Andromeda, and Other Poems

Blind!  I live, I love, I reign; and all the nations through
With the thunder of my judgments even now are ringing.
Do thou fulfil thy work but as yon wild-fowl do,
Thou wilt heed no less the wailing, yet hear through it angels singing.’

    Eversley, 1849.

THE OUBIT[3 - Found among Sandy Mackaye’s papers, of a hairy oubit who would not mind his mother.]

It was an hairy oubit, sae proud he crept alang,
A feckless hairy oubit, and merrily he sang—
‘My Minnie bad me bide at hame until I won my wings;
I show her soon my soul’s aboon the warks o’ creeping things.’

This feckless hairy oubit cam’ hirpling by the linn,
A swirl o’ wind cam’ doun the glen, and blew that oubit in:
Oh when he took the water, the saumon fry they rose,
And tigg’d him a’ to pieces sma’, by head and tail and toes.

Tak’ warning then, young poets a’, by this poor oubit’s shame;
Though Pegasus may nicher loud, keep Pegasus at hame.
Oh haud your hands frae inkhorns, though a’ the Muses woo;
For critics lie, like saumon fry, to mak’ their meals o’ you.

    Eversley, 1851.

THE THREE FISHERS

Three fishers went sailing away to the West,
Away to the West as the sun went down;
Each thought on the woman who loved him the best,
And the children stood watching them out of the town;
For men must work, and women must weep,
And there’s little to earn, and many to keep,
Though the harbour bar be moaning.

Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,
And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down;
They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,
And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown.
But men must work, and women must weep,
Though storms be sudden, and waters deep,
And the harbour bar be moaning.

Three corpses lay out on the shining sands
In the morning gleam as the tide went down,
And the women are weeping and wringing their hands
For those who will never come home to the town;
For men must work, and women must weep,
And the sooner it’s over, the sooner to sleep;
And good-bye to the bar and its moaning.

    Eversley, June 25, 1851.

SONNET

Oh, thou hadst been a wife for Shakspeare’s self!
No head, save some world-genius, ought to rest
Above the treasures of that perfect breast,
Or nightly draw fresh light from those keen stars
Through which thy soul awes ours: yet thou art bound—
O waste of nature!—to a craven hound;
To shameless lust, and childish greed of pelf;
Athené to a Satyr: was that link
Forged by The Father’s hand?  Man’s reason bars
The bans which God allowed.—Ay, so we think:
Forgetting, thou hadst weaker been, full blest,
Than thus made strong by suffering; and more great
In martyrdom, than throned as Cæsar’s mate.

    Eversley, 1851.

MARGARET TO DOLCINO

Ask if I love thee?  Oh, smiles cannot tell
Plainer what tears are now showing too well.
Had I not loved thee, my sky had been clear:
Had I not loved thee, I had not been here,
Weeping by thee.

Ask if I love thee?  How else could I borrow
Pride from man’s slander, and strength from my sorrow?
Laugh when they sneer at the fanatic’s bride,
Knowing no bliss, save to toil and abide
Weeping by thee.

    Andernach on the Rhine,
    August 1851.

DOLCINO TO MARGARET

The world goes up and the world goes down,
And the sunshine follows the rain;
And yesterday’s sneer and yesterday’s frown
Can never come over again,
Sweet wife:
No, never come over again.

For woman is warm though man be cold,
And the night will hallow the day;