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Earth To The Twentieth Century. | Jean Blewett | You cannot take from out my heart the growing,
The green, sweet growing, and the vivid thrill.
"O Earth," you cry, "you should be old, not glowing
With youth and all youth's strength and beauty still!"
Old, and the new hopes stirring in my bosom!
Old, and my children drawing life from me!
Old, in my womb the tender bud and blossom!
Old, steeped in richness and fertility!
Old, while the growing things call to each other,
In language I alone can understand:
"How she doth nourish us, this wondrous mother
Who is so beautiful and strong and grand!"
Old, while the wild things of the forest hide them
In my gray coverts, which no eye can trace!
Hunted or hurt, 'tis my task to provide them
Healing and soothing and a hiding place.
And then, my human children, could you listen
To secrets whispered in the stillness deep
Of noonday, or when night-dews fall and glisten -
'Tis on my bosom that men laugh and weep.
Some tell me moving tales of love and passion,
Of gladness all too great to be pent in -
The sweet, old theme which does not change its fashion -
Another cries out brokenly of sin.
While others filled with sorrow, fain to share it,
Hide tear-wet faces on my soft brown breast,
Sobbing: "Dear Mother Earth, we cannot bear it,
Grim death has stolen all that we loved best!"
The old familiar cry of loss and sorrow
I hear to-day - I heard it yesterday -
Ay, and will hear in every glad to-morrow
That ye may bring to me, O Century.
I answer mourner, penitent, and lover,
With quick'ning stir, with bud and leaf and sap:
"Peace, peace," I say, "when life's brief day is over
Ye shall sleep soundly in your mother's lap."
The loss, the longing of mankind I'm sharing,
The hopes, the joys, the laughter and the tears,
And yet you think I should be old, uncaring,
The barren, worn-out plaything of the years!
Past centuries have not trodden out my greenness
With all their marches, as you well can see,
Nor will you bring me withered age or leanness.
March on - what are your hundred years to me
While life and growth within me glow and flourish,
While in the sunshine and the falling rain
I, the great Mother, do bring forth and nourish
The springtime blossom and the harvest grain?
March on, O Century, I am safe holden
In God's right hand, the garner-house of truth -
The hand that holds the treasure rare and golden
Of life, and sweetness, and eternal youth! |
Frohnleichnam | D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards) | You have come your way, I have come my way;
You have stepped across your people, carelessly, hurting them all;
I have stepped across my people, and hurt them in spite of my care.
But steadily, surely, and notwithstanding
We have come our ways and met at last
Here in this upper room.
Here the balcony
Overhangs the street where the bullock-wagons slowly
Go by with their loads of green and silver birch- trees
For the feast of Corpus Christi.
Here from the balcony
We look over the growing wheat, where the jade- green river
Goes between the pine-woods,
Over and beyond to where the many mountains
Stand in their blueness, flashing with snow and the morning.
I have done; a quiver of exultation goes through me, like the first
Breeze of the morning through a narrow white birch.
You glow at last like the mountain tops when they catch
Day and make magic in heaven.
At last I can throw away world without end, and meet you
Unsheathed and naked and narrow and white;
At last you can throw immortality off, and I see you
Glistening with all the moment and all your beauty.
Shameless and callous I love you;
Out of indifference I love you;
Out of mockery we dance together,
Out of the sunshine into the shadow,
Passing across the shadow into the sunlight,
Out of sunlight to shadow.
As we dance
Your eyes take all of me in as a communication;
As we dance
I see you, ah, in full!
Only to dance together in triumph of being together
Two white ones, sharp, vindicated,
Shining and touching,
Is heaven of our own, sheer with repudiation. |
The Harebell. | Muriel Stuart | You give no portent of impermanence
Though before sun goes you are long gone hence,
Your bright, inherited crown
Withered and fallen down.
It seems that your blue immobility
Has been for ever, and must for ever be.
Man seems the unstable thing,
Fevered and hurrying.
So free of joy, so prodigal of tears,
Yet he can hold his fevers seventy years,
Out-wear sun, rain and frost,
By which you are soon lost.
|
You Don't Believe | William Blake | You don't believe -- I won't attempt to make ye:
You are asleep -- I won't attempt to wake ye.
Sleep on! sleep on! while in your pleasant dreams
Of Reason you may drink of Life's clear streams.
Reason and Newton, they are quite two things;
For so the swallow and the sparrow sings.
Reason says `Miracle': Newton says `Doubt.'
Aye! that's the way to make all Nature out.
`Doubt, doubt, and don't believe without experiment':
That is the very thing that Jesus meant,
When He said `Only believe! believe and try!
Try, try, and never mind the reason why!' |
At A Banquet Given To The Deputation Of The Swedish Riksdag To The Coronation, In Trondhjem, July 17, 1873 | Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson | (See Note 62)
You chosen men we welcome here
From brothers near.
We welcome you to Olaf's town
That Norway's greatest mem'ries crown,
Where ancient prowess looking down
With searching gaze,
The question puts to sea and strand:
Are men now in the Northern land
Like yesterday's?
'T is well, if on the battlefield
Our "Yes" is sealed!
'T is well, if now our strength is steeled
To grasp our fathers' sword and shield
And in life's warfare lift and wield
For God and home!
For us they fought; 't is now our call
To raise for them a temple-hall,
Fair freedom's dome.
List to the Northern spirit o'er
Our sea and shore!
Here once high thoughts in word were freed,
In homely song, in homely deed;
And ever shall the selfsame need
That spirit sing:
Heed not things trivial, foreign, new;
Alone th' eternal, Northern, true
Can harvest bring.
O brother-band, this faith so dear
Has brought us here?
The spirit of the North to free,
Our common toil and prayer shall be,
Those greater days again to see, -
As once before,
Of home and trust a message strong
To send the warring world we long
Forevermore.
|
In The Street. Lord - - . | Francis William Lauderdale Adams | You have done well, we say it. You are dead,
And, of the man that with the right hand takes
Less than the left hand gives, let it be said
He has done something for our wretched sakes.
For those to whom you gave their daily bread
Rancid with God-loathed "charity," their drink
Putrid with man-loathed "sin," we bow our head
Grateful, as the great hearse goes by, and think.
Yes, you have fed the flesh and starved the soul
Of thousands of us; you have taught too well
The rich are little gods beyond control,
Save of your big God of the heaven and hell.
We thank you. This was pretty once, and right.
Now it wears rather thin. My lord, good night! |
The Rose | Madison Julius Cawein | You have forgot: it once was red
With life, this rose, to which you said,--
When, there in happy days gone by,
You plucked it, on my breast to lie,--
"Sleep there, O rose! how sweet a bed
Is thine!--And, heart, be comforted;
For, though we part and roses shed
Their leaves and fade, love cannot die.--"
You have forgot.
So by those words of yours I'm led
To send it you this day you wed.
Look well upon it. You, as I,
Should ask it now, without a sigh,
If love can lie as it lies dead.--
You have forgot. |
The Twenty Hoss-Power Shay | Ellis Parker Butler | You have heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day.
And then, of a sudden, it up and bust,
And all that was left was a mound of dust?
Holmes, O. W. told it well
In a rhyme of his, what there was to tell,
But the one-hoss shay wasn't 'one, two, three'
With a vehicle once belonged to me.
One hoss? No, sir! Not six nor nine,
Twenty there were in this rig of mine!
Twenty hosses as tough as rocks,
All caged up in a sort of box
That stood jist back of the forward wheels!
Right! She was one of those automobiles
With twenty hosses bottled inside,
Hosses that not only pull but ride!
Wonder what Holmes would have had to say
If the mare had rode in his one-hoss shay!
I reckon the shay would have logicked out
Before the century rolled about.
Well, this big touring car, I say,
Was built just like the one-hoss shay,
Some dependable, logical way,
Flipflaps, dujabs, wheels and things,
Levers, thing-gum-bobs and springs,
Hub, and felloe, and hoss-power chest,
One part just as strong as the rest;
So 'logic is logic,' as Holmes would say,
And no one part could first give way.
Wonderful vehicle, you'll admit,
With not one flaw in the whole of it;
As long as I had it, I declare
I hadn't one cent to pay for repair,
It couldn't break down because, you see,
It was such a logical symphony.
Now for my tale. We're not so slow
These days as a hundred years ago,
And it's like enough that the one-hoss shay,
Ambling along in its sleepy way,
Should creep a century 'thout a break,
But nowadays we aim to make
A pace that is something like a pace,
And if that old shay got in our race
It would stand the pressure twenty days
And go to the home of played-out shays.
'Logic is logic.' Just figure this out,
For I know just what I'm talking about:
If a one-hoss vehicle, genus shays,
Will stand our pressure twenty days,
Then, vice versa, a twenty-hoss shay
Should stand the pressure just one day;
Well, mine is a logical automobile,
From rubber tire to steering wheel.
I bought it one morning at just 10.42,
And the very next morning what did it do,
Right on the second, but up and bust!
Talk of the old shay's pile of dust,
That's not logical; my mobile
Vanished completely! Brass and steel,
Iron and wood and rubber tire
Went right up in a gush of fire,
And in half a minute a gassy smell
Was all I had left by which to tell
I ever owned a touring car,
And then that vanished, and there you are!
End of my twenty hoss-power shay.
Logic is logic. That's all I say.
|
Despondency. | Wilfred S. Skeats | A Response to "Courage," by Celia Thaxter.
You have said that there is not a fear
Or a doubt that oppresses your soul,
That your faith is so strong
That it bears you along,
Ever holding you in its control.
'Tis a comfort to know there is one
Whose allegiance cannot be denied,
But I fain would enquire,
(For your faith is far high'r
Than is mine): Have you ever been tried?
Have you sought to aspire to a life
Higher far than the one that is past?
Have you laboured through years,
By your hopes crushing fears,
But to meet disappointment at last?
Have the friends who should love you the best,
In your absence forgotten that love,
And refused to impart
To your grief-stricken heart
All the solace their kindness would prove?
Has the world misconstrued your intents,
And endeavoured to sully your fame?
Has the venomous tongue
With its calumny stung
Your proud heart, and dishonoured your name?
I desire not to "chide" you nor "vex,"
But I ask you to answer me now;
Did the torturing pain
Of a love that is vain
Ever furrow your heart like a plough?
Have you loved with so fervent a love
That, when failure and hopelessness came,
All the torments of hell
In your breast seemed to dwell,
Scorching courage and faith in their flame?
One of these may have fall'n to your lot;
What if all were apportioned to me?
Could I then "lift my head,"
Nor a single tear shed?--
Has such faith been allotted to thee?
I have sought to be true to my God,
I have sought to be faithful as you;
But such "tumult and strife"
Have embittered my life
That I am not so faultlessly true. |
The Song Of The Banjo | Rudyard Kipling | You couldn't pack a Broadwood half a mile,
You mustn't leave a fiddle in the damp
You couldn't raft an organ up the Nile,
And play it in an Equatorial swamp.
I travel with the cooking-pots and pails,
I'm sandwiched 'tween the coffee and the pork,
And when the dusty column checks and tails,
You should hear me spur the rearguard to a walk!
With my "Pilly-willy-wirky-wirky-popp!"
[Oh, it's any tune that comes into my head!]
So I keep 'em moving forward till they drop;
So I play 'em up to water and to bed.
In the silence of the camp before the fight,
When it's good to make your will and say your prayer,
You can hear my strumpty-tumpty overnight,
Explaining ten to one was always fair.
I'm the Prophet of the Utterly Absurd,
Of the Patently Impossible and Vain
And when the Thing that Couldn't has occurred,
Give me time to change my leg and go again.
With my "Tumpa-tumpa-tumpa-tumpa-tump!"
In the desert where the dung-fed camp-smoke curled.
There was never voice before us till I fed our lonely chorus,
I the war-drum of the White Man round the world!
By the bitter road the Younger Son must tread,
Ere he win to hearth and saddle of his own,,
'Mid the riot of the shearers at the shed,
In the silence of the herder's hut alone,
In the twilight, on a bucket upside down,
Hear me babble what the weakest won't confess,
I am Memory and Torment, I am Town!
I am all that ever went with evening dress!
With my "Tunka-tunka-tunka-tunka-tunk!"
[So the lights, the London Lights grow near and plain!]
So I rowel'em afresh towards the Devil and the Flesh
Till I bring my broken rankers home again.
In desire of many marvels over sea,
Where the new-raised tropic city sweats and roars,
I have sailed with Young Ulysses from the quay
Till the anchor rumbled down on stranger shores.
He is blooded to the open and the sky,
He is taken in a snare that shall not fail,
He shall hear me singing strongly, till he die,
Like the shouting of a backstay in a gale.
With my "Hya! Heeya! Heeya! Hullah! Haul!"
(Oh, the green that thunders aft along the deck!]
Are you sick o' towns and men? You must sign and sail again,
For it's "Johnny Bowlegs, pack your kit and trek!"
Through the gorge that gives the stars at noon-day clear,
Up the pass that packs the scud beneath our wheel,
Round the bluff that sinks her thousand fathom sheer;,
Down the valley with our guttering brakes asqueal:
Where the trestle groans and quivers in the snow,
Where the many-shedded levels loop and twine,
Hear me lead my reckless children from below
Till we sing the Song of Roland to the pine!
With my "Tinka-tinka-tinka-tinka-tink!"
[Oh, the axe has cleared the mountain, croup and crest!]
And we ride the iron stallions down to drink,
Through the canons to the waters of the West!
And the tunes that mean so much to you alone,
Common tunes that make you choke and blow your nose,
Vulgar tunes that bring the laugh that brings the groan,
I can rip your very heartstrings out with those;
With the feasting, and the folly, and the fun,
And the lying, and the lusting, and the drink,
And the merry play that drops you, when you're done.
To the thoughs that burn like irons if you think.
With my "Plunka-lunka-linka-lunka-lunka!"
Here's a trifle on account of pleasure past,
Ere the wit made you win gives you eyes to see your sin
And, the heavier repentance at the last!
Let the organ moan her sorrow to the roof,
I have told the naked stars the Grief of Man!
Let the trumpet snare the foeman to the proof,
I have known Defeat, and mocked it as we ran!
My bray ye may not alter nor mistake
When I stand to jeer the fatted Soul of Things,
But the Song of Lost Endeavour that I make,
Is it hidden in the twanging of the strings?
With my "Ta-ra-rara-rara-ra-ra-rrrp!"
[Is it naught to you that hear and pass me by?]
But the word, the word is mine, when the order moves the line
And the lean, locked ranks go roaring down to die!
The grandam of my grandam was the Lyre,
[Oh, the blue below the little fisher-huts!]
That the Stealer stooping beachward filled with fire,
Till she bore my iron head and ringing guts!
By the wisdom of the centuries I speak,
To the tune of yestermorn I set the truth,
I, the joy of life unquestioned, I, the Greek,
I, the everlasting Wonder-song of Youth!
With my "Tinka-tinka-tinka-tinka-tink!"
What d'ye lack, my noble masters! What d'ye lack?]
So I draw the world together link by link:
Yea, from Delos up to Limerick and back! |
The Walk | Thomas Hardy | You did not walk with me
Of late to the hill-top tree
By the gated ways,
As in earlier days;
You were weak and lame,
So you never came,
And I went alone, and I did not mind,
Not thinking of you as left behind.
I walked up there to-day
Just in the former way:
Surveyed around
The familiar ground
By myself again:
What difference, then?
Only that underlying sense
Of the look of a room on returning thence. |
Pathos | Alfred Lichtenstein | You don't love me... I have never appealed to you...
Was never your type...
And my hard eyes annoy you, my darling...
I'm too dark for you. And too coarse -
And my white teeth have such a brutal shine
And my bloody lips are so terribly like sickles.
Ah, what you say -
Yes you are really right. I set you... free.
... And early in the morning I am going to an ocean
That is blue and eternal...
And lie on the beach...
And play with a smile on my face, until a death grabs me,
With sand and sun and with a white
Slender bitch. |
The Voice Of The North. | Charles Hamilton Musgrove | You have builded your ships in the sun-lands,
And launched them with song and wine;
They are boweled with your stanchest engines,
And masted with bravest pine;
You have met in your closet councils,
With your plans and your prayers to God
For a fortunate wind to waft you
Where never a foot has trod.
And now you follow the polar star
To the seat of the old Norse Kings,
Past the death-white halls of Valhalla,
Where the Norn to the tempest sings--
Follow the steady needle
That cleaves to its steady star
To the uttermost realms of Odin
And the warlike thunderer, Thor.
Far through the icy silence,
Where the glacier's teeth hang white,
And even the sun-god Baldur,
Looks down in vague affright,
You flutter like startled spectres,
With a prayer on your lips for the goal--
To stand for one thrilling moment
At the awful, nameless Pole.
But lo! in that hour shall greet you,
At the end of your perilous path,
A mockery far more bitter
Than the sting of the frost king's wrath,
For this is the meed you shall gather
In the lands no man has trod:
The finger that beckoned you onward
Shall lift and point to God!
1903 |
Replies | Ella Wheeler Wilcox | You have lived long and learned the secret of life, O Seer!
Tell me what are the best three things to seek -
The best three things for a man to seek on earth?
The best three things for a man to seek, O Son! are these:
Reverence for that great Source from whence he came;
Work for the world wherein he finds himself;
And knowledge of the Realm toward which he goes.
What are the best three things to love on earth, O Seer!
What are the best three things for a man to love?
The best three things for a man to love, O Son! are these:
Labour which keeps his forces all in action;
A home wherein no evil thing may enter;
And a loving woman with God in her heart.
What are the three great sins to shun, O Seer! -
What are the three great sins for a man to shun?
The three great sins for a man to shun, O Son! are these:
A thought which soils the heart from whence it goes;
An action that can harm a living thing;
And undeveloped energies of mind.
What are the worst three things to fear, O Seer! -
What are the worst three things for a man to fear?
The worst three things for man to fear, O Son! are these:
Doubt and suspicion in a young child's eyes;
Accusing shame upon a woman's face;
And in himself no consciousness of God.
|
The Lily In A Crystal | Robert Herrick | You have beheld a smiling rose
When virgins' hands have drawn
O'er it a cobweb-lawn:
And here, you see, this lily shows,
Tomb'd in a crystal stone,
More fair in this transparent case
Than when it grew alone,
And had but single grace.
You see how cream but naked is,
Nor dances in the eye
Without a strawberry;
Or some fine tincture, like to this,
Which draws the sight thereto,
More by that wantoning with it,
Than when the paler hue
No mixture did admit.
You see how amber through the streams
More gently strokes the sight,
With some conceal'd delight,
Than when he darts his radiant beams
Into the boundless air;
Where either too much light his worth
Doth all at once impair,
Or set it little forth.
Put purple grapes or cherries in-
To glass, and they will send
More beauty to commend
Them, from that clean and subtle skin,
Than if they naked stood,
And had no other pride at all,
But their own flesh and blood,
And tinctures natural.
Thus lily, rose, grape, cherry, cream,
And strawberry do stir
More love, when they transfer
A weak, a soft, a broken beam;
Than if they should discover
At full their proper excellence,
Without some scene cast over,
To juggle with the sense.
Thus let this crystall'd lily be
A rule, how far to teach
Your nakedness must reach;
And that no further than we see
Those glaring colours laid
By art's wise hand, but to this end
They should obey a shade,
Lest they too far extend.
So though you're white as swan or snow,
And have the power to move
A world of men to love;
Yet, when your lawns and silks shall flow,
And that white cloud divide
Into a doubtful twilight; then,
Then will your hidden pride
Raise greater fires in men. |
Putting In The Seed | Robert Lee Frost | You come to fetch me from my work to-night
When supper's on the table, and we'll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree.
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;)
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs. |
Poleon Dore | William Henry Drummond | A TALE OF THE SAINT MAURICE.
You have never hear de story of de young Napoleon Dor'?
Los' hees life upon de reever w'en de lumber drive go down?
W'ere de rapide roar lak tonder, dat's de place he's goin' onder,
W'en he's try save Paul Desjardins, 'Poleon hese'f is drown.
All de winter on de Shaintee, tam she's good, and work she's plaintee,
But we're not feel very sorry, w'en de sun is warm hees face,
W'en de mooshrat an' de beaver, tak' some leetle swim on reever,
An' de sout' win' scare de snowbird, so she fly some col'er place.
Den de spring is set in steady, an' we get de log all ready,
Workin' hard all day an' night too, on de water mos' de tam,
An' de skeeter w'en dey fin' us, come so quickly nearly blin' us,
Biz, biz, biz, biz, all aroun' us till we feel lak sacr'dam.
All de sam' we're hooraw feller, from de top of house to cellar,
Ev'ry boy he's feel so happy, w'en he's goin' right away,
See hees fader an' hees moder, see hees sister an' hees broder,
An' de girl he spark las' summer, if she's not get marie'.
Wall we start heem out wan morning, an' de pilot geev us warning,
"W'en you come on Rapide Cuisse, ma frien', keep raf' she's head on shore,
If you struck beeg rock on middle, w'ere le diable is play hees fiddle,
Dat's de tam you pass on some place, you don't never pass before."
But we'll not t'ink moche of danger, for de rapide she's no stranger
Many tam we're runnin' t'roo it, on de fall an' on de spring,
On mos' ev'ry kin' of wedder dat le Bon Dieu scrape togedder,
An' we'll never drown noboddy, an' we'll never bus' somet'ing.
Dere was Telesphore Montbriand, Paul Desjardins, Louis Guyon,
Bill McKeever, Aleck Gauthier, an' hees cousin Jean Bateese,
'Poleon Dor', Aim' Beaulieu, wit' some more man I can't tole you,
Dat was mak' it bes' gang never run upon de St. Maurice.
Dis is jus' de tam I wish me, I could spik de good English, me,
For tole you of de pleasurement we get upon de spring,
W'en de win' she's all a sleepin', an' de raf' she go a sweepin'
Down de reever on some morning, w'ile le rossignol is sing.
Ev'ryt'ing so nice an' quiet on de shore as we pass by it,
All de tree got fine new spring suit, ev'ry wan she's dress on green
W'y it mak' us all more younger, an' we don't feel any hunger,
Till de cook say "'Raw for breakfas'," den we smell de pork an' bean.
Some folk say she's bad for leever, but for man work hard on reever,
Dat's de bes' t'ing I can tole you, dat was never yet be seen,
Course dere's oder t'ing ah tak' me, fancy dish also I lak me,
But w'en I want somet'ing solid, please pass me de pork an' bean.
All dis tam de raf' she's goin' lak steamboat was got us towin'
All we do is keep de channel, an' dat's easy workin' dere,
So we sing some song an' chorus, for de good tam dat's before us,
W'en de w'ole beez-nesse she's finish, an' we come on Trois Rivieres.
But bad luck is sometam fetch us, for beeg strong win' come an' ketch us,
Jus' so soon we struck de rapide, jus' so soon we see de smoke,
An' before we spik some prayer for ourse'f dat's fightin' dere,
Roun' we come upon de beeg rock, an' it's den de raf' she broke.
Dat was tam poor Paul Desjardins, from de parish of St. Germain,
He was long way on de fronte side, so he's fallin' overboar'
Couldn't swim at all de man say, but dat's more ma frien', I can say,
Any how he's look lak drownin', so we'll t'row him two t'ree oar.
Dat's 'bout all de help our man do, dat's 'bout ev'ryt'ing we can do,
As de crib we're hangin' onto balance on de rock itse'f,
Till de young Napoleon Dor', heem I start for tole de story,
Holler out, "Mon Dieu, I don't lak see poor Paul go drown hese'f."
So he's mak' beeg jomp on water, jus' de sam you see some otter
An' he's pass on place w'ere Paul is tryin' hard for keep afloat,
Den we see Napoleon ketch heem, try hees possibill for fetch heem
But de current she's more stronger, an' de eddy get dem bote.
O Mon Dieu! for see dem two man, mak' me feel it cry lak woman,
Roun' an' roun' upon de eddy, quickly dem poor feller go,
Can't tole wan man from de oder, an' we'll know dem bote lak broder,
But de fight she soon is finish, Paul an' 'Poleon go below.
Yass, an' all de tam we stay dere, only t'ing we do is pray dere,
For de soul poor drownin' feller, dat's enough mak' us feel mad,
Torteen voyageurs, all brave man, glad get any chances save man,
But we don't see no good chances, can't do not'ing, dat's too bad.
Wall! at las' de crib she's come way off de rock, an' den on some way,
By an' by de w'ole gang's passin' on safe place below de Cuisse,
Ev'ryboddy's heart she's breakin', w'en dey see poor Paul he's taken
Wit' de young Napoleon Dor', bes' boy on de St. Maurice!
An' day affer, Bill McKeever fin' de bote man on de reever,
Wit' deir arm aroun' each oder, mebbe pass above dat way,
So we bury dem as we fin' dem, w'ere de pine tree wave behin' dem
An de Grande Montagne he's lookin' down on Marcheterre Bay.
You can't hear no church bell ring dere, but le rossignol is sing dere,
An' w'ere ole red cross she's stannin', mebbe some good ange gardien,
Watch de place w'ere bote man sleepin', keep de reever grass from creepin'
On de grave of 'Poleon Dor', an' of poor Paul Desjardins. |
An Appeal To My Countrywomen. | Frances Ellen Watkins Harper | You can sigh o'er the sad-eyed Armenian
Who weeps in her desolate home.
You can mourn o'er the exile of Russia
From kindred and friends doomed to roam.
You can pity the men who have woven
From passion and appetite chains
To coil with a terrible tension
Around their heartstrings and brains.
You can sorrow o'er little children
Disinherited from their birth,
The wee waifs and toddlers neglected,
Robbed of sunshine, music and mirth.
For beasts you have gentle compassion;
Your mercy and pity they share.
For the wretched, outcast and fallen
You have tenderness, love and care.
But hark! from our Southland are floating
Sobs of anguish, murmurs of pain,
And women heart-stricken are weeping
Over their tortured and their slain.
On their brows the sun has left traces;
Shrink not from their sorrow in scorn.
When they entered the threshold of being
The children of a King were born.
Each comes as a guest to the table
The hand of our God has outspread,
To fountains that ever leap upward,
To share in the soil we all tread.
When ye plead for the wrecked and fallen,
The exile from far-distant shores,
Remember that men are still wasting
Life's crimson around your own doors.
Have ye not, oh, my favored sisters,
Just a plea, a prayer or a tear,
For mothers who dwell 'neath the shadows
Of agony, hatred and fear?
Men may tread down the poor and lowly,
May crush them in anger and hate,
But surely the mills of God's justice
Will grind out the grist of their fate.
Oh, people sin-laden and guilty,
So lusty and proud in your prime,
The sharp sickles of God's retribution
Will gather your harvest of crime.
Weep not, oh my well-sheltered sisters,
Weep not for the Negro alone,
But weep for your sons who must gather
The crops which their fathers have sown.
Go read on the tombstones of nations
Of chieftains who masterful trod,
The sentence which time has engraven,
That they had forgotten their God.
'Tis the judgment of God that men reap
The tares which in madness they sow,
Sorrow follows the footsteps of crime,
And Sin is the consort of Woe. |
To Englishmen | John Greenleaf Whittier | You flung your taunt across the wave
We bore it as became us,
Well knowing that the fettered slave
Left friendly lips no option save
To pity or to blame us.
You scoffed our plea. 'Mere lack of will,
Not lack of power,' you told us
We showed our free-state records; still
You mocked, confounding good and ill,
Slave-haters and slaveholders.
We struck at Slavery; to the verge
Of power and means we checked it;
Lo!'presto, change! its claims you urge,
Send greetings to it o'er the surge,
And comfort and protect it.
But yesterday you scarce could shake,
In slave-abhorring rigor,
Our Northern palms for conscience' sake
To-day you clasp the hands that ache
With 'walloping the nigger!'*
O Englishmen!'in hope and creed,
In blood and tongue our brothers!
We too are heirs of Runnymede;
And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's deed
Are not alone our mother's.
'Thicker than water,' in one rill
Through centuries of story
Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still
We share with you its good and ill,
The shadow and the glory.
Joint heirs and kinfolk, leagues of wave
Nor length of years can part us
Your right is ours to shrine and grave,
The common freehold of the brave,
The gift of saints and martyrs.
Our very sins and follies teach
Our kindred frail and human
We carp at faults with bitter speech,
The while, for one unshared by each,
We have a score in common.
We bowed the heart, if not the knee,
To England's Queen, God bless her
We praised you when your slaves went free
We seek to unchain ours. Will ye
Join hands with the oppressor?
And is it Christian England cheers
The bruiser, not the bruised?
And must she run, despite the tears
And prayers of eighteen hundred years,
A-muck in Slavery's crusade?
Oh, black disgrace! Oh, shame and loss
Too deep for tongue to phrase on
Tear from your flag its holy cross,
And in your van of battle toss
The pirate's skull-bone blazon! |
Two Similes | Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator) | You have taken away my cloak,
My cloak of weariness;
Take my coat also,
My many-coloured coat of life....
On this great nursery floor
I had three toys,
A bright and varnished vow,
A Speckled Monster, best of boys,
True friend to me, and more
Beloved and a thing of cost,
My doll painted like life; and now
One is broken and two are lost.
From the Arabic of John Duncan. |
Sonnets: Idea XIX To Humour | Michael Drayton | You cannot love, my pretty heart, and why?
There was a time you told me that you would,
But how again you will the same deny.
If it might please you, would to God you could!
What, will you hate? Nay, that you will not neither;
Nor love, nor hate! How then? What will you do?
What, will you keep a mean then betwixt either?
Or will you love me, and yet hate me too?
Yet serves not this! What next, what other shift?
You will, and will not; what a coil is here!
I see your craft, now I perceive your drift,
And all this while I was mistaken there.
Your love and hate is this, I now do prove you:
You love in hate, by hate to make me love you. |
In Memoriam F.O.S. | Sara Teasdale | You go a long and lovely journey,
For all the stars, like burning dew,
Are luminous and luring footprints
Of souls adventurous as you.
Oh, if you lived on earth elated,
How is it now that you can run
Free of the weight of flesh and faring
Far past the birthplace of the sun? |
A Broken Appointment | Thomas Hardy | You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb. -
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness' sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.
You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
- I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once, you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love not me? |
Constancy | John Boyle O'Reilly | "You gave me the key of your heart, my love;
Then why do you make me knock?"
"Oh, that was yesterday, Saints above!
And last night, I changed the lock!" |
White China Plates II | Paul Cameron Brown | You could have driven
a pick-up truck
thru spokes of that moon, so big and radiant
this upended water chestnut -
ground mist weeping
in the shadows
flutter of an old woman's shawl,
the clammy smell like
a child's fingers to the face,
a little unsettling
crickets and dew in brigades
running tears on the old
shoe leather. |
Hay And Hell And Booligal | Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton) | "You come and see me, boys," he said;
"You'll find a welcome and a bed
And whiskey any time you call;
Although our township hasn't got
The name of quite a lively spot,
You see, I live in Booligal.
"And people have an awful down
Upon the district and the town,
Which worse than hell itself the call;
In fact, the saying far and wide
Along the Riverina side
Is 'Hay and Hell and Booligal'.
"No doubt it suits 'em very well
To say its worse than Hay or Hell,
But don't you heed their talk at all;
Of course, there's heat, no one denies,
And sand and dust and stacks of flies,
And rabbits, too, at Booligal.
"But such a pleasant, quiet place,
You never see a stranger's face;
They hardly ever care to call;
The drovers mostly pass it by,
They reckon that they'd rather die
Than spend the night in Booligal.
"The big mosquitoes frighten some,
You'll lie awake to hear 'em hum,
And snakes about the township crawl;
But shearers, when they get their cheque,
They never come along and wreck
The blessed town of Booligal.
"But down to Hay the shearers come
And fill themselves with fighting-rum,
And chase blue devils up the wall,
And fight the snaggers every day,
Until there is the deuce to pay,
There's none of that in Booligal.
"Of course, there isn't much to see,
The billiard-table used to be
The great attraction for us all,
Until some careless, drunken curs
Got sleeping on it in their spurs,
And ruined it, in Booligal.
"Just now there is a howling drought
That pretty near has starved us out,
It never seems to rain at all;
But, if there should come any rain,
You couldn't cross the black-soil plain,
You'd have to stop in Booligal."
* * * * * *
"We'd have to stop!" With bated breath
We prayed that both in life and death
Our fate in other lines might fall;
"Oh, send us to our just reward
In Hay or Hell, but, gracious Lord,
Deliver us from Booligal!"
|
An Afterthought | Robert Fuller Murray | You found my life, a poor lame bird
That had no heart to sing,
You would not speak the magic word
To give it voice and wing.
Yet sometimes, dreaming of that hour,
I think, if you had known
How much my life was in your power,
It might have sung and flown. |
To A Wealthy Man | William Butler Yeats | You gave but will not give again
Until enough of Paudeen's pence
By Biddy's halfpennies have lain
To be 'some sort of evidence,'
Before you'll put your guineas down,
That things it were a pride to give
Are what the blind and ignorant town
Imagines best to make it thrive.
What cared Duke Ercole, that bid
His mummers to the market place,
What th' onion-sellers thought or did
So that his Plautus set the pace
For the Italian comedies?
And Guidobaldo, when he made
That grammar school of courtesies
Where wit and beauty learned their trade
Upon Urbino's windy hill,
Had sent no runners to and fro
That he might learn the shepherds' will.
And when they drove out Cosimo,
Indifferent how the rancour ran,
He gave the hours they had set free
To Michelozzo's latest plan
For the San Marco Library,
Whence turbulent Italy should draw
Delight in Art whose end is peace,
In logic and in natural law
By sucking at the dugs of Greece.
Your open hand but shows our loss,
For he knew better how to live.
Let Paudeens play at pitch and toss,
Look up in the sun's eye and give
What the exultant heart calls good
That some new day may breed the best
Because you gave, not what they would
But the right twigs for an eagle's nest! |
The Fox & The Crane | Walter Crane | You have heard how Sir Fox treated Crane:
With soup in a plate. When again
They dined, a long bottle
Just suited Crane's throttle;
And Sir Fox licked the outside in vain.
There Are Games That Two Can Play At |
You Do Not Want Me? | Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator) | You do not want me, Zohrah.
Is it because I am maimed?
Yet Tamour-leng was maimed,
Going on crippled feet,
And he conquered the vast of the world.
You do not want me, Zohrah.
Is it because I am maimed?
Yet I have one arm to fight for you,
One arm to crush you to my rough breast,
One arm to break men for you.
It was to shield you from the Khargis
That I drag this stump in the long days.
It has been so with my women;
They would have made you a toy for heat.
After their chief with his axe once swinging
Cut my left arm, that, severed, bloody, and dead,
Yet struggled on the ground trying to guard you,
I have had pain for long in my arm that's lost.
Since the silk nets of your grape-lustrous eyes
Ensnared this heart that did not try to guard,
Ever I have a great pain in my heart that's lost.
You do not want me, Zohrah.
Kazack poem of the Chief Gahuan-Beyg (1850-1885). |
Sonet 21 | Michael Drayton | You cannot loue my pretty hart, and why?
There was a time, you told me that you would,
But now againe you will the same deny,
If it might please you, would to God you could;
What will you hate? nay, that you will not neither,
Nor loue, nor hate, how then? what will you do,
What will you keepe a meane then betwixt eyther?
Or will you loue me, and yet hate me to?
Yet serues not this, what next, what other shift?
You will, and will not, what a coyle is heere,
I see your craft, now I perceaue your drift,
And all this while, I was mistaken there.
Your loue and hate is this, I now doe proue you,
You loue in hate, by hate to make me loue you. |
Power. | Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | You cannot put a fire out;
A thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a fan
Upon the slowest night.
You cannot fold a flood
And put it in a drawer, --
Because the winds would find it out,
And tell your cedar floor. |
The Armenian Lady's Love | William Wordsworth | I
You have heard "a Spanish Lady
How she wooed an English man;"
Hear now of a fair Armenian,
Daughter of the proud Soldan;
How she loved a Christian slave, and told her pain
By word, look, deed, with hope that he might love again.
II
"Pluck that rose, it moves my liking,"
Said she, lifting up her veil;
"Pluck it for me, gentle gardener,
Ere it wither and grow pale."
"Princess fair, I till the ground, but may not take
From twig or bed an humbler flower, even for your sake!"
III
"Grieved am I, submissive Christian!
To behold thy captive state;
Women, in your land, may pity
(May they not?) the unfortunate."
"Yes, kind Lady! otherwise man could not bear
Life, which to every one that breathes is full of care."
IV
"Worse than idle is compassion
If it end in tears and sighs;
Thee from bondage would I rescue
And from vile indignities;
Nurtured, as thy mien bespeaks, in high degree,
Look up, and help a hand that longs to set thee free."
V
"Lady! dread the wish, nor venture
In such peril to engage;
Think how it would stir against you
Your most loving father's rage:
Sad deliverance would it be, and yoked with shame,
Should troubles overflow on her from whom it came."
VI
"Generous Frank! the just in effort
Are of inward peace secure:
Hardships for the brave encountered,
Even the feeblest may endure:
If almighty grace through me thy chains unbind
My father for slave's work may seek a slave in mind."
VII
"Princess, at this burst of goodness,
My long-frozen heart grows warm!"
"Yet you make all courage fruitless,
Me to save from chance of harm:
Leading such companion I that gilded dome,
Yon minarets, would gladly leave for his worst home."
VIII
"Feeling tunes your voice, fair Princess,
And your brow is free from scorn,
Else these words would come like mockery,
Sharper than the pointed thorn."
"Whence the undeserved mistrust? Too wide apart
Our faith hath been, O would that eyes could see the heart!"
IX
"Tempt me not, I pray; my doom is
These base implements to wield;
Rusty lance, I ne'er shall grasp thee,
Ne'er assoil my cobwebbed shield!
Never see my native land, nor castle towers,
Nor Her who thinking of me there counts widowed hours."
X
"Prisoner! pardon youthful fancies;
Wedded? If you 'can', say no!
Blessed is and be your consort;
Hopes I cherished, let them go!
Handmaid's privilege would leave my purpose free,
Without another link to my felicity."
XI
"Wedded love with loyal Christians,
Lady, is a mystery rare;
Body, heart, and soul in union,
Make one being of a pair."
"Humble love in me would look for no return,
Soft as a guiding star that cheers, but cannot burn."
XII
"Gracious Allah! by such title
Do I dare to thank the God,
Him who thus exalts thy spirit,
Flower of an unchristian sod!
Or hast thou put off wings which thou in heaven dost wear?
What have I seen, and heard, or dreamt? where am I? where?"
XIII
Here broke off the dangerous converse:
Less impassioned words might tell
How the pair escaped together,
Tears not wanting, nor a knell
Of sorrow in her heart while through her father's door,
And from her narrow world, she passed for evermore.
XIV
But affections higher, holier,
Urged her steps; she shrunk from trust
In a sensual creed that trampled
Woman's birthright into dust.
Little be the wonder then, the blame be none,
If she, a timid Maid, hath put such boldness on.
XV
Judge both Fugitives with knowledge:
In those old romantic days
Mighty were the soul's commandments
To support, restrain, or raise.
Foes might hang upon their path, snakes rustle near,
But nothing from their inward selves had they to fear.
XVI
Thought infirm ne'er came between them,
Whether printing desert sands
With accordant steps, or gathering
Forest-fruit with social hands;
Or whispering like two reeds that in the cold moonbeam
Bend with the breeze their heads, beside a crystal stream.
XVII
On a friendly deck reposing
They at length for Venice steer;
There, when they had closed their voyage
One, who daily on the pier
Watched for tidings from the East, beheld his Lord,
Fell down and clasped his knees for joy, not uttering word.
XVIII
Mutual was the sudden transport;
Breathless questions followed fast,
Years contracting to a moment,
Each word greedier than the last:
"Hie thee to the Countess, friend! return with speed,
And of this Stranger speak by whom her lord was freed.
XIX
Say that I, who might have languished,
Drooped and pined till life was spent,
Now before the gates of Stolberg
My Deliverer would present
For a crowning recompense, the precious grace
Of her who in my heart still holds her ancient place.
XX
Make it known that my Companion
Is of royal eastern blood,
Thirsting after all perfection,
Innocent, and meek, and good,
Though with misbelievers bred; but that dark night
Will holy Church disperse by means of gospel-light."
XXI
Swiftly went that grey-haired Servant,
Soon returned a trusty Page
Charged with greetings, benedictions,
Thanks and praises, each a gage
For a sunny thought to cheer the Stranger's way,
Her virtuous scruples to remove, her fears allay.
XXII
And how blest the Reunited,
While beneath their castle-walls,
Runs a deafening noise of welcome!
Blest, though every tear that falls
Doth in its silence of past sorrow tell,
And makes a meeting seem most like a dear farewell.
XXIII
Through a haze of human nature,
Glorified by heavenly light,
Looked the beautiful Deliverer
On that overpowering sight,
While across her virgin cheek pure blushes strayed,
For every tender sacrifice her heart had made.
XXIV
On the ground the weeping Countess
Knelt, and kissed the Stranger's hand;
Act of soul-devoted homage,
Pledge of an eternal band:
Nor did aught of future days that kiss belie,
Which, with a generous shout, the crowd did ratify.
XXV
Constant to the fair Armenian,
Gentle pleasures round her moved,
Like a tutelary spirit
Reverenced, like a sister, loved,
Christian meekness smoothed for all the path of life,
Who, loving most, should wiseliest love, their only strife.
XXVI
Mute memento of that union
In a Saxon church survives,
Where a cross-legged Knight lies sculptured
As between two wedded wives
Figures with armorial signs of race and birth,
And the vain rank the pilgrims bore while yet on earth. |
You Felons On Trial In Courts | Walt Whitman | You felons on trial in courts;
You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins, chain'd and hand-cuff'd with iron;
Who am I, too, that I am not on trial, or in prison?
Me, ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain'd with iron, or my ankles with iron?
You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs, or obscene in your rooms,
Who am I, that I should call you more obscene than myself?
O culpable!
I acknowledge, I expos'!
(O admirers! praise not me! compliment not me! you make me wince,
I see what you do not, I know what you do not.)
Inside these breast-bones I lie smutch'd and choked;
Beneath this face that appears so impassive, hell's tides continually run;
Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me;
I walk with delinquents with passionate love;
I feel I am of them, I belong to those convicts and prostitutes myself,
And henceforth I will not deny them, for how can I deny myself? |
How Betsey And I Made Up. | Will Carleton | GIVE us your hand, Mr. Lawyer: how do you do to-day?
"GIVE US YOUR HAND, MR. LAWYER: HOW DO YOU DO TO-DAY?"
You drew up that paper--I s'pose you want your pay.
Don't cut down your figures; make it an X or a V;
For that 'ere written agreement was just the makin' of me.
Goin' home that evenin' I tell you I was blue,
Thinkin' of all my troubles, and what I was goin' to do;
And if my hosses hadn't been the steadiest team alive,
They'd 've tipped me over, certain, for I couldn't see where to drive.
No--for I was laborin' under a heavy load;
No--for I was travelin' an entirely different road;
For I was a-tracin' over the path of our lives ag'in,
And seein' where we missed the way, and where we might have been.
And many a corner we'd turned that just to a quarrel led,
When I ought to 've held my temper, and driven straight ahead;
And the more I thought it over the more these memories came,
And the more I struck the opinion that I was the most to blame.
And things I had long forgotten kept risin' in my mind,
Of little matters betwixt us, where Betsey was good and kind;
And these things flashed all through me, as you know things
sometimes will
When a feller's alone in the darkness, and every thing is still.
"But," says I, "we're too far along to take another track,
And when I put my hand to the plow I do not oft turn back;
And 'tain't an uncommon thing now for couples to smash in two;"
And so I set my teeth together, and vowed I'd see it through.
When I come in sight o' the house 'twas some'at in the night,
And just as I turned a hill-top I see the kitchen light;
"AND JUST AS I TURNED A HILL-TOP I SEE THE KITCHEN LIGHT."
Which often a han'some pictur' to a hungry person makes,
But it don't interest a feller much that's goin' to pull up stakes.
And when I went in the house the table was set for me--
As good a supper's I ever saw, or ever want to see;
And I crammed the agreement down my pocket as well as I could,
And fell to eatin' my victuals, which somehow didn't taste good.
And Betsey, she pretended to look about the house,
But she watched my side coat pocket like a cat would watch a mouse:
And then she went to foolin' a little with her cup,
And intently readin' a newspaper, a-holdin' it wrong side up.
"AND INTENTLY READIN' A NEWSPAPER, A-HOLDIN' IT WRONG SIDE UP."
And when I'd done my supper I drawed the agreement out,
And give it to her without a word, for she knowed what 'twas about;
And then I hummed a little tune, but now and then a note
Was bu'sted by some animal that hopped up in my throat.
Then Betsey she got her specs from off the mantel-shelf,
And read the article over quite softly to herself;
Read it by little and little, for her eyes is gettin' old,
And lawyers' writin' ain't no print, especially when it's cold.
And after she'd read a little she give my arm a touch,
And kindly said she was afraid I was 'lowin' her too much;
But when she was through she went for me, her face a-streamin' with tears,
And kissed me for the first time in over twenty years!
"AND KISSED ME FOR THE FIRST TIME IN OVER TWENTY YEARS!"
I don't know what you'll think, Sir--I didn't come to inquire--
But I picked up that agreement and stuffed it in the fire;
And I told her we'd bury the hatchet alongside of the cow;
And we struck an agreement never to have another row.
And I told her in the future I wouldn't speak cross or rash
If half the crockery in the house was broken all to smash;
And she said, in regards to heaven, we'd try and learn its worth
By startin' a branch establishment and runnin' it here on earth.
And so we sat a-talkin' three-quarters of the night,
And opened our hearts to each other until they both grew light;
And the days when I was winnin' her away from so many men
Was nothin' to that evenin' I courted her over again.
Next mornin' an ancient virgin took pains to call on us,
Her lamp all trimmed and a-burnin' to kindle another fuss;
But when she went to pryin' and openin' of old sores,
My Betsey rose politely, and showed her out-of-doors.
"MY BETSEY ROSE POLITELY, AND SHOWED HER OUT-OF-DOORS."
Since then I don't deny but there's been a word or two;
But we've got our eyes wide open, and know just what to do:
When one speaks cross the other just meets it with a laugh,
And the first one's ready to give up considerable more than half.
Maybe you'll think me soft, Sir, a-talkin' in this style,
But somehow it does me lots of good to tell it once in a while;
And I do it for a compliment--'tis so that you can see
That that there written agreement of yours was just the makin' of me.
So make out your bill, Mr. Lawyer: don't stop short of an X;
Make it more if you want to, for I have got the checks.
I'm richer than a National Bank, with all its treasures told,
For I've got a wife at home now that's worth her weight in gold. |
To The Countess Of Blessington. | George Gordon Byron | 1.
You have asked for a verse: - the request
In a rhymer 'twere strange to deny;
But my Hippocrene was but my breast,
And my feelings (its fountain) are dry.
2.
Were I now as I was, I had sung
What Lawrence has painted so well;[607]
But the strain would expire on my tongue,
And the theme is too soft for my shell.
3.
I am ashes where once I was fire,
And the bard in my bosom is dead;
What I loved I now merely admire,
And my heart is as grey as my head.
4.
My Life is not dated by years -
There are moments which act as a plough,
And there is not a furrow appears
But is deep in my soul as my brow.
5.
Let the young and the brilliant aspire
To sing what I gaze on in vain;
For Sorrow has torn from my lyre
The string which was worthy the strain.
[First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 635, 636.] |
The Other Woman. | Madison Julius Cawein | You have shut me out from your tears and grief
Over the man laid low and hoary.
Listen to me now: I am no thief!
You have shut me out from your tears and grief,
Listen to me, I will tell my story.
The love of a man is transitory.
What do you know of his past? the years
He gave to another his manhood's glory?
The love of a man is transitory.
Listen to me now: open your ears.
Over the dead have done with tears!
Over the man who loved to madness
Me the woman you met with sneers,
Over the dead have done with tears!
Me the woman so sunk in badness.
He loved me ever, and that is gladness!
There by the dead now tell her so;
There by the dead where she bows in sadness.
He loved me ever, and that is gladness!
Mine the gladness and hers the woe.
The best of his life was mine. Now go,
Tell her this that her pride may perish,
Her with his name, his wife, you know!
The best of his life was mine. Now go,
Tell her this so she cease to cherish.
Bury him then with pomp and flourish!
Bury him now without my kiss!
Here is a thing for your hearts to nourish,
Bury him then with pomp and flourish!
Bury him now I have told you this. |
Lines On A Typewriter. | James McIntyre | Having received a letter from a gentleman glorying in his typewriter we replied as follows:
You glory in your typewriter,
And its virtues you rehearse,
But we prefer the old inditer,
For to write either prose or verse.
And let each man work his will,
But never never do abuse
The ancient and glorious quill
From the wing of a fine old goose. |
Whistler, The | Unknown | "You have heard," said a youth to his sweetheart, who stood
While he sat on a corn-sheaf, at daylight's decline,
"You have heard of the Danish boy's whistle of wood;
I wish that the Danish boy's whistle were mine!"
"And what would you do with it? tell me," she said,
While an arch smile play'd over her beautiful face.
"I would blow it," he answered, "and then my fair maid
Would fly to my side, and would there take her place."
"Is that all you wish for? Why, that may be yours
Without any magic," the fair maiden cried;
"A favour so slight one's good-nature secures;"
And she playfully seated herself by his side.
"I would blow it again," said the youth; "and the charm
Would work so, that not even modesty's check
Would be able to keep from my neck your white arm."
She smiled, and she laid her white arm round his neck.
"Yet once more I would blow, and the music divine
Would bring me a third time an exquisite bliss
You would lay your fair cheek to this brown one of mine
And your lips, stealing past it, would give me a kiss."
The maiden laughed out in her innocent glee,
"What a fool of yourself with the whistle you'd make!
For only consider how silly 'twould be
To sit there and whistle for what you might take." |
Wincing | Paul Cameron Brown | You can't go back,
to Love, a home.
memories of Pearl Bailey
even a scatterbrained job
curled like a Morning Glory
about the ribs of day.
Everyone repeats not going back.
A sly ripple on the cape of wind,
peaking with
absentminded glee,
into that bulge from within
your past, beyond your left arm,
called "before".
Dismissing angels, refusing to
court hardship, not to mention
wincing that comes from attaching
the mouth too fiercely on privale parts
and all flasks with firm memory;
wheeling drunkenly on her thought.
her sayings, sculling backwaters of your mind
with little fingers each repeating
sane warnings.
|
O Glorious France | Edgar Lee Masters | You have become a forge of snow white fire,
A crucible of molten steel, O France!
Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn
And fade in light for you, O glorious France!
They pass through meteor changes with a song
Which to all islands and all continents
Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame,
Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child
Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power,
Nor many days spent in a chosen work,
Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme
Of daily labor, nor the crowns nor wreaths
Or seventy years.
These are not all of life,
O France, whose sons amid the rolling thunder
Of cannon stand in trenches where the dead
Clog the ensanguin'd ice. But life to these
Prophetic and enraptured souls is vision,
And the keen ecstasy of fated strife,
And divination of the loss as gain,
And reading mysteries with brightened eyes
In fiery shock and dazzling pain before
The orient splendor of the face of Death,
As a great light beside a shadowy sea;
And in a high will's strenuous exercise,
Where the warmed spirit finds its fullest strength
And is no more afraid. And in the stroke
Of azure lightning when the hidden essence
And shifting meaning of man's spiritual worth
And mystical significance in time
Are instantly distilled to one clear drop
Which mirrors earth and heaven.
This is life
Flaming to heaven in a minute's span
When the breath of battle blows the smoldering spark.
And across these seas
We who cry Peace and treasure life and cling
To cities, happiness, or daily toil
For daily bread, or trail the long routine
Of seventy years, taste not the terrible wine
Whereof you drink, who drain and toss the cup
Empty and ringing by the finished feast;
Or have it shaken from your hand by sight
Of God against the olive woods.
As Joan of Arc amid the apple trees
With sacred joy first heard the voices, then
Obeying plunged at Orleans in a field
Of spears and lived her dream and died in fire,
Thou, France, hast heard the voices and hast lived
The dream and known the meaning of the dream,
And read its riddle: How the soul of man
May to one greatest purpose make itself
A lens of clearness, how it loves the cup
Of deepest truth, and how its bitterest gall
Turns sweet to soul's surrender.
And you say:
Take days for repetition, stretch your hands
For mocked renewal of familiar things:
The beaten path, the chair beside the window,
The crowded street, the task, the accustomed sleep,
And waking to the task, or many springs
Of lifted cloud, blue water, flowering fields -
The prison house grows close no less, the feast
A place of memory sick for senses dulled
Down to the dusty end where pitiful Time
Grown weary cries Enough!
|
Letter V. From An Earwig, Deploring The Loss Of All Her Children. (The Bird And Insects' Post-Office.) | Robert Bloomfield | DEAR AUNT,
You cannot think how distressed I have been, and still am; for, under the bark of a large elm, which, I dare say, has stood there a great while, I had placed my whole family, where they were dry, comfortable, and, as I foolishly thought, secure. But only mark what calamities may fall upon earwigs before they are aware of them! I had just got my family about me, all white, clean, and promising children, when pounce came down that bird they call a woodpecker; when, thrusting his huge beak under the bark where we lay, down went our whole sheltering roof! and my children, poor things, running, as they thought, from danger, were devoured as fast as the destroyer could open his beak and shut it. For my own part, I crept into a crack in the solid tree, where I have thus far escaped; but as this bird can make large holes into solid timber, I am by no means safe.
This calamity is the more heavy, as it carries with it a great disappointment; for very near our habitation was a high wall, the sunny side of which was covered with the most delicious fruits - peaches, apricots, nectarines, & c. - all just then ripening; and I thought of having such a feast with my children as I had never enjoyed in my life.
I am surrounded by woodpeckers, jackdaws, magpies, and other devouring creatures, and think myself very unfortunate. Yet, perhaps, if I could know the situation of some larger creatures - I mean particularly such as would tread me to death if I crossed their path - they may have complaints to make as well as I.
Take care of yourself, my good old aunt, and I shall keep in my hiding-place as long as starvation will permit, And, after all, perhaps the fruit was not so delicious as it looked - I am resolved to think so, just to comfort myself.
Yours, with compliments, as usual. |
To Henry Halloran | Henry Kendall | You know I left my forest home full loth,
And those weird ways I knew so well and long,
Dishevelled with their sloping sidelong growth
Of twisted thorn and kurrajong.
It seems to me, my friend (and this wild thought
Of all wild thoughts, doth chiefly make me bleed),
That in those hills and valleys wonder-fraught,
I loved and lost a noble creed.
A splendid creed! But let me even turn
And hide myself from what I've seen, and try
To fathom certain truths you know, and learn
The Beauty shining in your sky:
Remembering you in ardent autumn nights,
And Stenhouse near you, like a fine stray guest
Of other days, with all his lore of lights
So manifold and manifest!
Then hold me firm. I cannot choose but long
For that which lies and burns beyond my reach,
Suggested in your steadfast, subtle song
And his most marvellous speech!
For now my soul goes drifting back again,
Ay, drifting, drifting, like the silent snow
While scattered sheddings, in a fall of rain,
Revive the dear lost Long Ago!
The time I, loitering by untrodden fens,
Intent upon low-hanging lustrous skies,
Heard mellowed psalms from sounding southern glens
Euroma, dear to dreaming eyes!
And caught seductive tokens of a voice
Half maddened with the dim, delirious themes
Of perfect Love, and the immortal choice
Of starry faces Astral dreams!
That last was yours! And if you sometimes find
An alien darkness on the front of things,
Sing none the less for Life, nor fall behind,
Like me, with trailing, tired wings!
Yea, though the heavy Earth wears sackcloth now
Because she hath the great prophetic grief
Which makes me set my face one way, and bow
And falter for a far belief,
Be faithful yet for all, my brave bright peer,
In that rare light you hold so true and good;
And find me something clearer than the clear
White spaces of Infinitude. |
To Poe. | Edwin C. Ranck | You lived in a land horror-haunted,
And wrote with a pen half-divine;
You drank bitter sorrow, undaunted
And cast precious pearls before swine. |
Upon Carthy's Threatening To Translate Pindar (Epigram Against Carthy) | Jonathan Swift | You have undone Horace, - what should hinder
Thy Muse from falling upon Pindar?
But ere you mount his fiery steed,
Beware, O Bard, how you proceed: -
For should you give him once the reins,
High up in air he'll turn your brains;
And if you should his fury check,
'Tis ten to one he breaks your neck. |
The Tulip Bed At Greeley Square | Ella Wheeler Wilcox | You know that oasis, fresh and fair
In the city desert, as Greeley square?
That bright triangle of scented bloom
That lies surrounded by grime and gloom?
Right in the breast of the seething town
Like a gleaming gem or a wanton's gown?
Ah, wonderful things that tulip bed
Unto my listening soul has said.
Over the rattle and roar of the street
I hear a chorus of voices sweet,
Day and night, when I pass that way,
And these are the things the voices say:
"Here, in the heart of the foolish strife,
We live a simple and natural life.
"Here, in the midst of the clash and din,
We know what it is to be calm within.
"Here, environed by sin and shame,
We do what we can with our pure white flame.
"We do what we can with our bloom and grace,
To make the city a fairer place.
"It is well to be good though the world is vile,
And so through the dust and the smoke we smile,
"We are but atoms in chaos tossed,
Yet never a purpose for truth was lost."
Ah, many a sermon is uttered there
By the bed of blossoms in Greeley square.
And he who listens and hears aright,
Is better equipped for the world's hard fight.
|
Trouble On The Selection | Henry Lawson | You lazy boy, you're here at last,
You must be wooden-legged;
Now, are you sure the gate is fast
And all the sliprails pegged
And all the milkers at the yard,
The calves all in the pen?
We don't want Poley's calf to suck
His mother dry again.
And did you mend the broken rail
And make it firm and neat?
I s'pose you want that brindle steer
All night among the wheat.
And if he finds the lucerne patch,
He'll stuff his belly full;
He'll eat till he gets 'blown' on that
And busts like Ryan's bull.
Old Spot is lost? You'll drive me mad,
You will, upon my soul!
She might be in the boggy swamps
Or down a digger's hole.
You needn't talk, you never looked
You'd find her if you'd choose,
Instead of poking 'possum logs
And hunting kangaroos.
How came your boots as wet as muck?
You tried to drown the ants!
Why don't you take your bluchers off,
Good Lord, he's tore his pants!
Your father's coming home to-night;
You'll catch it hot, you'll see.
Now go and wash your filthy face
And come and get your tea. |
A Hyde Park Larrikin | Henry Kendall | You may have heard of Proclus, sir,
If you have been a reader;
And you may know a bit of her
Who helped the Lycian leader.
I have my doubts the head you 'sport'
(Now mark me, don't get crusty)
Is hardly of the classic sort
Your lore, I think, is fusty.
Most likely you have stuck to tracts
Flushed through with flaming curses
I judge you, neighbour, by your acts
So don't you d n my verses.
But to my theme. The Asian sage,
Whose name above I mention,
Lived in the pitchy Pagan age,
A life without pretension.
He may have worshipped gods like Zeus,
And termed old Dis a master;
But then he had a strong excuse
He never heard a pastor.
However, it occurs to me
That, had he cut Demeter
And followed you, or followed me,
He wouldn't have been sweeter.
No doubt with 'shepherds' of this time
He's not the 'clean potato',
Because excuse me for my rhyme
He pinned his faith to Plato.
But these are facts you can't deny,
My pastor, smudged and sooty,
His mind was like a summer sky
He lived a life of beauty
To lift his brothers' thoughts above
This earth he used to labour:
His heart was luminous with love
He didn't wound his neighbour.
To him all men were just the same
He never foamed at altars,
Although he lived ere Moody came
Ere Sankey dealt in psalters.
The Lycian sage, my 'reverend' sir,
Had not your chances ample;
But, after all, I must prefer
His perfect, pure example.
You, having read the Holy Writ
The Book the angels foster
Say have you helped us on a bit,
You overfed impostor?
What have you done to edify,
You clammy chapel tinker?
What act like his of days gone by
The grand old Asian thinker?
Is there no deed of yours at all
With beauty shining through it?
Ah, no! your heart reveals its gall
On every side I view it.
A blatant bigot with a big
Fat heavy fetid carcass,
You well become your greasy 'rig'
You're not a second Arcas.
What sort of 'gospel' do you preach?
What 'Bible' is your Bible?
There's worse than wormwood in your speech,
You livid, living libel!
How many lives are growing gray
Through your depraved behaviour!
I tell you plainly every day
You crucify the Saviour!
Some evil spirit curses you
Your actions never vary:
You cannot point your finger to
One fact to the contrary.
You seem to have a wicked joy
In your malicious labour,
Endeavouring daily to destroy
The neighbour's love for neighbour.
The brutal curses you eject
Make strong men dread to hear you.
The world outside your petty sect
Feels sick when it is near you.
No man who shuns that little hole
You call your tabernacle
Can have, you shriek, a ransomed soul
He wears the devil's shackle.
And, hence the 'Papist' by your clan
Is dogged with words inhuman,
Because he loves that friend of man
The highest type of woman
Because he has that faith which sees
Before the high Creator
A Virgin pleading on her knees
A shining Mediator!
God help the souls who grope in night
Who in your ways have trusted!
I've said enough! the more I write,
The more I feel disgusted.
The warm, soft air is tainted through
With your pernicious leaven.
I would not live one hour with you
In your peculiar heaven!
Now mount your musty pulpit thump,
And muddle flat clodhoppers;
And let some long-eared booby 'hump'
The plate about for coppers.
At priest and parson spit and bark,
And shake your 'church' with curses,
You bitter blackguard of the dark
With this I close my verses. |
Gunga Din | Rudyard Kipling | You may talk o' gin and beer
When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
Now in Injia's sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.
He was "Din! Din! Din!
You limpin' lump o' brick-dust, Gunga Din!
Hi! Slippy hitherao!
Water, get it! Panee lao! [Bring water swiftly.]
You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din."
The uniform 'e wore
Was nothin' much before,
An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind,
For a piece o' twisty rag
An' a goatskin water-bag
Was all the field-equipment 'e could find.
When the sweatin' troop-train lay
In a sidin' through the day,
Where the 'eat would make your bloomin' eyebrows crawl,
We shouted "Harry By!" [Mr. Atkins's equivalent for "O brother."]
Till our throats were bricky-dry,
Then we wopped 'im 'cause 'e couldn't serve us all.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
You 'eathen, where the mischief 'ave you been?
You put some juldee in it [Be quick.]
Or I'll marrow you this minute [Hit you.]
If you don't fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!"
'E would dot an' carry one
Till the longest day was done;
An' 'e didn't seem to know the use o' fear.
If we charged or broke or cut,
You could bet your bloomin' nut,
'E'd be waitin' fifty paces right flank rear.
With 'is mussick on 'is back, [Water-skin.]
'E would skip with our attack,
An' watch us till the bugles made "Retire",
An' for all 'is dirty 'ide
'E was white, clear white, inside
When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire!
It was "Din! Din! Din!"
With the bullets kickin' dust-spots on the green.
When the cartridges ran out,
You could hear the front-ranks shout,
"Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!"
I shan't forgit the night
When I dropped be'ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt-plate should 'a' been.
I was chokin' mad with thirst,
An' the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din.
'E lifted up my 'ead,
An' he plugged me where I bled,
An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water-green:
It was crawlin' and it stunk,
But of all the drinks I've drunk,
I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen;
'E's chawin' up the ground,
An' 'e's kickin' all around:
For Gawd's sake git the water, Gunga Din!"
'E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.
'E put me safe inside,
An' just before 'e died,
"I 'ope you liked your drink", sez Gunga Din.
So I'll meet 'im later on
At the place where 'e is gone,
Where it's always double drill and no canteen.
'E'll be squattin' on the coals
Givin' drink to poor damned souls,
An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din! |
Lyman King | Edgar Lee Masters | You may think, passer-by, that Fate
Is a pit-fall outside of yourself,
Around which you may walk by the use of foresight
And wisdom.
Thus you believe, viewing the lives of other men,
As one who in God-like fashion bends over an anthill,
Seeing how their difficulties could be avoided.
But pass on into life:
In time you shall see Fate approach you
In the shape of your own image in the mirror;
Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth,
And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest,
And you shall know that guest
And read the authentic message of his eyes.
|
The Imp. | Richard Hunter | You may call him an imp,
Or a gnome or a sprite;
And whate'er you call him
You are sure to be right.
He is here, he is there,
He will never stay long;
If you think he is caught,
You are sure to be wrong. |
Translations. - Three Pairs And One. (From Genestet.) | George MacDonald | You have two ears--and but one mouth:
Let this, friend, be a token--
Much should be heard, and not so much
Be spoken.
You have two eyes--and but one mouth:
That is an indication--
Much must you see, but little serves
Relation.
You have two hands--and but one mouth:
Receive the hint you meet with--
For labour two, but only one
To eat with. |
Signior Dildo | John Wilmot | You ladies of merry England
Who have been to kiss the Duchess's hand,
Pray, did you not lately observe in the show
A noble Italian called Signior Dildo?
This signior was one of the Duchess's train
And helped to conduct her over the main;
But now she cries out, 'To the Duke I will go,
I have no more need for Signior Dildo.'
At the Sign of the Cross in St James's Street,
When next you go thither to make yourselves sweet
By buying of powder, gloves, essence, or so,
You may chance to get a sight of Signior Dildo.
You would take him at first for no person of note,
Because he appears in a plain leather coat,
But when you his virtuous abilities know,
You'll fall down and worship Signior Dildo.
My Lady Southesk, heaven prosper her for't,
First clothed him in satin, then brought him to court;
But his head in the circle he scarcely durst show,
So modest a youth was Signior Dildo.
The good Lady Suffolk, thinking no harm,
Had got this poor stranger hid under her arm.
Lady Betty by chance came the secret to know
And from her own mother stole Signior Dildo.
The Countess of Falmouth, of whom people tell
Her footmen wear shirts of a guinea an ell,
Might save that expense, if she did but know
How lusty a swinger is Signior Dildo.
By the help of this gallant the Countess of Rafe
Against the fierce Harris preserved herself safe;
She stifled him almost beneath her pillow,
So closely she embraced Signior Dildo.
The pattern of virtue, Her Grace of Cleveland,
Has swallowed more pricks than the ocean has sand;
But by rubbing and scrubbing so wide does it grow,
It is fit for just nothing but Signior Dildo.
Our dainty fine duchesses have got a trick
To dote on a fool for the sake of his prick,
The fops were undone did their graces but know
The discretion and vigour of Signior Dildo.
The Duchess of Modena, though she looks so high,
With such a gallant is content to lie,
And for fear that the English her secrets should know,
For her gentleman usher took Signior Dildo.
The Countess o'th'Cockpit (who knows not her name?
She's famous in story for a killing dame),
When all her old lovers forsake her, I trow,
She'll then be contented with Signior Dildo.
Red Howard, red Sheldon, and Temple so tall
Complain of his absence so long from Whitehall.
Signior Barnard has promised a journey to go
And bring back his countryman, Signior Dildo.
Doll Howard no longer with His Highness must range,
And therefore is proferred this civil exchange:
Her teeth being rotten, she smells best below,
And needs must be fitted for Signior Dildo.
St Albans with wrinkles and smiles in his face,
Whose kindness to strangers becomes his high place,
In his coach and six horses is gone to Bergo
To take the fresh air with Signior Dildo.
Were this signior but known to the citizen fops,
He'd keep their fine wives from the foremen o'their shops;
But the rascals deserve their horns should still grow
For burning the Pope and his nephew, Dildo.
Tom Killigrew's wife, that Holland fine flower,
At the sight of this signior did fart and belch sour,
And her Dutch breeding the further to show,
Says, 'Welcome to England, Mynheer Van Dildo.'
He civilly came to the Cockpit one night,
And proferred his service to fair Madam Knight.
Quoth she, 'I intrigue with Captain Cazzo;
Your nose in mine arse, good Signior Dildo.'
This signior is sound, safe, ready, and dumb
As ever was candle, carrot, or thumb;
Then away with these nasty devices, and show
How you rate the just merit of Signior Dildo.
Count Cazzo, who carries his nose very high,
In passion he swore his rival should die;
Then shut himself up to let the world know
Flesh and blood could not bear it from Signior Dildo.
A rabble of pricks who were welcome before,
Now finding the porter denied them the door,
Maliciously waited his coming below
And inhumanly fell on Signior Dildo.
Nigh wearied out, the poor stranger did fly,
And along the Pall Mall they followed full cry;
The women concerned from every window
Cried, 'For heaven's sake, save Signior Dildo.'
The good Lady Sandys burst into a laughter
To see how the ballocks came wobbling after,
And had not their weight retarded the foe,
Indeed't had gone hard with Signior Dildo. |
Radio Poem | Bertolt Brecht | You little box, held to me escaping
So that your valves should not break
Carried from house to house to ship from sail to train,
So that my enemies might go on talking to me,
Near my bed, to my pain
The last thing at night, the first thing in the morning,
Of their victories and of my cares,
Promise me not to go silent all of a sudden. |
To One Who Ran Down The English | Alfred Lord Tennyson | You make our faults too gross, and thence maintain
Our darker future. May your fears be vain!
At times the small black fly upon the pane
May seem the black ox of the distant plain. |
Down About Old Shakertown. | George W. Doneghy | You may boast about the landscapes fair so far across the sea
Of castled Rhine, and southern France, and favored Italy--
But have you seen, when Springtime flings the scented blossoms down,
The forests and the meadows green around old Shakertown?
You may boast of some that bask beneath perpetual Summer's smiles--
Those "Eden's of the eastern wave"--the sunny Grecian isles--
And others that perhaps you've seen, of beauty and renown,
But come and view the country spread around old Shakertown!
O come and boast that you have been where Nature's lavish hand
Bestowed the gifts of wood and field that vie with any land--
Where valleys wear a velvet robe--the hills an emerald crown
Of bluegrass shimmering in the sun, around old Shakertown!
O come to old Kentucky then, and to her garden spot,
Then wander wheresoe'er you will, it ne'er will be forgot--
For Nature's face is wreathed in smiles nor wears a single frown
To mar the beauty she has spread around old Shakertown! |
Earth's Lyric. | Bliss Carman (William) | April. You hearken, my fellow,
Old slumberer down in my heart?
There's a whooping of ice in the rivers;
The sap feels a start.
The snow-melted torrents are brawling;
The hills, orange-misted and blue,
Are touched with the voice of the rainbird
Unsullied and new.
The houses of frost are deserted,
Their slumber is broken and done,
And empty and pale are the portals
Awaiting the sun.
The bands of Arcturus are slackened;
Orion goes forth from his place
On the slopes of the night, leading homeward
His hound from the chase.
The Pleiades weary and follow
The dance of the ghostly dawn;
The revel of silence is over;
Earth's lyric comes on.
A golden flute in the cedars,
A silver pipe in the swales,
And the slow large life of the forest
Wells bade and prevails.
A breath of the woodland spirit
Has blown out the bubble of spring
To this tenuous hyaline glory
One touch sets a-wing. |
A Word To The Calvinists | Anne Bronte | You may rejoice to think yourselves secure,
You may be grateful for the gift divine,
That grace unsought which made your black hearts pure
And fits your earthborn souls in Heaven to shine.
But is it sweet to look around and view
Thousands excluded from that happiness,
Which they deserve at least as much as you,
Their faults not greater nor their virtues less?
And wherefore should you love your God the more
Because to you alone his smiles are given,
Because He chose to pass the many o'er
And only bring the favoured few to Heaven?
And wherefore should your hearts more grateful prove
Because for all the Saviour did not die?
Is yours the God of justice and of love
And are your bosoms warm with charity?
Say does your heart expand to all mankind
And would you ever to your neighbour do,
The weak, the strong, the enlightened and the blind
As you would have your neighbour do to you?
And, when you, looking on your fellow men
Behold them doomed to endless misery,
How can you talk of joy and rapture then?
May God withhold such cruel joy from me!
That none deserve eternal bliss I know:
Unmerited the grace in mercy given,
But none shall sink to everlasting woe
That have not well deserved the wrath of Heaven.
And, O! there lives within my heart
A hope long nursed by me,
(And should its cheering ray depart
How dark my soul would be)
That as in Adam all have died
In Christ shall all men live
And ever round his throne abide
Eternal praise to give;
That even the wicked shall at last
Be fitted for the skies
And when their dreadful doom is past
To life and light arise.
I ask not how remote the day
Nor what the sinner's woe
Before their dross is purged away,
Enough for me to know
That when the cup of wrath is drained,
The metal purified,
They'll cling to what they once disdained,
And live by Him that died. |
Foreign Lands | Henry Lawson | You may roam the wide seas over, follow, meet, and cross the sun,
Sail as far as ships can sail, and travel far as trains can run;
You may ride and tramp wherever range or plain or sea expands,
But the crowd has been before you, and you'll not find 'Foreign Lands;'
For the Early Days are over,
And no more the white-winged rover
Sinks the gale-worn coast of England bound for bays in Foreign Lands.
Foreign Lands are in the distance dim and dreamlike, faint and far,
Long ago, and over yonder, where our boyhood fancies are,
For the land is by the railway cramped as though with iron bands,
And the steamship and the cable did away with Foreign Lands.
Ah! the days of blue and gold!
When the news was six months old,
But the news was worth the telling in the days of Foreign Lands.
Here we slave the dull years hopeless for the sake of Wool and Wheat
Here the homes of ugly Commerce, niggard farm and haggard street;
Yet our mothers and our fathers won the life the heart demands,
Less than fifty years gone over, we were born in Foreign Lands.
When the gipsies stole the children still, in village tale and song,
And the world was wide to travel, and the roving spirit strong;
When they dreamed of South Sea Islands, summer seas and coral strands,
Then the bravest hearts of England sailed away to Foreign Lands,
'Fitting foreign', flood and field,
Half the world and orders sealed,
And the first and best of Europe went to fight in Foreign Lands.
Canvas towers on the ocean, homeward bound and outward bound,
Glint of topsails over islands, splash of anchors in the sound;
Then they landed in the forests, took their strong lives in their hands,
And they fought and toiled and conquered, making homes in Foreign Lands,
Through the cold and through the drought,
Further on and further out,
Winning half the world for England in the wilds of Foreign Lands.
Love and pride of life inspired them when the simple village hearts
Followed Master Will and Harry, gone abroad to 'furrin parts'
By our townships and our cities, and across the desert sands
Are the graves of those who fought and died for us in Foreign Lands,
Gave their young lives for our sake
(Was it all a grand mistake?)
Sons of Master Will and Harry born abroad in Foreign Lands!
Ah, my girl, our lives are narrow, and in sordid days like these,
I can hate the things that banished 'Foreign Lands across the seas,'
But with all the world before us, God above us, hearts and hands,
I can sail the seas in fancy far away to Foreign Lands. |
Bequest. | Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | You left me, sweet, two legacies, --
A legacy of love
A Heavenly Father would content,
Had He the offer of;
You left me boundaries of pain
Capacious as the sea,
Between eternity and time,
Your consciousness and me. |
Poem Of Remembrance For A Girl Or A Boy | Walt Whitman | You just maturing youth! You male or female!
Remember the organic compact of These States,
Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thenceforward to the rights, life, liberty, equality of man,
Remember what was promulged by the founders, ratified by The States, signed in black and white by the Commissioners, and read by Washington at the head of the army,
Remember the purposes of the founders, - Remember Washington;
Remember the copious humanity streaming from every direction toward America;
Remember the hospitality that belongs to nations and men; (Cursed be nation, woman, man, without hospitality!)
Remember, government is to subserve individuals,
Not any, not the President, is to have one jot more than you or me,
Not any habitan of America is to have one jot less than you or me.
Anticipate when the thirty or fifty millions, are to become the hundred, or two hundred millions, of equal freemen and freewomen, amicably joined.
Recall ages - One age is but a part - ages are but a part;
The eternal equilibrium of things is great, and the eternal overthrow of things is great,
And there is another paradox.
Recall the angers, bickerings, delusions, superstitions, of the idea of caste,
Recall the bloody cruelties and crimes.
Anticipate the best women;
I say an unnumbered new race of hardy and well-defined women are to spread through all These States,
I say a girl fit for These States must be free, capable, dauntless, just the same as a boy.
Anticipate your own life - retract with merciless power,
Shirk nothing - retract in time - Do you see those errors, diseases, weaknesses, lies, thefts?
Do you see that lost character? - Do you see decay, consumption, rum-drinking, dropsy, fever, mortal cancer or inflammation?
Do you see death, and the approach of death? |
In The Afternoon | James Whitcomb Riley | You in the hammock; and I, near by,
Was trying to read, and to swing you, too;
And the green of the sward was so kind to the eye,
And the shade of the maples so cool and blue,
That often I looked from the book to you
To say as much, with a sigh.
You in the hammock. The book we'd brought
From the parlor - to read in the open air, -
Something of love and of Launcelot
And Guinevere, I believe, was there -
But the afternoon, it was far more fair
Than the poem was, I thought.
You in the hammock; and on and on.
I droned and droned through the rhythmic stuff -
But, with always a half of my vision gone
Over the top of the page - enough
To caressingly gaze at you, swathed in the fluff
Of your hair and your odorous "lawn."
You in the hammock - and that was a year -
Fully a year ago, I guess -
And what do we care for their Guinevere
And her Launcelot and their lordliness! -
You in the hammock still, and - Yes -
Kiss me again, my dear! |
The Old Cafe | Arthur Macy | You know,
Don't you, Joe,
Those merry evenings long ago?
You know the room, the narrow stair,
The wreaths of smoke that circled there,
The corner table where we sat
For hours in after-dinner chat,
And magnified
Our little world inside.
You know,
Don't you, Joe?
Ah, those nights divine!
The simple, frugal wine,
The airs on crude Italian strings,
The joyous, harmless revelings,
Just fit for us - or kings!
At times a quaint and wickered flask
Of rare Chianti, or from the homelier cask
Of modest Pilsener a stein or so,
Amid the merry talk would flow;
Or red Bordeaux
From vines that grew where dear Montaigne
Held his domain.
And you remember that dark eye,
None too shy;
In fact, she seemed a bit too free
For you and me.
You know,
Don't you, Joe?
Then Pegasus I knew,
And then I read to you
My callow rhymes
So many, many times;
And something in the place
Lent them a certain grace,
Until I scarce believed them mine,
Under the magic of the wine;
But now I read them o'er,
And see grave faults I had not seen before,
And wonder how
You could have listened with such placid brow,
And somehow apprehend
You sank the critic in the friend.
You know,
Don't you, Joe?
And when we talked of books,
How learned were our looks!
And few the bards we could not quote,
From gay Catullus' lines to Milton's purer note.
Mayhap we now are wiser men,
But we knew more than all the scholars then;
And our conceit
Was grand, ineffable, complete!
We know,
Don't we, Joe?
Gone are those golden nights
Of innocent Bohemian delights,
And we are getting on;
And anon,
Years sad and tremulous
May be in store for us;
But should we ever meet
Upon some quiet street,
And you discover in an old man's eye
Some transient sparkle of the days gone by,
Then you will guess, perchance,
The meaning of the glance;
You'll know,
Won't you, Joe?
|
To-Day You Understand. | Jean Blewett | You lifted eyes pain-filled to me,
Sad, questioning eyes that did demand
Why I should thrust back, childishly,
The friendship warm you offered me -
Ah, sweet, to-day you understand!
'Twas that my heart beat rapturously
At word of thine, at touch of hand,
At tender glance vouchsafed to me
The while I knew it must not be -
Ah, sweet, to-day you understand!
There's neither pain nor mystery
In that far-off and fragrant land
To which you journeyed fearlessly;
By gates of pearl and jasper sea -
Ah, sweet, to-day you understand! |
The Ol' Tunes | Paul Laurence Dunbar | You kin talk about yer anthems
An' yer arias an' sich,
An' yer modern choir-singin'
That you think so awful rich;
But you orter heerd us youngsters
In the times now far away,
A-singin' o' the ol' tunes
In the ol'-fashioned way.
There was some of us sung treble
An' a few of us growled bass,
An' the tide o' song flowed smoothly
With its 'comp'niment o' grace;
There was spirit in that music,
An' a kind o' solemn sway,
A-singin' o' the ol' tunes
In the ol'-fashioned way.
I remember oft o' standin'
In my homespun pantaloons--
On my face the bronze an' freckles
O' the suns o' youthful Junes--
Thinkin' that no mortal minstrel
Ever chanted sich a lay
As the ol' tunes we was singin'
In the ol'-fashioned way.
The boys 'ud always lead us,
An' the girls 'ud all chime in
Till the sweetness o' the singin'
Robbed the list'nin' soul o' sin;
An' I used to tell the parson
'T was as good to sing as pray,
When the people sung the ol' tunes
In the ol'-fashioned way.
How I long ag'in to hear 'em
Pourin' forth from soul to soul,
With the treble high an' meller,
An' the bass's mighty roll;
But the times is very diff'rent,
An' the music heerd to-day
Ain't the singin' o' the ol' tunes
In the ol'-fashioned way.
Little screechin' by a woman,
Little squawkin' by a man,
Then the organ's twiddle-twaddle,
Jest the empty space to span,--
An' ef you should even think it,
'T is n't proper fur to say
That you want to hear the ol' tunes
In the ol'-fashioned way.
But I think that some bright mornin',
When the toils of life air o'er,
An' the sun o' heaven arisin'
Glads with light the happy shore,
I shall hear the angel chorus,
In the realms of endless day,
A-singin' o' the ol' tunes
In the ol'-fashioned way. |
The Quarry | Walter De La Mare | You hunted me with all the pack,
Too blind, too blind, to see
By no wild hope of force or greed
Could you make sure of me.
And like a phantom through the glades,
With tender breast aglow,
The goddess in me laughed to hear
Your horns a-roving go.
She laughed to think no mortal ever
By dint of mortal flesh
The very Cause that was the Hunt
One moment could enmesh:
That though with captive limbs I lay,
Stilled breath and vanquished eyes,
He that hunts Love with horse and hound
Hunts out his heart and eyes. |
A Pot of Tea | Robert William Service | You make it in your mess-tin by the brazier's rosy gleam;
You watch it cloud, then settle amber clear;
You lift it with your bay'nit, and you sniff the fragrant steam;
The very breath of it is ripe with cheer.
You're awful cold and dirty, and a-cursin' of your lot;
You scoff the blushin' 'alf of it, so rich and rippin' 'ot;
It bucks you up like anythink, just seems to touch the spot:
God bless the man that first discovered Tea!
Since I came out to fight in France, which ain't the other day,
I think I've drunk enough to float a barge;
All kinds of fancy foreign dope, from caffy and doo lay,
To rum they serves you out before a charge.
In back rooms of estaminays I've gurgled pints of cham;
I've swilled down mugs of cider till I've felt a bloomin' dam;
But 'struth! they all ain't in it with the vintage of Assam:
God bless the man that first invented Tea!
I think them lazy lumps o' gods wot kips on asphodel
Swigs nectar that's a flavour of Oolong;
I only wish them sons o' guns a-grillin' down in 'ell
Could 'ave their daily ration of Suchong.
Hurrah! I'm off to battle, which is 'ell and 'eaven too;
And if I don't give some poor bloke a sexton's job to do,
To-night, by Fritz's campfire, won't I 'ave a gorgeous brew
(For fightin' mustn't interfere with Tea).
To-night we'll all be tellin' of the Boches that we slew,
As we drink the giddy victory in Tea. |
Baby Tortoise | D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards) | You know what it is to be born alone,
Baby tortoise!
The first day to heave your feet little by little from the shell,
Not yet awake,
And remain lapsed on earth,
Not quite alive.
A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.
To open your tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open,
Like some iron door;
To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower base
And reach your skinny little neck
And take your first bite at some dim bit of herbage,
Alone, small insect,
Tiny bright-eye,
Slow one.
To take your first solitary bite
And move on your slow, solitary hunt.
Your bright, dark little eye,
Your eye of a dark disturbed night,
Under its slow lid, tiny baby tortoise,
So indomitable.
No one ever heard you complain.
You draw your head forward, slowly, from your little wimple
And set forward, slow-dragging, on your four- pinned toes,
Rowing slowly forward.
Whither away, small bird?
Rather like a baby working its limbs,
Except that you make slow, ageless progress
And a baby makes none.
The touch of sun excites you,
And the long ages, and the lingering chill
Make you pause to yawn,
Opening your impervious mouth,
Suddenly beak-shaped, and very wide, like some suddenly gaping pincers;
Soft red tongue, and hard thin gums,
Then close the wedge of your little mountain front,
Your face, baby tortoise.
Do you wonder at the world, as slowly you turn your head in its wimple
And look with laconic, black eyes?
Or is sleep coming over you again,
The non-life?
You are so hard to wake.
Are you able to wonder?
Or is it just your indomitable will and pride of the first life
Looking round
And slowly pitching itself against the inertia
Which had seemed invincible?
The vast inanimate,
And the fine brilliance of your so tiny eye.
Challenger.
Nay, tiny shell-bird,
What a huge vast inanimate it is, that you must row against,
What an incalculable inertia.
Challenger.
Little Ulysses, fore-runner,
No bigger than my thumb-nail,
Buon viaggio.
All animate creation on your shoulder,
Set forth, little Titan, under your battle-shield.
The ponderous, preponderate,
Inanimate universe;
And you are slowly moving, pioneer, you alone.
How vivid your travelling seems now, in the troubled sunshine,
Stoic, Ulyssean atom;
Suddenly hasty, reckless, on high toes.
Voiceless little bird,
Resting your head half out of your wimple
In the slow dignity of your eternal pause.
Alone, with no sense of being alone,
And hence six times more solitary;
Fulfilled of the slow passion of pitching through immemorial ages
Your little round house in the midst of chaos.
Over the garden earth,
Small bird,
Over the edge of all things.
Traveller,
With your tail tucked a little on one side
Like a gentleman in a long-skirted coat.
All life carried on your shoulder,
Invincible fore-runner.
The Cross, the Cross
Goes deeper in than we know,
Deeper into life;
Right into the marrow
And through the bone. |
The Cure | Ella Wheeler Wilcox | You may talk of reformations, of the Economic Plan,
That shall stem the Social Evil in its course;
But the Ancient Sin of nations, must be got at in THE MAN.
If you want to cleanse a river, seek the source.
Ever since his first beginning, Man has had his way, in lust.
He has never learned the law of Self-Control;
And the World condones his sinning, and the Doctors say he must,
And the Churches shut their eyes, and take his toll.
And the lauded 'Lovely Mothers' send the son out into life
With no knowledge-welded armour for the fight;
'He will make his way like others, through the Oat field, to the Wife';
'He will somehow be led onward, to the light.'
Yes, his leaders, they shall find him. On the highways at each turn,
(Since you did not choose to counsel or to warn,)
They shall tempt him, then shall bind him; they shall blight, and they shall burn,
Down to offspring and descendants yet unborn.
It can never end through preaching; it can never end through laws;
This social sore, no punishment can heal.
It must be the mother's teaching of the purpose, and the cause,
And God's glory, lying under sex appeal.
She must feel no fear to name it to the children it has brought;
She must speak of it as sacred, and sublime;
She must beautify, not shame it, by her speech and by her thought;
Till they listen, and respect it, for all time.
From the heart they rested under ere they saw the light of day,
Must the daughters and the sons be taught this truth;
Till they think of it with wonder, as a holy thing alway;
While love's wisdom guides them safely through their youth.
Oh, the world has made its devil, and the Mothers let it grow;
And the Man has dragged their thoughts down to the earth.
There will be no Social Evil, when each waking mind shall know
All the grandeur and the beauty hid in birth.
When each Mother sets the fashion to win confidence, and trust,
And to teach the mighty lesson, Self-Control,
We can lift the great Sex passion from the darkness and the dust,
And enshrine it on the altar of the soul.
|
Readings Over The Teacups - Five Stories And A Sequel | Oliver Wendell Holmes | To My Old Readers
You know "The Teacups," that congenial set
Which round the Teapot you have often met;
The grave DICTATOR, him you knew of old, -
Knew as the shepherd of another fold
Grayer he looks, less youthful, but the same
As when you called him by a different name.
Near him the MISTRESS, whose experienced skill
Has taught her duly every cup to fill;
"Weak;" "strong;" "cool;" "lukewarm;" "hot as you can pour;"
"No sweetening;" "sugared;" "two lumps;" "one lump more."
Next, the PROFESSOR, whose scholastic phrase
At every turn the teacher's tongue betrays,
Trying so hard to make his speech precise
The captious listener finds it overnice.
Nor be forgotten our ANNEXES twain,
Nor HE, the owner of the squinting brain,
Which, while its curious fancies we pursue,
Oft makes us question, "Are we crack-brained too?"
Along the board our growing list extends,
As one by one we count our clustering friends, -
The youthful DOCTOR waiting for his share
Of fits and fevers when his crown gets bare;
In strong, dark lines our square-nibbed pen should draw
The lordly presence of the MAN OF LAW;
Our bashful TUTOR claims a humbler place,
A lighter touch, his slender form to trace.
Mark the fair lady he is seated by, -
Some say he is her lover, - some deny, -
Watch them together, - time alone can show
If dead-ripe friendship turns to love or no.
Where in my list of phrases shall I seek
The fitting words of NUMBER FIVE to speak?
Such task demands a readier pen than mine, -
What if I steal the Tutor's Valentine?
Why should I call her gracious, winning, fair?
Why with the loveliest of her sex compare?
Those varied charms have many a Muse inspired, -
At last their worn superlatives have tired;
Wit, beauty, sweetness, each alluring grace,
All these in honeyed verse have found their place;
I need them not, - two little words I find
Which hold them all in happiest form combined;
No more with baffled language will I strive, -
All in one breath I utter: Number Five!
Now count our teaspoons - if you care to learn
How many tinkling cups were served in turn, -
Add all together, you will find them ten, -
Our young MUSICIAN joined us now and then.
Our bright DELILAH you must needs recall,
The comely handmaid, youngest of us all;
Need I remind you how the little maid
Came at a pinch to our Professor's aid, -
Trimmed his long locks with unrelenting shears
And eased his looks of half a score of years?
Sometimes, at table, as you well must know,
The stream of talk will all at once run low,
The air seems smitten with a sudden chill,
The wit grows silent and the gossip still;
This was our poet's chance, the hour of need,
When rhymes and stories we were used to read.
One day a whisper round the teacups stole, -
"No scrap of paper in the silver bowl!"
(Our "poet's corner" may I not expect
My kindly reader still may recollect?)
"What! not a line to keep our souls alive?"
Spoke in her silvery accents Number Five.
"No matter, something we must find to read, -
Find it or make it, - yes, we must indeed!
Now I remember I have seen at times
Some curious stories in a book of rhymes, -
How certain secrets, long in silence sealed,
In after days were guessed at or revealed.
Those stories, doubtless, some of you must know, -
They all were written many a year ago;
But an old story, be it false or true,
Twice told, well told, is twice as good as new;
Wait but three sips and I will go myself,
And fetch the book of verses from its shelf."
No time was lost in finding what she sought, -
Gone but one moment, - lo! the book is brought.
"Now, then, Professor, fortune has decreed
That you, this evening, shall be first to read, -
Lucky for us that listen, for in fact
Who reads this poem must know how to act."
Right well she knew that in his greener age
He had a mighty hankering for the stage.
The patient audience had not long to wait;
Pleased with his chance, he smiled and took the bait;
Through his wild hair his coaxing fingers ran, -
He spread the page before him and began.
The Banker's Secret
The Banker's dinner is the stateliest feast
The town has heard of for a year, at least;
The sparry lustres shed their broadest blaze,
Damask and silver catch and spread the rays;
The florist's triumphs crown the daintier spoil
Won from the sea, the forest, or the soil;
The steaming hot-house yields its largest pines,
The sunless vaults unearth their oldest wines;
With one admiring look the scene survey,
And turn a moment from the bright display.
Of all the joys of earthly pride or power,
What gives most life, worth living, in an hour?
When Victory settles on the doubtful fight
And the last foeman wheels in panting flight,
No thrill like this is felt beneath the sun;
Life's sovereign moment is a battle won.
But say what next? To shape a Senate's choice,
By the strong magic of the master's voice;
To ride the stormy tempest of debate
That whirls the wavering fortunes of the state.
Third in the list, the happy lover's prize
Is won by honeyed words from women's eyes.
If some would have it first instead of third,
So let it be, - I answer not a word.
The fourth, - sweet readers, let the thoughtless half
Have its small shrug and inoffensive laugh;
Let the grave quarter wear its virtuous frown,
The stern half-quarter try to scowl us down;
But the last eighth, the choice and sifted few,
Will hear my words, and, pleased, confess them true.
Among the great whom Heaven has made to shine,
How few have learned the art of arts, - to dine!
Nature, indulgent to our daily need,
Kind-hearted mother! taught us all to feed;
But the chief art, - how rarely Nature flings
This choicest gift among her social kings
Say, man of truth, has life a brighter hour
Than waits the chosen guest who knows his power?
He moves with ease, itself an angel charm, -
Lifts with light touch my lady's jewelled arm,
Slides to his seat, half leading and half led,
Smiling but quiet till the grace is said,
Then gently kindles, while by slow degrees
Creep softly out the little arts that please;
Bright looks, the cheerful language of the eye,
The neat, crisp question and the gay reply, -
Talk light and airy, such as well may pass
Between the rested fork and lifted glass; -
With play like this the earlier evening flies,
Till rustling silks proclaim the ladies rise.
His hour has come, - he looks along the chairs,
As the Great Duke surveyed his iron squares.
That's the young traveller, - is n't much to show, -
Fast on the road, but at the table slow.
Next him, - you see the author in his look, -
His forehead lined with wrinkles like a book, -
Wrote the great history of the ancient Huns, -
Holds back to fire among the heavy guns.
Oh, there's our poet seated at his side,
Beloved of ladies, soft, cerulean-eyed.
Poets are prosy in their common talk,
As the fast trotters, for the most part, walk.
And there's our well-dressed gentleman, who sits,
By right divine, no doubt, among the wits,
Who airs his tailor's patterns when he walks,
The man that often speaks, but never talks.
Why should he talk, whose presence lends a grace
To every table where he shows his face?
He knows the manual of the silver fork,
Can name his claret - if he sees the cork, -
Remark that "White-top" was considered fine,
But swear the "Juno" is the better wine; -
Is not this talking? Ask Quintilian's rules;
If they say No, the town has many fools.
Pause for a moment, - for our eyes behold
The plain unsceptred king, the man of gold,
The thrice illustrious threefold millionnaire;
Mark his slow-creeping, dead, metallic stare;
His eyes, dull glimmering, like the balance-pan
That weighs its guinea as he weighs his man.
Who's next? An artist in a satin tie
Whose ample folds defeat the curious eye.
And there 's the cousin, - must be asked, you know, -
Looks like a spinster at a baby-show.
Hope he is cool, - they set him next the door, -
And likes his place, between the gap and bore.
Next comes a Congressman, distinguished guest
We don't count him, - they asked him with the rest;
And then some white cravats, with well-shaped ties,
And heads above them which their owners prize.
Of all that cluster round the genial board,
Not one so radiant as the banquet's lord.
Some say they fancy, but they know not why,
A shade of trouble brooding in his eye,
Nothing, perhaps, - the rooms are overhot, -
Yet see his cheek, - the dull-red burning spot, -
Taste the brown sherry which he does not pass, -
Ha! That is brandy; see him fill his glass!
But not forgetful of his feasting friends,
To each in turn some lively word he sends;
See how he throws his baited lines about,
And plays his men as anglers play their trout.
A question drops among the listening crew
And hits the traveller, pat on Timbuctoo.
We're on the Niger, somewhere near its source, -
Not the least hurry, take the river's course
Through Kissi, Foota, Kankan, Bammakoo,
Bambarra, Sego, so to Timbuctoo,
Thence down to Youri; - stop him if we can,
We can't fare worse, - wake up the Congressman!
The Congressman, once on his talking legs,
Stirs up his knowledge to its thickest dregs;
Tremendous draught for dining men to quaff!
Nothing will choke him but a purpling laugh.
A word, - a shout, - a mighty roar, - 't is done;
Extinguished; lassoed by a treacherous pun.
A laugh is priming to the loaded soul;
The scattering shots become a steady roll,
Broke by sharp cracks that run along the line,
The light artillery of the talker's wine.
The kindling goblets flame with golden dews,
The hoarded flasks their tawny fire diffuse,
And the Rhine's breast-milk gushes cold and bright,
Pale as the moon and maddening as her light;
With crimson juice the thirsty southern sky
Sucks from the hills where buried armies lie,
So that the dreamy passion it imparts
Is drawn from heroes' bones and lovers' hearts.
But lulls will come; the flashing soul transmits
Its gleams of light in alternating fits.
The shower of talk that rattled down amain
Ends in small patterings like an April's rain;
With the dry sticks all bonfires are begun;
Bring the first fagot, proser number one
The voices halt; the game is at a stand;
Now for a solo from the master-hand
'T is but a story, - quite a simple thing, -
An aria touched upon a single string,
But every accent comes with such a grace
The stupid servants listen in their place,
Each with his waiter in his lifted hands,
Still as a well-bred pointer when he stands.
A query checks him: "Is he quite exact?"
(This from a grizzled, square-jawed man of fact.)
The sparkling story leaves him to his fate,
Crushed by a witness, smothered with a date,
As a swift river, sown with many a star,
Runs brighter, rippling on a shallow bar.
The smooth divine suggests a graver doubt;
A neat quotation bowls the parson out;
Then, sliding gayly from his own display,
He laughs the learned dulness all away.
So, with the merry tale and jovial song,
The jocund evening whirls itself along,
Till the last chorus shrieks its loud encore,
And the white neckcloths vanish through the door.
One savage word! - The menials know its tone,
And slink away; the master stands alone.
"Well played, by - -"; breathe not what were best unheard;
His goblet shivers while he speaks the word, -
"If wine tells truth, - and so have said the wise, -
It makes me laugh to think how brandy lies!
Bankrupt to-morrow, - millionnaire to-day, -
The farce is over, - now begins the play!"
The spring he touches lets a panel glide;
An iron closet harks beneath the slide,
Bright with such treasures as a search might bring
From the deep pockets of a truant king.
Two diamonds, eyeballs of a god of bronze,
Bought from his faithful priest, a pious bonze;
A string of brilliants; rubies, three or four;
Bags of old coin and bars of virgin ore;
A jewelled poniard and a Turkish knife,
Noiseless and useful if we come to strife.
Gone! As a pirate flies before the wind,
And not one tear for all he leaves behind
From all the love his better years have known
Fled like a felon, - ah! but not alone!
The chariot flashes through a lantern's glare, -
Oh the wild eyes! the storm of sable hair!
Still to his side the broken heart will cling, -
The bride of shame, the wife without the ring
Hark, the deep oath, - the wail of frenzied woe, -
Lost! lost to hope of Heaven and peace below!
He kept his secret; but the seed of crime
Bursts of itself in God's appointed time.
The lives he wrecked were scattered far and wide;
One never blamed nor wept, - she only died.
None knew his lot, though idle tongues would say
He sought a lonely refuge far away,
And there, with borrowed name and altered mien,
He died unheeded, as he lived unseen.
The moral market had the usual chills
Of Virtue suffering from protested bills;
The White Cravats, to friendship's memory true,
Sighed for the past, surveyed the future too;
Their sorrow breathed in one expressive line, -
"Gave pleasant dinners; who has got his wine?"
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The reader paused, - the Teacups knew his ways, -
He, like the rest, was not averse to praise.
Voices and hands united; every one
Joined in approval: "Number Three, well done!"
"Now for the Exile's story; if my wits
Are not at fault, his curious record fits
Neatly as sequel to the tale we've heard;
Not wholly wild the fancy, nor absurd
That this our island hermit well might be
That story's hero, fled from over sea.
Come, Number Seven, we would not have you strain
The fertile powers of that inventive brain.
Read us 'The Exile's Secret'; there's enough
Of dream-like fiction and fantastic stuff
In the strange web of mystery that invests
The lonely isle where sea birds build their nests."
"Lies! naught but lies!" so Number Seven began, -
No harm was known of that secluded man.
He lived alone, - who would n't if he might,
And leave the rogues and idiots out of sight?
A foolish story, - still, I'll do my best, -
The house was real, - don't believe the rest.
How could a ruined dwelling last so long
Without its legends shaped in tale and song?
Who was this man of whom they tell the lies?
Perhaps - why not? - NAPOLEON! in disguise, -
So some said, kidnapped from his ocean coop,
Brought to this island in a coasting sloop, -
Meanwhile a sham Napoleon in his place
Played Nap. and saved Sir Hudson from disgrace.
Such was one story; others used to say,
"No, - not Napoleon, - it was Marshal Ney."
"Shot?" Yes, no doubt, but not with balls of lead,
But balls of pith that never shoot folks dead.
He wandered round, lived South for many a year,
At last came North and fixed his dwelling here.
Choose which you will of all the tales that pile
Their mingling fables on the tree-crowned isle.
Who wrote this modest version I suppose
That truthful Teacup, our Dictator, knows;
Made up of various legends, it would seem,
The sailor's yarn, the crazy poet's dream.
Such tales as this, by simple souls received,
At first are stared at and at last believed;
From threads like this the grave historians try
To weave their webs, and never know they lie.
Hear, then, the fables that have gathered round
The lonely home an exiled stranger found.
The Exile's Secret
Ye that have faced the billows and the spray
Of good St. Botolph's island-studded bay,
As from the gliding bark your eye has scanned
The beaconed rocks, the wave-girt hills of sand,
Have ye not marked one elm-o'ershadowed isle,
Round as the dimple chased in beauty's smile, -
A stain of verdure on an azure field,
Set like a jewel in a battered shield?
Fixed in the narrow gorge of Ocean's path,
Peaceful it meets him in his hour of wrath;
When the mailed Titan, scourged by hissing gales,
Writhes in his glistening coat of clashing scales,
The storm-beat island spreads its tranquil green,
Calm as an emerald on an angry queen.
So fair when distant should be fairer near;
A boat shall waft us from the outstretched pier.
The breeze blows fresh; we reach the island's edge,
Our shallop rustling through the yielding sedge.
No welcome greets us on the desert isle;
Those elms, far-shadowing, hide no stately pile
Yet these green ridges mark an ancient road;
And to! the traces of a fair abode;
The long gray line that marks a garden-wall,
And heaps of fallen beams, - fire-branded all.
Who sees unmoved, a ruin at his feet,
The lowliest home where human hearts have beat?
Its hearthstone, shaded with the bistre stain
A century's showery torrents wash in vain;
Its starving orchard, where the thistle blows
And mossy trunks still mark the broken rows;
Its chimney-loving poplar, oftenest seen
Next an old roof, or where a roof has been;
Its knot-grass, plantain, - all the social weeds,
Man's mute companions, following where he leads;
Its dwarfed, pale flowers, that show their straggling heads,
Sown by the wind from grass-choked garden-beds;
Its woodbine, creeping where it used to climb;
Its roses, breathing of the olden time;
All the poor shows the curious idler sees,
As life's thin shadows waste by slow degrees,
Till naught remains, the saddening tale to tell,
Save home's last wrecks, - the cellar and the well?
And whose the home that strews in black decay
The one green-glowing island of the bay?
Some dark-browed pirate's, jealous of the fate
That seized the strangled wretch of "Nix's Mate"?
Some forger's, skulking in a borrowed name,
Whom Tyburn's dangling halter yet may claim?
Some wan-eyed exile's, wealth and sorrow's heir,
Who sought a lone retreat for tears and prayer?
Some brooding poet's, sure of deathless fame,
Had not his epic perished in the flame?
Or some gray wooer's, whom a girlish frown
Chased from his solid friends and sober town?
Or some plain tradesman's, fond of shade and ease,
Who sought them both beneath these quiet trees?
Why question mutes no question can unlock,
Dumb as the legend on the Dighton rock?
One thing at least these ruined heaps declare, -
They were a shelter once; a man lived there.
But where the charred and crumbling records fail,
Some breathing lips may piece the half-told tale;
No man may live with neighbors such as these,
Though girt with walls of rock and angry seas,
And shield his home, his children, or his wife,
His ways, his means, his vote, his creed, his life,
From the dread sovereignty of Ears and Eyes
And the small member that beneath them lies.
They told strange things of that mysterious man;
Believe who will, deny them such as can;
Why should we fret if every passing sail
Had its old seaman talking on the rail?
The deep-sunk schooner stuffed with Eastern lime,
Slow wedging on, as if the waves were slime;
The knife-edged clipper with her ruffled spars,
The pawing steamer with her inane of stars,
The bull-browed galliot butting through the stream,
The wide-sailed yacht that slipped along her beam,
The deck-piled sloops, the pinched chebacco-boats,
The frigate, black with thunder-freighted throats,
All had their talk about the lonely man;
And thus, in varying phrase, the story ran.
His name had cost him little care to seek,
Plain, honest, brief, a decent name to speak,
Common, not vulgar, just the kind that slips
With least suggestion from a stranger's lips.
His birthplace England, as his speech might show,
Or his hale cheek, that wore the red-streak's glow;
His mouth sharp-moulded; in its mirth or scorn
There came a flash as from the milky corn,
When from the ear you rip the rustling sheath,
And the white ridges show their even teeth.
His stature moderate, but his strength confessed,
In spite of broadcloth, by his ample breast;
Full-armed, thick-handed; one that had been strong,
And might be dangerous still, if things went wrong.
He lived at ease beneath his elm-trees' shade,
Did naught for gain, yet all his debts were paid;
Rich, so 't was thought, but careful of his store;
Had all he needed, claimed to have no more.
But some that lingered round the isle at night
Spoke of strange stealthy doings in their sight;
Of creeping lonely visits that he made
To nooks and corners, with a torch and spade.
Some said they saw the hollow of a cave;
One, given to fables, swore it was a grave;
Whereat some shuddered, others boldly cried,
Those prowling boatmen lied, and knew they lied.
They said his house was framed with curious cares,
Lest some old friend might enter unawares;
That on the platform at his chamber's door
Hinged a loose square that opened through the floor;
Touch the black silken tassel next the bell,
Down, with a crash, the flapping trap-door fell;
Three stories deep the falling wretch would strike,
To writhe at leisure on a boarder's pike.
By day armed always; double-armed at night,
His tools lay round him; wake him such as might.
A carbine hung beside his India fan,
His hand could reach a Turkish ataghan;
Pistols, with quaint-carved stocks and barrels gilt,
Crossed a long dagger with a jewelled hilt;
A slashing cutlass stretched along the bed; -
All this was what those lying boatmen said.
Then some were full of wondrous stories told
Of great oak chests and cupboards full of gold;
Of the wedged ingots and the silver bars
That cost old pirates ugly sabre-scars;
How his laced wallet often would disgorge
The fresh-faced guinea of an English George,
Or sweated ducat, palmed by Jews of yore,
Or double Joe, or Portuguese moidore;
And how his finger wore a rubied ring
Fit for the white-necked play-girl of a king.
But these fine legends, told with staring eyes,
Met with small credence from the old and wise.
Why tell each idle guess, each whisper vain?
Enough: the scorched and cindered beams remain.
He came, a silent pilgrim to the West,
Some old-world mystery throbbing in his breast;
Close to the thronging mart he dwelt alone;
He lived; he died. The rest is all unknown.
Stranger, whose eyes the shadowy isle survey,
As the black steamer dashes through the bay,
Why ask his buried secret to divine?
He was thy brother; speak, and tell us thine!
. . . . . . . . . . .
Silence at first, a kind of spell-bound pause;
Then all the Teacups tinkled their applause;
When that was hushed no sound the stillness broke
Till once again the soft-voiced lady spoke:
"The Lover's Secret, - surely that must need
The youngest voice our table holds to read.
Which of our two 'Annexes' shall we choose?
Either were charming, neither will refuse;
But choose we must, - what better can we do
Than take the younger of the youthful two?"
True to the primal instinct of her sex,
"Why, that means me," half whispered each Annex.
"What if it does?" the voiceless question came,
That set those pale New England cheeks aflame;
"Our old-world scholar may have ways to teach
Of Oxford English, Britain's purest speech, -
She shall be youngest, - youngest for to-day, -
Our dates we'll fix hereafter as we may;
All rights reserved, - the words we know so well,
That guard the claims of books which never sell."
The British maiden bowed a pleased assent,
Her two long ringlets swinging as she bent;
The glistening eyes her eager soul looked through
Betrayed her lineage in their Saxon blue.
Backward she flung each too obtrusive curl
And thus began, - the rose-lipped English girl.
The Lover's Secret
What ailed young Lucius? Art had vainly tried
To guess his ill, and found herself defied.
The Augur plied his legendary skill;
Useless; the fair young Roman languished still.
His chariot took him every cloudless day
Along the Pincian Hill or Appian Way;
They rubbed his wasted limbs with sulphurous oil,
Oozed from the far-off Orient's heated soil;
They led him tottering down the steamy path
Where bubbling fountains filled the thermal bath;
Borne in his litter to Egeria's cave,
They washed him, shivering, in her icy wave.
They sought all curious herbs and costly stones,
They scraped the moss that grew on dead men's bones,
They tried all cures the votive tablets taught,
Scoured every place whence healing drugs were brought,
O'er Thracian hills his breathless couriers ran,
His slaves waylaid the Syrian caravan.
At last a servant heard a stranger speak
A new chirurgeon's name; a clever Greek,
Skilled in his art; from Pergamus he came
To Rome but lately; GALEN was the name.
The Greek was called: a man with piercing eyes,
Who must be cunning, and who might be wise.
He spoke but little, - if they pleased, he said,
He 'd wait awhile beside the sufferer's bed.
So by his side he sat, serene and calm,
His very accents soft as healing balm;
Not curious seemed, but every movement spied,
His sharp eyes searching where they seemed to glide;
Asked a few questions, - what he felt, and where?
"A pain just here," "A constant beating there."
Who ordered bathing for his aches and ails?
"Charmis, the water-doctor from Marseilles."
What was the last prescription in his case?
"A draught of wine with powdered chrysoprase."
Had he no secret grief he nursed alone?
A pause; a little tremor; answer, - "None."
Thoughtful, a moment, sat the cunning leech,
And muttered "Eros!" in his native speech.
In the broad atrium various friends await
The last new utterance from the lips of fate;
Men, matrons, maids, they talk the question o'er,
And, restless, pace the tessellated floor.
Not unobserved the youth so long had pined
By gentle-hearted dames and damsels kind;
One with the rest, a rich Patrician's pride,
The lady Hermia, called "the golden-eyed";
The same the old Proconsul fain must woo,
Whom, one dark night, a masked sicarius slew;
The same black Crassus over roughly pressed
To hear his suit, - the Tiber knows the rest.
(Crassus was missed next morning by his set;
Next week the fishers found him in their net.)
She with the others paced the ample hall,
Fairest, alas! and saddest of them all.
At length the Greek declared, with puzzled face,
Some strange enchantment mingled in the case,
And naught would serve to act as counter-charm
Save a warm bracelet from a maiden's arm.
Not every maiden's, - many might be tried;
Which not in vain, experience must decide.
Were there no damsels willing to attend
And do such service for a suffering friend?
The message passed among the waiting crowd,
First in a whisper, then proclaimed aloud.
Some wore no jewels; some were disinclined,
For reasons better guessed at than defined;
Though all were saints, - at least professed to be, -
The list all counted, there were named but three.
The leech, still seated by the patient's side,
Held his thin wrist, and watched him, eagle-eyed.
Aurelia first, a fair-haired Tuscan girl,
Slipped off her golden asp, with eyes of pearl.
His solemn head the grave physician shook;
The waxen features thanked her with a look.
Olympia next, a creature half divine,
Sprung from the blood of old Evander's line,
Held her white arm, that wore a twisted chain
Clasped with an opal-sheeny cymophane.
In vain, O daughter I said the baffled Greek.
The patient sighed the thanks he could not speak.
Last, Hermia entered; look, that sudden start!
The pallium heaves above his leaping heart;
The beating pulse, the cheek's rekindled flame,
Those quivering lips, the secret all proclaim.
The deep disease long throbbing in the breast,
The dread enchantment, all at once confessed!
The case was plain; the treatment was begun;
And Love soon cured the mischief he had done.
Young Love, too oft thy treacherous bandage slips
Down from the eyes it blinded to the lips!
Ask not the Gods, O youth, for clearer sight,
But the bold heart to plead thy cause aright.
And thou, fair maiden, when thy lovers sigh,
Suspect thy flattering ear, but trust thine eye;
And learn this secret from the tale of old
No love so true as love that dies untold.
. . . . . . . . . .
"Bravo, Annex!" they shouted, every one, -
"Not Mrs. Kemble's self had better done."
"Quite so," she stammered in her awkward way, -
Not just the thing, but something she must say.
The teaspoon chorus tinkled to its close
When from his chair the MAN OF LAW arose,
Called by her voice whose mandate all obeyed,
And took the open volume she displayed.
Tall, stately, strong, his form begins to own
Some slight exuberance in its central zone, -
That comely fulness of the growing girth
Which fifty summers lend the sons of earth.
A smooth, round disk about whose margin stray,
Above the temples, glistening threads of gray;
Strong, deep-cut grooves by toilsome decades wrought
On brow and mouth, the battle-fields of thought;
A voice that lingers in the listener's ear,
Grave, calm, far-reaching, every accent clear, -
(Those tones resistless many a foreman knew
That shaped their verdict ere the twelve withdrew;)
A statesman's forehead, athlete's throat and jaw,
Such the proud semblance of the Man of Law.
His eye just lighted on the printed leaf,
Held as a practised pleader holds his brief.
One whispered softly from behind his cup,
"He does not read, - his book is wrong side up!
He knows the story that it holds by heart, -
So like his own! How well he'll act his part!"
Then all were silent; not a rustling fan
Stirred the deep stillness as the voice began.
The Statesman's Secret
Who of all statesmen is his country's pride,
Her councils' prompter and her leaders' guide?
He speaks; the nation holds its breath to hear;
He nods, and shakes the sunset hemisphere.
Born where the primal fount of Nature springs
By the rude cradles of her throneless kings,
In his proud eye her royal signet flames,
By his own lips her Monarch she proclaims.
Why name his countless triumphs, whom to meet
Is to be famous, envied in defeat?
The keen debaters, trained to brawls and strife,
Who fire one shot, and finish with the knife,
Tried him but once, and, cowering in their shame,
Ground their hacked blades to strike at meaner game.
The lordly chief, his party's central stay,
Whose lightest word a hundred votes obey,
Found a new listener seated at his side,
Looked in his eye, and felt himself defied,
Flung his rash gauntlet on the startled floor,
Met the all-conquering, fought, - and ruled no more.
See where he moves, what eager crowds attend!
What shouts of thronging multitudes ascend!
If this is life, - to mark with every hour
The purple deepening in his robes of power,
To see the painted fruits of honor fall
Thick at his feet, and choose among them all,
To hear the sounds that shape his spreading name
Peal through the myriad organ-stops of fame,
Stamp the lone isle that spots the seaman's chart,
And crown the pillared glory of the mart,
To count as peers the few supremely wise
Who mark their planet in the angels' eyes, -
If this is life -
What savage man is he
Who strides alone beside the sounding sea?
Alone he wanders by the murmuring shore,
His thoughts as restless as the waves that roar;
Looks on the sullen sky as stormy-browed
As on the waves yon tempest-brooding cloud,
Heaves from his aching breast a wailing sigh,
Sad as the gust that sweeps the clouded sky.
Ask him his griefs; what midnight demons plough
The lines of torture on his lofty brow;
Unlock those marble lips, and bid them speak
The mystery freezing in his bloodless cheek.
His secret? Hid beneath a flimsy word;
One foolish whisper that ambition heard;
And thus it spake: "Behold yon gilded chair,
The world's one vacant throne, - thy plate is there!"
Ah, fatal dream! What warning spectres meet
In ghastly circle round its shadowy seat!
Yet still the Tempter murmurs in his ear
The maddening taunt he cannot choose but hear
"Meanest of slaves, by gods and men accurst,
He who is second when he might be first
Climb with bold front the ladder's topmost round,
Or chain thy creeping footsteps to the ground!"
Illustrious Dupe! Have those majestic eyes
Lost their proud fire for such a vulgar prize?
Art thou the last of all mankind to know
That party-fights are won by aiming low?
Thou, stamped by Nature with her royal sign,
That party-hirelings hate a look like thine?
Shake from thy sense the wild delusive dream
Without the purple, art thou not supreme?
And soothed by love unbought, thy heart shall own
A nation's homage nobler than its throne!
. . . . . . . . . .
Loud rang the plaudits; with them rose the thought,
"Would he had learned the lesson he has taught!"
Used to the tributes of the noisy crowd,
The stately speaker calmly smiled and bowed;
The fire within a flushing cheek betrayed,
And eyes that burned beneath their penthouse shade.
"The clock strikes ten, the hours are flying fast, -
Now, Number Five, we've kept you till the last!"
What music charms like those caressing tones
Whose magic influence every listener owns, -
Where all the woman finds herself expressed,
And Heaven's divinest effluence breathes confessed?
Such was the breath that wooed our ravished ears,
Sweet as the voice a dreaming vestal hears;
Soft as the murmur of a brooding dove,
It told the mystery of a mother's love.
The Mother's Secret
How sweet the sacred legend - if unblamed
In my slight verse such holy things are named -
Of Mary's secret hours of hidden joy,
Silent, but pondering on her wondrous boy!
Ave, Maria! Pardon, if I wrong
Those heavenly words that shame my earthly song!
The choral host had closed the Angel's strain
Sung to the listening watch on Bethlehem's plain,
And now the shepherds, hastening on their way,
Sought the still hamlet where the Infant lay.
They passed the fields that gleaning Ruth toiled o'er, -
They saw afar the ruined threshing-floor
Where Moab's daughter, homeless and forlorn,
Found Boaz slumbering by his heaps of corn;
And some remembered how the holy scribe,
Skilled in the lore of every jealous tribe,
Traced the warm blood of Jesse's royal son
To that fair alien, bravely wooed and won.
So fared they on to seek the promised sign,
That marked the anointed heir of David's line.
At last, by forms of earthly semblance led,
They found the crowded inn, the oxen's shed.
No pomp was there, no glory shone around
On the coarse straw that strewed the reeking ground;
One dim retreat a flickering torch betrayed, -
In that poor cell the Lord of Life was laid
The wondering shepherds told their breathless tale
Of the bright choir that woke the sleeping vale;
Told how the skies with sudden glory flamed,
Told how the shining multitude proclaimed,
"Joy, joy to earth! Behold the hallowed morn
In David's city Christ the Lord is born!
'Glory to God!' let angels shout on high,
'Good-will to men!' the listening earth reply!"
They spoke with hurried words and accents wild;
Calm in his cradle slept the heavenly child.
No trembling word the mother's joy revealed, -
One sigh of rapture, and her lips were sealed;
Unmoved she saw the rustic train depart,
But kept their words to ponder in her heart.
Twelve years had passed; the boy was fair and tall,
Growing in wisdom, finding grace with all.
The maids of Nazareth, as they trooped to fill
Their balanced urns beside the mountain rill,
The gathered matrons, as they sat and spun,
Spoke in soft words of Joseph's quiet son.
No voice had reached the Galilean vale
Of star-led kings, or awe-struck shepherd's tale;
In the meek, studious child they only saw
The future Rabbi, learned in Israel's law.
Beyond the hills that girt the village green;
Save when at midnight, o'er the starlit sands,
Snatched from the steel of Herod's murdering bands,
A babe, close folded to his mother's breast,
Through Edom's wilds he sought the sheltering West.
Then Joseph spake: "Thy boy hath largely grown;
Weave him fine raiment, fitting to be shown;
Fair robes beseem the pilgrim, as the priest;
Goes he not with us to the holy feast?"
And Mary culled the flaxen fibres white;
Till eve she spun; she spun till morning light.
The thread was twined; its parting meshes through
From hand to hand her restless shuttle flew,
Till the full web was wound upon the beam;
Love's curious toil, - a vest without a seam!
They reach the Holy Place, fulfil the days
To solemn feasting given, and grateful praise.
At last they turn, and far Moriah's height
Melts in the southern sky and fades from sight.
All day the dusky caravan has flowed
In devious trails along the winding road;
(For many a step their homeward path attends,
And all the sons of Abraham are as friends.)
Evening has come, - the hour of rest and joy, -
Hush! Hush! That whisper, - "Where is Mary's boy?"
Oh, weary hour! Oh, aching days that passed
Filled with strange fears each wilder than the last, -
The soldier's lance, the fierce centurion's sword,
The crushing wheels that whirl some Roman lord,
The midnight crypt that sucks the captive's breath,
The blistering sun on Hinnom's vale of death!
Thrice on his cheek had rained the morning light;
Thrice on his lips the mildewed kiss of night,
Crouched by a sheltering column's shining plinth,
Or stretched beneath the odorous terebinth.
At last, in desperate mood, they sought once more
The Temple's porches, searched in vain before;
They found him seated with the ancient men, -
The grim old rufflers of the tongue and pen, -
Their bald heads glistening as they clustered near,
Their gray beards slanting as they turned to hear,
Lost in half-envious wonder and surprise
That lips so fresh should utter words so wise.
And Mary said, - as one who, tried too long,
Tells all her grief and half her sense of wrong, -
What is this thoughtless thing which thou hast done?
Lo, we have sought thee sorrowing, O my son!
Few words he spake, and scarce of filial tone,
Strange words, their sense a mystery yet unknown;
Then turned with them and left the holy hill,
To all their mild commands obedient still.
The tale was told to Nazareth's sober men,
And Nazareth's matrons told it oft again;
The maids retold it at the fountain's side,
The youthful shepherds doubted or denied;
It passed around among the listening friends,
With all that fancy adds and fiction lends,
Till newer marvels dimmed the young renown
Of Joseph's son, who talked the Rabbis down.
But Mary, faithful to its lightest word,
Kept in her heart the sayings she had heard,
Till the dread morning rent the Temple's veil,
And shuddering earth confirmed the wondrous tale.
Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall
A mother's secret hope outlives them all.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Hushed was the voice, but still its accents thrilled
The throbbing hearts its lingering sweetness filled.
The simple story which a tear repays
Asks not to share the noisy breath of praise.
A trance-like stillness, - scarce a whisper heard,
No tinkling teaspoon in its saucer stirred;
A deep-drawn sigh that would not be suppressed,
A sob, a lifted kerchief told the rest.
"Come now, Dictator," so the lady spoke,
"You too must fit your shoulder to the yoke;
You'll find there's something, doubtless, if you look,
To serve your purpose, - so, now take the book."
"Ah, my dear lady, you must know full well,
'Story, God bless you, I have none to tell.'
To those five stories which these pages hold
You all have listened, - every one is told.
There's nothing left to make you smile or weep, -
A few grave thoughts may work you off to sleep."
The Secret Of The Stars
Is man's the only throbbing heart that hides
The silent spring that feeds its whispering tides?
Speak from thy caverns, mystery-breeding Earth,
Tell the half-hinted story of thy birth,
And calm the noisy champions who have thrown
The book of types against the book of stone!
Have ye not secrets, ye refulgent spheres,
No sleepless listener of the starlight hears?
In vain the sweeping equatorial pries
Through every world-sown corner of the skies,
To the far orb that so remotely strays
Our midnight darkness is its noonday blaze;
In vain the climbing soul of creeping man
Metes out the heavenly concave with a span,
Tracks into space the long-lost meteor's trail,
And weighs an unseen planet in the scale;
Still o'er their doubts the wan-eyed watchers sigh,
And Science lifts her still unanswered cry
"Are all these worlds, that speed their circling flight,
Dumb, vacant, soulless, - baubles of the night?
Warmed with God's smile and wafted by his breath,
To weave in ceaseless round the dance of Death?
Or rolls a sphere in each expanding zone,
Crowned with a life as varied as our own?"
Maker of earth and stars! If thou hast taught
By what thy voice hath spoke, thy hand hath wrought,
By all that Science proves, or guesses true,
More than thy poet dreamed, thy prophet knew, -
The heavens still bow in darkness at thy feet,
And shadows veil thy cloud-pavilioned seat!
Not for ourselves we ask thee to reveal
One awful word beneath the future's seal;
What thou shalt tell us, grant us strength to bear;
What thou withholdest is thy single care.
Not for ourselves; the present clings too fast,
Moored to the mighty anchors of the past;
But when, with angry snap, some cable parts,
The sound re-echoing in our startled hearts, -
When, through the wall that clasps the harbor round,
And shuts the raving ocean from its bound,
Shattered and rent by sacrilegious hands,
The first mad billow leaps upon the sands, -
Then to the Future's awful page we turn,
And what we question hardly dare to learn.
Still let us hope! for while we seem to tread
The time-worn pathway of the nations dead,
Though Sparta laughs at all our warlike deeds,
And buried Athens claims our stolen creeds,
Though Rome, a spectre on her broken throne,
Beholds our eagle and recalls her own,
Though England fling her pennons on the breeze
And reign before us Mistress of the seas, -
While calm-eyed History tracks us circling round
Fate's iron pillar where they all were bound,
Still in our path a larger curve she finds,
The spiral widening as the chain unwinds
Still sees new beacons crowned with brighter flame
Than the old watch-fires, like, but not the same
No shameless haste shall spot with bandit-crime
Our destined empire snatched before its time.
Wait, - wait, undoubting, for the winds have caught
From our bold speech the heritage of thought;
No marble form that sculptured truth can wear
Vies with the image shaped in viewless air;
And thought unfettered grows through speech to deeds,
As the broad forest marches in its seeds.
What though we perish ere the day is won?
Enough to see its glorious work begun!
The thistle falls before a trampling clown,
But who can chain the flying thistle-down?
Wait while the fiery seeds of freedom fly,
The prairie blazes when the grass is dry!
What arms might ravish, leave to peaceful arts,
Wisdom and love shall win the roughest hearts;
So shall the angel who has closed for man
The blissful garden since his woes began
Swing wide the golden portals of the West,
And Eden's secret stand at length confessed!
. . . . . . . . . . .
The reader paused; in truth he thought it time, -
Some threatening signs accused the drowsy rhyme.
The Mistress nodded, the Professor dozed,
The two Annexes sat with eyelids closed, -
Not sleeping, - no! But when one shuts one's eyes,
That one hears better no one, sure, denies.
The Doctor whispered in Delilah's ear,
Or seemed to whisper, for their heads drew near.
Not all the owner's efforts could restrain
The wild vagaries of the squinting brain, -
Last of the listeners Number Five alone
The patient reader still could call his own.
"Teacups, arouse!" 'T was thus the spell I broke;
The drowsy started and the slumberers woke.
"The sleep I promised you have now enjoyed,
Due to your hour of labor well employed.
Swiftly the busy moments have been passed;
This, our first 'Teacups,' must not be our last.
Here, on this spot, now consecrated ground,
The Order of 'The Teacups' let us found!
By winter's fireside and in summer's bower
Still shall it claim its ever-welcome hour,
In distant regions where our feet may roam
The magic teapot find or make a home;
Long may its floods their bright infusion pour,
Till time and teacups both shall be no more!" |
You Know Where You Did Despise | Alexander Pope | You know where you did despise
(Tother day) my little Eyes,
Little Legs, and little Thighs,
And some things, of little Size,
You know where.
You, tis true, have fine black eyes,
Taper legs, and tempting Thighs,
Yet what more than all we prize
Is a Thing of little Size,
You know where. |
His Mistress To Him At His Farewell | Robert Herrick | You may vow I'll not forget
To pay the debt
Which to thy memory stands as due
As faith can seal it you.
Take then tribute of my tears;
So long as I have fears
To prompt me, I shall ever
Languish and look, but thy return see never.
Oh then to lessen my despair,
Print thy lips into(the air,
So by this
Means, I may kiss thy kiss,
When as some kind
Wind
Shall hither waft it: And, in lieu,
My lips shall send a thousand back to you. |
A Bunch Of Triolets | Robert Fuller Murray | TO ---
You like the trifling triolet:
Well, here are three or four.
Unless your likings I forget,
You like the trifling triolet.
Against my conscience I abet
A taste which I deplore;
You like the trifling triolet:
Well, here are three or four.
Have you ever met with a pretty girl
Walking along the street,
With a nice new dress and her hair in curl?
Have you ever met with a pretty girl,
When her hat blew off and the wind with a whirl
Wafted it right to your feet?
Have you ever met with a pretty girl
Walking along the street?
I ran into a lady's arms,
Turning a corner yesterday.
To my confusion, her alarms,
I ran into a lady's arms.
So close a vision of her charms
Left me without a word to say.
I ran into a lady's arms,
Turning a corner yesterday.
How many maids you love,
How many maids love you!
Your conscious blushes prove
How many maids you love.
Each trusts you like a dove,
But would she, if she knew
How many maids you love,
How many maids love you? |
The Refugee's Haven. | Victor-Marie Hugo | ("Vous voil' dans la froide Angleterre.")
[Bk. III. xlvii., Jersey, Sept. 19, 1854.]
You may doubt I find comfort in England
But, there, 'tis a refuge from dangers!
Where a Cromwell dictated to Milton,
Republicans ne'er can be strangers! |
Dog | Harold Edward Monro | You little friend, your nose is ready; you sniff,
Asking for that expected walk,
(Your nostrils full of the happy rabbit-whiff)
And almost talk.
And so the moment becomes a moving force;
Coats glide down from their pegs in the humble dark;
The sticks grow live to the stride of their vagrant course.
You scamper the stairs,
Your body informed with the scent and the track and the mark
Of stoats and weasels, moles and badgers and hares.
We are going OUT. You know the pitch of the word,
Probing the tone of thought as it comes through fog
And reaches by devious means (half-smelt, half-heard)
The four-legged brain of a walk-ecstatic dog.
Out in the garden your head is already low.
(Can you smell the rose? Ah, no.)
But your limbs can draw
Life from the earth through the touch of your padded paw.
Now, sending a little look to us behind,
Who follow slowly the track of your lovely play,
You carry our bodies forward away from mind
Into the light and fun of your useless day.
* * * * *
Thus, for your walk, we took ourselves, and went
Out by the hedge and the tree to the open ground.
You ran, in delightful strata of wafted scent,
Over the hill without seeing the view;
Beauty is smell upon primitive smell to you:
To you, as to us, it is distant and rarely found.
Home ... and further joy will be surely there:
Supper waiting full of the taste of bone.
You throw up your nose again, and sniff, and stare
For the rapture known
Of the quick wild gorge of food and the still lie-down
While your people talk above you in the light
Of candles, and your dreams will merge and drown
Into the bed-delicious hours of night.
|
In A London Flat | Thomas Hardy | I
"You look like a widower," she said
Through the folding-doors with a laugh from the bed,
As he sat by the fire in the outer room,
Reading late on a night of gloom,
And a cab-hack's wheeze, and the clap of its feet
In its breathless pace on the smooth wet street,
Were all that came to them now and then . . .
"You really do!" she quizzed again.
II
And the Spirits behind the curtains heard,
And also laughed, amused at her word,
And at her light-hearted view of him.
"Let's get him made so just for a whim!"
Said the Phantom Ironic. "'Twould serve her right
If we coaxed the Will to do it some night."
"O pray not!" pleaded the younger one,
The Sprite of the Pities. "She said it in fun!"
III
But so it befell, whatever the cause,
That what she had called him he next year was;
And on such a night, when she lay elsewhere,
He, watched by those Phantoms, again sat there,
And gazed, as if gazing on far faint shores,
At the empty bed through the folding-doors
As he remembered her words; and wept
That she had forgotten them where she slept. |
The Conversation | Edgar Lee Masters | The Human Voice
You knew then, starting let us say with ether,
You would become electrons, out of whirling
Would rise to atoms; then as an atom resting
Till through Yourself in other atoms moving
And by the fine affinity of power
Atom with atom massed, You would go on
Over the crest of visible forms transformed,
Would be a molecule, a little system
Wherein the atoms move like suns and planets
With satellites, electrons. So as worlds build
From star-dust, as electron to electron,
The same attraction drawing, molecules
Would wed and pass over the crest again
Of visible forms, lying content as crystals,
Or colloids - ready now to use the gleam
Of life. As 'twere I see You with a match,
As one in darkness lights a candle, and one
Sees not his friend's form in the shadowed room
Until the candle's lighted? Even his form
Is darkened by the new-made light, he stands
So near it! Well, I add to all I've asked
Whether You knew the cell born to the glint
Of that same lighted candle would not rest
Even as electrons rest not - but would surge
Over the crest of visible forms, become
Beneath our feet things hidden from the eye
However aided, - as above our heads
Beyond the Milky Way great systems whirl
Beyond the telescope, - become bacilli,
Amoeba, starfish, swimming things, on land
The serpent, and then birds, and beasts of prey
The tiger (You in the tiger) on and on
Surging above the crest of visible forms until
The ape came - oh what ages they are to us -
But still creation flies on wings of light -
Then to the man who roamed the frozen fields
Neither man nor ape, - we found his jaw, You know,
At Heidelberg, in a sand-pit. On and on
Till Babylon was builded, and arose
Jerusalem and Memphis, Athens, Rome,
Venice and Florence, Paris, London, Berlin,
New York, Chicago - did You know, I ask,
All this would come of You in ether moving?
A Voice
I knew.
The Human Voice
You knew that man was born to be destroyed,
That as an atom perfect, whole, at ease,
Drawn to some other atom, is broken, changed
And rises o'er the crest of visible things
To something else - that man must pass as well
Through equal transformation. And You knew
The unutterable things of man's life: From the first
You saw his wracked Deucalion-soul that looks
Backward on life that rises, where he rose
Out of the stones. You saw him looking forward
Over the purple mists that hide the gulf.
Ere the green cell rose, even in the green cell
You saw the sequences of thought - You saw
That one would say, "All's matter" and another,
"All's mind," and man's mind which reflects the image,
Could not envision it. That even worship
Of what you are would be confused by cries
From India or Palestine. That love
Which sees itself beginning in the seeds,
Which fly and seek each other, maims
The soul at the last in loss of child or friend
Father or mother. And You knew that sex,
Ranging from plants through beasts and up to us
Had ties of filth - And out of them would rise
Diverse philosophies to tear the world.
You knew, when the green cell arose, that even
The You which formed it moving on would bring
Races and breeds, madmen, tyrants, slaves,
The idiot child, the murderer, the insane -
All springing from the action of one law.
You knew the enmity that lies between
The lives of micro-beings and our own. You knew
How man would rise to vision of himself:
Immortal only in the race's life.
And past the atom and the first glint of life,
Saw him with soul enraptured, yet o'ershadowed
Amid self-consciousness!
A Voice
I knew.
But this your fault: You see me as apart,
Over, removed, at enmity with You.
You are in Me, and of Me, even at one
With Me. But there's your soul - your soul may be
The germinal cell of vaster evolution.
Why try to tell you? If I gave a cell
Voice to inquire, and it should ask you this:
"After me what, a stalk, a flower, life
That swims or crawls?" And if I gave to you
Wisdom to say: "You shall become a reed
By the water's edge" - how could the cell foresee
What the reed is, bending beneath the wind
When the lake ripples and the skies are blue
As larkspur? Therefore I, who moved in darkness
Becoming light in suns and light in souls
And mind with thought - for what is thought but light
Sprung from the clash of ether? - I am with you.
And if beyond this stable state that stands
For your life here (as cells are whole and balanced
Till the inner urge bring union, then a breaking
And building up to higher life), there is
No memory of this world nor of your thought,
Nor sense of life on this world lived and borne;
Or whether you remember, know yourself
As one who lived here, suffered here, aspired -
What does it matter? - you cannot be lost,
As I am lost not. Therefore be at peace.
And from the laws whose orbits cross and run
To seeming tangles, find the law through which
Your soul shall be perfected till it draw, -
As the green cell the sunlight draws and turns
Its chemical effulgence into life -
My inner splendor. All the rest is mine
In infinite time. For if I should unroll
The parchment of the future, it were vain -
You could not read it.
|
The Last Trump | Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton) | "You led the trump," the old man said
With fury in his eye,
"And yet you hope my girl to wed!
Young man! your hopes of love are fled,
'Twere better she should die!
"My sweet young daughter sitting there,
So innocent and plump!
You don't suppose that she would care
To wed an outlawed man who'd dare
To lead the thirteenth trump!
"If you had drawn their leading spade
It meant a certain win!
But no! By Pembroke's mighty shade
The thirteenth trump you went and played
And let their diamonds in!
"My girl, return at my command
His presents in a lump!
Return his ring! For, understand,
No man is fit to hold your hand
Who leads a thirteenth trump!
"But hold! Give every man his due
And every dog his day.
Speak up and say what made you do
This dreadful thing, that is, if you
Have anything to say!"
He spoke. "I meant at first," said he,
"To give their spades a bump,
Or lead the hearts; but then you see
I thought against us there might be,
Perhaps, a fourteenth trump!"
* * * * *
They buried him at dawn of day
Beside a ruined stump:
And there he sleeps the hours away
And waits for Gabriel to play
The last, the fourteenth trump. |
The Star-Splitter | Robert Lee Frost | You know Orien always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
I should have done by daylight, and indeed,
After the ground is frozen, I should have done
Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful
Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney
To make fun of my way of doing things,
Or else fun of Orion's having caught me.
Has a man, I should like to ask, no rights
These forces are obliged to pay respect to?"
So Brad McLaughlin mingled reckless talk
Of heavenly stars with hugger-mugger farming,
Till having failed at hugger-mugger farming,
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And spent the proceeds on a telescope
To satisfy a life-long curiosity
About our place among the infinities.
"What do you want with one of those blame things?"
I asked him well beforehand. "Don't you get one!"
"Don't call it blamed; there isn't anything
More blameless in the sense of being less
A weapon in our human fight," he said.
"I'll have one if I sell my farm to buy it."
There where he moved the rocks to plow the ground
And plowed between the rocks he couldn't move,
Few farms changed hands; so rather than spend years
Trying to sell his farm and then not selling,
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And bought the telescope with what it came to.
He had been heard to say by several:
"The best thing that we're put here for's to see;
The strongest thing that's given us to see with's
A telescope. Someone in every town
Seems to me owes it to the town to keep one.
In Littleton it may as well be me."
After such loose talk it was no surprise
When he did what he did and burned his house down.
Mean laughter went about the town that day
To let him know we weren't the least imposed on,
And he could wait, we'd see to him to-morrow.
But the first thing next morning we reflected
If one by one we counted people out
For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long
To get so we had no one left to live with.
For to be social is to be forgiving.
Our thief, the one who does our stealing from us,
We don't cut off from coming to church suppers,
But what we miss we go to him and ask for.
He promptly gives it back, that is if still
Uneaten, unworn out, or undisposed of.
It wouldn't do to be too hard on Brad
About his telescope. Beyond the age
Of being given one's gift for Christmas,
He had to take the best way he knew how
To find himself in one. Well, all we said was
He took a strange thing to be roguish over.
Some sympathy was wasted on the house,
A good old-timer dating back along;
But a house isn't sentient; the house
Didn't feel anything. And if it did,
Why not regard it as a sacrifice,
And an old-fashioned sacrifice by fire,
Instead of a new-fashioned one at auction?
Out of a house and so out of a farm
At one stroke (of a match), Brad had to turn
To earn a living on the Concord railroad,
As under-ticket-agent at a station
Where his job, when he wasn't selling tickets,
Was setting out up track and down, not plants
As on a farm, but planets, evening stars
That varied in their hue from red to green.
He got a good glass for six hundred dollars.
His new job gave him leisure for star-gazing.
Often he bid me come and have a look
Up the brass barrel, velvet black inside,
At a star quaking in the other end.
I recollect a night of broken clouds
And underfoot snow melted down to ice,
And melting further in the wind to mud.
Bradford and I had out the telescope.
We spread our two legs as it spread its three,
Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it,
And standing at our leisure till the day broke,
Said some of the best things we ever said.
That telescope was christened the Star-splitter,
Because it didn't do a thing but split
A star in two or three the way you split
A globule of quicksilver in your hand
With one stroke of your finger in the middle.
It's a star-splitter if there ever was one
And ought to do some good if splitting stars
'Sa thing to be compared with splitting wood.
We've looked and looked, but after all where are we?
Do we know any better where we are,
And how it stands between the night to-night
And a man with a smoky lantern chimney?
How different from the way it ever stood? |
Incident Of The French Camp | Robert Browning | I.
You know, we French stormed Ratisbon:
A mile or so away,
On a little mound, Napol'on
Stood on our storming-day;
With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
Legs wide, arms locked behind,
As if to balance the prone brow
Oppressive with its mind.
II.
Just as perhaps he mused 'My plans
'That soar, to earth may fall,
'Let once my army-leader Lannes
'Waver at yonder wall,'
Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew
A rider, bound on bound
Full-galloping; nor bridle drew
Until he reached the mound.
III.
Then off there flung in smiling joy,
And held himself erect
By just his horse's mane, a boy:
You hardly could suspect
(So tight he kept his lips compressed,
Scarce any blood came through)
You looked twice ere you saw his breast
Was all but shot in two.
IV.
'Well,' cried he, 'Emperor, by God's grace
'We've got you Ratisbon!
'The Marshal's in the market-place,
'And you'll be there anon
'To see your flag-bird flap his vans
'Where I, to heart's desire,
'Perched him!' The chief's eye flashed; his plans
Soared up again like fire.
V.
The chief's eye flashed; but presently
Softened itself, as sheathes
A film the mother-eagle's eye
When her bruised eaglet breathes;
'You're wounded!' 'Nay,' the soldier's pride
Touched to the quick, he said:
'I'm killed, Sire!' And his chief beside
Smiling the boy fell dead. |
A Message to America | Alan Seeger | You have the grit and the guts, I know;
You are ready to answer blow for blow
You are virile, combative, stubborn, hard,
But your honor ends with your own back-yard;
Each man intent on his private goal,
You have no feeling for the whole;
What singly none would tolerate
You let unpunished hit the state,
Unmindful that each man must share
The stain he lets his country wear,
And (what no traveller ignores)
That her good name is often yours.
You are proud in the pride that feels its might;
From your imaginary height
Men of another race or hue
Are men of a lesser breed to you:
The neighbor at your southern gate
You treat with the scorn that has bred his hate.
To lend a spice to your disrespect
You call him the "greaser". But reflect!
The greaser has spat on you more than once;
He has handed you multiple affronts;
He has robbed you, banished you, burned and killed;
He has gone untrounced for the blood he spilled;
He has jeering used for his bootblack's rag
The stars and stripes of the gringo's flag;
And you, in the depths of your easy-chair -
What did you do, what did you care?
Did you find the season too cold and damp
To change the counter for the camp?
Were you frightened by fevers in Mexico?
I can't imagine, but this I know -
You are impassioned vastly more
By the news of the daily baseball score
Than to hear that a dozen countrymen
Have perished somewhere in Darien,
That greasers have taken their innocent lives
And robbed their holdings and raped their wives.
Not by rough tongues and ready fists
Can you hope to jilt in the modern lists.
The armies of a littler folk
Shall pass you under the victor's yoke,
Sobeit a nation that trains her sons
To ride their horses and point their guns -
Sobeit a people that comprehends
The limit where private pleasure ends
And where their public dues begin,
A people made strong by discipline
Who are willing to give - what you've no mind to -
And understand - what you are blind to -
The things that the individual
Must sacrifice for the good of all.
You have a leader who knows - the man
Most fit to be called American,
A prophet that once in generations
Is given to point to erring nations
Brighter ideals toward which to press
And lead them out of the wilderness.
Will you turn your back on him once again?
Will you give the tiller once more to men
Who have made your country the laughing-stock
For the older peoples to scorn and mock,
Who would make you servile, despised, and weak,
A country that turns the other cheek,
Who care not how bravely your flag may float,
Who answer an insult with a note,
Whose way is the easy way in all,
And, seeing that polished arms appal
Their marrow of milk-fed pacifist,
Would tell you menace does not exist?
Are these, in the world's great parliament,
The men you would choose to represent
Your honor, your manhood, and your pride,
And the virtues your fathers dignified?
Oh, bury them deeper than the sea
In universal obloquy;
Forget the ground where they lie, or write
For epitaph: "Too proud to fight."
I have been too long from my country's shores
To reckon what state of mind is yours,
But as for myself I know right well
I would go through fire and shot and shell
And face new perils and make my bed
In new privations, if ROOSEVELT led;
But I have given my heart and hand
To serve, in serving another land,
Ideals kept bright that with you are dim;
Here men can thrill to their country's hymn,
For the passion that wells in the Marseillaise
Is the same that fires the French these days,
And, when the flag that they love goes by,
With swelling bosom and moistened eye
They can look, for they know that it floats there still
By the might of their hands and the strength of their will,
And through perils countless and trials unknown
Its honor each man has made his own.
They wanted the war no more than you,
But they saw how the certain menace grew,
And they gave two years of their youth or three
The more to insure their liberty
When the wrath of rifles and pennoned spears
Should roll like a flood on their wrecked frontiers.
They wanted the war no more than you,
But when the dreadful summons blew
And the time to settle the quarrel came
They sprang to their guns, each man was game;
And mark if they fight not to the last
For their hearths, their altars, and their past:
Yea, fight till their veins have been bled dry
For love of the country that WILL not die.
O friends, in your fortunate present ease
(Yet faced by the self-same facts as these),
If you would see how a race can soar
That has no love, but no fear, of war,
How each can turn from his private role
That all may act as a perfect whole,
How men can live up to the place they claim
And a nation, jealous of its good name,
Be true to its proud inheritance,
Oh, look over here and learn from FRANCE! |
To My Old Readers - From Readings Over The Teacups - Five Stories And A Sequel | Oliver Wendell Holmes | You know "The Teacups," that congenial set
Which round the Teapot you have often met;
The grave DICTATOR, him you knew of old, -
Knew as the shepherd of another fold
Grayer he looks, less youthful, but the same
As when you called him by a different name.
Near him the MISTRESS, whose experienced skill
Has taught her duly every cup to fill;
"Weak;" "strong;" "cool;" "lukewarm;" "hot as you can pour;"
"No sweetening;" "sugared;" "two lumps;" "one lump more."
Next, the PROFESSOR, whose scholastic phrase
At every turn the teacher's tongue betrays,
Trying so hard to make his speech precise
The captious listener finds it overnice.
Nor be forgotten our ANNEXES twain,
Nor HE, the owner of the squinting brain,
Which, while its curious fancies we pursue,
Oft makes us question, "Are we crack-brained too?"
Along the board our growing list extends,
As one by one we count our clustering friends, -
The youthful DOCTOR waiting for his share
Of fits and fevers when his crown gets bare;
In strong, dark lines our square-nibbed pen should draw
The lordly presence of the MAN OF LAW;
Our bashful TUTOR claims a humbler place,
A lighter touch, his slender form to trace.
Mark the fair lady he is seated by, -
Some say he is her lover, - some deny, -
Watch them together, - time alone can show
If dead-ripe friendship turns to love or no.
Where in my list of phrases shall I seek
The fitting words of NUMBER FIVE to speak?
Such task demands a readier pen than mine, -
What if I steal the Tutor's Valentine?
Why should I call her gracious, winning, fair?
Why with the loveliest of her sex compare?
Those varied charms have many a Muse inspired, -
At last their worn superlatives have tired;
Wit, beauty, sweetness, each alluring grace,
All these in honeyed verse have found their place;
I need them not, - two little words I find
Which hold them all in happiest form combined;
No more with baffled language will I strive, -
All in one breath I utter: Number Five!
Now count our teaspoons - if you care to learn
How many tinkling cups were served in turn, -
Add all together, you will find them ten, -
Our young MUSICIAN joined us now and then.
Our bright DELILAH you must needs recall,
The comely handmaid, youngest of us all;
Need I remind you how the little maid
Came at a pinch to our Professor's aid, -
Trimmed his long locks with unrelenting shears
And eased his looks of half a score of years?
Sometimes, at table, as you well must know,
The stream of talk will all at once run low,
The air seems smitten with a sudden chill,
The wit grows silent and the gossip still;
This was our poet's chance, the hour of need,
When rhymes and stories we were used to read.
One day a whisper round the teacups stole, -
"No scrap of paper in the silver bowl!"
(Our "poet's corner" may I not expect
My kindly reader still may recollect?)
"What! not a line to keep our souls alive?"
Spoke in her silvery accents Number Five.
"No matter, something we must find to read, -
Find it or make it, - yes, we must indeed!
Now I remember I have seen at times
Some curious stories in a book of rhymes, -
How certain secrets, long in silence sealed,
In after days were guessed at or revealed.
Those stories, doubtless, some of you must know, -
They all were written many a year ago;
But an old story, be it false or true,
Twice told, well told, is twice as good as new;
Wait but three sips and I will go myself,
And fetch the book of verses from its shelf."
No time was lost in finding what she sought, -
Gone but one moment, - lo! the book is brought.
"Now, then, Professor, fortune has decreed
That you, this evening, shall be first to read, -
Lucky for us that listen, for in fact
Who reads this poem must know how to act."
Right well she knew that in his greener age
He had a mighty hankering for the stage.
The patient audience had not long to wait;
Pleased with his chance, he smiled and took the bait;
Through his wild hair his coaxing fingers ran, -
He spread the page before him and began. |
The Whistle of Sandy McGraw | Robert William Service | You may talk o' your lutes and your dulcimers fine,
Your harps and your tabors and cymbals and a',
But here in the trenches jist gie me for mine
The wee penny whistle o' Sandy McGraw.
Oh, it's: "Sandy, ma lad, will you lilt us a tune?"
And Sandy is willin' and trillin' like mad;
Sae silvery sweet that we a' throng aroun',
And some o' it's gay, but the maist o' it's sad.
Jist the wee simple airs that sink intae your hert,
And grup ye wi' love and wi' longin' for hame;
And ye glour like an owl till you're feelin' the stert
O' a tear, and you blink wi' a feelin' o' shame.
For his song's o' the heather, and here in the dirt
You listen and dream o' a land that's sae braw,
And he mak's you forget a' the harm and the hurt,
For he pipes like a laverock, does Sandy McGraw.
. . . . .
At Eepers I mind me when rank upon rank
We rose from the trenches and swept like the gale,
Till the rapid-fire guns got us fell on the flank
And the murderin' bullets came swishin' like hail:
Till a' that were left o' us faltered and broke;
Till it seemed for a moment a panicky rout,
When shrill through the fume and the flash and the smoke
The wee valiant voice o' a whistle piped out.
'The Campbells are Comin'': Then into the fray
We bounded wi' bayonets reekin' and raw,
And oh we fair revelled in glory that day,
Jist thanks to the whistle o' Sandy McGraw.
. . . . .
At Loose, it wis after a sconnersome fecht,
On the field o' the slain I wis crawlin' aboot;
And the rockets were burnin' red holes in the nicht;
And the guns they were veciously thunderin' oot;
When sudden I heard a bit sound like a sigh,
And there in a crump-hole a kiltie I saw:
"Whit ails ye, ma lad? Are ye woundit?" says I.
"I've lost ma wee whustle," says Sandy McGraw.
"'Twas oot by yon bing where we pressed the attack,
It drapped frae ma pooch, and between noo and dawn
There isna much time so I'm jist crawlin' back. . . ."
"Ye're daft, man!" I telt him, but Sandy wis gone.
Weel, I waited a wee, then I crawled oot masel,
And the big stuff wis gorin' and roarin' around,
And I seemed tae be under the oxter o' hell,
And Creation wis crackin' tae bits by the sound.
And I says in ma mind: "Gang ye back, ye auld fule!"
When I thrilled tae a note that wis saucy and sma';
And there in a crater, collected and cool,
Wi' his wee penny whistle wis Sandy McGraw.
Ay, there he wis playin' as gleg as could be,
And listenin' hard wis a spectacled Boche;
Then Sandy turned roon' and he noddit tae me,
And he says: "Dinna blab on me, Sergeant McTosh.
The auld chap is deein'. He likes me tae play.
It's makin' him happy. Jist see his een shine!"
And thrillin' and sweet in the hert o' the fray
Wee Sandy wis playin' 'The Watch on the Rhine'.
. . . . .
The last scene o' a' - 'twas the day that we took
That bit o' black ruin they ca' Labbiesell.
It seemed the hale hillside jist shivered and shook,
And the red skies were roarin' and spewin' oot shell.
And the Sergeants were cursin' tae keep us in hand,
And hard on the leash we were strainin' like dugs,
When upward we shot at the word o' command,
And the bullets were dingin' their songs in oor lugs.
And onward we swept wi' a yell and a cheer,
And a' wis destruction, confusion and din,
And we knew that the trench o' the Boches wis near,
And it seemed jist the safest bit hole tae be in.
So we a' tumbled doon, and the Boches were there,
And they held up their hands, and they yelled: "Kamarad!"
And I merched aff wi' ten, wi' their palms in the air,
And my! I wis prood-like, and my! I wis glad.
And I thocht: if ma lassie could see me jist then. . . .
When sudden I sobered at somethin' I saw,
And I stopped and I stared, and I halted ma men,
For there on a stretcher wis Sandy McGraw.
Weel, he looks in ma face, jist as game as ye please:
"Ye ken hoo I hate tae be workin'," says he;
"But noo I can play in the street for bawbees,
Wi' baith o' ma legs taken aff at the knee."
And though I could see he wis rackit wi' pain,
He reached for his whistle and stertit tae play;
And quaverin' sweet wis the pensive refrain:
'The floors o' the forest are a' wede away'.
Then sudden he stoppit: "Man, wis it no grand
Hoo we took a' them trenches?" . . . He shakit his heid:
"I'll - no - play - nae - mair - - " feebly doon frae his hand
Slipped the wee penny whistle and - SANDY WIS DEID.
. . . . .
And so you may talk o' your Steinways and Strads,
Your wonderful organs and brasses sae braw;
But oot in the trenches jist gie me, ma lads,
Yon wee penny whistle o' Sandy McGraw. |
The Little Town O' Tailholt | James Whitcomb Riley | You kin boast about yer cities, and their stiddy growth and size,
And brag about yer County-seats, and business enterprise,
And railroads, and factories, and all sich foolery -
But the little Town o' Tailholt is big enough fer me!
You kin harp about yer churches, with their steeples in the clouds,
And gas about yer graded streets, and blow about yer crowds;
You kin talk about yer "theaters," and all you've got to see -
But the little Town o' Tailholt is show enough fer me!
They hain't no style in our town - hit's little-like and small -
They hain't no "churches," nuther, jes' the meetin' house is all;
They's no sidewalks, to speak of - but the highway's allus free,
And the little Town o' Tailholt is wide enough fer me!
Some find it discommodin'-like, I'm willin' to admit,
To hev but one post-office, and a womern keepin' hit,
And the drug-store, and shoe-shop, and grocery, all three -
But the little Town o' Tailholt is handy 'nough fer me!
You kin smile and turn yer nose up, and joke and hev yer fun,
And laugh and holler "Tail-holts is better holts'n none!
Ef the city suits you better w'y, hit's where you'd ort'o be -
But the little Town o' Tailholt's good enough fer me! |
Song Of The Aviator | Ella Wheeler Wilcox | You may thrill with the speed of your thoroughbred steed,
You may laugh with delight as you ride the ocean,
You may rush afar in your touring car,
Leaping, sweeping, by things that are creeping -
But you never will know the joy of motion
Till you rise up over the earth some day,
And soar like an eagle, away - away.
High and higher above each spire,
Till lost to sight is the tallest steeple,
With the winds you chase in a valiant race,
Looping, swooping, where mountains are grouping,
Hailing them comrades, in place of people.
Oh! vast is the rapture the birdman knows,
As into the ether he mounts and goes.
He is over the sphere of human fear;
He has come into touch with things supernal.
At each man's gate death stands await;
And dying, flying, were better than lying
In sick-beds, crying for life eternal.
Better to fly half-way to God
Than to burrow too long like a worm in the sod.
|
The Vampyre | Charles Baudelaire | You invaded my sorrowful heart
Like the sudden stroke of a blade;
Bold as a lunatic troupe
Of demons in drunken parade,
You in my mortified soul
Made your bed and your domain;
Abhorrence, to whom 1 am bound
As the convict is to the chain,
As the drunkard is to the jug,
As the gambler to the game,
As to the vermin the corpse,
I damn you, out of my shame!
And I prayed to the eager sword
To win my deliverance,
And have asked the perfidious vial
To redeem my cowardice.
Alas! the vial and the sword
Disdainfully said to me;
'You are not worthy to lift
From your wretched slavery,
You fool! if from her command
Our efforts delivered you forth,
Your kisses would waken again
Your vampire lover's corpse!'
|
Glory Of Women | Siegfried Loraine Sassoon | You love us when we're heroes, home on leave,
Or wounded in a mentionable place.
You worship decorations; you believe
That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace.
You make us shells. You listen with delight,
By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.
You crown our distant ardours while we fight,
And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.
You can't believe that British troops "retire"
When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,
Trampling the terrible corpses - blind with blood.
O German mother dreaming by the fire,
While you are knitting socks to send your son
His face is trodden deeper in the mud. |
Break O' Day | Henry Lawson | You love me, you say, and I think you do,
But I know so many who don't,
And how can I say I'll be true to you
When I know very well that I won't?
I have journeyed long and my goal is far,
I love, but I cannot bide,
For as sure as rises the morning star,
With the break of day I'll ride.
I was doomed to ruin or doomed to mar
The home wherever I stay,
But I'll think of you as the morning star
And they call me Break o' Day.
They well might have named me the Fall o' Night,
For drear is the track I mark,
But I love fair girls and I love the light,
For I and my tribe were dark.
You may love me dear, for a day and night,
You may cast your life aside;
But as sure as the morning star shines bright
With the break of day I'll ride.
There was never a lover so proud and kind,
There was never a friend so true;
But the song of my life I have left behind
In the heart of a girl like you.
There was never so deep or cruel a wrong
In the land that is far away,
There was never so bitter a broken heart
That rode at the break of day.
God bless you, dear, with your red-gold hair
And your pitying eyes of grey,
Oh! my heart forbids that a star so fair
Should be marred by the Break o' Day.
Live on, my girl, as the girl you are,
Be a good and a true man's bride,
For as sure as beckons the evening star
With the fall o' night I'll ride.
I was born to ruin or born to mar
The home wherever I light.
Oh! I wish that you were the Evening Star
And that I were the Fall o' Night. |
A Word To The 'Elect' | Anne Bronte | You may rejoice to think yourselves secure;
You may be grateful for the gift divine
That grace unsought, which made your black hearts pure,
And fits your earth-born souls in Heaven to shine.
But, is it sweet to look around, and view
Thousands excluded from that happiness,
Which they deserved, at least, as much as you,
Their faults not greater, nor their virtues less?
And, wherefore should you love your God the more,
Because to you alone his smiles are given;
Because he chose to pass the many o'er,
And only bring the favoured few to Heaven?
And, wherefore should your hearts more grateful prove,
Because for ALL the Saviour did not die?
Is yours the God of justice and of love
And are your bosoms warm with charity?
Say, does your heart expand to all mankind?
And, would you ever to your neighbour do
The weak, the strong, the enlightened, and the blind
As you would have your neighbour do to you?
And, when you, looking on your fellow-men,
Behold them doomed to endless misery,
How can you talk of joy and rapture then?
May God withhold such cruel joy from me!
That none deserve eternal bliss I know;
Unmerited the grace in mercy given:
But, none shall sink to everlasting woe,
That have not well deserved the wrath of Heaven.
And, Oh! there lives within my heart
A hope, long nursed by me;
(And, should its cheering ray depart,
How dark my soul would be!)
That as in Adam all have died,
In Christ shall all men live;
And ever round his throne abide,
Eternal praise to give.
That even the wicked shall at last
Be fitted for the skies;
And, when their dreadful doom is past,
To life and light arise.
I ask not, how remote the day,
Nor what the sinner's woe,
Before their dross is purged away;
Enough for me, to know
That when the cup of wrath is drained,
The metal purified,
They'll cling to what they once disdained,
And live by Him that died. |
At The Road-House: In Memory Of Robert Louis Stevenson. | Bliss Carman (William) | You hearken, fellows? Turned aside
Into the road-house of the past!
The prince of vagabonds is gone
To house among his peers at last.
The stainless gallant gentleman,
So glad of life, he gave no trace,
No hint he even once beheld
The spectre peering in his face;
But gay and modest held the road,
Nor feared the Shadow of the Dust;
And saw the whole world rich with joy,
As every valiant farer must.
I think that old and vasty inn
Will have a welcome guest to-night,
When Chaucer, breaking off some tale
That fills his hearers with delight,
Shall lift up his demure brown eyes
To bid the stranger in; and all
Will turn to greet the one on whom
The crystal lot was last to fall.
Keats of the more than mortal tongue
Will take grave Milton by the sleeve
To meet their kin, whose woven words
Had elvish music in the weave.
Dear Lamb and excellent Montaigne,
Sterne and the credible Defoe,
Borrow, DeQuincey, the great Dean,
The sturdy leisurist Thoreau;
The furtive soul whose dark romance,
By ghostly door and haunted stair,
Explored the dusty human heart
And the forgotten garrets there;
The moralist it could not spoil,
To hold an empire in his hands;
Sir Walter, and the brood who sprang
From Homer through a hundred lands,
Singers of songs on all men's lips,
Tellers of tales in all men's ears,
Movers of hearts that still must beat
To sorrows feigned and fabled tears;
Horace and Omar, doubting still
What mystery lurks beyond the seen,
Yet blithe and reassured before
That fine unvexed Virgilian mien;
These will companion him to-night,
Beyond this iron wintry gloom,
When Shakespeare and Cervantes bid
The great joy-masters give him room.
No alien there in speech or mood,
He will pass in, one traveller more;
And portly Ben will smile to see
The velvet jacket at the door. |
Bad Dreams II | Robert Browning | You in the flesh and here,
Your very self! Now, wait!
One word! May I hope or fear?
Must I speak in love or hate?
Stay while I ruminate!
The fact and each circumstance
Dare you disown? Not you!
That vast dome, that huge dance,
And the gloom which overgrew
A possibly festive crew!
For why should men dance at all
Why women a crowd of both
Unless they are gay? Strange ball
Hands and feet plighting troth,
Yet partners enforced and loth!
Of who danced there, no shape
Did I recognize: thwart, perverse,
Each grasped each, past escape
In a whirl or weary or worse:
Man's sneer met woman's curse,
While he and she toiled as if
Their guardian set galley-slaves
To supple chained limbs grown stiff:
Unmanacled trulls and knaves
The lash for who misbehaves!
And a gloom was, all the while,
Deeper and deeper yet
O'ergrowing the rank and file
Of that army of haters set
To mimic love's fever-fret.
By the wall-side close I crept.
Avoiding the livid maze.
And, safely so far, outstepped
On a chamber, a chapel, says
My memory or betrays
Closet-like, kept aloof
From unseemly witnessing
What sport made floor and roof
Of the Devil's palace ring
While his Damned amused their king.
Ay, for a low lamp burned,
And a silence lay about
What I, in the midst, discerned
Though dimly till, past doubt,
'Twas a sort of throne stood out
High seat with steps, at least:
And the topmost step was filled
By whom? What vestured priest?
A stranger to me, his guild,
His cult, unreconciled
To my knowledge how guild and cult
Are clothed in this world of ours:
I pondered, but no result
Came to, unless that Giaours
So worship the Lower Powers.
When suddenly who entered?
Who knelt, did you guess I saw?
Who, raising that face were centred
Allegiance to love and law
So lately, off-casting awe,
Down-treading reserve, away
Thrusting respect . . . but mine
Stands firm, firm still shall stay!
Ask Satan! for I decline
To tell what I saw, in fine!
Yet here in the flesh you come,
Your same self, form and face,
In the eyes, mirth still at home!
On the lips, that commonplace
Perfection of honest grace!
Yet your errand is, needs must be,
To palliate, well, explain,
Expurgate in some degree
Your soul of its ugly stain.
Oh, you, the good in grain,
How was it your white took tinge?
'A mere dream', never object!
Sleep leaves a door on hinge
Whence soul, ere our flesh suspect,
Is off and away: detect
Her vagaries when loose, who can!
Be she pranksome, be she prude,
Disguise with the day began:
With the night, ah, what ensued
From draughts of a drink hell-brewed?
Then She: 'What a queer wild dream!
And perhaps the best fun is,
Myself had its fellow, I seem
Scarce awake from yet. 'Twas this,
Shall I tell you? First, a kiss!
'For the fault was just your own,
'Tis myself expect apology:
You warned me to let alone
(Since our studies were mere philology)
That ticklish (you said) Anthology.
'So I dreamed that I passed exam
Till a question posed me sore:
'Who translated this epigram
By an author we best ignore?'
And I answered, 'Hannah More'!' |
Love Brown And Bitter | Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator) | You know so well how to stay me with vapours
Distilled expertly to that unworthy end;
You know the poses of your body I love best
And that I am cheerful with your head on my breast,
You know you please me by disliking one friend;
You read up what amuses me in the papers.
Who knows me knows I am not of those fools
That gets tired of a woman who is kind to them,
Yet you know not how stifled you render me
By learning me so well, how I long to see
An unpractised girl under your clever phlegm,
A soul not so letter-perfect in the rules.
From the Arabic of John Duncan. |
On The Jellico-Spur. | Madison Julius Cawein | TO MY FRIEND, JOHN FOX, JR.
You remember, the deep mist, -
Climbing to the Devil's Den -
Blue beneath us in the glen
And above us amethyst,
Throbbed and circled and away
Thro' the wild-woods opposite,
Torn and shattered, morning-lit,
Scurried up a dewy gray.
Vague as in Romance we saw
From the fog one riven trunk,
Its huge horny talons shrunk,
Thrust a hungry dragon's claw.
And we climbed two hours thro'
The dawn-dripping Jellicoes,
To that wooded rock that shows
Undulating peaks of blue:
The vast Cumberlands that sleep,
Weighed with soaring forests, far
To the concave welkin's bar,
Leagues on leagues of purple sweep.
Range exalted over range
Billowed their enormous spines,
And we heard the priestly pines
Hum the wisdom of their change.
We were sons of Nature then;
She had taken us to her,
Closer drawn by brier and burr,
There on lonely Devil's Den.
We were pupils of her moods:
Taught the beauties of her loins
In those bloom-anointed coignes, -
Love in her eternal woods:
How she bore or flower or bud;
Pithed the wiry sapling-oak;
In the long vine zeal awoke
Aye to climb a leafy flood.
Her waste fantasies of birth:
Sponge-like exudations fair -
Dainty fungi everywhere
Bulging from the loamy earth.
Coral-vegetable things;
Crystals clamily exhaled;
Bulbous, marble-ribbed and scaled,
Vip'rous colored; then close rings
Of the Indian Pipe that cleft
Pink and white the woodland lax, -
Blossoms of a natural wax
The brown mountain-fairies left.
We on that parched precipice,
Stretched beneath the chestnuts' burrs,
Breathed the balsam of the firs,
Felt the blue sky like a kiss.
Soft that heaven; stainless as
The grand woodlands lunging on,
Wound majestic in the sun,
Or as our devotion was!
Freedom sat there cragged we saw,
Freedom whom hoarse forests sang;
Heaven-browed her eyes, whence sprang
Audience august with law.
Wildernesses, from her hips
Sprung the giant forests there,
Tossed the cataracts from her hair,
Thunders lightened from her lips.
Oft some scavenger, with vane
Motionless, above we knew
Wheeled thro' altitudes of blue
By his rapid shadow's stain.
Or some cloud of sunny white, -
Puffed a lazy drift of pearl, -
Balmy breezes o'er would whirl
Shot with coruscating light.
So we dreamed an hour upon
Those warm rocks, dry, lichen-scabbed.
Lounged beneath long leaves that dabbed
At us coins of shade and sun.
Then arose and down some gorge
Made a bowldered torrent broad
The hurled pathway of our road
Tumbled down the mountain large.
At that farm-house, which you know,
Where old-fashioned flowers spun
Gay rag-carpets in the sun,
By green apple-boughs built low,
Rested from our hot descent;
One deep draught of cider cool,
Unctuous, our fierce veins to dull
At old Hix's eloquent....
On Wolf Mountain died the light;
A colossal blossom, rayed
With rent petaled clouds that played
'Round a calyxed fury bright.
Down the moist mint-scented vale
To the mining camp we turned,
Thro' the twilight faint discerned
With its crowded cabins pale.
Ah! those nights! - We wandered forth
On some shadow-haunted path
When the moon was late and rathe
The large stars; sowed south and north,
Clustered bursting heavens down:
And the milky zodiac,
Rolled athwart the belted black,
Myriad-million-moted shone.
And in dreams we sauntered till
In the valley pale beneath,
From a dew-drop's vapored breath
To faint ghosts, there gathered still,
Grave creations weird of mist:
Then we knew the moonrise near,
As with necromance the air
Pulsed to pearl and amethyst.
Shrilled the insects of the dusk,
Grated, buzzed and strident sung
Till each leaf seemed tuned and strung
For high Pixy music brusque.
Stealing steps and stealthy sighs
As of near unhallowed things,
Rustled hair or fluttered wings,
Seemed about us; then the eyes
Of plumed phantom warriors
Burned mesmeric from some bush
Mournful in the goblin hush,
Then materialized to stars.
Mantled mists like ambushed braves,
Chiefed by some swart Blackfoot tall,
Stole along each forest wall -
Phosphorescent moony waves.
Then the moon rose; from some cup
Each hill's bowl, - magnetic shine,
Mist and silence poured like wine, -
Brimmed a monster goblet up.
Ingot from lost orient mines,
Delved by humpbacked gnomes of Night,
Full her orb loomed, nacreous white,
O'er Pine Mountain's druid pines.
As thro' fragmentary fleece
Her circumference polished broke,
Orey-seamed, about us woke
Myths of Italy and Greece.
Then - a chanson serenade -
You, rich-voiced, to your guitar
To our goddess in that star
Sang "Ne Tempo" from the glade.
|
Disillusion. | Paul Bewsher | You mortals see the sky -
I only see the ground,
As through the air I fly.
You mortals see the sky,
And yet with envy sigh
Because to earth you're bound!
You mortals see the sky -
I only see the ground! |
Via, Et Veritas, Et Vita | Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell | "You never attained to Him?" "If to attain
Be to abide, then that may be."
"Endless the way, followed with how much pain!"
"The way was He." |
You On The Tower | Thomas Hardy | I
"You on the tower of my factory -
What do you see up there?
Do you see Enjoyment with wide wings
Advancing to reach me here?"
- "Yea; I see Enjoyment with wide wings
Advancing to reach you here."
II
"Good. Soon I'll come and ask you
To tell me again thereon . . .
Well, what is he doing now? Hoi, there!"
- "He still is flying on."
"Ah, waiting till I have full-finished.
Good. Tell me again anon . . .
III
Hoi, Watchman! I'm here. When comes he?
Between my sweats I am chill."
- "Oh, you there, working still?
Why, surely he reached you a time back,
And took you miles from your mill?
He duly came in his winging,
And now he has passed out of view.
How can it be that you missed him?
He brushed you by as he flew." |
Harlan Sewall | Edgar Lee Masters | You never understood,
O unknown one,
Why it was I repaid
Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations
First with diminished thanks,
Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you,
So that I might not be compelled to thank you,
And then with silence which followed upon
Our final Separation.
You had cured my diseased soul.
But to cure it
You saw my disease, you knew my secret,
And that is why I fled from you.
For though when our bodies rise from pain
We kiss forever the watchful hands
That gave us wormwood, while we shudder
For thinking of the wormwood,
A soul that's cured is a different matter,
For there we'd blot from memory
The soft - toned words, the searching eyes,
And stand forever oblivious,
Not so much of the sorrow itself
As of the hand that healed it.
|
Old Pardon, The Son Of Reprieve | Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton) | You never heard tell of the story?
Well, now, I can hardly believe!
Never heard of the honour and glory
Of Pardon, the son of Reprieve?
But maybe you're only a Johnnie
And don't know a horse from a hoe?
Well, well, don't get angry, my sonny,
But, really, a young un should know.
They bred him out back on the "Never",
His mother was Mameluke breed.
To the front, and then stay there, was ever
The root of the Mameluke creed.
He seemed to inherit their wiry
Strong frames, and their pluck to receive,
As hard as a flint and as fiery
Was Pardon, the son of Reprieve.
We ran him at many a meeting
At crossing and gully and town,
And nothing could give him a beating,
At least when our money was down.
For weight wouldn't stop him, nor distance,
Nor odds, though the others were fast;
He'd race with a dogged persistence,
And wear them all down at the last.
At the Turon the Yattendon filly
Led by lengths at the mile-and-a-half,
And we all began to look silly,
While her crowd were starting to laugh;
But the old horse came faster and faster,
His pluck told its tale, and his strength,
He gained on her, caught her, and passed her,
And won it, hands down, by a length.
And then we swooped down on Menindie
To run for the President's Cup;
Oh! that's a sweet township, a shindy
To them is board, lodging, and sup.
Eye-openers they are, and their system
Is never to suffer defeat;
It's "win, tie, or wrangle", to best 'em
You must lose 'em, or else it's "dead heat".
We strolled down the township and found 'em
At drinking and gaming and play;
If sorrows they had, why they drowned 'em,
And betting was soon under way.
Their horses were good uns and fit uns,
There was plenty of cash in the town;
They backed their own horses like Britons,
And, Lord! how we rattled it down!
With gladness we thought of the morrow,
We counted our wages with glee,
A simile homely to borrow,
"There was plenty of milk in our tea."
You see we were green; and we never
Had even a thought of foul play,
Though we well might have known that the clever
Division would "put us away".
Experience docet, they tell us,
At least so I've frequently heard;
But, "dosing" or "stuffing", those fellows
Were up to each move on the board:
They got to his stall, it is sinful
To think what such villains will do,
And they gave him a regular skinful
Of barley, green barley, to chew.
He munched it all night, and we found him
Next morning as full as a hog,
The girths wouldn't nearly meet round him;
He looked like an overfed frog.
We saw we were done like a dinner,
The odds were a thousand to one
Against Pardon turning up winner,
'Twas cruel to ask him to run.
We got to the course with our troubles,
A crestfallen couple were we;
And we heard the " books" calling the doubles,
A roar like the surf of the sea.
And over the tumult and louder
Rang "Any price Pardon, I lay!"
Says Jimmy, "The children of Judah
Are out on the warpath today."
Three miles in three heats:, Ah, my sonny,
The horses in those days were stout,
They had to run well to win money;
I don't see such horses about.
Your six-furlong vermin that scamper
Half-a-mile with their feather-weight up,
They wouldn't earn much of their damper
In a race like the President's Cup.
The first heat was soon set a-going;
The Dancer went off to the front;
The Don on his quarters was showing,
With Pardon right out of the hunt.
He rolled and he weltered and wallowed,
You'd kick your hat faster, I'll bet;
They finished all bunched, and he followed
All lathered and dripping with sweat.
But troubles came thicker upon us,
For while we were rubbing him dry
The stewards came over to warn us:
"We hear you are running a bye!
If Pardon don't spiel like tarnation
And win the next heat, if he can,
He'll earn a disqualification;
Just think over that now, my man!"
Our money all gone and our credit,
Our horse couldn't gallop a yard;
And then people thought that we did it
It really was terribly hard.
We were objects of mirth and derision
To folks in the lawn and the stand,
And the yells of the clever division
Of "Any price Pardon!" were grand.
We still had a chance for the money,
Two heats remained to be run:
If both fell to us, why, my sonny,
The clever division were done.
And Pardon was better, we reckoned,
His sickness was passing away,
So we went to the post for the second
And principal heat of the day.
They're off and away with a rattle,
Like dogs from the leashes let slip,
And right at the back of the battle
He followed them under the whip.
They gained ten good lengths on him quickly
He dropped right away from the pack;
I tell you it made me feel sickly
To see the blue jacket fall back.
Our very last hope had departed,
We thought the old fellow was done,
When all of a sudden he started
To go like a shot from a gun.
His chances seemed slight to embolden
Our hearts; but, with teeth firmly set,
We thought, "Now or never! The old un
May reckon with some of 'em yet."
Then loud rose the war-cry for Pardon;
He swept like the wind down the dip,
And over the rise by the garden
The jockey was done with the whip.
The field was at sixes and sevens,
The pace at the first had been fast,
And hope seemed to drop from the heavens,
For Pardon was coming at last.
And how he did come! It was splendid;
He gained on them yards every bound,
Stretching out like a greyhound extended,
His girth laid right down on the ground.
A shimmer of silk in the cedars
As into the running they wheeled,
And out flashed the whips on the leaders,
For Pardon had collared the field.
Then right through the ruck he was sailing,
I knew that the battle was won,
The son of Haphazard was failing,
The Yattendon filly was done;
He cut down The Don and The Dancer,
He raced clean away from the mare,
He's in front! Catch him now if you can, sir!
And up went my hat in the air!
Then loud from the lawn and the garden
Rose offers of "Ten to one on!"
"Who'll bet on the field? I back Pardon!"
No use; all the money was gone.
He came for the third heat light-hearted,
A-jumping and dancing about;
The others were done ere they started
Crestfallen, and tired, and worn out.
He won it, and ran it much faster
Than even the first, I believe;
Oh, he was the daddy, the master,
Was Pardon, the son of Reprieve.
He showed 'em the method of travel,
The boy sat still as a stone,
They never could see him for gravel;
He came in hard-held, and alone.
* * * * * * *
But he's old, and his eyes are grown hollow
Like me, with my thatch of the snow;
When he dies, then I hope I may follow,
And go where the racehorses go.
I don't want no harping nor singing,
Such things with my style don't agree;
Where the hoofs of the horses are ringing
There's music sufficient for me.
And surely the thoroughbred horses
Will rise up again and begin
Fresh faces on far-away courses,
And p'raps they might let me slip in.
It would look rather well the race-card on
'Mongst Cherubs and Seraphs and things,
"Angel Harrison's black gelding Pardon,
Blue halo, white body and wings."
And if they have racing hereafter,
(And who is to say they will not?)
When the cheers and the shouting and laughter
Proclaim that the battle grows hot;
As they come down the racecourse a-steering,
He'll rush to the front, I believe;
And you'll hear the great multitude cheering
For Pardon, the son of Reprieve.
|
Semper Eadem | Charles Baudelaire | You said, there grows within you some strange gloom,
A sea rising on rock, why is it so?
When once your heart has brought its harvest home
Life is an evil! (secret all men know),
A simple sorrow, not mysterious,
And, like your joy, it sparkles for us all.
So, lovely one, be not so curious!
And even though your voice is sweet, be still!
Be quiet silly girl! Soul of delight!
Mouth of the childish laugh! More, still, than Life
Death holds us often in the subtlest ways.
So let my heart be lost within a lie,
As in a sweet dream, plunge into your eyes
And sleep a long time in your lashes' shade. |
Jessie. | Jean Blewett | You miss the touch of her dear hand,
Her laughter gay and sweet,
The dimpled cheek, the sunny smile,
The patter of her feet.
The loving glances she bestowed,
The tender tales she told -
The world, since she has gone away,
Seems empty, drear and cold.
Dear, oft you prayed that God would give
Your darling joy and grace,
That pain or loss might never dim
The brightness of her face.
That her young heart might keep its trust,
Its purity so white,
Its wealth of sweet unselfishness,
Her eyes their radiant light,
Her fair, soft face its innocence
Of every guile and wrong,
And nothing touch to mar the joy
And gladness of her song.
God heard the prayer; His answer came -
Now, cease thy murmuring, cease -
"Come, little one, come home," He said,
"Unto the Land of Peace!"
You sheltered her upon your breast,
The child so quaint and wise,
To-day, where sorrow is unknown,
She walks in paradise.
Her eyes have learned the mystery,
Her feet the vale have crost,
But, friend of mine, you'll find again
The treasure you have lost.
Your arms will surely clasp once more
The little fair-haired girl
Who waits for you within the gates
Of jasper and of pearl. |