The Outcast's Farewell
The sun is banished,
The daylight vanished,
No rosy traces
Are left behind.
Here in the meadow
I watch the shadow
Of forms and faces
Upon your blind.
Through swift transitions,
In new positions,
My eyes still follow
One shape most fair.
My heart delaying
Awhile, is playing
With pleasures hollow,
Which mock despair.
I feel so lonely,
I long once only
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poem by Robert Fuller Murray
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Cairnsmill Den
As I, with hopeless love o'erthrown,
With love o'erthrown, with love o'erthrown,
And this is truth I tell,
As I, with hopeless love o'erthrown,
Was sadly walking all alone,
I met my love one morning
In Cairnsmill Den.
One morning, one morning,
One blue and blowy morning,
I met my love one morning
In Cairnsmill Den.
A dead bough broke within the wood
Within the wood, within the wood,
And this is truth I tell.
A dead bough broke within the wood,
And I looked up, and there she stood.
I asked what was it brought her there,
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poem by Robert Fuller Murray
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A Ballad Of The Town Water
It is the Police Commissioners,
All on a winter's day;
And they to prove the town water
Have set themselves away.
They went to the north, they went to the south,
And into the west went they,
Till they found a civil, civil engineer,
And unto him did say:
'Now tell to us, thou civil engineer,
If this be fit to drink.'
And they showed him a cup of the town water,
Which was as black as ink.
He took three sips of the town water,
And black in the face was he;
And they turned them back and fled away,
Amazed that this should be.
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poem by Robert Fuller Murray
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The Banished Bejant
from the unpublished remains of Edgar Allan Poe
In the oldest of our alleys,
By good bejants tenanted,
Once a man whose name was Wallace—
William Wallace—reared his head.
Rowdy Bejant in the college
He was styled:
Never had these halls of knowledge
Welcomed waster half so wild!
Tassel blue and long and silken
From his cap did float and flow
(This was cast into the Swilcan
Two months ago);
And every gentle air that sported
With his red gown,
Displayed a suit of clothes, reported
The most alarming in the town.
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poem by Robert Fuller Murray
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Andrew M’Crie
from the unpublished remains of Edgar Allan Poe
It was many and many a year ago,
In a city by the sea,
That a man there lived whom I happened to know
By the name of Andrew M'Crie;
And this man he slept in another room,
But ground and had meals with me.
I was an ass and he was an ass,
In this city by the sea;
But we ground in a way which was more than a grind,
I and Andrew M'Crie;
In a way that the idle semis next door
Declared was shameful to see.
And this was the reason that, one dark night,
In this city by the sea,
A stone flew in at the window, hitting
The milk-jug and Andrew M'Crie.
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poem by Robert Fuller Murray
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Come Back to St Andrews
Come back to St. Andrews! Before you went away
You said you would be wretched where you could not see the Bay,
The East sands and the West sands and the castle in the sea
Come back to St. Andrews--St. Andrews and me.
Oh, it's dreary along South Street when the rain is coming down,
And the east wind makes the student draw more close his warm red gown,
As I often saw you do, when I watched you going by
On the stormy days to College, from my window up on high.
I wander on the Lade Braes, where I used to walk with you,
And purple are the woods of Mount Melville, budding new,
But I cannot bear to look, for the tears keep coming so,
And the Spring has lost the freshness which it had a year ago.
Yet often I could fancy, where the pathway takes a turn,
I shall see you in a moment, coming round beside the burn,
Coming round beside the burn, with your swinging step and free,
And your face lit up with pleasure at the sudden sight of me.
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poem by Robert Fuller Murray
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Trafalgar Square
These verses have I pilfered like a bee
Out of a letter from my C. C. C.
In London, showing what befell him there,
With other things, of interest to me
One page described a night in open air
He spent last summer in Trafalgar Square,
With men and women who by want are driven
Thither for lodging, when the nights are fair.
No roof there is between their heads and heaven,
No warmth but what by ragged clothes is given,
No comfort but the company of those
Who with despair, like them, have vainly striven.
On benches there uneasily they doze,
Snatching brief morsels of a poor repose,
And if through weariness they might sleep sound,
Their eyes must open almost ere they close.
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poem by Robert Fuller Murray
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The City of Golf
Would you like to see a city given over,
Soul and body, to a tyrannising game?
If you would, there's little need to be a rover,
For St. Andrews is the abject city's name.
It is surely quite superfluous to mention,
To a person who has been here half an hour,
That Golf is what engrosses the attention
Of the people, with an all-absorbing power.
Rich and poor alike are smitten with the fever;
Their business and religion is to play;
And a man is scarcely deemed a true believer,
Unless he goes at least a round a day.
The city boasts an old and learned college,
Where you'd think the leading industry was Greek;
Even there the favoured instruments of knowledge
Are a driver and a putter and a cleek.
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poem by Robert Fuller Murray
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Thirty Years After
Two old St. Andrews men, after a separation of nearly thirty years, meet by chance at a wayside inn. They interchange experiences; and at length one of them, who is an admirer of Mr. Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, speaks as follows:
If you were now a bejant,
And I a first year man,
We'd grind and grub together
In every kind of weather,
When Winter's snows were regent,
Or when the Spring began;
If you were now a bejant,
And I a first year man.
If you were what you once were,
And I the same man still,
You'd be the gainer by it,
For you—you can't deny it—
A most uncommon dunce were;
My profit would be nil,
If you were what you once were,
And I the same man still.
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poem by Robert Fuller Murray
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A Lover's Confession
When people tell me they have loved
But once in youth,
I wonder, are they always moved
To speak the truth?
Not that they wilfully deceive:
They fondly cherish
A constancy which they would grieve
To think might perish.
They cherish it until they think
`Twas always theirs.
So, if the truth they sometimes blink,
`Tis unawares.
Yet unawares, I must profess,
They do deceive
Themselves, and those who questionless
Their tale believe.
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poem by Robert Fuller Murray
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