A fog drifts in, the heavy laden
Cold white ghost of the sea
One by one the hills go out,
The road and the pepper-tree.
I watch the fog float in at the window
With the whole world gone blind,
Everything, even my longing, drowses,
Even the thoughts in my mind.
I put my head on my hands before me,
There is nothing left to be done or said,
There is nothing to hope for, I am tired,
And heavy as the dead.

When stern Misfortune, monitress severe!
Dissolves Prosperity's enchanting dreams,
And, chased from Man's probationary sphere,
Fair Hope withdraws her vivifying beams.

If then, untaught to bend at Heaven's high will,
The desp'rate mortal dares the dread unknown,
To future fate appeals from present ill,
And stands, uncall'd, before th' Eternal throne!

Shall justice there immutably decide?
Dread thought! which Reason trembles to explore,
She feels, be mercy granted or denied,
'Tis her's in dumb submission to adore.

Yet, could the self-doom'd victim be forgiven
His final error, for his merits past;
Could virtuous life, propitiating Heaven
With former deeds, extenuate the last:

Then GOLDSMID! Mercy, to thy humble shrine,
Angel o...

I look at the swaling sunset
And wish I could go also
Through the red doors beyond the black-purple bar.

I wish that I could go
Through the red doors where I could put off
My shame like shoes in the porch,
My pain like garments,
And leave my flesh discarded lying
Like luggage of some departed traveller
Gone one knows not where.

Then I would turn round,
And seeing my cast-off body lying like lumber,
I would laugh with joy.

One blossoming rose-tree, like a beautiful thought
Nursed in a broken mind, that waits and schemes,
Survives, though shattered, and about it caught,
The strangling dodder streams.

Gaunt weeds: and here a bayonet or pouch,
Rusty and rotting where men fought and slew:
Bald, trampled paths that seem with fear to crouch,
Feeling a bloody dew.

Here nothing that was beauty's once remains.
War left the garden to its dead alone:
And Life and Love, who toiled here, for their pains
Have nothing once their own.

Death leans upon the battered door, at gaze
The house is silent where there once was stir
Of husbandry, that led laborious days,
With Love for comforter.

Now in Love's place, Death, old and halt and blind,
Gropes, searching everywhere ...

They come from the highways of labour,
From labour and leisure they come;
But not to the sound of the tabor,
And not to the beating of drum.

By thousands the people assemble
With faces of shadow and flame,
And spirits that sicken and tremble
Because of their sorrow and shame!

Their voice is the voice of a nation;
But lo, it is muffled and mute,
For the sword of a strong tribulation
Hath stricken their peace to the root.

The beautiful tokens of pity
Have utterly fled from their eyes,
For the demon who darkened the city
Is curst in the breaking of sighs.

Their thoughts are as one; and together
They band in their terrible ire,
Like legions of wind in fierce weather
Whose footsteps are thunder and fire.

But for eve...

By painful sickness long severely prest,
Here sinks, on Nature's sacred lap of rest,
A friend, who, in a life too short, display'd
A mind in virtue bright, without one shade.
Hence with unusual grief is Fondness mov'd,
Hence more than Pity's sighs for one belov'd;
Unshaken Honour sheds a manly tear,
And weeping Virtue stops, a mourner here.

Douglas, Isle of Man


Who taught this pleading to unpractis’d eyes?
Who hid such import in an infant’s gloom?
Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise?
What clouds thy forehead, and fore-dates thy doom?

Lo! sails that gleam a moment and are gone;
The swinging waters, and the cluster’d pier.
Not idly Earth and Ocean labour on,
Nor idly do these sea-birds hover near.

But thou, whom superfluity of joy
Wafts not from thine own thoughts, nor longings vain,
Nor weariness, the full-fed soul’s annoy;
Remaining in thy hunger and thy pain:

Thou, drugging pain by patience; half averse
From thine own mother’s breast, that knows not thee;
With eyes that sought thine eyes thou didst converse,
And that soul-searching vision fell on me.<...

Strong are thine arms, O love, & strong
Thine heart to live, and love, and long;
But thou art wed to grief and wrong:
Live, then, and long, though hope be dead!
Live on, & labour thro' the years!
Make pictures through the mist of tears,
Of unforgotten happy fears,
That crossed the time ere hope was dead.
Draw near the place where once we stood
Amid delight's swift-rushing flood,
And we and all the world seemed good
Nor needed hope now cold and dead.
Dream in the dawn I come to thee
Weeping for things that may not be!
Dream that thou layest lips on me!
Wake, wake to clasp hope's body dead!
Count o'er and o'er, and one by one
The minutes of the happy sun
That while agone on kissed lips shone,
Count on, rest not, for hope is dead.
Weep...

Tune - "Macgregor of Rura's Lament."


I.

    Raving winds around her blowing,
    Yellow leaves the woodlands strowing,
    By a river hoarsely roaring,
    Isabella stray'd deploring,
    "Farewell hours that late did measure
    Sunshine days of joy and pleasure;
    Hail, thou gloomy night of sorrow,
    Cheerless night that knows no morrow!

II.

    "O'er the past too fondly wandering,
    On the hopeless future pondering;
    Chilly grief my life-blood freezes,
    Fell despair my fancy seizes.
    Life, thou soul of every blessing,
    Load to misery most distressing,
    Gladly how would I resign thee,
    And to dark oblivion join thee!"

One Autumn evening, wandering, when the sun was hanging low,
Through a woodland where the music of a streamlet's gentle flow
Commingled with the rustling of the yellow golden leaves,
And the idling breeze's sighing as it floated through the trees,
I heard sweet voices whispering in accents soft and low,
That lulled to rest the troubled soul, like those of long ago.

Enchanted thus I lingered, by unseen hands fast bound,
My willing fancy captive to the magic of sweet sound,
And eagerly I listened to the whispering voices tell
Of happy days of childhood, and the tear unbidden fell,
As were pictured to the mind again the halcyon scenes of yore,
And loved ones that no more I'll meet till on the silent shore!

And as the slanting shadows fell athwart the scattered leaves

For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.

For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears.

O Where is our Mother of Peace
Nodding her purple hood?
For the winds that awakened the stars
Are blowing through my blood.
I would that the death-pale deer
Had come through the mountain side,
And trampled the mountain away,
And drunk up the murmuring tide;
For the winds that awakened the stars
Are blowing through my blood,
And our Mother of Peace has forgot me
Under her purple hood.

    The first rose on my rose-tree
        Budded, bloomed, and shattered,
    During sad days when to me
            Nothing mattered.

    Grief of grief has drained me clean;
        Still it seems a pity
    No one saw,--it must have been
            Very pretty.

Scene I. Near the place of the damned. Enter Werner and Spirit.

Werner.

    What piercing, stunning sounds assail my ear!
Wild shrieks and wrathful curses, groans and prayers,
A chaos of all cries! making the space
Through which they penetrate to flutter like
The heart of a trapped hare, - are revelling round us.
    Unlike the gloomy realm we just have quitted,
Silent and solemn, all is restless here,
All wears the ashy hue of agony.
Above us bends a black and starless vault,
Which ever echoes back the fearful voices
That rise from the abodes of wo beneath.
Around us grim-browed desolation broods,
While, far below, a sea of pale gray clouds,
Like to an ocean tempest beaten, boils.
Whither shall we direct our journey now?

Spirit.

"The winter wind is loud and wild,
Come close to me, my darling child;
Forsake thy books, and mateless play;
And, while the night is gathering gray,
We'll talk its pensive hours away;

"Ierne, round our sheltered hall
November's gusts unheeded call;
Not one faint breath can enter here
Enough to wave my daughter's hair,
And I am glad to watch the blaze
Glance from her eyes, with mimic rays;
To feel her cheek, so softly pressed,
In happy quiet on my breast,

"But, yet, even this tranquillity
Brings bitter, restless thoughts to me;
And, in the red fire's cheerful glow,
I think of deep glens, blocked with snow;
I dream of moor, and misty hill,
Where evening closes dark and chill;
For, lone, among the mountains cold,
Lie those that I h...

Leaden skies and a lonesome shadow
    Where summer has passed with her gorgeous train;
Snow on the mountain, and frost on the meadow -
    A white face pressed to the window pane;
A cold mist falling, a bleak wind calling,
    And oh! but life seems vain.

Rain is better than golden weather,
    When the heart is dulled with a dumb despair.
Dead leaves lie where they walked together,
    The hammock is gone, and the rustic chair.
Let bleak snows cover the whole world over -
    It will never again seem fair.

Time laughs lightly at youth's sad 'Never,'
    Summer shall come again, smiling once more,
High o'er the cold world the sun shines for ever,
    Hearts that seemed dead are alive at the core.
Oh, but the pain of it -oh, but the gain of it,

The door was shut. I looked between
    Its iron bars; and saw it lie,
    My garden, mine, beneath the sky,
Pied with all flowers bedewed and green:

From bough to bough the song-birds crossed,
    From flower to flower the moths and bees;
    With all its nests and stately trees
It had been mine, and it was lost.

A shadowless spirit kept the gate,
    Blank and unchanging like the grave.
    I peering through said: 'Let me have
Some buds to cheer my outcast state.'

He answered not. 'Or give me, then,
    But one small twig from shrub or tree;
    And bid my home remember me
Until I come to it again.'

The spirit was silent; but he took
    Mortar and stone to build a wall;
    He left no loophole great or small
Through wh...

Windy the sky and mad;
Surly the gray March day;
Bleak the forests and sad,
Sad for the beautiful May.

On maples tasseled with red
No blithe bird swinging sung;
The brook in its lonely bed
Complained in an unknown tongue.

We walked in the wasted wood:
Her face as the Spring's was fair,
Her blood was the Spring's own blood,
The Spring's her radiant hair,

And we found in the windy wild
One cowering violet,
Like a frail and tremulous child
In the caked leaves bowed and wet.

And I sighed at the sight, with pain
For the May's warm face in the wood,
May's passions of sun and rain,
May's raiment of bloom and of bud.

But she said when she saw me sad,
"Tho' the world be gloomy as fate,
And we yearn for the day...