_My house_, I say. But hark to the sunny doves That make my roof the arena of their loves, That gyre about the gable all day long And fill the chimneys with their murmurous song: _Our house_, they say; and _mine_, the cat declares And spreads his golden fleece upon the chairs; And _mine_ the dog, and rises stiff with wrath If any alien foot profane the path. So too the buck that trimmed my terraces, Our whilome gardener, called the garden his; Who now, deposed, surveys my plain abode And his late kingdom, only from the road. XXXVII MY body which my dungeon is, And yet my parks and palaces:— Which is so great that there I go All the day long to and fro, And when the night begins to fall Throw down my bed and sleep, while all The building hums with wakefulness— Even as a child of savages When evening takes her on her way, (She having roamed a summer’s day Along the mountain-sides and scalp) Sleeps in an antre of that alp:— Which is so broad and high that there, As in the topless fields of air, My fancy soars like to a kite And faints in the blue infinite:— Which is so strong, my strongest throes And the rough world’s besieging blows Not break it, and so weak withal, Death ebbs and flows in its loose wall As the green sea in fishers’ nets, And tops its topmost parapets:— Which is so wholly mine that I Can wield its whole artillery, And mine so little, that my soul Dwells in perpetual control, And I but think and speak and do As my dead fathers move me to:— If this born body of my bones The beggared soul so barely owns, What money passed from hand to hand, What creeping custom of the land, What deed of author or assign, Can make a house a thing of mine? XXXVIII SAY not of me that weakly I declined The labours of my sires, and fled the sea, The towers we founded and the lamps we lit, To play at home with paper like a child. But rather say: _In the afternoon of time_ _A strenuous family dusted from its hands_ _The sand of granite_, _and beholding far_ _Along the sounding coast its pyramids_ _And tall memorials catch the dying sun_, _Smiled well content_, _and to this childish task_ _Around the fire addressed its evening hours_. BOOK II.—_In Scots_ TABLE OF COMMON SCOTTISH VOWEL SOUNDS