As I sit apart by the desert stone, Like Elijah at Horeb's cave, alone, "A still small voice" comes through the wild, Thomas Pringle [1789-1834] SPRING SONG IN THE CITY WHO remains in London, In the streets with me, Now the sun shines mellow, English lanes are yellow? Little barefoot maiden, Selling violets blue, Where the sweetlings grew? Oh, the warm wild woodland ways, Deep in dewy grasses, Where the wind-blown shadow strays, Scented as it passes! Peddler breathing deeply, Toiling into town, With the dusty highway You are dusky brown; Out of yonder wagon Pleasant hay-scents float, He who drives it carries A daisy in his coat: Spring Song in the City Oh, the English meadows, fair Mid the snow of daisies! Now in busy silence Broods the nightingale, Choosing his love's dwelling In a dimpled dale; Round the leafy bower they raise Rose-trees wild are springing; Underneath, through the green haze, Bounds the brooklet singing. And his love is silent As a bird can be, For the red buds only Fill the red rose-tree; Just as buds and blossoms blow He'll begin his tune, When all is green and roses glow Nowhere in the valleys Will the wind be still, Blows the milkmaid's kirtle clean Oh, to be a-roaming All the world looks well, Waters flow, breezes blow, 1673 Robert Buchanan [1841-1901] IN CITY STREETS YONDER in the heather there's a bed for sleeping, Sorely throb my feet, a-tramping London highways, .ways, Homeless in the City, poor among the poor! London streets are gold-ah, give me leaves a-glinting Oh, my heart is fain to hear the soft wind blowing, THE VAGABOND (To an Air of Schubert) GIVE to me the life I love, And the byway nigh me. Bread I dip in the river--- Let the blow fall soon or late, IN the highlands, in the country places, Where the old plain men have rosy faces, I And the young fair maidens Quiet eyes; Where essential silence cheers and blesse And for ever in the hill-recesses Her more lovely music Broods and dies. O to mount again where erst I haunted; Bright with sward; And when even dies, the million-tinted, And the night has come, and planets glinted, Lamp-bestarred! O to dream, O to awake and wander There, and with delight to take and render, Quiet breath! Lo! for there, among the flowers and grasses, Life and Death. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894] THE SONG MY PADDLE SINGS WEST wind, blow from your prairie nest, Blow from the mountains, blow from the west. O wind of the west, we wait for you! I have wooed you so, But never a favor you bestow. You rock your cradle the hills between, I stow the sail and unship the mast: My paddle will lull you into rest: O drowsy wind of the drowsy west, By your mountains steep, Or down where the prairie grasses sweep, Be strong, O paddle! be brave, canoe! |