emes,
Pouring in each poet-heart
Some rare essence of your art
Till it seems your singing lip
Kisses every pencil tip!
Far across the unknown lands--
Reach of heavenly isle and sea--
How we long to touch the hands
You outhold so lovingly!

TO JAMES NEWTON MATTHEWS

IN ANSWER TO A LETTER ON THE ANATOMY OF THE SONNET

Oho! ye sunny, sonnet-singin' vagrant,
Flauntin' your simmer sangs in sic a weather!
Ane maist can straik the bluebells and the heather
Keekin' aboon the snaw and bloomin' fragrant!
Whiles you, ye whustlin' brither, sic a lay grant
O' a' these janglin', wranglin' sweets thegither,
I weel maun perk my ain doon-drappin' feather
And pipe a wee: Tho' boisterous and flagrant
The winds blow whuzzle-whazzle rhymes that trickle
Fra' aff my tongue less limpid than I'd ha'e them,
I in their little music hap a mickle
O' canty praises, a' asklent to weigh them
Agen your pride, and smile to see them tickle
The warm nest o' the heart wherein I lay them.

SONG

O I would I had a lover!
A lover! a lover!
O I would I had a lover
With a twinkering guitar,
To come beneath my casement
Singing "There is none above her,"
While I, leaning, seemed to hover
In the scent of his cigar!

Then at morn I'd want to meet him--
To meet him! to meet him!
O at morn I'd want to meet him,
When the mist was in the sky,
And the dew along the path I went
To casually greet him,
And to cavalierly treat him,
And regret it by and by.

And I'd want to meet his brother--
His brother! his brother!
O I'd want to meet his brother
At the german or the play,
To pin a rose on his lapel
And lightly press the other,
And love him like a mother--
While he thought the other way.

O I'd pitilessly test him!
And test him! and test him!
O I'd pitilessly test him
Far beyond his own control;
And every tantalizing lure
With which I could arrest him,
I'd loosen to molest him,
Till I tried his very soul.

But ah, when I relented--
Relented, relented!
But ah, when I relented
When the stars were blurred and dim,
And the moon above, with crescent grace,
Looked off as I repented,
And with rapture half demented,