Volume Iii Part 76 (1/2)

I leave this notice on my door For each accustomed visitor:-- ”I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields;-- Reflection, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.-- You with the unpaid bill, Despair,-- You tiresome verse-reciter, Care,-- I will pay you in the grave,-- Death will listen to your stave.

Expectation too, be off!

To-day is for itself enough; Hope, in pity mock not Woe With smiles, nor follow where I go; Long having lived on thy sweet food, At length I find one moment's good Alter long pain--with all your love, This you never told me of.”

Radiant Sister of the Day Awake! arise! and come away!

To the wild woods and the plains, To the pools where winter rains Image all their roof of leaves, Where the pine its garland weaves Of sapless green, and ivy dun, Round sterns that never kiss the sun.

Where the lawns and pastures be, And the sandhills of the sea;-- Where the melting h.o.a.r-frost wets The daisy-star that never sets, And wind-flowers, and violets, Which yet join not scent to hue, Crown the pale year weak and new; When the night is left behind In the deep east, dun and blind, And the blue noon is over us, And the mult.i.tudinous Billows murmur at our feet, Where the earth and ocean meet, And all things seem only one In the universal sun.

Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley [1792-1822]

”MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS”

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here; My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer; A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,-- My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North, The birthplace of valor, the country of worth; Wherever I wander, wherever I rove, The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow; Farewell to the straths and green valleys below; Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods; Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here; My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer, A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,-- My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.

Robert Burns [1759-1796]

”AFAR IN THE DESERT”

Afar in the desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side.

When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast, And, sick of the present, I cling to the past; When the eye is suffused with regretful tears, From the fond recollections of former years; And shadows of things that have long since fled Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead: Bright visions of glory that vanished too soon; Day-dreams that departed ere manhood's noon; Attachments by fate or falsehood reft; Companions of early days lost or left-- And my native land--whose magical name Thrills to the heart like electric flame; The home of my childhood; the haunts of my prime; All the pa.s.sions and scenes of that rapturous time When the feelings were young, and the world was new, Like the fresh bowers of Eden unfolding to view; All--all now forsaken--forgotten--foregone!

And I--a lone exile remembered of none-- My high aims abandoned,--my good acts undone-- Aweary of all that is under the sun-- With that sadness of heart which no stranger may scan, I fly to the desert afar from man.

Afar in the desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side, When the wild turmoil of this wearisome life, With its scenes of oppression, corruption, and strife-- The proud man's frown, and the base man's fear-- The scorner's laugh, and the sufferer's tear-- And malice, and meanness, and falsehood, and folly, Dispose me to musing and dark melancholy; When my bosom is full, and my thoughts are high, And my soul is sick with the bondman's sigh-- Oh! then there is freedom, and joy, and pride, Afar in the desert alone to ride!

There is rapture to vault on the champing steed, And to bound away with the eagle's speed, With the death-fraught firelock in my hand-- The only law of the Desert Land!

Afar in the desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side.

Away--away from the dwellings of men, By the wild deer's haunt, by the buffalo's glen; By valleys remote where the oribi plays, Where the gnu, the gazelle, and the hartebeest graze, And the kudu and eland unhunted recline By the skirts of gray forest o'erhung with wild vine: Where the elephant browses at peace in his wood, And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood, And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will In the fen where the wild a.s.s is drinking his fill.

Afar in the desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side.

O'er the brown karroo, where the bleating cry Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively: And the timorous quagga's shrill whistling neigh Is heard by the fountain at twilight gray; Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane, With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain; And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste, Hieing away to the home of her rest, Where she and her mate have scooped their nest, Far hid from the pitiless plunderer's view In the pathless depths of the parched karroo.

Afar in the desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side.

Away--away--in the wilderness vast Where the white man's foot hath never pa.s.sed, And the quivered Coranna or Bechuan Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan: A region of emptiness, howling and drear, Which man hath abandoned from famine and fear; Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone, With the twilight bat from the yawning stone; Where gra.s.s, nor herb, nor shrub takes root, Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot; And the bitter melon, for food and drink, Is the pilgrim's fare by the salt-lake's brink; A region of drought, where no river glides, Nor rippling brook with osiered sides; Where sedgy pool, nor bubbling fount, Nor tree, nor cloud, nor misty mount, Appears, to refresh the aching eye; But the barren earth and the burning sky, And the blank horizon, round and round, Spread--void of living sight or sound.

And here, while the night-winds round me sigh, And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky, As I sit apart by the desert stone, Like Elijah at h.o.r.eb's cave, alone, ”A still small voice” comes through the wild, Like a father consoling his fretful child, Which banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear, Saying--Man is distant, but G.o.d is near!