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Lang Andrew
The Blue Poetry Book
HYMN FOR THE DEAD
That day of wrath, that dreadful day,
When heaven and earth shall pass away!
What power shall be the sinner’s stay?
How shall he meet that dreadful day?
When, shrivelling like a parched scroll,
The flaming heavens together roll;
When louder yet, and yet more dread,
Swells the high trump that wakes the dead!
Oh! on that day, that wrathful day,
When man to judgment wakes from clay,
Be Thou the trembling sinner’s stay,
Though heaven and earth shall pass away!
Sir W. Scott.
THE POPLAR FIELD
The poplars are fell’d; farewell to the shade,
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade!
The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.
Twelve years have elapsed since I last took a view
Of my favourite field, and the bank where they grew;
And now in the grass behold they are laid,
And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade!
The blackbird has fled to another retreat,
Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat,
And the scene where his melody charm’d me before
Resounds with his sweet flowing ditty no more.
My fugitive years are all hasting away,
And I must ere long lie as lowly as they,
With a turf on my breast, and a stone at my head,
Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.
’Tis a sight to engage me, if anything can,
To muse on the perishing pleasures of man;
Short-lived as we are, our pleasures, I see
Have a still shorter date, and die sooner than we.
W. Cowper.
WINTER
When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tuwhoo!
Tuwhit! tuwhoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all around the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl
Tuwhoo!
Tuwhit! tuwhoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
W. Shakespeare.
ANNABEL LEE
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child, and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love,
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me;
Yes! – that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we —
Of many far wiser than we;
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I see the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling – my darling – my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
E. A. Poe.
TO MARY
If I had thought thou couldst have died,
I might not weep for thee;
But I forgot, when by thy side,
That thou couldst mortal be:
It never through my mind had past
The time would e’er be o’er,
And I on thee should look my last,
And thou shouldst smile no more!
And still upon that face I look,
And think ’twill smile again;
And still the thought I will not brook
That I must look in vain!
But when I speak – thou dost not say,
What thou ne’er left’st unsaid;
And now I feel, as well I may,
Sweet Mary! thou art dead.
If thou wouldst stay, e’en as thou art,
All cold and all serene —
I still might press thy silent heart,
And where thy smiles have been!
While e’en thy chill, bleak corse I have,
Thou seemest still mine own;
But there I lay thee in thy grave —
And I am now alone!
I do not think, where’er thou art,
Thou hast forgotten me;
And I, perhaps, may soothe this heart,
In thinking too of thee:
Yet there was round thee such a dawn
Of light ne’er seen before,
As fancy never could have drawn,
And never can restore!
C. Wolfe.
TWIST YE, TWINE YE
Twist ye, twine ye! even so,
Mingle shades of joy and woe,
Hope, and fear, and peace, and strife,
In the thread of human life.
While the mystic twist is spinning,
Aid the infant’s life beginning,
Dimly seen through twilight bending,
Lo, what varied shapes attending!
Passions wild, and follies vain,
Pleasures soon exchanged for pain;
Doubt, and jealousy, and fear,
In the magic dance appear.
Now they wax, and now they dwindle,
Whirling with the whirling spindle.
Twist ye, twine ye! even so,
Mingle human bliss and woe.
Sir W. Scott.
TO LUCASTA, ON GOING TO THE WARS
Tell me not (sweet) I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind,
To war and arms I fly.
True: a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.
Yet this inconstancy is such,
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Lov’d I not Honour more.
Colonel Lovelace.
THE DEMON LOVER
‘O where have you been, my long, long love,
This long seven years and mair?’
‘O I’m come to seek my former vows
Ye granted me before.’
‘O hold your tongue of your former vows,
For they will breed sad strife;
O hold your tongue of your former vows,
For I am become a wife.’
He turned him right and round about,
And the tear blinded his e’e:
’I wad never hae trodden on Irish ground
If it had not been for thee.
‘I might hae had a king’s daughter,
Far, far beyond the sea;
I might have had a king’s daughter,
Had it not been for love o’ thee.’
‘If ye might have had a king’s daughter,
Yer sel ye had to blame;
Ye might have taken the king’s daughter,
For ye kend that I was nane.’
‘O faulse are the vows o’ womankind,
But fair is their faulse bodie;
I never wad hae trodden on Irish ground,
Had it not been for love o’ thee.’
‘If I was to leave my husband dear,
And my two babes also,
O what have you to take me to,
If with you I should go?’
‘I hae seven ships upon the sea,
The eighth brought me to land;
With four-and-twenty bold mariners,
And music on every hand.’
She has taken up her two little babes,
Kissed them baith cheek and chin;
‘O fare ye weel, my ain twa babes,
For I’ll never see you again.’
She set her foot upon the ship,
No mariners could she behold;
But the sails were o’ the taffetie
And the masts o’ the beaten gold.
She had not sailed a league, a league,
A league but barely three,
When dismal grew his countenance,
And drumlie grew his e’e.
The masts, that were like the beaten gold,
Bent not on the heaving seas;
But the sails, that were o’ the taffetie,
Fill’d not in the east land breeze.
They had not sailed a league, a league,
A league but barely three,
Until she espied his cloven foot,
And she wept right bitterlie.
‘O hold your tongue of your weeping,’ says he,
‘Of your weeping now let me be;
I will show you how the lilies grow
On the banks of Italy.’
‘O what hills are yon, yon pleasant hills,
That the sun shines sweetly on?’
‘O yon are the hills of heaven,’ he said,
‘Where you will never win.’
‘O whaten a mountain is yon,’ she said,
‘All so dreary wi’ frost and snow?’
‘O yon is the mountain of hell,’ he cried,
‘Where you and I will go.’
And aye when she turn’d her round about,
Aye taller he seemed to be;
Until that the tops o’ the gallant ship
Nae taller were than he.
The clouds grew dark, and the wind grew loud,
And the leven filled her e’e;
And waesome wail’d the snow-white sprites
Upon the gurlie sea.
He strack the tapmast wi’ his hand,
The foremast wi’ his knee;
And he brake that gallant ship in twain,
And sank her in the sea.
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
THE LAWLANDS OF HOLLAND
The Love that I have chosen
I’ll therewith be content;
The salt sea shall be frozen
Before that I repent.
Repent it shall I never
Until the day I dee!
But the Lawlands of Holland
Have twinn’d my Love and me.
My Love he built a bonny ship,
And set her to the main;
With twenty-four brave mariners
To sail her out and hame.
But the weary wind began to rise,
The sea began to rout,
And my Love and his bonny ship
Turn’d withershins about.
There shall no mantle cross my back,
No comb go in my hair,
Neither shall coal nor candle-light
Shine in my bower mair;
Nor shall I choose another Love
Until the day I dee,
Since the Lawlands of Holland
Have twinn’d my Love and me.
‘Now haud your tongue, my daughter dear,
Be still, and bide content!
There’s other lads in Galloway;
Ye needna sair lament.’
– O there is none in Galloway,
There’s none at all for me: —
I never loved a lad but one,
And he’s drown’d in the sea.
Unknown.
THE VALLEY OF UNREST
Once it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell:
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly from their azure towers
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sunlight lazily lay.
Now each visitor shall confess
The sad valley’s restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless —
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.
Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!
Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet heaven
Unceasingly, from morn till even.
Over the violets there that lie
In myriad types of the human eye —
Over the lilies there that wave
And weep above a nameless grave!
They wave – from out their fragrant tops
Eternal dews come down in drops;
They weep – from off their delicate stems
Perennial tears descend in gems.
E. A. Poe.
THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA
Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O’er the grave where our hero we buried.
We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam’s misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.
No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.
Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
We thought, as we hollow’d his narrow bed,
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
That the foe and the stranger would tread o’er his head,
And we far away on the billow!
Lightly they’ll talk of the spirit that’s gone,
And o’er his cold ashes upbraid him, —
But little he’ll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.
But half of our heavy task was done
When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone —
But we left him alone with his glory!
C. Wolfe.
ST. SWITHIN’S CHAIR
On Hallow-Mass Eve, ere you boune ye to rest,
Ever beware that your couch be bless’d;
Sign it with cross, and sain it with bead,
Sing the Ave, and say the Creed.
For on Hallow-Mass Eve the Night-Hag will ride,
And all her nine-fold sweeping on by her side,
Whether the wind sing lowly or loud,
Sailing through moonshine or swath’d in the cloud.
The Lady she sate in St. Swithin’s Chair,
The dew of the night has damp’d her hair:
Her cheek was pale – but resolved and high
Was the word of her lip and the glance of her eye.
She mutter’d the spell of Swithin bold,
When his naked foot traced the midnight wold,
When he stopp’d the Hag as she rode the night,
And bade her descend, and her promise plight.
He that dare sit on St. Swithin’s Chair,
When the Night-Hag wings the troubled air,
Questions three, when he speaks the spell,
He may ask, and she must tell.
The Baron has been with King Robert his liege,
These three long years in battle and siege;
News are there none of his weal or his woe
And fain the Lady his fate would know.
She shudders and stops as the charm she speaks; —
Is it the moody owl that shrieks?
Or is that sound, betwixt laughter and scream,
The voice of the Demon who haunts the stream?
The moan of the wind sunk silent and low,
And the roaring torrent had ceased to flow;
The calm was more dreadful than raging storm,
When the cold grey mist brought the ghastly form!
Sir W. Scott.
STANZAS WRITTEN ON THE ROAD BETWEEN FLORENCE AND PISA
Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story;
The days of our youth are the days of our glory;
And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty
Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.
What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled?
’Tis but as a dead flower with May-dew besprinkled.
Then away with all such from the head that is hoary!
What care I for the wreaths that can only give glory!
Oh Fame! – if I e’er took delight in thy praises,
’Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases,
Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover,
She thought that I was not unworthy to love her.
There chiefly I sought thee, there only I found thee;
Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee;
When it sparkled o’er aught that was bright in my story,
I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory.
Lord Byron.
BARTHRAM’S DIRGE
They shot him dead on the Nine-Stone Rig,
Beside the Headless Cross,
And they left him lying in his blood,
Upon the moor and moss.
They made a bier of the broken bough,
The sauch and the aspin gray,
And they bore him to the Lady Chapel,
And waked him there all day.
A lady came to that lonely bower
And threw her robes aside,
She tore her ling (long) yellow hair,
And knelt at Barthram’s side.
She bath’d him in the Lady-Well
His wounds so deep and sair,
And she plaited a garland for his breast,
And a garland for his hair.
They rowed him in a lily-sheet,
And bare him to his earth,
(And the Grey Friars sung the dead man’s mass,
As they passed the Chapel Garth).
They buried him at (the mirk) midnight,
(When the dew fell cold and still,
When the aspin gray forgot to play,
And the mist clung to the hill).
They dug his grave but a bare foot deep,
By the edge of the Nine-Stone Burn,
And they covered him (o’er with the heather-flower)
The moss and the (Lady) fern.
A Grey Friar staid upon the grave,
And sang till the morning tide,
And a friar shall sing for Barthram’s soul,
While Headless Cross shall bide.
R. Surtees.
TO THE CUCKOO
O blithe New-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice.
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?
While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear,
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off, and near.
Though babbling only to the Vale,
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.
Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!
Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;
The same whom in my schoolboy days
I listened to; that Cry
Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky.
To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen.
And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.
O blessèd Bird! the earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial, faery place:
That is fit home for Thee!
W. Wordsworth.
HELEN OF KIRKCONNEL
I wish I were where Helen lies!
Night and day on me she cries;
O that I were where Helen lies,
On fair Kirkconnel Lee!
Curst be the heart that thought the thought
And curst the hand, that fired the shot,
When in my arms burd Helen dropt,
And died to succour me!
O think na ye my heart was sair,
When my love dropt down and spak’ nae mair!
There did she swoon wi’ meikle care,
On fair Kirkconnel Lee.
As I went down the water side,
None but my foe to be my guide,
None but my foe to be my guide,
On fair Kirkconnel Lee.
I lighted down, my sword did draw,
I hacked him into pieces sma’,
I hacked him into pieces sma’,
For her sake that died for me.
O Helen fair, beyond compare!
I’ll make a garland of thy hair,
Shall bind my heart for evermair,
Untill the day I die.
O that I were where Helen lies!
Night and day on me she cries;
Out of my bed she bids me rise,
Says, ‘Haste, and come to me!’
O Helen fair! O Helen chaste!
If I were with thee, I were blest,
Where thou lies low, and takes thy rest,
On fair Kirkconnel Lee.
I wish my grave were growing green,
A winding-sheet drawn ower my een,
And I in Helen’s arms lying,
On fair Kirkconnel Lee.
I wish I were where Helen lies!
Night and day on me she cries,
And I am weary of the skies,
For her sake that died for me.
Unknown.
TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON
When Love with unconfinèd wings
Hovers within my gates;
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates:
When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fetter’d to her eye;
The Gods that wanton in the air,
Know no such liberty.
When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free,
Fishes that tipple in the deep,
Know no such liberty.
When, like committed linnets, I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my King;
When I shall voice aloud, how good
He is, how great should be;
Enlargèd winds that curl the flood,
Know no such liberty.
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free;
Angels alone that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.
Colonel Lovelace.
‘I WANDERED LONELY.’
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed – and gazed – but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
W. Wordsworth.
HESTER
When maidens such as Hester die,
Their place ye may not well supply,
Though ye among a thousand try,
With vain endeavour.
A month or more hath she been dead,
Yet cannot I by force be led
To think upon the wormy bed
And her together.
A springy motion in her gait,
A rising step, did indicate
Of pride and joy no common rate,
That flushed her spirit.
I know not by what name beside
I shall it call: – if ’twas not pride,
It was a joy to that allied,
She did inherit.
Her parents held the Quaker rule,
Which doth the human feeling cool,
But she was train’d in Nature’s school,
Nature had blest her.
A waking eye, a prying mind,
A heart that stirs, is hard to bind,
A hawk’s keen sight ye cannot blind,
Ye could not Hester.
My sprightly neighbour! gone before
To that unknown and silent shore,
Shall we not meet, as heretofore,
Some Summer morning,
When from thy cheerful eyes a ray
Hath struck a bliss upon the day,
A bliss that would not go away,
A sweet fore-warning?
C. Lamb.
TO EVENING
If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song,
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
Like thy own brawling springs,
Thy springs, and dying gales;
O Nymph reserved, while now the bright-hair’d sun
Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,
With brede ethereal wove,
O’erhang his wavy bed:
Now air is hush’d, save where the weak-eyed bat
With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing,
Or where the beetle winds
His small but sullen horn,
As oft he rises midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum: —
Now teach me, maid composed
To breathe some soften’d strain,
Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale,
May not unseemly with its stillness suit;
As, musing slow, I hail
Thy genial loved return!
For when thy folding-star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant Hours, and Elves
Who slept in buds the day,
And many a Nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge
And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still,
The pensive Pleasures sweet,
Prepare thy shadowy car.
Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene;
Or find some ruin midst its dreary dells,
Whose walls more awful nod
By thy religious gleams.
Or, if chill blustering winds, or driving rain
Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut,
That from the mountain’s side,
Views wilds, and swelling floods,
And hamlets brown, and dim-discover’d spires;
And hears their simple bell, and marks o’er all
Thy dewy fingers draw
The gradual dusky veil.
While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont,
And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve!
While Summer loves to sport
Beneath thy lingering light;
While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves;
Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air,
Affrights thy shrinking train,
And rudely rends thy robes;
So long, regardful of thy quiet rule,
Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, smiling Peace,
Thy gentlest influence own,
And love thy favourite name!
W. Collins.
