When those we love are absent—far away,
When those we love have met some hapless fate,
How pours the heart its lone and plaintive lay,
As the wood-songster mourns her stolen mate!
Alas! the Summer-bower—how desolate!
The Winter hearth—how dim its fire appears!
While the pale memories of by-gone years
Around our thoughts like spectral shadows wait.
How changed the picture! here, they all are parted
To meet no more—the true, the gentle-hearted!
The old have journeyed to their bourne—the young
Wander, if living, distant lands among—

Love came to us in time gone by
—When one at twilight shyly played
And one in fear was standing nigh—
—For Love at first is all afraid.

We were grave lovers. Love is past
—That had his sweet hours many a one;
Welcome to us now at the last
—The ways that we shall go upon.

If from my lips some angry accents fell,
Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind,
'Twas but the error of a sickly mind
And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well,
And waters clear, of Reason; and for me
Let this my verse the poor atonement be—
My verse, which thou to praise wert ever inclined
Too highly, and with a partial eye to see
No blemish. Thou to me didst ever shew
Kindest affection; and would oft-times lend
An ear to the desponding love-sick lay,
Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay
But ill the mighty debt of love I owe,

'Tis true, fair Celia, that by thee I live,
That every kiss, and every fond embrace,
Forms a new soul within me, and doth give
A balsam to the wound made by thy face.
Yet still methinks I miss
That bliss,
Which Lovers dare not name,
And only then described is,
When flame doth meet with flame.

Those favours which do bless me every day,
Are yet but empty and Platonical.
Think not to please your servants with half pay.
Good Gamesters never stick to throw at all.
Who can endure to miss
That bliss,
Which Lovers dare not name,

Come, Love, let 's walk into the spring,
Where we may hear the blackbird sing,
The robin-redbreast and the thrush,
The nightingale in thorny bush,
The mavis sweetly carolling,
These to my Love content will bring.

In yonder dale there are fine flowers,
And many pleasant shady bowers,
A purling brook whose silver streams
Are beautified by Phoebus' beams,
Which stealing through the trees for fear,
Because Diana bathes her there.

See where this nymph with all her train
Comes tripping o'er the park amain,
And in this grove here will she stay,

Full ill, I ween, can measured speech reveal
Or thought embody, what true bosoms feel,
For hollow falsehood long has set her sign
On each soft phrase that speaks a love like mine:
The choicest terms are now enfeoff'd to folly,
To vain delight, or wilful melancholy.

Oh! for a virgin speech, a strain untainted
By worldly use, with holy meaning sainted,
Thoughts to conceive, and words devote to tell
The strength divine of love, its secret spell,
Of brother's love, that is within the heart
A spiritual essence, and exists apart

O BEAUTIFUL Stars, when you see me go
Hither and thither, in search of love,
Do you think me faithless, who gleam and glow
Serene and fixed in the blue above?
O Stars, so golden, it is not so.

But there is a garden I dare not see,
There is a place where I fear to go,
Since the charm and glory of life to me
The brown earth covered there, long ago.
O Stars, you saw it, you know, you know.

Hither and thither I wandering go,
With aimless haste and wearying fret;
In a search for pleasure and love? Not so,
Seeking desperately to forget.

Strong as the death it masters, is the hope
That onward looks to immortality:
Let the frame perish, so the soul survive,
Pure, spiritual and loving. I believe
The grave exalts, not separates, the ties
That hold us in affection to our kind.
I will look down from yonder pitying sky,
Watching and waiting those I love on earth,
Anxious in heaven until they too are there.
I will attend your guardian angel's side,
And weep away your faults with holy tears;
Your midnight shall be filled with solemn thought:
And when, at length, death brings you to my love,

I love one, and he loveth me:
Who sayeth this? who deemeth this?
And is this thought a cause of bliss,
Or source of misery?

The loved may die, or he may change:
And if he die thou art bereft;
Or if he alter, nought is left
Save life that seemeth strange.

A weary life, a hopeless life,
Full of all ill and fear-oppressed;
A weary life that looks for rest
Alone after death's strife.

And love's joy hath no quiet even;
It evermore is variable.
Its gladness is like war in Hell,
More than repose in Heaven.

‘There springs a rose in Fyvie's yard,
And O but it springs bonny!
There 's a daisy in the middle of it,
Its name is Andrew Lammie.

‘I wish the rose were in my breast,
For the love I bear the daisy;
So blyth and merry as I would be,
And kiss my Andrew Lammie.

‘The first time I and my love met
Was in the wood of Fyvie;
He kissëd and he dawted me,
Calld me his bonny Annie.

‘Wi apples sweet he did me treat,
Which stole my heart so canny,
And ay sinsyne himself was kind,
My bonny Andrew Lammie.’