Sigh, watcher for a dawn remote and gray,
Mourn, journeyer to an undesired deep,
Eternal sower, thou that shalt not reap,
Immortal, whom the plagues of God devour.
Mourn 'tis the hour when thou wert wont to pray. Sigh in the silence of the midnight hour.
Have you learnt the sorrow of windy nights
When lilacs down in the garden moan,
And stars are flickering faint, wan lights,
And voices whisper in wood and stone?
When steps on the stairway creak and groan,
And shadowy ghosts take an hour of ease
In dim-lit galleries all their own?
Do you know the sorrow of nights like these?
Have you lain awake on the windy nights
Slighted by sleep and to rest unknown,
When keen remorse is a whip that smites
With every gust on the window blown?
When phantom Love from a broken throne
Steps down through the Night's torn tapestries,
Sad-eyed and wistful, and ah! so alone?
you know the sorrow of nights like these?
Have you felt a touch on the windy nights-
The touch of a hand not flesh nor bone,
But a mystical something, pale, that plights
With waning stars and with dead stars strown?
Or heard grey lips with the fire all flown
Pleading again in a lull o' the breeze-
A long life's wreck in a short hour shown?
Do you know the sorrow of nights like these?
Ah, the whirlwind reaped where a wind is sown, And the phantom Love in the night one sees!
Ah, the touching hand and the pleading tone! you know the sorrow of nights like these? Will H. Ogilvie
BALLADE OF CHRISTMAS GHOSTS
Between the moonlight and the fire
In winter twilights long ago,
What ghosts we raised for your desire
To make your merry blood run slow!
How old, how grave, how wise we grow!
No Christmas ghost can make us chill,
Save those that troop in mournful row,
The ghosts we all can raise at will!
The beasts can talk in barn and byre
On Christmas Eve, old legends know,
As year by year the years retire,
We men fall silent then I trow,
Such sights hath Memory to show,
Such voices from the silence thrill,
Such shapes return with Christmas snow,—
The ghosts we all can raise at will.
Oh, children of the village choir,
Your carols on the midnight throw,
Oh, bright across the mist and mire,
Ye ruddy hearths of Christmas glow!
Beat back the dread, beat down the woe,
Let's cheerily descend the hill;
Be welcome all, to come or go,
The ghosts we all can raise at will!
Friend, sursum corda, soon or slow
We part, like guests who've joyed their fill;
Forget them not, nor mourn them so,
The ghosts we all can raise at will!
Oh, to go back to the days of June,
Just to be young and alive again,
Hearken again to the mad, sweet tune
Birds were singing with might and main:
South they flew at the summer's wane,
Leaving their nests for storms to harry,
Since time was coming for wind and rain
Under the wintry skies to marry.
Wearily wander by dale and dune
Footsteps fettered with clanking chain-
Free they were in the days of June,
Free they never can be again:
Fetters of age, and fetters of pain,
Joys that fly, and sorrows that tarry—
Youth is over, and hopes were vain
Under the wintry skies to marry.
Now we chant but a desolate rune-
Oh, to be young and alive again!
But never December turns to June,
And length of living is length of pain:
Winds in the nestless trees complain,
Snows of winter about us tarry,
And never the birds come back again
Under the wintry skies to marry.
Youths and maidens, blithesome and vain,
Time makes thrusts that you cannot parry;
Mate in season, for who is fain
Under the wintry skies to marry?
Louise Chandler Moulton
* From Poems and Sonnets by Louise Chandler Moulton. Copyright 1909, Little, Brown & Company, Publishers.
The frost hath spread a shining net
Where late the autumn roses blew,
On lake and stream a seal is set
Where floating lilies charmed the view;
So silently the wonder grew
Beneath pale Dian's mystic light,
I know my fancies whisper true,
The Pixies are abroad to-night.
When at the midnight chime are met
Together elves of every hue,
I trow the gazer will regret
That peers upon their retinue;
For limb awry and eye askew
Have oft proclaimed a fairy's spite-
Peep slyly, gallants, lest ye rue,
The Fixies are abroad to-night.
'Tis said their forms are tiny, yet
All human ills they can subdue,
Or with a wand or amulet
Can win a maiden's heart for you;
And many a blessing know to strew
To make the way to wedlock bright;
Give honour to the dainty crew,
The Pixies are abroad to-night.
Prince, e'en a prince might vainly sue,
Unaided by a fairy's might;
Remember Cinderella's shoe,
The Pixies are abroad to-night.
Samuel Minturn Peck
BALLADE TO THEOCRITUS, IN WINTER *
ἐσορῶν τὰν Σικελὰν ἐς ἅλα
Ah! leave the smoke, the wealth, the roar
Of London, leave the bustling street,
For still, by the Sicilian shore,
The murmur of the Muse is sweet.
Still, still, the suns of summer greet
The mountain-grave of Helikê,
And shepherds still their songs repeat
Where breaks the blue Sicilian sea.
What though they worship Pan no more,
That guarded once the shepherd's seat,
They chatter of their rustic lore,
They watch the wind among the wheat;
Cicalas chirp, the young lambs bleat,
Where whispers pine to cypress tree;
They count the waves that idly beat
Where breaks the blue Sicilian sea.
Theocritus! thou canst restore
The pleasant years, and over-fleet;
With thee we live as men of yore,
We rest where running waters meet:
And then we turn unwilling feet
And seek the world-so must it be-
We may not linger in the heat
Where breaks the blue Sicilian sea!
Master, when rain, and snow, and sleet
And northern winds are wild, to thee
We come, we rest in thy retreat,
Where breaks the blue Sicilian sea!
* From Ballades and Verses Vain by Andrew Lang. Copy
right 1884 by Charles Scribner's Sons, Publishers.
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