The Lovely Lass o' Inverness

The lovely lass o' Inverness,
Nae joy nor pleasure can she see;
For e'en and morn she cries, Alas!
And ay the saut tear blin's her e'e:
Drumossie moor--Drumossie day--
A waefu' day it was to me!
For there I lost my father dear,
My father dear, and brethren three.
Their winding-sheet the bluidy clay,
Their graves are growing green to see:
And by them lies the dearest lad
That ever blest a woman's e'e!

Now wae to thee, thou cruel lord,
A bluidy man I trow thou be;
For mony a heart thou hast made sair

The Lovely Husband

Oh a lovely husband he was known, He loved his wife and
her alone; She reaped the harvest he had sown; She ate the meat; he
picked the bone. With mixed admirers ev'ry size, She smiled on each with
out disguise; This lovely husband closed his eyes Lest he might take her

CHORUS.

by surprise. Trot! Run! Wasn't he a handy hubby?
What Fun She could plot and plan! Not One
Other such a dandy hubby As this lovely man!

II

He answered at her least command:

War Poet

I know that honour is
Because I follow it.
I know that love is
My heart does cry for it.

The sun? I dare not watch.
The stars? I was night-walker:
My friends in the high arch —
By Cranham or high Crickley.

They hurt like unsought kisses
From a love one dare
Not love — they are the water-hisses
From a cooled iron, red-bare.

Greatness? I have sailed
A boat in March daring . . .
And made a music, called
All March to my caring

Whether I made well
Or no — and Vermand knows

When I Am Covered

When I am covered with the dust of peace
And but the rain to moist my senseless clay,
Will there be one regret left in that ill ease

One sentimental fib of light and day —
A grief for hillside and the beaten trees?
Better to leave them, utterly to go away.

When every tiny pang of love is counterpiece
To shadowed woe of huge weight and the stay
For yet another torment ere release

Better to lie and be forgotten aye.
In death his rose-leaves never is a crease.
Rest squares reckonings love set awry.

The Last Question

New love, new love, where are you to lead me?
All along a narrow way that marks a crooked line.
How are you to slake me, and how are you to feed me?
With bitter yellow berries, and a sharp new wine.

New love, new love, shall I be forsaken?
One shall go a-wandering, and one of us must sigh.
Sweet it is to slumber, but how shall we awaken —
Whose will be the broken heart, when dawn comes by?

Pictures in the Smoke

Oh, gallant was the first love, and glittering and fine;
The second love was water, in a clear white cup;
The third love was his, and the fourth was mine;
And after that, I always get them all mixed up.

When Love Becomes Words

The yet undone, become the unwritten
By the activity of others
And the immobile pen of ourselves
Lifted, in postponed readiness,
Over the yet unsmooth paper of time—
Themes of the writing-table now,
All those implicit projects
By our minds rescued from enactment,
That lost literature which only death reads.

And we expect works of one another
Of exceeding not so much loveliness
Or fame among our physical sighs
As quietness, eventful
Not beyond thought, which moves unstrangely,

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