English

Beautiful Loch Ness,
The truth to express,
Your landscapes are lovely and gay,
Along each side of your waters, to Fort Augustus all the way,
Your scenery is romantic…
With rocks and hills gigantic…
Enough to make one frantic,
As they view thy beautiful heathery hills,
And their clear crystal rills,
And the beautiful woodlands so green,
On a fine summer day…
From Inverness all the way…
Where the deer and the roe together doth play;
And the beautiful Falls of Foyers with its crystal spray,
As clear as the day,

Oh! Shepherd John is good and kind,
Oh! Shepherd John is brave;
He loves the weakest of his flock,
His arm is quick to save.

But Shepherd John to little John
Says: ‘Learn, my laddie, learn!
In grassy nooks still read your books,
And aye for knowledge burn.

Read while you tend the grazing flock:
Had I but loved my book,
I'd not be still in shepherd's frock,
Nor bearing shepherd's crook.

The world is wide, the world is fair,
There's muckle work to do.
I'll rest content a shepherd still,

All day the children play along the walks,
A robin sings in a brave, green tree,
The city lifts gray temples at its marge,
But still it keeps the heart of Arcady.

Still blows a flower in the waving grass,
Lifting a face of beauty to the sun;
Still bursts the bough in joyous burgeoning—
Still comes a lover when the day is done.

Here the white moon, with magic in her train,
Stoops from the starry lanes of paradise,
And, with her ancient witchery of dreams,
Lays some new hope upon a poet's eyes.

I thought of Ennerdale as of a thing
Upon the confines of my memory.
There was a hazy gleam as o'er a sheet
Of sunny water cast, and mountain side,
And much ploughed land, and cleanly cottages,
A bubbling brook, the emptying of the lake,
An indistinct remembrance of being pleased
That there were hedgerows there instead of walls,
That it was noon, and that I swam for long
In the warm lake, and dressed upon a rock:—
And this is all of verdant Ennerdale
Which I can now recover from my mind;

The lightning came with fierce and fiery breath
And swept a human soul to instant death.

But all the air, so fever-charged before,
After the storm grew sweet with health once more.

And men reëcho that old-time refrain,
“Thus good with evil mingles—loss with gain.”

How do we know what evil is, or good?—
What, loss or gain? Ah, if we understood,

Should we thus scan God's deep but perfect way,
Singing, perchance, His goodness all astray—

In harsh discordance with that praiseful hymn

I do not know, I do not fear,
I only stand amazédly,
And, down the dawn or nightly sky,
Watch pageants wonderful pass by.

I do not fear, my soul doth hear,
My wild enraptured soul doth see,
'Tis but the curtain rising
On an act that is to be.

Parting's day and night of sev'rance From the Friend, at last, is ended;
And my need, through favouring planets, Since the lot I cast, is ended.

All the weariful vexation, That from Winter came and Autumn,
In the footsteps of the breezes Of the Spring is past, is ended.

To Hope's morning, self-secluded In the curtain of the future,
Say, “Come forth, for lo! the business Of the night aghast is ended.”

God be thanked that, with the coming Of the cap-peak of the rose-bud,
Might of thorn and overweening Of December's blast is ended.

A SHIP that speeds with a crimson sail,
Aslant on a restless sea,
And in my heart the longing
That stirs unceasingly.

A wind that warms with a perfumed breath
Adrift from the dreaming earth,
And for my grief no solace
But melancholy's dearth.

A hush that haunts like a loved one's smile
In dreams of departed years,
But in the silence sadness
And unavailing tears.

The night that comes with a bat-like sweep,
A moon with the harvest light,
But O, the endless yearning
For one beyond the night.

Sweet Muse who led my life astray,
Wove round my heart a spell,
What need to leave me now and say Farewell?

Whilst in my heart you dwelt, how well
Sped song and roundelay!
But who can fate foretell?

My lips that sang no longer may,
Alas! since you rebel.
And so for ever and a day Farewell!

Oh! that Id had a tear to've quencht that flame
Which did dissolve the Heavens above
Into those liquid drops that Came
To drown our Carnall love.
Our cheeks were dry and eyes refusde to weep.
Tears bursting out ran down the skies darke Cheek.

Were th'Heavens sick? must wee their Doctors bee
And physick them with pills, our sin?
To make them purg and Vomit, see,
And Excrements out fling?
We've griev'd them by such Physick that they shed
Their Excrements upon our lofty heads.