While the glad shepherd traced their tracks along,
Free as the lark and happy as her song.
But now all’s fled and flats of many a dye
That seemed to lengthen with the following eye,
Moors losing from the sight, far, smooth and blea,
Where swopt the plover in its pleasure free,
Are vanished now with commons wild and gay
As poets’ visions of life’s early day.
Mulberry bushes where the boy would run
To fill his hands with fruit are grubbed and done,
And hedgerow briars – flower-lovers overjoyed
Came and got flower pots – these are all destroyed,
And sky-bound moors in mangled garbs are left
Like mighty giants of their limbs bereft.
Fence now meets fence in owners’ little bounds
Of field and meadow, large as garden grounds,
In little parcels little minds to please
With men and flocks imprisoned, ill at ease.
Each little path that led its pleasant way
As sweet as morning leading night astray,
Where little flowers bloomed round, a varied host,
That Travel felt delighted to be lost
Nor grudged the steps that he had ta’en as vain
When right roads traced his journey’s end again;
Nay on a broken tree he’d sit awhile
To see the moors and fields and meadows smile,
Sometimes with cowslips smothered – then all white
With daisies – then the summer’s splendid sight
Of corn fields crimson o’er, the ‘headache’ bloomed
Like splendid armies for the battle plumed;
He gazed upon them with wild fancy’s eye
As fallen landscapes from an evening sky.
These paths are stopped – the rude philistine’s thrall
Is laid upon them and destroyed them all.
Each little tyrant with his little sign
Shows where man claims, earth glows no more divine.
On paths to freedom and to childhood dear
A board sticks up to notice ‘no road here’
And on the tree with ivy overhung
The hated sign by vulgar taste is hung
As though the very birds should learn to know
When they go there they must no further go.
Thus, with the poor, scared freedom bade good-bye
And much they feel it in the smothered sigh,
And birds and trees and flowers without a name
All sighed when lawless law’s enclosure came,
And dreams of plunder in such rebel schemes
Have found too truly that they were but dreams.
JOHN CLARE
Summer Evening
The frog, half fearful, jumps across the path,
And little mouse that leaves its hole at eve
Nimbles with timid dread beneath the swath;
My rustling steps awhile their joys deceive,
Till past – and then the cricket sings more strong
And grasshoppers in merry moods still wear
The short night wean’ with their fretting song.
Up from behind the mole-hill jumps die hare,
Cheat of his chosen bed, and from the bank
The yellow-hammer flutters in short fears
From off its nest hid in the grasses rank,
And drops again when no more noise it hears.
Thus nature’s human link and endless thrall,
Proud man, still seems the enemy of all.
JOHN CLARE
Oor Location
A hunner funnels bleezin’, reekin’,
Coal an’ ironstane, charrin’, smeekin’;
Navvies, miners, keepers, fillers,
Puddlers, rollers, iron millers;
Reestit, reekit, raggit laddies,
Firemen, enginemen, an’ Paddies;
Boatmen, banksmen, rough an’ rattlin’,
Bout the wecht wi’ colliers battlin’,
Sweatin’, swearin’, fechtin’, drinkin’;
Change-house bells an’ gill-stoups clinkin’;
Police – ready men and willin’ –
Aye at han’ whan stoups are fillin’;
Clerks an’ counter-loupers plenty,
Wi’ trim moustache and whiskers dainty –
Chaps that winna staun at trifles!
Min’ ye, they can han’le rifles!
’Bout the wives in oor location –
An’ the lassies’ botheration –
Some are decent, some are dandies,
An’ a gey wheen drucken randies;
Aye to neebors’ houses sailin’,
Greetin’ bairns ahint them trailin’,
Gaun for nouther bread nor butter,
Juist to drink an’ rin the cutter!
0 the dreadfu’ curse o’ drinkin’!
Men are ill, but, tae my thinkin’,
Leukin’ through the drucken fock,
There’s a Jenny for ilka Jock.
Oh the dool an’ desolation,
An’ the havock in the nation
Wrocht by dirty, drucken wives!
Oh hoo mony bairnies lives
Lost ilk year through their neglec’!
Like a millstane roun’ the neck
O’ the struggling toilin’ masses
Hing drucken wives an’ wanton lassies.
To see sae mony unwed mithers
Is sure a shame that taps a’ ithers.
An’ noo I’m fairly set a-gaun;
On baith the whisky-shop and pawn
I’ll speak my min’ – and what for no?
Frae whence cums misery, want, an’ wo
The ruin, crime, disgrace, an’ shame
That quenches a’ the lichts o’ hame?
Ye needna speer, the feck ot’s drawn
Oot o’ the change-hoose an’ the pawn.
Sin an’ Death, as poets tell,
On ilk side the doors o’ hell
Wait to haurl mortals in;
Death gets a’ that’s catcht by sin:
There are doors where Death an’ Sin
Draw their tens o’ thoosan’s in;
Thick an’ thrang we see them gaun,
First the dram-shop, then the pawn;
Owre a’ kin’s o’ ruination,
Drink’s the King in oor location!
JANET HAMILTON
Auld Mither Scotlan’
Na, na, I wunna pairt wi’ that,
I downa gi’e it up;
O’ Scotlan’s hamely mither tongue
I canna quat the grup.
It’s bedded in my very he’rt,
Ye needna rive an’ rug;
It’s in my e’e an’ on my tongue,
An’ singin’ in my lug.
O leeze me on the Scottish lass,
Fresh frae her muirlan’ hame,
Wi’ gowden or wi’ coal-black hair,
Row’d up wi’ bucklin’-kame;
Or wavin’ roun’ her snawy broo,
Sae bonnie, braid, an’ brent,
Gaun barefit wi’ her kiltit coat,
Blythe singin’ ower the bent.
I heard her sing ‘Auld Robin Gray’,
An’ ‘Yarrow’s dowie den’ –
O’ Flodden, an’ oor forest flouris
Cut doon by Englishmen;
My saul was fir’d, my he’rt was fu’,
The tear was in my e’e:
Let ither lan’s hae ither sangs –
Auld Scotlan’s sangs for me.
JANET HAMILTON
‘This living hand, now warm and capable’
This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish th
ine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm’d – see here it is –
I hold it towards you.
JOHN KEATS
A Song about Myself
I
There was a naughty boy
A naughty boy was he,
He would not stop at home,
He could not quiet be –
He took
In his Knapsack
A Book
Full of vowels
And a shirt
With some towels –
A slight cap
For a night cap –
A hair brush,
Comb ditto,
New Stockings
For old ones
Would split O!
This Knapsack
Tight at’s back
He rivetted close
And followed his Nose
To the North,
To the North,
And followed his Nose
To the North.
II
There was a naughty boy
And a naughty boy was he,
For nothing would he do
But scribble poetry –
He took
An ink stand
In his hand
And a pen
Big as ten
In the other.
And away
In a Pother
He ran
To the mountains
And fountains
And ghostes
And Postes
And witches
And ditches
And wrote
In his coat
When the weather
Was cool,
Fear of gout
And without
When the weather
Was warm –
Och the charm
When we choose
To follow one’s nose
To the north
To the north,
To follow one’s nose
To the north!
III
There was a naughty boy
And a naughty boy was he,
He kept little fishes
In washing tubs three
In spite
Of the might
Of the Maid
Nor afraid
Of his Granny-good –
He often would
Hurly burly
Get up early
And go
By hook or crook
To the brook
And bring home
Miller’s thumb,
Tittlebat
Not over fat,
Minnows small
As the stall
Of a glove,
Not above
The size
Of a nice
Little Baby’s
Little fingers –
O he made
’Twas his trade
Of fish a pretty Kettle
A Kettle –
A Kettle
Of fish a pretty Kettle
A Kettle!
IV
There was a naughty Boy,
And a naughty Boy was he,
He ran away to Scotland
The people for to see –
Then he found
That the ground
Was as hard,
That a yard
Was as long,
That a song
Was as merry,
That a cherry
Was as red –
That lead
Was as weighty,
That fourscore
Was as eighty,
That a door
Was as wooden
As in England –
So he stood in his shoes
And he wondered,
He wondered,
He stood in his
Shoes and he wondered.
JOHN KEATS
On the Grasshopper and the Cricket
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s – he takes the lead
In summer luxury, – he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.
JOHN KEATS
‘Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art’
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art –
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores.
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors –
No – yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever – or else swoon to death.
JOHN KEATS
Grief
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death:
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe,
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it: the marble eyelids are not wet;
If it could weep, it could arise and go.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
When Our Two Souls
When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curved point, – what bitter wrong
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us, and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep dear silence. Let us stay
Rather on earth. Beloved, where the unfit
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways’
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, – I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
Lord Walter’s Wife
‘But why do you go?’ said the lady, while both sate under the yew,
And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath the sea-blue.
‘Because I fear you,’ he answered; – ‘because you are far too fair,
And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your gold-coloured hair.’
‘Oh, that,’ she said, ‘is no reason! Such knots are quickly undone,
And too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but too much sun.’
‘Yet farewell so,’ he answered; – ‘the sunstroke ‘s fatal at times.
I value your husband, Lord Walter, whose gallop rings still from the limes.’
‘O, that,’ she said, ‘is no reason. You smell a rose through a fence:
If two should smell it, what matter? who grumbles, and where’s the pretence?’
‘But I,’ he replied, ‘have promised another, when love was free,
To love her alone, alone, who alone and afar loves me.’
‘Why, that,’ she said, ‘is no reason. Love’s always free, I am told.
Will you vow to be safe from the headache on Tuesday, and think it will hold?’
‘But you,’ he replied, ‘have a daughter, a young little child, who was laid
In your lap to be pure; so I leave you: the angels would make me afraid.’
‘O, that,’ she said, ‘is no reason. The angels keep out of the way;
And Dora, the child, observes nothing, although you should please me and stay.’
At which he rose up in his anger, – ‘Why, now, you no longer are fair!
Why, now, you no longer are fatal, but ugly and hateful, I swear.’
At which she laughed out in her scorn, – ‘These men! O, these men overnice,
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