Had I the power
— To Midas given of old
To touch a flower
— And leave the petals gold,
I then might touch thy face,
— Delightful boy,
And leave a metal grace,
— A graven joy.

Thus would I slay, —
— Ah, desperate device!
The vital day
— That trembles in thine eyes,
And let the red lips close
— Which sang so well,
And drive away the rose
— To leave a shell.

Then I myself,
— Rising austere and dumb,
On the high shelf
— Of my half-lighted room
Would place the shining bust

Had I that haze of streaming blue,
That sea below, the summer faced,
I'd work and weave a dress for you
And kneel to clasp it round your waist,
And broider with those burning bright
Threads of the Sun across the sea,
And bind it with the silver light
That wavers in the olive tree.

Had I the gold that like a river
Pours through our garden, eve by eve,
Our garden that goes on for ever
Out of the world, as we believe;
Had I that glory on the vine
That splendour soft on tower and town,
I'd forge a crown of that sunshine,

1
Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!

2

Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast;
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.

3

Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull
Just on a mountain-edge as bare as the creature's skull,

Ha! whare ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie!
Your impudence protects you sairly:
I canna say but ye strunt rarely,
Owre gauze and lace;
Tho' faith, I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.

Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner,
How dare ye set your fit upon her,
Sae fine a lady!
Gae somewhere else, and seek your dinner
On some poor body.

Swith, in some beggar's haffet squattle;
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle
Wi' ither kindred, jumping cattle,
In shoals and nations;

As I was lying in my bed
I heard the church-bell ring;
Before one solemn word was said
A bird began to sing.

I heard a dog begin to bark
And a bold crowing cock;
The bell, between the cold and dark,
Tolled. It was five o'clock.

The church-bell tolled, and the bird sang,
A clear true voice he had;
The cock crew, and the church-bell rang,
I knew it had gone mad.

A hand reached down from the dark skies,
It took the bell-rope thong,
The bell cried “Look! Lift up your eyes!”
The clapper shook to song.

The gypsies passed her little gate —
She stopped her wheel to see. —
A brown-faced pair who walked the road,
Free as the wind is free;
And suddenly her tidy room
A prison seemed to be.

Her shining plates against the walls,
Her sunlit, sanded floor,
The brass-bound wedding chest thaTheld
Her linen's snowy store,
The very wheel whose humming died, —
Seemed only chains she bore.

She watched the foot-free gypsies pass;
She never knew or guessed
The wistful dream that drew them close —
The longing in each breast

The gypsies came to our good lord's gate,
And wow but they sang sweetly!
They sang sae sweet and sae very compleat
That down came the fair lady.

And she came tripping down the stair,
And a' her maids before her;
As soon as they saw her well-far'd face,
They coost the glamer o'er her.

"Gae tak frae me this gay mantile,
And bring to me a plaidie;
For if kith and kin and a' had sworn,
I'll follow the gypsie laddie.

"Yestreen I lay in a well-made bed,
And my good lord beside me;
This night I'll ly in a tenant's barn,

Gut eats all day, and lechers all the night;
So all his meat he tasteth over, twice;
And striving so to double his delight,
He makes himself a thoroughfare of vice.
Thus in his belly can he change a sin:
Lust it comes out, that gluttony went in.

Gulls in an airy morrice
Gleam and vanish and gleam ...
The full sea, sleepily basking,
Dreams under skies of dream.

Gulls in an airy morrice
Circle and swoop and close ...
Fuller and ever fuller
The rose of the morning blows.

Gulls, in an airy morrice
Frolicking, float and fade ...
O, the way of a bird in the sunshine,
The way of a man with a maid!

In Thoro town there lives a maid,
I am sure she has no marrow;
For she has forsaken both lords and knights,
And loved a servant-lad in Galla.

Evening and morning her page he ran,
Her page he ran wi sorrow,
With letters bound, just frae the town,
To the servant-lad in Galla.

Her father he got word of that,
And he 's bred all her sorrow;
He sent him forth to fight wi nine,
In the dowie glens of Yarrow.

She washd his face, she comd his hair,
She thought he had no marrow;
Wi a thrusty rapier by his side,