Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By A Summer Night and Other Poems (1891). II. Two Songs

Graham R. Thomson (Rosamund Marriott Watson) (1860–1911)

THE SUN is gone from the valleys,

The air breathes fresh and chill;

On the barn-roof yellow with lichen

A robin is singing shrill.

Like a tawny leaf is his bosom,

Like a dead leaf is his wing;

He is glad of the coming winter

As the thrush is glad of the spring.

The sound of a shepherd’s piping

Comes down from a distant fold,

Like the ripple of running water,

As tuneless, and sweet, and cold.

The two songs mingle together;

Like and unlike are they,

For one sounds tired and plaintive,

And one rings proud and gay.

They take no thought of their music,

The bird and the shepherd lad;

But the bird-voice thrills with rapture,

And the human note is sad.