The Hundred Best Poems (lyrical) in the English language

Front matter

THE HUNDRED BEST POEMS.

SECOND SERIES.

THE HUNDRED BEST POEMS

Consolation

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

MIST clogs the sunshine. Smoky dwarf houses Hem me round everywhere; A vague dejection Weighs down my soul.

Yet, while I languish, Everywhere countless Prospects unroll themselves, And countless beings Pass countless moods.

Far hence, in Asia, On the smooth convent-roofs, On the gilt terraces, Of holy Lassa, Bright shines the sun.

Grey time-worn marbles Hold the pure Muses; In their cool gallery, By yellow Tiber, They still look fair.

Strange unloved uproar Shrills round their portal;

Yet not on Helicon Kept they more cloudless Their noble calm.

Through sun-proof alleys In a lone, sand-hemm'd City of Africa, A blind, led beggar, Age-bow'd, asks alms.

No bolder robber Erst abode ambush'd Deep in the sandy waste; No clearer eyesight Spied prey afar.

Saharan sand-winds Sear'd his keen eyeballs; Spent is the spoil he won. For him the present Holds only pain.

Two young, fair lovers, Where the warm June-wind, Fresh from the summer fields, Plays fondly round them, Stand, tranced in joy.

With sweet, join'd voices, And with eyes brimming: "Ah," they cry, "Destiny, Prolong the present! Time, stand still here!"

The prompt stern Goddess Shakes her head, frowning; Time gives his hour-glass Its due reversal; Their hour is gone.

With weak indulgence Did the just Goddess Lengthen their happiness, She lengthen'd also Distress elsewhere.

The hour, whose happy Unalloy'd moments I would eternalise, Ten thousand mourners Well pleased see end.

The bleak, stern hour, Whose severe moments I would annihilate, Is pass'd by others In warmth, light, joy.

Time, so complain'd or, Who to no one man Shows partiality, Brings round to all men Some undimm'd hours.

1885 Edition.

The Buried Life

LIGHT flows our war of mocking words, and yet, Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet! I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll. Yes, yes, we know that we can jest, We know, we know that we can smile! But there's a something in this breast, To which thy light words bring no rest, And thy gay smiles no anodyne.

Give me thy hand, and hush awhile, And turn those limpid eyes on mine, And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul.

Alas! is even love too weak To unlock the heart, and let it speak? Are even lovers powerless to reveal To one another what indeed they feel? I knew the mass of men conceal'd Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd They would by other men be met With blank indifference, or with blame reproved; I knew they lived and moved Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest Of men, and alien to themselves—and yet The same heart beats in every human breast!

But we, my love!—doth a like spell benumb Our hearts, our voices?—must we too be dumb?

Ah! well for us, if even we, Even for a moment, can get free Our heart, and have our lips unchain'd; For that which seals them hath been deep-ordain'd!

Fate, which foresaw How frivolous a baby man would be— By what distractions he would be possess'd, How he would pour himself in every strife, And well-nigh change his own identity— That it might keep from his capricious play His genuine self, and force him to obey Even in his own despite his being's law,

Bade through the deep recesses of our breast The unregarded river of our life Pursue with indiscernible flow its way; And that we should not see The buried stream, and seem to be Eddying at large in blind uncertainty, Though driving on with it eternally.

But often, in the world's most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us—to know Whence our lives come and where they go. And many a man in his own breast then delves, But deep enough, alas! none ever mines. And we have been on many thousand lines, And we have shown, on each, spirit and power; But hardly have we, for one little hour, Been on our own line, have we been ourselves— Hardly had skill to utter one of all The nameless feelings that course through our breast, But they course on for ever unexpress'd. And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well—but 'tis not true! And then we will no more be rack'd With inward striving, and demand

Of all the thousand nothings of the hour Their stupifying power; Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call! Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn, From the soul's subterranean depth upborne As from an infinitely distant land, Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey A melancholy into all our day.

Only—but this is rare— When a beloved hand is laid in ours, When, jaded with the rush and glare Of the interminable hours, Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, When our world-deafen'd ear Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd— A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again. The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know. A man becomes aware of his life's flow, And hears its winding murmur; and he sees The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.

And there arrives a lull in the hot race Wherein he doth for ever chase That flying and elusive shadow, rest. An air of coolness plays upon his face, And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. And then he thinks he knows The hills where his life rose, And the sea where it goes.

The Last Word

CREEP into thy narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said! Vain thy onset! all stands fast. Thou thyself must break at last.

Let the long contention cease! Geese are swans, and swans are geese. Let them have it how they will! Thou art tired; best be still.

They out-talk'd thee, hiss'd thee, tore thee? Better men fared thus before thee; Fired their ringing shot and pass'd, Hotly charged—and sank at last.

Charge once more, then, and be dumb! Let the victors, when they come, When the forts of folly fall, Find thy body by the wall!

The Scholar-Gipsy

"There was very lately a lad in the University of Oxford, who was by his poverty forced to leave his studies there; and at last to join himself to a company of vagabond gipsies. Among these extravagant people, by the insinuating subtilty of his carriage, he quietly got so much of their love and esteem as that they discovered to him their mystery. After he had been a pretty while exercised in the trade, there chanced to ride by a couple of scholars, who had formerly been of his acquaintance. They quickly spied out their old friend among the gipsies; and he gave them an account of the necessity which drove him to that kind of life, and told them that the people he went with were not such impostors as they were taken for, but that they had a traditional kind of learning among them, and could do wonders by the power of imagination, their fancy binding that of others: that himself had learned much of their art, and when he had compassed the whole secret, he intended, he said, to leave their company, and give the world an account of what he had learned."—Glanvil's "Vanity of Dogmatizing," 1661.

GO, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill; Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes! No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed, Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats, Nor the cropp'd herbage shoot another head. But when the fields are still, And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest, And only the white sheep are sometimes seen Cross and recross the strips of moon-blanch'd green, Come, shepherd, and again begin the quest!

Here, where the reaper was at work of late— In this high field's dark corner, where he leaves His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruse, And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves,

Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use— Here will I sit and wait, While to my ear from uplands far away The bleating of the folded flocks is borne, With distant cries of reapers in the corn— All the live murmur of a summer's day.

Screen'd is this nook o'er the high, half-reap'd field, And here till sun-down, shepherd! will I be. Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see Pale pink convolvulus in tendrils creep; And air-swept lindens yield Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid, And bower me from the August sun with shade; And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers.

And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book— Come, let me read the oft-read tale again! The story of the Oxford scholar poor, Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain, Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door, One summer-morn forsook His friends, and went to learn the gipsy-lore, And roam'd the world with that wild brotherhood, And came, as most men deem'd, to little good, But came to Oxford and his friends no more.

But once, years after, in the country-lanes, Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew, Met him, and of his way of life enquired; Whereat he answer'd, that the gipsy-crew, His mates, had arts to rule as they desired The workings of men's brains, And they can bind them to what thoughts they will. "And I," he said, "the secret of their art, When fully learn'd, will to the world impart; But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill."

This said, he left them, and return'd no more.— But rumours hung about the country-side, That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray, Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied, In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey, The same the gipsies wore. Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring, At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors, On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frock'd boors Had found him seated at their entering,

But, 'mid their drink and clatter, he would fly. And I myself seem half to know thy looks, And put the shepherds, wanderer! on thy trace; And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks I ask if thou hast pass'd their quiet place; Or in my boat I lie Moor'd to the cool bank in the summer-heats, 'Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine fills,

And watch the warm, green-muffled Cumner hills, And wonder if them haunt'st their shy retreats.

For most, I know, thou lov'st retired ground! Thee at the ferry Oxford riders blithe, Returning home on summer-nights, have met Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe, Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, As the punt's rope chops round; And leaning backward in a pensive dream, And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers Pluck'd in shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers, And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream.

And then they land, and thou art seen no more!— Maidens, who from the distant hamlets come To dance around the Fyfield elm in May, Oft through the darkening fields have seen thee roam, Or cross a stile into the public way. Oft thou has given them store Of flowers—the frail-leaf'd, white anemony, Dark bluebells drench'd with dews of summer eves, And purple orchises with spotted leaves— But none hath words she can report of thee.

And, above Godstow Bridge, when hay-time's here In June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames, Men who through those wide fields of breezy grass

Where black-wing'd swallows haunt the glittering Thames, To bathe in the abandon' d lasher pass, Have often pass'd thee near Sitting upon the river bank o'ergrown; Mark'd thine outlandish garb, thy figure spare, Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air— But, when they came from bathing, thou wast gone!

At some lone homestead in the Cumner hills, Where at her open door the housewife darns, Thou hast been seen, or hanging on a gate To watch the threshers in the mossy barns. Children, who early range these slopes and late For cresses from the rills, Have known thee eying, all an April-day, The springing pastures and the feeding kine; And mark'd thee, when the stars come out and shine, Through the long dewy grass move slow away.

In autumn, on the skirts of Bagley Wood— Where most the gipsies by the turf-edged way Pitch their smoked tents, and every bush you see With scarlet patches tagg'd and shreds ot grey, Above the forest-ground called Thessaly— The blackbird, picking food, Sees thee, nor stops his meal, nor fears at all; So often has he known thee past him stray, Rapt, twirling in thy hand a wither'd spray, And waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.

And once, in winter, on the causeway chill Where home through flooded fields foot-travellers go, Have I not pass'd thee on the wooden bridge, Wrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow, Thy face tow'rd Hinksey and its wintry ridge? And thou hast climb' d the hill, And gain'd the white brow of the Cumner range; Turn'd once to watch, while thick the snowflakes fall, The line of festal light in Christ-Church hall Then sought thy straw in some sequester'd grange.

But what—I dream! Two hundred years are flown Since first thy story ran through Oxford halls, And the grave Glanvil did the tale inscribe That thou wert wander'd from the studious walls To learn strange arts, and join a gipsy-tribe; And thou from earth art gone Long since, and in some quiet churchyard laid— Some country-nook, where o'er thy unknown grave Tall grasses and white flowering nettles wave, Under a dark, red-fruited yew-tree's shade.

—No, no, thou hast not felt the lapse of hours! For what wears out the life of mortal men? 'Tis that from change to change their being rolls; 'Tis that repeated shocks, again, again, Exhaust the energy of strongest souls And numb the elastic powers. Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen,

And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit, To the just-pausing Genius we remit Our worn-out life, and are—what we have been.

Thou hast not lived, why should'st thou perish, so? Thou hadst one aim, one business, one desire; Else wert thou long since number'd with the dead! Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire! The generations of thy peers are fled, And we ourselves shall go; But thou possessest an immortal lot, And we imagine thee exempt from age And living as thou liv'st on Glanvil's page, Because thou hadst—what we, alas! have not.

For early didst thou leave the world, with powers Fresh, undiverted to the world without, Firm to their mark, not spent on other things; Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt, Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings. O life unlike to ours! Who fluctuate idly without term or scope, Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives, And each half lives a hundred different lives; Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope.

Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we, Light half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd, Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,

Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd; For whom each year we see Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new; Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day— Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?

Yes, we await it!—but it still delays, And then we suffer! and amongst us one, Who most has suffer'd, takes dejectedly His seat upon the intellectual throne; And all his store of sad experience he Lays bare of wretched days; Tells us his misery's birth and growth and signs, And how the dying spark of hope was fed, And how the breast was soothed, and how the head, And all his hourly varied anodynes.

This for our wisest! and we others pine, And wish the long unhappy dream would end, And waive all claim to bliss, and try to bear; With close-lipp'd patience for our only friend, Sad patience, too near neighbour to despair— But none has hope like thine! Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray, Roaming the country-side, a truant boy, Nursing thy project in unclouded joy, And every doubt long blown by time away.

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;

Before this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife— Fly hence, our contact fear! Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood! Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern From her false friend's approach in Hades turn, Wave us away, and keep thy solitude!

Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade, With a free, onward impulse brushing through, By night, the silver'd branches of the glade— Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue, On some mild pastoral slope Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales Freshen thy flowers as in former years With dew, or listen with enchanted ears, From the dark dingles, to the nightingales!

But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly! For strong the infection of our mental strife, Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest; And we should win thee from thy own fair life, Like us distracted, and like us unblest. Soon, soon thy cheer would die, Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix'd thy powers, And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made; And then thy glad perennial youth would fade, Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours.

Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles! —As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea, Descried at sunrise an emerging prow Lifting the cool-hair'd creepers stealthily, The fringes of a southward-facing brow Among the Ægæan isles; And saw the merry Grecian coaster come, Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine, Green, bursting figs, and tunnies steep'd in brine— And knew the intruders on his ancient home,

The young light-hearted masters of the waves— And snatch'd his rudder, and shook out more sail; And day and night held on indignantly O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale, Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily, To where the Atlantic raves Outside the western straits; and unbent sails There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam, Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come; And on the beach undid his corded bales.

1888 Edition.

On the Tombs in Westminster

FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

MORTALITY, behold, and fear! What a change of flesh is here!

Think how many royal bones Sleep within this heap of stone: Here they lie had realms and lands, Who now want strength to stir their hands; Where from their pulpits, soil'd with dust, They preach, "In greatness is no trust." Here's an acre sown indeed With the richest royal'st seed, That the earth did e'er suck in Since the first man died for sin: Here the bones of birth have cried, "Though gods they were, as men they died": Here are sands, ignoble things, Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings: Here's a world of pomp and state Buried in dust, once dead by fate.

Dyce's Text.

Lay a garland on my hearse

FRANCIS BEAUMONT AND JOHN FLETCHER.

LAY a garland on my hearse of the dismal yew; Maidens, willow-branches bear; say I died true. My love was false, but I was firm from my hour of birth: Upon my buried body lie lightly, gentle earth!

Dyce's Text.

A Musical Instrument

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

I.

WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan,

Down in the reeds by the river? Spreading ruin and scattering ban, Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat With the dragon-fly on the river?

II.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,

From the deep cool bed of the river. The limpid water turbidly ran, And the broken lilies a-dying lay, And the dragon-fly had fled away, Ere he brought it out of the river.

III.

High on the shore sate the great god Pan,

While turbidly flowed the river, And hacked and hewed as a great god can, With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed To prove it fresh from the river.

IV.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan,

(How tall it stood in the river!) Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, Steadily from the outside ring, Then notched the poor dry empty thing In holes as he sate by the river.

V.

"This is the way," laughed the great god Pan,

(Laughed while he sate by the river!) "The only way since gods began To make sweet music they could succeed." Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, He blew in power by the river.

VI.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan,

Piercing sweet by the river! Blinding sweet, O great god Pan! The sun on the hill forgot to die, And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly Came back to dream on the river.

VII.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan

To laugh, as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man. The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,— For the reed that grows nevermore again As a reed with the reeds in the river.

1860 Edition.

Heap cassia, sandal-buds, and stripes

ROBERT BROWNING.

HEAP cassia, sandal-buds, and stripes Of labdanum, and aloe-balls

Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes From out her hair: (such balsam falls Down sea-side mountain pedestals, From summits where tired winds are fain, Spent with the vast and howling main, To treasure half their island-gain.)

And strew faint sweetness from some old Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud, Which breaks to dust when once unrolled; And shred dim perfume, like a cloud From chamber long to quiet vowed, With mothed and dropping arras hung, Mouldering the lute and books among Of queen, long dead, who lived there young

1841 Edition.

Evelyn Hope

I.

BEAUTIFUL Evelyn Hope is dead!

Sit and watch by her side an hour. That is her book-shelf, this her bed; She plucked that piece of geranium-flower, Beginning to die too, in the glass; Little has yet been changed, I think: The shutters are shut, no light may pass Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink.

II.

Sixteen years old when she died!

Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name;

It was not her time to love; beside, Her life had many a hope and aim, Duties enough and little cares, And now was quiet, now astir, Till God's hand beckoned unawares,— And the sweet white brow is all of her.

III.

Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?

What, your soul was pure and true, The good stars met in your horoscope, Made you of spirit, fire and dew— And, just because I was thrice as old And our paths in the world diverged so wide, Each was nought to each, must I be told? We were fellow mortals, nought beside?

IV.

No, indeed! for God above

Is great to grant, as mighty to make, And creates the love to reward the love: I claim you still, for my own love's sake! Delayed it may be for more lives yet, Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few: Much is to learn, much to forget Ere the time be come for taking you.

V.

But the time will come,—at last it will,

When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say) In the lower earth, in the years long still, That body and soul so pure and gay?

Why your hair was amber, I shall divine, And your mouth of your own geranium's red— And what you would do with me, in fine, In the new life come in the old one's stead.

VI.

I have lived (I shall say) so much since then,

Given up myself so many times, Gained me the gains of various men, Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes; Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope, Either I missed or itself missed me: And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope! What is the issue ? let us see!

VII.

I loved you, Evelyn, all the while.

My heart seemed full as it could hold? There was place and to spare for the frank young smile, And the red young mouth, and the hair's young gold. So, hush, I will give you this leaf to keep: See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand! There, that is our secret: go to sleep! You will wake, and remember, and understand.

Home Thoughts, from Abroad

I.

OH, to be in England

Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England—now!

II.

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover Blossoms and dewdrop—sat the bent spray's edge— That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower —Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

One Way of Love

I.

ALL June I bound the rose in sheaves.

Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves And strew them where Pauline may pass. She will not turn aside? Alas! Let them lie. Suppose they die? The chance was they might take her eye.

II.

How many a month I strove to suit

These stubborn fingers to the lute! To-day I venture all I know. She will not hear my music? So! Break the string; fold music's wing: Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!

III.

My whole life long I learned to love.

This hour my utmost art I prove And speak my passion—heaven or hell? She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well! Lose who may—I still can say, Those who win heaven, blest are they!

In a Year

I.

NEVER any more,

While I live, Need I hope to see his face As before. Once his love grown chill, Mine may strive: Bitterly we re-embrace, Single still.

II.

Was it something said,

Something done,

Vexed him? was it touch of hand, Turn of head? Strange! that very way Love begun: I as little understand Love's decay.

III.

When I sewed or drew,

I recall How he looked as if I sung, —Sweetly too. If I spoke a word, First of all Up his cheek the colour sprung, Then he heard.

IV.

Sitting by my side,

At my feet, So he breathed but air I breathed, Satisfied! I, too, at love's brim Touched the sweet: I would die if death bequeathed Sweet to him.

V.

"Speak, I love thee best!"

He exclaimed: "Let thy love my own foretell!" I confessed:

"Clasp my heart on thine "Now unblamed, "Since upon thy soul as well "Hangeth mine!"

VI.

Was it wrong to own,

Being truth? Why should all the giving prove His alone? I had wealth and ease, Beauty, youth: Since my lover gave me love, I gave these.

VII.

That was all I meant,

—To be just, And the passion I had raised, To content. Since he chose to change Gold for dust, If I gave him what he praised Was it strange?

VIII.

Would he loved me yet,

On and on, While I found some way undreamed —Paid my debt! Gave more life and more, Till, all gone,

He should smile "She never seemed "Mine before.

IX.

"What, she felt the while,

"Must I think? "Love's so different with us men!" He should smile: "Dying for my sake— "White and pink! "Can't we touch these bubbles then "But they break?"

X.

Dear, the pang is brief,

Do thy part, Have thy pleasure! How perplexed Grows belief! Well, this cold clay clod Was man's heart: Crumble it, and what comes next? Is it God?

1896 Edition.

O, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast

ROBERT BURNS.

I.

O, WERT thou in the cauld blast

On yonder lea, on yonder lea, My plaidie to the angry airt, I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee.

Or did Misfortune's bitter storms Around thee blaw, around thee blaw, Thy bield should be my bosom, To share it a', to share it a'.

II.

Or were I in the wildest waste,

Sae black and bare, sae black and bare,. The desert were a Paradise, If thou wert there, if thou wert there. Or were I monarch of the globe, Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign, The brightest jewel in my crown Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.

How Lang and Dreary is the Night

Chorus.

For O, her lanely nights are lang,

And O, her dreams are eerie, And O, her widow'd heart is sair, That's absent frae her dearie!

I.

HOW lang and dreary is the night,

When I am frae my dearie! I restless lie frae e'en to morn, Tho' I were ne'er sae weary.

II.

When I think on the lightsome days

I spent wi' thee, my dearie,

And now what seas between us roar, How can I be but eerie?

III.