Written by
William Butler Yeats |
'Lay me in a cushioned chair;
Carry me, ye four,
With cushions here and cushions there,
To see the world once more.
'To stable and to kennel go;
Bring what is there to bring;
Lead my Lollard to and fro,
Or gently in a ring.
'Put the chair upon the grass:
Bring Rody and his hounds,
That I may contented pass
From these earthly bounds.
'
His eyelids droop, his head falls low,
His old eyes cloud with dreams;
The sun upon all things that grow
Falls in sleepy streams.
Brown Lollard treads upon the lawn,
And to the armchair goes,
And now the old man's dreams are gone,
He smooths the long brown nose.
And now moves many a pleasant tongue
Upon his wasted hands,
For leading aged hounds and young
The huntsman near him stands.
'Huntsmam Rody, blow the horn,
Make the hills reply.
'
The huntsman loosens on the morn
A gay wandering cry.
Fire is in the old man's eyes,
His fingers move and sway,
And when the wandering music dies
They hear him feebly say,
'Huntsman Rody, blow the horn,
Make the hills reply.
'
'I cannot blow upon my horn,
I can but weep and sigh.
'
Servants round his cushioned place
Are with new sorrow wrung;
Hounds are gazing on his face,
Aged hounds and young.
One blind hound only lies apart
On the sun-smitten grass;
He holds deep commune with his heart:
The moments pass and pass:
The blind hound with a mournful din
Lifts slow his wintry head;
The servants bear the body in;
The hounds wail for the dead.
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Written by
Robert Burns |
IN this strange land, this uncouth clime,
A land unknown to prose or rhyme;
Where words ne’er cross’t the Muse’s heckles,
Nor limpit in poetic shackles:
A land that Prose did never view it,
Except when drunk he stacher’t thro’ it;
Here, ambush’d by the chimla cheek,
Hid in an atmosphere of reek,
I hear a wheel thrum i’ the neuk,
I hear it—for in vain I leuk.
The red peat gleams, a fiery kernel,
Enhuskèd by a fog infernal:
Here, for my wonted rhyming raptures,
I sit and count my sins by chapters;
For life and ***** like ither Christians,
I’m dwindled down to mere existence,
Wi’ nae converse but Gallowa’ bodies,
Wi’ nae kenn’d face but Jenny Geddes,
Jenny, my Pegasean pride!
Dowie she saunters down Nithside,
And aye a westlin leuk she throws,
While tears hap o’er her auld brown nose!
Was it for this, wi’ cannie care,
Thou bure the Bard through many a shire?
At howes, or hillocks never stumbled,
And late or early never grumbled?—
O had I power like inclination,
I’d heeze thee up a constellation,
To canter with the Sagitarre,
Or loup the ecliptic like a bar;
Or turn the pole like any arrow;
Or, when auld Phoebus bids good-morrow,
Down the zodiac urge the race,
And cast dirt on his godship’s face;
For I could lay my bread and kail
He’d ne’er cast saut upo’ thy tail.
—
Wi’ a’ this care and a’ this grief,
And sma’, sma’ prospect of relief,
And nought but peat reek i’ my head,
How can I write what ye can read?—
Tarbolton, twenty-fourth o’ June,
Ye’ll find me in a better tune;
But till we meet and weet our whistle,
Tak this excuse for nae epistle.
ROBERT BURNS.
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