by John Buchan
Tired dusty feet and threadbare gown,
And face sun-browned as autumn beech
With wandering through the Attic town.
Marcus Aurelius
O thou my Soul, thou lord of many mansions,
Who art my life, and all earth’s joy to me,
Haste with swift wing from forth thy dim expansions;
Make thou me free.
Grant me this gift, I pray thee, O my master,
For which I yearn as seeker for the sought,
More rare than gold, more fair than alabaster, —
One perfect thought,
Strong with the strength of masterful endeavour,
Rich with exceeding wealth divinely given,
And fair as waters where the pale stars quiver,
And high as Heaven.
Hereafter
We know not now, but we shall know
Hereafter, in a clear-day,
The things untold, the mystic way
Which God hath walked from long ago;
The secrets of the silent skies,
The love, the immemorial strength;
Then shall we know the breadth, the length,
The truth of the philosophies.
From men long kept shall open be
The hidden things of death and birth,
The wonders of the glad, green earth,
The mysteries of the old, gray sea.
And life’s long tale of good and ill,
The fancies which the poets sing;
Why flutes the mavis in the Spring,
How pipes the linnet on the hill.
But chief for thee, dear heart, I long,
Dear heart, long lost, again to hear
Thy sweet voice mellow in mine ear,
Like echo of an ancient song.
On a Portrait of the Hon. Mrs Graham by Gainsborough
Tall and stately there thou standest, looking as in days of old,
When the painter on his canvas drew those glowing locks of gold,
Dressed in quaintest, richest fashion, in the style of long ago,
With thy flounces of white satin and thy lace of Iacotot.
Beautiful thou art and haughty, with a royal head and eye,
Standing by the pillared sailing, ‘neath a grey and dusky sky.
All around are woodlands shady. Shadow dark thy beauty frames;
Thou thyself the fairest lady in an age of noble dames.
Well we know thy mournful story, of the passing of thy bloom,
How thy husband’s heart and pleasures lay beside thee in the tomb;
ow, pacing ever through the hall,
And in grief for thee his lost love turned thy picture to the wall.
How he raised his clan, and, eager, sought the battle’s hottest fray,
Stoutly warred, and at Barossa won the honour of the day.
Years have gone and they have found thee, scarcely dimmed by dust and time,
Bright and radiant still, fair-coloured, glorying in thy beauty’s prime.
Men and women, all have perished; gone the painter, too, forsooth;
But his handiwork, thy picture, liveth in immortal youth.
Still thou standest, haughty, stately, on thy cheek a rosy glow,
With thy flounces of white satin and thy lace of Iacotot.
The Dead Scholar
One told me, Heraclitus, of thy fate;
I wept, and minded me how oft we twain
Had held high converse till the day was late,
And the broad sun was setting with his train.
And thou art ashes long and long ago,
O Halicarnian; but thy deathless band
Of nightingales shall live for evermore.
No Death can lay on them his plundering hand.
The Orchard
Anth. Pal. IX. 314.
I, Hermes, stand by the windy ways, by the orchard, nigh
The gray shore of the sea.
Rest I give to the wearied man, to the passer-by,
And water cold and free.
Erinna
(Leonidas of Tarentum)
Anth. Pal. VII. 13.
The maid Erinna, child among the old,
The bee who sucked from flowers the Muse’s breath,
Death snatched for marriage, and the maiden bold
Spake wisely, “Thou art curious, O Death.”
Spring and Death
‘Solvitur aeris heimo’ etc.
(Hor.)
The Spring returns, the West Winds blow;
Across the foam the vessels go;
No more the cattle seek the byre;
The farmer leaves his winter fire;
The hoar frost rimes the field with snow.
Around thy brow the myrtle throw,
For Graces trip it to and fro,
And Cytherea leads her choir,
When Spring returns.
Death comes alike to high and low;
Our hopes are riven ere we know.
To-day beholds thee strike the lyre,
Another mom may see the pyre.
Ah! Never in the realms below
Will Spring return.
Trioleto
I
I quite agree with you, my friend
‘ Tis but an idle triolet;
Of making which there is no end;
I quite agree with you, my friend,
Tis wrong my time to verse to lend
Which every rule doth violate.
I quite agree with you, my friend,
‘Tis but an idle triolet.
II
The rain is over and gone,
The mist has left the hill;
Bright the sun hath shone,
The rain is over and gone;
But put your greatcoat on;
The evening air is chill.
The rain is over and gone,
The mist hath left the hill.
III
If fairy tunes were fairy gold;
Then, ah, how rich we bards would be;
For then by every wood and wold,
If fairy tunes were fairy gold,
We’d gather treasures manifold.
A happy time for you and me!
If fairy tunes were fairy gold,
Then, ah! how rich we bards would be.
In Glen Eaisdale
In the September days’ late afternoon
The skies above are blue and cold and still;
The glen is sleeping with its heath and hill;
In the black pinewoods low the pigeons croon.
Ah would that man could learn the heavenly tune
Of silence and the peace that quiet begets,
And in the market-place of thousand frets
Read the quaint writ of this forgotten rune.
For soon we pass with all our work undone,
Our silver and our houses are as nought;
Our raiment and apparel which we wrought
With toil and trouble ere our sands were run,
But still the breeze with honey-scents is fraught,
And o’er the midmost mountain shines the sun.
A Moorland Ballade
Up on the hills when the wind is free,
And the strong air glows like a draught of wine,
And the royal sun glints merrily
Over the heather and woods of pine,
I envy thee not the woodlands thine,
Thy sleepy rivers and meadows gay;
Keep thy roses and eglantine,
But give, oh give me the moorlands gray.
Then doth the heart grow high with glee
When the hill bees hum in the blithe sunshine.
Cares of the past and the things to be
Pass like ships on the swift-waved brine.
Some men love the olive and vine,
Some the plains and the dusty way,
Some the fields of the large-eyed kine,
But give, oh give me the moorland
s gray.
Fair are the brackens and tenderly
Scents of thyme and heather combine;
Fairer far than the clover lea,
Ivies over the boulders twine.
Here alone in the hills divine,
Care and weariness pass away;
Grant me this boon, Ye Muses Nine,
Give, oh give me the moorlands gray.
Lands and houses and raiment fine,
What are they but a vain display?
Gladly I all to others resign,
But give, oh give me the moorlands gray.
On a Certain Affected Obscurity of Style
Some men there are who love not simple speech,
But needs must wrap their truth in clouds of dust,
Weakening the terror of their strong sword’s thrust
With mail of nothingness; for still they reach
And blindly aim and toil and fight and teach,
With half their work undone, for half doth seem
But as the fitful phasing of a dream
Or the light wave-foam on a sanded beach.
For better sure the white, pellucid page
Of courtly Sidney, or the majestic calm
Of the sweet dreamer, or the noble rage
Of Milton and the quaint-turned phrase of Lamb;
Or the strong words clear borne across the age
From the wise mouth of great-browed Verulam.
Autumn
O daughter of the fading gold,
Crowned with sere leaves and berries red,
Thou comest when the year is old.
Let all thy sober charms be told,
Thy stately form, thy wreathéd head,
O daughter of the fading gold.
Red russet robes thy breasts enfold,
By thee the harvest feast is spread;
Thou comest when the year is old.
Thine are the fruits in field and wold,
In orchard close and garden bed,
O daughter of the fading gold.
The woods grow bare; the nights are cold;
The skies are dark; the flowers are dead,
Thou comest when the year is old.
But still to thee let hymns be rolled,
And white steers to the altar led.
0 — daughter of the fading gold,
Thou comest when the year is old.
An Autumn Picture
As here I sit this languid Autumn day,
Before me stretch great shores of sunset leaves,
Crowning the gaunt boughs ere the wind bereaves
The woods of these, the lingering leaves of May.
Crimson and golden in a death display
Bright flare the blossoms of the falling year.
Now gone the green of beech, and cold and sere
The yielding hazel. All the skies are gray.
High from the wild woods stretch the upland spaces,
Brown is the bent and cumbered with dead bloom;
No cheerful song of lark the moorland thrills;
But dim and distant gleam the mountain places,
And, hovering half in daylight and in gloom,
The clear October shadows fold the hills.
The Snow Queen
I saw the Snow Queen in her chariot fare,
Drawn by twin steeds, clean-limbed and vigorous.
Full well she drove, most swift and valorous
Through the gray storm-clouds and the rustling air.
All robed in furs of ermine and of vair,
Whence shone the blossom of her starlike face,
Crowned with the wreathing of her golden grace,
The weird, unutterable beauty of her hair.
And well I know that ill befalls the wight
Who seeks her love and with her followeth;
For she with her fell witchery shall him smite,
And freeze his heart’s blood with her frosty breath.
For, though her beauty be most rare and bright,
Her kiss is mortal as the embrace of Death.
The Norus
I saw the fair hall by the holy well,
Hard by the shadow of the sacred tree
Yggdrasil, where the worm gnaws endlessly,
And whose one root extendeth down to Hell;
Wherein the maids, men call the Norus, do dwell,
Who draw the living water day by day,
And strew the ash-boughs with the healing clay,
Who shape the lives of man and damosel.
The elder Urd, sat high and dark and old,
With guise of one whose day is finishéd;
In midst Verdandi, chill and wintry cold,
Clear-faced as ice and girt with death and dread;
While skuld apart, though all in duck enfold,
Had a dim aureole circling o’er her head.
Death
Why should a brave man fear the warrior Death,
Who cometh girt as strong man for the fray,
O’er the hilltops when the skies are gray,
Ere the fair sunrise comes, he hasteneth.
And all green things are withered at his breath.
He with clear voice and welcome words doth say,
‘Thy time hath come, rise, let us haste away’,
And o’er the mountains back he followeth.
While men of sinking faith and courage small
He guides by dismal alley and hard way,
By dark woodpath where never sunbeams fall,
Men of stout heart, to whom the world is fair,
With no sick soul nor any weary day,
Pass o’er the mountains in the cool, bright air.
Kyrielle
Down in the valley the sun is bright;
Hollows glow in the Autumn light;
But ever we dream of a brighter day
Over the Hills and faraway.
Fair are the lawns and woodlands deep,
Pastures sunk in a Summers sleep;
But we know of happier sights than they
Over the Hills and faraway.
Skies with never an angry cloud,
Woods where never the wind pipes loud,
Meadows peopled by faun and fay
Over the Hills and faraway.
And thus from Dawning unto Dark,
From the evensong to the early lark,
Siren whisperings ever say
Over the Hills and faraway.
Giordano Bruno
Oh, to have lived in thy triumphant time,
When ‘mid the gloom and ruin of outworn creed,
And snarling churchmen and the felon breed
Of monks apostate, and the lust of crime,
Thou grandly held’st thy head erect, sublime;
With some few brothers sought a better home,
And dashed the gauntlet in the face of Rome,
And died ere yet the passing of thy prime.
Oh, that with thee I had had the strength to stand,
Serene, unconquerable, still reaching higher,
With some fair vision of a mystic land
Before mine eyes to which I should aspire;
And, o’er the shouting of the rabble band
Follow to freedom, even through the fire.
The Song of all Seasons
Blue the sky and gray the hill,
Pan is singing, Pan is playing,
Up and down the vale at will
Lad and lasses go a-maying.
Shy cuckoo and throstle gay
By the bank and brake are winging,
All the world has gone to play,
Pan is piping, Pan is singing.
Waters sleep and woods are green,
Pan is singing, Pan is playing,
Bud and leaf and bloom between
List Sir Poet lackadaying.
Morning gold and evening red,
Summer at our feet is flinging
Who is not a-wander led?
Pan is piping, P
an is singing.
Nuts a-tremble in the wood,
Pan is singing, Pan is playing,
In the mountain solitude
Heath and heather fair arraying;
Golden sheaf and russet fruit
Men into their stores are bringing,
Woods are silent, birds are mute
Pan is piping, Pan is singing.
Still the world beneath the snow,
Pan is singing, Pan is playing,
By the wood does winter go
On the streams his sceptre laying;
Though the earth be chill and cold,
Though no bard his lyre is stringing,
Still across the wintry wold
Pan is piping, Pan is singing.
The Ballad of Gideon Scott
Oh, ye may ride by the Annan side,
Up the dale and down;
South ye may go to the Solway Flow,
And North to Moffat town.
But fare not near, if the ford ye fear,
And the pains of death ye dread;
Yea, ride as well to the gate of Hell
As the moors of Erickstanehead.
Gideon Scott was a reiver bold,
And fray was his delight;
No man could dare on the Border fair
To meet with him in fight.
