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Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!

Even yet thou art to me

No bird, but an invisible thing,

A voice, a mystery;

The same whom in my schoolboy days
I listened to; that Cry

Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky.

To seek thee did I often rove

Through woods and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen.

And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.

O blessed Bird! the earth we pace

Again appears to be

An unsubstantial, faery place:

That is fit home for Thee!

WORDSWORTH.

HELEN OF KIRKCONNEL

I WISH I were where Helen lies!
Night and day on me she cries;

O that I were where Helen lies,
On fair Kirkconnel Lee!

Curst be the heart that thought the thought
And curst the hand, that fired the shot,
When in my arms burd Helen dropt,
And died to succour me!

O think na ye my heart was sair,

When my love dropt down and spak' nae mair!
There did she swoon wi' meikle care,

On fair Kirkconnel Lee.

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O Helen fair! O Helen chaste!
If I were with thee, I were blest,
Where thou lies low, and takes thy rest,
On fair Kirkconnel Lee.

I wish my grave were growing green,
A winding-sheet drawn ower my een,
And I in Helen's arms lying,

On fair Kirkconnel Lee.

I wish I were where Helen lies!
Night and day on me she cries,
And I am weary of the skies,

For her sake that died for me.

TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON

WHEN Love with unconfinèd wings

Hovers within my gates;

And my divine Althea brings

To whisper at the grates:
When I lie tangled in her hair,

And fetter'd to her eye;

The Gods that wanton in the air,
Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,

Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,

When healths and draughts go free,

Fishes that tipple in the deep,
Know no such liberty.

When, like committed linnets, I

With shriller throat shall sing

The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my KING;

When I shall voice aloud, how good
He is, how great should be;
Enlarged winds that curl the flood,
Know no such liberty.

UNKNOWN.

THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA

NOT a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him; But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;

But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed,
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,

That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,—
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done

When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing.

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