I listen'd till I had my fill;

And as I mounted up the hill
The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more.

W. Wordsworth

* 31 *

NEW AND OLD

GLAD sight, wherever new with old
Is join'd through some dear homeborn tie;
The life of all that we behold

Depends upon that mystery.

Vain is the glory of the sky,

The beauty vain of field and grove,
Unless, while with admiring eye
We gaze, we also learn to love.

THE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying;

And the year

On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,

Is lying.

Come, Months, come away,

From November to May,

In your saddest array,—
Follow the bier

Of the dead cold year,

And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

8 array, dress

11 sepulchre, tomb

The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling, For the year;

The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each

gone

To his dwelling.

Come, Months, come away;

Put on white, black, and gray;
Let your light sisters play;

Ye, follow the bier

Of the dead cold year,

And make her grave green with tear on tear.

*

33*

THE COUNTRYMAN

P. B. Shelley

WHAT pleasures have great princes
More dainty to their choice,
Than herdmen wild, who careless
In quiet life rejoice;

And fortune's favours scorning,
Sing sweet in summer morning.

All day their flocks each tendeth;
At night they take their rest ;
More quiet than who sendeth
His ship into the east,
Where gold and pearl are plenty,
But getting very dainty.

For lawyers and their pleading,
They 'steem it not a straw :—
They think that honest meaning
Is of itself a law:

Where conscience judgeth plainly,
They spend no money vainly.

O happy who thus liveth,

Not caring much for gold;
With clothing, which sufficeth
To keep him from the cold :-
Though poor and plain his diet,
Yet merry it is and quiet.

TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY

WEE, modest, crinrson-tippéd flower,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stour
Thy slender stem;

To spare thee now is past my power,
Thou bonnie gem.

Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet,
The bonnie lark, companion meet!
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet
Wi' spreckled breast,

Unknown

When upward springing, blythe, to greet
The purpling east.

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north
Upon thy early, humble, birth;

Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm;

Scarce rear'd above the parent earth
Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield
High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield,
But thou beneath the random bield

12 purpling, at dawn

7 no, not neebor, neighbour 10 spreckled, speckled 15 glinted, glanced

20 wa's, walls 21 bield, shelter 23 histie, dry: stibble, stubble

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawy bosom sunward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
In humble guise ;

But now the share uptears thy bed,

And low thou lies!

R. Burns

* 35 *

THE WHIRL-BLAST

A WHIRL-BLAST from behind the hill
Rush'd o'er the wood with startling sound;
Then-all at once the air was still,

And showers of hailstones patter'd round.
Where leafless oaks tower'd high above,
I sat within an undergrove

Of tallest hollies, tall and green;
A fairer bower was never seen.
From year to year the spacious floor
With wither'd leaves is cover'd o'er,

And all the year the bower is green ;
But see! where'er the hailstones drop
The wither'd leaves all skip and hop;
There's not a breeze-no breath of air-
Yet here, and there, and every where
Along the floor, beneath the shade
By those embowering hollies made,
The leaves in myriads jump and spring,
As if with pipes and music rare
Some Robin Goodfellow were there,
And all those leaves, in festive glee,
Were dancing to the minstrelsy.

27 unassuming, modest

20 Robin Goodfellow, a fairy

W. Wordsworth

28 guise, manner

22 minstrelsy, music

*36

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.

* 37 *

W. Shakespeare

JOCK OF HAZELDEAN

'WHY weep ye by the tide, ladie ?
'Why weep ye by the tide ?
'I'll wed ye to my youngest son,

'And ye

sall be his bride :

‘And ye sall be his bride, ladie,

But aye she loot the tears down fa’

For Jock of Hazeldean.

9 keel, skim

I saw, speech

14 crabs, wild apples

7 loot, let: fa' fall