English

S ONGEANT à sa maison, grande parmi les grandes,
Plus grande qu'lñigo lur-même et qu'Abarca,
Le vieux Diego Laynez ne goûte plus aux viandes.

Il ne dort plus, depuis qu'un sang honteux marqua
La joue encore chaude où l'a frappé le Comte,
Et que pour se venger la force lui manqua.

Il craint que ses amis ne lui demandent compte,
Et ne veut pas, navré d'un vertueux ennui,
Leur laisser respirer l'haleine de sa honte.

Alors il fit querir et rangea devant lui
Les quatre rejetons de sa royalé branche,

“It fell about the Martinmas,” as well as I remember it—
I think it was November; it was after Halloween—
And I sprang up from dreaming, and in my midnight solitude
I found these words: they spoke themselves, to say what I had seen.

She came, so small and shivering: I wondered what had frightened her!
I tightened her in circling arms, and, oh, but she was chill—
She climbed at once to my embrace: I felt her shaken, quivering.
I heard the loud November gust that scoured the window sill.

When from the wars I do return,
And at a cup of good ale mourn,
I'll tell how towns without fire we did burn,
And is not that a wonder?

I'll tell how that my general
Entered the breach, and scaled the wall,
And made the foremost battery of all,
And is not that a wonder?

How that we went to take a fort,
And took it too in war-like sort,
I'll swear that a lie is a true report,
And is not that a wonder?

How that we soldiers have true pay,
And clothes, and victuals every day,

Close on the bat-crossed hour
I waited for a flower
By light grown visible
Burning the vivid hill.

Pimpernel in night-bud
Showed like small drops of blood;
It was no common flower
I kept late vigil for.

I watched by falling light
Till I saw how with white
And patient petals shone
Night-flowering campion.

So white those petals showed
And such a rich scent flowed,
I said, ‘Are we not one,
I and this campion?’

Seeing how for us both
Sweetness followed on sloth

I know a Tulledegan flower rare
That lifts between the rocks a blushing face,
And doth with every wind its sweetness share
That bloweth over its wild dwelling-place.
It gathers beauty where the storms are rough
And clings devoted to the rugged bluff.

Far 'bove its sisters in the vale below,
It swings its censor like a ruby star,
And thither all the days of summer go
The mountain bees—fierce knights of love and war—
To seal in noontide hour—O hour of bliss!—
Each tender vow of true love with a kiss.

YOUNG mother, he is gone!
His dimpled cheek no more will touch thy breast;
No more the music-tone
Float from his lips, to thine all fondly press'd;
His smile and happy laugh are lost to thee:
Earth must his mother and his pillow be.

His was the morning hour,
And he had pass'd in beauty from the day,
A bud, not yet a flower,
Torn, in its sweetness, from the parent spray;
The death-wind swept him to his soft repose,
As frost, in spring-time, blights the early rose.

Never on earth again

When almond buds unclose,
Soft white and tender rose,—
A swarm of white moth things,
With sunset on their wings,
That fluttering settle down
On branches chill and brown;
When all the sky is blue,
And up from grasses new
Blithe springs the meadow lark,—
Sweet, sweet, from dawn to dark;—
When all the young year's way
Grows sweeter day by day;—
When almond buds unclose,
Who doubts of May's red rose?

The scene was bathed in beauty rare,
For Alpine grandeur toppled there,
With emerald spots between,
A summer-evening's blush of rose
All faintly warmed the crested snows,
And tinged the valleys green;

Night gloom'd apace, and dark on high
The thousand banners of the sky
Their awful width unfurl'd,
Veiling Mont Blanc's majestic brow,
That seem'd among its cloud-wrapt snow,
The ghost of some dead world:

When Pierre the hunter cheerly went
To scale the Catton's battlement
Before the peep of day;

No place commendes the man vnworthie praise.
No title of state doth stay vp vices fall:
No wicked wight to wo can make delayes,
No loftie lookes preserue the proude at all
No brags or boast, no stature high and tall,
No lusty yought, no swearing, stareing stout,
No brauerie, banding, cogging, cutting out.

Then what availes to haue a Princly place,
A name of honour or an high degree,
To come by kindred of a noble race?
Except wee Princely, worthie, noble be.
The fruites declare the goodnes of the tree.

For thirty years I read, and mused, and wrote,
Or idly angled from my fishing-boat;
Or wandered through the woods, or climbed the hills,
Listening to songsters and to murmuring rills;

Or sauntering in my garden talked with flowers,
As friend with friend, for many happy hours;
Or working in my fields ablaze with golden grain,
And herbs and fruits which keep life clean and sane.

Far from the busy mart and huckstering crowd,
Striving for gold or place with brawlings loud,—
From youth to middle age I've passed my days