So fare thee well, my brown-eyed lass,
May heaven keep thee pure and sweet!
May ne’er a shadow o’er thee pass
Of evil’s harm or dark deceit!
And mayst thou from the Southern clime
Return when April’s breezes blow,
When minstrel hosts perceive ’tis time
To lift their wings and northward go.
ALONE
It is good to be all alone,
In the dark of the night, aye, the starry night,
When those you love truest are from you gone,
In the far away, beyond sound and sight;
When the wind is singing its sad, strange song
In gloomy tree-tops, a-tow’ring high,
And whispers the names for whom you long,
And the love for which you sigh.
It is good to be all alone with one’s soul,—
The soul which so seldom has chance to speak;
It is good to be freed from the narrow and small,
To rise from the vale to the mountain peak,
To be guided by stargleams into a sphere,
Where the world does not reach with its clamour and cry,
And there in the silence pause, till you hear
Your innermost self and the God that is nigh.
LINES ON AN OLD SONGBOOK
An old hymnbook, owned by my great-grandmother, and bearing the following inscription:
Cenfebam Hafniae d. 9 Sept. Anno 1684,
is a collection of hymns and religious songs, written by Dorothe Engelbrets Datter, a poetess of considerable distinction in Norway and Denmark in the 17th century.
I faintly can remember still
A scene from childhood years,
A picture dim which always will
Be treasured in my heart until
Beyond the change of good and ill,
It glorified appears.
I saw through an half-open door
An aged woman’s face,
Amid the sunlight on the floor,
Uplifted and it seemed adore
A heavenly vision, or implore
For mercy and for grace.