 
 
 And listless as an open loose-leaved book 
 Turned by the wind ; yea, passive as the grass, 
 
 Weak as the wavelet of a summer brook. 
 
10 THE HOURS. 
 
 THE HOURS. 
 
 I saw once in my dreams a Dreamer sit 
 
 With half-shut eyes upon a bank of flowers 
 Bedropt with pearl and gold, the various dowers 
 
 Of all the Graces ; and with hands fast knit 
 
 In long array I saw a vision flit 
 
 A glorious sisterhood, stately as towers 
 
 Before the Dreamer : And these were the HOURS. 
 
 And as they passed the bank each knelt on it 
 
 And bowed her head upon the Dreamer's knees : 
 
 And some he crowned awry with chaplets, green 
 
 And fresh with flowers, to which clung feeding bees ; 
 Or careless necklaced some with pearly sheen 
 
 Or gold j but mostly in material ease 
 
 He sat, and let the Angels pass unseen. 
 
CHANGE. 11 
 
 CHANGE. 
 
 In the grey skies the sun is growing cold, 
 And all the beauty of the air is gone ; 
 The fays have left their bowers ; the flowers alone - 
 Sweet summer things which never can grow old 
 Are bright, but meaningless ; the ring of gold 
 
 No longer crowns the kingcup, for the wealth 
 Of all the fields is ravished ; and the stealth 
 Of lovers' glances into violets' eyes 
 For meanings which these eyes no longer hold 
 
 Is sadly unavailing. But, change 
 Saddest of all ! the hearts I wont to prize 
 
 As nearest to my own are cold and strange, 
 And I am strange to them ; and, when we meet, 
 Our words are commonplace, and few, and fleet. 
 
12 HOPE. 
 
 HOPE. 
 
 O bright-eyed Hope, that still look'st back on me, 
 And beckon' st with thy hand, seeming to say 
 " Leave caring for these baubles of To-Day ; 
 
 Lift up thy heavy lids ; look on and see 
 
 The glory waiting in the far To-Be, 
 
 Before whose beams thy present joys shall show 
 As shows the wan moon, in the morning-glow, 
 
 And all thy troubles like the night-fog flee !" 
 
 How light at times my labours seem when I 
 
 Look up to wipe my brow, and see thee there 
 
 O'erwatching all my toil with constant eye, 
 Lustrous, and oh ! above all fancy fair ! 
 
 And yet the fear that sometime thou shalt fly 
 And leave me to the blankness of despair ! 
 
FANCY. 
 
 FANCY. 
 
 Thou sluggard body, that must sit on shore 
 
 While sleepless Fancy ranges space at will 
 Now shooting boldly o'er the billowy hoar 
 
 That bounds the isle ; now to some distant hill 
 Voyaging lightly with mercurial ease 
 
 Through the wide hyaline ; anon in caves 
 Deep underground, whose black-arched vastnesses 
 
 Eing to the roar of subterranean waves, 
 Wandering and all but lost : What is thy claim, 
 
 Thou sluggard body, to companionship 
 With this ethereal essence, living flame, 
 
 Which cannot yet with perfect freedom slip 
 Its loose mysterious leash 1 What mystic spell 
 Hath pent within thy trunk this Ariel 1 
 
14 MORNING ON MORVEN. 
 
 MORNING ON MORVEN. 
 
 We stood on Morven ere the morning broke : 
 Night lingered on the hills ; a single star 
 Sent tremulously down on Lochnagar 
 
 A smile that wandered o'er his misty cloak 
 
 And touched his heart at last : sullen he woke 
 
 And bared his bosom, seamed with rent and scar 
 The silent wounds of many a Winter's war. 
 
 The mist rolled upwards : Sudden a mountain oak, 
 
 That in its sunless hollow near us grew, 
 
 Through all its leaves shook in the morning air ; 
 
 The mist still rose, the Dee rolled into view ; 
 The mist still rose, and then, a vision rare 
 
 As the first rays of morning smote it through, 
 
 And ringed with gold old Morven's forehead bare ! 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 15 
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 O give me speech ! companionship I ask 
 
 With my own kind : my soul is sick of books, 
 And longs with passionate longing for the looks 
 
 Of living men. Thou flat, insipid flask ! 
 
 Thou dead man's soul ! Thou book ! Thou calf -skin mask ! 
 I loathe thee ! Lo ! abroad the reaping-hooks, 
 From the high hill-brow to the confluent brooks, 
 
 Are circling in the harvest : Happy task ! 
 
 Thine, happy peasant ! is the healthful breeze, 
 
 The beams that call the red blood to the cheek, 
 
 The hunger which the plainest meals appease, 
 
 And thine, bliss ! companions that can speak : 
 
 To me close chambers, where at noon I freeze, 
 
 And musty tomes from dumb-day'd week to week. 
 
1 6 NORTHERN ST UDENT. 
 
 NORTHERN STUDENT. 
 
 I'm weary of the thing, if this be life 
 
 To dose and prose, companion of the clock, 
 
 Bound to my room as seaweed to the rock, 
 And maddened by a garrulous old wife ! 
 O for the noise, the bustle, and the strife, 
 
 And the glad smell of brine down at the dock ; 
 
 The launch, and the brave timbers that will mock 
 A winter's voyage with storm and whirlwind rife ! 
 This, this were life, to mount the swelling wave, 
 
 And steer the stout ship through the opposing blast, 
 And, even in dreams, to hear the tempest rave 
 
 And the great league-long tides go groaning past, 
 Till soft winds waft, and smoother waters lave 
 
 The good ship, and she gains the port at last ! 
 
ABOVE THE STARS. 17 
 
 ABOVE THE STARS. 
 
 To my sad soul the balm of sleep was sent, 
 
 Grateful as falling rain when dry winds parch 
 The withered tassels of the drooping larch ; 
 
 And through my dream voices inviting went 
 
 " Come, range with us the higher firmament : 
 For it is high and of exalted arch, 
 And suns unwearied round horizons march 
 
 To which thy compass narrows to a tent." 
 
 And in my dream methought my soul was blown, 
 By wind of wings behind it and around, 
 To a most distant sky o'er-arching ground, 
 
 If ground it might be called, with stars bestrewn ! 
 
 And all my human cares and fears were drowned 
 
 In a vast sea of harmony round me thrown ! 
 
18 IN IMITATION OF " THE 'NAME UNKNOWN.'" 
 
 IN IMITATION OF" THE ' NAME UNKNOWN/" 
 BY CAMPBELL AFTER KLO.PSTOCK. 
 
 Where is the Wizard that will tell me tine, 
 Of all the beauteous female forms I meet, 
 In green suburban walk or crowded street, 
 
 While I the daily rounds of life pursue, 
 
 Which of them all shall journey with me through 
 The coming years, a helpmate kind and meet : 
 Where wons she now ? or whither point her feet ? 
 
 And whether tend they to or from my view 1 
 
 What is she doing now 1 But is she nigh 1 
 Or in what Eden do her steps delay 1 
 
 Or have I missed her in the crowd ? why 
 
 Should cruel fate thus with blind lovers play ? 
 
 Perhaps she's in an early grave, and I 
 
 But follow vainly searching all the way. 
 
A BACK-LYIXG FARM. 19 
 
 A BACK-LYING FARM. 
 
 A back-lying farm but lately taken in ; 
 
 Forlorn hill-slopes and grey, without a tree ; 
 
 And at their base a waste of stony lea 
 Through which there creeps, too small to make a din, 
 Even where it slides over a rocky linn, 
 
 A stream, unvisited of bird or bee, 
 
 Its flowerless banks a bare sad sight to see. 
 All round, with ceaseless plaint, though spent and thin, 
 
 Like a lost child far-wandered from its home, 
 
 A querulous wind all day doth coldly roain. 
 Yet here, with sweet calm face, tending a cow, 
 
 Upon a rock a girl bareheaded sat, 
 Singing unheard, while with unlifted brow 
 
 She twined the long wan grasses in her hat. 
 
20 TO-MORROW AND TO-MORROW AND TO-MORROW." 
 
 "TO-MORROW AND TO-MORROW AND 
 TO-MORROW." 
 
 My youthtime past, Life's joyous season o'er, 
 
 The April of our years, when buds half-blown 
 
 Of golden promise, seedlings too, thick sown, 
 Delight the soul a rich uncounted store, 
 Which future suns in splendour shall restore 
 
 Poor creditor i Autumn perhaps will moan 
 
 Most inconsolably from stone to stone 
 Over a field that prematurely bore 
 A harvestry of buds reaped by the wind 
 
 That never came to fruitage ! I remember 
 The very day when to my youthful mind 
 
 A low-born thought that counselled ease did clamber 
 And drugged my energies : I woke to find 
 
 The dark winds and the cold snows of December. 
 
EPICUREAN. 21 
 
 EPICUREAN. 
 
 <( Gather we in, our wishes are complete, 
 
 This room our temple, and this board our shrine ; 
 
 See where his godship, laughing from the wine, 
 Flings to each devotee a welcome sweet, 
 And waves him to a rose-encircled seat ! 
 
 No boding suppliants we, pale-faced that pine 
 
 Beneath an angry tyrant : we recline 
 Around our blushing god, companions meet ! 
 Ha ! what is that 1 Whence came the sprig of yew 
 
 Among our roses 1 Who has stilled the lyre T 
 The lamps are out, or shed a ghastly blue, 
 
 The palsied revellers with black lips retire, 
 Crash goes the lattice ! There the lightning flew ! 
 
 And hark ! the deafening thunder's awful ire ! 
 
22 AMBITION: IN " ERCLES' VEINS 
 
 AMBITION: IN "ERCLES' VEIN." 
 
 Pooh ! stay me not ! What though or gem, or pearl ? 
 
 Let the red gold to silver blanch ! What reck 1 
 
 Shall Plutus lure my heart 1 Shall Venus' neck 
 Entice my arm to twine 1 Neaera's curl 
 With silken chain bind me, a soulless churl ? 
 
 Shall Bacchus have me at his drunken beck 
 
 lo to shout, and with vine-fronds to deck 
 Myself a fool, and life a tipsy whirl 1 
 Perish th' ignoble thought ! Why stay me ] See ! 
 
 Yonder ! 'Tis she ! She calls me let me go ! 
 She is my gem, my gold my crown is she, 
 
 Aye flashing in mine eye misering the glow ! 
 She is my love, my mistress ! I am he 
 
 That, drunk with love, adores her ! On ! lo ! 
 
YOUTH. 23 
 
 YOUTH. 
 
 Thus end the Moorish annals : " On the hill 
 
 The poor king paused, and turned a mournful gaze 
 Backward o'er green Granada to the blaze 
 
 Of the red-towered Alhanibra ; then a thrill 
 
 Of sudden anguish wrung his soul, until 
 Relief came in a rush a tearful haze 
 Blinded his view ; and to uiihonoured days 
 
 With one deep sigh departed Boabdil." 
 
 Unhappy Prince ! Methinks I pity thee, 
 
 For that thy fate prefigures forth my own : 
 
 Here, from the specular mount of Memory, 
 I gaze across my Youth, so quickly flown, 
 
 Bidding its joys and hopes eternally 
 
 A long adieu, and heaving many a moan. 
 
24 LOVE. 
 
 LOVE. 
 
 Bright in the dim horizon of the years 
 
 Hung the unsettled Light that leads to Fame : 
 Smit with the beckoning witchery of its flame 
 
 I followed on girt round with hopes and fears 
 
 That sometimes smiled but oftener, drowned in tears, 
 
 Made the dark march a sad one : sudden there came 
 Between my vision and the wandering aim 
 
 A glorious form that claimed the long arrears 
 
 Of my be-wasted youth, and fixed my eye : 
 I gazed adoring nor devoid of pain 
 
 Lest the angelic visitant should fly, 
 
 But, as she lingered on, Surely, thought I, 
 Surely the primal sentence was in vain ; 
 Only stay thou, and Eden blooms again ! 
 
SLEEP. 25 
 
 TWO SONNETS. 
 
 I. SLEEP. 
 
 And now 'tis Night, and with oblivious plume 
 
 Sleep fans the eyelids of the sons of care, 
 
 And souls to their mysterious haunts repair 
 Where the dim dreamland spreads its warping gloom. 
 O sweet and soft the glories that illume 
 
 The land of dreams, and multiform as fair, 
 Brighter than gorgeous tissues of the loom, 
 
 Or sunset splendours of the waking air ! 
 The worldling and his brother of the soil, 
 
 This one his toilsome, that his tedious day, 
 His suit the lawyer, and the smith his toil, 
 
 His rags the beggar, and the child its play 
 Each his peculiar care forgets a while, 
 
 And all, sweet Sleep, under thy peaceful sway. 
 
26 DEATH. 
 
 II. DEATH. 
 
 But if thou findest eyes that will not close, 
 
 Eyes that through suffering wet or, in despair 
 Guarding a secret which they cannot share, 
 
 Tearless refuse the respite of repose 
 
 Not thine, sweet Sleep, to end the sufferer's woes ; 
 Believe not thou canst dissipate a care 
 So dark ; thy blandishments forbear ; 
 
 There is a grief that no cessation knows. 
 
 Yet, ere thou goe'st, hear the sufferer crave 
 
 One boon of thee, and oh ! thou need'st not fear 
 
 To kill a sorrow where thou canst not save, 
 However dark the sad request appear 
 
 Call thy more pallid brother of the grave, 
 He only is the true physician here. 
 
THE KNIFEGRIXDLB. 27 
 
 THE KNIFEGRINDER. 
 
 I met a Rnifegrinder, a glorious fellow, 
 Upon the dusty highway, and I stood 
 And saw him push his one-wheeled thing of wood 
 
 Before him lustily, and heard him bellow 
 
 With a strong voice, whole-lung'd and loud and mellow, 
 For work with a becoming hardihood : 
 His cheek was brown, by many a summer hued, 
 
 And his rough foxy beard was fring'd with yellow. 
 
 And, if you will believe me, as I gazed 
 
 'Twas with both praise and envy : here methought 
 
 Is happiness on no foundation raised 
 
 External to the mind, but safely wrought 
 
 In self ; and then the manliness I praised 
 
 With which he met the meanness of his lot. 
 
28 FAITH. 
 
 FAITH. 
 
 With" the dim brooding of a painless woe 
 
 Sent from afar, I knew not how nor why, 
 My soul was dark beneath so bright a sky 
 
 The light seemed from beyond the sun to flow : 
 
 Onward I went in gloom with all this glow 
 Falling about me, when a joyful cry 
 Escaped my lips, as, twinkling swiftly by, 
 
 A thousand doves flew up with wings of snow. 
 
 That instant I was glad : the gloom gave way, 
 And left th' horizon of my spirit clear ; 
 
 And from behind I heard the rustling play 
 
 Of winging hopes and memories drawing near 
 
 There was not one of all the memories gray. 
 
 And with the hopes there did not blend a fear. 
 
IN THE SHADOWS. 
 
 IN THE SHADOWS. 
 
 And now I am alone : the city's hum 
 
 Is far behind me, and at rest I dwell 
 Beyond the maddening circle of her spell, 
 
 Whither her lynx-eyed envies may not come, 
 
 Nor the vain roll of her distracting drum. 
 
 O Mother Nature, mercifully dumb, 
 
 How doth thy countenance all care dispel, 
 Breathing a peace upon the inward hell ! 
 
 Here at thy knees, where in the wayward time 
 Of reckless infancy I ran and played, 
 
 Here at thy knees I mourn my wasted prime, 
 
 That far from thee in quest of trifles strayed ; 
 
 And thou with mute eyes overlook'st my crime, 
 With thy maternal arms around me laid ! 
 
30 IN THE SHADOWS. 
 
 II. 
 
 As wandering bird to its forsaken nest, 
 After long buffetings amid the rain, 
 Comes home with weary wings fatigued in vain 
 
 When Evening's peace soothes the yet weeping west : 
 
 Or as the dove, with strange adventurous breast, 
 Chose the wide horrors of the rnargeless main 
 Only with mournful note to seek again 
 
 The sheltering ark, a late-returning guest : 
 
 So I, repentant, to the shadows flee 
 
 From the fierce light that tempted me to roam, 
 
 Happy in this, that there is left to me 
 The sweet obscure security of home, 
 
 Doubly endeared in that it was despised, 
 
 And in the light of contrast doubly prized. 
 
IN THE SHADOWS. 31 
 
 III. 
 
 The voiceless benediction of a peace 
 
 That tarries with me from this very hour 
 Falls on my brain, as falls the windless shower 
 On summer plants that droop at day's decease, 
 Instilling strength and promising increase 
 
 To the renewal of the fading dower 
 The Morning gave : And if the lust of power 
 Once to what issue boots not swayed my life, 
 Here its command and my allegiance cease ! 
 To you, ye sons of Anak, vainly brave, 
 I leave the plaudits of the conquered slave 
 And the unenvied honours of the strife ; 
 For what is all that glory ever gave ? 
 Glitter and sound, and mostly o'er a grave ! 
 
32 "OCTOBER WINDS:' 
 
 "OCTOBER WINDS." 
 
 October winds are hungering o'er the hill 
 
 In a vain search for summer joys that flee 
 The approaching day of desolated tree 
 
 And vanished flower and unmelodious rill ; 
 
 And yet a parting beauty lingers still 
 
 Of Autumn's own, which were not sad to see 
 But for bare fields and flower-forsaken lea 
 
 And wan loose leaves that all the valley fill. 
 
 For I have found, when summer days were dead, 
 In a sad glen of whisper'd memories full, 
 
 Autumn rejoicing in the berries red 
 
 Of a gay rowan by a Highland pool, 
 
 Amid the signs of sorrow Nature shed 
 
 When Summer's love for her began to cool. 
 
BEAUTY. 33 
 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 It is not in the air that Beauty dwells ; 
 
 Nor do you steal upon her in her dreams 
 In the far glens ; among the lonely streams 
 
 She is not now, pursuing water-bells ; 
 
 Her feet are not among the pearly shells 
 
 Of some fair islet that we do not know, 
 Severed from sister archipelago, 
 
 And sitting in the sea that round it swells 
 
 Gently in the broad belt of calms. But where 
 From human eyes a noble soul looks forth 
 
 On Nature with the freedom of an heir 
 
 Greedy, perhaps, but grateful for his share 
 Beauty arising sings : She is the birth 
 Of the sweet sympathy of man with earth. 
 
A RETROSPECT. 
 
 A RETROSPECT. 
 
 Now what this pebbly strip of Kentish coast 
 
 And the lone sweep of this blue curling bay 
 
 Has waked my fancy to I cannot say, 
 That most is busy when I idle most, 
 But backward through the years she seems to post ; 
 
 She seems in running to devour the way, 
 
 And I, dull laggard, follow as I may, 
 Till at the last she stops : And lo ! a host 
 Of whitening sails, far as the eye can reach, 
 
 Advancing from the sky-line more and more ! 
 * These are the men that bring your Shakespeare speech !' 
 
 I look again, and, closer than before, 
 Lo ! Hengist's galley cabled to the beach, 
 
 And Horsa's sailors pulling for the shore. 
 
ARCADIA. 35 
 
 ARCADIA. 
 
 A glorious day among the Ochil hills ! 
 
 Blue April skies above ; and all about 
 
 Green primrose banks that slope to where the trout 
 In silver glance athwart the gleaming rills, 
 And wagtails bob, and ouzels wet their bills ; 
 
 And linnets in the heather in and out 
 
 Weaving sweet music ; and the shepherd's shout ; 
 And the fine fragrance which the birk distils : 
 Arcadia ! and ten hours of it ! But stay, 
 
 There was no clock in Arden ; let me see ; 
 Suppose we borrow Milton's words, and say 
 
 From morn till dewy eve. And who were we ? 
 Why, Jack and I. Angling : we ' whipt' all day. 
 
 Well, I got none, but Jack was good for three ! 
 
36 MICHAEL BRUCE. 
 
 MICHAEL BRUCE: 
 
 A POEM IN SONNETS. 
 
 The children of one king one rank retain ; 
 
 And he that is the youngest, in his plays 
 
 Is none the less a prince with him who sways 
 A sceptre in the father-king's domain 
 Apportioned to his years : So I were fain, 
 
 Out of my love for one of gentle ways 
 
 And golden promise of his youth, to raise 
 The whole poetic choir of every strain 
 To one great level ; and, that I may guard 
 
 A life so gentle from debate, and shun 
 Conflicting with the critic's nice award, 
 
 I will prevent idle comparison 
 By naming in one breath England's great bard, 
 
 Milton, and Bruce, Apollo's uncrowned son. 
 
MICHAEL BRUOE. 37 
 
 II. 
 
 MILTON and MICHAEL BRUCE : Not thine the blame, 
 Sweet minor poet of my native shire, 
 If thus the mighty master of the lyre 
 
 And thou be linked together, name to name. 
 
 Yet now, however wide the master's fame 
 
 Burn in our English heavens, a living fire, 
 While thy small taper threatens to expire, 
 
 I soberly must think your meeds the same. 
 
 'Tis true thy genius crept in narrow groove, 
 
 While his soared sunward beyond common ken ; 
 
 But as the power of mighty poets move 
 Only the mighty, so thy simple pen 
 
 Belike as great an influence doth prove 
 
 Upon the simple lives of common men. 
 
38 MICHAEL BRUCE. 
 
 III. 
 
 'Twas his to cheer the leaders of the throng 
 
 That moves between the moaning of two seas 
 Darkling between the two eternities 
 
 With the high hopes of his unclouded song. 
 
 Of light he sang, and rolled its beams along 
 
 The skies of human life : the vales and leas 
 Catch not the- rays that strike the hills and trees ;, 
 
 And Milton's strength was only for the strong. 
 
 But thou wert in the crowd, and stooped thy brow, : 
 Lambent with Heaven's own light, among the low,, 
 
 And sang sweet hymns to cheer the passing Now, 
 
 And raised sweet hopes of a bright morning glow ;. 
 
 And ever, amidst thy singing, thou wouldst bow 
 
 Thy head to hide the tears that would down-flow. 
 
MICHAEL BRUCE. 39 
 
 IV. 
 
 If, where thou sitt'st in juster state than here, 
 
 With scarce a bud of all thy springtime blown, 
 Thy friends could claim for thee, till thou wert gone 
 
 And they were free to think thee Milton's peer, 
 
 And fain to find for thee some idle sphere 
 Waiting thy tardy coronation on 
 The lofty splendours of its empty throne 
 
 To burst forth singing on a new career, 
 
 If, where thou sitt'st inheriting the glow 
 
 Of full-orbed glory, thou hast thought of earth, 
 
 Thy gentle spirit must be pleased to know 
 That in the pastoral hamlet of thy birth, 
 
 While stranger generations come and go, 
 
 Thy cherished hymns are heard by many a hearth. 
 
40 MICHAEL BRUCE. 
 
 V. 
 
 The pale-faced weaver, pensive at his loom, 
 Flinging the idle shuttle day by day, 
 Cheered by the solace of thy gospel lay, 
 
 Escapes the thraldom of his narrow doom. 
 
 And I have heard sweet voices in the broom 
 Of orphan girl or boy, on upland brae 
 Tending the cow, or tedding of the hay, 
 
 Singing of glad reunions at the tomb 
 
 In solemn hymns of thine ; and I have thought 
 Their hopes the braver for their faith in thee ; 
 
 For thou wert one of them : thy parents wrought 
 At wheel and loom beneath yon old rooftree ; 
 
 And thou, like them, wert in thy boyhood taught 
 On these same hills to earn thy infant fee. 
 
MICHAEL BRUCE. 41 
 
 VI. 
 
 Thou art a living presence in the streets 
 
 Of the small town, familiar on the tongue 
 Of every villager, and ever young ; 
 
 So that the pilgrim to these lone retreats 
 
 Marvels to find in every one he meets 
 
 That kindly memory, of affection sprung, 
 Which, more than panegyric said or sung, 
 
 Time and the grave of their grim functions cheats. 
 
 But when the blissful Sabbath days bestow 
 
 Their weekly balm on jaded heart and limb, 
 
 And temporal cares the burdened heart forego, 
 
 And Heaven appears less distant and less dim, 
 
 Is heard thy voice plaintive o'er human woe, 
 Or jubilant in the grand millennial hymn. 
 
42 ON THE DECADENCE OF THE 
 
 ON THE DECADENCE OF THE 
 SCOTS LANGUAGE, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS. 
 
 They're wearin' by, the guid auld times 
 0' Scottish rants and hamet rhymes, 
 In ilka biggin* said or sung 
 In the familiar mither tongue, 
 When lads and lasses were convenin' 
 Roun' the wide ingle at the e'enin'. 
 
 They're wearin 7 by, the guicl auld days 
 O' simple faith an 7 honest phrase 
 Atween the maister an' the man 
 In ilka corner o' the Ian', 
 "When faithfu' service was a pleasour, 
 An' faithfu' servants were a treasour. 
 
 They're wearin' by, the guid auld lives 
 O' leal an 1 thrifty men an' wives ; 
 They're wearin' oot, the guid auld creeds 
 That met a simple people's needs ; 
 
SCOTS LANGUAGE, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS. 43 
 
 The auld Scots character an' laws 
 That made oor kintra what it was 
 Esteemed at hame, envied abroad, 
 Honoured o' man an' loved o' God ; 
 Oor nationality, oor name, 
 Oor patriotic love for hame 
 I 'maist could greet ; I can but sigh 
 They're wearin' oot, they're a' gaun by ! 
 
 The gude auld honest mither tongue ! 
 They kent nae ither, auld or young ; 
 The cottar spak' it in his yaird, 
 An' on his rigs the gawcie laird. 
 
 Weel could it a' oor wants express, 
 Weel could it ban, weel could it bless ; 
 Wi' a' oor feelin's 'twas acquent, 
 Had words for pleasour an' complent ; 
 Was sweet to hear in sacred psalm 
 In simmer Sabbath mornin's calm; 
 An' at the family exerceese, 
 When auld gudeinan, on bended knees, 
 Wrastled as Jacob did langsyne 
 For favours temporal an' divine, 
 
44 ON THE DECADENCE OF THE 
 
 Hoo did its fervent accents roll 
 
 The load o' sin frae aff the soul ! 
 
 Nae fine affeckit foreign soun', 
 
 Wi' frequent flexions up an' down, 
 
 But a straucht-for'at free-born speech, 
 
 A manly tongue to learn or teach, 
 
 Whaur ilka say was to the point, 
 
 An' ilka word in ilka joint 
 
 Gruppit the sense it carried wi' 't, 
 
 An* stappit aff wi' decent speed 
 
 An' ilka letter gat its due 
 
 The first page o' the Carritch thro', 
 
 An' ne'er a lisp was tolerated, 
 
 An' "lock" for "loch" like Sawtan hated, 
 
 An' aye the " r," tho' crank awee, 
 
 Gaed birlin' aff the mooth-ruif free. 
 
 It was as yauld an' bauld a tongue 
 
 As roun' the wa's o' Babel rung, 
 
 An' better rung, for plank or plaister ; 
 
 Nae dcot its author was a maister 
 
 At least a foresman owre the people, 
 
 The masons at the muckle steeple, 
 
 An' swuir at lairge, an 1 dang'd and deyvled, 
 
 That awfu' oor the tongues were reyvled ! 
 
SCOTS LANGUAGE, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS. 45 
 
 An' it had words were a' its aiii ; 
 A gowlock was a gowlock thain ; 
 A soughin' wind amang the trees 
 Was bonnier than a gentle breeze ; 
 The shut o' day was aye .the gloamin', 
 An' daunder was the word for roamin', 
 An' true was leal, an' loss was tyne, 
 An' long ago was auld langsyne. 
 
 Ye've heard, when May was new begun, 
 Aniangs' the gress a peepin' wun' 
 That shook the blades an' swith awa' ! 
 As saf t a breath as bairn could blaw ; 
 Belyve it creepit owre the lee, 
 An' up an' sang upon the tree 
 A strain sae plaintive that to hear it 
 Ye thocht some disembodied speerit, 
 Frae heaven forwander't far its lane, 
 Was greetin' to win back again. 
 
 Anon it loupit to the wud, 
 An', like a wulbeast nane can hud, 
 Seiz'd on the patient pines an' tare 
 An' whirl'd their branches high in air, 
 An' raged an' roared fra' glade to glen 
 
46 ON THE DECADENCE OF THE 
 
 Till the haill wud, fra' en 7 to en 7 , 
 Thro* a 7 its caves an* corners rung, 
 An 7 to the tempest rock 7 d an 7 swung : 
 The cattle, moaning, fled the bield, 
 Th 7 umbrageous wud was wont to yield. 
 
 As wide could range the auld Scots tongue ; 
 'Twas meet alike for auld an 7 young, 
 For jest an 7 earnest, joy an 7 wae, 
 For cursin 7 an 7 caressin 7 tae. 
 
 Twas gentlier at a hushaba 
 Than a wud-muffled waterfa 7 , 
 Or cushats wi 7 their downie croon 
 Heard through a gowden afternoon, 
 Or streams that rin wi 7 liquid lapse, 
 Or wun 7 s among the pine-tree taps. 
 
 'Twas sweet at a 7 times i' the mooth 
 O 7 woman moved wi 7 meltin 7 ruth ; 
 But oh ! when first love was her care, 
 'Twas bonnie far beyond compare. 
 
 7 Twas mair sonorous than the Latin, 
 Cam 7 heavier on the hide o' Satan, 
 
SCOTS LANGUAGE, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS. 47 
 
 When frae his Ebal o' a poopit 
 
 The minister grew hearse an' roopit, 
 
 An' bann'd wi' energetic jaw 
 
 The author o' the primal fa'. 
 
 But if the poopit's sacred clangour 
 
 Was something aw'some in its anger, 
 
 Gude keep my Southlan' freen's fra' hearin' 
 
 A rouch red-headed Scotsman swearin' ! 
 
 But wha would hae audacity 
 To question its capacity ] 
 
 The mither croon'd by cradle side, 
 Young Jockie woo'd his blushin' bride, 
 The bargain at the fair was driven, 
 The solemn prayer was wing'd to heaven, 
 The deein' faither made his will, 
 In gude braid Scots : 
 
 A language still ! 
 It lives in Ereedom-Barbour's lines, 
 In bauld D unbar it brichtly shines, 
 On Lyndsay's page like licht it streams, 
 In Border scraps it fitful gleams, 
 An' like the shimmerin' spunkie strays 
 By Ettrick banks an' Yarrow braes. 
 
48 ON THE DECADENCE OF THE 
 
 It lives for aye in Allan's play, 
 
 In Coila's sangs, the Shepherd's lay, 
 
 The bird-like lilts fra' Paisley side, 
 
 The Wizart's tales that flew sae wide, 
 
 Forbye the vast an' various lore 
 
 0' later ballants by the score : 
 
 The gude auld Scots ! a language still, 
 
 Let fortune vary as she will. 
 
 Though banish'd from oor College ha's, 
 
 It frames the siccar auld Scots laws ; 
 
 Though from the lips, of speech the portal, 
 
 It lives in Literature immortal. 
 
 But oh, alas ! the waefu' change, 
 
 The customs new, the fashions strange, 
 
 Sin' the auld patriarchal days 
 
 O' sober thocht an' simple phrase ! 
 
 In thae auld days a heaven o' calm 
 Hung owre the kintra like a balm 
 That still'd the fractious fretfu' blude, 
 An' made a tranquil neighbourhude. 
 Ilk townie was a human fauld ; 
 The young grew up amang the auld, 
 An' learnt their ways, an' settled down 
 
SCOTS LANGUAGE, MANNEMS, AND CUSTOMS. 49 
 
 Contentit i' their native town. 
 
 The sergeant, whiles, sae brave an' braw, 
 
 Wad wile a flichty chiel' awa', 
 
 An' noo an' thain some book-lear'cl birkie 
 
 "Wad tak' a hankerin' for a kirkie ; 
 
 But few they were to cities ran ; 
 
 The village was a family than, 
 
 Where ilka housie was a hame, 
 
 An' ilka bairnie kent by name. 
 
 Nor think it was a humdrum life, 
 A lang-continued labour'd strife, 
 Withouten stop frae Yule to Yule 
 For the bare wants o' milk an' meal. 
 Ilk cottar had his ain bit land 
 He labour'd wi' an eident hand, 
 Afore the meikle farms came in, 
 Like Pharaoh's cattle lank an' thin, 
 An' swallow'd up it's e'en a sair joke 
 The bien bit crofties o' the puir folk. 
 Oh, wae the day the puir man tint it, 
 His cot an' pendicle ahint it ! 
 Tho' short his boonds, an' small his gain, 
 A BIT o' SCOTLAND was his ain. 
 
50 ON THE DECADENCE OF THE 
 
 What better guard or guarantee 
 O 7 patriot love or loyaltie, 
 Amang the common kintra cless 
 The kintra's mainstey in distress 
 What stauncher safeguard could ye get 
 Than the auld crofter system yet ? 
 
 That neuk o' Scotland's auld gray plaid 
 Was his his shelter an' his shade ; 
 An 7 jealous was he of his corner, 
 Quick to resent the scoff of scorn er, 
 An' ready for his richt to stand 
 As ony lordling in the land. 
 
 tourin' schemes o' foreign gain 
 Ayont the wide Atlantic main, 
 Nae sinfu' thochts o' wild ambition 
 Garr'd him despise his low condition ; 
 His twa-'ree acres delv'd an' plantit, 
 He whistled, and was weel-contentit. 
 
 An' then the simple plays an 7 ploys, 
 The healthfu' games an' hamely joys- 
 A present pleasour to the mind, 
 That left nae efter-sting behind. 
 
SCOTS LANGUAGE, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS. 51 
 
 The time were surely idly spent 
 To speak o' preachin's fra' the tent, 
 0' kirns an' foys an' penny-waddin's, 
 An 7 back-en* midnicht masqueraddin's ; 
 An* Hallowe'en sae blythe an' merry, 
 An' the daft days o' Janiwary ; 
 An' pranks an' plays at Beltantide, 
 An' mony frolics mair beside. 
 
 And auld-warld cracks an' eldritch stories 
 O' wizart caves an' haunted corries ; 
 An* eerie tales o' water- witches, 
 That to the foord decoyed puir wretches ; 
 An' lang accounts o' doughty deeds, 
 By heroes wroucht in warrior weeds 
 For puir auld Scotland's honoured sake 
 In days when Freedom was at stake. 
 Then chiefly in the lang forenicht 
 Was tauld the tale o' Wallace wicht, 
 Hoo like a lion roused he rose, 
 An' rush'd on his insulting foes ; 
 Before his glance like deer they fled 
 Behind him lay a line of dead 
 Till, breathless from the chase at length, 
 
52 ON THE DECADENCE OF THE 
 
 He sought the woods to gather strength, 
 
 Whence, issuing ever and again, 
 
 He bled an' battled to the en'. 
 
 An' here the tale would tak' a turn 
 
 To Robert Bruce o' Bannockburn ; 
 
 How through the lang eventfu' strife, 
 
 Ere glory crooned his later life, 
 
 He rather chose the woods an' caves 
 
 Wi' freedom an' his band o' braves 
 
 Than sit upon a silken seat, 
 
 An' wear a crown at Edward's feet. 
 
 Or aiblins that daft lassie, SANG, 
 Would slip unseen amang the thrang 
 O' lads an' lasses busy jokin' 
 Koun' the wide ingle at the rokin'. 
 Tho' snaw- white was the robe she wore, 
 An' strung wi' gold the harp she bore, 
 She mair than tholed the reek an' coom 
 The auld clay biggin' was her hame ! 
 She micht hae sat in city ha's, 
 An' listened to refined applause ; 
 But dearer to her heart the cot, 
 The kintra, an' the puir man's lot. 
 
SOOTS LANGUAGE, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS. 53 
 
 She sang to children o 7 the soil 
 The dignity of honest toil, 
 The independence o' the mind, 
 An' better days for a 7 mankind. 
 
 She sang o' love and youthfu 7 joys, 
 O' friendship's frank an 7 social noise, 
 An 7 toasted in her moods o' glee 
 Scotland wi' a 7 the honours three. 
 
 She sang auld Scotland's broomy knowes, 
 Her tourin' hills where heather grows, 
 Her scroggy glens to memory dear, 
 Her burnies wimplin' thro' them clear. 
 
 She flang owre cairn o' mountain stane 
 Familiar wi' the midnicht's maen, 
 Owre moory monumental fiel 7 , 
 Owre river wi' its ruin'd peel, 
 A beauty mair than sun could gi'e, 
 Or blue-bells noddin' bonnilie. 
 
 The glamour o' the vanish'd past 
 On bare forsaken scenes she cast, 
 The licht o' lang-descendit suns, 
 The wail o' lang-exhaustit wun's, 
 
54 ON THE DECADENCE OF THE 
 
 The shouts o' heroes in the dust, 
 The gleam o 7 glaives 1100 red wi' rust. 
 
 At ither times, late i' the gloamin', 
 When wun's aroon' the wa's were roamin'- 
 Like warl'y cares aroond a mind 
 To heaven's high will serene resigned 
 While slept the heavy-laboured young, 
 And owre the fire the auld folk hung, 
 A holy radiance would illume 
 The cottage wi' a gowden bloom, 
 And i' the midst would seem to stand 
 Wi' peacefu' olive in her hand, 
 A matron of supernal air 
 RELIGION was the name she bare. 
 
 mere emotional face had she, 
 But a clear intellectual e'e, 
 From whilk the Truth, as from a dookit 
 Or open lattice-window, lookit. 
 
 Her lips, o' gracefu' curve divine, 
 Had that placidity of line 
 Whose sweet severity alway 
 Hep els the rude and awes the gay. 
 
SCOTS LANGUAGE, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS. 55 
 
 Hie was her broo an' fair to see 
 A temple of serenitie, 
 On whilk a glance how short soe'er 
 DispelTd the momentary fear, 
 An* gave the heart a lively sense 
 Of lasting peace an* confidence. 
 
 She spake wi' calmness o' the grave 
 As of an entrance-gate that gave, 
 Withouten tax of man or toll, 
 Admission to the ransom'd soul 
 Admission purchased wi' a price, 
 To the fair fields of paradise. 
 
 Her teachings nourished hopes sublime 
 Beyond the dreams of earth or time ; 
 Before their brilliance paled away 
 Sceptres an' swords of widest sway, 
 The flashing crown, the purpled robe, 
 The glory of a conquer'd globe. 
 
 Nor less the splendour of a name 
 Hailed by a wondering world's acclaim, 
 For triumphs nobler than the sword's, 
 Achieved by noiseless thochts an' words 
 
56 ON THE DECADENCE OF THE 
 
 In the much wider world of mind, 
 Unenvied fell their hopes behind. 
 
 The boast of rank, the pride of state, 
 The airs and orders of the great ; 
 The curtain'd cushion'd coach an' bed, 
 The prancing steeds, the banners spread ; 
 The flash, the glitter, an' the glare, 
 The bress, the gless, the trumpet blare 
 What were they but a toom pretence, 
 The fleeting shapes ah 7 shows of sense ? 
 
 Not more enduring by a day 
 Than the puir cottar's hodden gray, 
 His staff, his bannet, an' his plaid, 
 The sweaty emblems of his trade, 
 His horny luif, his thristly soil, 
 His back sair bent wi' lifelong toil, 
 His bitter cares, his vexin' crosses, 
 His disappointments, pains, an' losses. 
 
 Wi' a' their prizes, a' their pains, 
 Their petty losses, paltry gains, 
 Th' allotted threescore years an' ten 
 What were they after a' to men 
 
SCOTS LANGUAGE, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS. 57 
 
 Whase view of human life was less 
 A tent life in a wilderness 
 Than a short passage owre a muir 
 To mansions waitin' them secure ? 
 
 Present abasement they could bide, 
 Sustained by an immortal pride ; 
 For were they not the absent heirs 
 Of heaven, predestinated theirs ? 
 The exiled children journey in' harne 
 Of a great Prince of powerfu' name 1 
 Yea, were they not upon the road 
 Princes and priests disguised of God ] 
 
 The present age, I maun alloo, 
 Is wide an' cultured in its view, 
 Keen to spy oot, an' quick to damn 
 The hoar hypocrisy an' sham 
 That in the silent growth o' years 
 Covers wi' superstitious fears 
 Forms that express the noblest truth 
 That ever cam' fra' human mouth, 
 As ye have seen the lichen hide 
 The ootlines o' the sculptor's pride. 
 
58 ON THE DECADENCE OF THE 
 
 But, oh ! I canna but lament 
 The slackenin' o' a' restraint 
 Halesome to social life ; but chief 
 The rootin' up o' a' belief 
 In life on earth to heaven translated, 
 In God, and man as God-created ; 
 Nor least that reverential tone 
 Of oor grave elders changed or gone. 
 
 Others there are, but these the chief 
 License, irreverence, unbelief 
 Evils that follow in the train 
 Of forms exposed and held as vain, 
 Tho' cherished long, to suit the gentry 
 Of this omniscient nineteen cent'ry. 
 
 In thae auld days noo on the wing, 
 In thae auld ways I've tried to sing, 
 Thus were the youth o' Scotland reared, 
 An' Scotland's ancient name revered. 
 
 Dear were her mountains, knocks, an' knowes, 
 Her fells an' forests, haughs an' howes 
 Not for their natural beauty only, 
 
SCOTS LANGUAGE, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS. 59 
 
 Or grandeur, lofty, grim, an 7 lonely, 
 But for they were an heritage 
 Bequeathed intact from age to age 
 By men wha bocht them wr 1 their blude, 
 An 7 battled for them rude by rude. 
 
 Thus were those feelings kept alive 
 That still for independence strive 
 Against a power that would control 
 Freedom o' body, mind, or soul. 
 
 Thus, too, the passion was begot 
 That Scotsman feels for brither Scot 
 When they amang the frem'd forgaither, 
 Tho' perfect strangers to ilk ither ; 
 For they were rear'd on common fare, 
 An' breathed the same wild mountain air, 
 Their hearts wi' mutual memories glowed, 
 Their blude wi' kindred instincts flowed, 
 Their sympathies in common ran, 
 Their likes an' dislikes were at wan. 
 
 But wae befa' the weary toun ! 
 It brought the sad reverse aroun', 
 
60 ON THE DECADENCE OF THE 
 
 An' lowsed the tender social ties 
 In whilk a nation's vigour lies. 
 It like a black-wambed speeder flang 
 Its telegraphic wires alang 
 The fields where rural industry, 
 Maist like an unambitious bee 
 Contentit wi' a modest spoil, 
 Had humm'd sae happy at its toil. 
 
 It laid its lines o' iron doun, 
 
 An' sallied forth wi' clatteriii' soun', 
 
 Wi' puff an' snort an' startlin' shriek, 
 
 Envelop'd in a cludd o' smeek 
 
 To scare the little folks awa', 
 
 To bleck wi' coom the greenwud shaw, 
 
 To fill the youthfu' peasant breast 
 
 Wi' discontentment and unrest, 
 
 An' drag sweet Innocence within 
 
 The city's whiiiin' gulf o' sin. 
 
 { A panic owre the kintra spread, 
 
 To towns the simple peasants sped, 
 
 4 Where, disappointed in their dreams, 
 
 They listened to the wildest schemes, 
 
SCOTS LANGUAGE, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS. 61 
 
 An' crossed the ocean faem to find 
 ^N"ae hame like what they left behind. 
 
 O then was heard by foreign streams 
 The exile's wail owre vanished dreams ; 
 An' nichtly to their dashing wave 
 Perhaps some banish'd bard would rave 
 The blindin' saut tear in his e'e 
 O' bonnie Doon or banks o' Dee. 
 
 The lesser venturesome that steyed, 
 Gaed wanderin' thro' the kintra wide 
 Here for a year, an 7 there for twa, 
 "Where flittin' fortune seem'd to ca.' 
 
 O thou accursed lust o' gain, 
 For whilk we madly strive an' strain, 
 What offerings on thine altar laid, 
 What sacrifices maun be made ! 
 
 And a' for what ? It's no' in gear 
 It's no' in cent, per cent, per year 
 It's no' in gowd although we hed it 
 The wise can see't, the rich hae said it 
 
62 SOOTS LANGUAGE, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS. 
 
 It's no 7 in mountain heaps o' wealth 
 To purchase happiness an' health ! 
 
 But what avails this lang oration, 
 This pleadin' an' expostulation ? 
 Oh, Ichabod ! The better plan 
 Were just to end as I began 
 To note the waef u' change, an' cry 
 The guid auld times are a' gaun by ! 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE AMAZON. 63 
 
 THE SPECTRE OF THE AMAZON. 
 
 I've been a traveller in my time : 
 And aince in a far foreign clime, 
 Where rows the Amazon sublime 
 
 Through mony a grand Savannah, 
 I spied the knuckles o' a hand 
 Projectin' fra' the seaside sand ; 
 Thinks I, the banes have aince been awn'd 
 
 By some puir quadrumana. 
 
 Ye see, the region roun' was rife 
 Wi' a' the forms o j puggy life : 
 It's fa'en, quo' I, in battle strife, 
 
 Or died for want o' pheesic ; 
 Or aiblins he had built a raft 
 An ape the neebors counted daft 
 Syne ventured seaward in his craft, 
 
 An 7 fa'en owreboard when sea-sick ! 
 
 Or, maybe, crost in love, a' hope 
 Gaed fra' him ; he begoud to mope 
 
64 THE SPECTRE OF THE AMAZON. 
 
 Becam' a monkey misanthrope, 
 
 An* lived an' died a hermit. 
 Nae doot the cratur's howf was near, 
 Where he would sit the lee-lang year, 
 An' row the saut melodious tear, 
 As human poets term it. 
 
 Howe'er it happened nane can tell ; 
 But here at last the puggy fell, 
 TVT tranquil sob or frantic yell, 
 
 Beside the lanely ocean : 
 
 An' now, said I when back I sprang, 
 
 As, glowerin' doun, / saw them gang, 
 Five fleshless fingers, workin' thrang 
 
 "WT ane uncanny motion ! 
 
 There was a drappie in my e'e, 
 Or aiblins twa I winna lee ; 
 But, sirs, it sobered me awee, 
 
 This ghaistly sicht an' eerie. 
 The larig-hour'd tropic day was dune, 
 There was a far-awa' dim mune, 
 An' clouds were driftin' wild abune, 
 
 An' win's were whistlin' dreary. 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE AMAZON. 65 
 
 I set my staff, an' glowerin' stude : 
 Five fingers void o' flesh, an' blude ; 
 Five rattlin' banes ! an' how they gaed ! 
 
 Lang yellow spangs, an' ghastly ! 
 I glowered again wi' steadier view : 
 Less quick the pulseless fingers flew, 
 The joints gaed slower yet, an' grew 
 
 As stiff as iron lastly. 
 
 I didna mair than weet my teeth, 
 Pu'd doun my bannet, drew my breath, 
 Syne to mysel' I swuir an aith 
 
 To shak' hands wi' the ferlie. 
 Sae doun my loof I rax'd fu' bauld, 
 An' seized the banes : my bluid ran cauld 
 The fingers roun' my fingers fauld, 
 
 An' Imd the grip richt sairly ! 
 
 I swat wi' terror an' affricht, 
 
 An' tugg'd an' pu'd wi' a' my micht, 
 
 Till, fra' the sand, an awesome sicht 
 
 Ease up in roosty armour ! 
 The figure sich'd an' ga'e a grane, 
 But as it let my hand alane 
 
66 THE SPECTRE OF THE AMAZON. 
 
 " I doot ye've wauken'd fully sune," 
 
 Quo 1 I, " my sprichtly charmer !" 
 
 It rax'd an* gaunted, rubbed its e'en, 
 Or rather where they aince had been ; 
 At length quo* I, " My waukrife frien', 
 
 Ye're mine by richt o' captur'." 
 The strange thocht through my noddle ran 
 That in a painted caravan 
 I'd mak' a fortune wi' the man, 
 
 An' raise in Fife a raptur'. 
 
 Wi* that he raised his helm awee, 
 An' there, abune his richt e'ebree, 
 There was a clour richt sair to see 
 
 Deep in his skull indented ; 
 His hand gaed roun" the place an* roun', 
 Like ane just waukenin' fra' a stoun' ; 
 Quo' I, "My man, a crackit croon 
 
 'S the best nichtcap invented ! 
 
 But, noo ye've waukened fra' your snooze, 
 Come, lowse your pack, an' gie's your news- 
 Hoo cam' ye by your iron trews ?" 
 And oot I pu'd my bottle. 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE AMAZON. 67 
 
 It tried to speak : wae's me ! the soun' 
 Cam' fra' the cratur's wame far doun ; 
 " Na, na ! " quo 1 I, " the drink's no' brewn 
 Would moistify that throttle !" 
 
 He stacher'd to the ocean bank, 
 At ilka stap the mail played clank 
 Against his ribs, and doun ilk flank 
 
 The pourin' sand ran rattlin'. 
 Wi' mony a pech upon a stane 
 He sat him doun, an' graned a grane : 
 " Ye've sleepit lang," I spak' again, 
 
 " In that nichtgoon o' yetlin !" 
 
 Sudden he spak' "Three hundred years." 
 Quo' I, " It's no' a bairn 'at speirs ; 
 An' then, ye ken the gate o' leers. 
 
 Come, come ! nae tricks on travellers !" 
 " Three hundred .years," he spak' again 
 In sic a sad dooms-earnest strain, 
 " Weel, weel !" quo' I, " gif ye'se be plain, 
 
 We'se no' be carpin' cavillers." 
 
 " Hearken !" quo' he his voice was hale 
 " And see thou tell some priest my tale." 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE AMAZON. 
 
 11 1 will," quo' I, " withooten fail, 
 I'll tak' it tae the Session." 
 " Too long unshriven have I lain 
 Eeside the lone oblivious main, 
 And if I now renew my pain, 
 
 It is to make confession ! 
 
 I was among that daring band 
 
 That left the conquered Inca's land, 
 
 And marched beneath the proud command 
 
 Of the great chief Gonzalo : 
 Stranger, if ever human head 
 Alive deserved a crown, or dead 
 Was worthier of the glory shed 
 
 Round heroes by the halo, 
 
 It was, it is Gonzalo's brow ! 
 And here my treason I avow 
 I broke to him my knightly vow, 
 
 And leagued with Orellana ! 
 I was with that disloyal crew 
 The first this river-sea to view, 
 Down whose fleet stream our pinnace flew 
 
 Through Selva and Savanna. 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE AMAZON. 69 
 
 One New Year's morning from Quito, 
 Three hundred years and more ago, 
 We started for the hills of snow, 
 
 The steep untrodden Andes ; 
 Three hundred gentlemen of Spain, 
 All clad in mail, were in our train ; 
 Caciques and Incas mixed amain 
 
 With cavaliers and grandees. 
 
 Strange rumours of a realm of gold 
 Blew o'er those mountains high and cold, 
 Whispering of marvels manifold 
 
 Beyond the far Nevada ; 
 So forth with adios unsaid, 
 And scarce a preparation made, 
 We leapt one morning from our bed 
 
 To search for El Dorado ! 
 
 We scaled those peaks, untrod before, 
 Where whirlwinds round volcanoes roar, 
 And icicles, descending frore, 
 
 Defend the embattled ridges. 
 We had no lack of hardihood, 
 Yet if our hearts were unsubdued 
 
70 THE SPECTRE OF THE AMAZON. 
 
 It was with, shattered ranks we stood 
 Upon the loftiest ledges. 
 
 One treacherous bridge of frozen snow 
 Concealed an awful chasm below 
 Down through the wreath we saw them go, 
 
 The foremost of our heroes ! 
 But who shall count the many lost 
 From famine and the piercing frost 1 
 Rare battening had the condor host 
 
 That flapped and revelled near us ! 
 
 To torrid heat from Arctic snow 
 We stept into a clime below, 
 Where Summer in perpetual glow 
 
 Keeps Eden in the valley : 
 Fair on the meadows shone the flowers, 
 And fruited hung the forest bowers, 
 But all was lonely, all was ours, 
 
 Llano and woodland alley ! 
 
 Through unsown fields of flowering rice, 
 Through groves of cinnamon and spice, 
 We hurried from this Paradise, 
 Our own without resistance. 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE AMAZON. 7 1 
 
 'Twas empire that we sought, renown, 
 The glory of a fallen town, 
 Some Cuzco to be beaten down, 
 
 And hiding in the distance ! 
 
 At last we struck the mighty stream 
 Whose belt of shining waters gleams 
 From Andes to the far extreme 
 
 Of the remotest ocean ! 
 Along its level marshy banks 
 Our muster-roll had many blanks ; 
 Nor fever only thinned our ranks, 
 
 But huner's slow corrosion. 
 
 came our sorrows thick and fast : 
 First menaced by the distant blast, 
 The dreaded deluge broke at last, 
 
 And poured for months, nor failed us. 
 With ague-fits of cold and hot, 
 Continual dampness, sweats, what not, 
 Our clothes our very skins did rot, 
 
 And sleepless thoughts assailed us. 
 
 'Twas then a hostile tribe appeared ; 
 'Twos little for their darts we feared, 
 
72 THE SPECTRE OF THE AMAZON. 
 
 Though with the cobra's poison smeared, 
 
 But for their lying story : 
 They told us of a realm beyond 
 Their marshy tract of bog and pond, 
 By some great borla'd* pagan own'd 
 In solitary glory. 
 
 It lured us onwards to our fate, 
 Nay, on we rushed with hopes elate ; 
 We built a brig we could not wait 
 
 To journey on together. 
 Strange sight it was to see a mast 
 Rising amid that forest vast, 
 And Spaniards toiling in the blast 
 
 And naked to the weather ! 
 
 On palm and pine our axes rung, 
 Our forge-fire o'er the waters flung 
 The red reflection of its tongue, 
 
 While groaned the labouring bellows. 
 And foremost at the work was he, 
 Our gallant captain, felling tree, 
 
 * The ' borla' was the imperial crown worn by the chief Inca. 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE AMAZON. 73 
 
 Or lifting timber knee to knee 
 
 Beside his meanest fellows. 
 
 Dear was that river ship to all, 
 
 For, though but slimly built and small, 
 
 She carried in her wooden wall 
 
 The hopes our breast inspiring ; 
 Besides that, in our want extreme, 
 Our linen caulked her every seam, 
 And every bolt gave out the gleam 
 
 Of gold among the iron ! 
 
 But fifty of us leapt on board, 
 
 All well- approved with spear and sword, 
 
 And each man pledged his knightly word 
 
 In fealty to Gonzalo. 
 'Tis to the everlasting shame 
 And ignominy of our name 
 We broke that oath : No after fame 
 
 Our perjury could hallow ! 
 
 As swept our pinnace down the tide, 
 ' A quick return !' our comrades cried ; 
 4 Good luck the little bark betide ! 
 Good fortune !' cried Pizarro. 
 
74 THE SPECTRE OF THE AMAZON. 
 
 We loft them wasting on the shore, 
 Our comrades, whom we saw no more, 
 And onward swift as bird we bore, 
 Or unre turning arrow. 
 
 One only of our faithless crew, 
 Of all the fifty, one was true ; 
 Him on an islet-rock we threw, 
 
 The brave young Hernan Sanchez, 
 Then, whither the swift current led, 
 For weeks without a pause we sped ; 
 The heavens swept westward o'er our head,. 
 
 Past whirled the forest branches ; 
 
 Till on the far horizon's verge 
 One morn we saw the sun emerge 
 From the salt ocean's restless surge, 
 
 And knew our course was ended. 
 And here, where sea and stream unite, 
 I perished in an Indian fight, 
 And to the caves of endless night 
 
 My guilty soul descended. 
 
 Yet still, each night till cock-crow freed. 
 Hither I post with anxious speed 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE AMAZON. 75 
 
 If by best chance some one will heed 
 
 And hear my sad confession. 
 Stranger, three hundred years and more 
 My ghost has walked this lonely shore, 
 A dreary weird ! now haply o'er 
 
 If good my intercession. 
 
 I charge thee to convey my tale 
 
 With all the speed of horse or sail 
 
 To Mother Church : And if thou fail / " 
 
 The curse remained unspoken. 
 But sic a lowe glared in his een 
 As ne'er in human head was seen ; 
 It's no a chancy thing, my frien', 
 
 This supernat'ral trokin' ! 
 
 I doot I maun ha'e swarfed awa' ; 
 But what's the strangest thing o' a', 
 Neist mornin' ghaist nor banes I saw, 
 
 But just an empty bottle ! 
 I took the story to a priest, 
 A Popish loon ; but at the least 
 My saul was fra' its voo released. 
 
 An' noo ye ha'e the total ! 
 
76 TAMMAS WILSON. 
 
 TAMMAS WILSON; 
 
 OR 
 
 THE FOKTUNES OF A SCOTTISH PLOUGHMAN. 
 
 Tarn Wilson was a pleughman bred, 
 But had a saul aboon his tredd. 
 
 harum-scarum chiel' was he 
 To birl awa' his dear- won fee 
 On yill or sweeties or sic trash, 
 To ha'e a name and mak' a clash 
 For a fine free-and-easy mind : 
 Tarn was to better things inclin'd. 
 
 Tarn kent a bank nae wild-thyme brae 
 Where dads o' sunlicht glint an' gae 
 Eut a bare shop where siller's lent 
 To multiplie at three per cent. 
 'Twas here he pat whate'er he earned ; 
 And then he turned his lug and learned, 
 Where'er he gaed, the saws o' sense 
 That taught him hoo to guide his pence. 
 
TAMMAS WILSON, 77 
 
 He saw at markets and at fairs 
 Hoo fowk laid oot an' sauld their wares ; 
 He studied weel the wheedlin' airt 
 That garr'd the sumph wi's siller pairt, 
 Yet think himself a clever chiel' 
 To skin the chapman aff sae weel. 
 An' ae wise maxim first owre a' 
 He gathered in fra' what he saw 
 The adage, never faithless found, 
 That gars the penny herd the pound. 
 
 Tarn, like the brethren o' his station, 
 
 Had unco little education ; 
 
 But i' the lang fore-winter-nicht 
 
 He edged his kist in by the licht, 
 
 An' while his neebor loons were snorin', 
 
 Or owre some new brent ballant roarin', 
 
 Or, maybe, if the nicht was fine, 
 
 Awa' to tryst some gigglin' qwine, 
 
 He took his bannet aff his pow, 
 
 An' down he sat beside the lowe, 
 
 An' swat an' gied his brains a rackin', 
 
 Addin', dividin', and subtrackin' : 
 
 Straucht through the Gray his way he urged, 
 
78 TAMMAS WILSON. 
 
 coont lie missed, nae answer forged, 
 Simple an' compound, big an' wee, 
 To Practice an' the Eules o' Three : 
 Some say he mastered Tare-an'-Tret, 
 Tho' sair it garr'd him fume an' fret. 
 
 At ither times he gat his bottle 
 Whusky ! it never wat his throttle ! 
 'Twas Peerie's ink, a better liquor ; 
 He seized his pen, an' grupp'd it sicker, 
 Eow'd up his sleeve-bands no' to blofc, 
 An', restin' on his elbuck, wrote. 
 An' if the letters werena braw, 
 An' sometimes lowse an' sair athraw, 
 His thochts were aye wi' skill conneckit, 
 An' aye wi' taste his words seleckit ! 
 
 Noo, lad, I'll lay a croon-piece wager 
 
 Ye think Tarn ettled at a gauger. 
 
 Oh, man ! but ye're a grovellin' wicht ! 
 
 Tarn's fancy had a higher llicht ; 
 
 In fact, he didna clearly see 
 
 Where it wad licht : but bide awee ; 
 
 An', i' the mids' o' the meantime, ken ye 
 
TAMMAS WILSON. 79 
 
 Tarn thocht the best perch to ascen' fra 1 
 A pedlar's pack a rowin' stane 
 That gaithers moss, the only ane ! 
 
 His measures were matured completely, 
 An' a' his plans laid sae discreetly, 
 That when, ae term-day i' the Fa' 
 Tarn quat the pleugh for guid an' a', 
 He had nae mair ado but tak' 
 A muckle bundle on his back, 
 Weel stored wi' ribban's, knives, an' rings, 
 Wi' claith, an' capes, an' orra things 
 Tak' oot the license, twa pound odd, 
 Cut a stoot rung, an' to the road ! 
 
 Noo, in his new-adopted life, 
 Wi' change o' scene an' fowk sae rife, 
 Sae weel contrived for interviews 
 An' wrestlin's wi' the rural muse, 
 Tarn micht hae faith er'd mony a sang 
 To cheer him as he jogg'd alang. 
 
 But Tammy's saul was sae intent, 
 Sae eident aye on business bent, 
 
80 TAMMAS WILSON. 
 
 A corner o't he couldna spare 
 For lichter matter than his ware : 
 The muse was ither than a true ane, 
 An' rhymin' raither waur than pleughin'* 
 
 Yet sometimes, as he stoopt to drink 
 By some clear upland burnie's brink, 
 The go wan, wi' its sil'er rim, 
 Or primrose wad look up at him, 
 An 7 by their sweet suggestive hues 
 Wad set Tarn's fancy on the muse, 
 An' glitter thro' his day-dream doverin's 
 Like sil'er sixpences an' sovereigns ! 
 
 Lang, lang, an' mony a mile he trudged, 
 An' some, ye needna doot, he grudged, 
 Tor Fortune's but a fickle jaud, 
 An' e'en her best is mix'd wi' bad ; 
 But, guid or bad, or baith thegither, 
 Tarn took his customers wi' his weatheiv 
 In winter's mirk, an' simmer's sun, 
 Familiar wi' the varyin' wun', 
 Fra' hoose to hoose he made his ca's, 
 Displayed his pack, an' gaed his wa's ; 
 
TAMMAS WILSON. 81 
 
 Contented, if when gloamin' gray 
 Shut in anither gowden day, 
 His hogger had a mellower chime ' 
 To shaw he had "improved" the time. 
 
 When mony a day had come an* gane, 
 An 7 mony a pack an' pair o' shoon, 
 An' mony a groat na ! that's a bam ! 
 The bawbees biket when they cam' 
 At last, in a sma' country toun, 
 Tarn laid his hazel ellwand doun, 
 An', strong wi' speculative hope, 
 Open'd a haberdasher's shop ! 
 
 I tellna here hoo sair he strove, 
 An' tackled to his wark, an' throve : 
 Tarn aye had guidwill to his wark 
 Bear witness mony a sweaty sark ! 
 Baith wi' the flail an' at the pleugh, 
 An' warstlin' wi' his pack, an' noo 
 Ahint the coonter, rack'd in mind 
 At aince to deed an' fleece mankind. 
 
 Aneuch that Fortune's wayward ba', 
 That rows obedient to nae law, 
 
TAMMAS WILSON. 
 
 Play'd gently in to Tammy's feet : 
 Tain cuist the coat an' gae't a heat ; 
 Doun the lang years he sent it spinning 
 An' followed hard an* het wi' rinnin' ! 
 
 When thrice the sun had wheel'd his roun', 
 A farmer enter'd this same toun, 
 As blithe a carle as ever stappit 
 Tho' simmer, in a grey plaid happit 
 Twal miles, a weary foot, frae hame, 
 An' Willie Gowanlock his name. 
 
 Up thro' the middle o' the street 
 He paced wi' patriarchal feet, 
 Took up his station at the Cross, 
 Syne glowered aboot him at a loss. 
 His faithfu' collie, dune wi' daffin', 
 Stood heedless o' the toon-tykes' yaffin', 
 An' lookit in his maister's face 
 As if his inmost wish to trace. 
 At last, a muckle painted sign, 
 Wi' gowden letters glitteriii' fine, 
 Tane Willie's wuld an' wanderin' e'e : 
 He stood an' spelt, an' thocht awee. 
 
TAMMAS WILSON. S3 
 
 What's this 1" quo' Will; "my e'esicht's failing 
 
 But isna that Castmetalpailin' ? 
 
 An' Lord, forgie's for a' oor ills dune ! 
 
 What's that below't but TAMMAS WILSON 1 
 
 The verra man, I'll tak' my aith ; 
 
 But, Lord, he deals in daft-like graith !" 
 
 Three staps brocht Willie to the place, 
 An' there was Tammy's weel-kent face. 
 Tammy, wi' smile an' smirk sae ready, 
 Was shawin' gum-flooers to a leddy, 
 An' twa wee spunkie prentice loons 
 Were measurin' claith an' brushin' goons. 
 
 " Tammas ! your hand ; I'm glad to see ye ; 
 Haith, lad, but things are prosperin' wi' ye ! 
 Ye'll mind o' me, an' Euth, my dochter ? 
 It's juist gey far, or I'd hae brocht her. 
 Hoot, fye ! Ye mind she used to squeeze 
 Your pouches fu' o' cakes an' cheese 
 What time ye ran the packman's tether ; 
 I used to think ye fain o' ither." 
 
 Tarn raised his e'eglass, glowered, an' spak' 
 
84 TAMMAS WILSON. 
 
 " I dout, my man, there's some mistak' ; 
 I dinna ken ye ! George, the door ! 
 John, dinna mak' sae muckle stonr ! 
 Weel, madam, what's your further orders 1 
 See, here's some braw new soo-back borders,. 
 Their like for cheapness near nor far is, 
 They cam' yestreen direct from Paris 
 The newest shape, the best design, 
 Baith stuff an' trimmin' superfine !" 
 
 Weel was it said, the haly saw, 
 Pride gangs afore an awfu' fa' ! 
 To shaw a customer gudewill 
 Tarn wrote his name across a bill ; 
 The scoundrel ran, an' Tammy brak', 
 Paid audit i' pound, an' took a pack ! 
 
 An' noo, owre hill an' muir again, 
 Thro' lanely shaw an' rocky glen, 
 Owre bog an' slap an' dyke an' stile 
 He travell'd mony an anxious mile : 
 His weel-kent face aince mair was seen 
 At fair an' dance on village green. 
 Nae birth was near but Tammy kent it, 
 
TAMMAS WILSON. 85 
 
 An' wakes an' wacldin's he frequentit ; 
 Black-wavin' crapes an' ghostly weepers, 
 Tap-knots an' snoods an' dancin' cheepers, 
 Eazors an' hones for gay young shavers, 
 An' Sabbath scarfs an' marriage favours 
 In short, whatever ane could lack 
 Bude first to come fra' Tammy's pack : 
 Sae quick his wares flew roond aboot him, 
 Hoo had the kintra dune withoot him ? 
 
 Ae snawy nicht in winter time 
 
 Sae dark ye couldna see a sty me 
 
 Tammy, returnin' fra' a toor, 
 
 Ventured a short-cut owre a moor. 
 
 Aroond him howled the eerie blast, 
 
 The snaw was drif tin' fierce an' fast ; 
 
 Tarn pu'd the bannet owre his lug, 
 
 An' gied his belt anither tug, 
 
 An', ruminatin' owre his lot, 
 
 Calmly pursued his ain jog-trot ; 
 
 Till, swith ! a whin-stump catch'd his cuit, 
 
 An' owre he fell like ony peat ! 
 
 The witch- wind screamed wi' eldritch laughter, 
 
 An' doun the snaw-ghaists danced the dafter ! 
 
8G TAMMAS WILSON. 
 
 Up gat puir Tammy, sair benighted ; 
 
 The heavy fa' had dung him doited : 
 
 Up Tammy gat puir luckless fallow ! 
 
 His scattered senses widna rally. 
 
 A' roond he glower'd, but glower' d in vain 
 
 The mirk was solid as a stane. 
 
 He siched as if his heart wad brak', 
 
 Then graipit till he fand his pack, 
 
 Then fand his legs nae banes were broken 
 
 An' spak' (the words aloud were spoken) : 
 
 " There was an auld sang nearhan* endit ; 
 
 But, lad, we're livin' an' we'll mend it 
 
 Drive on, ye jaud, an 7 be mair tenty !" 
 
 But whatna road, where roads were plenty ? 
 
 He stude, the centre o' the compass, 
 
 An' hearkened to the windy rumpus 
 
 A' roond the moor's mysterious border, 
 
 An' guessed an' glowered, but naething furder 
 
 The gate he wished hoo could he find it ? 
 
 The gate he cam' lie didna mind it ! 
 
 The sweat stude cauld on Tammy's broo 
 " Lord save's or here's the end o't noo 
 
T AM MAS WILSON. ST 
 
 Twa minutes syne I kent it brawl j, 
 An' noo Lord pity a poor fallow !" 
 
 Lauch na : devoutly Tammy prayed, 
 An' shortly cam' the timely aid. 
 Twal random staps he hadna gane, 
 An' just twal resolutions tane, 
 When, as he turned a distant knowe, 
 Laich on his left he spied a lowe. 
 
 Straight to the licht his path he steered, 
 
 Its lively ee the darkness cheered ; 
 
 He lost it in a treeless glen, 
 
 But up the bank he saw't again 
 
 Streamin' far oot into the nicht 
 
 A social, soul-enlivenin' lichtj 
 
 At ilka stap a Scots ell nearer, 
 
 Broader at ilka stap an' clearer, 
 
 Till, owre a cheese-stane nearhan' stumblin', 
 
 Tammy was at a door-sneck fumblin'. 
 
 j 
 The door flew open wi' a bang ! 
 
 The lassie stoppit in her sang, 
 The collie started wi' a flurry, 
 
SS TAMMAS WILSON. 
 
 An' barkit like a very fury : 
 The auld man at the fireside pechan, 
 An' stitchin' at an auld tow brechan, 
 Threw up his hands aboon his pow, 
 An' sat an' nae thing said but " Yow !" 
 
 Tammy appeared a ghaistly sicht ! 
 
 He glowered to left, he glowered to richt ; 
 
 Familiar was the scene throughout, 
 
 But yet he couldna mak' it oot, 
 
 Till through his saul there flashed the truth- 
 
 " It's Willie Gowanlock an' Kuth, 
 
 An' this is Heath'ryleys, an' there 
 
 That's Bingwood birsin' up his hair." 
 
 Auld Willie like a statue sat, 
 
 An' glower'd, but said ne this nor that. 
 
 " Willie," quo' Tain, " ye ken me fine 
 
 O, Willie, man, for auld langsyne ! 
 
 I tried the muir, but gaed clean wild 
 
 An' hoo it blaws ! just hearken till'd !" 
 
 Oot spak' the lass " It's Tammas, faither ; 
 Eid him inowre it's awfu' weather." 
 
TAMMAS WILSON. 89 
 
 He raised the brechan to his e'e 
 " I ken nae Tammas wha are ye 1 
 I doot, my man, there's some mistak' ; 
 I dinna ken ye shaw yer back !" 
 
 The lassie ran an' barred the door : 
 " A bonnie thing to say, I'm sure 1 
 Wasna the lamp expressly lichtit 
 To cheer the traveller dark-benichted, 
 An' on the window bunker set 
 To guide puir wanderers to our yett T 
 
 Euth spak' wi' kindlin' e'e and cheek, 
 An' trimmed wi' care the rashy wick ; 
 Then to the floor returnin' back, 
 She eased puir Tammy o' his pack ; 
 His coat wi' her ain hand she shook, 
 An' led him to the ingle nook. 
 
 Auld Willie started to his fit 
 
 " Tammas, the play's played oot we're quit ! 
 
 See. there's my loof ; it's frankly gi'en ; 
 
 Ye're welcome, as ye've ever been. 
 
 Euth, bring a riddlefu' o' peats. 
 
90 TAMMAS WILSON. 
 
 Tammas, draw in an' heat your cults. 
 
 The peat-reek, lassie ? that's weel-mindit 
 
 Ahint John Fidel ye'll aiblins find it." 
 
 house was spent a happier nicht in ; 
 The hours flew owre their heads like lichtnin 1 ; 
 The auld guidman was fu' o' jokin', 
 An' Ruth, though bendin' owre a stocking 
 In kirtle jimp an' shapely boddice 
 To Tammy's e'en showed like a goddess. 
 
 Ye lee, ye rhymin' bardies a' 
 Wha say when leaves begin to fa', 
 An* norlan' win's blaw cauld an' dry, 
 An' swallows gather i' the sky, 
 The naked laddie greetin' rins 
 Soothward awa', where sunny win's, 
 Wi' lang, lang saft an' silken hair, 
 An' blue, blue e'en that ken nae care, 
 Wait on the purple hills to meet 
 An' welcome his far-travell'd feet. 
 
 Good faith ! Ye've something yet to learn : 
 He's no' a feckless lassie-bairn ! 
 
TAMMAS WILSON. 91 
 
 The lang black winter thro' he tarries, 
 
 The hardy wean ! an* shoots his arrows 
 
 Wi' quicker han', an' keener aim 
 
 The loonie's nearer to his game : 
 
 He's left the shaw, the glen, the ley ; 
 
 He's come wi' Robin a' the wey 
 
 To barns an' stackyards, doors an' windows ; 
 
 An' weel he kens it's no' the Indies 
 
 That ane may scaithless want the breek, 
 
 An' sae he seeks the chimla-cheek ; 
 
 An' there he sits an' trims his bow, 
 
 Lauchs till himsel', an' nods his pow, 
 
 An' chuckles like a wee red etyn, 
 
 "Ho! Ho ! the famous winter shootin' !" 
 
 Tammy he shot, an' shot again, 
 His heart was prinklin' wi' the pain ! 
 
 Upon the wa', aboon the press, 
 There hung a fairy keekin'-gless ; 
 Twa peacock feathers, droopin' lang, 
 Fra' the twa tapmost corners sprang, 
 An' at the foot, in kintra fashion, 
 Hung a wee red three-cornered cushion : 
 
T AM MAS WILSON. 
 
 Not redder was that cushion-cover 
 Than was the heart of our true lover, 
 Nor mair preen-holed than Tammy's heart 
 By Cupid's fleet an' frequent dart ! 
 
 Strange are the vagaries o' drink; 
 But stranger yet than ane can think 
 The varied changes love can work : 
 It drave Tarn regular to the kirk, 
 It drave him to the Book o' Truth, 
 It drave him to the Tale o' Euth. 
 
 It nearhan' drave him to the Muse, 
 But he'd the firmness to refuse 
 To listen to her bursts o' sang 
 That floated on the air alang, 
 An' garr'd his nerves, against his will, 
 Wi' a lang unkent sweetness thrill 
 For, sprung o' Covenantin' blude, 
 He dooted if she cam' o 7 gude ! 
 
 But, crush its utterance as he micht, 
 The feeling struggled to the licht 
 A|holy poetry that flings 
 Its arms roond a' created things. 
 
TAMMAS WILSON 93 
 
 As for a taste, when Spring cam' on, 
 An 1 gowans thro' the black yird shone, 
 An' sweet primroses starr'd the mould 
 (They were a fairer sicht than gold), 
 The love, deep-planted in his breast, 
 Bloomed in a bookay on his vest. 
 
 Whate'er o' beauty Tammy saw 
 Cheerin' the gloom o' glen or shaw, 
 It gat the witcherie o' its grace, 
 In Tammy's fancy, fra' a face 
 Where Beauty's sel', embracin' Truth, 
 Was shinin' in the eyes o' Ruth. 
 
 Sair a' that Winter did he toil ; 
 An' when the gowk brocht in April 
 For ne'er a lassie yet consentit 
 To a May marriage but repentit 
 He ceased the pedlar's wanderin' life, 
 An' he an' Euth were man an' wife. 
 
 Ten years o' sober married bliss, 
 Ten years o' weel-deserv'd success, 
 And in the canty burrowstoun, 
 
TAMMAS WILSON. 
 
 Where cautiously he settled doun, 
 
 Wha was sae mensefu' or sae douce, 
 
 Had roucher board or brawer hoose ? 
 
 Whase wife was less to gossip gi'en ? 
 
 Whase bairns wi' redder cheeks were seen 1 
 
 Whase servant lass was better guidit ? 
 
 Wha ampler for the puir providit 1 
 
 Whase name was named wi' mair respect 1 
 
 What Bailie spak' to mair effect 1 
 
 Wha bore the Sacramental cup 
 
 Wi' cleaner heart or holier grup 
 
 Than Tammas Wilson ? Wha wad dreamt o't ? - 
 
 A pleughman aince, an' not ashamed o't ! 
 
THE FLOWER OF AIRLIE. 95 
 
 THE FLOWER OF AIRLIE. 
 
 When daisies in the desert start 
 
 To welcome back the Spring, 
 And hopes that haunt the youthful heart 
 
 For very gladness sing, 
 There came to Airlie's castle old 
 
 A maid of beauty rare, 
 No sweeter flower the woods unfold 
 
 Woo'd the dim April air. 
 
 O hazelly glen, or leafy grove, 
 
 Or blooming river shore, 
 Whatever haunt the Muses love 
 
 This maiden flower that bore, 
 The day that took this flower from thee, 
 
 It was a doleful morn ; 
 The sweet birds sang on every tree 
 
 " Oh ! Maggie, yet return !" 
 
 Now were that bonnie flow'ret mine 
 To shelter and to tend, 
 
96 THE FLOWER OF AIRLIE. 
 
 Though every hope in quick decline 
 Should now and here have end, 
 
 How lightly would I let them go 
 For one so dear and fair ! 
 
 How lightly feel the weightiest woe 
 With Maggie for my care ! 
 
RAB, THE SCOTTISH PLOUGHMAN. 97 
 
 RAB, THE SCOTTISH PLOUGHMAN. 
 
 Anacreon's flute with fitful swell 
 
 Can still our cares beguile, 
 And sweetly Sappho's moaning shell 
 
 Sobs round her sea-born isle ; 
 The lyric notes, how neat they fa' 
 
 When plays the dapper Eoman, 
 But the blithe whistle dings them a* 
 
 Of Bab, the Scottish ploughman. 
 
 A simple pipe ! but in his hand 
 
 Mair potent in its power 
 Than e'er was eastern genie's wand 
 
 Within a Persian bower. 
 Around the peasant's lowly lot 
 
 It threw a noble halo, 
 And lighted up the ploughman's cot 
 
 With more than Summer's yellow. 
 
 It cheered the stey an' stourie road 
 With bursts o' sudden sang, 
 
98 RAB, THE SCOTTISH PLOUGHMAN. 
 
 Till Labour, bowed beneath his load, 
 Looked up and trudged alang. 
 
 Sweet airs a' round the mountains hung, 
 And floated through the valleys, 
 
 And youth grew daft and age grew young 
 In cottage and in palace. 
 
 ISTo finer music yet was heard, 
 
 Wedded to sweeter line, 
 Since new-made Eve on Eden's sward 
 
 To Adam sang langsyne ; 
 Or since were dreamed the airs sublime 
 
 By the sweet Swan of Avon, 
 That flooded all the enchanted clime 
 
 Where Prospero found a haven. 
 
 He sang the native worth of mind, 
 
 The freedom of the soul, 
 And love's and friendship's joys refined, 
 
 And mankind's glorious goal. 
 What wonder if he moved the heart 
 
 With but a simple solo 1 
 He played wi' sae divine an art, 
 
 Our Scottish-born Apollo ! 
 
THE MENSTRIL. 99 
 
 THE MENSTRIL: A BALLAD. 
 
 He sat upon the auld stane brig, 
 And, vow ! he was the queerest fig 
 
 That ever mortal sang or saw ; 
 His cloak was of the faded green, 
 His hair hung scattered owre his e'en, 
 
 And on his pipe he loud did blaw. 
 
 But oh ! his pipin' wha could praise 1 
 Sic music at his touch arase 
 
 Bot ear it left ye nocht ava ! 
 It was his soul the menstril sent, 
 Sad-sounding through his instrument, 
 
 His simple pipe sae round and sma'. 
 
 Four-and-twenty gentlemen 
 Came riding doun the dowie glen, 
 
 As mony ladies fair and braw ; 
 And aye as they came near and near, 
 With bridles jingling sweet to hear, 
 
 He louder on his pipe did blaw. 
 
100 THE MENSTR1L. 
 
 And this was Aither o' the Birk 
 Was riding to Saint Mary's kirk 
 
 To gie his dochter dear awa' ; 
 And he was gay, if she was sad, 
 And they for very mirth were mad, 
 
 Tho' she was mute amang them a' ! 
 
 " 0, what is this, my sister dear, 
 That glitters on your gluve sae clear, 
 
 An* seemed that fra' your chin did fa' ] 
 " 0, Willie, that's a diamond free 
 That our step-minnie gae to me 
 
 When first she cam' amang us a'." 
 
 " Now, sister Ann, it's a' a lee, 
 Step-minnie ne'er was kind to thee, 
 
 An' see ! the diamond's row'd awa' !" 
 " 0, Willie, haud ye leal an' true, 
 It's but a drap o' mornin' dew 
 
 I kepit in the birken shaw ! " 
 
 " 0, what is this, my dochter dear, 
 That gars ye weep the bitter tear, 
 
 And ride sae sweir amang us a' ?" 
 
THE MENSTRIL. 101 
 
 " 0, faither dear, I 'maist could greet, 
 He plays sae sad, lie plays sae sweet, 
 The menstril on his pipe sae sma'." 
 
 He played sae low, he piped sae schrill, 
 
 The trees were charmed, the winds were still, 
 
 The laverocks fra' the lift did fa' ; 
 Sic glamourie was in his e'en, 
 Sic wizardrie in his playin', 
 
 He wiled the maiden's heart awa' ! 
 
 " Now cease, thou menstril, cease to 'plain, 
 There is nae pleasour in thy strain, 
 
 Thou silly menstril, haste awa' !" 
 " Bide on, ride on, my faither dear, 
 And let me o' his piping hear, 
 
 Sae sweet he on his pipe does blaw !" 
 
 He raised the bannet aff his bree, 
 O, vow ! but he was bauld and slee ; 
 
 And loot his faded mantle fa' ; 
 Sae licht he to the saddle sprang, 
 Sae fondly to his waist she clang, 
 
 'Twas head aboot, and swith awa' ! 
 
102 THE MENSTRIL. 
 
 Now shines the merry morning iicht, 
 But stars maun twinkle thro' the nicht 
 
 Ere brave Sir William bridle draw ! 
 But baud thee up, thou gallant steed, 
 And shaw the utmost o' thy speed, 
 
 And thou wilt bear them safe awa' ! 
 
A BALLAD 103 
 
 A BALLAD. 
 
 The August sun was shining hie, 
 
 The black broom-pods were crackin', 
 The kye were tiggin' owre the lea, 
 
 Or couching in the bracken ; 
 The wee bit barefit laddie-herd 
 
 Was whippin' at the burn, 
 But ne'er a silver trootie stirr'd 
 
 Or gae its tail a turn. 
 
 " Now tell me, bonnie boy, tell me true, 
 
 Wha lives in yonder dwellin'?" 
 " 0, that's the farm o' Breezyview, 
 
 And yon is bonnie Ellen, 
 The maister's only dochter dear, 
 
 Moving amang the trees, 
 For while I mind the cattle here 
 
 She tends the flowers and bees." 
 
 " Good news like thine, my little lad, 
 Should be with gold rewarded, 
 
104 A BALLAD. 
 
 For thou hast killed the fear I had 
 That half my steps retarded." 
 
 He turned him round, and leapt the stile, 
 Moved briskly up the brae j 
 
 The loonie gaping glowered the while, 
 But hadna thanks to say. 
 
 A wanderin' life, as ye might guess, 
 
 Was on his broo imprented, 
 And lang wi' foreign suns his face 
 
 Had closely been acquented. 
 A diamond ring, a gowden chain, 
 
 And als' a grizzled beard, 
 Shewed what fra' time had been his gain, 
 
 And what he weel had spar'd. 
 
 !Noo Ellen in her garden-place, 
 
 A honeysuckle guidin' 
 Wi' genty hand and queenly grace, 
 
 Surpasses my descrivin'. 
 And owre the bower, aboon the yett, 
 
 Twa een are lookin' on ; 
 And never een wi' tear-drops wet 
 
 For sweeter reason shone. 
 
A BALLAD. 105 
 
 " "Tis she ! The very face appears, 
 
 The form sae gimp and genty ; 
 The maid I left o' twenty years 
 
 Is still a maid o' twenty !" 
 A bird flew oot was shelterin* near, 
 
 She turned her head and gaz'd ; 
 With " Ellen Douglas" in her ear 
 
 The maiden stood amaz'd. 
 
 She loot the shears from one hand slide, 
 
 The wild-spray from the other, 
 And running from the garden cried 
 
 " He names my sainted mother I" 
 Alas ! for him who hopes to find, 
 
 After a far sojourn, 
 The joys he left sae lang behind 
 
 Awaiting his return I 1 
 
106 MAY MORNING. 
 
 MAY MORNING: A BALLAD. 
 
 Lord William rose ere rnornin' licht 
 
 Had dimmed the mornin' star, 
 
 And belted on his gude sword bricht, 
 
 And seized a gay guitar ; 
 
 And doun the stairs went hurrying fast 
 
 And o'er the sounding hall ; 
 
 The huge wall-mirror, as he pass'd, 
 
 His form reflected all. 
 
 A sidelong look he cast, and frown'd, 
 
 " I am a lover grim ; " 
 
 And ill a face in battle brown 7 d 
 
 Suits with the silken trim. 
 
 " Is that your voice, my noble lord, 
 
 Is that your foot I hear ? 
 
 And fare ye forth to fight with sword, 
 
 Or chase the peaceful deer?" 
 
 " Now close thine ee, my little page, 
 
 And sleep till it be day, 
 
MA Y MORNING. 1 07 
 
 The chase shall then thy powers engage 
 Till falls the gloamin gray." 
 
 He wandered till his castle tower 
 
 Sank down in greenwood shaw, 
 
 But when he came to Margret's bower 
 
 An evil sicht he saw. 
 
 Beneath her lattice on the string 
 
 A gay gallant did play, 
 
 And sweet it was to hear him sing 
 
 " Now is the month of May." 
 
 " What dost thou here, thou maiden youth, 
 
 In the chill morning air 1 
 
 Or art thou of the sunny south 
 
 A vagabond trouvere ?" 
 
 " Thy words are scornful, haughty lord ; 
 
 But here I make avow, 
 
 And I will keep it with my sword, 
 
 I am as good as thou." 
 
 " Now, by my beard, it makes me blush 
 
 To hear thy braggart tale : 
 
 And wilt thou on the falcon rush, 
 
 Thou silly nightingale ?" 
 
108 MAY MORNING. 
 
 " Thy lands are spacious, and above 
 
 All blame thy name in war ; 
 
 But I in youth-time and in love 
 
 Am rich and happier far ; 
 
 And for my treasure I will fight 
 
 As bold as thou for thine ; 
 
 And here I bid thee turn, proud knight, 
 
 For Margret's care is mine." 
 
 " 'Tis false, 'tis false, thou lying knave ! 
 
 Thy words are madness now : 
 
 A warrior's daughter never gave 
 
 Her hand to such as thou. 
 
 Near where I stand, but yesternight 
 
 Did Margret's lips declare 
 
 I was her own free-chosen knight, 
 
 And mine is Margret's care." 
 
 " Have done, have done, the morning sun 
 
 Will soon surprise us here ; 
 
 There but remains, now all is done, 
 
 Manhood and metal clear. 
 
 So step we out to yon green sward, 
 
 Lord William, art thou fey]" 
 
 " What squire art thou who wears a sword 
 
 IBelted the wrongward way 2" 
 
MAY MORNING. 109 
 
 The youth looked down, and faltering blushed, 
 
 And half-inclined to flee : 
 
 That instant all the orient flushed, 
 
 And yellowed all the lea. 
 
 Lord William gazed with clearer eyes, 
 
 And backward stept a pace : 
 
 Twas Margret's self in masking guise 
 
 That flew to his embrace ! 
 
110 A DOG- DATS PETITION. 
 
 A DOG-DAY'S PETITION. 
 
 Fortune, ye jade ! it's shame an* sin 
 To pen your puir petitioner in 
 Amang Auld Beekie's dust an' din 
 
 Thae sultry simmer hoors, 
 When Fasney's wimplin' waters rin 
 
 Sae cool amang the moors. 
 
 O, that your Blindness pity took, 
 Would ope your bandaged een, an 7 look 
 Where fish-like gaspin' by a brook 
 
 Amang the channel dry, 
 Or wrigglin' on a ruthless hook, 
 
 Wriggle in anguish I ! 
 
 A big black oven seems the toun, 
 Het flags below, red sun aboon, 
 An', birstlin' like a joint in June 
 
 Afore the dog-day fire, 
 I'm rinnin' doun to creesh my shoon ; 
 
 I'm taperin' like a spire. 
 
A DOG-DATS PETITION. Ill 
 
 I'm sick o' city soonds an' sichts, 
 O' feverish, days an' sleepless nichts, 
 0' like-conditioned neebor-wichts, 
 
 0' auld St Giles's chime : 
 The moors and burns would put's to richts 
 
 Within a fortnicht's time. 
 
 To turn the ledger I begin, 
 St Vitus' dance the figures spin, 
 While fancy and remembrance rin 
 
 Where Fasney, ripplin' clear, 
 Oars glancin' stream an' roarin' linn 
 
 Mak' music to the ear. 
 
 Ahint a heathery knowe I steal 
 An' drap the flee ! joy ! to feel 
 A lusty thumper whirl your reel 
 
 An' rin oot half your line ! 
 O joy ! to see him i' the creel 
 
 His yellow length recline ! 
 
 angler's near ; the stream's your ain ; 
 Arrange your tackle, an' to't again ! 
 Nor scorn to list the lintie's strain, 
 
112 A DOG-DAYS PETITION. 
 
 The curlew's risin' clang ; 
 An', happy mortal ! coont it gain 
 Catch ye the gowkoo's sang. 
 
 Fortune, ye limmer ! ance for a' 
 
 Upon my knees again I fa', 
 
 $Ta ! dinna stap your lug, an 1 thraw, 
 
 Grant me twa short ooks' grace : 
 Ye see I'm pinin' fast awa' 
 
 Afore your very face. 
 
 I'm dwindled doun to skin an' bane, 
 Dry as a speldrin or a spune, 
 A walkin' noonday skeleton, 
 
 JSTae shadow followin' after ; 
 I'm wanin' like the wanin' mune, 
 
 I'm i' my hin'most quarter ! 
 
 An' sune to be a bluidless ghost 
 Gaun daunderin' doun the gloom, an' lost ; 
 ETae " whippin' " by Cocytus' coast, 
 !N"ae gulps o' sweet hill air, 
 troot the black-waved waters boast, 
 Fasney ripples there ! 
 
A DOG-DAY'S PETITION. 113 
 
 I'm aff ! Fareweel the dusty dask, 
 Fareweel the tiresome inky task ! 
 Fortune, your leave I dinna ask, 
 
 Gude troth, I'm far owre nice ! 
 I go on Fasney's banks to bask, 
 
 It's medical advice ! 
 
114: HORACE IN HOGGESS. 
 
 HORACE IN HOGGERS. 
 
 " Vides ut alta stet nlve candidum 
 Soracte ' ' 
 
 Fra whaur ye hing, my cauldrife frien', 
 
 Yer blue neb owre the lowe, 
 A snawy nichtcap may be seen 
 
 Upon Benarty's pow. 
 An' snaw upo' the auld gean stump 
 
 Whase frostit" branches hang 
 Ootowre the dyke aboon the pump 
 
 That's gane clean an the fang. 
 The pump that half the town's folk ser'd, 
 
 It winna gie a jaw ; 
 An' rouch, I ken, shall be yer baird 
 
 Until there comes a thaw. 
 
 Come, reenge the ribs, an' let the heat 
 
 Down to oor tinglin' taes ; 
 Clap on a gude Kinaskit peat 
 
 An' let us see a blaze. 
 
HORACE IN HOGGERS. 115 
 
 An', since o' water we are scant, 
 
 Fesh "ben the barley bree, 
 A nebfu' baith we sanna want 
 
 To weet oor whistles wi'. 
 Noo let the winds o' winter blaw 
 
 Owre Scotland's hills an' plains, 
 It maitters nocht to us ava 
 
 WeVe simmer in oor veins ! 
 
 The pooers o' Nature, wind an' snaw, 
 
 Are far aboon oor fit, 
 But, while we scoog them, let them blaw, 
 
 We'll aye hae simmer yet. 
 An 7 sae wi' Fortune's blasts, my frien', 
 
 They'll come an' bide at will, 
 But we can scoog ahint a screen 
 
 An' jouk their fury still. 
 Then happy ilka day that comes, 
 
 An' glorious ilka nicht, 
 The present disna fash oor thumbs, 
 
 The future needna fricht. 
 
116 THE MO UNTAIN MAID. 
 
 THE MOUNTAIN MAID. 
 
 Where a moor for miles extending 
 
 Tires the westward straining eye, 
 And the northern bens ascending 
 
 Darken and divide the sky, 
 Where the stornicloud, ever wheeling, 
 
 Flings on Earth a tortured shade 
 Happy in a humble shieling 
 
 Lived the dark-eyed Mountain Maid. 
 
 Here, 'mid scenes of naked grandeur, 
 
 Day dawned on her infant view, 
 Here her childhood wont to wander, 
 
 Here to girlhood glad she grew. 
 Moving shadows, laughing water, 
 
 Wind and flowers, with these she played 
 And Omniscient Mature taught her, 
 
 Taught the lonely Mountain Maid. 
 
 Close with Nature converse holding, 
 Wondering Fear at first she knew ; 
 
THE MOUNTAIN MAID. 117 
 
 Till from Fear to Faith, unfolding 
 
 Wondering Love within her grew. 
 Then the tender gospel story 
 
 Revelation's roll display'd, 
 And an absent heir of glory 
 
 Was the lowly Mountain Maid. 
 
 Dwelling with her widowed father, 
 
 He a gloomy mountaineer, 
 Was not she an angel rather 
 
 Come his silent life to cheer ] 
 For, as Horeb, seared and roughened, 
 
 Moses' voice in floods obey'd, 
 So the dark man's heart was softened 
 
 By the gentle Mountain Maid. 
 
 This her simple mission ended, 
 
 Soon she sought her native skies ; 
 Straight to Heaven her soul ascended, 
 
 Sinless as a seraph's eyes. 
 Six short months of holy sorrow 
 
 She was from his sight convey'd, 
 When the everlasting morrow 
 
 Gave him back his Mountain Maid. 
 
118 THE MO UNTAIN MAID. 
 
 I have seen the roofless dwelling 
 
 On the lonely wind-swept moor, 
 I have heard the shepherd telling 
 
 Of her earthly lot obscure ; 
 And her name and age surviving 
 
 On the graveyard stone survey'd, 
 And have thought it worth the striving 
 
 To be like the Mountain Maid. 
 
HESPERUS. 119 
 
 HESPERUS. 
 
 The sun has sunk within the western glow, 
 
 The flush is fading from the evening sky, 
 A single star sits on the welkin's brow 
 
 'Tis Hesperus looks down with golden eye. 
 Now sleeps the lark that in its evening flight 
 
 Dropt wild melodious notes from rosy skies ; 
 One wakeful voice alone wails through the night 
 
 It is the homeless wind that raves and sighs. 
 
 Eoam, restless thing, around the dusky hill 
 
 Where bird and beast are slumbering, flower and tree ; 
 No evening hour that bids the world be still 
 
 Comes motherly to calm and comfort thee. 
 Even such am I, that find no rest at all, 
 
 From home and fireside comforts wandered far, 
 Whose only joy is, when the shadows fall, 
 
 To gaze regretful on yon western star. 
 
120 HEART-SORROW. 
 
 HEART-SORROW. 
 
 roaming wind that never rests, 
 
 How weird thy wailings be ! 
 How deep from out thy heaving breasts 
 
 Of wave thy sobs, sea ! 
 O heart, that ever like the wind 
 
 Rests not, and like the sea 
 Groans forth what may not be confin'd, 
 
 How strange thy sorrows be ! 
 
 The speargrass by the lakeside lone, 
 
 And on the hill the pine, 
 In sunlight sigh, in moonlight moan, 
 
 A grief that echoes mine. 
 What mystic woes of higher birth 
 
 With human woes entwine, 
 As with the sorrow-sentient earth, 
 
 Heart, commingle thine 1 
 
CHAUCER. 121 
 
 CHAUCER 
 
 O sunny-hearted Chaucer ! thou 
 
 The old bard with the youthful brow, 
 
 Thy country sadly needs thee now ! 
 
 Of a long thousand years the half 
 Have journey' d by on pilgrim staff 
 Since last she heard thy merry laugh. 
 
 Few pleasant bards like thee had they, 
 Those pilgrim years, to keep them gay 
 And journey with them on their way. 
 
 We miss thy unaffected speech, 
 
 Thy ringing laugh, thy tales that reach 
 
 With readiest road the heart of each. 
 
 But most we miss thy generous tone, 
 That said to each " Possess thy own, 
 But be content with it alone." 
 
122 CHAUCER. 
 
 That said to youth " Enjoy thy prime, 
 And taste the gladness of the time ; 
 Sour looks and sadness are a crime."" 
 
 But now the sentimental tale, 
 The puling song, the hymn for sale, 
 And borrowed form and phrase prevail. 
 
 For girls our modern poet writes, 
 For teapot squires, and carpet knights. 
 And dolls, and drawing-room delights. 
 
 He simpers, but he cannot laugh ; 
 His talk you understand but half ; 
 He views far off the vile riff-raff. 
 
 human-hearted Chaucer ! thou 
 The old bard with the youthful brow, 
 Thy England sadly needs thee now ! 
 
 As with the motley pilgrim show 
 Thou unaffectedly didst go 
 One April morning long ago, 
 
CHAUCER. 
 
 So with the common English throng 
 Abode, a cherished guest, thy song, 
 And journeyed with their lives along. 
 
 Methinks I see thee at the age 
 
 Thou made that famous pilgrimage : 
 
 A little past Life's middle stage ; 
 
 A shapely form, and firm of joint, 
 Portly withal and in good point ; 
 A face with cheerfulness anoint ; 
 
 Whose eyes at sixty through the haze, 
 Which sad experience still doth raise, 
 Shine clear as in thy early days ; 
 
 Atop whose beard of flaxen glow 
 
 Two pleasant lips smile evermo', 
 
 Like sunbeams where white roses blow. 
 
 But vain, alas ! the filial care 
 To limn thine image on the air 
 Unless thy spirit, too, be therp 
 
124 CHAUCER. 
 
 If, happy spirit ! to thine ear 
 The human language still is dear 
 Which from thy lips came erst so clear, 
 
 To some one in these days impart 
 
 The gentle secret of thy art 
 
 Which takes unstorm'd the stubborn heart. 
 
 Give him the freshness of the spring 
 To clothe with leaves the stoniest thing 
 And in the thorniest hedge to sing ; 
 
 To sympathise with the young breast, 
 With all that causes it unrest, 
 And all that makes it purely blest. 
 
 And give him of thy gladsome mood 
 To seek, and see, and sing of good 
 With a becoming hardihood ; 
 
 For there is none so reprobate, 
 So lost to self, so cursed of fate, 
 As wholly to deserve our hate ; 
 
CHAUCER. 
 
 Of happiness to see no dearth, 
 But far more matter for our mirth 
 Than for our grief, broadcast o'er earth. 
 
 Give him thy kindliness of soul 
 
 To see a beauty in the whole 
 
 Whose parts to narrow views are foul ; 
 
 Thy kindliness and courage both : 
 To shed on shams the light of truth, 
 But not to butcher without ruth. 
 
126 A FRAGMENT. 
 
 A FRAGMENT. 
 
 I. 
 
 The rosy evening of a day in May 
 
 Shedding its coloured lights upon a bay 
 
 That sleeps beneath green banks. The winds at rest. 
 
 Low o'er the waters, winging to the west, 
 
 A seabird, with its plumage full display'd, 
 
 Whiter than sea-foam. 
 
 Standing in the shade 
 Of an old cedar on the seabank high 
 A youth, gazing around with thoughtful eye : 
 A pleasant face, that would be joyous wholly 
 But for a trace of pensive melancholy. 
 Listen ! He speaks : 
 
 " Fair, fair, very fair, 
 The summer beauty of the evening air, 
 Brooding o'er plains, and hills, and tranquil streams, 
 
A FRAGMENT. 127 
 
 And. seas, and windless capes ! Heaven, meseems 
 
 This Earth were yet an Eden if the smoke 
 
 And roar of cities never rose or broke 
 
 On eye or ear, and men like brethren dwelt 
 
 In the green wilderness, and never felt 
 
 The fiendish lust for gold : yond 7 gleaming cloud, 
 
 That seems a turban 7 d head devoutly bow'd, 
 
 Filling the western sky, and that one star 
 
 In deepest ether sunk serenely far 
 
 Are wealth enough ! 
 
 some bright angel, come ! 
 I will not start, or swoon, or straight be dumb 
 By thy mysterious presence overpowered, 
 For sure this Earth by beauty overbowered 
 Was meant for forms angelic ! 
 
 Say if e'er 
 
 The first man God made saw a scene more fair 
 Bending o'er Eden ! Did his being thrill 
 With pleasure such as mine 1 yet haunted still 
 By thoughtful pain that in a little while, 
 Though other joys may follow, this will smile [ 
 
 No more at all ! 
 
128 A FRAGMENT. 
 
 Poor mortal ! this fair scene 
 That runs thee back to the primeval green 
 Of new-made Eden ; this, which thou dost prize 
 As Heaven itself, it passes from thine eyes ; 
 Is made and unmade ; lavish J d but not for thee ; 
 Cast like unfmgered gold into the sea ! 
 
 'Twas some black angel's whisper. I will change, 
 "Will look to heaven and it will vanish ! 
 
 Strange ! 
 
 The scene is as before ; but I remain, 
 My pleasure dash'd with recollective pain 
 That Time is toying with me : in my sadness 
 He brings me face to face with scenes of gladness : 
 They glad me, and they go ; and grief again 
 Is my unasked companion : joy and pain 
 Thus hurry me through life, the slaves of Time 
 And my refined tormentors. But sublime 
 Kise, rise, my soul, superior to thy fate 
 In a calm proud indifference ! 
 
 It wears late ! 
 The sun has set. The clouds are settling down 
 
A FRAGMENT. 
 
 On the stern hill-brow, like an iron frown. 
 The air is colourless : th' o'erarching heaven 
 Is like a prison-vault, gray and uneven : 
 The land lies soulless 'tis the brutish Earth, 
 That is enclad with Spring and knows no mirth, 
 And stripped again and cares not, and so yearly : 
 And the vast sea is water, water merely !" 
 
 II. 
 
 An Autumn night. The winds are whistling shrill : 
 The long-haired pinetrees half way up the hill 
 Fling their dishevelled tresses to the gale, 
 And fill with sighing all the hollow vale. 
 Clouds through the sky careering. Wild unrest 
 Except among the stars. A night unblest. 
 
 Deep in a sunken valley by a brook 
 That hurries guiltily from human look 
 From hemlock-darkened bank to caverned stone, 
 A shapeless figure in the shadows lone 
 Eeclining : to himself he speaks in tones 
 Of bitter anguish, broke by frequent moans : 
 
 I loved. No mother ever loved her child 
 Half so devotedly. 'Twill drive me wild, 
 One glance into the past, the silent land 
 
130 A FRAGMENT. 
 
 Where all my hopes lie dead. What shadowy hand 
 
 Thus tempts me to my ruin 1 Do not ope 
 
 The door of that dead-room ! Without or hope 
 
 Of what's to come or memory of the past, 
 
 Here let me lie a clod, such as at last 
 
 I must be. What is life to mo that I 
 
 Should thus desire it if I have to die, 
 
 Or anyone, or anything I love 1 
 
 The winds around me, and the stars above, 
 
 Scream on, shine on, and mock me ! Is there one 
 
 That knows what sorrow is 1 Do I alone 
 
 Bave discontented ? Yet the nations toil 
 
 And sweat, and work, and walk the Earth awhile, 
 
 Then drop into the wormy cell beneath, 
 
 And murmur not, and ere they drop bequeath 
 
 Their sweaty-handled tools and thistly soil 
 
 To those they love j and they, too, sweat and toil ! 
 
 Why do they build ? Is there a structure stands 1 
 
 They seem like children raising on the sands 
 
 Castles of sand in hearing of the wave, 
 
 Yet, unlike children, hope their towers will brave, 
 
 Though former wrecks are round them scattered wide, 
 
 Time's more relentless and almighty tide !" 
 
ANTI-STUDIOUS. 131 
 
 ANTI-STUDIOUS. 
 
 "Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits" 
 
 No ! not for me the narrow hearth. 
 
 With studious chair beside it ; 
 But I will round the rolling earth, 
 
 And help, who knows ? to guide it. 
 
 The freedom of the winds be mine, 
 
 The privilege of changing ; 
 From where hot Indian summer's shine 
 
 To polar rigours ranging. 
 
 I've no ambition among books ; 
 
 I hate the silent creeping 
 From line to line with blear-eyed looks 
 
 While wiser folks are sleeping. 
 
 The wisdom of the shelves I own : 
 
 'Twere folly to dispute it ; 
 But much of it is musty grown, 
 
 And much of it diluted 
 
132 ANTI-STUDIOUS. 
 
 By men who mix and mix again 
 And will not let you taste it 
 
 Till of the virtue naught remain 
 And all the flavour's wasted. 
 
 Even though in treasured books it lay 
 Like hived honey glowing, 
 
 Mine be the brighter task to stray 
 Where opening buds are blowing ; 
 
 To sip it from the breezy bell 
 And from the dewy chalice, 
 
 To sport o'er mountain, moor, and fell, 
 And revel in the valleys. 
 
 The proper glory of the chase 
 
 Is galloping enraptured 
 With freedom beating on one's face, 
 
 !N"ot the poor quarry captured. 
 
 Pursuit Possession, choose refuse : 
 The last would not content me, 
 
 And I would rather searching lose 
 Than sleeping have it sent me. 
 
ANTI-STUDIOUS. 133 
 
 So I will up, and give the slip 
 
 To library and college, 
 And listen to the living lip 
 
 For wisdom and for knowledge ; 
 
 And view the spacious changeful play 
 
 Of human life enacted, 
 And fling those views of it away 
 
 That come through books refracted ; 
 
 And gauge the secret springs profound 
 
 That moving underlie it ; 
 And learn the use of wisdom found 
 
 The wisdom to apply it. 
 
 Then farewell book, and narrow hearth, 
 
 And midnight lamp beside it ; 
 I'm off to round the rolling earth, 
 
 And help mayhap to guide it ! 
 
134 BY LOCHLEVEN. 
 
 BY LOCHLEVEN. 
 
 I lie within the old pineshade beside the mimic main, 
 
 And all day long the laughing sound of the lake is in my 
 
 brain, 
 But in the gusts that come, and go, and leave the pinetrees 
 
 sleeping, 
 I hear the tones of something sad amid the sunshine weeping. 
 
 Between me and Benarty slopes the sparkling waters lie, 
 Bright as the sheeny sun above, blue as the bending sky, 
 But near the willows now and then I spy a shadow sailing, 
 And hear the tones of something sad amid the sunshine 
 wailing. 
 
 The cushat in the cool recess intones his croodendoo, 
 The snow-white seagull in the sun is sporting in my view, 
 But in the segs along the lake, like sounds for ever dying, 
 I hear the tones of something sad amid the sunshine sighing. 
 
 I hear the cheerful twitter of the songbird in its nest, 
 
 And hither and yon 1 the hum of bees in summer's bounty blest, 
 
BY LOGHLEVEN. 135 
 
 But in the knot-grass at my feet, too plain for misbelieving, 
 I hear the tones of something sad amid the sunshine grieving. 
 
 The dimpling of the limpid lake into unnumbered smiles, 
 The grandeur of the solemn hills, the glory of the isles, 
 O, Earth were paradise at times but that from lea and loaning 
 There come the tones of something sad amid the sunshine 
 moaning. 
 
 Now who will tell me what it is that, when I would be glad, 
 Comes stealing through the summer air and makes my spirit 
 
 sad, 
 And why, ere Autumn winds are out and Autumn suns are 
 
 failing, 
 I hear the tones of something sad amid the sunshine wailing 1 
 
136 BOAT SONG. 
 
 BOAT SONG : "UP WITH THE SAIL." 
 
 Up with the sail to the freshening gale 
 
 And let our bark go free, 
 Away, away from th' embracing bay 
 
 To the ever-opening sea. 
 
 O joy to hear the whistling wind 
 
 And feel old Ocean heave ! 
 The cares we had on the land behind 
 
 With the land behind we leave. 
 
 The sea-fowls float by our bounding boat, 
 
 And the circling dolphins play ; 
 But fleet is the speed of our winged steed 
 
 Away o'er the waves and away ! 
 
 We leave the sun in his sinking car 
 
 On the western weather-gleam, 
 And away by the twinkling light of stars 
 
 To welcome his rising beam. 
 
BOAT SONG. 137 
 
 The petrels poise on our bending mast, 
 Or scream thro' the mists of the night, 
 
 And the wild sea-surges to the blast 
 Fling out their sea-manes white. 
 
 But our bark rides out the stormy night, 
 
 For a tight little craft is she ; 
 And away she flies like a sea bird bright 
 
 That wings to the morning free ! 
 
138 WINDS OF APRIL. 
 
 WINDS OF APRIL. 
 
 Blow, winds of April, over the Sea, 
 
 The world is wide and your wings are free I 
 
 No towering Alp on the bulging Earth 
 
 Can break the leap of your bounding mirth ;; 
 
 No isle lies hid in the ocean vast 
 
 Where ye may not fold your wings at last ; 
 
 Then up and away in your dauntless pride, 
 
 Your wings are free and the world is wide I 
 
 Blow, winds of April, over the lea, 
 The world is fair and your wings are free ! 
 There lurks no flower in the prairie grass 
 That ye may not kiss as ye onward pass ; 
 No mountain pine that ye may not shake, 
 No palm-tree lone by its inland lake ; 
 Then up and off and away with care, 
 Your wings are free and the world is fair I 
 
 Blow, winds of April, the winds for me, 
 The world is ours and our wings are free t 
 
WINDS OF APRIL. 
 
 The lordly dome and the fenced estate, 
 The palaced park of the rich and great, 
 The castled lands of a hundred kings, 
 We pass them by on triumphant wings ; 
 We overlook them all from our skiey bow'rs, 
 Our wings are free and the world is ours ! 
 
140 AN ANCIENT CITY. 
 
 AN ANCIENT CITY. 
 
 An ancient city I beheld : 
 
 Oh, call it not a dream of eld 
 
 It was when Time was young, 
 And bluer o'er the infant Earth 
 
 Heaven hung ! 
 
 The sadness was in me the mirth 
 In thee had unprophetic birth 
 And unpolluted sprung, 
 
 For thou wert young, young ! 
 
 Matrons of large voluptuous glance 
 And virgins nodding in the dance 
 
 Iii a continuous stream 
 Yirgins in their own tresses veil'd ; 
 
 And the gleam 
 
 Of golden cymbals high upheld 
 By snowy arms that swung and swell'd 
 
 Like lilies in a stream 
 
 When winds disturb their dream. 
 
'AN ANCIENT CITY. HI 
 
 In vain the antique music play'd, 
 
 In vain the cymbals flashed and sway'd, 
 
 In vain on stop and string 
 The taper fingers rose and fell ! 
 
 Who could bring 
 Music from a tongueless bell 1 
 And yet of music did they tell 
 
 By motion and by swing ; 
 
 Voiceless, thou did sing ! 
 
 But if of sinful joy the sound 
 A holy silence lapp'd it round : 
 
 To me it seemed a time 
 With the large liberty endow'd 
 
 Of the prime, 
 
 When larger pleasures were allowed 
 And nobler sacrifices vow'd ; 
 
 But thou wert grown sublime 
 
 In loveliness and crime ! 
 
 Thou like a sacrifice wert led, 
 With fatal finery garlanded, 
 To thy eternal woe ! 
 
AN ANCIENT CITY. 
 
 Thy beauty was a curse ; sublime 
 
 On thy brow 
 
 Glitter'd the leprosy of crime, 
 The boasted glory of thy prime, 
 And now thou liest low 
 In the Dead Sea flow ! 
 
A FAREWELL. 143 
 
 A FAREWELL (BYRONIC). 
 
 I've looked my last upon your face, 
 
 And spoke my last adieu ; 
 My heart is cold to other love 
 
 That burned with love to you. 
 
 To you the dawn of a new life 
 
 And a new love begun, 
 To me the gathering clouds of night 
 
 And a descending sun. 
 
 Yet not to me the kindly fates 
 Have doomed a starless woe, 
 
 The cherished memory of the past 
 Goes with me where I go. 
 
 I see a sweet pale pensive face 
 With lustrous eyes of blue 
 
 ^et in a cloud of hair from which 
 A hidden sun looks through ; 
 
144 A FAREWELL. 
 
 A breast which once in happier days 
 Was fondly pressed to mine, 
 
 On which the leaves of a white rose, 
 Though crushed and scentless, shine. 
 
 Thus mated, I can dare the gloom 
 Whence earthly hopes are fled, 
 
 And deem my plighted love returned 
 As by the sainted dead. 
 
A LOST TREASURE. 145 
 
 A LOST TREASURE. 
 
 A pilgrim to the places 
 
 Where I was bred a boy, 
 I cannot find the faces 
 
 That with my fancy toy : 
 
 O the drear employ ! 
 To search in empty spaces 
 For the long-vanished traces 
 
 Of early love and joy. 
 
 The fields and streams around me, 
 
 The hillsides and the woods, 
 Unchanged themselves, have found me 
 
 A stranger to their moods : 
 
 the solitudes 
 
 To which I crept in childhood ! 
 I cannot now in wildwood 
 
 Shun the multitudes. 
 
 'Twas here I built a bower 
 
 In hearing of the streams, 
 
146 A LOST TREASURE. 
 
 A shelter from the shower, 
 
 A shade from summer beams : 
 the happy gleams 
 Of hopes therein in quiet, 
 "Whose loss I can but sigh at ! 
 the pleasant dreams ! 
 
 What man was yet contented 
 
 Tho' Fortune on him smiled 1 
 And who has not repented 
 
 He left his native wild 1 ? 
 
 the pleasures mild, 
 The simple hopes I builded, 
 The love my life that gilded, 
 
 Whenas I was a child ! 
 
 For I have lost a treasure 
 
 In the vanished time 
 When living was a pleasure 
 
 And discontent a crime. 
 
 the happy prime 
 Of life and love together 
 And sweet-aired April weather 
 
 And thoughts that rose in rhyme. 
 
A MEAL QUEEN. 147 
 
 A REAL QUEEN. 
 
 Thou art so graceful in thy mien, so gracious in thy gaze, 
 
 Thou art to me a real queen born out of queenly days. 
 
 Surely a diadem has crowned a less imperial brow, 
 
 And vassals true have thronged around a queen less fair than 
 thou. 
 
 I never see thy deep blue eyes, thy wealth of golden hair, 
 
 Th' unconscious pride thy look implies, and thy still stately 
 air, 
 
 But still the dream my fancy fills that surely thou must be 
 
 A daughter of the Norlan hills, a princess of the Sea. 
 
 How bold these clear blue eyes had gleamed beneath a belly- 
 ing sail, 
 
 These flowing locks how brightly streamed on a dark north- 
 sea gale ! 
 
 And all the charms that round thee cling, at once so fair and 
 free, 
 
 Sure Danish scald had joyed to sing upon the billowy sea ! 
 
 And men of valorous Viking blood and simple speech and 
 true 
 
148 A EEAL QUEEN. 
 
 Had dared for them the mountain flood and stemmed the 
 
 Malstrom, too ! 
 By right of beauty thou hadst reigned a claim we honour 
 
 still- 
 Perchance of blood, that all unstained may yet thy being fill. 
 Lady ! whatever be thy lot, thy lineage or degree, 
 In castle-hall or humble cot, thou art not mean to me ; 
 For thou in gesture, form, and face art one of Nature's 
 
 queens, 
 
 Fit to adorn with easy grace the proudest palace scenes, 
 And equal fit in paths obscure and rural shades to shine 
 A queen among the lowly poor whose fortunes measure thine. 
 Tho' ne'er in golden chair enthroned in regal pomp and ease, 
 Yet many mute eyes must have owned thy sway in words like 
 
 these, 
 Fair stranger-queen, to thee we bow, our hearts confess thy 
 
 sway, 
 The tribute of pure thoughts we vow to pay thee from this 
 
 day. 
 
ANCIENT MEXICO. 149 
 
 ANCIENT MEXICO. 
 
 Her day of glory past unsung, 
 
 She sleeps in evening's fading glow, 
 
 With bands of shadow o'er her flung 
 The sunbeams slant on Mexico. 
 
 Around her tower the solemn hills, 
 Her lakes reposing far below ; 
 
 Deep silence all her borders fills 
 The sunbeams slant on Mexico. 
 
 The busy tides of Aztec life 
 
 Have ebbed, no more again to flow ; 
 J Tis o'er, the fever of the strife 
 
 The sunbeams slant on Mexico. 
 
 Her dark mysterious worship past, 
 
 Her tebcallis lying low, 
 Oblivion's night uprising fast, 
 
 The sunbeams slant on Mexico. 
 
150 ANCIENT MEXICO. 
 
 No longer thro* her noonday streets 
 Pass priestly pomp and regal show, 
 
 But shadow lengthening shadow meets 
 The sunbeams slant on Mexico. 
 
 No fleet canoes adorn her lakes, 
 NOT garden-islands floating slow ; 
 
 NOT song nor oar their silence breaks 
 The sunbeams slant on Mexico. 
 
 Her plumy robe and crown of gold 
 Are gone to alien and to foe ; 
 
 The glory of her past uproll'd 
 The sunbeams slant on Mexico. 
 
 Her nerveless arm hath lost the skill 
 To wield the axe, the lance to throw ; 
 
 The warrior pulse for ever still 
 The sunbeams slant on Mexico. 
 
 She sits beside her inland sea 
 A queenly widow in her woe, 
 
 For only memories hath she 
 The sun hath set on Mexico. 
 
PAT OF TRALEE. 151 
 
 PAT OF TRALEE: IRISH SONG. 
 
 I'm alone and awake, too, wid no one to spake to, 
 The loneliest bhoy in the vale of Tralee, 
 
 For to-noight is the parthy, and Mrs McCarthy 
 Has ax'd all the neighbours but me, 
 
 But me, 
 She has ax'd the whole county but me. 
 
 II. 
 
 Shure I wouldn't be afther env'ying the laughther, 
 The music so fine and the dancing so free, 
 
 The fun and flirtation, and swate botheration, 
 But Kathleen has gone widout me, 
 
 Widout me, 
 She has gone to the ball widout me. 
 
 III. 
 
 I know that she's dancing, her bright eyes are glancing 
 Wid aqual proportions of mischief and glee ; 
 
152 PAT OF TRALEE. 
 
 And every bhoy present, he thinks, moighty pleasant, 
 " Shure Kathleen's the Colleen for me, 
 
 For me, 
 I am sartin she's smiling for me." 
 
 IV. 
 
 Be this and be that now, as shure as I'm Pat now, 
 I've sat here from tin till a quarther to three, 
 
 I've sat widout winking quite spacheless but thinking 
 If Kathleen is caring for me, 
 
 For me, 
 Whether Kathleen is caring for me. 
 
 V. 
 
 Me poipe it is broken, and, be that same token, 
 
 So, too, is me heart if ye only could see, 
 For there's Tim and there's Barney, and och ! wid their 
 
 blarney, 
 They'll steal away Kathleen from me, 
 
 From me, 
 They will steal the swate creathure from me. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Arrah ! now for a shindy ! I'd jump thro' a windy, 
 Knock down a polaceman, or pull up a tree, 
 
PAT OF TRALEE. if>3 
 
 But och ! wirristhrue now ! what good would it do now 
 But froighten me darlint from me, 
 
 From me, 
 It would froighten me darlint from me ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 Hear now to her warning, the ould clock ! of morning ; 
 
 Jump into bed, Pat, that's the best jump, says she ; 
 A dacent ould clock tho j the truth must be spoke, too, 
 
 'Tis sildom at noight we agree, 
 We agree, 
 
 It's but sildom at noight we agree. 
 
154 ECHOES. 
 
 ECHOES. 
 
 " It is late, so late, and the lights are out 
 
 In the castle overhead, 
 And the only sounds that move about 
 . Are the wind and the warder's tread. 
 It is late, my son, and you do not sleep, 
 
 But wearily sit and sigh : 
 Now tell me the vexing thoughts that keep 
 
 Sweet slumber from your eye." 
 
 " They will not lie : they fill my soul : 
 
 They murmur ever deep : 
 The echoes, my mother, they rise and roll ^ 
 
 They will not let me sleep. 
 the weary sound, with its ebbless flow ! 
 
 The dead are beyond its reach : 
 See where they sleep in the churchyard low 
 
 Like shells on a sea-beat beach ! 
 They hear it not : nor sigh nor moan 
 
 Escapes their narrow bed, 
 
ECHOES. 155 
 
 But each is dreamless as the stone 
 
 That presses on his head. 
 I am envious of your mounds 
 
 And of your slumbers deep, 
 For ye do not hear the maddening sounds 
 
 That will not let me sleep !" 
 
 Now doubly cold is the wind to me, 
 
 And sadder yet its sigh ! 
 And I could weep, my son, with thee, 
 
 But the springs of my grief are dry. 
 It was years ago, on a night like this, 
 
 And thou wert but unborn, 
 I wept and prayed, but all amiss, 
 
 Till breaking of the morn. 
 
 . 
 
 For the angry winds were all abroad 
 
 And thy father on the sea : 
 His ship never more the waters rode 
 
 And never home came he. 
 And the selfsame wind that would not hear 
 
 The prayers of a tender wife 
 Now fills a mother's heart with fear 
 
 And sickens me of life. 
 
156 ECHOES. 
 
 But do not talk of death, my son, 
 
 And do not heed the wind 
 That quickens the sad thoughts which run 
 
 Destructive o'er thy mind." 
 
 " It is not the wail of the wind, mother, 
 
 Nor ocean's stormy roll : 
 They enter not by outward ear 
 
 The sounds that fill my souL 
 Music to me were the wildest roar 
 
 Of wind and water blent 
 Could it drown the sounds that evermore 
 
 My tortured soul torment. 
 Yet they are sweet, they won me first 
 
 By the witchery of their tone, 
 And ere ever I knew to a charm accurst 
 
 Had the mystic music grown. 
 'Tis the clamorous Voice of the Past I hear, 
 
 The Sounds of a World gone by, 
 The noble speech, and the poem clear, 
 
 And the deed divinely high. 
 All down the ante-rooms of Time 
 
 They stream and gather and roll ; 
 
ECHOES. 157 
 
 And with hopes to which I may never climb 
 
 Their echoes vex my soul. 
 I know that a music of my own 
 
 Their terror-tones might lay, 
 But what can I, with the wish alone 
 
 To do or sing or say V 1 
 
158 LAST LOOK OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 LAST LOOK OF SCOTLAND : A SONG. 
 
 I. 
 
 I stand on the deck and gaze over the blue, 
 
 And thy hills, bonnie Scotland, are yet in my view. 
 
 They are bright in the rays of the slow-setting sun, 
 
 And the glow of the amethyst robes them each one ; 
 
 Enraptured I look till the vision is past, 
 
 And Heaven only knows if this look is my last. 
 
 II. 
 
 My last it may be, but it fades not away, 
 Immortal as memory it knows no decay ; 
 It is thus from the dear land since I maun depart, 
 O 'tis thus I would carry its print on my heart, 
 With the peace which a sweet Scottish gloamin instils, 
 And the glow of a sunset spread over the hills ! 
 
 III. 
 
 In the wilds of the "West there's a splendour, they say, 
 And beside it the glories of Scotland look gray ; 
 
LAST LOOK OF SCOTLAND. 159 
 
 But of this I am sure, when its brightness I view, 
 My mind will be turning, old Scotland, to you ; 
 My thoughts will be flying unfettered and free 
 To a dear little island far over the Sea ! 
 
160 CATULLUS TO LESBIA. 
 
 CATULLUS TO LESBIA (ODE V.) 
 
 Let us live as lives the dove, 
 Let us live, and let us love. 
 Count the counsels of the old 
 As but Abyssinian gold ! 
 With their frigid looks austere, 
 And their rigid laws severe, 
 They would banish us in haste 
 Prom the joys they cannot taste. 
 Be their saws behind us flung ! 
 Life is lovely to the young ; 
 Love is odious to the old, 
 From their envious reach outroll'd.. 
 
 Tho' the sun each night expires, 
 Morning renovates its fires ; 
 But when our brief day is o'er 
 Youth refills our veins no more,, 
 And the long dim night of age 
 Passes as a sleeping stage. 
 
CATULLUS TO LESBIA. 161 
 
 Give me quick a thousand kisses, 
 And a hundred more such blisses ; 
 Add a thousand to the score 
 And a second hundred more ! 
 Come, a thousand yet again, 
 And another ten times ten ! 
 Then, when many thousands past, 
 We take breath to count at last, 
 Let us purposely confound them 
 With a sweet confusion round them, 
 Lest some cynic, lurking near us 
 With an evil ear, o'erhear us 
 And our future bliss destroy, 
 Envious of our counted joy ; 
 Or, if we must know th' amount, 
 Let us make a fresh account. 
 
162 THE MARRIAGE OF PELEUS 
 
 THE MARRIAGE OF PELEUS: 
 A LAY OF ANCIENT GREECE. 
 
 What time the bold idea fired the youth of ancient Greece 
 To go to distant Colchis and seize the Golden Fleece, 
 They turned their eyes to Pelion, on whose high ridges stood 
 A forest of the virgin pine in stately sisterhood. 
 
 Then axe in hand they scaled the slopes to where the pine- 
 trees grew, 
 
 And quick and thick around their strokes the chips of fir- 
 wood flew, 
 
 Till they had hewn of timber a rich and ample store, 
 
 And dragged the daughters of the hill down to the sounding 
 shore ; 
 
 And there they wrought with silent zeal as if they all were 
 dumb, 
 
 Till they had framed the famous ship that first on ocean 
 swum. 
 
THE MARRIAGE OF PELEVS. 163 
 
 The Goddess of the Helmet and of the Brandished Steel, 
 She taught them first to fix the mast and form the curving 
 
 keel; 
 
 'Not for ignoble trade, be sure, but for all-glorious war 
 Was fashioned with Minerva's aid the first great Ocean Car ! 
 
 Uow sprang each rower to his bench and bent a lusty oar, 
 "While seaward with adventurous leap the Argo shot from 
 
 shore ; 
 The ship unerring from the launch that churned the seas to 
 
 foam 
 Swung round to East at once, as if far Colchis were her 
 
 home ! 
 
 The hills of Greece were still in view, and daylight still was 
 
 clear 
 When sea-nymphs rising from the deep, a wondrous sight, 
 
 appear ; 
 
 A wondrous sight to the bold youths as ever met their view, 
 NOT to the nymphs less wonderful this marvel strange and 
 
 new. 
 
 Their snow-white breasts, amid the whirl and foam of waters 
 . vext, 
 
164 THE MARRIAGE OF PELEUS. 
 
 Surround the ship, a circle fair, for that day and the next, 
 Till Peleus, smit with Thetis' charms, the loveliest of the 
 
 train, 
 A mortal her immortal loved, and was beloved again ! 
 
 But this was in the glorious burst and golden dawn of Time, 
 When manly grace and mortal strength were in their vigorous 
 
 prime, 
 When men were rivals of the gods, nor with them vainly 
 
 strove, 
 
 That Thetis gave to Peleus the hand she kept from Jove ; 
 Nor did the match to Tethys beneath her daughter seem, 
 And the great God forbade it not that guides the ocean- 
 stream ! 
 
 And now drew nigh the nuptial day when from the salt-sea 
 
 foam 
 
 Peleus should lead his Nereid bride to his Thessalian home, 
 And all the youth of Thessaly with offerings in their hand 
 Came forth in holiday attire to welcome them to land, 
 From farm and village far remote, from islets sundered 
 
 wide, 
 To greet to land Prince Peleus, and his fair Ocean Bride. 
 
THE MARRIAGE OF PELEUS. 165 
 
 The men of Scyros left their tools among the marble blocks, 
 Through Tempe's valley bleating roamed the undistinguished 
 
 flocks, 
 
 Larissa from her southern gate sent forth a joyous throng, 
 And gay from castled Cronon the people trooped along ! 
 
 On topmost Ossa you might stand and view the country 
 
 round, 
 
 You might not spy in any field a tiller of the ground : 
 The bondaged ox, with traces swinging loosely from his 
 
 flanks, 
 
 Stood aimless in the shallow stream, or lowing on the banks ; 
 The mattock's clang was silent among the copper mines, 
 The sunlight streamed through lonely groves and solitary 
 
 vines ; 
 The plough was in mid-furrow left, the share was red with 
 
 rust, 
 That day the careless sons of toil forsook their ancient trust. 
 
 But if the farms were lonely, the vineyards dull that day, 
 What shouts arose, what laughing rang along the public way 
 Where dalesman met with mountaineer, and maiden of the 
 town 
 
166 THE MARRIAGE OF PELEUS. 
 
 Beheld with curious eye askance her sister of the down ; 
 And all on far-converging paths looked forth with joyful eye 
 To where Pharsala's lordly towers salute the purple sky ! 
 
THE OLD ROMAN GALLEY. 16T 
 
 THE OLD KOMAN GALLEY. 
 
 (AFTER CATULLUS.) 
 
 Yon Galley dreaming on the bay 
 With scarcely heaving prow 
 
 She was the fleetest in her day, 
 Tho J somewhat crippled now. 
 
 In vain her rivals crowded sail 
 
 And toiled with furious oar ; 
 Her only rival was the gale, 
 
 Her only stop the shore. 
 
 She dreaded not the rocks that gird 
 
 The restless Hadrian seas, 
 . And threaded, lightly as a bird, 
 The mazy Cyclades. 
 
 She held her own with Ehodian craft, 
 
 Good sailers every one ; 
 At Thrace's scowling horrors laughed, 
 
 And thro* Propontis spun ; 
 
168 THE OLD ROMAN GALLEY. 
 
 Then from the Passage of the Ox, 
 
 Like arrow quivering free, 
 Shot from between the Clashing Eocks 
 
 Into the Pontic Sea ! 
 
 The Pontic ! on whose banks a wood, 
 
 Erst with her sister trees, 
 Fast anchored in the rock she stood 
 
 And wrestled with the breeze. 
 
 For on the steep Cytorian Hills 
 
 Her sapling years were spent, 
 And seaward with the rushing rills 
 
 Her infant wishes went ; 
 
 Till from Cytorus' groves of box 
 
 And piny summits free, 
 Launched smoothly from Amastrian stocks, 
 
 She sought at length the Sea. 
 
 Since then on many a lengthened course, 
 
 By many a savage shore, 
 When waves ran high and winds blew hoarse, 
 
 Her master safe she bore. 
 
THE OLD ROMAN GALLEY. 16& 
 
 She dared the storm with open sail 
 
 When others hugged the bay, 
 And swift, when sank th' exhausted gale. 
 
 Sped on her oary way. 
 
 No demon of the deep she feared, 
 
 Xor danger of the shore, 
 Past Seylla's rocks unscathed she steered 
 
 And braved Charybdis' roar. 
 
 Such life was hers : 
 
 But now begin 
 
 The days when she must pray 
 The aid of Castor and his Twin, 
 
 Whom winds and waves obey. 
 
170 THE COLD LIGHT OF STARS. 
 
 THE COLD LIGHT OF STARS. 
 
 " There is no light in Earth or Heaven 
 But the cold light of stars." 
 
 No ! tell me not that Nature grieves for human care and pain, 
 That aught but poor Humanity lifts up its voice to 'plain. 
 Man, in his misery blinded, thinks for him the sad wind 
 
 sighs, 
 
 That sea and forest with him in his sorrow sympathise ; 
 In stormy skies he sees a gloom congenial to his mind, 
 And deems the stars with pitying look beam love upon his 
 
 kind. 
 
 There's grandeur in the heavenly host, but 'tis a fearful sight, 
 Encompassing with silent siege the Earth thro' all the night ; 
 The glare of Mars bursts from their eyes, but ne'er a glance of 
 
 love, 
 As they pursue with measured pace their marshalled march 
 
 above. 
 So round the pitiless Hebrews went, with ordered ranks and 
 
 calm, 
 
THE COLD LIGHT OF STARS. 171 
 
 The fair but fated city that was shaded by the palin. 
 Yon very star at last may reach its torch of scathing fire, 
 To blaze destruction round the globe, a red funereal pyre ! 
 
 Years piled on years, a pyramid no finite mind can scale, 
 Have mounted high since finished were their order and their 
 
 tale; 
 Yet there they march as calm and cold in their primeval 
 
 sheen 
 For all the sin and misery their tearless orbs have seen ! 
 
 Silent and bright as when their light first clove chaotic 
 gloom, 
 
 Silent and bright as on the night they first saw Eden's 
 bloom ; 
 
 And bright when blasted was that bloom for evermore to be, 
 
 And silent when unthinking Eve plundered the deadly tree ! 
 
 Silent when Abel shrieking fell beneath the club of Cain, 
 
 Silent when Adam's soul gave forth its sorrow for the slain ; 
 
 Undimmed when Adam's eyes were wet and Eve's with grief 
 ran o'er, 
 
 And bright, tho' hope withdrew its rays from Cain for ever- 
 more ! 
 
172 THE COLD LIGHT OF STARS. 
 
 And so all down the centuries with steady stoic stare, 
 When tyranny usurped the Earth and battle rent the air ; 
 When empires rose and empires fell, and famine filled the 
 
 land, 
 And pestilence and pain and death colleagued a ghastly 
 
 band; 
 When floods did overwhelm the Earth, and Earth herself 
 
 devour, 
 
 With hasty and unnatural man, her children of an hour ; 
 When storm and hail and solid fire, laden with death, were 
 
 hurled, 
 
 And all Pandora's fancied ills let loose on this poor world, 
 Till now it rolls a lazar-house of woes and wounds and sighs ; 
 But think not, bending from the blue, that those are 
 
 mourners' eyes ! 
 
 Unsympathetic Souls of Night ! ye arm our hearts with 
 
 might, 
 But we catch no pity in your pomp, no love see in your 
 
 light; 
 
 So roll ye on in unconcern above this scene of woe, 
 And smile in mockery on the taint your robes may never 
 
 know ! 
 
LOOHLEVEN CASTLE. 173 
 
 LOCHLEVEN CASTLE. 
 
 The Lake was singing round the Isle, 
 In freedom leapt and laughed each wave, 
 
 While mourned the captive Queen the while, 
 And all her hours to grieving gave. 
 
 Blithe round the Tower the bright sea-mew 
 With pinion spread and joyous din 
 
 In wide aerial freedom flew 
 
 While she a prisoner pined within. 
 
 The wind, the free unfettered wind, 
 Piped merrily as it passed her cell, 
 
 Mocking the Lady there confined, 
 In gloomy donjon doomed to dwell. 
 
 From out the grated window she, 
 
 Leaning against the rusty bars, 
 The bonnie buds of Spring could see, 
 
 And view the gladness of the stars ; 
 
174 LOCHLEVEN CASTLE. 
 
 And mark the green leaves of the grove 
 Clapping and whispering in their glee ; 
 
 And hear the laverock hymn its love 
 In trills of heavenly melodie. 
 
 So days of sparkling joy went by, 
 
 And nights of soft and beauteous gloom ; 
 
 And dim grew Mary's star-bright eye, 
 And paled, as blossoms pale, her bloom. 
 
 The country basked in Summer's smile 
 When, wet with tears and girt with steel, 
 
 Came Mary to this lonely isle 
 A faction's fury doomed to feel. 
 
 And Summer rained from cloudless skies 
 Her music and her roses down ; 
 
 And Autumn, gorgeous in his dyes, 
 
 Strode sober through his harvests brown ; 
 
 And Winter to the Lornonds came, 
 
 Ghost-like, and left ; and Spring awoke, 
 
 And Earth burst out in flowery flame, 
 And music from the woodlands broke. 
 
LOCHLEVEN CASTLE. 175 
 
 And Life had charms for Mary still, 
 
 And love, a fountain sealed before, 
 Flowed in her heart, a wasteful rill 
 
 Kings might have sipped, and sighed for more. 
 
 The memories of former years, 
 
 A beauteous Vision, o'er her mind 
 Like sunshine flashed, but fringed with tears, 
 
 And leaving deepest night behind. 
 
 And thus beneath Despair's black wing 
 
 She sat in silence and in grief, 
 Till Hope broke forth, as breaks in Spring 
 
 From the dead branch the living leaf. 
 
 Yet, yet the future might atone 
 
 For all the errors of the past 
 Her actions, all too much unknown, 
 
 In clearer, truer light be cast. 
 
 Her labours for the common weal 
 
 Each grateful lip might yet confess ; 
 Then, oh ! what misery to feel 
 
 A captive's utter powerlessness ! 
 
176 LOCHLEVEN CASTLE. 
 
 While bhus, with, changeful smile and tear, 
 Despair and Hope alternate rose, 
 
 With none around to help or cheer 
 
 She told the Evening Wind her woes : 
 
 " sunset in the glowing West ! 
 
 Glorious for every eye but mine ! 
 To me thou warnest Summer's haste, 
 
 Another priceless day's decline ! 
 
 moments unenjoyed by me, 
 hours of gold, slow-slipping by ! 
 
 A string of radiant pearls are ye, 
 A lone unnecklaced Queen am I ! 
 
 The lowliest-born in all my land 
 Holds the dear boon denied to me, 
 
 And, poor and 'pressed, may yet command 
 The one best blessing libertie ! 
 
 The village maiden meets her swain 
 
 At evening on the quiet lea : 
 One heart, one thought unites them twain, 
 
 But is there heart has thought of me ? 
 
LOCHLEVEN CASTLE. 177 
 
 Why was my every action seen 
 
 With coldness or suspicion still ? 
 Or wherefore was I crowned a Queen 
 
 To govern by another's will 1 
 
 I loved my people and my land, 
 
 Dear to this heart as aught of Earth ; 
 For here my sires long held command, 
 
 And here my mother gave me birth. 
 
 And thou, cruel brother mine ! 
 
 What did I to deserve thy hate ? 
 On thee I bade fair fortune shine, 
 
 And lifted thee to high estate. 
 
 Yet thou didst league with lawless men, 
 
 And coldly unconcerned hast stood, 
 While they compelled th* ignoble pen 
 
 With oath profane and violence rude. 
 
 Eeft of my freedom and my fame, 
 
 Heft of my kingdom and my crown, 
 I yet unanswered urge the claim 
 
 Of mother yearning for her son. 
 
178 LOCHLEVEN CASTLE. 
 
 Were mine the convent's calm retreat, 
 Its holy pastimes and its prayers, 
 
 Nothing again should tempt my feet 
 To leave it for a crown of cares I" 
 
 Her sorrows caught an idling page ; 
 
 And, when she ceased, he sighed, " Ah me ! 
 The linnet in its sunless cage 
 
 'Plains not more sweetly to be free. 
 
 If none will try the dangerous task 
 To free our Lady, then will I ; 
 
 And for the hazard I will ask 
 A passing love-blink of her eye !" 
 
 He told the Lady his design, 
 
 The crimson colouring all his cheek ; 
 
 She smiled to him approving sign 
 But hope so faint forbade to speak. 
 
 The Master o'er his cups delayed 
 At evening in the Castle-hall : 
 
 Beside him on the board were laid 
 The keys that kept a Queen in thrall. 
 
LOCHLEVEN CASTLE. J 179 
 
 The youth remarked the Master's ease, 
 And thought upon the hapless Queen : 
 
 He dropt his 'kerchief on the keys, 
 And with the prize escaped unseen. 
 
 The door is wide ! the prisoner free ! 
 
 Misplaced were thanks with danger nigh ; 
 " Lady, there's life and libertie 
 
 Lost in the time we talk : 0, fly !" 
 
 They lock the gate, and to the shore 
 
 Hurry with noiseless footfall down, 
 Enter the boat, and bend the oar, 
 
 And westering stretch them to'ard the town, 
 
 Kinross ! amid a green retreat 
 
 Sleeping in moonbeams bathed, and dew, 
 Where sworn their rightful Queen to meet 
 
 Brave hearts and arms were waiting true. 
 
 Out from the frowning shade they sweep ; 
 
 The waters plash, though skimmed with care ; 
 When, hark ! from out th' awakened keep 
 
 A shot rings on the startled air. 
 
180 LOCHLEVEN CASTLE. 
 
 From the dear mark the ball flies wide ; 
 
 Hope yet gives strength the oars dip fast'; 
 By royal hand an oar is plied ; 
 
 The keys into the Lake are cast. 
 
 The skiff skims lightly o'er the Lake, 
 The bending rowers work with zeal : 
 
 Sudden ! swift and resounding break 
 The red gleam and the rattling peal ! 
 
 The wild gull starts with 'wildered screech : 
 But safe beneath the moon's sweet smile 
 
 They row, beyond the cannon's reach, 
 Eelaxing from the useless toil. 
 
 A silver shield, the round moon shed 
 Its guiding radiance o'er the Queen, 
 
 And every wavelet bowed its head, 
 
 And smooth the waters stretched serene. 
 
 Then, Willie Douglas, did thy breast 
 
 Eeceive a bright abiding joy 
 When the fair Queen her debt confest, 
 
 And bent on thee a grateful eye ! 
 
LOCHLEVEN CASTLE. 181 
 
 And now with nervous stroke they near, 
 And throbbing heart, th' approaching land ; 
 
 And now the friendly hail they hear, 
 And now the keel grates on the sand. 
 
 Upon a green round-rising mound 
 
 She stood still by the peasant shewn 
 
 Within Lethangie's favoured bound ; 
 
 And still as " Mary's Knowe" 'tis known. 
 
 The loyal lords with Hamilton 
 
 There bade her welcome to the shore ; 
 
 They knelt and kissed her hand each one, 
 And new and firm allegiance swore. 
 
 They set her on a fleet-limbed steed, 
 
 And gathered round her in a band ; 
 Then south away they spurred with speed, 
 
 Resolved with her to fall or stand. 
 
 1868. 
 
182 PAT-LVCK. 
 
 PAT-LUCK. 
 
 \ 
 
 The monk had a greedy ee, 
 The monk wanted siller, 
 
 The monk cam' to see 
 Auld Widow Miller. 
 
 In a wee theekit hoose 
 Auld Widow Miller sat, 
 
 Ne'er a cricket half sae croose, 
 Scrapin' her parritch-pat. 
 
 Great faith in haly men, 
 Great faith had she ; 
 
 That's a pat amon' ten, 
 That pat, quo' he. 
 
 Puir auld Widow Miller 
 
 What will she dae ] 
 No a plack left o' siller, 
 
 The pat gane tae ! 
 
PAT-LUCK. 183 
 
 Hame ran the greedy freer, 
 
 Girnin' as lie gaed ; 
 Wha like, ye needna speer, 
 
 The pat on his head. 
 
 Loupin' a wide ditch 
 
 Him an' hame atween, 
 Down wi' a hasty pitch 
 
 The pat's owre his een ! 
 
 Up again it winna come 
 
 Eug he ne'er sae sair, 
 And the mannie's far fra hame, 
 
 Beast nor body near. 
 
 a roar an* noo a race, 
 Gloamin' i' the sky ! 
 Here arid there in desert place 
 Ease the lanely cry ! 
 
 Thro' a kintra town he rins, 
 
 Bellowin' like a bull ; 
 Haste ye ! hoose ye ! waukrife weans, 
 
 Sandie's oot, an' will' ! 
 
184 PAT LUCK. 
 
 Auld wine at the door, 
 Yer apron owre yer een ! 
 
 Shuh ! He's by like stour, 
 Hardlins seen ! 
 
 Noo everybody's hearkenin', 
 An 7 ilka winker's wide ; 
 
 Eh ! but i' the darkenin' 
 The horns winna hide ! 
 
 Burn-the-win', neist mornin', 
 Was lyin' whaur he fell ; 
 
 He aimed a clink at Hornie 
 That sair mischiev'd himsel'. 
 
 A pat he dang to shairds 
 An' hammer heft baith ; 
 
 The bits, yell see them in his yaird 
 A witness o' the truth ! 
 
 The monk has a sair head, 
 His ehafts winna chow ; 
 
 On beef an 7 greens he winna feed 
 He's made a Lenten vow ! 
 
NOS MUTAMURl 185 
 
 NOS MUTAMUR! 
 
 (Spoken by an Old Boy of Sixty.) 
 
 Is this the house 1 Ay, there's the well-known sign, 
 The Bunch of Grapes, still hanging o'er the door. 
 
 I gaze around, the change maybe is mine, 
 But all is small and dingier than of yore. 
 
 The same black-coated waiters whisk about, 
 But where is TOM, the prince of waiting men 1 
 
 Methinks I hear old Tom's commanding shout 
 " Way for the gentlemen of Number Ten !" 
 
 " Here, waiter ! shew me into Number Ten !" 
 " No Number Ten, sir ! That's the coffee-room. 
 
 Some wine, sir ?" " No ! some honest beer ;" and then- 
 " No Number Ten," and settle into gloom. 
 
 The coffee-room is empty, and I sit 
 
 And sip the beer in memory of old times. 
 
186 NOS MUTAMUR! 
 
 How flat it tastes without the joyous wit 
 That spiced our undergraduate pantomimes ! 
 
 I stretch my hand across the vanish'd years, 
 Full forty ! Ay, the world is growing old 1 
 
 I blow aside the mists, and there appears 
 Faintly at last our crew of six all told ! 
 
 Six honest, simple, healthy country lads 
 
 Met by chance-medley in the college town, 
 
 Six hale, hilarious, hearty undergrads 
 Without a thought of riches or renown. 
 
 To live and laugh, to have the self-same cause 
 Of joy and laughter, mutually shared, 
 
 And do at times a little reading was 
 All we desired and all we ever cared ! 
 
 I see them as they sit how strange it is ! 
 
 Among the rest T seem to see myself ! 
 There's Charlie with that comic face of his, 
 
 Poor Charlie ! first to lie upon the shelf ! 
 
NOS MUTAMUR ! 187 
 
 The world was happier with poor Charlie in it : 
 With what an air as Chairman Charlie spoke 
 
 " I call upon the Clerk to read the minute 
 
 That fines you sixpence for that barbarous joke !" 
 
 And Sandy : he's a reverend Doctor now 
 
 With ritualistic leanings, and a wife 
 That wrinkled into horn poor Sandy's brow, 
 
 And now he advocates a single life. 
 
 And the two Toms : the one has disappeared, 
 
 And dead or living, none can truly say ; . 
 The other for a rich old widow steered, 
 
 And married wealth, and is no longer gay. 
 
 And then there's Archy : Archy drove the car 
 That brought me from the railway station here ; 
 
 And I well, I've been travelling wide and far 
 In search of happiness for forty year. 
 
 Alas ! the search has only made me sad, 
 
 And gathered round my life a mournful haze ; 
 
 for one night of all the nights we had 
 Here in the dear old distant College days ! 
 
188 NOS MUTAMUE! 
 
 Well, and cui lono ? could I call them back, 
 
 Unless, indeed, the days when called would stay. 
 
 " Waiter, some port !" I'm out of sorts. " The sack 
 You rogue, there's lime in't : take it all away !" 
 
 And, here ! well, never mind the change d'ye still 
 Have now and then a students' gathering here V 
 
 " Lor' bless you, sir ! That's them a-ringing ! Bill ! 
 There's dumber Nine a-calling for more beer !" 
 
TOUJOURS GAL 189 
 
 TOUJOURS GAI. 
 
 While sunbeams on the mountain play, 
 And fairies haunt the glen, 
 
 Eoniance shall o'er my mind have sway, 
 
 And I will to my latest day 
 Be happiest of men. 
 
 The sweet religion of my life, 
 
 Which all my thoughts shall sway, 
 Shall be to shun the envious strife, 
 To march to tabor and to fife, 
 
 And ever to be gay. 
 
 The hills of Earth are green and high, 
 
 And lift their heads to heaven ; 
 And why with drooping head should I 
 Sink down into the dust and sigh, 
 To whom the Earth was given 1 
 
190 TOUJOUES GAL 
 
 They're mine ! the cheerful poet cried, 
 
 Creation's heir am I, 
 The hills, the rills that down them glide, 
 The stars that in the sunshine hide, 
 
 The sunshine and the sky ; 
 
 The apple-blossoms of the spring, 
 
 The clusters of the vine, 
 The gladsome voice of those who sing, 
 The joy of every living thing : 
 And what was his is mine ! 
 
 Sing, joyous birds ! your mirth is mine : 
 
 Blow, winds ! o'er shore and sea, 
 And let your visits be a sign 
 Both sides the great globe-girdling line 
 That mankind should be free. 
 
 Alas ! the little birds that sing, 
 
 The flowers that bloom so gay 
 Will in the snow lie withering, 
 And those will fold their shivering wing 
 And dumbly pine away ! 
 
TOUJOUKS GAL 191 
 
 And yet the brave philosophy 
 
 Of life is theirs to sing, 
 And flaunt it in the suns of May, 
 Ere comes to them the evil day 
 Which is our second Spring. 
 
192 JO, BACCHE! 
 
 10, BACCHE! 
 
 Come, a brimmer ere we rise ! 
 
 We have toasted love and beauty, 
 Sung the brave and praised the wise, 
 There is yet a parting duty ; 
 Higher yet your glasses raise ! 
 This is to our monarch's praise ! 
 Thou, of all our joys the giver, 
 Eosy Bacchus ! reign for ever ! 
 
 Now the god is in our veins, 
 
 How he sets the blood careering ! 
 How he pulsates through the brains, 
 Mind-ennobling, spirit-cheering ! 
 
 Every hope our hearts can know 
 "Widens in his warming glow ! 
 Thou of every joy the giver, 
 Eosy Bacchus ! reign for ever ! 
 
/O, BACCUE! 193 
 
 Wealth may vanish, beauty fades, 
 
 Woman's plighted love may fail us ; 
 While we see them pass as shades 
 Yet despair can ne'er assail us ! 
 
 There's a pleasure more divine, 
 Never failing in the wine ! 
 Thou, of all our joys the giver, 
 Rosy Bacchus ! reign for ever ! 
 
194 STELLA. 
 
 STELLA: A SONG. 
 
 i. 
 
 Whatever sorrow cloud my lot, 
 
 On distant day or near, 
 The darkness shall dismay me not 
 
 I have no cause to fear. 
 No gloom upon my soul can light 
 
 If Stella's face I see, 
 O my heart and all the heavens are bright 
 
 When Stella shines on me ! 
 
 II. 
 
 The world is full of noisy strife 
 
 And selfish tumult all, 
 And into every ordered life 
 
 Some jarring notes will fall ; 
 But all the discord of the fray 
 
 In vain invades my ear, 
 O my heart and all the world is gay 
 
 When Stella's voice I hear ! 
 
STELLA. 195 
 
 III. 
 
 The beauty of the summer air 
 
 Is round about her thrown, 
 The music of the woodlands fair 
 
 Is in her every tone. 
 She speaks, she smiles, and fear and care 
 
 Like mists of morning flee ; 
 Heaven is bright and Earth is fair, 
 
 And Stella smiles on me ! 
 
196 FROM CHAOS TO COSMOS. 
 
 FROM CHAOS TO COSMOS 
 
 (Suggested by Krummacher's Six Days.) 
 
 Swathes of solid darkness shrouded 
 Chaos on a world destroyed ; 
 
 God, the quickening Spirit, brooded 
 O'er the lifeless formless void. 
 Hark ! the lone creative word 
 Startles darkness from his sleep \ 
 
 Light, attendant on her Lord, 
 
 Glimmers on the frozen deep. 
 
 Darkness from his station hurl'd, 
 
 Lo, revealed a ruined world ! 
 
 II. 
 
 Vapours from the waste ascending 
 
 Dim the rays that bade them rise, 
 
 And, close round the surface bending, 
 Seek not yet the vacant skies. 
 
FROM CHAOS TO COSMOS. 197 
 
 Hark ! the Voice again commands : 
 
 Breathes the all-essential air, 
 Heaven his widening wings expands, 
 
 They the buoyant clouds upbear. 
 Bushing now from pole to pole 
 Tempests roar and billows roll ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Now the loud-usurping ocean 
 
 Tramples on the subject-shore ; 
 Sudden shrinks his swelling motion 
 
 Backward with retreating roar. 
 
 Hark ! the Voice assigns his bed 
 
 And confines his restless reign ; 
 Earth uplifts her dripping head, 
 
 Moist emerging from the main. 
 Lo, what greenness girds the sea, 
 Waving field, and fruitful tree ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 Light not yet revealed her fountain, 
 
 White-wing'd herald, wander'd far ; 
 Night, lone on her dusky mountain, 
 
198 FROM CHAOS TO COSMOS. 
 
 Heard not yet the quiring star ! 
 
 Hark ! again the Word of might ! 
 
 Kindling 'neath its Maker's eye, 
 Circling grandly into sight, 
 
 Lo ! where morning scales the sky ! 
 Day revolves to whence he rose, 
 Lo ! all ether throbs and glows ! 
 
 V. 
 
 And the sea its stores provided, 
 
 And the groves as gardens grew, 
 
 But no fin the wave divided, 
 
 And the sky no tenant knew. 
 
 Hark ! the Word. : The waters teem, 
 
 Life upleaps, a various throng ; 
 
 Plumes athwart the sunshine gleam, 
 
 And the woods resound with song ! 
 
 Fish and fowl in sea and sky 
 
 Play and pipe and multiply ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 As the glorious consummation 
 
 Of creative power draws nigh, 
 
FROM CHAOS TO COSMOS. 199 
 
 Angels from their shining station 
 
 Bend on earth a wondering eye. 
 
 Lo ! while myriads round him spring 
 
 From the opening cells of earth, 
 Man appears, creation's king, 
 
 Godlike from his humble birth ! 
 Then the empyrean rang 
 And the Sons of Morning sang ! 
 
 1870. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
NOTE. The Verses on pages 120, 134, and 136 have been 
 set to Music by A. C. MACKENZIE, and are published, with 
 Pianoforte Accompaniments, by Messrs HUTCHINGS & 
 HOMER, 10 and 11 Little Marlborough Street, Eegent 
 Street, London, W.