HEY! now the day dawis;
The jolly cock crawis;
Now shroudis the shawis
Thro’ Nature anon.
The thissel-cock cryis
On lovers wha lyis:
Now skaillis the skyis;
The nicht is neir gone.

The fieldis ouerflowis
With gowans that growis,
Quhair lilies like low is
As red as the rone.
The turtle that true is,
With notes that renewis,
Her pairty pursuis:
The nicht is neir gone.

Now hairtis with hindis
Conform to their kindis,
Hie tursis their tyndis
On ground quhair they grone.
Now hurchonis, with hairis,
Aye passis in pairis;
Quhilk duly declaris
The nicht is neir gone.

The season excellis
Through sweetness that smellis;
Now Cupid compellis
Our hairtis echone
On Venus wha waikis,
To muse on our maikis,
Syne sing for their saikis—
‘The nicht is neir gone!’

All courageous knichtis
Aganis the day dichtis
The breist-plate that bright is
To fight with their fone.
The stoned steed stampis
Through courage, and crampis,
Syne on the land lampis:
The nicht is neir gone.

The freikis on feildis
That wight wapins weildis
With shyning bright shieldis
At Titan in trone;
Stiff speiris in reistis
Ouer corseris crestis
Are broke on their breistis:
The nicht is neir gone.

So hard are their hittis,
Some sweyis, some sittis,
And some perforce flittis
On ground quhile they grone.
Syne groomis that gay is
On blonkis that brayis
With swordis assayis:—
The nicht is neir gone.

–Alexander Montgomerie, The Night is Near Gone

Oh, very gloomy is the house of woe,
Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling,
With all the dark solemnities that show
That Death is in the dwelling!

Oh, very, very dreary is the room
Where Love, domestic Love, no longer nestles,
But smitten by the common stroke of doom,
The corpse lies on the trestles!

But house of woe, and hearse, and sable pall,
The narrow home of the departed mortal,
Ne’er looked so gloomy as that Ghostly Hall,
With its deserted portal!

The centipede along the threshold crept,
The cobweb hung across in mazy tangle,
And in its winding sheet the maggot slept
At every nook and angle.

The keyhole lodged the earwig and her brood,
The emmets of the steps has old possession,
And marched in search of their diurnal food
In undisturbed procession.

As undisturbed as the prehensile cell
Of moth or maggot, or the spider’s tissue,
For never foot upon that threshold fell,
To enter or to issue.

O’er all there hung the shadow of a fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted.

Howbeit, the door I pushed—or so I dreamed–
Which slowly, slowly gaped, the hinges creaking
With such a rusty eloquence, it seemed
That Time himself was speaking.

But Time was dumb within that mansion old,
Or left his tale to the heraldic banners
That hung from the corroded walls, and told
Of former men and manners.

Those tattered flags, that with the opened door,
Seemed the old wave of battle to remember,
While fallen fragments danced upon the floor
Like dead leaves in December.

The startled bats flew out, bird after bird,
The screech-owl overhead began to flutter,
And seemed to mock the cry that she had heard
Some dying victim utter!

A shriek that echoed from the joisted roof,
And up the stair, and further still and further,
Till in some ringing chamber far aloof
In ceased its tale of murther!

Meanwhile the rusty armor rattled round,
The banner shuddered, and the ragged streamer;
All things the horrid tenor of the sound
Acknowledged with a tremor.

The antlers where the helmet hung, and belt,
Stirred as the tempest stirs the forest branches,
Or as the stag had trembled when he felt
The bloodhound at his haunches.

The window jingled in its crumbled frame,
And through its many gaps of destitution
Dolorous moans and hollow sighings came,
Like those of dissolution.

The wood-louse dropped, and rolled into a ball,
Touched by some impulse occult or mechanic;
And nameless beetles ran along the wall
In universal panic.

The subtle spider, that, from overhead,
Hung like a spy on human guilt and error,
Suddenly turned, and up its slender thread
Ran with a nimble terror.

The very stains and fractures on the wall,
Assuming features solemn and terrific,
Hinted some tragedy of that old hall,
Locked up in hieroglyphic.

Some tale that might, perchance, have solved the doubt,
Wherefore, among those flags so dull and livid,
The banner of the bloody hand shone out
So ominously vivid.

Some key to that inscrutable appeal
Which made the very frame of Nature quiver,
And every thrilling nerve and fiber feel
So ague-like a shiver.

For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted!

Prophetic hints that filled the soul with dread,
But through one gloomy entrance pointing mostly,
The while some secret inspiration said,
“That chamber is the ghostly!”

Across the door no gossamer festoon
Swung pendulous, –no web, no dusty fringes,
No silky chrysalis or white cocoon,
About its nooks and hinges.

The spider shunned the interdicted room,
The moth, the beetle, and the fly were banished,
And when the sunbeam fell athwart the gloom,
The very midge had vanished.

One lonely ray that glanced upon a bed,
As if with awful aim direct and certain,
To show the Bloody Hand, in burning red,
Embroidered on the curtain.

— Thomas Hood, The Haunted House

The mark of a stake in the shoulder,
The brand of a wall on the knee,
Are scars to the careless beholder
And blemishes. So it may be ;
But every such blemish endorses
The pluck of a steed unafraid,
And the heart of a lover of horses
Goes out to the Battered Brigade.
Their knocks have been gathered in duty,
Their scars in the front of the fray;
It isn’t your cleanest-legged beauty
That’s first at the end of the day.
When five foot of timber before us
Has half of the pretty ones stayed,
If you want to catch up to the chorus
Come on with the Battered Brigade!
Turned out in the finest of fettle
‘Tis sometimes the soundest that fails
And would rather hear hoofs on the metal
Than follow the rattle of rails;
But out on the grass with hounds racing
And fences as big as they’re made
The cream of the gay steeple-chasing
Is left to the Battered Brigade.
Their line is the line of the foxes,
Their pace is the pace of the pack,
Though to-morrow they stand in their boxes
As stiff as the props of a stack;
And I ‘ll lay you my cheque at the banker’s
They’re forward next week undismayed.
Good luck to the blemished front-rankers!
Hats off to the Battered Brigade!

— William Henry Ogilvie, The Battered Brigade

My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.

I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream.

— Dylan Thomas, Clown in the Moon

This is the place. Stand still, my steed,
Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
The forms that once have been.

The Past and Present here unite
Beneath Time’s flowing tide,
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
But seen on either side.

Here runs the highway to the town;
There the green lane descends,
Through which I walked to church with thee,
O gentlest of my friends!

The shadow of the linden-trees
Lay moving on the grass;
Between them and the moving boughs,
A shadow, thou didst pass.

Thy dress was like the lilies,
And thy heart as pure as they:
One of God’s holy messengers
Did walk with me that day.

I saw the branches of the trees
Bend down thy touch to meet,
The clover-blossoms in the grass
Rise up to kiss thy feet,

“Sleep, sleep to-day, tormenting cares,
Of earth and folly born!”
Solemnly sang the village choir
On that sweet Sabbath morn.

Through the closed blinds the golden sun
Poured in a dusty beam,
Like the celestial ladder seen
By Jacob in his dream.

And ever and anon, the wind,
Sweet-scented with the hay,
Turned o’er the hymn-book’s fluttering leaves
That on the window lay.

Long was the good man’s sermon,
Yet it seemed not so to me;
For he spake of Ruth the beautiful,
And still I thought of thee.

Long was the prayer he uttered,
Yet it seemed not so to me;
For in my heart I prayed with him,
And still I thought of thee.

But now, alas! the place seems changed;
Thou art no longer here:
Part of the sunshine of the scene
With thee did disappear.

Though thoughts, deep-rooted in my heart,
Like pine-trees dark and high,
Subdue the light of noon, and breathe
A low and ceaseless sigh;

This memory brightens o’er the past,
As when the sun, concealed
Behind some cloud that near us hangs
Shines on a distant field.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Gleam of Sunshine

YE learned sisters which haue oftentimes
beene to me ayding, others to adorne:
Whom ye thought worthy of your gracefull rymes,
That euen the greatest did not greatly scorne
To heare theyr names sung in your simply layes,
But ioyed in theyr prayse.
And when ye lift your owne mishaps to mourne,
Which death, or loue, or fortunes wreck did rayse,
Your string could soone to sadder tenor turne,
And teach the woods and waters to lament
Your dolefull dreriment.
Now lay those sorrowfull complaints aside,
And hauing all your heads with girland crownd,
Helpe me mine owne loues prayses to resound,
Ne let the same of any be enuide,
So Orpheus did for his owne bride,
So I vnto my selfe alone will sing,
The woods shall to me answer and my Eccho ring.

— Edmund Spenser – Poem 1

“Oh, look at that great ugly spider!” said Ann;
And screaming, she brush’d it away with her fan;
“‘Tis a frightful black creature as ever can be,
I wish that it would not come crawling on me. ”

“Indeed,” said her mother, “I’ll venture to say,
The poor thing will try to keep out of your way;
For after the fright, and the fall, and the pain,
It has much more occasion than you to complain.

“But why should you dread the poor insect, my dear?
If it hurt you, there’d be some excuse for your fear;
But its little black legs, as it hurried away,
Did but tickle your arm, as they went, I dare say.

“For them to fear us we must grant to be just,
Who in less than a moment can tread them to dust;
But certainly we have no cause for alarm;
For, were they to try, they could do us no harm.

“Now look! it has got to its home; do you see
What a delicate web it has spun in the tree?
Why here, my dear Ann, is a lesson for you:
Come learn from this spider what patience can do!

“And when at your business you’re tempted to play,
Recollect what you see in this insect to-day,
Or else, to your shame, it may seem to be true,
That a poor little spider is wiser than you. ”

— Jane Taylor, The Spider

What counsel has the hooded moon
Put in thy heart, my shyly sweet,
Of Love in ancient plenilune,
Glory and stars beneath his feet — –
A sage that is but kith and kin
With the comedian Capuchin?

Believe me rather that am wise
In disregard of the divine,
A glory kindles in those eyes
Trembles to starlight. Mine, O Mine!
No more be tears in moon or mist
For thee, sweet sentimentalist.

— James Joyce, What Counsel Has The Hooded Moon

O happier half of days decreed to me,
My early years, so soon you passed away:
Few were the flowers that blossomed on that tree,
And they, scarce budded, fell into decay.
Few were the rays of hope that I could see,
And storms would often rage in wild array;
Still, for my youth, dark though thy dawn may be,
My heart will ever cry, God be with thee!

Too soon the fruits of knowledge did I eat!
Where dripped their poison, faded all delight:
I saw how honesty and truth could meet
Among the human kind with scorn and spite.
I sought true love – an empty dream and fleet,
Which disappeared as dawn broke into light!
And wisdom, justice and the learned mind
Were dowerless maids – no suitors could they find.

I saw how those who are not loved by fate
Their ship in vain against the wind may steer;
The one who is not born to high estate
Shall see no Fortune at his cradle appear;
I saw how fame is purchased at the rate
Of current cash – no price too high, too dear;
I saw in glory’s and in honour’s seat
All that beguiles men’s minds with lies, deceit.

These sights and others uglier by far
Burned in my heart till cruelly it bled;
Yet thoughts like these the joys of youth will bar
And quickly drive them out of heart and head;
Fair cloud-born castles glimmer from afar,
Green lawns arise where desert places spread,
Hope kindles many a wanton, beckoning light,
To lure the young and tempt them in the night.

They know not of the sudden storm that blows,
Dispelling phantom shapes that cannot last,
And all too soon forget misfortune’s woes,
Forget the wounds once they are healed and past –
Until the changing years show how life flows
Into a vessel that is leaking fast.
Still, O my youth, dark though thy dawn may be,
My heart will ever cry, God be with thee!

— France Preseren, A Farewell to my Youth

HUMANITY, delighting to behold
A fond reflection of her own decay,
Hath painted Winter like a traveller old,
Propped on a staff, and, through the sullen day,
In hooded mantle, limping o’er the plain,
As though his weakness were disturbed by pain:
Or, if a juster fancy should allow
An undisputed symbol of command,
The chosen sceptre is a withered bough,
Infirmly grasped within a palsied hand.
These emblems suit the helpless and forlorn;
But mighty Winter the device shall scorn.

For he it was–dread Winter! who beset,
Flinging round van and rear his ghastly net,
That host, when from the regions of the Pole
They shrunk, insane ambition’s barren goal–
That host, as huge and strong as e’er defied
Their God, and placed their trust in human pride!
As fathers persecute rebellious sons,
He smote the blossoms of their warrior youth;
He called on Frost’s inexorable tooth
Life to consume in Manhood’s firmest hold;
Nor spared the reverend blood that feebly runs;
For why–unless for liberty enrolled
And sacred home–ah! why should hoary Age be bold?

Fleet the Tartar’s reinless steed,
But fleeter far the pinions of the Wind,
Which from Siberian caves the Monarch freed,
And sent him forth, with squadrons of his kind,
And bade the Snow their ample backs bestride,
And to the battle ride.
No pitying voice commands a halt,
No courage can repel the dire assault;
Distracted spiritless, benumbed, and blind,
Whole legions sink–and, in one instant, find
Burial and death: look for them–and descry,
When morn returns, beneath the clear blue sky,
A soundless waste, a trackless vacancy!

— William Wordsworth, The French Army in Russia, 1812-13