romantic poems

But yesternight we laughed to view
The stars that sailed in seas of blue—
To-day we wake 'neath greyer skies,
To look on life with diff'rent eyes,
To look on life with diff'rent eyes, with diff'rent eyes—

Alas! how many stars are set,
For which we're longing, watching yet,
O useless hope! O eyes that burn!
The stars you love will not return,
The stars you love will not return.

O WHA 's that at my chamber door?—
“Fair widow, are ye wawking?”—
Auld carle, your suit give o'er,
Your love lies a' in tawking:
Gi'e me the lad that 's young and tight,
Sweet like an April meadow;
'Tis sic as he can bless the sight
And bosom of a widow.

“O widow! wilt thou let me in,
“I 'm pawky, wise, and thrifty,
“And come of a right gentle kin;
“I 'm little mair than fifty.”
Daft carle, dit your mouth,
What signifies how pawky,
Or gentle born ye be; but youth,
In love you 're but a gawky.

When your head leans back slowly, and gazing eyes
Muse earnest upon mine and starry swim
With depths unfathomed that still well and rise,
And the words fail, and sight with love grows dim,
Whence comes that almost sadness, almost wound
Of joy, whose thoughts sink like the wearied flight
Of birds on seas, lost in love's deeps profound,
Inscrutable as odours blown through night?

We know not: and we know not whence love rose
Pouring its beauty over us, as the moon
On this dim garden rises, and none knows

She sang a song of death and battle,
Through which one heard the cannon roll.
They said, “O wondrous gift of fancy,
The glorious dower of poet-soul!”

She sang a song of love and passion—
Love's land, she sang, was very fair.
They said no more of wondrous fancy,
They said, “She lays her own heart bare.”

The years they come and go,
The races drop in the grave,
Yet never the love doth so
Which here in my heart I have.

Could I see thee but once, one day,
And sink down so on my knee,
And die in thy sight while I say,
“Lady, I love but thee!”

I have loved my land yet hailed it as a stranger
When birth-wracks wrecked me on a faerie shore:
I have kept the Faith yet hardly grasped it more
Than groping shepherds when they found the Manger.
I have loved my friends yet feared them more than foes
Lest they should ask the name God only knows;
And in long years of mating have been blest
Restlessly wondering why I was at rest.

The one
I glimpsed
is just so
hard to catch—
like
those monkeys
vainly
stretching out
their hands
for the moon
in a valley pool.

1. We love the venerable house Our fathers built to God;
2. Here holy thoughts a light have shed From many a radiant face,
In heaven are kept their grateful vows, Their dust endears the sod.
And prayers of humble virtue spread The perfume of the place.

3. And anxious hearts have pondered here
The mystery of life,
And prayed th' Eternal Light to clear
Their doubts and aid their strife.

4. From humble tenements around
Came up the pensive train,
And in the church a blessing found,
That filled their homes again;

Long life's a lovely thing to know,
With lovely health and wealth, forsooth,
And lovely name and fame—But O
The loveliness of Youth!

We must buy coal.
On account of the wind
the flowers are constantly losing their petals.

Horseman,
take me to the best firewood store.
At present the chill wind is blowing too hard,
intent on leaving nothing,
not a single word of human speech.

I go to the hearth to light the fire,
but it's full of a pool of golden spittle.
I head southwards in search of live coals but
they tell me some Greek fellow died for that long ago.

I shook my head
and told them “No.”
For the sake of the future,