To lose thee, sweeter than to gain
All other hearts I knew.
'T is true the drought is destitute,
But then I had the dew!

The Caspian has its realms of sand,
Its other realm of sea;
Without the sterile perquisite
No Caspian could be.

Hail! muse of my Lancastria fair;
No more may lie the bleeding flowers;
Born but to breathe one native air,
They intertwine in their own bowers.
Red rose and white, commingling well,
Another beauty shall be born,
And all shall praise and love to tell
They have escaped the wounding thorn.
No more in England's genial vales
Vex'd feud or civil broil prevails;
Then all unite, as if in one--
Let all be free beneath the sun!

In by-gone years the tyrants reigned,
And with a cruel hand held sway;
With blood of innocence were stained

Tired of the life I lead,
Tired of the blues I breathe,
Tired counting things I need,
Gonna cut out wine, and that's the truth,
Get a brand-new guy while I got my youth.
Tired of the clothes I wear,
Tired of the patches bare,
Tired of the crows I scare,
Gonna truck downtown and spend my moo,
Get some short-vamped shoes and a new guy, too.
A-scrubbin' and a-cleanin' sure leaves my glamour with a scar,
A-mendin' and a-moppin',
A-starchin' and a-shoppin'
Don't make me look like no Hedy Lamarr.
Tired 'cause the tears I shed,

O Inverey came down Dee side, whistling and playing;
He 's landed at Braikly's yates at the day dawing.

Says, Baron of Braikly, are ye within?
There 's sharp swords at the yate will gar your blood spin.

The lady raise up, to the window she went;
She heard her kye lowing oer hill and oer bent.

‘O rise up, John,’ she says, ‘turn back your kye;
They 're oer the hills rinning, they 're skipping away.’

‘Come to your bed, Peggie, and let the kye rin,
For were I to gang out, I would never get in.’

Ask me why I send you here
This sweet Infanta of the year?
Ask me why I send to you
This primrose, thus bepearl'd with dew?
I will whisper to your ears:--
The sweets of love are mix'd with tears.

Ask me why this flower does show
So yellow-green, and sickly too?
Ask me why the stalk is weak
And bending (yet it doth not break)?
I will answer:--These discover
What fainting hopes are in a lover.

Where the blessèd winter sunshine close beside my pallet falls,
While I watch its golden glory steal across the white-washed walls,
While I hear amid the silence Christmas chime and Christmas shout,—
I am lying,
Faint and dying,
Waiting to be mustered out.

'T is the time, I well remember, when I hoped once more to stand
Safe within the charmèd circle of the joyous household band,
Grim, perhaps, with warlike scarring; proud, perhaps, of warlike fame;—
Vain my dreaming,—
Yet in seeming
I can think it just the same.

Cruel and bright as the whin
Is my love, my love,
And cold as the light of the linn
The light of her eyes.

Free as the kestrel in air
Is my love, my love,
And dark as the heather, her hair,
Beneath dark skies.

Like heather burned black by the fire
Is my heart, my heart,
Burned black to the ash of desire,
As daylight dies.

Who seeks to show another's fault will find
In self a greater shown,
But he that is to faults of others blind,
But covers thus his own.

“If there were any power in human love,”
Or in th' intensest longing of the heart,
Then should the oceans and the lands that part
Ye from my sight all unprevailing prove,
Then should the yearning of my bosom bring
Ye here, through space and distance infinite;
And life 'gainst love should be a baffled thing,
And circumstance 'gainst will lose all its might.
Shall not a childless mother's misery
Conjure the earth with such a potent spell—
A charm so desperate—as to compel
Nature to yield to her great agony?
Can I not think of ye till ye arise,

Let me from this World go free
Before the last of me is spent!
While yet some few fair girls lament,
And some good fellows cherish me!