by John Buchan
And a worn old blade that swung at his side.
But he hated Spaniards terribillee, —
And the Almiranty of Santa Fee.
The Almiranty of Santa Fee
Had a laughing lady, fair and free,
Gold in chest and wine in keg,
And pearls as big as a pigeon’s egg;
And crosses and jewels so rare to see,
Had the Almiranty of Santa Fee.
Now Dickon came in with the wind, came he,
And burned the castle of Santa Fee,
Slew the guards and rifled the chests,
And tossed the guns to the sea-birds’ nests;
And he said to the dame, “Will ye come with me,
Or bide in the ashes of Santa Fee?”
Then up and spoke the lady free,
“It’s out of this prison I fain would be.
For I am of England, bred and bom,
And I hold all yellow-faced Dons in scorn.” —
“Oh, a widowed man this day I be!”
Quo’ the Almiranty of Santa Fee.”
The Shorter Catechism
1911
When I was young and herdit sheep,
I read auld tales o’ Wallace wight;
My heid was fou o’ sangs and threip
O’folk that feared nae mortal might.
But noo I’m auld and weel I ken
We’re made alike o’ gowd and mire;
There’s saft bits in the stievest men
The bairnliest’s got a spunk o’ fire.
Sae hearken to me, lads,
It’s truith that I tell; —
There’s nae man a’ courage —
I ken by mysel’.
I’ve been an elder forty year,
I’ve tried to keep the narrow way,
I’ve walked afore the Lord in fear,
I’ve never missed the kirk a day
I’ve read the Bible in and oot,
I ken the feck o’t clean by hert; —
But still and on I sair misdoot
I’m better noo than at the stert.
Sae hearken to me, lads,
It’s truith I maintain! —
Man’s works are but rags, for
I ken by my ain.
I hae a name for dacent trade;
I’ll wager a’ the countryside
Wad swear nae trustier man was made
The ford to soom, the bent to bide.
But when it comes to coupin’ horse
I’m just like a’ that e’re were bom,
I fling my heels and tak my course —
I’d sell the minister in the morn.
Sae hearken to me, lads,
It’s truith that I tell; —
There’s nae man deid honest —
I ken by mysel.
Fratri Dilectissimo
1912
When we were little wandering boys,
And every hill was blue and high,
On ballad ways and martial joys
We fed our fancies, you and I.
With Bruce we crouched in bracken shade,
With Douglas charged the Paynim foes;
And oft in moorland noons I played
Colkitto to your grave Montrose.
The obliterating seasons flow —
They cannot kill our boyish game.
Though creeds may change and kings may go,
Yet burns undimmed the ancient flame.
While young men in their pride make haste
The wrong to right, the bond to free,
And plant a garden in the waste,
Still rides our Scottish chivalry.
Another end had held your dream —
To die fulfilled of hope and might,
To pass in one swift rapturous gleam
From mortal to immortal light —
But through long hours of labouring breath
You watched the world grow small and far,
And met the constant eyes of Death
And haply knew how kind they are.
One boon the Fates relenting gave —
Not where the scented hill-wind blows
From cedar thickets lies your grave,
Nor ‘mid the steep Himalayan snows.
Night calls the stragglers to the nest,
And at long last ‘tis home indeed
For your far-wandering feet to rest
Forever by the crooks of Tweed.
In perfect honour, perfect truth,
And gentleness to all mankind,
You trod the golden paths of youth,
Then left the world and youth behind.
Ah no. ‘Tis we who fade and fail —
And you from Time’s slow torments free
Shall pass from strength to strength and scale
The steeps of immortality.
Dear heart, in that serener air,
If blessed souls may backward gaze,
Some slender nook of memory spare
For our old happy moorland days.
I sit alone, and musing fills
My breast with pain that shall not die,
Till once again o’er greener hills
We ride together, you and I.
In Peebles Churchyard
1912
Here by the Tower the mossy headstones lean,
Circled with haggard elms, and the pale sun
With mists begarmented moves down the steep
To wet the wintry even; day is done.
And I am left alone with those who sleep
Beneath the turf still green,
And the dear dust of him who asked no more
Than that his rest in such a shade might be,
Lulled by the river murmering on its shore,
And girdled by the hills’ eternity.
Not unattended sleeps he, for around
His kinsfolk keep their ageless company —
Mother and Father and that generous heart
Who dying left an ache that cannot die:
Whose ardour lit the world, and seemed a part
Of this song-haunted ground.
Ah, lost too soon! how trivial life had grown
When those kind eyes were dimmed, that ardent gaze!
A brother comes; no more thou sleepst alone:
Comrades again as in old boyish days.
The twilight thickens. Now the mountain lines
Dislimn in night; below, from crooked street,
The lights of hearth and casement ope their eyes,
The homeward summons to the wandering feet.
All home in the evening, all save him who lies
Where never firelight shines.
He sleeps companioned by the fitful stars,
The lone hill winds their ancient comforts bring,
And the white moon peeps through her cloudy bars,
And the wild birds sweep o’er him whispering.
There is no sorrow in so quiet a home:
He hath returned to his own kindly earth.
To him the Mighty Mother gave the key
That wins the riches of her toil and mirth —
The tranced ear to list, the eye to see.
It was his joy to roam,
In March’s pride, in the long July days,
By windy hill, at even and at mom,
And learn the secret of the mystic ways
That God hath walked ere the first dawn was bom.
For as an islander in city’s glare
Bears in his ear the sound of surf and sea,
And hears the tern call o’er the noisy throng,
So cherished he his happy mystery.
In the dull round of toil his heart was strong,
Lit by the vision fair.
Ever the cool winds blew upon his face,
The smoke and squalor vanished, and his eyes
Found on his own green hills a resting-place,
And saw St Mary’s mirror the calm skies.
He loved all chan
ges that the seasons bring;
Enough for him the homely natural joys;
The wayside flower, the heath-clad mountain rift,
The ferny woodland, were his favoured choice.
Each year with grateful heart he hailed the gift,
The princely gift of Spring.
Not as the thankless world that takes God’s boon
With blinded soul on trivial cares intent,
To him heaven shone in every summer noon,
And every morning was a sacrament.
He loved old ways. The paths of lost romance
Beckoned his steps from many a misty glen.
The long-forgotten voices filled his ear
Of kings now dust and their tall mail-clad men.
Old rimes and pastoral tales to him were dear;
He saw the Good Folk dance.
For, as the sun ennobles and makes rare
Even common things, so in the gentle ray
Of his clear soul all the wide earth was fair,
And pallid morrows brightened to mid-day.
And yet his lot was hard and drear and strait,
Doing the King’s work through the unfeatured years.
He tasted deep of sorrow; loss and death
Brought to his table their full cup of tears.
He knew the ingratitude and envy’s breath
And men’s unthinking hate.
They touched him little; when the sun is high
Ill-omened fogs and vapours shrink and cease;
The aches and frailties of mortality
Dissolved in the great noontide of his peace.
That did r-ot come from Nature. She can soothe
And charm her lover, but her spell is brief.
Hers is the opiate, but she knows no cure
For the contagion of our mortal grief.
Not hers to heal the maimed, the foul make pure,
And the hard high-way smoothe.
For her the young, the joyful, and the strong;
She has no pity for weak souls that crave;
She rules the seasons, gives the birds their song,
And swells the buds — but man she cannot save.
From the deep fountain of Eternal love
He drew his faith that pitieth all mankind,
As some great stream, which eddieth not nor breaks
From its sheer depth and volume. Ever his mind
Was clear and shadowless like mountain lakes
Where pure skies dream above.
The barren doubts, the little fears that gnaw,
Were solved by deeds and duties, wars to wage
On sin and folly and sorrow. Life he saw
Not as a school but as a pilgrimage.
And, as in Bunyan’s tale, he trod the path
From the low lands to the Celestial Town,
No faint-heart Christian, racked with doubts and tears,
Dreading the tempter’s lure, the giant’s frown,
With his own soul concerned, the sport of fears,
The cynosure of wrath.
But rather as a Greatheart led the pilgrim band,
Careless of self he toiled to ease the way
For tired limbs, and his strong guiding hand
Made of the desert steeps a holy-day.
He was the Interpreter to untrustful souls;
The weary feet he led into the cool
Soft plain called Ease; he gave the faint to drink;
Dull hearts he brought to the House Beautiful.
The timorous knew his heartening on the brink
Where the dark River rolls.
He drew men from the town of Vanity
Past Demas’ mine and Castle Doubting’s towers,
To the green hills where the wise Shepherds be
And Zion’s songs are crooned among the flowers.
An endless benediction were his days,
Fulfdled with peace — the glad content of those
Who find a Sabbath stillness in the noise
And in our fevered night the soul’s repose;
His were the hidden springs, the secret joys,
Bom of the Holy Place.
From wells of living water streams he drew
To cool the air and wet the parched sod;
And make Heaven’s garden, bright with dawn and dew,
For all the haggard world that strives with God.
Honour and praise he asked not; fame i’the sun
Ne’er vexed his thought; nay, even the City of Gold
He would forego if haply, by his loss,
His wearied sheep might safely come to fold.
He was content to hold the world as dross,
And thereby all things won.
Toiling he found the balm nought mortal yields;
He drew from poverty fullness, joy from pain;
Scattering full-handed, reaped the ample fields;
To him to live was Christ — to die was gain.
Beneath this wintry ground lies many a seed
Hid deep in darkness from the beleaguering air,
Salvage of flowers from autumn’s winnowing —
A woeful change from what was once most fair.
But through the nursing earth run fires of spring,
And in the seasons’ need
Dead things will rise to deck the summer’s pride,
There wintry prelude past, their birth-pangs o’er,
As the black night prepares for morning-tide.
And the dim threshold for the radiant door.
Within the porches of immortal joys
He sleeps a little while — a short, brief hour.
Not as this gloaming, harsh with rain and storm,
Closed his life’s day; in him the natural power
Was scarce abated, still the blood ran warm —
His heart a hopeful boy’s.
The ford was shallow, and full low the stream,
And happy was the soul that journeyed o’er.
Almost the watchers caught the welcoming gleam,
And saw the Shining Ones that thronged the shore.
Even as some day in the mid-summer’s prime
Moves with soft tread from the high thrones of dawn;
In the clear air man goes with lightsome feet;
New hay and clover scent each upland lawn,
Rivers are bright with flags and meadow-sweet,
The hills a-blow with thyme.
Dusk comes, the woods grow silent, the songs die;
Yet scarce one hour is mute in field and thorn;
For ere the red has left the western sky,
The east is tremulous with the happier mom.
The Eternal Feminine
1912
When I was a freckled bit bairn
And cam in frae my ploys to the fire,
Wi’ my buits a’ clamjamphried wi’ shaim
And my jaicket a’ speldered’ wi’ mire,
I got gloomin’ and glunchin’ and paiks,
And nae bite frae the press or the pan,
And my auld grannie said as she skelped me to bed,
“Hech, sirs, what a burden is man!”
When I was a lang-leggit lad,
At waddin’s and kirns a gey cheild,
I happit a lass in my maud
And gone cauldrife that she micht hae beild,
And convoyed her bye bogles and stirks,
A kiss at the hindmost my plan;
But a’ that I fand was the wecht o’ her hand,
And “Hech, sirs, what a burden is man!”
When Ailie and me were made yin
We set up a canty bit cot;
Sair wrocht we day oot and day in,
We were unco content wi’ oor lot.
But whiles wi’ a neebor I’d tak
A gless that my heid couldna’ stan’;
Syne she’d greet for a week, and nae a word wad she speak
But “Hech, sirs, what a burden is man!”
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She dee’d, and my dochter and me
For the lave wi’ ilk ither maun shift.
Nae tentier lass could ye see;
The wooers cam doun like a drift;
But sune wi’an unco blae glower
Frae the doorstep they rade and they ran,
And she’d sigh to hersel’, as she gae’d to the well,
“Hech, sirs, what a burden is man!”
She’s mairrit by noo and she’s got
A white-heided lass o’ her ain.
White-heided mysel, as I stot
Roond the doors o’her shouther I’m fain.
What think ye that wean said yestreen?
I’ll tell ye, believe’t if ye can;
She primmed up her mou’ and said saft as a doo,
“Hech, sirs, what a burden is man!”
Plain Folk
1912
Since flaming angels drove our sire
From Eden’s green to walk the mire,
We are the folk who tilled the plot
And ground the grain and boiled the pot.
We hung the garden terraces
That pleasured Queen Semiramis.
Our toil it was and burdened brain
That set the Pyramids o’er the plain.
We marched from Egypt at God’s call
And drilled the ranks and fed them all;
But never Eshcol’s wine drank we —
Our bones lay ‘twixt the sand and sea.
We officered the brazen bands
That rode the far and desert lands;
We bore the Roman eagles forth
And made great roads from south to north;
White cities flowered for holiday,
But we, forgot, died far away.
And when the Lord called folk to Him,
And some sat blissful at His feet,
Ours was the task the bowl to brim,
For on this earth even saints must eat.
The serfs have little need to think,
Only to work and sleep and drink;
A rover’s life is boyish play,
For when cares press he rides away;
The king sits on his ruby throne,
And calls the whole wide world his own.
But we, the plain folk, noon and night
