Chapter I: LAVED my hands,

By the water side;
With the willow leaves
My hands I dried.

The nightingale sung
On the bough of the tree;
Sing, sweet nightingale,
It is well with thee.

Thou hast heart’s delight,
I have sad heart’s sorrow
For a false false maid
That will wed to-morrow.

’Tis all for a rose,
That I gave her not,
And I would that it grew
In the garden plot.

And I would the rose-tree
Were still to set,
That my love Marie
Might love me yet.

BALLADS OF MODERN GREECE.

THE BRIGAND’S GRAVE.

THE moon came up above the hill,
The sun went down the sea;
Go, maids, and fetch the well-water,
But, lad, come here to me.

Gird on my jack and my old sword,
For I have never a son;
And you must be the chief of all
When I am dead and gone.

But you must take my old broad sword,
And cut the green bough of the tree,
And strew the green boughs on the ground
To make a soft death bed for me.

And you must bring the holy priest
That I may sained be;
For I have lived a roving life
Fifty years under the greenwood tree.

And you shall make a grave for me,
And make it deep and wide;
That I may turn about and dream
With my old gun by my side.

And leave a window to the east,
And the swallows will bring the spring;
And all the merry month of May
The nightingales will sing.

THE SUDDEN BRIDAL.

IT was a maid lay sick of love,
All for a leman fair;
And it was three of her bower-maidens
That came to comfort her.

The first she bore a blossomed branch,
The second an apple brown,
The third she had a silk kerchief,
And still her tears ran down.

The first she mocked, the second she laughed—
‘We have loved lemans fair,
We made our hearts like the iron stone
Had little teen or care.’

‘If ye have loved ’twas a false false love,
And an ill leman was he;
But her true love had angel’s eyes,
And as fair was his sweet body.

And I will gird my green kirtle,
And braid my yellow hair,
And I will over the high hills
And bring her love to her.’

‘Nay, if you braid your yellow hair,
You’ll twine my love from me.’
‘Now nay, now nay, my lady good,
That ever this should be!’

‘When you have crossed the western hills
My true love you shall meet,
With a green flag blowing over him,
And green grass at his feet.’

She has crossed over the high hills,
And the low hills between,
And she has found the may’s leman
Beneath a flag of green.

’Twas four and twenty ladies fair
Were sitting on the grass;
But he has turned and looked on her,
And will not let her pass.

‘You’ve maidens here, and maidens there,
And loves through all the land;
But what have you made of the lady fair
You gave the rose-garland?’

She was so harsh and cold of love,
To me gave little grace;
She wept if I but touched her hand,
Or kissed her bonny face.

‘Yea, crows shall build in the eagle’s nest,
The hawk the dove shall wed,
Before my old true love and I
Meet in one wedding bed.’

When she had heard his bitter rede
That was his old true love,
She sat and wept within her bower,
And moaned even as a dove.

She rose up from her window seat,
And she looked out to see;
Her love came riding up the street
With a goodly company.

He was clad on with Venice gold,
Wrought upon cramoisie,
His yellow hair shone like the sun
About his fair body.

‘Now shall I call him blossomed branch
That has ill knots therein?
Or shall I call him basil plant,
That comes of an evil kin?

‘Oh, I shall give him goodly names,
My sword of damask fine;
My silver flower, my bright-winged bird,
Where go you, lover mine?’

‘I go to marry my new bride,
That I bring o’er the down;
And you shall be her bridal maid,
And hold her bridal crown.’

‘When you come to the bride chamber
Where your fair maiden is,
You’ll tell her I was fair of face,
But never tell her this,

‘That still my lips were lips of love,
My kiss love’s spring-water,
That my love was a running spring,
My breast a garden fair.

‘And you have kissed the lips of love
And drained the well-water,
And you have spoiled the running spring,
And robbed the fruits so fair.’

* * * * * *

‘Now he that will may scatter nuts,
And he may wed that will;
But she that was my old true love
Shall be my true love still.’

GREEK FOLK SONGS.

IANNOULA.

ALL the maidens were merry and wed
All to lovers so fair to see;
The lover I took to my bridal bed
He is not long for love and me.

I spoke to him and he noting said,
I gave him bread of the wheat so fine,
He did not eat of the bridal bread,
He did not drink of the bridal wine.

I made him a bed was soft and deep,
I made him a bed to sleep with me;
‘Look on me once before you sleep,
And look on the flower of my fair body.

‘Flowers of April, and fresh May-dew,
Dew of April and buds of May;
Two white blossoms that bud for you,
Buds that blossom before the day.’

THE TELL-TALES.

ALL in the mirk midnight when I was beside you,
Who has seen, who has heard, what was said, what was done?
’Twas the night and the light of the stars that espied you,
The fall of the moon, and the dawning begun.

’Tis a swift star has fallen, a star that discovers
To the sea what the green sea has told to the oars,
And the oars to the sailors, and they of us lovers
Go singing this song at their mistress’s doors.

AVE.

TWILIGHT ON TWEED.

THREE crests against the saffron sky,
Beyond the purple plain,
The dear remembered melody
Of Tweed once more again.

Wan water from the border hills,
Dear voice from the old years,
Thy distant music lulls and stills,
And moves to quiet tears.

Like a loved ghost thy fabled flood
Fleets through the dusky land;
Where Scott, come home to die, has stood,
My feet returning stand.

A mist of memory broods and floats,
The border waters flow;
The air is full of ballad notes,
Borne out of long ago.

Old songs that sung themselves to me,
Sweet through a boy’s day dream,
While trout below the blossom’d tree
Plashed in the golden stream.

* * * * * *

Twilight, and Tweed, and Eildon Hill,
Fair and thrice fair you be;
You tell me that the voice is still
That should have welcomed me.

ONE FLOWER.

“Up there shot a lily red,
With a patch of earth from the land of the dead,
For she was strong in the land of the dead.”

* * * * *

WHEN autumn suns are soft, and sea winds moan,
And golden fruits make sweet the golden air,
In gardens where the apple blossoms were,
In these old springs before I walked alone;
I pass among the pathways overgrown,
Of all the former flowers that kissed your feet
Remains a poppy, pallid from the heat,
A wild poppy that the wild winds have sown.
Alas! the rose forgets your hands of rose;
The lilies slumber in the lily bed;
’Tis only poppies in the dreamy close,
The changeless, windless garden of the dead,
You tend, with buds soft as your kiss that lies
In over happy dreams, upon mine eyes.

METEMPSYCHOSIS.

I SHALL not see thee, nay, but I shall know
Perchance, thy grey eyes in another’s eyes,
Shall guess thy curls in gracious locks that flow
On purest brows, yea, and the swift surmise
Shall follow, and track, and find thee in disguise
Of all sad things, and fair, where sunsets glow,
When through the scent of heather, faint and low,
The weak wind whispers to the day that dies.

From all sweet art, and out of all ‘old rhyme,’
Thine eyes and lips are light and song to me;
The shadows of the beauty of all time,
Carven and sung, are only shapes of thee;
Alas, the shadowy shapes! ah, sweet my dear
Shall life or death bring all thy being near?

LOST IN HADES.