After dark vapours have oppress’d our plains

      For a long dreary season, comes a day

      Born of the gentle South, and clears away

      From the sick heavens all unseemly stains.

      The anxious month, relieved of its pains,

      Takes as a long-lost right the feel of May;

      The eyelids with the passing coolness play

      Like rose leaves with the drip of summer rains.

      The calmest thoughts come round us; as of leaves

      Budding – fruit ripening in stillness – autumn suns

      Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves -

      Sweet Sappho’s cheek – a smiling infant’s breath -

      The gradual sand that through an hourglass runs -

      A woodland rivulet – a Poet’s death.

      O that a week could be an age, and we

      Felt parting and warm meeting every week,

      Then one poor year a thousand years would be,

      The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:

      So could we live long life in little space,

      So time itself would be annihilate,

      So a day’s journey in oblivious haze

      To serve our joys would lengthen and dilate.

      O to arrive each Monday morn from Ind!

      To land each Tuesday from the rich Levant!

      In little time a host of joys to bind,

      And keep our souls in one eternal pant!

      This morn, my friend, and yester-evening taught

      Me how to harbour such a happy thought.

      O golden tongued Romance, with serene lute!

      Fair plumed Syren, Queen of far-away!

      Leave melodising on this wintry day,

      Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:

      Adieu! for, once again, the fierce dispute

      Betwixt damnation and impassion’d clay

      Must I burn through; once more humbly assay

      The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit:

      Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,

      Begetters of our deep eternal theme!

      When through the old oak forest I am gone,

      Let me not wander in a barren dream,

      But, when I am consumed in the fire,

      Give me new Phoenix wings’ to fly at my desire.

      Before he went to feed with owls and bats

      Nebuchadnezzar had an ugly dream,

      Worse than an hus’if s when she thinks her cream

      Made a naumachia for mice and rats.

      So scared, he sent for that ‘Good King of Cats’

      Young Daniel, who soon did pluck away the beam

      From out his eye, and said he did not deem

      The sceptre worth a straw – his cushions old door-mats.

      A horrid nightmare similar somewhat

      Of late has haunted a most motley crew,

      Most loggerheads and chapmen – we are told

      That any Daniel tho’ he be a sot

      Can make the lying lips turn pale of hue

      By belching out ‘ye are that head of gold.’

      This mortal body of a thousand days

      Now fills, O Burns, a space in thine own room,

      Where thou didst dream alone on budded bays,

      Happy and thoughtless of thy day of doom!

      My pulse is warm with thine own barley-bree,

      My head is light with pledging a great soul,

      My eyes are wandering, and I cannot see,

      Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal;

      Yet can I stamp my foot upon thy floor,

      Yet can I ope thy window-sash to find

      The meadow thou hast tramped o’er and o’er, -

      Yet can I think of thee till thought is blind, -

      Yet can I gulp a bumper to thy name, -

      O smile among the shades, for this is fame!

      Son of the old moon-mountains African!

      Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!

      We call thee fruitful, and, that very while,

      A desert fills our seeing’s inward span;

      Nurse of swart nations since the world began,

      Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile

      Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,

      Rest for a space ‘twixt Cairo and Decan?

      O, O may dark fancies err! they surely do;

      ’Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste

      Of all beyond itself, thou dost bedew

      Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste

      The pleasant sunrise, green isles hast thou too,

      And to the sea as happily dost haste.

      O Peace! and dost thou with thy presence bless

      The dwellings of this war-surrounded Isle;

      Soothing with placid brow our late distress,

      Making the triple kingdom brightly smile?

      Joyful I hail thy presence; and I hail

      The sweet companions that await on thee;

      Complete my joy – let not my first wish fail,

      Let the sweet mountain nymph thy favourite be,

      With England’s happiness proclaim Europa’s Liberty.

      O Europe! let not sceptred tyrants see

      That thou must shelter in thy former state;

      Keep thy chains burst, and boldly say thou art free;

      Give thy kings law – leave not uncurbed the great;

      So with the horrors past thou’lt win thy happier fate!

      Seeing ‘The Stranger’ Played at Inverary

      Of late two dainties were before me plac’d

      Sweet, holy, pure, sacred and innocent,

      From