Blacken thy heavens, Jove,
With thunder-clouds,
And exercise thee, like a boy
Who thistles crops,
With smiting oaks and mountain-tops
Yet must leave me standing
My own firm Earth;
Must leave my cottage, which thou didst not build,
And my warm hearth,
Whose cheerful glow
Thou enviest me.

I know naught more pitiful
Under the sun than you, Gods!
Ye nourish scantily,
With altar-taxes
And with cold lip-service,
This your majesty; —
Would perish, were not
Children and beggars
Credulous fools.

To W. G. S.

The blackbird sang, the skies were clear and clean;
We bowled along a road that curved a spine
Superbly sinuous and serpentine
Thro' silent symphonies of summer green.
Sudden the Forth came on us — sad of mien,
No cloud to colour it, no breeze to line:
A sheet of dark, dull glass, without a sign
Of life or death, two spits of sand between.
Water and sky merged blank in mist together,
The Fort loomed spectral, and the Guardship's spars
Traced vague, black shadows on the shimmery glaze:

Blackbird , blackbird in the cage,
There's something wrong to-night.
Far off the sheriff's footfall dies,
The minutes crawl like last year's flies
Between the bars, and like an age
The hours are long to-night.

The sky is like a heavy lid
Out here beyond the door to-night.
What's that? A mutter down the street.
What's that? The sound of yells and feet.
For what you didn't do or did
You'll pay the score to-night.

No use to reek with reddened sweat,
No use to whimper and to sweat.
They've got the rope; they've got the guns,

Black within and red without,
Four corners round about.
A chimney

Black wave the trees in the forest
And a rough wind hurries by,
But the swineherd's toddling daughter
Knows where fallen pine-cones lie.

And girt in a snowy apron
— She scampers, alert and gay,
To the hidden pool in the hollow
Where the wan witch people play.

They smile, the wee wrinkled women,
They creep to her pinafore;
And lay in her lap strange treasures
Trolls brought from the ocean's floor.

And they marvel at her blonde tresses
And braid them with scented fern;
And they lave her dusty, brown ankles

Forsaken woods, trees with sharp storms oppressed,
Whose leaves once hid the sun, now strew the ground,
Once bred delight, now scorn, late used to sound
Of sweetest birds, now of hoarse crows the nest;
Gardens, which once in thousand colours dressed
Showed nature's pride, now in dead sticks abound,
In whom proud summer's treasure late was found
Now but the rags of winter's torn coat rest;
Meadows whose sides late fair brooks kissed, now slime
Embraced holds; fields whose youth green and brave
Promised long life, now frosts lay in the grave:

But for thy gracious words, revered of men,
Scarce had I ventured on from year to year
To seek the great world's much-engrossed ear
With the small rhythmic whispers of my pen.
And now to silence oft withdrawing when
Thy songs so full and sweet, so strong and clear,
And those of others, nobly sung, I hear,
I ask, Why do I aught but listen? Then
Myself makes answer, Who hath given thee
This voice within that thou art fain to still?
Though few and scarcely heard thy notes may be,
Seek not, nor yet withhold. Trust makes amends

Black poplar-boughs are bare, and comb
With their sharp spines the stooping cloud.
Rain falls in gusts, like the torn foam
When the west wind is loud.

The heavens stoop low and, broken, sweep
Still with rough seas the water meads,
And shake long furrow-pools where sleep
The slowly rotting seeds.

Not Cornwall's cliffs more bold that take
The mass and number of the seas,
Than boughs that comb swift heavens and shake
Rain upon rainy leas.

Black mountains pricked with pointed pine
A melancholy sky.
Out-distanced was the German vine,
The sterile fields lay high.
From swarthy Alps I travelled forth
Aloft; it was the north, the north;
Bound for the Noon was I.

I seemed to breast the streams that day;
I met, opposed, withstood
The northward rivers on their way,
My heart against the flood —
My heart that pressed to rise and reach,
And felt the love of altering speech,
Of frontiers, in its blood.

But O the unfolding South! the burst
Of summer! O to see

The black cat yawns,
Opens her jaws,
Stretches her legs,
And shows her claws.

Then she gets up
And stands on four
Long stiff legs
And yawns some more.

She shows her sharp teeth,
She stretches her lip,
Her slice of a tongue
Turns up at the tip.

Lifting herself
On her delicate toes,
She arches her back
As high as it goes.

She lets herself down
With particular care,
And pads away
With her tail in the air.