Oh! while my brother with me played,
Would I had loved him more!"

FELICIA HEMANS

53

THE POPLAR FIELD

THE poplars are felled; farewell to the shade
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade;
The winds play no more and sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.

Twelve years have elapsed since I first took a view
Of my favourite field, and the bank where they grew;
And now in the grass below they are laid,

And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade.

The blackbird has fled to another retreat
Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat,
And the scene where his melody charmed me before
Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more.

My fugitive years are all hasting away,
And I must ere long lie as lowly as they
With a turf on my breast, and a stone at my head,
Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.

'Tis a sight to engage me, if anything can,
To muse on the perishing pleasures of man;
Though his life be a dream, his enjoyments, I see,
Have a being less durable even than he.

54

FAREWELL

WILLIAM COWPER

NOT soon shall I forget-a sheet

Of golden water, cold and sweet,

The young moon with her head in veils
Of silver, and the nightingales.

55

A wain of hay came up the lane-
O fields I shall not walk again,
And trees I shall not see, so still
Against a sky of daffodil!

Fields where my happy heart had rest,
And where my heart was heaviest,
I shall remember them at peace
Drenched in moon-silver like a fleece.

The golden water sweet and cold,
The moon of silver and of gold,
The dew upon the gray grass-spears,
I shall remember them with tears.

KATHARINE TYNAN

“YE BANKS AND BRAES O' BONNIE

1 Every

DOON'

YE banks and braes o' boonie Doon,

How can ye bloom sae fair?

How can ye chant, ye little birds,

And I sae fu' o' care?

Thou'll break my heart, thou bonnie bird

That sings upon the bough;

Thou minds me o' the happy days

When my fause Luve was true.

Thou'll break my heart, thou bonnie bird
That sings beside thy mate;

For sae I sat, and nae I sang,
And wist na o' my fate.

Aft hae I roved by bonnie Doon
To see the woodbine twine,
And ilka bird sang o' its love;
And sae did I o' mine.

CALL me no more, O gentle stream,

To wander through thy sunny dream,
No more to lean at twilight cool
Above thy weir and glimmering pool.

Surely I know thy hoary dawns,
The silver crisp on all thy lawns,
The softly swirling undersong

That rocks thy reeds the winter long.

Surely I know the joys that ring
Through the green deeps of leafy spring;
I know the elfin cups and domes
That are their small and secret homes.

Yet is the light for ever lost

That daily once thy meadows crossed,
The voice no more by thee is heard
That matched the song of stream and bird.

Call me no more!-thy waters roll

Here, in the world that is my soul,

And here, though Earth be drowned in night,
Old love shall dwell with old delight.

HENRY NEWBOLT

57

1 Stole

THE DESERTED HOUSE

THERE'S no smoke in the chimney,
And the rain beats on the floor;

58

There's no glass in the window,

There's no wood in the door;
The heather grows behind the house,
And the sand lies before.

No hand hath trained the ivy,
The walls are gray and bare;
The boats upon the sea sail by,
Nor ever tarry there.

No beast of the field comes nigh,

Nor any bird of the air.

MARY COLERIDGE

AN OLD WOMAN OF THE ROADS

O, to have a little house!

To own the hearth and stool and all!

The heaped-up sods upon the fire,

The pile of turf against the wall!

To have a clock with weights and chains.
And pendulum swinging up and down!
A dresser filled with shining delph,
Speckled and white and blue and brown!

I could be busy all the day

Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor,
And fixing on their shelf again

My white and blue and speckled store!

I could be quiet there at night

Beside the fire and by myself,

Sure of a bed, and loth to leave

The ticking clock and the shining delph!

Och! but I'm weary of mist and dark,

And roads where there's never a house or bush,

And tired I am of bog and road

And the crying wind and the lonesome hush!

And I am praying to God on high,

And I am praying Him night and day,
For a little house-a house of my own—
Out of the wind's and the rain's way.

PADRAIC COLUM

59

A DESERTED HOME

HERE where the fields lie lonely and untended,
Once stood the old house grey among the trees,
Once to the hills rolled the waves of the cornland-
Long waves and golden, softer than the sea's.

Long, long ago has the ploughshare rusted,

Long has the barn stood roofless and forlorn;
But oh! far away are some who still remember
The songs of the young girls binding up the corn.

Here where the windows shone across the darkness,
Here where the stars once watched above the fold,
Still watch the stars, but the sheepfold is empty;
Falls now the rain where the hearth glowed of old.

Here where the leagues of melancholy lough-sedge
Moan in the wind round the grey forsaken shore,
Once waved the corn in the mid-month of autumn,
Once sped the dance when the corn was on the floor.
SIDNEY ROYSE LYSAGHT

60

UNDER THE WOODS

WHEN these old woods were young

The thrushes' ancestors

As sweetly sung

In the old years.

There was no garden here,

Apples nor mistletoe;