ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies,
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Clustered around by all her starry fays;
But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faëry lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:-Do I wake or sleep?

ROBIN HOOD.

No! those days are gone away,
And their hours are old and gray,
And their minutes buried all
Under the down-trodden pall
Of the leaves of many years:
Many times have Winter's shears,
Frozen North, and chilling East,
Sounded tempests to the feast
Of the forest's whispering fleeces,
Since men knew nor rent nor leases.

No, the bugle sounds no more,
And the twanging bow no more,
Silent is the ivory shrill

Past the heath and up the hill;
There is no mid-forest laugh,
Where lone Echo gives the half
To some wight, amazed to hear
Jesting, deep in forest drear.

On the fairest time in June
You may go with sun or moon,
Or the seven stars to light you;
Or the polar ray to right you;
But you never may behold
Little John, or Robin bold;

Never one, of all the clan,
Thrumming on an empty can
Some old hunting ditty, while
He doth his green way beguile
To fair hostess Merriment,
Down beside the pasture Trent;
For he left the merry tale
Messenger for spicy ale.

Gone the merry morris din;
Gone the song of Gamelyn;
Gone, the tough-belted outlaw
Idling in the "greenè shawe;"
All are gone away and past!
And if Robin should be cast
Sudden from his tufted grave,
And if Marian should have
Once again her forest-days,

She would weep and he would craze, He would swear, for all his oaks, Fallen beneath the dock-yard strokes, Have rotted on the briny seas:

She would weep that her wild bees
Sang not to her-strange! that honey
Can't be got without hard money!

So it is; yet let us sing
Honour to the old bow-string!
Honour to the bugle-horn!
Honour to the woods unshorn!
Honour to the Lincoln-green!
Honour to the archer keen!
Honour to tight Little John,
And the horse he rode upon!
Honour to bold Robin Hood,
Sleeping in the underwood!
Honour to Maid Marian,
And to all the Sherwood clan!
Though their days have hurried by
Let us two a burden try.

JAMES HOGG

WAS a writer of great original powers, which unfortunately were not sufficiently improved by cultivation. His poems are very unequal: some of them rank among the first, and many among the last, in our language, Few, however, will deny that the author of Bonny Kilmeney possessed the feelings and the imagination of a genuine poet. He died A.D. 1835.

ELEGY.

FAIR was thy blossom, tender flower,
That opened like the rose in May,
Though nursed beneath the chilly shower
Of fell regret for love's decay.

How oft thy mother heaved a sigh
O'er wreaths of honour early shorn,
Before thy sweet and guiltless eye
Hath opened on the dawn of morn!
How oft, above thy lowly bed,

When all in silence slumbered low,
The fond and filial tear was shed,

Thou child of love, of shame, and woe!
Her wronged but gentle bosom burned
With joy thy opening bloom to see;
The only breast that o'er thee yearned;
The only heart that cared for thee.
Oft her young eye, with tear-drops bright,
Pleaded with Heaven for her sweet child,
When faded dreams of past delight

O'er recollection wandered wild.

Fair was thy blossom, bonny flower,
Fair as the softest wreaths that spring,
When late I saw thee seek the bower
In peace thy morning hymn to sing.
Thy little foot across the lawn

Scarce from the primrose pressed the dew;
I thought the spirit of the dawn
Before me to the greenwood flew.

E'en then the shaft was on the wing,

Thy spotless soul from earth to sever,

A tear of pity wet the string

That twanged and sealed thy doom for ever.

I saw thee late, the emblem fair
Of beauty, innocence, and truth,
Start tiptoe on the verge of air,
"Twixt childhood and unstable youth;

But now I see thee stretched at rest:

To break that rest shall wake no morrow!
Pale as the grave-flower on thy breast,

Poor child of love, of shame, and sorrow!

May thy long sleep be sound and sweet;
Thy visions fraught with bliss to be;
And long the daisy, emblem meet,

Shall shed its earliest tear o'er thee!

THE FATE OF MACGREGOR,

"MACGREGOR, Macgregor, remember our foemen;
The moon rises broad from the brow of Ben-Lomond;
The clans are impatient and chide thy delay;
Arise! let us bound to Glen-Lyon away.".

Stern scowled the Macgregor, then, silent and sullen,
He turned his red eyes to the braes of Strathfillan;
"Go Malcolm, to sleep, let the clans be dismissed;
The Campbells this night for Macgregor must rest."
"Macgregor, Macgregor, our scouts have been flying
Three days round the hill of M’Nab and Glen-Lyon;
Of riding and running such tidings they bear,

We must meet them at home, else they'll quickly be here." "The Campbell may come, as his promises bind him, And haughty M’Nab with his giants behind him,

This night I am bound to relinquish the fray,

And do what it freezes my vitals to say.

Forgive me, dear brother, this horror of mind;
Thou know'st in the strife I was never behind,
Nor ever receded a foot from the van,
Or blenched at the ire or the
of man.
prowess
But I've sworn by the cross, by my God, and by all!
An oath which I cannot and dare not recall,-

Ere the shadows of midnight fall east from the pile,
To meet with a spirit this night in Glen-Gyle.

"Last night, in my chamber, all thoughtful and lone,
I called to remembrance some deeds I had done,
When entered a lady with visage so wan,
And looks such as never were fastened on man.

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »