The wood is bare: a river-mist is steeping
—The trees that winter's chill of life bereaves:
Only their stiffened boughs break silence, weeping
——Over their fallen leaves;

That lie upon the dank earth brown and rotten,
—Miry and matted in the soaking wet:
Forgotten with the spring, that is forgotten
——By them that can forget.

Yet it was here we walked when ferns were springing,
—And through the mossy bank shot bud and blade:—
Here found in summer, when the birds were singing,
——A green and pleasant shade.

Woman in whose voice
silver and wine mingle
in the rains
From the mirrors of your knees
the day begins its journey
life puts out to sea

Within a poor man's squalid home I stood:
The one bare chamber, where his work-worn wife
Above the stove and wash-tub passed her life,
Next the sty where they slept with all their brood.
But I saw not that sunless, breathless lair,
The chamber's sagging roof and reeking floor;
The smeared walls, broken sash, and battered door;
The foulness and forlornness everywhere.
I saw a great house with the portals wide
Upon a banquet room, and, from without,
The guests descending in a brilliant line
By the stair's statued niches, and beside

With a yellow lantern
I take the road at night,
And chase the flying shadows
By its cheerful light.

From the banks and hedgerows
Other lanterns shine,
Tiny elfin glimmers,
Not so bright as mine.

Those are glow-worm lanterns,
Coloured green and blue,
Orange, red and purple,
Gaily winking through.

See the glow-worms hurry!
See them climb and crawl!
They go to light the dancers
At the fairy ball.

The wing of separation
Bore me away;
The fluttering heart was dismayed
And bore away her senses …
Had she but seen me,
When my soul was intent on speeding the journey by night,
When my sounding steps
Held converse with the demons of the desert—
When I wandered through the waste
In the shadows of night,
While the roar of the lion was heard
From his lair among the reeds—
When the brilliant Pleiades circled,
Like dark-eyed maidens in the green woods;
And the stars were borne round
Like wine-cups,
Filled by a fair maid

‘Willie, Willie, I 'll learn you a wile,’
And the sun shines over the valleys and a'
‘How this pretty fair maid ye may beguile.’
Amang the blue flowrs and the yellow and a'

‘Ye maun lie doun just as ye were dead,
And tak your winding-sheet around your head.

‘Ye maun gie the bellman his bell-groat,
To ring your dead-bell at your lover's yett.’

He lay doun just as he war dead,
And took his winding-sheet round his head.

He gied the bellman his bell-groat,
To ring his dead-bell at his lover's yett.

‘O wha is this that is dead, I hear?’

Who comes here?
A grenadier.
What do you want?
A pot of beer.
Where is your money?
I've forgot.
Get you gone,
You drunken lot.

‘Who burst the barriers of my peaceful grave?
Ah! cruel death, that would no longer save,
But grudg'd me e'en that narrow dark abode,
And cast me out into the wrath of God;
Where shrieks, the roaring flame, the rattling chain,
And all the dreadful eloquence of pain,
Our only song; black fire's malignant light,
The sole refreshment of the blasted sight.
Must all those pow'rs, heaven gave me to supply
My soul with pleasure, and bring in my joy,
Rise up in arms against me, join the foe,
Sense, reason, memory, increase my woe?

The white moth to the closing bine,
The bee to the opened clover,
And the gipsy blood to the gipsy blood
Ever the wide world over.

Ever the wide world over, lass,
Ever the trail held true,
Over the world and under the world,
And back at the last to you.

Out of the dark of the gorgio camp,
Out of the grime and the gray
(Morning waits at the end of the world),
Gipsy, come away!

The wild boar to the sun-dried swamp,
The red crane to her reed,
And the Romany lass to the Romany lad
By the tie of a roving breed.

While Sherman stood beneath the hottest fire,
That from the lines of Vicksburg gleamed,
And bomb-shells tumbled in their smoky gyre,
And grape-shot hissed, and case-shot screamed;
Back from the front there came,
Weeping and sorely lame,
The merest child, the youngest face
Man ever saw in such a fearful place.

Stifling his tears, he limped his chief to meet:
But when he paused, and tottering stood,
Around the circle of his little feet
There spread a pool of bright, young blood.
Shocked at his doleful case,