[From Poems on Life and Duty.]

THE STREAM OF LIFE.

O stream descending to the sea,
Thy mossy banks between,
The flowerets blow, the grasses grow,
The leafy trees are green.

In garden plots the children play,
The fields the labourers till,
And houses stand on either hand,
And thou descendest still.

O life descending into death,
Our waking eyes behold,
Parent and friend thy lapse attend,
Companions young and old.

Strong purposes our mind possess,
Our hearts affections fill,

We toil and earn, we seek and learn,
And thou descendest still.

O end to which our currents tend,
Inevitable sea,

To which we flow, what do we know,
What shall we guess of thee?

A roar we hear upon thy shore,
As we our course fulfil;

Scarce we divine a sun will shine

And be above us still.

[From The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich.]

THE HIGHLAND STREAM,

There is a stream (I name not its name, lest inquisitive tourist Hunt it, and make it a lion, and get it at last into guide-books), Springing far off from a loch unexplored in the folds of great mountains,

Falling two miles through rowan and stunted alder, enveloped Then for four more in a forest of pine, where broad and ample Spreads, to convey it, the glen with heathery slopes on both sides:

Broad and fair the stream, with occasional falls and narrows; But, where the glen of its course approaches the vale of the river,

Met and blocked by a huge interposing mass of granite,

Scarce by a channel deep-cut, raging up, and raging onward, Forces its flood through a passage so narrow a lady would

step it.

There, across the great rocky wharves, a wooden bridge goes,
Carrying a path to the forest; below, three hundred yards, say,
Lower in level some twenty-five feet, through flats of shingle,
Stepping-stones and a cart-track cross in the open valley.
But in the interval here the boiling pent-up water
Frees itself by a final descent, attaining a basin,

Ten feet wide and eighteen long, with whiteness and fury
Occupied partly, but mostly pellucid, pure, a mirror;
Beautiful there for the colour derived from green rocks under;
Beautiful, most of all, where beads of foam uprising
Mingle their clouds of white with the delicate hue of the stillness,
Cliff over cliff for its sides, with rowan and pendent birch boughs,
Here it lies, unthought of above at the bridge and pathway,
Still more enclosed from below by wood and rocky projection.
You are shut in, left alone with yourself and perfection of water,
Hid on all sides, left alone with yourself and the goddess of
bathing.

Here, the pride of the plunger, you stride the fall and clear it ; Here, the delight of the bather, you roll in beaded sparklings, Here into pure green depth drop down from lofty ledges.

ELSPIE AND PHILIP

But a revulsion wrought in the brain and bosom of Elspie; And the passion she just had compared to the vehement ocean, Urging in high spring-tide its masterful way through the moun. tains,

Forcing and flooding the silvery stream, as it runs from the

inland ;

That great power withdrawn, receding here and passive,

Felt she in myriad springs, her sources far in the mountains,
Stirring, collecting, rising, upheaving, forth-outflowing,
Taking and joining, right welcome, that delicate rill in the valley,
Filling it, making it strong, and still descending, seeking,
With a blind forefeeling descending ever, and seeking,
With a delicious forefeeling, the great still sea before it;
There deep into it, far, to carry, and lose in its bosom,
Waters that still from their sources exhaustless are fain to be
added.

As he was kissing her fingers, and knelt on the ground before her,

Yielding backward she sank to her seat, and of what she was doing

Ignorant, bewildered, in sweet multitudinous vague emotion, Stooping, knowing not what, put her lips to the hair on his

forehead:

And Philip, raising himself, gently, for the first time round her Passing his arms, close, close, enfolded her, close to his bosom. As they went home by the moon, Forgive me, Philip, she

whispered;

I have so many things to think of, all of a sudden ;

I who had never once thought a thing,-in my ignorant Highlands.

PHILIP TO ADAM,

These are fragments again without date addressed to Adam.
As at return of tide the total weight of ocean,

Drawn by moon and sun from Labrador and Greenland,
Sets-in amain, in the open space betwixt Mull and Scarba,
Heaving, swelling, spreading, the might of the mighty Atlantic
There into cranny and slit of the rocky, cavernous bottom
Settles down, and with dimples huge the smooth sea-surface
Eddies, coils, and whirls; by dangerous Corryvreckan :
So in my soul of souls, through its cells and secret recesses,
Comes back, swelling and spreading, the old democratic fervour

But as the light of day enters some populous city,

Shaming away, ere it come, by the chilly day-streak signal,
High and low, the misusers of night, shaming out the gaslamps—
All the great empty streets are flooded with broadening clearness
Which, withal, by inscrutable simultaneous access

Permeates far and pierces to the very cellars lying in
Narrow high back-lane, and court, and alley of alleys :-
He that goes forth to his walks, while speeding to the suburb,
Sees sights only peaceful and pure; as labourers settling
Slowly to work, in their limbs the lingering sweetness of slumber;
Humble market-carts, coming in, bringing in, not only
Flower, fruit, farm-store, but sounds and sights of the country
Dwelling yet on the sense of the dreamy drivers; soon after
Half-awake servant-maids unfastening drowsy shutters

Up at the windows, or down, letting in the air by the doorway,
School-boys, school-girls soon, with slate, portfolio, satchel,
Hampered as they haste, those running, these others maidenly
tripping ;

Early clerk anon turning out to stroll, or it may be

Meet his sweetheart-waiting behind the garden gate there; Merchant on his grass-plat haply bare-headed; and now by this time

Little child bringing breakfast to 'father' that sits on the timber
There by the scaffolding; see, she waits for the can beside him;
Meantime above purer air untarnished of new-lit fires:

So that the whole great wicked artificial civilised fabric—
All its unfinished houses, lots for sale, and railway out-works--
Seems reaccepted, resumed to Primal Nature and Beauty :-
-Such-in me, and to me, and on me the love of Elspie !

[From Songs in Absence.]

COME BACK!

Come back, come back, behold with straining mast,

And swelling sail, behold her steaming fast;

With one new sun to see her voyage o'er,

With morning light to touch her native shore.
Come back, come back.

Come back, come back, while westward labouring by,
With sailless yards, a bare black hulk we fly.

See how the gale we fight with sweeps her back,
To our lost home, on our forsaken track.

Come back, come back.

Come back, come back, across the flying foam,
We hear faint far-off voices call us home,
Come back, ye seem to say; ye seek in vain ;
We went, we sought, and homeward turned again.
Come back, come back.

Come back, come back; and whither back or why?
To fan quenched hopes, forsaken schemes to try;
Walk the old fields; pace the familiar street;
Dream with the idlers, with the bards compete.
Come back, come back.

Come back, come back; and whither and for what?
To finger idly some old Gordian knot,

Unskilled to sunder, and too weak to cleave,
And with much toil attain to half-believe.

Come back, come back.

Come back, come back; yea back, indeed, do go
Sighs panting thick, and tears that want to flow;
Fond fluttering hopes upraise their useless wings,
And wishes idly struggle in the strings;

Come back, come back.

Come back, come back, more eager than the breeze,
The flying fancies sweep across the seas,

And lighter far than ocean's flying foam,
The heart's fond message hurries to its home.
Come back, come back!

Come back, come back!

Back flies the foam; the hoisted flag streams back; The long smoke wavers on the homeward track, Back fly with winds things which the winds obey, The strong ship follows its appointed way.