English

Knedneuch land
And a loppert sea
And a lift like a blue-douped
Mawkin'-flee.

I'm famished, but fegs!
What's here for a man
But a wheen rubbish that's lain
Sin' Time began?

The sun has a goût
And the mune's hairy-mouldit,
And wha but auld Daith
Has a stummack to hold it?

I'll thraw the lot oot
And lippen to get fresh,
For the sicht o'ts eneuch
To turn my soul nesh!

Unlike the triflers whose contracted view
Ne'er looks beyond a glitt'ring outside show,
In this machine with moral eyes survey
How gliding life steals silently away,
And, mindful of it's short determin'd space,
Improve the flying moments, as they pass.

See rolling years, with quick dispatch, decide
The transient date of sublunary pride:
See beauty, genius, fortune, fair, sublime,
Borne headlong down the rapid stream of time:
O'er their sad wrecks, along the fatal shore,
Rapacious death asserts his tyrant pow'r;

Apprentice to life and death,
Pin a gay flower on your coat!
It will not bruise the throat
That draws a tightened breath,
Or slow the quick pulse, fever rushed,
Or stir the dull heart, hushed.
It is harmless; it can do
No more than you
White coated, debonair,
So leave it there.

Where Thou art not no day holds light for me,
The brightest noontide turns to midnight deep;
There no bird sings, but awesome shadows creep,—
Persistent ghosts that hold my memory,
And walk where Joy and Hope once walked with thee,
And in thy place their lonesome vigil keep,—
Sad shades that haunt the inmost ways of sleep,
No kindly morning ever bids them flee.

Those tireless footsteps, will they never cease?
Like crownless queens they tread their ancient ways,—
Pale phantoms of old dreams and vanished days,—

Love , it is night. The orb of day
Has gone to hit the cosmic hay.
Nocturnal voices now we hear.
Come, heart's delight, the hour is near
When Passion's mandate we obey.

I would not, sweet, the fact convey
In any crude and obvious way:
I merely whisper in your ear—
“Love, it is night!”

Candor compels me, pet, to say
That years my fading charms betray.
Tho' Love be blind, I grant it's clear
I'm no Apollo Belvedere.
But after dark all cats are gray.
Love, it is night!

To arms! to arms! the trumpet is summoning.
What heart is cold, when glory awakens us!
When youth, for hearth and shrine contending,
Rush to the shock, and in death are happy!

A holy feeling stirs, as the signal sounds.
To die for home, how high and how glorious!
The recreant only hears and trembles.
Give me my sword,—I will haste and meet them!

Raise high the song,—the foe is discomfited!
Our sacred soil untouched and unsullied!
With laurel wreathed, by loved ones greeted,
Proudly we move, as the pæan echoes.

Ah , did we live the poems that we write,
What heroes, saints, a wondering world would see!
And how, for every poet, there would be
A spirit clad in panoply of light,—
Courageous, calm, divining Truth at sight,
To follow her, come rout or victory!
And such there are whose lives and songs agree;
Like tropic growths where flower and fruit unite,
On the same bough, to sweeten all the air.
O, poets! let your fruited deeds be fair
As are your blossoming words; for, thus allied,
Each of the other shall be justified;

You call them “beasts that perish,” and you say
That we, God's higher children, have the right
To trample our dumb brothers in the clay,
And use against them all our greater might;

To force the horses on their weary way,
Urged by the stinging whip and tight-drawn rein;
To take the slow, dull cattle for our prey,
And slay the furry creatures for our gain.

They may not reach the heaven we hope to win,
And so ten thousand of their lives are naught
Against one human life, though dark with sin—

Jingle for nickels; twangle twice for dimes
(The caller hearkens in his humid grot),
But, oh, the rich and grave cathedral chimes
Of quarters tolling in their appointed slot!

Unloved I love, unwept I weep,
Grief I restrain, hope I repress;
Vain is this anguish, fixed and deep,
Vainer desires or means of bliss.

My life is cold, love's fire being dead;
That fire self-kindled, self-consumed;
What living warmth erewhile it shed,
Now to how drear extinction doomed!

Devoid of charm how could I dream
My unasked love would e'er return?
What fate, what influence lit the flame
I still feel inly, deeply burn?

Alas! there are those who should not love;
I to this dreary band belong;