Robert Miller, the author of the two following songs, was a native of Glasgow, and was educated for the legal profession. He contributed verses to the periodicals, but did not venture on any separate publication. He died at Glasgow, in September 1834, at the early age of twenty-four. His "Lay of the Hopeless" was written within a few days of his decease.
The loved of early days!
Where are they?—where?
Not on the shining braes,
The mountains bare;—
Not where the regal streams
Their foam-bells cast—
Where childhood's time of dreams
And sunshine pass'd.
Some in the mart, and some
In stately halls,
With the ancestral gloom
Of ancient walls;
Some where the tempest sweeps
The desert waves;
Some where the myrtle weeps
On Roman graves.
And pale young faces gleam
With solemn eyes;
Like a remember'd dream
The dead arise;
In the red track of war
The restless sweep;
In sunlit graves afar
The loved ones sleep.
The braes are dight with flowers,
The mountain streams
Foam past me in the showers
Of sunny gleams;
But the light hearts that cast
A glory there,
In the rejoicing past,
Where are they?—where?
Oh! would that the wind that is sweeping now
O'er the restless and weary wave,
Were swaying the leaves of the cypress bough
O'er the calm of my early grave—
And my heart with its pulses of fire and life,
Oh! would it were still as stone.
I am weary, weary, of all the strife,
And the selfish world I 've known.
I 've drunk up bliss from a mantling cup,
When youth and joy were mine;
But the cold black dregs are floating up,
Instead of the laughing wine;
And life hath lost its loveliness,
And youth hath spent its hour,
And pleasure palls like bitterness,
And hope hath not a flower.
And love! was it not a glorious eye
That smiled on my early dream?
It is closed for aye, where the long weeds sigh,
In the churchyard by the stream:
And fame—oh! mine were gorgeous hopes
Of a flashing and young renown:
But early, early the flower-leaf drops
From the withering seed-cup down.
And beauty! have I not worshipp'd all
Her shining creations well?
The rock—the wood—the waterfall,
Where light or where love might dwell.
But over all, and on my heart,
The mildew hath fallen sadly,
I have no spirit, I have no part
In the earth that smiles so gladly!
I only sigh for a quiet bright spot
In the churchyard by the stream,
Whereon the morning sunbeams float,
And the stars at midnight dream;
Where only Nature's sounds may wake
The sacred and silent air,
And only her beautiful things may break
Through the long grass gathering there.
