Songs

I.

Though here fair blooms the rose and the woodbine waves on high, And oak and elm and bracken frond enrich the rolling lea, And winds as if from Arcady breathe joy as they go by, Yet I yearn and I pine for my North Countrie.

I leave the drowsing south and in dreams I northward fly, And walk the stretching moors that fringe the ever-calling sea; And am gladdened as the gales that are so bitter-sweet go by, While grey clouds sweetly darken o'er my North Countrie.

For there's music in the storms, and there's colour in the shades, And there's joy e'en in the sorrow widely brooding o'er the sea; And larger thoughts have birth among the moors and lowly glades And reedy mounds and sands of my North Countrie.

II.

You who know what easeful arms Silence winds about the dead, Or what far-swept music charms Hearts that were earth-wearied;

You who know--if aught be known In that everlasting Hush Where the life-born years are strewn, Where the eyeless ages rush,--

Tell me, is it conscious rest Heals the whilom hurt of life? Or is Nirvana undistressed E'en by memory of strife?

III.

Metempsychosis.

When Grief comes this way by With her wan lip and drooping eye, Bid her welcome, woo her boldly; Soon she'll look on thee less coldly.

Her tears soon cease to flow. 'Tis now not Grief but Joy we know; From her smiling face the roses Tell the glad metempsychosis.

IV.

Life with the sun in it-- Shaded by gloom! Life with the fun in it-- Shadowed by Doom!

Life with its Love ever haunted by Hate! Life's laughing morrows frowned over by Fate! Young Life's wild gladness still waylaid by Age! All its sweet badness still mocking the sage! What can e'er measure the joy of its strife?

What boundless leisure Count the heaped treasure Of woe, that's the pleasure And beauty of Life?

V.

Once as the aureole Day left the earth, Faded, a twilight soul, Memory, had birth: Young were her sister souls, Sorrow and Mirth.

Dark mirrors are her eyes: Wherein who gaze See wan effulgencies Flicker and blaze-- Lorn fleeting shadows of beautiful days.

Scan those deep mirrors well After long years: Lo! what aforetime fell In rain of tears, In radiant glamour-mist now reappears.

See old wild gladness Tamed now and coy; Grief that was madness Turned into joy. Fate cannot harry them now, nor annoy.

Down from yon throbbing blue, Passionless, fair, Still faces look on you, Sunlit their hair, With a slow smile at your pleasure and care.

Life and death murmurings From their lips go In vaster music-rings; Outward they flow, Tenderer, wilder, than songs that we know.

VI.

My love's unchanged--though time, alas! Turns silver-gilt the golden mass Of flowing hair, and pales, I wis, The rose that deepened with that kiss-- The first--before our marriage was.

And though the fields of corn and grass, So radiant then, as summers pass Lose something of their look of bliss, My love's unchanged.

Our tiny girl's a sturdy lass; Our boy's shrill pipe descends to bass; New friends appear, the old we miss; My Love grows old ... in spite of this My love's unchanged.

VII.

A Gurly Breeze in Scotland.

A gurly breeze swept from the pool The Autumn peace so blue and cool, Which all day long had dreamed thereon Of men and things aforetime gone, Their vanished joy, their ended dule: So glooms the sea, so sounds her brool, As from the East at eve comes on A gurly breeze.

Sense yields to Fancy 'neath whose rule This inland scene is quickly full Of ocean moods wherein I con As in a picture; quickly gone. To what sweet use the mind may school A gurly breeze!