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. I DREAMED that somewhere in the shadowy place, Grief of farewell unspoken was forgot In welcome, and regret remembered not; And hopeless prayer accomplished turned to praise On lips that had been songless many days; Hope had no more to hope for, and desire And dread were overpast, in white attire New born we walked among the new world’s ways.