Robert Leighton

AS in the babbling crowd where gossips meet,
Some quiet heart maintains itself alone—
Or grass-grown alley off the trampled street—
Glen-Messen lies unknown.The visitors of summer come and go,…

BETWEEN Loch-Foyle and Greenan’s ancient fort,
From Derry’s famous walls a little way,
There dreams a gorsy glen, in whose lone heart
I mused a Sabbath day.A nameless glen, one mass of yellow gorse,…

HERE Cromwell stood, that dark and frowning night,
Hemmed in upon this desperate tongue of land,
The sea behind, the sea on either hand,
And, fronting him, the foe on yonder height.…

THERE ’s a place in the middle of Ireland called
Seven Churches of Clonmacnoise,—
As noisy a place as ever squalled,
If the churches have each a different voice.…

O WORLD, what have your poets while they live
But sorrow and the finger of the scorner?
And, dead, the highest honor you can give
Is burial in a corner.Not so, my poets of the popular school…

IN Liverpool, the good old town, we miss
The grand old relics of a reverend past,—
Cathedrals, shrines that pilgrims come to kiss,—
Walls wrinkled by the blast.Some crypt or keep, historically dear,…

TO Stratford-on-the-Avon. And we passed
Through aisles and avenues of the princeliest trees
That ever eyes beheld. None such with us
Here in the bleaker North. And as we went…

YORK Minster! what a monument is this
  Out of one meek and simple life uprist!
Within these walls what sceptic but needs kiss
        Thy garment’s hem, O Christ!For not on fable, but immortal fact,…