Chapter I: LOVE not the wine-cup, but if thou art fain

I should drink, do thou taste it, and bring it to me;
If it touch but thy lips it were hard to refrain,
It were hard from the sweet maid who bears it to flee;
For the cup ferries over the kisses, and plain
Does it speak of the grace that was given it by thee.

ON THE GARLAND SENT TO RHODOCLEIA

RUFINUS

GOLDEN EYES

‘AH, Golden Eyes, to win you yet,
I bring mine April coronet,
The lovely blossoms of the spring,
For you I weave, to you I bring
These roses with the lilies set,
The dewy dark-eyed violet,
Narcissus, and the wind-flower wet:
Wilt thou disdain mine offering?
Ah, Golden Eyes!

Crowned with thy lover’s flowers, forget
The pride wherein thy heart is set,
For thou, like these or anything,
Has but a moment of thy spring,
Thy spring, and then—the long regret!
Ah, Golden Eyes!’

A GALLOWAY GARLAND

WE know not, on these hills of ours,
The fabled asphodel of Greece,
That filleth with immortal flowers
Fields where the heroes are at peace!
Not ours are myrtle buds like these
That breathe o’er isles where memories dwell
Of Sappho, in enchanted seas!

We meet not, on our upland moor,
The singing Maid of Helicon,
You may not hear her music pure
Float on the mountain meres withdrawn;
The Muse of Greece, the Muse is gone!
But we have songs that please us well
And flowers we love to look upon.

More sweet than Southern myrtles far
The bruised Marsh-myrtle breatheth keen;
Parnassus names the flower, the star,
That shines among the well-heads green
The bright Marsh-asphodels between—
Marsh-myrtle and Marsh-asphodel
May crown the Northern Muse a queen

CELIA’S EYES

PASTICHE

TELL me not that babies dwell
In the deeps of Celia’s eyes;
Cupid in each hazel well
Scans his beauties with surprise,
And would, like Narcissus, drown
In my Celia’s eyes of brown.

Tell me not that any goes
Safe by that enchanted place;
Eros dwells with Anteros
In the garden of her Face,
Where like friends who late were foes
Meet the white and crimson Rose.

BRITANNIA

FROM JULES LEMAÎTRE

THY mouth is fresh as cherries on the bough,
Red cherries in the dawning, and more white
Than milk or white camellias is thy brow;
And as the golden corn thy hair is bright,
The corn that drinks the Sun’s less fair than thou;
While through thine eyes the child-soul gazeth now—
Eyes like the flower that was Rousseau’s delight.

Sister of sad Ophelia, say, shall these
Thy pearly teeth grow like piano keys
Yellow and long; while thou, all skin and bone,
Angles and morals, in a sky-blue veil,
Shalt hosts of children to the sermon hale,
Blare hymns, read chapters, backbite, and intone?

GALLIA

LADY, lady neat
Of the roguish eye,
Wherefore dost thou hie,
Stealthy, down the street,
On well-booted feet?
From French novels I
Gather that you fly,
Guy or Jules to meet.

Furtive dost thou range,
Oft thy cab dost change;
So, at least, ’tis said:
Oh, the sad old tale
Passionately stale,
We’ve so often read!

THE FAIRY MINISTER

The Rev. Mr. Kirk of Aberfoyle was carried away by the Fairies in 1692.

PEOPLE of Peace! a peaceful man,
Well worthy of your love was he,
Who, while the roaring Garry ran
Red with the life-blood of Dundee,
While coats were turning, crowns were falling,
Wandered along his valley still,
And heard your mystic voices calling
From fairy knowe and haunted hill.
He heard, he saw, he knew too well
The secrets of your fairy clan;
You stole him from the haunted dell,
Who never more was seen of man.
Now far from heaven, and safe from hell,
Unknown of earth, he wanders free.
Would that he might return and tell
Of his mysterious Company!
For we have tired the Folk of Peace;
No more they tax our corn and oil;
Their dances on the moorland cease,
The Brownie stints his wonted toil.
No more shall any shepherd meet
The ladies of the fairy clan,
Nor are their deathly kisses sweet
On lips of any earthly man.
And half I envy him who now,
Clothed in her Court’s enchanted green,
By moonlit loch or mountain’s brow
Is Chaplain to the Fairy Queen.

TO ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

WITH KIRK’S ‘SECRET COMMONWEALTH’

O LOUIS! you that like them maist,
Ye’re far frae kelpie, wraith, and ghaist,
And fairy dames, no unco chaste,
And haunted cell.
Among a heathen clan ye’re placed,
That kensna hell!

Ye hae nae heather, peat, nor birks,
Nae trout in a’ yer burnies lurks,
There are nae bonny U.P. kirks,
An awfu’ place!
Nane kens the Covenant o’ Works
Frae that o’ Grace!

But whiles, maybe, to them ye’ll read
Blads o’ the Covenanting creed,
And whiles their pagan wames ye’ll feed
On halesome parritch;
And syne ye’ll gar them learn a screed
O’ the Shorter Carritch.

Yet thae uncovenanted shavers
Hae rowth, ye say, o’ clash and clavers
O’ gods and etins—auld wives’ havers,
But their delight;
The voice o’ him that tells them quavers
Just wi’ fair fright.

And ye might tell, ayont the faem,
Thae Hieland clashes o’ our hame
To speak the truth, I takna shame
To half believe them;
And, stamped wi’ _Tusitala’s_ name,
They’ll a’ receive them.

And folk to come ayont the sea
May hear the yowl o’ the Banshie,
And frae the water-kelpie flee,
Ere a’ things cease,
And island bairns may stolen be
By the Folk o’ Peace.

FOR MARK TWAIN’S JUBILEE

TO brave Mark Twain, across the sea,
The years have brought his jubilee;
One hears it half with pain,
That fifty years have passed and gone
Since danced the merry star that shone
Above the babe, Mark Twain!

How many and many a weary day,
When sad enough were we, ‘Mark’s way’
(Unlike the Laureate’s Mark’s)
Has made us laugh until we cried,
And, sinking back exhausted, sighed,
Like Gargery, _Wot larx_!

We turn his pages, and we see
The Mississippi flowing free;
We turn again, and grin
O’er all _Tom Sawyer_ did and planned,
With him of the Ensanguined Hand,
With _Huckleberry Finn_!

Spirit of mirth, whose chime of bells
Shakes on his cap, and sweetly swells
Across the Atlantic main,
Grant that Mark’s laughter never die,
That men, through many a century,
May chuckle o’er Mark Twain!

III POEMS WRITTEN UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF WORDSWORTH

MIST

MIST, though I love thee not, who puttest down
Trout in the Lochs, (they feed not, as a rule,
At least on fly, in mere or river-pool
When fogs have fallen, and the air is lown,
And on each Ben, a pillow not a crown,
The fat folds rest,) thou, Mist, hast power to cool
The blatant declamations of the fool
Who raves reciting through the heather brown.

Much do I bar the matron, man, or lass
Who cries ‘How lovely!’ and who does not spare
When light and shadow on the mountain pass,—
Shadow and light, and gleams exceeding fair,
O’er rock, and glade, and glen,—to shout, the Ass,
To me, to me the Poet, ‘Oh, look there!’

LINES

Written under the influence of Wordsworth, with a slate-pencil on a window of the dining-room at the Lowood Hotel, Windermere, while waiting for tea, after being present at the Grasmere Sports on a very wet day, and in consequence of a recent perusal of _Belinda_, a Novel, by Miss Broughton, whose absence is regretted.

HOW solemn is the front of this Hotel,
When now the hills are swathed in modest mist,
And none can speak of scenery, nor tell
Of ‘tints of amber,’ or of ‘amethyst.’
Here once thy daughters, young Romance, did dwell,
Here _Sara_ flirted with whoever list,
_Belinda_ loved not wisely but too well,
And _Mr. Ford_ played the Philologist!
Haunted the house is, and the balcony
Where that fond Matron knew her Lover near,
And here we sit, and wait for tea, and sigh,
While the sad rain sobs in the sullen mere,
And all our hearts go forth into the cry,
Would that the teller of the tale were here!

LINES

Written on the window pane of a railway carriage after reading an advertisement of sunlight soap, and _Poems_, by William Wordsworth.