Robert F. Murray (Author of the Scarlet Gown): His Poems; with a Memoir

Made wondrous with the moon.

Where loveliness is rarest,
’Tis also prized the most:
The moonlight shone her fairest
Along that level coast
Where sands and dunes the barest,
Of beauty seldom boast,

Far from that bleak and rude land
An exile I remain
Fixed in a fair and good land,
A valley and a plain
Rich in fat fields and woodland,
And watered well with rain.

Last night the full moon’s splendour
Shone down on Taunton Dene,
And pasture fresh and tender,
And coppice dusky green,
The heavenly light did render
In one enchanted scene,

One fair unearthly vision.
Yet soon mine eyes were cloyed,
And found those fields Elysian
Too rich to be enjoyed.
Or was it our division
Made all my pleasure void?

Across the window glasses
The curtain then I drew,
And, as a sea-bird passes,
In sleep my spirit flew
To grey and windswept grasses
And moonlit sands – and you.

WINTER AT ST. ANDREWS

The city once again doth wear
Her wonted dress of winter’s bride,
Her mantle woven of misty air,
With saffron sunlight faintly dyed.
She sits above the seething tide,
Of all her summer robes forlorn —
And dead is all her summer pride —
The leaves are off Queen Mary’s Thorn.

All round, the landscape stretches bare,
The bleak fields lying far and wide,
Monotonous, with here and there
A lone tree on a lone hillside.
No more the land is glorified
With golden gleams of ripening corn,
Scarce is a cheerful hue descried —
The leaves are off Queen Mary’s Thorn.

For me, I do not greatly care
Though leaves be dead, and mists abide.
To me the place is thrice as fair
In winter as in summer-tide:
With kindlier memories allied
Of pleasure past and pain o’erworn.
What care I, though the earth may hide
The leaves from off Queen Mary’s Thorn?

Thus I unto my friend replied,
When, on a chill late autumn morn,
He pointed to the tree, and cried,
‘The leaves are off Queen Mary’s Thorn!’

PATRIOTISM

There was a time when it was counted high
To be a patriot – whether by the zeal
Of peaceful labour for the country’s weal,
Or by the courage in her cause to die:

For King and Country was a rallying cry
That turned men’s hearts to fire, their nerves to steel;
Not to unheeding ears did it appeal,
A pulpit formula, a platform lie.

Only a fool will wantonly desire
That war should come, outpouring blood and fire,
And bringing grief and hunger in her train.
And yet, if there be found no other way,
God send us war, and with it send the day
When love of country shall be real again!

SLEEP FLIES ME

Sleep flies me like a lover
Too eagerly pursued,
Or like a bird to cover
Within some distant wood,
Where thickest boughs roof over
Her secret solitude.

The nets I spread to snare her,