English

Sister of sleep, healer of life, divine
As rest and strong as very love may be,
To set the soul that love could set not free,
To bid the skies that day could bid not shine,
To give the gift that life withheld was thine.
With all my heart I loved one borne from me:
And all my heart bows down and praises thee,
Death, that hast now made grief not his but mine.

O Changer of men's hearts, we would not bid thee
Turn back our hearts from sorrow: this alone.
We bid, we pray thee, from thy sovereign throne

Could love give strength to thank thee! Love can give
Strong sorrow heart to suffer: what we bear
We would not put away, albeit this were
A burden love might cast aside and live.
Love chooses rather pain than palliative,
Sharp thought than soft oblivion. May we dare
So trample down our passion and our prayer
That fain would cling round feet now fugitive
And stay them—so remember, so forget,
What joy we had who had his presence yet,
What griefs were his while joy in him was ours
And grief made weary music of his breath,

O Death, fair Death, sole comforter and sweet,
Nor Love nor Hope can give such gifts as thine:
Sleep hardly shows us round thy shadowy shrine
What roses hang, what music floats, what feet
Pass and what wings of angels. We repeat
Wild words or mild, disastrous or divine,
Blind prayer, blind imprecation, seeing no sign
Nor hearing aught of thee not faint and fleet
As words of men or snowflakes on the wind.
But if we chide thee, saying “Thou hast sinned, thou hast sinned,
Dark Death, to take so sweet a light away

But half a man's days—and his days were nights
What hearts were ours who loved him, should we pray
That night would yield him back to darkling day,
Sweet death that soothes, to life that spoils and smites?
For now, perchance, life lovelier than the light's
That shed no comfort on his weary way
Shows him what none may dream to see or say
Ere yet the soul may scale those topless heights
Where death lies dead, and triumph. Haply there
Already may his kindling eyesight find
Faces of friends—no face than his more fair—

The days of a man are threescore years and ten.
The days of his life were half a man's, whom we
Lament, and would yet not bid him back, to be
Partaker of all the woes and ways of men.
Life sent him enough of sorrow: not again
Would anguish of love, beholding him set free,
Bring back the beloved to suffer life and see
No light but the fire of grief that scathed him then.

We know not at all: we hope, and do not fear.
We shall not again behold him, late so near,
Who now from afar above, with eyes alight

I' M full of everything I do not want,
And have not that wherein I should find ease;
For alway till Becchina brings me peace
The heavy heart I bear must toil and pant;
That so all written paper would prove scant
(Though in its space the Bible you might squeeze,)
To say how like the flames of furnaces
I burn, remembering what she used to grant.
Because the stars are fewer in heaven's span
Than all those kisses wherewith I kept tune
All in an instant (I who now have none!)
Upon her mouth (I and no other man!)

I sat a little while beside
A greystoned rock—the rugged brow
Of our clear pool, where waters glide
By leaning tree and hanging bough—
In fall, when open air was cool,
And skimming swallows left the pool,
And glades in long-cast shadows lay
Below the yet clear day.

The leaves, that through the spring were gay,
Were now by hasty winds that shook
Them, wither'd, off their quiv'ring spray
All borne away along the brook,
Without a day of rest around
Their mother tree, on quiet ground;

O when, with weary limbs, we lose
The light, with day-time's thousand hues,
And when, from shady shapes of night,
We shut in sleep our weary sight,
All heedless how the stars may light
The hoary fogs of airy night;
To light the road for later eyes
The lofty moon then climbs the skies,
And southern sides of boughs grow bright
Above the darksome shades of night,
Where cheeks in glimm'ring gloom may hide
Their glowing by a sweetheart's side;
As when in younger years we took
Home you up hill beyond the brook,

As late by a sodger I chanced to pass,
I heard him a courtin a bony young lass;
My hinny, my life, my dearest, quo he,
I'll mak you be fain to follow me.
Gin I should follow you, a poor sodger lad,
Ilk ane o' my cummers wad think I was mad;
For battles I never shall lang to see,
I'll never be fain to follow thee.

To follow me, I think ye may be glad,
A part o' my supper, a part o' my bed,
A part o' my bed, wherever it be,
I'll mak you be fain to follow me.
Come try my knapsack on your back,

O Leeze me on my spinnin-wheel,
And leeze me on my rock and reel;
Frae tap to tae that cleeds me bien,
And haps me fiel and warm at e'en!
I'll set me down and sing and spin,
While laigh descends the simmer sun,
Blest wi' content, and milk and meal,
O leeze me on my spinnin-wheel.—

On ilka hand the burnies trot,
And meet below my theekit cot;
The scented birk and hawthorn white
Across the pool their arms unite,
Alike to screen the birdie's nest,
And little fishes' callor rest:
The sun blinks kindly in the biel'