A Selection from the Works of Frederick LockerLocker-Lampson, Frederick
Philosophy
A Selection from the Works of Frederick Locker
Locker-Lampson, Frederick
English poetry
Her gentle spirit yearns
When she reads of Robin Burns--
Luckless Bard!
Had she blossomed in thy time,
How rare had been the rhyme
--And reward!
Thrice happy then is he
Who, planting such a Tree,
Sees it bloom
To shelter him--indeed
We have sorrow as we speed
To our doom!
I am happy having grown
Such a Sapling of my own;
And I crave
No garland for my brows,
But peace beneath its boughs
Till the grave.
"O DOMINE DEUS,
"O DOMINE DEUS,
SPERAVI IN TE,
O CARE MI JESU,
NUNC LIBERA ME."
Her quiet resting-place is far away,
None dwelling there can tell you her sad story:
The stones are mute. The stones could only say,
"A humble spirit passed away to glory."
She loved the murmur of this mighty town,
The lark rejoiced her from its lattice prison;
A streamlet soothes her now,--the bird has flown,--
Some dust is waiting there--a soul has risen.
No city smoke to stain the heather bells,--
Sigh, gentle winds, around my lone love sleeping,--
She bore her burthen here, but now she dwells
Where scorner never came, and none are weeping.
O cough! O cruel cough! O gasping breath!
These arms were round my darling at the latest:
All scenes of death are woe--but painful death
In those we dearly love is surely greatest!
I could not die. HE willed it otherwise;
My lot is here, and sorrow, wearing older,
Weighs down the heart, but does not fill the eyes,
And even friends may think that I am colder.
I might have been more kind, more tender; now
Repining wrings my bosom. I am grateful
No eye can see this mark upon my brow,
Yet even gay companionship is hateful.
But when at times I steal away from these,
And find her grave, and pray to be forgiven,
And when I watch beside her on my knees,
I think I am a little nearer heaven.
THE HOUSEMAID.
"Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide."
Alone she sits, with air resigned
She watches by the window-blind:
Poor girl! No doubt
The pilgrims here despise thy lot:
Thou canst not stir--because 'tis not
Thy _Sunday out_.
To play a game of hide and seek
With dust and cobwebs all the week,
Small pleasure yields:
O dear, how nice it is to drop
One's scrubbing-brush, one's pail and mop--
And scour the fields!
Poor Bodies some such Sundays know;
They seldom come. How soon they go!
But Souls can roam.
And, lapt in visions airy-sweet,
She sees in this too doleful street
Her own loved Home!
The road is now no road. She pranks
A brawling stream with thymy banks;
In Fancy's realm
This post sustains no lamp--aloof
It spreads above her parents' roof
A gracious elm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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