Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great,
When in an Eye thou art, alive with fate!
Sonnet: After dark vapours have oppress’d our plains
After dark vapours have oppress’d our plains
For a long dreary season, comes a day
Born of the gentle South, and clears away
From the sick heavens all unseemly stains.
The anxious month, relieved of its pains,
Takes as a long-lost right the feel of May;
The eyelids with the passing coolness play
Like rose leaves with the drip of summer rains.
The calmest thoughts come round us; as of leaves
Budding – fruit ripening in stillness – autumn suns
Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves -
Sweet Sappho’s cheek – a smiling infant’s breath -
The gradual sand that through an hourglass runs -
A woodland rivulet – a Poet’s death.
Sonnet to John Hamilton Reynolds
O that a week could be an age, and we
Felt parting and warm meeting every week,
Then one poor year a thousand years would be,
The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:
So could we live long life in little space,
So time itself would be annihilate,
So a day’s journey in oblivious haze
To serve our joys would lengthen and dilate.
O to arrive each Monday morn from Ind!
To land each Tuesday from the rich Levant!
In little time a host of joys to bind,
And keep our souls in one eternal pant!
This morn, my friend, and yester-evening taught
Me how to harbour such a happy thought.
Sonnet on Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again
O golden tongued Romance, with serene lute!
Fair plumed Syren, Queen of far-away!
Leave melodising on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:
Adieu! for, once again, the fierce dispute
Betwixt damnation and impassion’d clay
Must I burn through; once more humbly assay
The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit:
Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Begetters of our deep eternal theme!
When through the old oak forest I am gone,
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But, when I am consumed in the fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings’ to fly at my desire.
Sonnet: Before he went to feed with owls and bats
Before he went to feed with owls and bats
Nebuchadnezzar had an ugly dream,
Worse than an hus’if s when she thinks her cream
Made a naumachia for mice and rats.
So scared, he sent for that ‘Good King of Cats’
Young Daniel, who soon did pluck away the beam
From out his eye, and said he did not deem
The sceptre worth a straw – his cushions old door-mats.
A horrid nightmare similar somewhat
Of late has haunted a most motley crew,
Most loggerheads and chapmen – we are told
That any Daniel tho’ he be a sot
Can make the lying lips turn pale of hue
By belching out ‘ye are that head of gold.’
Sonnet Written in the Cottage where Burns was Born
This mortal body of a thousand days
Now fills, O Burns, a space in thine own room,
Where thou didst dream alone on budded bays,
Happy and thoughtless of thy day of doom!
My pulse is warm with thine own barley-bree,
My head is light with pledging a great soul,
My eyes are wandering, and I cannot see,
Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal;
Yet can I stamp my foot upon thy floor,
Yet can I ope thy window-sash to find
The meadow thou hast tramped o’er and o’er, -
Yet can I think of thee till thought is blind, -
Yet can I gulp a bumper to thy name, -
O smile among the shades, for this is fame!
Sonnet to the Nile
Son of the old moon-mountains African!
Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We call thee fruitful, and, that very while,
A desert fills our seeing’s inward span;
Nurse of swart nations since the world began,
Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile
Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,
Rest for a space ‘twixt Cairo and Decan?
O, O may dark fancies err! they surely do;
’Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste
Of all beyond itself, thou dost bedew
Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste
The pleasant sunrise, green isles hast thou too,
And to the sea as happily dost haste.
Sonnet on Peace
O Peace! and dost thou with thy presence bless
The dwellings of this war-surrounded Isle;
Soothing with placid brow our late distress,
Making the triple kingdom brightly smile?
Joyful I hail thy presence; and I hail
The sweet companions that await on thee;
Complete my joy – let not my first wish fail,
Let the sweet mountain nymph thy favourite be,
With England’s happiness proclaim Europa’s Liberty.
O Europe! let not sceptred tyrants see
That thou must shelter in thy former state;
Keep thy chains burst, and boldly say thou art free;
Give thy kings law – leave not uncurbed the great;
So with the horrors past thou’lt win thy happier fate!
Sonnet on Hearing the Bagpipe and
Seeing ‘The Stranger’ Played at Inverary
Of late two dainties were before me plac’d
Sweet, holy, pure, sacred and innocent,
From