Alexander Anderson
Alexander Anderson Poems
I never see a castle
That is gaunt and grey and grim,
But my thoughts at once go backward
To the past so misty and dim.
...
A strappin', sonsie, weel-matched pair
Were Jock Macree an' Maggie Blair,
An' mony wusses, said an' thinkit,
They had that nicht when they were linkit.
...
The bairnies cuddle doon at nicht,
Wi' muckle faucht an' din—
'O, try and sleep, ye waukrife rogues,
Your faither's comin' in'—
...
One red rose you took from my hand—
O the light was sweet that summer day—
One red rose from her queenly band,
That was far too sweet to pine away.
...
The feeble infant, but an hour in life,
Lay wailing in our arms, while on the bed
Slept, like a faded flower, the one year's wife,
With all her mother's first sweet feelings, dead.
...
I heard beneath my feet the clear sharp ring
Of grinding rail and wheel,
I felt, as on we sped with rush and swing,
The carriage sway and reel.
...
Once again within the city, 'mid its multitudinous din,
Stand I, while, as sinks a leaf when left by the uncertain wind,
So the daily village quiet, and the calm I had within,
Shrinks before the magic contact of the ever-shaping mind.
...
Ah, the stream by the ruin in the wood
Has long ago run dry,
And the only voice in the solitude
Is the wind that rushes by.
...
The spirit of God fell on him, and he pass'd
From out the common bounds wherein we move,
And like a mantle round his life he cast
The grandeur of his mission from above.
...
I stood within a wood, and heard the wind
Keep up its music in the solemn trees,
But this could soothe me not, for in my mind
My thoughts were ill at ease;
...
Last year I sat within my room,
And heard the cricket in the gloom
Chirp out his palpitating lay,
As if he were on holiday.
...
The merry children are playing
In the little village street;
The old men sit by the doorway:
Their evening rest is sweet.
...
The mist lies on Glen Aymer hill,
Listless as if asleep,
Below the silence quivers still
With bleatings of the sheep.
...
The simmer day was sweet an' lang,
It had nae thocht o' sorrow,
As my true love and I stood on
The bonnie banks o' Yarrow.
...
Wull I ha'e to speak again
To thae weans o' mine?
Eicht o'clock, an' weel I ken
The schule gangs in at nine.
...
I am auld an' frail, an' I scarce can gang,
Though whiles when I tak' a turn,
It's only when the sun blinks oot
On the braes by the Vennel Burn.
...
He will not sing his loudest song,
This poet full of love and mirth,
Until the shadows which belong
To night are deep upon the hearth.
...
Whisper, dear, that love is sweet,
Sweeter far than anything;
Brighter than the flowers that grow
...
Here's wee Tam aside the fire,
Soun' as soun' can be,
Tangs across his wee fat legs,
...
The humble bee is hiding
In the blossom's golden cells;
He, and he only, can tell me
Where the queen of the fairies dwells.
...
Alexander Anderson Biography
Alexander Anderson (April 30, 1845 – July 11, 1909) was a Scottish poet. Born in Kirkconnel, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, the sixth and youngest son of James Anderson a quarrier. When the boy was three, the household moved to Crocketford in Kirkcudbrightshire. He attended the local school where the teacher found him to be of average ability. The area around Croketford was renowned for martyrdom and Anderson seems to have taken inspiration from his walks in the hills in his later poetry. At sixteen he was back in his native village working in a quarry; some two years later (1862), he became a surfaceman or platelayer on the Glasgow and South-western railway, and generally wrote under the name of Surfaceman. Spending all his leisure in self-culture, he mastered German, French, and Spanish sufficiently to read the chief masterpieces in these languages. His poetic vein, which was true if somewhat limited in range, soon manifested itself, and in 1870 he began to send verses to the ‘People's Friend’ of Dundee, and subsequently his fist book ‘A Song of Labour and other Poems’, was published in 1873 by the Dundee advertiser in a run of 1000. Thanks to the support of The Peoples Friend this issue sold out within a fortnight. He was also aided by the support of the Rev George Gilfillan, a poetry critic in Dundee. Gilfillan wrote to Thomas Aird “You will be greatly interested in his simple manner and appearance-an unspoiled Burns is these respects and not without a little real mens divinor. Of course you know his poetry and his remarkable history”. and there followed Two Angels (1875), Songs of the Rail (1878), and Ballads and Sonnets (1879). In the following year he was made assistant librarian in the University of Edinburgh, and after an interval as secretary to the Philosophical Institution there, he returned as Chief Librarian to the university. Thereafter he wrote little. Of a simple and gentle character, he made many friends, including the Duke of Argyll, Thomas Carlyle, and Lord Houghton. A famous poem of his is "Cuddle Doon)
The Best Poem Of Alexander Anderson
A Castle Old And Grey
I never see a castle
That is gaunt and grey and grim,
But my thoughts at once go backward
To the past so misty and dim.
To the time when tower and turret,
Kept watch far over the vale;
And along the sounding draw-bridge
Rode knights in their suits of mail.
I see the sunshine glancing
On helmet, pennon, and spear;
And hear from the depth of the forest,
A bugle calling clear.
I fill the hall with visions
Of ladies rich in their bloom;
And stately knights in armour,
And waving with feather and plume.
If I climb the broken stairway,
Where the stone is smooth and fine,
I hear a rustle and whisper,
And footsteps in front of mine.
Whisper of youth and maiden,
As they met in the long ago;
His deep and strong and manly,
Hers tender and sweet and low.
But maiden and youth have vanished,
Away from the scene and the light;
Gone, too, the high-born lady,
And the plumed and armoured knight.
Only the grey old castle,
Of crumbling stone and lime,
Still stands to speak of the ages,
And the iron footsteps of Time.
Alexander Anderson Comments
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