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HEATHER ALE: A GALLOWAY LEGEND

FROM the bonny bells of heather
They brewed a drink long-syne,
Was sweeter far than honey,
Was stronger far than wine.
They brewed it and they drank it,
And lay in a blessed swound
For days and days together
In their dwellings underground.

There rose a king in Scotland,
A fell man to his foes,
He smote the Picts in battle,

He hunted them like roes.
Over miles of the red mountain

He hunted as they fled,

And strewed the dwarfish bodies
Of the dying and the dead.

Summer came in the country,
Red was the heather bell;
But the manner of the brewing
Was none alive to tell.
In graves that were like children's
On many a mountain head,
The Brewsters of the Heather

Lay numbered with the dead.

The king in the red moorland
Rode on a summer's day;
And the bees hummed, and the curlews
Cried beside the way.

The king rode, and was angry;
Black was his brow and pale,
To rule in a land of heather
And lack the Heather Ale.

It fortuned that his vassals,

Riding free on the heath, Came on a stone that was fallen And vermin hid beneath. Rudely plucked from their hiding, Never a word they spoke : A son and his aged father

Last of the dwarfish folk.

The king sat high on his charger,
He looked on the little men ;
And the dwarfish and swarthy couple
Looked at the king again.

Down by the shore he had them;
And there on the giddy brink

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Should wreck such ills where they obtain
The victims to their sorry trade,
The player cozened by the played;
Pasteboards supreme; to this they bring
Both gallant buck and roystering blade,
Puppets of knave, and queen, and king.

From reckless play, what noble gain?

One friend hard hit, the rest afraid To show their pleasure at his pain,

Such sympathy might well persuade The cards in garish heaps displayed To join, with impish revelling,

And jeer as all his fortunes fade Puppets of knave, and queen, and king.

L'ENVOI

Prince! after all, they are the shade,
The type of every earthly thing,
And we, through all life's masquerade,
Puppets of knave, and queen, and king.

SUFFICIENCY

A LITTLE love, of Heaven a little share, And then we go - what matters it? since where,

Or when, or how, none may aforetime know,

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"And the winds from dawn to vesper,

Blow they north or blow they south, Softly in my ear shall whisper,

"Thou hast kissed Schöne Rothraut's mouth.'

"Every floweret of the meadow,

Every bird upon the tree,
In life's sunshine or its shadow,

Shall bring back my joy to me."

A PARABLE OF THE SPIRIT

I CAME in light that I might behold
The shadow which shut me apart of old.
Lo, it was lying robed in white,
With the still palms crossed o'er a lily,
bright

With salt rain of tears; and everywhere
Around lay blossoms that filled the air
With perfume, snow of flowers that hid
The snow of the silken coverlid

With myrtle and orange bloom and store
Of jasmine stars, and a wreath it wore
Of stephanotis. Still it lay,

For its time of travail had passed away.
"Of old it was never so fair as this,"
I said, as I bent me down to kiss

The cast swathing robe. "It is well that so
I see it before I turn to go -
Turn to depart that I may bless

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On its alabaster altar stood

A vessel with sacrificial blood.
Incense of sweet unselfishness
Rose ever, a pillar of light to bless
That fair pure place with its flower-sweet
fume.

Dimmed was that shrine by no cloud of

gloom,

But bright shone that pillar which rose above

On her earthly jewels with its lambent love.

So I knew that any gift of mine

Was naught by her treasure of love divine, Flowing freely down; but a flower I lent That would bloom in her bosom with sweet content,

'T was forget-me-not. "Though poor," I said,

"Mid her blossoms of living love, the dead Would yet be loved, and I will that she Keep this, and render it back to me."

I knew how my blossom would live and

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Its fulness, before but dimly seen,
As I lifted its veils and entered in
Entered, and saw with mute amaze
How squalid and narrow was the place.
Still, I fancied, perchance for me
The best of that which is here may be.
Searching in dusk, I forced my way
To the secret place where my chamber
lay,

Choked with the sordid piles o'erthrown
Of a miser's dust which had been my own,
Till but little space for me remained,
All being filthy and weather-stained;
Whilst evil fungi, spawn of lust,
Pushed through the rotten floor, and

thrust

Unsightly growths in that evil space,
And vanity pressed in the crowded space
Till room was scanty for me to tread.
I gazed shadowed a moment before I fled,

For no gift of mine of love or care
Might live in that pestilential air;
Still, for the love of dreams bygone,
I could not leave him quite alone,
So I planted cypress to warn of death.
It might live, and its keen balsamic breath
Would wither these fungi one by one,
Giving entrance, perchance, to some ray of

sun.

Then I departed, earth's lesson o'er.
Never henceforth shall I enter more ;
And the thought was mine of former
dread

And former longings, and so I said,
"Blind I was when my dearest wish
Was ever to dwell in a home like this."
Knew, as I went forth to my rest,
My prayer was a child's, and God knew
best.

Eric Mackay

THE WAKING OF THE LARK

O BONNIE bird, that in the brake, exultant, dost prepare thee,

As poets do whose thoughts are true, for wings that will upbear thee

Oh! tell me, tell me, bonnie bird, Canst thou not pipe of hope deferred ? Or canst thou sing of naught but Spring among the golden meadows?

Methinks a bard (and thou art one) should suit his song to sorrow,

And tell of pain, as well as gain, that waits us on the morrow;

But thou art not a prophet, thou, If naught but joy can touch thee now; If, in thy heart, thou hast no vow that speaks of Nature's anguish.

Oh! I have held my sorrows dear, and felt, though poor and slighted, The songs we love are those we hear when love is unrequited;

But thou art still the slave of dawn, And canst not sing till night be gone, Till o'er the pathway of the fawn the sunbeams shine and quiver.

Thou art the minion of the sun that rises in his splendor,

And canst not spare for Dian fair the songs that should attend her.

The moon, so sad and silver-pale, Is mistress of the nightingale ; And thou wilt sing on hill and dale no ditties in the darkness.

For Queen and King thou wilt not spare one note of thine outpouring;

And thou 'rt as free as breezes be on Nature's velvet flooring.

The daisy, with its hood undone, The grass, the sunlight, and the sunThese are the joys, thou holy one, that pay thee for thy singing.

Oh, hush! Oh, hush! how wild a gush of rapture in the distance

A roll of rhymes, a toll of chimes, a cry for love's assistance;

A sound that wells from happy throats, A flood of song where beauty floats, And where our thoughts, like golden boats, do seem to cross a river.

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