Algernon Charles Swinburne - A Jacobite`s ExileAlgernon Charles Swinburne - A Jacobite`s Exile
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The weary day runs down and dies,
The weary night wears through:
And never an hour is fair wi` flower,
And never a flower wi` dew.
I would the day were night for me,
I would the night were day:
For then would I stand in my ain fair land,
As now in dreams I may.
O lordly flow the Loire and Seine,
And loud the dark Durance:
But bonnier shine the braes of Tyne
Than a` the fields of France;
And the waves of Till that speak sae still
Gleam goodlier where they glance.
O weel were they that fell fighting
On dark Drumossie`s day:
They keep their hame ayont the faem
And we die far away.
O sound they sleep, and saft, and deep,
But night and day wake we;
And ever between the sea banks green
Sounds loud the sundering sea.
And ill we sleep, sae sair we weep
But sweet and fast sleep they:
And the mool that haps them roun` and laps them
Is e`en their country`s clay;
But the land we tread that are not dead
Is strange as night by day.
Strange as night in a strange man`s sight,
Though fair as dawn it be:
For what is here that a stranger`s cheer
Should yet wax blithe to see?
The hills stand steep, the dells lie deep,
The fields are green and gold:
The hill-streams sing, and the hill-sides ring,
As ours at home of old.
But hills and flowers are nane of ours,
And ours are over sea:
And the kind strange land whereon we stand,
It wotsna what were we
Or ever we came, wi` scathe and shame,
To try what end might be.
Scathe and shame, and a waefu` name,
And a weary time and strange,
Have they that seeing a weird for dreeing
Can die, and cannot change.
Shame and scorn may we thole that mourn,
Though sair be they to dree:
But ill may we bide the thoughts we hide,
Mair keen than wind and sea.
Ill may we thole the night`s watches,
And ill the weary day:
And the dreams that keep the gates of sleep,
A waefu` gift gie they;
For the songs they sing us, the sights they bring us,
The morn blaws all away.
On Aikenshaw the sun blinks braw,
The burn rins blithe and fain:
There`s nought wi` me I wadna gie
To look thereon again.
On Keilder-side the wind blaws wide:
There sounds nae hunting-horn
That rings sae sweet as the winds that beat
Round banks where Tyne is born.
The Wansbeck sings with all her springs
The bents and braes give ear;
But the wood that rings wi` the sang she sings
I may not see nor hear;
For far and far thae blithe burns are,
And strange is a` thing near.
The light there lightens, the day there brightens,
The loud wind there lives free:
Nae light comes nigh me or wind blaws by me
That I wad hear or see.
But O gin I were there again,
Afar ayont the faem,
Cauld and dead in the sweet saft bed
That haps my sires at hame!
We`ll see nae mair the sea-banks fair,
And the sweet grey gleaming sky,
And the lordly strand of Northumberland,
And the goodly towers thereby;
And none shall know but the winds that blow
The graves wherein we lie.
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