English

Sweet sounds, oh, beautiful music, do not cease!
Reject me not into the world again.
With you alone is excellence and peace,
Mankind made plausible, his purpose plain.
Enchanted in your air benign and shrewd,
With limbs a-sprawl and empty faces pale,
The spiteful and the stingy and the rude
Sleep like the scullions in the fairy-tale.
This moment is the best the world can give:
The tranquil blossom on the tortured stem.
Reject me not, sweet sounds! oh, let me live,
Till Doom espy my towers and scatter them,

Stand by your noblest stocke; and euer grow
In loue, and grace of vertue most admir'd;
And we will pay the sacrifice we owe
Of prayre and honour, with all good desir'd
To your diuine soule; that shall euer liue
In height of all blisse prepar'd here beneath,
In that ingenuous and free grace you giue
To knowledge; onely Bulwarke against Death.
Whose rare sustainers here, her powres sustaine
Hereafter. Such reciprocall effects
Meet in her vertues. Where the loue doth raigne,
The Act of knowledge crownes our intellects.

Three lords sat drinking at the wine
I the bonny braes o Yarrow,
An there cam a díspute them between,
Who was the Flower o Yarrow.

‘I 'm wedded to your sister dear,
Ye coont nae me your marrow;
I stole her fae her father's back,
An made her the Flower o Yarrow.’

‘Will ye try hearts, or will ye try hans,
I the bonnie braes o Yarrow?
Or will ye try the weel airmt sword,
I the bonnie braes o Yarrow?’

‘I winna try hearts, I winna try hans,
I the bonnie braes o Yarrow,

Fair of the ruddy cheek, and russet vest,
With eye that beams the sunshine of thy breast,
That tripping light yon heathy cliffs among,
Pour'st to the source of good, thine artless song.

Yet, thou canst quit awhile the leafy glen,
Thy thoughts of solitude's still charms divest,
To wander playful, thro' the haunts of men,
And revel in the busy, blameless, breast!

Where'er thou art, associate of the good,
Unheard, where vacant Mirth is laughing loud;
Or calm, amidst a city's noisy crowd,

In Aprell and in May,
When hartes be all mery,
Besse Bunting, the millaris may,
Withe lippes so red as chery,
She cast in hir remembrance
To passe hir time in daliance
And to leve hir thought driery.
Right womanly arayd
In a peticote of whit,
She was nothing dismayd—
Hir countenance was full light.

They say she flirts; sore news that she
Should flirt at all and not with me.
Sam Rogers—so the tale expands—
Has gone for good to foreign lands,
And left her free to go and live
In whichsoever State will give
Release from matrimonial gyves
With least display of jarring lives.
The trouble? Oh, some say Sam beat her.
But others claim that what's the matter
Is that he didn't. Some, again,
Hear rumors about “other men,”
And add, explaining all that's hid—
“She flirts; you know she always did.”

To be or not to be; that is the bare bodkin
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane,
But that the fear of something after death
Murders the innocent sleep,
Great nature's second course,
And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune
Than fly to others that we know not of.
There's the respect must give us pause:
Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

Fast, fast asleep my Edith lies,
With her snowy night-dress on;
Closed are now her sparkling eyes;
All her merry thoughts are gone.
Gone! ah no! perhaps she dreams;
Perhaps she views the crystal streams,
Wanders in the grove and field,—
What hath sleep to her revealed?

Bat and owl enjoy the night;
All the stars are sweetly twinkling;
While the Moon doth shed her light
On the brooklet gently tinkling:
Perhaps for her the Sun doth shine;
Perhaps she pulls the king-cups fine;
Merry birds around her singing,

Come to me, dearest, I'm lonely without thee;
Daytime and night-time, I'm thinking about thee;
Night-time and daytime, in dreams I behold thee;
Unwelcome the waking which ceases to fold thee.
Come to me, darling, my sorrows to lighten,
Come in thy beauty to bless and to brighten;
Come in thy womanhood, meekly and lowly,
Come in thy lovingness, queenly and holy.

Swallows will flit round the desolate ruin,
Telling of spring and its joyous renewing;
And thoughts of thy love and its manifold treasure,

Down along the mountains, down to Damascus,
The little Nahr Baradâ waters all the wide wilderness,
Flowing like a holy thing into thirsty gardens,
Where the fair pomegranate, bride among the trees,
Blushes with delight, while the camel bells tinkle
On trails cooled from far above by Hermon's snowy breeze.

Down into the valley, on the same pilgrimage
It made when Thebes and Babylon were marts of living men,
It flows to the city's rim that burgeons still because of it;
Nor cares whether Christian bell or minaret be heard;