DREAM-PEDLARY

If there were dreams to sell,
What would you buy?
Some cost a passing bell;
Some a light sigh,

That shakes from Life's fresh crown
Only a rose-leaf down.

If there were dreams to sell,
Merry and sad to tell,

And the crier rang the bell,

What would you buy?

A cottage lone and still,

With bowers nigh,

Shadowy, my woes to still,

Until I die.

Such pearl from Life's fresh crown

Fain would I shake me down.

Were dreams to have at will,

This would best heal my ill,
This would I buy.

But there were dreams to sell

Ill didst thou buy;

Life is a dream, they tell,

Waking, to die.

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Dreaming a dream to prize,

Is wishing ghosts to rise;
And, if I had the spell
To call the buried well,

Which one would I?

If there are ghosts to raise,
What shall I call,

Out of hell's murky haze,
Heaven's blue pall?

Raise my loved long-lost boy
To lead me to his joy.--
There are no ghosts to raise ;
Out of death lead no ways;
Vain is the call.

Know'st thou not ghosts to sue?
No love thou hast.

Else lie, as I will do,

And breathe thy last.

So out of Life's fresh crown

Fall like a rose-leaf down.

Thus are the ghosts to woo;

Thus are all dreams made true,

1851.

Ever to last!

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Thomas Lovell Beddoes.

GOOD-BY

GOOD-BY, proud world! I'm going home:
Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine.

Good-By

Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
A river-ark on the ocean brine,

Long I've been tossed like the driven foam;
But now, proud world! I 'm going home.

Good-by to Flattery's fawning face;
To Grandeur with his wise grimace;
To upstart Wealth's averted eye;
To supple Office, low and high;

To crowded halls, to court and street;
To frozen hearts and hasting feet;
To those who go, and those who come;
Good-by, proud world! I'm going home.

I'm going to my own hearth-stone,
Bosomed in yon green hills alone,-
A secret nook in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;
Where arches green, the livelong day,
Echo the blackbird's roundelay,

And vulgar feet have never trod

A spot that is sacred to thought and God.

O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,

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I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools, and the learnèd clan;
For what are they all, in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet? 30
Ralph Waldo Emerson.

1839.

HUNTING SONG

WAKEN, lords and ladies gay,
On the mountain dawns the day;

All the jolly chase is here,

With hawk and horse and hunting-spear! Hounds are in their couples yelling, Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling, Merrily, merrily, mingle they,

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Waken, lords and ladies gay."

Waken, lords and ladies gay,

The mist has left the mountain gray,
Springlets in the dawn are steaming,
Diamonds on the brake are gleaming:
And foresters have busy been

To track the buck in thicket green;

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Now we come to chant our lay,

Waken, lords and ladies gay."

Waken, lords and ladies gay,
To the green-wood haste away;
We can show you where he lies,
Fleet of foot and tall of size;

We can show the marks he made,

When 'gainst. the oak his antlers frayed;
You shall see him brought to bay;
"Waken, lords and ladies gay."

Youth and Love

Louder, louder chant the lay,
Waken, lords and ladies gay!

Tell them youth and mirth and glee
Run a course as well as we;
Time, stern huntsman, who can balk,
Staunch as hound and fleet as hawk?
Think of this and rise with day,
Gentle lords and ladies gay!

1808.

1895.

Sir Walter Scott.

YOUTH AND LOVE

ONCE only by the garden gate
Our lips we joined and parted.

I must fulfil an empty fate

And travel the uncharted.

Hail and farewell! I must arise,
Leave here the fatted cattle,
And paint on foreign land and skies
My Odyssey of battle.

The untented Kosmos my abode,

I pass, a wilful stranger:

My mistress still the open road

And the bright eyes of danger.

Come ill or well, the cross, the crown,

The rainbow or the thunder,

I fling my soul and body down
For God to plough them under.

Robert Louis Stevenson.

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