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The Outlaw | Robert William Service | A wild and woeful race he ran
Of lust and sin by land and sea;
Until, abhorred of God and man,
They swung him from the gallows-tree.
And then he climbed the Starry Stair,
And dumb and naked and alone,
With head unbowed and brazen glare,
He stood before the Judgment Throne.
The Keeper of the Records spoke:
"This man, O Lord, has mocked Thy Name.
The weak have wept beneath his yoke,
The strong have fled before his flame.
The blood of babes is on his sword;
His life is evil to the brim:
Look down, decree his doom, O Lord!
Lo! there is none will speak for him."
The golden trumpets blew a blast
That echoed in the crypts of Hell,
For there was Judgment to be passed,
And lips were hushed and silence fell.
The man was mute; he made no stir,
Erect before the Judgment Seat . . .
When all at once a mongrel cur
Crept out and cowered and licked his feet.
It licked his feet with whining cry.
Come Heav'n, come Hell, what did it care?
It leapt, it tried to catch his eye;
Its master, yea, its God was there.
Then, as a thrill of wonder sped
Through throngs of shining seraphim,
The Judge of All looked down and said:
"Lo! here is ONE who pleads for him.
"And who shall love of these the least,
And who by word or look or deed
Shall pity show to bird or beast,
By Me shall have a friend in need.
Aye, though his sin be black as night,
And though he stand 'mid men alone,
He shall be softened in My sight,
And find a pleader by My Throne.
"So let this man to glory win;
From life to life salvation glean;
By pain and sacrifice and sin,
Until he stand before Me - clean.
For he who loves the least of these
(And here I say and here repeat)
Shall win himself an angel's pleas
For Mercy at My Judgment Seat." |
A Wink From Hesper | William Ernest Henley | A wink from Hesper, falling
Fast in the wintry sky,
Comes through the even blue,
Dear, like a word from you . . .
Is it good-bye?
Across the miles between us
I send you sigh for sigh.
Good-night, sweet friend, good-night:
Till life and all take flight,
Never good-bye. |
Daybreak | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | A wind came up out of the sea,
And said, "O mists, make room for me."
It hailed the ships, and cried, "Sail on,
Ye mariners, the night is gone."
And hurried landward far away,
Crying, "Awake! it is the day."
It said unto the forest, "Shout!
Hang all your leafy banners out!"
It touched the wood-bird's folded wing,
And said, "O bird, awake and sing."
And o'er the farms, "O chanticleer,
Your clarion blow; the day is near."
It whispered to the fields of corn,
"Bow down, and hail the coming morn."
It shouted through the belfry-tower,
"Awake, O bell! proclaim the hour."
It crossed the churchyard with a sigh,
And said, "Not yet! in quiet lie." |
The Wind | Sara Teasdale | A wind is blowing over my soul,
I hear it cry the whole night through,
Is there no peace for me on earth
Except with you?
Alas, the wind has made me wise,
Over my naked soul it blew,
There is no peace for me on earth
Even with you. |
Sonnet 21 | Michael Drayton | A witlesse Gallant, a young Wench that woo'd,
(Yet his dull Spirit her not one iot could moue)
Intreated me, as e'r I wish'd his good,
To write him but one Sonnet to his Loue:
When I, as fast as e'r my Penne could trot,
Powr'd out what first from quicke Inuention came;
Nor neuer stood one word thereof to blot,
Much like his Wit, that was to vse the same:
But with my Verses he his Mistres wonne,
Who doted on the Dolt beyond all measure.
But soe, for you to Heau'n for Phraze I runne,
And ransacke all APOLLO'S golden Treasure;
Yet by my Troth, this Foole his Loue obtaines,
And I lose you, for all my Wit and Paines. |
The King's High Way | William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham) | A wonderful Way is The King's High Way;
It runs through the Nightlands up to the Day;
From the wonderful WAS, by the wonderful IS,
To the still more wonderful IS TO BE,--
Runs The King's High Way.
Through the crooked by-ways of history,
Through the times that were dark with mystery,
From the cities of man's captivity,
By the shed of The Child's nativity,
And over the hill by the crosses three,
By the sign-post of God's paternity,
From Yesterday into Eternity,--
Runs The King's High Way.
And wayfaring men, who have strayed, still say
It is good to travel The King's High Way.
Through the dim, dark Valley of Death, at times,
To the peak of the Shining Mount it climbs,
While wonders, and glories, and joys untold
To the eyes of the visioned each step unfold,--
On The King's High Way.
And everywhere there are sheltering bowers,
Plenished with fruits and radiant with flowers,
Where the weary of body and soul may rest,
As the steeps they breast to the beckoning crest,--
On The King's High Way.
And inns there are too, of comforting mien,
Where every guest is a King or a Queen,
And room never lacks in the inns on that road,
For the hosts are all gentle men, like unto God,--
On The King's High Way.
The comrades one finds are all bound the same way,
Their faces aglow in the light of the day;
And never a quarrel is heard, nor a brawl,
They're the best of good company, each one and all,--
On The King's High Way.
So, gallantly travel The King's High Way,
With hearts unperturbed and with souls high and gay,
There is many a road that is much more the mode,
But none that so surely leads straight up to God,
As The King's High Way.
|
Lines To A Shamrock - A Song Of Exile | Nora Pembroke (Margaret Moran Dixon McDougall) | A withered shamrock, yet to me 'tis fair
As the sweet rose to other eyes might be,
Because its leaves spread in my native air,
And the same land gave birth to it and me.
They were as plentiful as drops of dew
In our green meadows sprinkled everywhere,
Heedless I wandered o'er them life was new,
Now as a friend I greet thee shamrock fair
Because I dwelt with my own people then,
Erin's bright eyes, and kindly hearts and true,
That from my cradle loved me, and again
We'll never meet--spoken our last adieu
I am a stranger here, I have not seen
One friendly face of all that I have known,
And my heart mourns for thee my island green,
Because I am a stranger and alone
So thou art welcome as a friend to me,
Tell me where lay the sod that brought thee forth,
Idly I wonder as I look at thee
If thou hast come, as I did, from the North?
From the green glens that he beside the sea
From cloud capt Sleive mis of the shamrock vest?
From near old castles, where the dread banshee
Waits for the native lords when laid to rest?
Or did the tartaned stranger call thee where
Mount Cashel's Lord rules o'er a fair domain?
Or grass grown ruin all that's left to bear
Of a lost race the all but fading name?
The lovely Maine lingers in flowing through
The peaceful place that was my childhood's home,
Myriads of shamrocks on its margin grew,
Was it from these thy sisters thou hast come?
Such fair broad meadows by Maine water lay,
Erin her mantle green for carpet spread,
In merry childhood there we met to play,
Dashing the dew from many a shamrock's head.
Where sleep the village dead there is a spot
That's dearer far than all the rest to me;
It's interwoven with full many a thought,
And with my young heart's childish history.
She was most fair that sleeps that sod beneath;
The fair form shrined a soul akin to mine,
And the sharp pain of heart ties cut by death,
Has softened been but left unhealed by time
And Erin spread her skirt across her grave,
And there were shamrocks nestling on the breast,
And blue bells and all flowers that softly wave,
Making more beautiful her place of rest.
If 'twas from there the stranger gathered thee
I would forgive the sacrilege, and thou
A precious relic to my breast would be,
Nor prized the less because thou'rt withered now.
Ah me! I know thou canst not answer me,
Yet sight of thee must all these thoughts awake;
Enough, from mine own land thou comest, thou'lt be
Welcome to Erin's child alone for Erin's sake. |
The Horse and the Wolf. | Jean de La Fontaine | A wolf who, fall'n on needy days,
In sharp look-out for means and ways,
Espied a horse turn'd out to graze.
His joy the reader may opine.
"Once got," said he, "this game were fine;
But if a sheep, 'twere sooner mine.
I can't proceed my usual way;
Some trick must now be put in play."
This said,
He came with measured tread,
And told the horse, with learned verbs,
He knew the power of roots and herbs, -
Whatever grew about those borders, -
He soon could cure of all disorders.
If he, Sir Horse, would not conceal
The symptoms of his case,
He, Doctor Wolf, would gratis heal;
For that to feed in such a place,
And run about untied,
Was proof itself of some disease,
As all the books decide.
"I have, good Doctor, if you please,"
Replied the horse, "as I presume,
Beneath my foot, an aposthume."
"My son," replied the learned leech,
"That part, as all our authors teach,
Is strikingly susceptible
Of ills which make acceptable
What you may also have from me -
The aid of skilful surgery."
The fellow, with this talk sublime,
Watch'd for a snap the fitting time.
Meanwhile, suspicious of some trick,
The weary patient nearer draws,
And gives his doctor such a kick,
As makes a chowder of his jaws.
Exclaim'd the Wolf, in sorry plight,
"I own those heels have served me right.
I err'd to quit my trade, as I will not in future;
Me Nature surely made for nothing but a butcher." |
A Strange City | William Henry Davies | A wondrous city, that had temples there
More rich than that one built by David's son,
Which called forth Ophir's gold, when Israel
Made Lebanon half naked for her sake.
I saw white towers where so-called traitors died,
True men whose tongues were bells to honest hearts,
And rang out boldly in false monarch's ears.
Saw old black gateways, on whose arches crouched
Stone lions with their bodies gnawed by age.
I looked with awe on iron gates that could
Tell bloody stones if they had our tongues.
I saw tall mounted spires shine in the sun,
That stood amidst their army of low streets.
I saw in buildings pictures, statues rare,
Made in those days when Rome was young, and new
In marble quarried from Carrara's hills;
Statues by sculptors that could almost make
Fine cobwebs out of stone, so light they worked.
Pictures that breathe in us a living soul,
Such as we seldom feel come from that life
The artist copies. Many a lovely sight,
Such as the half sunk barge with bales of hay,
Or sparkling coals, employed my wondering eyes.
I saw old Thames, whose ripples swarmed with stars
Bred by the sun on that fine summer's day;
I saw in fancy fowl and green banks there,
And Liza's barge rowed past a thousand swans.
I walked in parks and heard sweet music cry
In solemn courtyards, midst the men-at-arms;
Which suddenly would leap those stony walls
And spring up with loud laughter into trees.
I walked in busy streets where music oft
Went on the march with men; and ofttimes heard
The organ in cathedral, when the boys
Like nightingales sang in that thunderstorm;
The organ, with its rich and solemn tones,
As near a God's voice as a man conceives;
Nor ever dreamt the silent misery
That solemn organ brought to homeless men.
I heard the drums and soft brass instruments,
Led by the silver cornets clear and high,
Whose sounds turned playing children into stones.
I saw at night the City's lights shine bright,
A greater milky way; how in its spell
It fascinated with ten thousand eyes;
Like those sweet wiles of an enchantress who
Would still detain her knight gone cold in love;
It was an iceberg with long arms unseen,
That felt the deep for vessels far away.
All things seemed strange, I stared like any child
That pores on some old face and sees a world
Which its familiar granddad and his dame
Hid with their love and laughter until then.
My feet had not yet felt the cruel rocks
Beneath the pleasant moss I seemed to tread.
But soon my ears grew weary of that din,
My eyes grew tired of all that flesh and stone;
And, as a snail that crawls on a smooth stalk,
Will reach the end and find a sharpened thorn,
So did I reach the cruel end at last.
I saw the starving mother and her child,
Who feared that Death would surely end its sleep,
And cursed the wolf of Hunger with her moans.
And yet, methought, when first I entered there,
Into that city with my wondering mind,
How marvellous its many sights and sounds;
The traffic with its sound of heavy seas
That have and would again unseat the rocks.
How common then seemed Nature's hills and fields
Compared with these high domes and even streets,
And churches with white towers and bodies black.
The traffic's sound was music to my ears;
A sound of where the white waves, hour by hour,
Attack a reef of coral rising yet;
Or where a mighty warship in a fog,
Steams into a large fleet of little boats.
Aye, and that fog was strange and wonderful,
That made men blind and grope their way at noon.
I saw that City with fierce human surge,
With millions of dark waves that still spread out
To swallow more of their green boundaries.
Then came a day that noise so stirred my soul,
I called them hellish sounds, and thought red war
Was better far than peace in such a town.
To hear that din all day, sometimes my mind
Went crazed, and it seemed strange, as I were lost
In some vast forest full of chattering apes.
How sick I grew to hear that lasting noise,
And all those people forced across my sight,
Knowing the acres of green fields and woods
That in some country parts outnumbered men;
In half an hour ten thousand men I passed,
More than nine thousand should have been green trees.
There on a summer's day I saw such crowds
That where there was no man man's shadow was;
Millions all cramped together in one hive,
Storing, methought, more bitter stuff than sweet.
The air was foul and stale; from their green homes
Young blood had brought its fresh and rosy cheeks,
Which soon turned colour, like blue streams in flood.
Aye, solitude, black solitude indeed,
To meet a million souls and know not one;
This world must soon grow stale to one compelled
To look all day at faces strange and cold.
Oft full of smoke that town; its summer's day
Was darker than a summer's night at sea;
Poison was there, and still men rushed for it,
Like cows for acorns that have made them sick.
That town was rich and old; man's flesh was cheap,
But common earth was dear to buy one foot.
If I must be fenced in, then let my fence
Be some green hedgerow; under its green sprays,
That shake suspended, let me walk in joy,
As I do now, in these dear months I love.
|
The Wolf And The Lamb | Walter Crane | A wolf, wanting lamb for his dinner,
Growled out--"Lamb you wronged me, you sinner."
Bleated Lamb--"Nay, not true!"
Answered Wolf--"Then 'twas Ewe--
Ewe or lamb, you will serve for my dinner."
Fraud And Violence Have No Scruples |
A Wanderer's Song | John Masefield | A wind's in the heart of me, a fire's in my heels,
I am tired of brick and stone and rumbling wagon-wheels;
I hunger for the sea's edge, the limit of the land,
Where the wild old Atlantic is shouting on the sand.
Oh I'll be going, leaving the noises of the street,
To where a lifting foresail-foot is yanking at the sheet;
To a windy, tossing anchorage where yawls and ketches ride,
Oh I'l be going, going, until I meet the tide.
And first I'll hear the sea-wind, the mewing of the gulls,
The clucking, sucking of the sea about the rusty hulls,
The songs at the capstan at the hooker warping out,
And then the heart of me'll know I'm there or thereabout.
Oh I am sick of brick and stone, the heart of me is sick,
For windy green, unquiet sea, the realm of Moby Dick;
And I'll be going, going, from the roaring of the wheels,
For a wind's in the heart of me, a fire's in my heels. |
Cubits | Paul Cameron Brown | A woman is a trough
hardly that - a river,
a pond to sail a small boat thru,
rapids to manoeuvre.
A woman commandingly tall
receptive as water,
quicksilver to the light
yet mirages all.
Two cubits to an arm's length
a bridge to span,
virgin territory with
the compass needle jumping -
a plane dusting crops.
A woman once, parchment twice
warm treacle to the core -
a marshmellow for a heart. |
Patience | D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards) | A wind comes from the north
Blowing little flocks of birds
Like spray across the town,
And a train, roaring forth,
Rushes stampeding down
With cries and flying curds
Of steam, out of the darkening north.
Whither I turn and set
Like a needle steadfastly,
Waiting ever to get
The news that she is free;
But ever fixed, as yet,
To the lode of her agony. |
A Woman Waits For Me | Walt Whitman | A woman waits for me--she contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the
right man were lacking.
Sex contains all,
Bodies, Souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results,
promulgations,
Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal
milk;
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals,
All the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth,
All the governments, judges, gods, follow'd persons of the earth,
These are contain'd in sex, as parts of itself, and justifications of
itself.
Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of his
sex,
Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.
Now I will dismiss myself from impassive women,
I will go stay with her who waits for me, and with those women that
are warm-blooded and sufficient for me;
I see that they understand me, and do not deny me;
I see that they are worthy of me--I will be the robust husband of
those women.
They are not one jot less than I am,
They are tann'd in the face by shining suns and blowing winds,
Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength,
They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike,
retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves,
They are ultimate in their own right--they are calm, clear, well-
possess'd of themselves.
I draw you close to me, you women!
I cannot let you go, I would do you good,
I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but for
others' sakes;
Envelop'd in you sleep greater heroes and bards,
They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.
It is I, you women--I make my way,
I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable--but I love you,
I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,
I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for These States--I
press with slow rude muscle,
I brace myself effectually--I listen to no entreaties,
I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated
within me.
Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,
In you I wrap a thousand onward years,
On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America,
The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls, new
artists, musicians, and singers,
The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn,
I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings,
I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you
interpenetrate now,
I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I
count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now,
I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death,
immortality, I plant so lovingly now. |
Let Me Sing Of What I Know | William Allingham | A wild west Coast, a little Town,
Where little Folk go up and down,
Tides flow and winds blow:
Night and Tempest and the Sea,
Human Will and Human Fate:
What is little, what is great?
Howsoe'er the answer be,
Let me sing of what I know. |
Of Prayer. From Proverbial Philosophy | Martin Farquhar Tupper | A WICKED man scorneth prayer, in the shallow sophistry of reason.
He derideth the silly hope that God can be moved by supplication: '
Can the unchangeable be changed, or waver in his purpose?
Can the weakness of pity affect him? Should he turn at the bidding of a man?
Methought lie ruled all things, and ye called his decrees immutable,
But if thus he listeneth to words, wherein is the firmness of his will? '
So I heard the speech of the wicked, and, lo, it was smoother than oil;
But I knew that his reasonings were false, for the promise of the Scripture is true:
Yet was my soul in darkness, for his words were too hard for me;
Till I turned to my God in prayer: for I know He heareth always.
Then I looked abroad on the earth, and, behold, the Lord was in all things;
Yet saw I not his hand in aught, but perceived that He worketh by means;
Yea, and the power of the mean proveth the wisdom that ordained it,
Yea, and no act is useless, to the hurling of a stone through the air.
So I turned my thoughts to supplication, and beheld the mercies of Jehovah,
And I saw sound argument was still the faithful friend of godliness;
For as the rock of the affections is the solid approval of reason.
Even so the temple of Religion is founded on the basis of Philosophy.
Scorner, thy thoughts are weak, they reach not the summit of the matter;
Go to, for the mouth of a child might show thee the mystery of prayer:
Verily, there is no change in the counsels of the Mighty Ruler:
Verily, his purpose is strong, and rooted in the depths of necessity:
But who hath shown thee his purpose, who hath made known to thee his will?
When, gainsayer! hast thou been schooled in the secrets of wisdom?
Fate is a creature of God, and all things move in their orbits.
And that which shall surely happen is known unto him from eternity;
But as, in the field of nature, he useth the sinews of the ox,
And commaudeth diligence and toil, himself giving the increase;
So, in the kingdom of his grace, granteth he omnipotence to prayer,
For he knoweth what thou wilt ask, and what thou wilt ask aright.
No man can pray in faith, whose prayer is not grounded on a promise:
Yet a good man commendeth all things to the righteous wisdom of his God:
For those, who pray in faith, trust the immutable Jehovah,
And they, who ask blessings unpromised, lean on uncovenanted mercy.
Man, regard thy prayers as a purpose of love to thy soul;
Esteem the providence that led to them as an index of God's good will;
So shalt thou pray aright, and thy words shall meet with acceptance.
Also, in pleading for others, be thankful for the fulness of thy prayer:
For if thou art ready to ask, the Lord is more ready to bestow.
The salt preserveth the sea, and the saints uphold the earth;
Their prayers are the thousand pillars that prop the canopy of nature.
Verily, an hour without prayer, from some terrestrial mind,
Were a curse in the calendar of time, a spot of the blackness of darkness.
Perchance the terrible day, when the world must rock into ruins,
Will be one unwhitened by prayer, ' shall He find faith on the earth?
For there is an economy of mercy, as of wisdom, and power, and means;
Neither is one blessing granted, unbesought from the treasury of good:
And the charitable heart of the Being, to depend upon whom is happiness,
Never withholdeth a bounty, so long as his subject prayeth;
Yea, ask what thou wilt, to the second throne in heaven,
It is thine, for whom it was appointed; there is no limit unto prayer:
But and if thou cease to ask, tremble, thou self-suspended creature.
For thy strength is cut off as was Samson's: and the hour of thy doom is come.
Frail art thou, O man, as a bubble on the breaker.
Weak and governed by externals, like a poor bird caught in the storm;
Yet thy momentary breath can still the raging waters,
Thy hand can touch a lever that may move the world.
O Merciful, we strike eternal covenant with thee.
For man may take for his ally the King who ruleth kings:
How strong, yet how most weak, in utter poverty how rich,
What possible omnipotence to good is dormant in a man!
Behold that fragile form of delicate transparent beauty,
Whose light-blue eye and hectic cheek are lit by the bale-fires of decline,
All droopingly she lieth, as a dew-laden lily,
Her flaxen tresses, rashly luxuriant, dank with unhealthy moisture;
Hath not thy heart said of her, Alas! poor child of weakness?
Thou hast erred; Goliath of Gath stood not in half her strength:
Terribly she fighteth in the van as the virgin daughter of Orleans,
She beareth the banner of heaven, her onset is the rushing cataract,
Seraphim rally at her side, and the captain of that host is God,
And the serried ranks of evil are routed by the lightning of her eye;
She is the King's remembrancer, and steward of many blessings,
Holding the buckler of security over her unthankful land:
For that weak fluttering heart is strong in faith assured,
Dependence is her might, and behold ' she prayeth.
Angels are round the good man, to catch the incense of his prayers.
And they fly to minister kindness to those for whom he pleadeth;
For the altar of his heart is lighted, and burneth before God continually,
And he breatheth, conscious of his joy, the native atmosphere of heaven:
Yea, though poor, and contemned, and ignorant of this world's wisdom,
Ill can his fellows spare him, though they know not of his value.
Thousands bewail a hero, and a nation mourneth for its king.
But the whole universe lamenteth the loss of a man of prayer.
Verily, were it not for One, who sitteth on His rightful throne.
Crowned with a rainbow of emerald, the green memorial of earth, '
For one, a mediating man, that hath clad His Godhead with mortality.
And offereth prayer without ceasing, the royal priest of Nature,
Matter and life and mind had simk into dark annihilation.
And the lightning frown of Justice withered the world into nothing.
Thus, worshipper of reason, thou hast heard the sum of the matter:
And woe to his hairy scalp that restraineth prayer before God.
Prayer is a creature's strength, his very breath and being;
Prayer is the golden key that can open the wicket of Mercy:
Prayer is the magic sound that saith to Fate, so be it;
Prayer is the slender nerve that moveth the muscles of Omnipotence.
Wherefore, pray, O creature, for many and great are thy wants;
Thy mind, thy conscience, and thy being, thy rights commend thee unto prayer,
The cure of all cares, the grand panacea for all pains,
Doubt's destroyer, ruin's remedy, the antidote to all anxieties.
So then, God is true, and yet He hath not changed:
It is He that sendeth the petition, to answer it according to His will.
Transcribed from the 25th edition "Proverbial Philosophy by Martin Farquhar Tupper" by Mick Puttock, August 2011 (Spelling, punctuation and grammer left mostly unchanged from the 25th edition)
|
Lines Written To A Translator Of Greek Poetry. | Margaret Steele Anderson | A wild spring upland all this charmed page,
Where, in the early dawn, the maenads rage,
Mad, chaste, and lovely! This, a darker spot
Where lone Antigone bewails her lot.
Death for her spouse, her bridal-bed the tomb.
And this, again, is some rich palace-room.
Where Phsedra pines: "0 woodlands! 0, the sea!"
Or some sweet walk of Sappho, beauteously
Built o'er with rose, with bloom of purple grapes!
They are all here, the ancient Attic shapes
Of passion, beauty, terror, love, and shame;
Proud shadows, you do summon them by name:
Achaean princes, Helen, the young god.
Fair Dionysus, CEdipus, who trod
Such ways of doom! Aye, these and more than these
You call across the ages and the seas!
And each one, answering, doth dream he lists
To the great voices of old tragedists! |
The Noble Woman. | W. M. MacKeracher | A woman on an empire's throne
Has sat in queenly pride,
And swayed the sceptre of her power
O'er land and ocean wide:
A crown of gold adorned the head
That held a nation's fate,
And courtly knights and princely peers
Did on her bidding wait.
A woman too in ancient days
Has borne the warrior's brand,
And by heroic deed performed
Has saved her native land.
She too has sung inspiring songs,
And told entrancing tales;
Has softened and has swayed the mind
Where bolder genius fails.
But nobler far than thron'd queen,
Or heroine of fame,
Or she who by her potent pen
Has won illustrious name,
Is she who seeks the needy out,
Nor scorns the wretched's door,
But, with compassion Christlike, loves
To help the humble poor.
|
The Horse And The Wolf. | Jean de La Fontaine | [1]
A wolf, what time the thawing breeze
Renews the life of plants and trees,
And beasts go forth from winter lair
To seek abroad their various fare, -
A wolf, I say, about those days,
In sharp look-out for means and ways,
Espied a horse turn'd out to graze.
His joy the reader may opine.
'Once got,' said he, 'this game were fine;
But if a sheep, 'twere sooner mine.
I can't proceed my usual way;
Some trick must now be put in play.'
This said,
He came with measured tread,
As if a healer of disease, -
Some pupil of Hippocrates, -
And told the horse, with learned verbs,
He knew the power of roots and herbs, -
Whatever grew about those borders, -
And not at all to flatter
Himself in such a matter,
Could cure of all disorders.
If he, Sir Horse, would not conceal
The symptoms of his case,
He, Doctor Wolf, would gratis heal;
For that to feed in such a place,
And run about untied,
Was proof itself of some disease,
As all the books decide.
'I have, good doctor, if you please,'
Replied the horse, 'as I presume,
Beneath my foot, an aposthume.'
'My son,' replied the learned leech,
'That part, as all our authors teach,
Is strikingly susceptible
Of ills which make acceptable
What you may also have from me -
The aid of skilful surgery;
Which noble art, the fact is,
For horses of the blood I practise.'
The fellow, with this talk sublime,
Watch'd for a snap the fitting time.
Meanwhile, suspicious of some trick,
The wary patient nearer draws,
And gives his doctor such a kick,
As makes a chowder of his jaws.
Exclaim'd the wolf, in sorry plight,
'I own those heels have served me right.
I err'd to quit my trade,
As I will not in future;
Me nature surely made
For nothing but a butcher.' |
The Elopement | Thomas Hardy | "A woman never agreed to it!" said my knowing friend to me.
"That one thing she'd refuse to do for Solomon's mines in fee:
No woman ever will make herself look older than she is."
I did not answer; but I thought, "you err there, ancient Quiz."
It took a rare one, true, to do it; for she was surely rare -
As rare a soul at that sweet time of her life as she was fair.
And urging motives, too, were strong, for ours was a passionate case,
Yea, passionate enough to lead to freaking with that young face.
I have told no one about it, should perhaps make few believe,
But I think it over now that life looms dull and years bereave,
How blank we stood at our bright wits' end, two frail barks in distress,
How self-regard in her was slain by her large tenderness.
I said: "The only chance for us in a crisis of this kind
Is going it thorough!" "Yes," she calmly breathed. "Well, I don't mind."
And we blanched her dark locks ruthlessly: set wrinkles on her brow;
Ay she was a right rare woman then, whatever she may be now.
That night we heard a coach drive up, and questions asked below.
"A gent with an elderly wife, sir," was returned from the bureau.
And the wheels went rattling on, and free at last from public ken
We washed all off in her chamber and restored her youth again.
How many years ago it was! Some fifty can it be
Since that adventure held us, and she played old wife to me?
But in time convention won her, as it wins all women at last,
And now she is rich and respectable, and time has buried the past. |
La Mer | Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde | A white mist drifts across the shrouds,
A wild moon in this wintry sky
Gleams like an angry lion's eye
Out of a mane of tawny clouds.
The muffled steersman at the wheel
Is but a shadow in the gloom; -
And in the throbbing engine-room
Leap the long rods of polished steel.
The shattered storm has left its trace
Upon this huge and heaving dome,
For the thin threads of yellow foam
Float on the waves like ravelled lace. |
The Sonnets XX - A woman's face with nature's own hand painted | William Shakespeare | A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue all 'hues' in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure. |
Magdalene. | Jean Blewett | A woman in her youth, but lost to all
The joys of innocence. Love she had known,
Such love as leaves the soul filled full of shame.
Passion was hers, hate and impurity,
The gnawing of remorse, the longing vain
To lose the mark of sin, the scarlet flush
Of fallen womanhood, the envy of
The spotless, the desire that they might sink
Low in the mire as she.
Oh, what a soul
She carried on that day! The women drew
Their robes back from her touch, men leered,
And children seemed afraid to meet
The devilish beauty of her form and face.
Shunned and alone,
Till One came to her side,
And spake her name, and took her hand in His.
And what He said
Is past the telling. There are things the heart
Knows well, but cannot blazon to the world;
And when He went His way,
Upon her brow, where shame had lain,
Was set the one sweet word:
Forgiveness.
|
Sonnets: Idea XXI | Michael Drayton | A witless gallant a young wench that wooed--
Yet his dull spirit her not one jot could move--
Intreated me as e'er I wished his good,
To write him but one sonnet to his love.
When I as fast as e'er my pen could trot,
Poured out what first from quick invention came,
Nor never stood one word thereof to blot;
Much like his wit that was to use the same.
But with my verses he his mistress won,
Who doated on the dolt beyond all measure.
But see, for you to heaven for phrase I run,
And ransack all Apollo's golden treasure!
Yet by my troth, this fool his love obtains,
And I lose you for all my wit and pains! |
The Wolf Accusing The Fox Before The Monkey. | Jean de La Fontaine | [1]
A wolf, affirming his belief
That he had suffer'd by a thief,
Brought up his neighbour fox -
Of whom it was by all confess'd,
His character was not the best -
To fill the prisoner's box.
As judge between these vermin,
A monkey graced the ermine;
And truly other gifts of Themis[2]
Did scarcely seem his;
For while each party plead his cause,
Appealing boldly to the laws,
And much the question vex'd,
Our monkey sat perplex'd.
Their words and wrath expended,
Their strife at length was ended;
When, by their malice taught,
The judge this judgment brought:
'Your characters, my friends, I long have known,
As on this trial clearly shown;
And hence I fine you both - the grounds at large
To state would little profit -
You wolf, in short, as bringing groundless charge,
You fox, as guilty of it.'
Come at it right or wrong, the judge opined
No other than a villain could be fined.[3] |
What Is A Woman Like? | Unknown | A woman is like to, but stay,
What a woman is like, who can say?
There is no living with or without one.
Love bites like a fly,
Now an ear, now an eye,
Buzz, buzz, always buzzing about one.
When she's tender and kind
She is like to my mind,
(And Fanny was so, I remember).
She's like to, Oh, dear!
She's as good, very near,
As a ripe, melting peach in September.
If she laugh, and she chat,
Play, joke, and all that,
And with smiles and good humor she meet me,
She's like a rich dish
Of venison or fish,
That cries from the table, Come eat me!
But she'll plague you and vex you,
Distract and perplex you;
False-hearted and ranging,
Unsettled and changing,
What then do you think, she is like?
Like sand? Like a rock?
Like a wheel? Like a clock?
Ay, a clock that is always at strike.
Her head's like the island folks tell on,
Which nothing but monkeys can dwell on;
Her heart's like a lemon, so nice
She carves for each lover a slice;
In truth she's to me,
Like the wind, like the sea,
Whose raging will hearken to no man;
Like a mill, like a pill,
Like a flail, like a whale,
Like an ass, like a glass
Whose image is constant to no man;
Like a shower, like a flower,
Like a fly, like a pie,
Like a pea, like a flea,
Like a thief, like, in brief,
She's like nothing on earth, but a woman! |
Suspense. | James Whitcomb Riley | A woman's figure, on a ground of night
Inlaid with sallow stars that dimly stare
Down in the lonesome eyes, uplifted there
As in vague hope some alien lance of light
Might pierce their woe. The tears that blind her sight -
The salt and bitter blood of her despair -
Her hands toss back through torrents of her hair
And grip toward God with anguish infinite.
And O the carven mouth, with all its great
Intensity of longing frozen fast
In such a smile as well may designate
The slowly-murdered heart, that, to the last,
Conceals each newer wound, and back at Fate
Throbs Love's eternal lie - "Lo, I can wait!" |
Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650): Thomas Middleton | Algernon Charles Swinburne | A wild moon riding high from cloud to cloud,
That sees and sees not, glimmering far beneath,
Hell's children revel along the shuddering heath
With dirge-like mirth and raiment like a shroud:
A worse fair face than witchcraft's, passion-proud,
With brows blood-flecked behind their bridal wreath
And lips that bade the assassin's sword find sheath
Deep in the heart whereto love's heart was vowed:
A game of close contentious crafts and creeds
Played till white England bring black Spain to shame:
A son's bright sword and brighter soul, whose deeds
High conscience lights for mother's love and fame:
Pure gipsy flowers, and poisonous courtly weeds:
Such tokens and such trophies crown thy name. |
Ballade Of Woman | Richard Le Gallienne | A woman! lightly the mysterious word
Falls from our lips, lightly as though we knew
Its meaning, as we say - a flower, a bird,
Or say the moon, the stream, the light, the dew,
Simple familiar things, mysterious too;
Or as a star is set down on a chart,
Named with a name, out yonder in the blue:
A woman - and yet how much more thou art!
So lightly spoken, and so lightly heard,
And yet, strange word, who shall thy sense construe?
What sage hath yet fit designation dared?
Yet I have sought the dictionaries through,
And of thy meaning found me not a clue;
Blessing and breaking still the firmest heart,
So fairy false, yet so divinely true:
A woman - and yet how much more thou art!
Mother of God, and Circe, bosom-bared,
That nursed our manhood, and our manhood slew;
First dream, last sigh, all the long way we fared,
Sweeter than honey, bitterer than rue;
Thou fated radiance sorrowing men pursue,
Thou art the whole of life - the rest but part
Of thee, all things we ever dream or do;
A woman - and yet how much more thou art!
ENVOI
Princess, that all this craft of moonlight threw
Across my path, this deep immortal smart
Shall still burn on when winds my ashes strew:
A woman - and yet how much more thou art! |
A Winter Eden | Robert Lee Frost | A winter garden in an alder swamp,
Where conies now come out to sun and romp,
As near a paradise as it can be
And not melt snow or start a dormant tree.
It lifts existence on a plane of snow
One level higher than the earth below,
One level nearer heaven overhead,
And last year's berries shining scarlet red.
It lifts a gaunt luxuriating beast
Where he can stretch and hold his highest feat
On some wild apple tree's young tender bark,
What well may prove the year's high girdle mark.
So near to paradise all pairing ends:
Here loveless birds now flock as winter friends,
Content with bud-inspecting. They presume
To say which buds are leaf and which are bloom.
A feather-hammer gives a double knock.
This Eden day is done at two o'clock.
An hour of winter day might seem too short
To make it worth life's while to wake and sport. |
Tones. | Madison Julius Cawein | I.
A woman, fair to look upon,
Where waters whiten with the moon;
While down the glimmer of the lawn
The white moths swoon.
A mouth of music; eyes of love;
And hands of blended snow and scent,
That touch the pearl-pale shadow of
An instrument.
And low and sweet that song of sleep
After the song of love is hushed;
While all the longing, here, to weep,
Is held and crushed.
Then leafy silence, that is musk
With breath of the magnolia-tree,
While dwindles, moon-white, through the dusk
Her drapery.
Let me remember how a heart,
Romantic, wrote upon that night!
My soul still helps me read each part
Of it aright.
And like a dead leaf shut between
A book's dull chapters, stained and dark,
That page, with immemorial green,
Of life I mark.
II.
It is not well for me to hear
That song's appealing melody:
The pain of loss comes all too near,
Through it, to me.
The loss of her whose love looks through
The mist death's hand hath hung between:
Within the shadow of the yew
Her grave is green.
Ah, dream that vanished long ago!
Oh, anguish of remembered tears!
And shadow of unlifted woe
Athwart the years!
That haunt the sad rooms of my days,
As keepsakes of unperished love,
Where pale the memory of her face
Is framed above.
This olden song, she used to sing,
Of love and sleep, is now a charm
To open mystic doors and bring
Her spirit form.
In music making visible
One soul-assertive memory,
That steals unto my side to tell
My loss to me.
|
The Willow Garland. | Robert Herrick | A willow garland thou did'st send
Perfum'd, last day, to me,
Which did but only this portend -
I was forsook by thee.
Since so it is, I'll tell thee what,
To-morrow thou shalt see
Me wear the willow; after that,
To die upon the tree.
As beasts unto the altars go
With garlands dress'd, so I
Will, with my willow-wreath, also
Come forth and sweetly die. |
The Soul Of The Sea | Clark Ashton Smith | A wind comes in from the sea,
And rolls through the hollow dark
Like loud, tempestuous waters.
As the swift recurrent tide,
It pours adown the sky,
And rears at the cliffs of night
Uppiled against the vast.
Like the soul of the sea -
Hungry, unsatisfied
With ravin of shores and of ships -
Come forth on the land to seek
New prey of tideless coasts,
It raves, made hoarse with desire,
And the sounds of the night are dumb
With the sound of its passing. |
Poem: La Mer | Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde | A white mist drifts across the shrouds,
A wild moon in this wintry sky
Gleams like an angry lion's eye
Out of a mane of tawny clouds.
The muffled steersman at the wheel
Is but a shadow in the gloom;
And in the throbbing engine-room
Leap the long rods of polished steel.
The shattered storm has left its trace
Upon this huge and heaving dome,
For the thin threads of yellow foam
Float on the waves like ravelled lace. |
To Lillian Massey Treble | Jean Blewett | A woman with a heart of gold
I heard her called before I knew
How noble was that heart and true,
How full of tenderness untold.
Her sympathies both broad and sure,
Her one desire to do the right -
Clear visioned from the inner light
God gives to souls unworldly, pure.
A heart of gold that loves and gives,
God's almoner from day to day,
Of her there is but this to say:
The world is better that she lives. |
The Wolf And The Shepherds. | Jean de La Fontaine | [1]
A Wolf, replete
With humanity sweet,
(A trait not much suspected,)
On his cruel deeds,
The fruit of his needs,
Profoundly thus reflected.
'I'm hated,' said he,
'As joint enemy,
By hunters, dogs, and clowns.
They swear I shall die,
And their hue and cry
The very thunder drowns.
'My brethren have fled,
With price on the head,
From England's merry land.
King Edgar came out,
And put them to rout,[2]
With many a deadly band.
'And there's not a squire
But blows up the fire
By hostile proclamation;
Nor a human brat,
Dares cry, but that
Its mother mocks my nation.
'And all for what?
For a sheep with the rot,
Or scabby, mangy ass,
Or some snarling cur,
With less meat than fur,
On which I've broken fast!
'Well, henceforth I'll strive
That nothing alive
Shall die to quench my thirst;
No lambkin shall fall,
Nor puppy, at all,
To glut my maw accurst.
With grass I'll appease,
Or browse on the trees,
Or die of famine first.
'What of carcass warm?
Is it worth the storm
Of universal hate?'
As he spoke these words,
The lords of the herds,
All seated at their bait,
He saw; and observed
The meat which was served
Was nought but roasted lamb!
'O! O!' said the beast,
'Repent of my feast -
All butcher as I am -
On these vermin mean,
Whose guardians e'en
Eat at a rate quadruple! -
Themselves and their dogs,
As greedy as hogs,
And I, a wolf, to scruple!'
'Look out for your wool
I'll not be a fool,
The very pet I'll eat;
The lamb the best-looking,
Without any cooking,
I'll strangle from the teat;
And swallow the dam,
As well as the lamb,
And stop her foolish bleat.
Old Hornie, too, - rot him, -
The sire that begot him
Shall be among my meat!'
Well-reasoning beast!
Were we sent to feast
On creatures wild and tame?
And shall we reduce
The beasts to the use
Of vegetable game?
Shall animals not
Have flesh-hook or pot,
As in the age of gold?
And we claim the right,
In the pride of our might,
Themselves to have and hold?
O shepherds, that keep
Your folds full of sheep,
The wolf was only wrong,
Because, so to speak,
His jaws were too weak
To break your palings strong. |
Manifesto | D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards) | I
A woman has given me strength and affluence.
Admitted!
All the rocking wheat of Canada,
ripening now,
has not so much of strength as the body of one woman sweet in ear,
nor so much to give though it feed nations.
Hunger is the very Satan.
The fear of hunger is Moloch,
Belial, the horrible God.
It is a fearful thing to be dominated by the fear of hunger.
Not bread alone, not the belly nor the thirsty throat.
I have never yet been smitten through the belly,
with the lack of bread, no,
nor even milk and honey.
The fear of the want of these things seems to be quite left out of me.
For so much, I thank the good generations of man- kind.
II
AND the sweet, constant,
balanced heat of the suave sensitive body,
the hunger for this has never seized me and terrified me.
Here again, man has been good in his legacy to us,
in these two primary instances.
III
THEN the dumb, aching, bitter,
helpless need, the pining to be initiated,
to have access to the knowledge that the great dead have opened up for us,
to know, to satisfy the great and dominant hunger of the mind;
man's sweetest harvest of the centuries, sweet,
printed books, bright, glancing,
exquisite corn of many a stubborn glebe in the upturned darkness;
I thank mankind with passionate heart that I just escaped the hunger for these,
that they were given when I needed them, because I am the son of man.
I have eaten, and drunk, and warmed and clothed my body,
I have been taught the language of understanding,
I have chosen among the bright and marvellous books,
like any prince, such stores of the world's supply were open to me,
in the wisdom and goodness of man.
So far, so good.
Wise, good provision that makes the heart swell with love!
IV
BUT then came another hunger very deep, and ravening;
the very body's body crying out with a hunger more frightening,
more profound than stomach or throat or even the mind;
redder than death, more clamorous.
The hunger for the woman.
Alas, it is so deep a Moloch,
ruthless and strong,
'tis like the unutterable name of the dread Lord,
not to be spoken aloud.
Yet there it is, the hunger which comes upon us,
which we must learn to satisfy with pure,
real satisfaction;
or perish, there is no alternative.
I thought it was woman,
indiscriminate woman,
mere female adjunct of what I was.
Ah, that was torment hard enough and a thing to be afraid of,
a threatening, torturing, phallic Moloch.
A woman fed that hunger in me at last.
What many women cannot give,
one woman can; so I have known it.
She stood before me like riches that were mine.
Even then, in the dark, I was tortured, ravening, unfree,
Ashamed, and shameful, and vicious.
A man is so terrified of strong hunger;
and this terror is the root of all cruelty.
She loved me, and stood before me, looking to me.
How could I look, when I was mad?
I looked sideways, furtively, being mad with voracious desire.
V
THIS comes right at last.
When a man is rich,
he loses at last the hunger fear.
I lost at last the fierceness that fears it will starve.
I could put my face at last between her breasts
and know that they were given for ever that I should never starve never perish;
I had eaten of the bread that satisfies and my body's body was appeased,
there was peace and richness, fulfilment.
Let them praise desire who will,
but only fulfilment will do, real fulfilment,
nothing short.
It is our ratification our heaven,
as a matter of fact.
Immortality, the heaven,
is only a projection of this strange but actual fulfilment,
here in the flesh.
So, another hunger was supplied,
and for this I have to thank one woman,
not mankind, for mankind would have prevented me;
but one woman, and these are my red-letter thanksgivings.
VI
To be, or not to be, is still the question.
This ache for being is the ultimate hunger.
And for myself, I can say "almost, almost, oh, very nearly."
Yet something remains.
Something shall not always remain.
For the main already is fulfilment.
What remains in me, is to be known even as I know.
I know her now: or perhaps,
I know my own limitation against her.
Plunging as I have done, over, over the brink
I have dropped at last headlong into nought,
plunging upon sheer hard extinction;
I have come, as it were, not to know, died,
as it were; ceased from knowing; surpassed myself.
What can I say more, except that I know what it is to surpass myself?
It is a kind of death which is not death.
It is going a little beyond the bounds.
How can one speak, where there is a dumbness on one's mouth?
I suppose, ultimately she is all beyond me,
she is all not-me, ultimately.
It is that that one comes to.
A curious agony, and a relief,
when I touch that which is not me in any sense,
it wounds me to death with my own not-being;
definite, inviolable limitation, and something beyond,
quite beyond, if you understand what that means.
It is the major part of being,
this having surpassed oneself,
this having touched the edge of the beyond,
and perished, yet not perished.
VII
I WANT her though, to take the same from me.
She touches me as if I were herself, her own.
She has not realized yet, that fearful thing, that
I am the other, she thinks we are all of one piece.
It is painfully untrue.
I want her to touch me at last,
ah,
on the root and quick of my darkness and perish on me,
as I have perished on her.
Then, we shall be two and distinct,
we shall have each our separate being.
And that will be pure existence, real liberty.
Till then, we are confused, a mixture, unresolved,
unextricated one from the other.
It is in pure, unutterable resolvedness,
distinction of being, that one is free,
not in mixing, merging, not in similarity.
When she has put her hand on my secret,
darkest sources, the darkest outgoings,
when it has struck home to her, like a death,
"this is him!" she has no part in it,
no part whatever, it is the terrible other,
when she knows the fearful other flesh,
ah, darkness unfathomable and fearful,
contiguous and concrete,
when she is slain against me,
and lies in a heap like one outside the house,
when she passes away as I have passed away being pressed up against the other,
then I shall be glad, I shall not be confused with her,
I shall be cleared, distinct,
single as if burnished in silver,
having no adherence, no adhesion anywhere,
one clear, burnished, isolated being, unique,
and she also, pure, isolated, complete, two of us,
unutterably distinguished, and in unutterable conjunction.
Then we shall be free, freer than angels, ah, perfect.
VIII
AFTER that,
there will only remain that all men detach themselves and become unique,
that we are all detached,
moving in freedom more than the angels,
conditioned only by our own pure single being,
having no laws but the laws of our own being.
Every human being will then be like a flower, untrammelled.
Every movement will be direct.
Only to be will be such delight,
we cover our faces when we think of it lest our faces betray us to some untimely fiend.
Every man himself, and therefore,
a surpassing singleness of mankind.
The blazing tiger will spring upon the deer,
undimmed, the hen will nestle over her chickens,
we shall love, we shall hate, but it will be like music,
sheer utterance, issuing straight out of the unknown,
the lightning and the rainbow appearing in us unbidden,
unchecked,
like ambassadors.
We shall not look before and after.
We shall be, now.
We shall know in full.
We, the mystic NOW.
ZENNOR |
The Wolf Turned Shepherd. | Jean de La Fontaine | [1]
A wolf, whose gettings from the flocks
Began to be but few,
Bethought himself to play the fox
In character quite new.
A shepherd's hat and coat he took,
A cudgel for a crook,
Nor e'en the pipe forgot:
And more to seem what he was not,
Himself upon his hat he wrote,
'I'm Willie, shepherd of these sheep.'
His person thus complete,
His crook in upraised feet,
The impostor Willie stole upon the keep.
The real Willie, on the grass asleep,
Slept there, indeed, profoundly,
His dog and pipe slept, also soundly;
His drowsy sheep around lay.
As for the greatest number,
Much bless'd the hypocrite their slumber,
And hoped to drive away the flock,
Could he the shepherd's voice but mock.
He thought undoubtedly he could.
He tried: the tone in which he spoke,
Loud echoing from the wood,
The plot and slumber broke;
Sheep, dog, and man awoke.
The wolf, in sorry plight,
In hampering coat bedight,
Could neither run nor fight.
There's always leakage of deceit
Which makes it never safe to cheat.
Whoever is a wolf had better
Keep clear of hypocritic fetter. |
Memorials Of A Tour On The Continent, 1820 - IV. - After Visiting The Field Of Waterloo | William Wordsworth | A winged Goddess, clothed in vesture wrought
Of rainbow colours; One whose port was bold,
Whose overburthened hand could scarcely hold
The glittering crowns and garlands which it brought
Hovered in air above the far-famed Spot.
She vanished; leaving prospect blank and cold
Of wind-swept corn that wide around us rolled
In dreary billows; wood, and meagre cot,
And monuments that soon must disappear:
Yet a dread local recompense we found;
While glory seemed betrayed, while patriot-zeal
Sank in our hearts, we felt as men 'should' feel
With such vast hoards of hidden carnage near,
And horror breathing from the silent ground! |
The Chosen | Thomas Hardy | "[Greek text which cannot be reproduced]"
"A woman for whom great gods might strive!"
I said, and kissed her there:
And then I thought of the other five,
And of how charms outwear.
I thought of the first with her eating eyes,
And I thought of the second with hers, green-gray,
And I thought of the third, experienced, wise,
And I thought of the fourth who sang all day.
And I thought of the fifth, whom I'd called a jade,
And I thought of them all, tear-fraught;
And that each had shown her a passable maid,
Yet not of the favour sought.
So I traced these words on the bark of a beech,
Just at the falling of the mast:
"After scanning five; yes, each and each,
I've found the woman desired at last!"
" I feel a strange benumbing spell,
As one ill-wished!" said she.
And soon it seemed that something fell
Was starving her love for me.
"I feel some curse. O, FIVE were there?"
And wanly she swerved, and went away.
I followed sick: night numbed the air,
And dark the mournful moorland lay.
I cried: "O darling, turn your head!"
But never her face I viewed;
"O turn, O turn!" again I said,
And miserably pursued.
At length I came to a Christ-cross stone
Which she had passed without discern;
And I knelt upon the leaves there strown,
And prayed aloud that she might turn.
I rose, and looked; and turn she did;
I cried, "My heart revives!"
"Look more," she said. I looked as bid;
Her face was all the five's.
All the five women, clear come back,
I saw in her with her made one,
The while she drooped upon the track,
And her frail term seemed well-nigh run.
She'd half forgot me in her change;
"Who are you? Won't you say
Who you may be, you man so strange,
Following since yesterday?"
I took the composite form she was,
And carried her to an arbour small,
Not passion-moved, but even because
In one I could atone to all.
And there she lies, and there I tend,
Till my life's threads unwind,
A various womanhood in blend -
Not one, but all combined. |
An English Girl | William Schwenck Gilbert | A wonderful joy our eyes to bless,
In her magnificent comeliness,
Is an English girl of eleven stone two,
And five foot ten in her dancing shoe!
She follows the hounds, and on she pounds -
The "field" tails off and the muffs diminish -
Over the hedges and brooks she bounds -
Straight as a crow, from find to finish.
At cricket, her kin will lose or win -
She and her maids, on grass and clover,
Eleven maids out - eleven maids in -
(And perhaps an occasional "maiden over").
Go search the world and search the sea,
Then come you home and sing with me
There's no such gold and no such pearl
As a bright and beautiful English girl!
With a ten-mile spin she stretches her limbs,
She golfs, she punts, she rows, she swims -
She plays, she sings, she dances, too,
From ten or eleven till all is blue!
At ball or drum, till small hours come
(Chaperon's fan conceals her yawning),
She'll waltz away like a teetotum,
And never go home till daylight's dawning.
Lawn tennis may share her favours fair -
Her eyes a-dance and her cheeks a-glowing -
Down comes her hair, but what does she care?
It's all her own and it's worth the showing!
Go search the world and search the sea,
Then come you home and sing with me
There's no such gold and no such pearl
As a bright and beautiful English girl!
Her soul is sweet as the ocean air,
For prudery knows no haven there;
To find mock-modesty, please apply
To the conscious blush and the downcast eye.
Rich in the things contentment brings,
In every pure enjoyment wealthy,
Blithe as a beautiful bird she sings,
For body and mind are hale and healthy.
Her eyes they thrill with right goodwill -
Her heart is light as a floating feather -
As pure and bright as the mountain rill
That leaps and laughs in the Highland heather!
Go search the world and search the sea,
Then come you home and sing with me
There's no such gold and no such pearl
As a bright and beautiful English girl! |
The Supper | Walter De La Mare | A wolf he pricks with eyes of fire
Across the night's o'ercrusted snows,
Seeking his prey,
He pads his way
Where Jane benighted goes,
Where Jane benighted goes.
He curdles the bleak air with ire,
Ruffling his hoary raiment through,
And lo! he sees
Beneath the trees
Where Jane's light footsteps go,
Where Jane's light footsteps go.
No hound peals thus in wicked joy,
He snaps his muzzle in the snows,
His five-clawed feet
Do scamper fleet
Where Jane's bright lanthorn shows,
Where Jane's bright lanthorn shows.
Now his greed's green doth gaze unseen
On a pure face of wilding rose,
Her amber eyes
In fear's surprise
Watch largely as she goes,
Watch largely as she goes.
Salt wells his hunger in his jaws,
His lust it revels to and fro,
Yet small beneath
A soft voice saith,
'Jane shall in safety go,
Jane shall in safety go.'
He lurched as if a fiery lash
Had scourged his hide, and through and through,
His furious eyes
O'erscanned the skies,
But nearer dared not go,
But nearer dared not go.
He reared like wild Bucephalus,
His fangs like spears in him uprose,
Ev'n to the town
Jane's flitting gown
He grins on as she goes,
He grins on as she goes.
In fierce lament he howls amain,
He scampers, marvelling in his throes
What brought him there
To sup on air,
While Jane unarm'd goes,
While Jane unarm'd goes.
|
At The Piano | Thomas Hardy | A woman was playing,
A man looking on;
And the mould of her face,
And her neck, and her hair,
Which the rays fell upon
Of the two candles there,
Sent him mentally straying
In some fancy-place
Where pain had no trace.
A cowled Apparition
Came pushing between;
And her notes seemed to sigh,
And the lights to burn pale,
As a spell numbed the scene.
But the maid saw no bale,
And the man no monition;
And Time laughed awry,
And the Phantom hid nigh. |
Ballad | Jonathan Swift | To the tune of "Commons and Peers."
A wonderful age
Is now on the stage:
I'll sing you a song, if I can,
How modern Whigs,
Dance forty-one jigs,[1]
But God bless our gracious Queen Anne.
The kirk with applause
Is established by laws
As the orthodox church of the nation.
The bishops do own
It's as good as their own.
And this, Sir, is call'd moderation.
It's no riddle now
To let you see how
A church by oppression may speed;
Nor is't banter or jest,
That the kirk faith is best
On the other side of the Tweed.
For no soil can suit
With every fruit,
Even so, Sir, it is with religion;
The best church by far
Is what grows where you are,
Were it Mahomet's ass or his pigeon.
Another strange story
That vexes the Tory,
But sure there's no mystery in it,
That a pension and place
Give communicants grace,
Who design to turn tail the next minute.
For if it be not strange,
That religion should change,
As often as climates and fashions;
Then sure there's no harm,
That one should conform.
To serve their own private occasions.
Another new dance,
Which of late they advance,
Is to cry up the birth of Pretender,
And those that dare own
The queen heir to the crown,
Are traitors, not fit to defend her.
The subject's most loyal
That hates the blood royal,
And they for employments have merit,
Who swear queen and steeple
Were made by the people,
And neither have right to inherit.
The monarchy's fixt,
By making on't mixt,
And by non-resistance o'erthrown;
And preaching obedience
Destroys our allegiance,
And thus the Whigs prop up the throne.
That viceroy [2] is best,
That would take off the test,
And made a sham speech to attempt it;
But being true blue,
When he found 'twould not do,
Swore, damn him, if ever he meant it.
'Tis no news that Tom Double
The nation should bubble,
Nor is't any wonder or riddle,
That a parliament rump
Should play hop, step, and jump,
And dance any jig to his fiddle.
But now, sir, they tell,
How Sacheverell,
By bringing old doctrines in fashion,
Hath, like a damn'd rogue,
Brought religion in vogue,
And so open'd the eyes of the nation.
Then let's pray without spleen,
May God bless the queen,
And her fellow-monarchs the people;
May they prosper and thrive,
Whilst I am alive,
And so may the church with the steeple. |
The Star | Sara Teasdale | A white star born in the evening glow
Looked to the round green world below,
And saw a pool in a wooded place
That held like a jewel her mirrored face.
She said to the pool: "Oh, wondrous deep,
I love you, I give you my light to keep.
Oh, more profound than the moving sea
That never has shown myself to me!
Oh, fathomless as the sky is far,
Hold forever your tremulous star!"
But out of the woods as night grew cool
A brown pig came to the little pool;
It grunted and splashed and waded in
And the deepest place but reached its chin.
The water gurgled with tender glee
And the mud churned up in it turbidly.
The star grew pale and hid her face
In a bit of floating cloud like lace. |
Double Carnations | Ella Wheeler Wilcox | A wild Pink nestled in a garden bed,
A rich Carnation flourished high above her,
One day he chanced to see her pretty head
And leaned and looked again, and grew to love her.
The Moss (her humble mother) saw with fear
The ardent glances of the princely stranger;
With many an anxious thought and dewy tear
She sought to hide her darling from this danger.
The gardener-guardian of this noble bud
A cruel trellis interposed between them.
No common Pink should mate with royal blood,
He said, and sought in every way to wean them.
The poor Pink pined and faded day by day:
Her restless lover from his prison bower
Called in a priestly bee who passed that way,
And sent a message to the sorrowing flower.
The fainting Pink wept as the bee drew near,
Droning his prayers, and begged him to confess her.
Her weary mother, over-taxed by fear,
Slept, while the priest leaned low to shrive and bless her.
But lo! ere long the tale went creeping out,
The rich Carnation and the Pink were married!
The cunning bee had brought the thing about
While Mamma Moss in Slumber's arms had tarried.
And proud descendants of that loving pair,
The offspring of that true and ardent passion,
Are famous for their beauty everywhere,
And leaders in the floral world of fashion. |
Eyes | John Frederick Freeman | A winter sky of pale blue and pale gold,
Bare trees, a wind that made the wood-path cold,
And one slow-moving figure, gray and old.
We met where the soft path falls from the wood
Down to the village. As I came near she stood
And answered when I spoke, drawing the hood
Back from her face. I saw only her eyes,
Large and sad. I could not bear those eyes.
They were like new graves. I could not bear her eyes.
But what we said as each passed on is gone.
We looked and spoke and passed like strangers on,
I to the high wood, she towards the paling sun.
And there, where the clear-heavened small pool lies,
And the tallest beeches brush the bending skies,
In pool and tree I saw again her eyes. |
The Passing Of The Rose | Arthur Macy | A White Rose said, "How fair am I.
Behold a flower that cannot die!"
A lover brushed the dew aside,
And fondly plucked it for his bride.
"A fitting choice!" the White Rose cried.
The maiden wore it in her hair;
The Rose, contented to be there,
Still proudly boasted, "None so fair!"
Then close she pressed it to her lips,
But, weary of companionships,
The flower within her bosom slips.
O'ercome by all the beauty there,
It straight confessed, "Dear maid, I swear
'Tis you, and you alone, are fair!"
Turning its humbled head aside,
The envious Rose, lamenting, died.
|
A Virtuous Woman. | Thomas Frederick Young | Proverbs, Chap. xxxi.
A woman pure, oh, who can find?
Her price is dearer far than gold,
And greater in her husband's mind,
Than shining gems, or pearls untold.
In her he safely puts his trust,
And while her life shall last,
His welfare she shall surely seek,
His honor, holding fast.
With willing hands she works in flax,
In wool, and many other things,
And, rising early in the morn,
Her household's portion duly brings.
She buyeth fields, she planteth vines,
And girds herself to duty's round,
And far into the shades of night,
Her spindle plies with busy sound.
Her open hand, and gen'rous heart,
The poor and needy daily bless,
And in the cold her household walk,
All warmly clad in scarlet dress.
And she herself, in bright array
Of gorgeous silk and tapestries,
Brings gladness to her husband's face,
Who sits in honor 'mid the wise.
In honor and in virtue strong,
Her joy shall come in future days;
She speaks with gentleness to all;
The law of kindness guides her ways.
She governeth her household well,
And eateth not of idle bread,
Her husband gives the praise she earns,
Her children bless her worthy head.
Amid the virtuous and the good,
Of womankind she stands alone,
Unconscious of her priceless worth -
A queen on her domestic throne. |
To Wilhelmina. | Sidney Lanier | A white face, drooping, on a bending neck:
A tube-rose that with heavy petal curves
Her stem: a foam-bell on a wave that swerves
Back from the undulating vessel's deck.
From out the whitest cloud of summer steals
The wildest lightning: from this face of thine
Thy soul, a fire-of-heaven, warm and fine,
In marvellous flashes its fair self reveals.
As when one gazes from the summer sea
On some far gossamer cloud, with straining eye,
Fearing to see it vanish in the sky,
So, floating, wandering Cloud-Soul, I watch thee.
Montgomery, Alabama, 1866. |
The Writer's Dream | Henry Lawson | A writer wrote of the hearts of men, and he followed their tracks afar;
For his was a spirit that forced his pen to write of the things that are.
His heart grew tired of the truths he told, for his life was hard and grim;
His land seemed barren, its people cold, yet the world was dear to him;,
So he sailed away from the Streets of Strife, he travelled by land and sea,
In search of a people who lived a life as life in the world should be.
And he reached a spot where the scene was fair, with forest and field and wood,
And all things came with the seasons there, and each of its kind was good;
There were mountain-rivers and peaks of snow, there were lights of green and gold,
And echoing caves in the cliffs below, where a world-wide ocean rolled.
The lives of men from the wear of Change and the strife of the world were free,
For Steam was barred by the mountain-range and the rocks of the Open Sea.
And the last that were born of a noble race, when the page of the South was fair,
The last of the conquered dwelt in peace with the last of the victors there.
He saw their hearts with the author's eyes who had written their ancient lore,
And he saw their lives as he'd dreamed of such, ah! many a year before.
And 'I'll write a book of these simple folk ere I to the world return,
'And the cold who read shall be kind for these, and the wise who read shall learn.
'Never again in a song of mine shall a jarring note be heard:
'Never again shall a page or line be marred by a bitter word;
'But love and laughter and kindly hours will the book I'll write recall,
'With chastening tears for the loss of one, and sighs for their sorrows all.
'Old eyes will light with a kindly smile, and the young eyes dance with glee,
'And the heart of the cynic will rest awhile for my simple folk and me.'
The lines ran on as he dipped his pen, ran true to his heart and ear,
Like the brighter pages of memory when every line is clear.
The pictures came and the pictures passed, like days of love and light,
He saw his chapters from first to last, and he thought it grand to write.
And the writer kissed his girlish wife, and he kissed her twice for pride:
''Tis a book of love, though a book of life! and a book you'll read!' he cried.
He was blind at first to each senseless slight (for shabby and poor he came)
From local 'Fashion' and mortgaged pride that scarce could sign its name.
What dreamer would dream of such paltry pride in a scene so fresh and fair?
But the local spirit intensified, with its pitiful shams, was there;
There were cliques wherever two houses stood (no rest for a family ghost!)
They hated each other as women could, but they hated the stranger most.
The writer wrote by day and night and he cried in the face of Fate,
'I'll cleave to my dream of life in spite of the cynical ghosts that wait.
''Tis the shyness born of their simple lives,' he said to the paltry pride,
(The homely tongues of the simple wives ne'er erred on the generous side),
'They'll prove me true and they'll prove me kind ere the year of grace be passed,'
But the ignorant whisper of 'axe to grind!' went home to his heart at last.
The writer sat by his drift-wood fire three nights of the South-east gale,
His pen lay idle on pages vain, for his book was a fairy tale.
The world-wise lines of an elder age were plain on his aching brow,
As he sadly thought of each brighter page that would never be written now.
'I'll write no more!' But he bowed his head, for his heart was in Dreamland yet,
'The pages written I'll burn,' he said, 'and the pages thought forget.'
But he heard the hymn of the Open Sea, and the old fierce anger burned,
And he wrenched his heart from its dreamland free as the fire of his youth returned:,
'The weak man's madness, the strong man's scorn, the rebellious hate of youth
'From a deeper love of the world are born! And the cynical ghost is Truth!'
And the writer rose with a strength anew wherein Doubt could have no part;
'I'll write my book and it shall be true, the truth of a writer's heart.
'Ay! cover the wrong with a fairy tale, who never knew want or care,
'A bright green scum on a stagnant pool that will reek the longer there.
'You may starve the writer and buy the pen, you may drive it with want and fear,
'But the lines run false in the hearts of men, and false to the writer's ear.
'The bard's a rebel and strife his part, and he'll burst from his bonds anew,
'Till all pens write from a single heart! And so may the dream come true.
''Tis ever the same in the paths of men where money and dress are all,
'The crawler will bully whene'er he can, and the bully who can't will crawl.
'And this is the creed in the local hole, where the souls of the selfish rule;
'Borrow and cheat while the stranger's green, then sneer at the simple fool.
'Spit your spite at the men whom Fate has placed in the head-race first,
'And hate till death, with a senseless hate, the man you have injured worst!
'There are generous hearts in the grinding street, but the Hearts of the World go west;
'For the men who toil in the dust and heat of the barren lands are best!
'The stranger's hand to the stranger, yet, for a roving folk are mine,
'The stranger's store for the stranger set, and the camp-fire glow the sign!
'The generous hearts of the world, we find, thrive best on the barren sod,
'And the selfish thrive where Nature's kind (they'd bully or crawl to God!)
'I was born to write of the things that are! and the strength was given to me.
'I was born to strike at the things that mar the world as the world should be!
'By the dumb heart-hunger and dreams of youth, by the hungry tracks I've trod,
'I'll fight as a man for the sake of truth, nor pose as a martyred god.
'By the heart of 'Bill' and the heart of 'Jim,' and the men that their hearts deem 'white,'
'By the handgrips fierce, and the hard eyes dim with forbidden tears!, I'll write!
'I'll write untroubled by cultured fools, or the dense that fume and fret,
'For against the wisdom of all their schools I would stake mine instinct yet!
'For the cynical strain in the writer's song is the world, not he, to blame,
'And I'll write as I think, in the knowledge strong that thousands think the same;
'And the men who fight in the Dry Country grim battles by day, by night,
'Will believe in me, and will stand by me, and will say to the world, 'He's right!'' |
Vitascope Pictures. | Edwin C. Ranck | A young girl stands
Upon the sands,
And waves her hands--
Flirtation.
A fresh young man
With shoes of tan,
Looks spick and span--
Expectation.
They walk the beach,
She seems a peach
Just out of reach--
Vexation.
Ah what is this?
A sound of bliss
A kiss, a kiss--
Elation.
A father lean
Upon the scene,
Looks awful mean--
(Curtain.) |
Ravenna | Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde | (Newdigate prize poem recited in the Sheldonian Theatre Oxford June 26th, 1878.
To my friend George Fleming author of 'The Nile Novel' and 'Mirage')
I.
A year ago I breathed the Italian air,
And yet, methinks this northern Spring is fair,-
These fields made golden with the flower of March,
The throstle singing on the feathered larch,
The cawing rooks, the wood-doves fluttering by,
The little clouds that race across the sky;
And fair the violet's gentle drooping head,
The primrose, pale for love uncomforted,
The rose that burgeons on the climbing briar,
The crocus-bed, (that seems a moon of fire
Round-girdled with a purple marriage-ring);
And all the flowers of our English Spring,
Fond snowdrops, and the bright-starred daffodil.
Up starts the lark beside the murmuring mill,
And breaks the gossamer-threads of early dew;
And down the river, like a flame of blue,
Keen as an arrow flies the water-king,
While the brown linnets in the greenwood sing.
A year ago! it seems a little time
Since last I saw that lordly southern clime,
Where flower and fruit to purple radiance blow,
And like bright lamps the fabled apples glow.
Full Spring it was and by rich flowering vines,
Dark olive-groves and noble forest-pines,
I rode at will; the moist glad air was sweet,
The white road rang beneath my horse's feet,
And musing on Ravenna's ancient name,
I watched the day till, marked with wounds of flame,
The turquoise sky to burnished gold was turned.
O how my heart with boyish passion burned,
When far away across the sedge and mere
I saw that Holy City rising clear,
Crowned with her crown of towers! On and on
I galloped, racing with the setting sun,
And ere the crimson after-glow was passed,
I stood within Ravenna's walls at last!
II.
How strangely still! no sound of life or joy
Startles the air; no laughing shepherd-boy
Pipes on his reed, nor ever through the day
Comes the glad sound of children at their play:
O sad, and sweet, and silent! surely here
A man might dwell apart from troublous fear,
Watching the tide of seasons as they flow
From amorous Spring to Winter's rain and snow,
And have no thought of sorrow; here, indeed,
Are Lethe's waters, and that fatal weed
Which makes a man forget his fatherland.
Ay! amid lotus-meadows dost thou stand,
Like Proserpine, with poppy-laden head,
Guarding the holy ashes of the dead.
For though thy brood of warrior sons hath ceased,
Thy noble dead are with thee! they at least
Are faithful to thine honour:- guard them well,
O childless city! for a mighty spell,
To wake men's hearts to dreams of things sublime,
Are the lone tombs where rest the Great of Time.
III.
Yon lonely pillar, rising on the plain,
Marks where the bravest knight of France was slain,
The Prince of chivalry, the Lord of war,
Gaston de Foix: for some untimely star
Led him against thy city, and he fell,
As falls some forest-lion fighting well.
Taken from life while life and love were new,
He lies beneath God's seamless veil of blue;
Tall lance-like reeds wave sadly o'er his head,
And oleanders bloom to deeper red,
Where his bright youth flowed crimson on the ground.
Look farther north unto that broken mound,
There, prisoned now within a lordly tomb
Raised by a daughter's hand, in lonely gloom,
Huge-limbed Theodoric, the Gothic king,
Sleeps after all his weary conquering.
Time hath not spared his ruin, wind and rain
Have broken down his stronghold; and again
We see that Death is mighty lord of all,
And king and clown to ashen dust must fall
Mighty indeed THEIR glory! yet to me
Barbaric king, or knight of chivalry,
Or the great queen herself, were poor and vain,
Beside the grave where Dante rests from pain.
His gilded shrine lies open to the air;
And cunning sculptor's hands have carven there
The calm white brow, as calm as earliest morn,
The eyes that flashed with passionate love and scorn,
The lips that sang of Heaven and of Hell,
The almond-face which Giotto drew so well,
The weary face of Dante; to this day,
Here in his place of resting, far away
From Arno's yellow waters, rushing down
Through the wide bridges of that fairy town,
Where the tall tower of Giotto seems to rise
A marble lily under sapphire skies!
Alas! my Dante! thou hast known the pain
Of meaner lives, the exile's galling chain,
How steep the stairs within kings' houses are,
And all the petty miseries which mar
Man's nobler nature with the sense of wrong.
Yet this dull world is grateful for thy song;
Our nations do thee homage, even she,
That cruel queen of vine-clad Tuscany,
Who bound with crown of thorns thy living brow,
Hath decked thine empty tomb with laurels now,
And begs in vain the ashes of her son.
O mightiest exile! all thy grief is done:
Thy soul walks now beside thy Beatrice;
Ravenna guards thine ashes: sleep in peace.
IV.
How lone this palace is; how grey the walls!
No minstrel now wakes echoes in these halls.
The broken chain lies rusting on the door,
And noisome weeds have split the marble floor:
Here lurks the snake, and here the lizards run
By the stone lions blinking in the sun.
Byron dwelt here in love and revelry
For two long years a second Anthony,
Who of the world another Actium made!
Yet suffered not his royal soul to fade,
Or lyre to break, or lance to grow less keen,
'Neath any wiles of an Egyptian queen.
For from the East there came a mighty cry,
And Greece stood up to fight for Liberty,
And called him from Ravenna: never knight
Rode forth more nobly to wild scenes of fight!
None fell more bravely on ensanguined field,
Borne like a Spartan back upon his shield!
O Hellas! Hellas! in thine hour of pride,
Thy day of might, remember him who died
To wrest from off thy limbs the trammelling chain:
O Salamis! O lone Plataean plain!
O tossing waves of wild Euboean sea!
O wind-swept heights of lone Thermopylae!
He loved you well ay, not alone in word,
Who freely gave to thee his lyre and sword,
Like AEschylos at well-fought Marathon:
And England, too, shall glory in her son,
Her warrior-poet, first in song and fight.
No longer now shall Slander's venomed spite
Crawl like a snake across his perfect name,
Or mar the lordly scutcheon of his fame.
For as the olive-garland of the race,
Which lights with joy each eager runner's face,
As the red cross which saveth men in war,
As a flame-bearded beacon seen from far
By mariners upon a storm-tossed sea,
Such was his love for Greece and Liberty!
Byron, thy crowns are ever fresh and green:
Red leaves of rose from Sapphic Mitylene
Shall bind thy brows; the myrtle blooms for thee,
In hidden glades by lonely Castaly;
The laurels wait thy coming: all are thine,
And round thy head one perfect wreath will twine.
V.
The pine-tops rocked before the evening breeze
With the hoarse murmur of the wintry seas,
And the tall stems were streaked with amber bright;
I wandered through the wood in wild delight,
Some startled bird, with fluttering wings and fleet,
Made snow of all the blossoms; at my feet,
Like silver crowns, the pale narcissi lay,
And small birds sang on every twining spray.
O waving trees, O forest liberty!
Within your haunts at least a man is free,
And half forgets the weary world of strife:
The blood flows hotter, and a sense of life
Wakes i' the quickening veins, while once again
The woods are filled with gods we fancied slain.
Long time I watched, and surely hoped to see
Some goat-foot Pan make merry minstrelsy
Amid the reeds! some startled Dryad-maid
In girlish flight! or lurking in the glade,
The soft brown limbs, the wanton treacherous face
Of woodland god! Queen Dian in the chase,
White-limbed and terrible, with look of pride,
And leash of boar-hounds leaping at her side!
Or Hylas mirrored in the perfect stream.
O idle heart! O fond Hellenic dream!
Ere long, with melancholy rise and swell,
The evening chimes, the convent's vesper bell,
Struck on mine ears amid the amorous flowers.
Alas! alas! these sweet and honied hours
Had whelmed my heart like some encroaching sea,
And drowned all thoughts of black Gethsemane.
VI.
O lone Ravenna! many a tale is told
Of thy great glories in the days of old:
Two thousand years have passed since thou didst see
Caesar ride forth to royal victory.
Mighty thy name when Rome's lean eagles flew
From Britain's isles to far Euphrates blue;
And of the peoples thou wast noble queen,
Till in thy streets the Goth and Hun were seen.
Discrowned by man, deserted by the sea,
Thou sleepest, rocked in lonely misery!
No longer now upon thy swelling tide,
Pine-forest-like, thy myriad galleys ride!
For where the brass-beaked ships were wont to float,
The weary shepherd pipes his mournful note;
And the white sheep are free to come and go
Where Adria's purple waters used to flow.
O fair! O sad! O Queen uncomforted!
In ruined loveliness thou liest dead,
Alone of all thy sisters; for at last
Italia's royal warrior hath passed
Rome's lordliest entrance, and hath worn his crown
In the high temples of the Eternal Town!
The Palatine hath welcomed back her king,
And with his name the seven mountains ring!
And Naples hath outlived her dream of pain,
And mocks her tyrant! Venice lives again,
New risen from the waters! and the cry
Of Light and Truth, of Love and Liberty,
Is heard in lordly Genoa, and where
The marble spires of Milan wound the air,
Rings from the Alps to the Sicilian shore,
And Dante's dream is now a dream no more.
But thou, Ravenna, better loved than all,
Thy ruined palaces are but a pall
That hides thy fallen greatness! and thy name
Burns like a grey and flickering candle-flame
Beneath the noonday splendour of the sun
Of new Italia! for the night is done,
The night of dark oppression, and the day
Hath dawned in passionate splendour: far away
The Austrian hounds are hunted from the land,
Beyond those ice-crowned citadels which stand
Girdling the plain of royal Lombardy,
From the far West unto the Eastern sea.
I know, indeed, that sons of thine have died
In Lissa's waters, by the mountain-side
Of Aspromonte, on Novara's plain,
Nor have thy children died for thee in vain:
And yet, methinks, thou hast not drunk this wine
From grapes new-crushed of Liberty divine,
Thou hast not followed that immortal Star
Which leads the people forth to deeds of war.
Weary of life, thou liest in silent sleep,
As one who marks the lengthening shadows creep,
Careless of all the hurrying hours that run,
Mourning some day of glory, for the sun
Of Freedom hath not shewn to thee his face,
And thou hast caught no flambeau in the race.
Yet wake not from thy slumbers, rest thee well,
Amidst thy fields of amber asphodel,
Thy lily-sprinkled meadows, rest thee there,
To mock all human greatness: who would dare
To vent the paltry sorrows of his life
Before thy ruins, or to praise the strife
Of kings' ambition, and the barren pride
Of warring nations! wert not thou the Bride
Of the wild Lord of Adria's stormy sea!
The Queen of double Empires! and to thee
Were not the nations given as thy prey!
And now thy gates lie open night and day,
The grass grows green on every tower and hall,
The ghastly fig hath cleft thy bastioned wall;
And where thy mailed warriors stood at rest
The midnight owl hath made her secret nest.
O fallen! fallen! from thy high estate,
O city trammelled in the toils of Fate,
Doth nought remain of all thy glorious days,
But a dull shield, a crown of withered bays!
Yet who beneath this night of wars and fears,
From tranquil tower can watch the coming years;
Who can foretell what joys the day shall bring,
Or why before the dawn the linnets sing?
Thou, even thou, mayst wake, as wakes the rose
To crimson splendour from its grave of snows;
As the rich corn-fields rise to red and gold
From these brown lands, now stiff with Winter's cold;
As from the storm-rack comes a perfect star!
O much-loved city! I have wandered far
From the wave-circled islands of my home;
Have seen the gloomy mystery of the Dome
Rise slowly from the drear Campagna's way,
Clothed in the royal purple of the day:
I from the city of the violet crown
Have watched the sun by Corinth's hill go down,
And marked the 'myriad laughter' of the sea
From starlit hills of flower-starred Arcady;
Yet back to thee returns my perfect love,
As to its forest-nest the evening dove.
O poet's city! one who scarce has seen
Some twenty summers cast their doublets green
For Autumn's livery, would seek in vain
To wake his lyre to sing a louder strain,
Or tell thy days of glory; poor indeed
Is the low murmur of the shepherd's reed,
Where the loud clarion's blast should shake the sky,
And flame across the heavens! and to try
Such lofty themes were folly: yet I know
That never felt my heart a nobler glow
Than when I woke the silence of thy street
With clamorous trampling of my horse's feet,
And saw the city which now I try to sing,
After long days of weary travelling.
VII.
Adieu, Ravenna! but a year ago,
I stood and watched the crimson sunset glow
From the lone chapel on thy marshy plain:
The sky was as a shield that caught the stain
Of blood and battle from the dying sun,
And in the west the circling clouds had spun
A royal robe, which some great God might wear,
While into ocean-seas of purple air
Sank the gold galley of the Lord of Light.
Yet here the gentle stillness of the night
Brings back the swelling tide of memory,
And wakes again my passionate love for thee:
Now is the Spring of Love, yet soon will come
On meadow and tree the Summer's lordly bloom;
And soon the grass with brighter flowers will blow,
And send up lilies for some boy to mow.
Then before long the Summer's conqueror,
Rich Autumn-time, the season's usurer,
Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees,
And see it scattered by the spendthrift breeze;
And after that the Winter cold and drear.
So runs the perfect cycle of the year.
And so from youth to manhood do we go,
And fall to weary days and locks of snow.
Love only knows no winter; never dies:
Nor cares for frowning storms or leaden skies
And mine for thee shall never pass away,
Though my weak lips may falter in my lay.
Adieu! Adieu! yon silent evening star,
The night's ambassador, doth gleam afar,
And bid the shepherd bring his flocks to fold.
Perchance before our inland seas of gold
Are garnered by the reapers into sheaves,
Perchance before I see the Autumn leaves,
I may behold thy city; and lay down
Low at thy feet the poet's laurel crown.
Adieu! Adieu! yon silver lamp, the moon,
Which turns our midnight into perfect noon,
Doth surely light thy towers, guarding well
Where Dante sleeps, where Byron loved to dwell. |
Brooding Grief | D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards) | A yellow leaf from the darkness
Hops like a frog before me.
Why should I start and stand still?
I was watching the woman that bore me
Stretched in the brindled darkness
Of the sick-room, rigid with will
To die: and the quick leaf tore me
Back to this rainy swill
Of leaves and lamps and traffic mingled before me. |
The Veiled Statue At Sais. | Friedrich Schiller | A youth, impelled by a burning thirst for knowledge
To roam to Sais, in fair Egypt's land,
The priesthood's secret learning to explore,
Had passed through many a grade with eager haste,
And still was hurrying on with fond impatience.
Scarce could the Hierophant impose a rein
Upon his headlong efforts. "What avails
A part without the whole?" the youth exclaimed;
"Can there be here a lesser or a greater?
The truth thou speak'st of, like mere earthly dross,
Is't but a sum that can be held by man
In larger or in smaller quantity?
Surely 'tis changeless, indivisible;
Deprive a harmony of but one note,
Deprive the rainbow of one single color,
And all that will remain is naught, so long
As that one color, that one note, is wanting."
While thus they converse held, they chanced to stand
Within the precincts of a lonely temple,
Where a veiled statue of gigantic size
The youth's attention caught. In wonderment
He turned him toward his guide, and asked him, saying,
"What form is that concealed beneath yon veil?"
"Truth!" was the answer. "What!" the young man cried,
"When I am striving after truth alone,
Seekest thou to hide that very truth from me?"
"The Godhead's self alone can answer thee,"
Replied the Hierophant. "'Let no rash mortal
Disturb this veil,' said he, 'till raised by me;
For he who dares with sacrilegious hand
To move the sacred mystic covering,
He' said the Godhead " "Well?" "'will see the truth.'"
"Strangely oracular, indeed! And thou
Hast never ventured, then, to raise the veil?"
"I? Truly not! I never even felt
The least desire." "Is't possible? If I
Were severed from the truth by nothing else
Than this thin gauze " "And a divine decree,"
His guide broke in. "Far heavier than thou thinkest
Is this thin gauze, my son. Light to thy hand
It may be but most weighty to thy conscience."
The youth now sought his home, absorbed in thought;
His burning wish to solve the mystery
Banished all sleep; upon his couch he lay,
Tossing his feverish limbs. When midnight came,
He rose, and toward the temple timidly,
Led by a mighty impulse, bent his way.
The walls he scaled, and soon one active spring
Landed the daring boy beneath the dome.
Behold him now, in utter solitude,
Welcomed by naught save fearful, deathlike silence,
A silence which the echo of his steps
Alone disturbs, as through the vaults he paces.
Piercing an opening in the cupola,
The moon cast down her pale and silvery beams,
And, awful as a present deity,
Glittering amid the darkness of the pile,
In its long veil concealed, the statue stands.
With hesitating step, he now draws near
His impious hand would fain remove the veil
Sudden a burning chill assails his bones
And then an unseen arm repulses him.
"Unhappy one, what wouldst thou do?" Thus cries
A faithful voice within his trembling breast.
"Wouldst thou profanely violate the All-Holy?"
"'Tis true the oracle declared, 'Let none
Venture to raise the veil till raised by me.'
But did the oracle itself not add,
That he who did so would behold the truth?
Whate'er is hid behind, I'll raise the veil."
And then he shouted: "Yes! I will behold it!"
"Behold it!"
Repeats in mocking tone the distant echo.
He speaks, and, with the word, lifts up the veil.
Would you inquire what form there met his eye?
I know not, but, when day appeared, the priests
Found him extended senseless, pale as death,
Before the pedestal of Isis' statue.
What had been seen and heard by him when there
He never would disclose, but from that hour
His happiness in life had fled forever,
And his deep sorrow soon conducted him
To an untimely grave. "Woe to that man,"
He warning said to every questioner,
"Woe to that man who wins the truth by guilt,
For truth so gained will ne'er reward its owner." |
That's a Fact. | John Hartley | "A'a Mary aw'm glad 'at that's thee!
Aw need thy advice, lass, aw'm sure; -
Aw'm all ov a mooild tha can see,
Aw wor nivver i' this way afoor.
Aw've net slept a wink all th' neet throo;
Aw've been twirlin abaat like a worm,
An' th' blankets gate felter'd, lass, too -
Tha nivver saw cloas i' sich form.
Aw'll tell thee what 't all wor abaght -
But promise tha'll keep it reight squat;
For aw wod'nt for th' world let it aght,
But aw can't keep it in - tha knows that.
We'd a meetin at th' schooil yesterneet,
An Jimmy wor thear, - tha's seen Jim?
An he hutch'd cloise to me in a bit,
To ax me for th' number o'th' hymn;
Aw thowt 't wor a gaumless trick,
For he heeard it geen aght th' same as me;
An he just did th' same thing tother wick, -
It made fowk tak nooatice, dos't see.
An when aw wor gooin towards hooam,
Aw heeard som'dy comin behund:
'Twor pitch dark, an aw thowt if they coom,
Aw should varry near sink into th' graund.
Aw knew it wor Jim bi his traid,
An aw tried to get aght ov his gate;
But a'a! tha minds, lass, aw wor flaid,
Aw wor nivver i' sich en a state.
Then aw felt som'dy's arm raand my shawl,
An aw said, "nah, leeav loise or aw'll screeam!
Can't ta let daycent lasses alooan,
Consarn thi up! what does ta mean?"
But he stuck to mi arm like a leach,
An he whispered a word i' mi ear;
It tuk booath mi breeath an mi speech,
For aw'm varry sooin thrown aght o' gear.
Then he squeezed me cloise up to his sel,
An he kussed me, i' spite o' mi teeth:
Aw says, "Jimmy, forshame o' thisel!"
As sooin as aw'd getten mi breeath.
But he wod'nt be quiet, for he sed
'At he'd loved me soa true an soa long -
Aw'd ha geen a ear off o' my ye'd
To get loise - but tha knows he's soa strong. -
Then he tell'd me he wanted a wife,
An he begged 'at aw wodn't say nay; -
Aw'd ne'er heeard sich a tale i' mi life,
Aw wor fesen'd whativver to say;
'Coss tha knows aw've a likin for Jim;
But yo can't allus say what yo meean;
For aw tremb'ld i' ivvery limb,
Wol he kussed me agean an agean.
But at last aw began to give way,
For, raylee, he made sich a fuss,
An aw kussed him an all - for they say,
Ther's nowt costs mich less nor a kuss.
Then he left me at th' end o' awr street,
An aw've felt like a fooil all th' neet throo;
But if aw should see him to neet,
What wod ta advise me to do?
But dooant spaik a word - tha's noa need,
For aw've made up mi mind ha to act,
For he's th' grandest lad ivver aw seed,
An aw like him th' best too - that's a fact!" |
The Cockerel, The Cat, And The Young Mouse. | Jean de La Fontaine | [1]
A youthful mouse, not up to trap,
Had almost met a sad mishap.
The story hear him thus relate,
With great importance, to his mother: -
'I pass'd the mountain bounds of this estate,
And off was trotting on another,
Like some young rat with nought to do
But see things wonderful and new,
When two strange creatures came in view.
The one was mild, benign, and gracious;
The other, turbulent, rapacious,
With voice terrific, shrill, and rough,
And on his head a bit of stuff
That look'd like raw and bloody meat,
Raised up a sort of arms, and beat
The air, as if he meant to fly,
And bore his plumy tail on high.'
A cock, that just began to crow,
As if some nondescript,
From far New Holland shipp'd,
Was what our mousling pictured so.
'He beat his arms,' said he, 'and raised his voice,
And made so terrible a noise,
That I, who, thanks to Heaven, may justly boast
Myself as bold as any mouse,
Scud off, (his voice would even scare a ghost!)
And cursed himself and all his house;
For, but for him, I should have staid,
And doubtless an acquaintance made
With her who seem'd so mild and good.
Like us, in velvet cloak and hood,
She wears a tail that's full of grace,
A very sweet and humble face, -
No mouse more kindness could desire, -
And yet her eye is full of fire.
I do believe the lovely creature
A friend of rats and mice by nature.
Her ears, though, like herself, they're bigger,
Are just like ours in form and figure.
To her I was approaching, when,
Aloft on what appear'd his den,
The other scream'd, - and off I fled.'
'My son,' his cautious mother said,
'That sweet one was the cat,
The mortal foe of mouse and rat,
Who seeks by smooth deceit,
Her appetite to treat.
So far the other is from that,
We yet may eat
His dainty meat;
Whereas the cruel cat,
Whene'er she can, devours
No other meat than ours.'
Remember while you live,
It is by looks that men deceive. |
The Unusual Goose And The Imbecilic Woodcutter | Guy Wetmore Carryl | A woodcutter bought him a gander,
Or at least that was what he supposed,
As a matter of fact, 'twas a slander
As a later occurrence disclosed;
For they locked the bird up in the garret
To fatten, the while it grew old,
And it laid there a twenty-two carat
Fine egg of the purest of gold!
There was much unaffected rejoicing
In the home of the woodcutter then,
And his wife, her exuberance voicing,
Proclaimed him most lucky of men.
"'Tis an omen of fortune, this gold egg,"
She said, "and of practical use,
For this fowl doesn't lay any old egg,
She's a highly superior goose."
Twas this creature's habitual custom,
This laying of superfine eggs,
And they made it their practice to dust 'em
And pack them by dozens in kegs:
But the woodcutter's mind being vapid
And his foolishness more than profuse,
In order to get them more rapid
He slaughtered the innocent goose.
He made her a gruel of acid
Which she very obligingly ate,
And at once with a touchingly placid
Demeanor succumbed to her fate.
With affection that passed the platonic
They buried her under the moss,
And her epitaph wasn't ironic
In stating, "We mourn for our loss."
And THE MORAL: It isn't much use,
As the woodcutter found to be true,
To lay for an innocent goose
Just because she is laying for you. |
Plenty o' Brass. | John Hartley | A'a! it's grand to ha plenty o' brass!
It's grand to be able to spend
A trifle sometimes on a glass
For yorsen, or sometimes for a friend.
To be able to bury yor neive
Up to th' shackle i' silver an' gowd,
An, 'baght pinchin, be able to save
A wee bit for th' time when yo're owd.
A'a! it's grand to ha plenty o' brass!
To be able to set daan yor fooit
Withaat ivver thinkin - bi'th' mass!
'At yo're wearin' soa much off yor booit.
To be able to walk along th' street,
An stand at shop windows to stare,
An net ha to beat a retreat
If yo scent a "bum bailey" i'th' air.
A'a! it's grand to ha plenty o' brass!
To be able to goa hooam at neet,
An sit i'th' arm-cheer bi'th' owd lass,
An want nawther foir nor leet.
To tak th' childer a paper o' spice,
Or a pictur' to hing up o' th' wall;
Or a taste ov a summat 'at's nice
For yor friends, if they happen to call.
A'a! it's grand to ha plenty o' brass!
Then th' parsons'll know where yo live;
If yo're poor, it's mooast likely they'll pass,
An call where fowk's summat to give.
Yo may have a trifle o' sense,
An yo may be booath upright an trew,
But that's nowt, if yo can't stand th' expense
Ov a whole or a pairt ov a pew.
A'a! it's grand to ha plenty o' brass!
An to them fowk 'at's getten a hooard,
This world seems as smooth as a glass,
An ther's flaars o' booath sides o'th' rooad;
But him 'at's as poor as a maase,
Or, happen, a little i' debt,
He mun point his nooas up to th' big haase,
An be thankful for what he can get.
A'a! it's grand to ha plenty o' chink!
But dooan't let it harden yor heart:
Yo 'at's blessed wi' abundance should think
An try to do gooid wi' a part!
An then, as yo're totterin' daan,
An th' last grains o' sand are i'th glass,
Yo may find 'at yo've purchased a craan
Wi' makkin gooid use o' yor brass. |
Lady Onlie. | Robert Burns | Tune - "The Ruffian's Rant."
I.
A' the lads o' Thornie-bank,
When they gae to the shore o' Bucky,
They'll step in an' tak' a pint
Wi' Lady Onlie, honest Lucky!
Lady Onlie, honest Lucky!
Brews good ale at shore o' Bucky;
I wish her sale for her gude ale,
The best on a' the shore o' Bucky.
II.
Her house sae bien, her curch sae clean,
I wat she is a dainty chucky;
And cheerlie blinks the ingle-gleed
Of Lady Onlie, honest Lucky!
Lady Onlie, honest Lucky,
Brews good ale at shore o' Bucky
I wish her sale for her gude ale,
The best on a' the shore o' Bucky. |
A Quiet Day. | John Hartley | A'a! its grand to have th' place to yorsen!
To get th' wimmen fowk all aght o'th' way!
Mine's all off for a trip up to th' Glen,
An aw've th' haase to misen for a day.
If aw'd mi life to spend ovver ageean,
Aw'd be bothered wi' nooan o' that mak;
What they're gooid for aw nivver could leearn,
Except to spooart clooas o' ther back.
Nah, aw'll have a quiet pipe, just for once,
Aw'm soa thankful to think 'at they're shut;
An its seldom a chap has a chonce; -
Whear the dickens has th' matches been put?
Well, nah then, aw've th' foir to leet, -
It will'nt tak long will'nt that,
An as sooin as its gotten burned breet,
Aw'il fry some puttates up i' fat.
Aw know aw'm a stunner to cook, -
Guys-hang-it! this kinlin's damp!
It does nowt but splutter an smook,
An this Hue's ov a varry poor stamp.
It's lukkin confaandedly black, -
Its as dismal an dull as mi hat;
Nah, Sal leets a foir in a crack, -
Aw will give her credit for that.
Ther's nowt nicer nor taties when fried, -
Aw could ait em to ivvery meal;
Aw can't get 'em, altho' aw've oft tried, -
Its some trouble aw know varry weel.
Th' foirs aght! an it stops aght for me!
Aw'il bother noa mooar wi' th' old freet!
Next time they set off for a spree,
They'st net leeav me th' foir to leet.
Aw dooant care mich for coffee an teah,
Aw can do wi' some milk an a cake;
An fried taties they ne'er seem to me,
Worth th' bother an stink 'at they make.
Whear's th' milk? Oh, its thear, an aw'm blest,
That cat has its heead reight i'th' pot;
S'cat! witta! A'a, hang it aw've missed!
If aw hav'nt aw owt to be shot!
An th' pooaker's flown cleean throo a pane;
It wor fooilish to throw it, that's true;
Them 'at keep sich like cats are insane,
For aw ne'er see noa gooid 'at they do.
Aw think aw'il walk aght for a while,
But, bless us! mi shooin isn't blackt!
Aw'm net used to be sarved i' this style,
An aw think at ther's somdy gooan crackt.
It doesn't show varry mich thowt,
When aw'm left wi' all th' haasewark to do,
For fowk to set off an do nowt,
Net soa mich as to blacken a shoe.
It'll be dinner time nah varry sooin, -
An ther's beefsteaks i'th' cubbord aw know;
But aw can't leet that foir bi nooin,
An aw can't ait beefsteak when its raw.
Aw tell'd Sal this morn 'at shoo'd find,
A rare appetite up i' that Glen;
An aw think if aw dooant change mi mind,
Aw shall manage to find one misen.
Aw wor fooilish to send 'em away,
But they'll ha to do th' best at they can;
But aw'st feel reight uneasy all th' day, -
Wimmen's net fit to goa baght a man.
They've noa nooation what prices to pay,
An they dooant know th' best places to call;
Aw'il be bun it'll cost 'em to-day,
What wod pay my expences an all.
It luks better, aw fancy, beside,
When a chap taks his family raand;
Nah, suppooas they should goa for a ride,
An be pitched ovver th' brig an be draand.
Aw ne'er should feel happy ageean,
If owt happen'd when aw wor away;
An to leeav 'em i' danger luks meean,
Just for th' sake o' mi own quiet day.
Aw could catch th' train at leeavs abaat nooin;
E'e, gow! that'll be a gooid trick!
An aw'st get a gooid dinner for gooin,
An th' foir can goa to old Nick.
Its a pity to miss mi quiet day,
But its better to do that 'at's reight;
An it matters nowt what fowk may say,
But a chap mun ha summat to ait, |
The Clergyman's First Tale | Arthur Hugh Clough | Love is fellow-service.
A youth and maid upon a summer night
Upon the lawn, while yet the skies were light,
Edmund and Emma, let their names be these,
Among the shrubs within the circling trees,
Joined in a game with boys and girls at play:
For games perhaps too old a little they;
In April she her eighteenth year begun,
And twenty he, and near to twenty-one.
A game it was of running and of noise;
He as a boy, with other girls and boys
(Her sisters and her brothers), took the fun;
And when her turn, she marked not, came to run,
'Emma,' he called, then knew that he was wrong,
Knew that her name to him did not belong.
Her look and manner proved his feeling true,
A child no more, her womanhood she knew;
Half was the colour mounted on her face,
Her tardy movement had an adult grace.
Vexed with himself, and shamed, he felt the more
A kind of joy he ne'er had felt before.
Something there was that from this date began;
'Twas beautiful with her to be a man.
Two years elapsed, and he who went and came,
Changing in much, in this appeared the same;
The feeling, if it did not greatly grow,
Endured and was not wholly hid below.
He now, o'ertasked at school, a serious boy,
A sort of after-boyhood to enjoy
Appeared in vigour and in spirit high
And manly grown, but kept the boy's soft eye:
And full of blood, and strong and lithe of limb,
To him 'twas pleasure now to ride, to swim;
The peaks, the glens, the torrents tempted him.
Restless he seemed, long distances would walk,
And lively was, and vehement in talk.
A wandering life his life had lately been,
Books he had read, the world had little seen.
One former frailty haunted him, a touch
Of something introspective overmuch.
With all his eager motions still there went
A self-correcting and ascetic bent,
That from the obvious good still led astray,
And set him travelling on the longest way;
Seen in these scattered notes their date that claim
When first his feeling conscious sought a name.
'Beside the wishing gate which so they name,
'Mid northern hills to me this fancy came,
A wish I formed, my wish I thus expressed:
Would I could wish my wishes all to rest,
And know to wish the wish that were the best!
O for some winnowing wind, to the empty air
This chaff of easy sympathies to bear
Far off, and leave me of myself aware!
While thus this over health deludes me still,
So willing that I know not what I will;
O for some friend, or more than friend, austere,
To make me know myself, and make me fear!
O for some touch, too noble to be kind,
To awake to life the mind within the mind!'
'O charms, seductions and divine delights!
All through the radiant yellow summer nights,
Dreams, hardly dreams, that yield or e'er they're done,
To the bright fact, my day, my risen sun!
O promise and fulfilment, both in one!
O bliss, already bliss, which nought has shared,
Whose glory no fruition has impaired,
And, emblem of my state, thou coming day,
With all thy hours unspent to pass away!
Why do I wait? What more propose to know?
Where the sweet mandate bids me, let me go;
My conscience in my impulse let me find,
Justification in the moving mind,
Law in the strong desire; or yet behind,
Say, is there aught the spell that has not heard,
A something that refuses to be stirred?'
'In other regions has my being heard
Of a strange language the diviner word?
Has some forgotten life the exemplar shown?
Elsewhere such high communion have I known,
As dooms me here, in this, to live alone?
Then love, that shouldest blind me, let me, love,
Nothing behold beyond thee or above;
Ye impulses, that should be strong and wild,
Beguile me, if I am to be beguiled!'
'Or are there modes of love, and different kinds,
Proportioned to the sizes of our minds?
There are who say thus, I held there was one,
One love, one deity, one central sun;
As he resistless brings the expanding day,
So love should come on his victorious way.
If light at all, can light indeed be there,
Yet only permeate half the ambient air?
Can the high noon be regnant in the sky,
Yet half the land in light, and half in darkness lie?
Can love, if love, be occupant in part,
Hold, as it were, some chambers in the heart;
Tenant at will of so much of the soul,
Not lord and mighty master of the whole?
There are who say, and say that it is well;
Opinion all, of knowledge none can tell.
'Montaigne, I know in a realm high above
Places the seat of friendship over love;
'Tis not in love that we should think to find
The lofty fellowship of mind with mind;
Love 's not a joy where soul and soul unite,
Rather a wondrous animal delight;
And as in spring, for one consummate hour,
The world of vegetation turns to flower,
The birds with liveliest plumage trim their wing,
And all the woodland listens as they sing;
When spring is o'er and summer days are sped,
The songs are silent, and the blossoms dead:
E'en so of man and woman is the bliss.
O, but I will not tamely yield to this!
I think it only shows us in the end,
Montaigne was happy in a noble friend,
Had not the fortune of a noble wife;
He lived, I think, a poor ignoble life,
And wrote of petty pleasures, petty pain;
I do not greatly think about Montaigne.'
'How charming to be with her! yet indeed,
After a while I find a blank succeed;
After a while she little has to say,
I'm silent too, although I wish to stay;
What would it be all day, day after day?
Ah! but I ask, I do not doubt, too much;
I think of love as if it should be such
As to fulfil and occupy in whole
The nought-else-seeking, nought-essaying soul.
Therefore it is my mind with doubts I urge;
Hence are these fears and shiverings on the verge;
By books, not nature, thus have we been schooled,
By poetry and novels been befooled;
Wiser tradition says, the affections' claim
Will be supplied, the rest will be the same.
I think too much of love, 'tis true: I know
It is not all, was ne'er intended so;
Yet such a change, so entire, I feel, 'twould be,
So potent, so omnipotent with me;
My former self I never should recall,
Indeed I think it must be all in all.'
'I thought that Love was winged; without a sound,
His purple pinions bore him o'er the ground,
Wafted without an effort here or there,
He came and we too trod as if in air:
But panting, toiling, clambering up the hill,
Am I to assist him? I, put forth my will
To upbear his lagging footsteps, lame and slow,
And help him on and tell him where to go,
And ease him of his quiver and his bow?'
'Erotion! I saw it in a book;
Why did I notice it, why did I look?
Yea, is it so, ye powers that see above?
I do not love, I want, I try to love!
This is not love, but lack of love instead!
Merciless thought! I would I had been dead,
Or e'er the phrase had come into my, head.'
She also wrote: and here may find a place,
Of her and of her thoughts some slender trace.
'He is not vain; if proud, he quells his pride,
And somehow really likes to be defied;
Rejoices if you humble him: indeed
Gives way at once, and leaves you to succeed.'
'Easy it were with such a mind to play,
And foolish not to do so, some would say;
One almost smiles to look and see the way:
But come what will, I will not play a part,
Indeed I dare not condescend to art.'
Easy 'twere not, perhaps, with him to live;
He looks for more than any one can give:
So dulled at times and disappointed; still
Expecting what depends not of my will:
My inspiration comes not at my call,
Seek me as I am, if seek you do at all.'
'Like him I do, and think of him I must;
But more I dare not and I cannot trust.
This more he brings say, is it more or less
Than that no fruitage ever came to bless,
The old wild flower of love-in-idleness?'
'Me when he leaves and others when he sees,
What is my fate who am not there to please?
Me he has left; already may have seen
One, who for me forgotten here has been;
And he, the while, is balancing between.
If the heart spoke, the heart I knew were bound;
What if it utter an uncertain sound?'
'So quick to vary, so rejoiced to change,
From this to that his feelings surely range;
His fancies wander, and his thoughts as well;
And if the heart be constant, who can tell?
Far off to fly, to abandon me, and go,
He seems, returning then before I know:
With every accident he seems to move,
Is now below me and is now above,
Now far aside, O, does he really love?'
'Absence were hard; yet let the trial be;
His nature's aim and purpose he would free,
And in the world his course of action see.
O should he lose, not learn; pervert his scope;
O should I lose! and yet to win I hope.
I win not now; his way if now I went,
Brief joy I gave, for years of discontent.'
'Gone, is it true? but oft he went before,
And came again before a month was o'er.
Gone though I could not venture upon art,
It was perhaps a foolish pride in part;
He had such ready fancies in his head,
And really was so easy to be led;
One might have failed; and yet I feel 'twas pride,
And can't but half repent I never tried.
Gone, is it true? but he again will come,
Wandering he loves, and loves returning home.'
Gone, it was true; nor came so soon again;
Came, after travelling, pleasure half, half pain,
Came, but a half of Europe first o'erran;
Arrived, his father found a ruined man.
Rich they had been, and rich was Emma too.
Heiress of wealth she knew not, Edmund knew.
Farewell to her! In a new home obscure,
Food for his helpless parents to secure,
From early morning to advancing dark,
He toiled and laboured as a merchant's clerk.
Three years his heavy load he bore, nor quailed,
Then all his health, though scarce his spirit, failed;
Friends interposed, insisted it must be,
Enforced their help, and sent him to the sea.
Wandering about with little here to do,
His old thoughts mingling dimly with his new,
Wandering one morn, he met upon the shore,
Her, whom he quitted five long years before.
Alas! why quitted? Say that charms are nought,
Nor grace, nor beauty worth one serious thought;
Was there no mystic virtue in the sense
That joined your boyish girlish innocence?
Is constancy a thing to throw away,
And loving faithfulness a chance of every day?
Alas! why quitted? is she changed? but now
The weight of intellect is in her brow;
Changed, or but truer seen, one sees in her
Something to wake the soul, the interior sense to stir.
Alone they met, from alien eyes away,
The high shore hid them in a tiny bay.
Alone was he, was she; in sweet surprise
They met, before they knew it, in their eyes.
In his a wondering admiration glowed,
In hers, a world of tenderness o'erflowed;
In a brief moment all was known and seen,
That of slow years the wearying work had been:
Morn's early odorous breath perchance in sooth,
Awoke the old natural feeling of their youth:
The sea, perchance, and solitude had charms,
They met I know not in each other's arms.
Why linger now why waste the sands of life?
A few sweet weeks, and they were man and wife.
To his old frailty do not be severe,
His latest theory with patience hear:
'I sought not, truly would to seek disdain,
A kind, soft pillow for a wearying pain,
Fatigues and cares to lighten, to relieve;
But love is fellow-service, I believe.'
'No, truly no, it was not to obtain,
Though that alone were happiness, were gain,
A tender breast to fall upon and weep,
A heart, the secrets of my heart to keep;
To share my hopes, and in my griefs to grieve;
Yet love is fellow-service, I believe.'
'Yet in the eye of life's all-seeing sun
We shall behold a something we have done,
Shall of the work together we have wrought,
Beyond our aspiration and our thought,
Some not unworthy issue yet receive;
For love is fellow-service, I believe.'
The tale, we said, instructive was, but short;
Could he not give another of the sort?
He feared his second might his first repeat,
'And Aristotle teaches, change is sweet;
But come, our younger friend in this dim night
Under his bushel must not hide his light.'
I said I'd had but little time to live,
Experience none or confidence could give.
'But I can tell to-morrow, if you please,
My last year's journey towards the Pyrenees.'
To-morrow came, and evening, when it closed,
The penalty of speech on me imposed. |
A Marine Etching | Ella Wheeler Wilcox | A yacht from its harbour ropes pulled free,
And leaped like a steed o'er the race-track blue,
Then up behind her the dust of the sea,
A gray fog, drifted, and hid her from view.
|
Explanation Of An Antique Gem, | Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | A Young fig-tree its form lifts high
Within a beauteous garden;
And see, a goat is sitting by.
As if he were its warden.
But oh, Quirites, how one errs!
The tree is guarded badly;
For round the other side there whirrs
And hums a beetle madly.
The hero with his well-mail'd coat
Nibbles the branches tall so;
A mighty longing feels the goat
Gently to climb up also.
And so, my friends, ere long ye see
The tree all leafless standing;
It looks a type of misery,
Help of the gods demanding.
Then listen, ye ingenuous youth,
Who hold wise saws respected:
From he-goat and from beetles-tooth
A tree should be protected! |
The Wooing | Paul Laurence Dunbar | A youth went faring up and down,
Alack and well-a-day.
He fared him to the market town,
Alack and well-a-day.
And there he met a maiden fair,
With hazel eyes and auburn hair;
His heart went from him then and there,
Alack and well-a-day.
She posies sold right merrily,
Alack and well-a-day;
But not a flower was fair as she,
Alack and well-a-day.
He bought a rose and sighed a sigh,
"Ah, dearest maiden, would that I
Might dare the seller too to buy!"
Alack and well-a-day.
She tossed her head, the coy coquette,
Alack and well-a-day.
"I'm not, sir, in the market yet,"
Alack and well-a-day.
"Your love must cool upon a shelf;
Tho' much I sell for gold and pelf,
I 'm yet too young to sell myself,"
Alack and well-a-day.
The youth was filled with sorrow sore,
Alack and well-a-day.
And looked he at the maid once more,
Alack and well-a-day.
Then loud he cried, "Fair maiden, if
Too young to sell, now as I live,
You're not too young yourself to give,"
Alack and well-a-day.
The little maid cast down her eyes,
Alack and well-a-day.
And many a flush began to rise,
Alack and well-a-day.
"Why, since you are so bold," she said,
"I doubt not you are highly bred,
So take me!" and the twain were wed,
Alack and well-a-day. |
A Word. | Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day. |
"A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest," | Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | A wounded deer leaps highest,
I've heard the hunter tell;
'T is but the ecstasy of death,
And then the brake is still.
The smitten rock that gushes,
The trampled steel that springs;
A cheek is always redder
Just where the hectic stings!
Mirth is the mail of anguish,
In which it cautions arm,
Lest anybody spy the blood
And "You're hurt" exclaim! |
Captain John Smith. | James Barron Hope | A yeoman born, with patrimony small,
He held the world at large as his estate;
Found fit advices in the bugle's call
And took his part in iron-tongued debate
Where'er one sword another sword blade notched;
Ne'er was he slain, though often he was scotched,
Now down, now up, but always fronting fate.
At last a figure resolute, and grand
In arms he leaped upon Virginia's strand;
Fitted in many schools his course to steer
He knew the ax, the musketoon, and brand,
How to obey, and better to command;
First of his line he stood - a planted spear
The New World saw the English Pioneer! |
On A Scotch Bard, Gone To The West Indies. | Robert Burns | A' ye wha live by sowps o' drink,
A' ye wha live by crambo-clink,
A' ye wha live and never think,
Come, mourn wi' me!
Our billie's gien us a' a jink,
An' owre the sea.
Lament him a' ye rantin' core,
Wha dearly like a random-splore,
Nae mair he'll join the merry roar
In social key;
For now he's taen anither shore,
An' owre the sea!
The bonnie lasses weel may wiss him,
And in their dear petitions place him;
The widows, wives, an' a' may bless him,
Wi' tearfu' e'e;
For weel I wat they'll sairly miss him
That's owre the sea!
O Fortune, they hae room to grumble!
Hadst thou taen' aff some drowsy bummle
Wha can do nought but fyke and fumble,
'Twad been nae plea,
But he was gleg as onie wumble,
That's owre the sea!
Auld, cantie Kyle may weepers wear,
An' stain them wi' the saut, saut tear;
'Twill mak her poor auld heart, I fear,
In flinders flee;
He was her laureate monie a year,
That's owre the sea!
He saw Misfortune's cauld nor-west
Lang mustering up a bitter blast;
A jillet brak his heart at last,
Ill may she be!
So, took a birth afore the mast,
An' owre the sea.
To tremble under fortune's cummock,
On scarce a bellyfu' o' drummock,
Wi' his proud, independent stomach,
Could ill agree;
So, row't his hurdies in a hammock,
An' owre the sea.
He ne'er was gien to great misguiding,
Yet coin his pouches wad na bide in;
Wi' him it ne'er was under hiding:
He dealt it free;
The muse was a' that he took pride in,
That's owre the sea.
Jamaica bodies, use him weel,
An' hap him in a cozie biel;
Ye'll find him ay a dainty chiel,
And fou o' glee;
He wad na wrang'd the vera deil,
That's owre the sea.
Fareweel, my rhyme-composing billie!
Your native soil was right ill-willie;
But may ye flourish like a lily,
Now bonnilie!
I'll toast ye in my hindmost gillie,
Tho' owre the sea! |
An Epitaph On My Dear And Ever Honoured Mother Mrs. Dorothy Dudley, Who Deceased Decemb. 27. 1643. And Of Her Age, 61. | Anne Bradstreet | Here lyes,
A worthy Matron of unspotted life,
A loving Mother and obedient wife,
A friendly Neighbor, pitiful to poor,
Whom oft she fed, and clothed with her store;
To Servants wisely aweful, but yet kind,
And as they did, so they reward did find:
A true Instructer of her Family,
The which she ordered with dexterity.
The publick meetings ever did frequent,
And in her Closet constant hours she spent;
Religious in all her words and wayes,
Preparing still for death, till end of dayes:
Of all her Children, Children, liv'd to see,
Then dying, left a blessed memory. |
The Panorama | John Greenleaf Whittier | "A! fredome is a nobill thing!
Fredome mayse man to haif liking.
Fredome all solace to man giffis;
He levys at ese that frely levys!
A nobil hart may haif nane ese
Na ellys nocht that may him plese
Gyff Fredome failythe." |
Lines On The Finding Of A Young Man's Body In Toronto Bay. | James McIntyre | His identity was discovered by finding the maker's name on the suit he wore and by sending a strip of the cloth to the maker in Montreal.
A young man's body long it lay
In bottom of Toronto Bay,
But at last the waters bore,
And raised him up near to the shore.
But no one knew his rank or station,
No one knew his home or nation,
But his form and dress were genteel,
And sorrow many they did feel.
Kind man took charge of the remains,
And was well rewarded for his pains,
So skilful he did him embalm,
Restored the features sweet and calm.
The father came and he did bless
The man who did restore the face,
And saved for him his son's remains,
And thus he fame and honor gains. |
The Pampered Lapdog And The Misguided Ass | Guy Wetmore Carryl | A woolly little terrier pup
Gave vent to yelps distressing,
Whereat his mistress took him up
And soothed him with caressing,
And yet he was not in the least
What one would call a handsome beast.
He might have been a Javanese,
He might have been a Jap dog,
And also neither one of these,
But just a common lapdog,
The kind that people send, you know,
Done up in cotton, to the Show.
At all events, whate'er his race,
The pretty girl who owned him
Caressed his unattractive face
And petted and cologned him,
While, watching her with mournful eye,
A patient ass stood silent by.
"If thus," he mused, "the feminine
And fascinating gender
Is led to love, I, too, can win
Her protestations tender."
And then the poor, misguided chap
Sat down upon the lady's lap.
Then, as her head with terror swam,
"This method seems to suit you,"
Observed the ass, "so here I am."
Said she, "Get up, you brute you!"
And promptly screamed aloud for aid:
No ass was ever more dismayed.
They took the ass into the yard
And there, with whip and truncheon,
They beat him, and they beat him hard,
From breakfast-time till luncheon.
He only gave a tearful gulp,
Though almost pounded to a pulp.
THE MORAL is (or seems, at least,
To be): In etiquette you
Will find that while enough's a feast
A surplus will upset you.
Toujours, toujours la politesse, if
The quantity be not excessive. |
The Dying Warrior. | Thomas Moore | A wounded Chieftain, lying
By the Danube's leafy side,
Thus faintly said, in dying,
"Oh! bear, thou foaming tide.
"This gift to my lady-bride."
'Twas then, in life's last quiver,
He flung the scarf he wore
Into the foaming river,
Which, ah too quickly, bore
That pledge of one no more!
With fond impatience burning,
The Chieftain's lady stood,
To watch her love returning
In triumph down the flood,
From that day's field of blood.
But, field, alas, ill-fated!
The lady saw, instead
Of the bark whose speed she waited,
Her hero's scarf, all red
With the drops his heart had shed.
One shriek--and all was over--
Her life-pulse ceased to beat;
The gloomy waves now cover
That bridal-flower so sweet.
And the scarf is her winding sheet! |
Song - Upon The Admiration Of The Valour And Amiable Qualities Of Lord Nelson, Expressed By Junot, Now Duke Of Abrantes, Who, By The Chances Of War, Was For A Short Time The British Hero's Prisoner. | John Carr (Sir) | A wreath from an immortal bough
Should deck that gen'rous victor's brow,
Who hears his captive's grateful praise
Augment the thanks his country pays;
For him the minstrel's song shall flow,
The canvass breathe, the marble glow. |
The Old Cat and the Young Mouse. | Jean de La Fontaine | A young and inexperienced mouse
Had faith to try a veteran cat, -
Raminagrobis, death to rat,
And scourge of vermin through the house, -
Appealing to his clemency
With reasons sound and fair.
"Pray let me live; a mouse like me
It were not much to spare.
Am I, in such a family,
A burden? Would my largest wish
Our wealthy host impoverish?
A grain of wheat will make my meal;
A nut will fat me like a seal.
I'm lean at present; please to wait,
And for your heirs reserve my fate."
The captive mouse thus spake.
Replied the captor, "You mistake;
To me shall such a thing be said?
Address the deaf! address the dead!
A cat to pardon! - old one too!
Why, such a thing I never knew.
Thou victim of my paw,
By well-establish'd law,
Die as a mousling should,
And beg the sisterhood
Who ply the thread and shears,
To lend thy speech their ears.
Some other like repast
My heirs may find, or fast."
He ceased. The moral's plain.
Youth always hopes its ends to gain,
Believes all spirits like its own:
Old age is not to mercy prone. |
What it is to be a Mother. | John Hartley | A'a, dear! what a life has a mother!
At leeast, if they're hamper'd like me,
Thro' mornin' to neet ther's some bother,
An' ther will be, aw guess, wol aw dee.
Ther's mi chap, an misen, an' six childer,
Six o'th' roughest, aw think, under th' sun,
Aw'm sartin sometimes they'd bewilder
Old Joab, wol his patience wor done.
They're i' mischief i' ivery corner,
An' ther tongues they seem niver at rest;
Ther's one shaatin' "Little Jack Horner,"
An' another "The realms o' the blest."
Aw'm sure if a body's to watch 'em,
They mun have een at th' back o' ther yed;
For quiet yo niver can catch 'em
Unless they're asleep an' i' bed.
For ther's somdy comes runnin to tell us
'At one on em's takken wi' fits;
Or ther's two on 'em feightin for th' bellus,
An' rivin' ther clooas all i' bits.
In a mornin' they're all weshed an' tidy'd,
But bi nooin they're as black as mi shoe;
To keep a lot cleean, if yo've tried it,
Yo know 'at ther's summat to do.
When my felly comes hooam to his drinkin',
Aw try to be gradely, an' straight;
For when all's nice an' cleean, to mi thinkin',
He enjoys better what ther's to ait.
If aw tell him aw'm varry near finished
Wi allus been kept in a fuss,
He says, as he looks up astonished,
"Why, aw niver see owt 'at tha does."
But aw wonder who does all ther mendin',
Weshes th' clooas, an cleans th' winders an' flags?
But for me they'd have noa spot to stand in -
They'd be lost i' ther filth an' ther rags.
But it allus wor soa, an' it will be,
A chap thinks' at a woman does nowt;
But it ne'er bothers me what they tell me,
For men havn't a morsel o' thowt.
But just harken to me wol aw'm tellin'
Ha aw tew to keep ivery thing straight;
An' aw'l have yo for th' judge if yor willin',
For aw want nowt but what aw think's reight.
Ov a Monday aw start o' my weshin',
An' if th' day's fine aw get um all dried;
Ov a Tuesday aw fettle mi kitchen,
An' mangle, an' iron beside.
Ov a Wednesday, then aw've mi bakin';
Ov a Thursday aw reckon to brew;
Ov a Friday all th' carpets want shakin',
An' aw've th' bedrooms to clean an' dust throo.
Then o'th' Setterday, after mi markets,
Stitch on buttons, an' th' stockins' to mend,
Then aw've all th' Sundy clooas to luk ovver,
An' that brings a week's wark to its end.
Then o'th' Sundy ther's cooking 'em th' dinner,
It's ther only warm meal in a wick;
Tho' ther's some say aw must be a sinner,
For it's paving mi way to Old Nick.
But a chap mun be like to ha' summat,
An' aw can't think it's varry far wrang,
Just to cook him an' th' childer a dinner,
Tho' it may mak me rayther too thrang.
But if yor a wife an' a mother,
Yo've yor wark an' yor duties to mind;
Yo mun leearn to tak nowt as a bother,
An' to yor own comforts be blind.
But still, just to seer all ther places,
When they're gethred raand th' harston at neet,
Fill'd wi six roosy-red, smilin' faces;
It's nooan a despisable seet.
An, aw connot help thinkin' an' sayin',
(Tho' yo may wonder what aw can mean),
'At if single, aw sooin should be playin'
Coortin tricks, an' be weddin' agean. |
Isle Of Man | William Wordsworth | A youth too certain of his power to wade
On the smooth bottom of this clear bright sea,
To sight so shallow, with a bather's glee
Leapt from this rock, and but for timely aid
He, by the alluring element betrayed,
Had perished. Then might Sea-nymphs (and with sighs
Of self-reproach) have chanted elegies
Bewailing his sad fate, when he was laid
In peaceful earth: for, doubtless, he was frank,
Utterly in himself devoid of guile;
Knew not the double-dealing of a smile;
Nor aught that makes men's promises a blank,
Or deadly snare: and He survives to bless
The Power that saved him in his strange distress. |
To A Daisy, Found Blooming March 7th. | John Hartley | A'a awm feeared tha's come too sooin,
Little daisy!
Pray, whativer wor ta doin?
Are ta crazy?
Winter winds are blowin' yet, -
Tha'll be starved, mi little pet.
Did a gleam o' sunshine warm thee,
An' deceive thee?
Niver let appearance charm thee,
For believe me,
Smiles tha'll find are oft but snares,
Laid to catch thee unawares.
Still aw think it luks a shame,
To tawk sich stuff;
Aw've lost faith, an' tha'll do th' same,
Hi, sooin enuff.
If tha'rt happy as tha art
Trustin' must be th' wisest part.
Come, aw'll pile some bits o' stooan,
Raand thi dwellin';
They may screen thee when aw've gooanm,
Ther's no tellin';
An' when gentle spring draws near
Aw'll release thee, niver fear.
An' if then thi pretty face,
Greets me smilin';
Aw may come an' sit bith' place,
Time beguilin';
Glad to think aw'd paar to be,
Of some use, if but to thee. |
The Forest And The Woodcutter (Prose Fable) | Jean de La Fontaine | A woodcutter had broken or lost the handle of his hatchet and found it not easy to get it repaired at once. During the time, therefore, that it was out of use, the woods enjoyed a respite from further damage. At last the man came humbly and begged of the forest to allow him gently to take just one branch wherewith to make him a new haft, and promised that then he would go elsewhere to ply his trade and get his living. That would leave unthreatened many an oak and many a fir that now won universal respect on account of its age and beauty.
The innocent forest acquiesced and furnished him with a new handle. This he fixed to his blade and, as soon as it was finished, fell at once upon the trees, despoiling his benefactress, the forest, of her most cherished ornaments. There was no end to her bewailings: her own gift had caused her grief.
Here you see the way of the world and of those who follow it. They use the benefit against the benefactors. I weary of talking about it. Yet who would not complain that sweet and shady spots should suffer such outrage. Alas! it is useless to cry out and be thought a nuisance: ingratitude and abuses will remain the fashion none the less.
|
Christmas Greeting | James Whitcomb Riley | A word of Godspeed and good cheer
To all on earth, or far or near,
Or friend or foe, or thine or mine -
In echo of the voice divine,
Heard when the star bloomed forth and lit
The world's face, with God's smile on it. |
My Gronfayther's Days. | John Hartley | A'a, Jonny! a'a Johnny! aw'm sooary for thee!
But come thi ways to me, an' sit o' mi knee,
For it's shockin' to hearken to th' words 'at tha says: -
Ther wor nooan sich like things i' thi gronofayther's days.
When aw wor a lad, lads wor lads, tha knows, then,
But nahdays they owt to be 'shamed o' thersen;
For they smook, an' they drink, an' get other bad ways;
Things wor different once i' thi gronfayther's days.
Aw remember th' furst day aw went a coortin' a bit,
An' walked aght thi granny; - awst niver forget;
For we blushed wol us faces wor all in a blaze; -
It wor nooa sin to blush i' thi gronfayther's days.
Ther's nooa lasses nah, John, 'at's fit to be wed;
They've false teeth i' ther maath, an false hair o' ther heead;
They're a make up o' buckram, an' waddin', an' stays,
But a lass wor a lass i' thi gronfayther's days.
At that time a tradesman dealt fairly wi' th' poor,
But nah a fair dealer can't keep oppen th' door;
He's a fooil if he fails, he's a scamp if he pays;
Ther wor honest men lived i' thi gronfayther's days.
Ther's chimleys an' factrys i' ivery nook nah,
But ther's varry few left 'at con fodder a caah;
An' ther's telegraff poles all o'th edge o'th' highways,
Whear grew bonny green trees i' thi gronfayther's days.
We're teld to be thankful for blessin's at's sent,
An' aw hooap 'at tha'll allus be blessed wi' content;
Tha mun make th' best tha con o' this world wol tha stays,
But aw wish tha'd been born i' thi gronfayther's days. |
Mari Magno or Tales on Board1 | Arthur Hugh Clough | A youth was I. An elder friend with me,
'Twas in September o'er the autumnal sea
We went; the wide Atlantic ocean o'er
Two amongst many the strong steamer bore.
Delight it was to feel that wondrous force
That held us steady to our purposed course,
The burning resolute victorious will
'Gainst winds and waves that strive unwavering still.
Delight it was with each returning day.
To learn the ship had won upon her way
Her sum of miles, delight were mornings grey
And gorgeous eves, nor was it less delight,
On each more temperate and favouring night,
Friend with familiar or with new-found friend,
To pace the deck, and o'er the bulwarks bend,
And the night watches in long converse spend;
While still new subjects and new thoughts arise
Amidst the silence of the seas and skies.
Amongst the mingled multitude a few,
Some three or four, towards us early drew;
We proved each other with a day or two;
Night after night some three or four we walked,
And talked, and talked, and infinitely talked.
Of the New England ancient blood was one,
His youthful spurs in letters he had won,
Unspoilt by that, to Europe late had come,
Hope long deferred, and went unspoilt by Europe home.
What racy tales of Yankeeland he had!
Up-country girl, up-country farmer lad;
The regnant clergy of the time of old
In wig and gown; tales not to be retold
By me. I could but spoil were I to tell:
Himself must do it who can do it well.
An English clergyman came spick and span
In black and white a large well-favoured man,
Fifty years old, as near as one could guess.
He looked the dignitary more or less.
A rural dean, I said, he was, at least,
Canon perhaps; at many a good man's feast
A guest had been, amongst the choicest there.
Manly his voice and manly was his air:
At the first sight you felt he had not known
The things pertaining to his cloth alone.
Chairman of Quarter Sessions had he been?
Serious and calm, 'twas plain he much had seen,
Had miscellaneous large experience had
Of human acts, good, half and half, and bad.
Serious and calm, yet lurked, I know not why,
At times, a softness in his voice and eye.
Some shade of ill a prosperous life had crossed;
Married no doubt: a wife or child had lost?
He never told us why he passed the sea.
My guardian friend was now, at thirty-three,
A rising lawyer ever, at the best,
Slow rises worth in lawyer's gown compressed;
Succeeding now, yet just, and only just,
His new success he never seemed to trust.
By nature he to gentlest thoughts inclined,
To most severe had disciplined his mind;
He held it duty to be half unkind.
Bitter, they said, who but the exterior knew;
In friendship never was a friend so true:
The unwelcome fact he did not shrink to tell,
The good, if fact, he recognised as well.
Stout to maintain, if not the first to see;
In conversation who so great as he?
Leading but seldom, always sure to guide,
To false or silly, if 'twas borne aside,
His quick correction silent he expressed,
And stopped you short, and forced you to your best.
Often, I think, he suffered from some pain
Of mind, that on the body worked again;
One felt it in his sort of half-disdain,
Impatient not, but acrid in his speech;
The world with him her lesson failed to teach
To take things easily and let them go.
He, for what special fitness I scarce know,
For which good quality, or if for all,
With less of reservation and recall
And speedier favour than I e'er had seen,
Took, as we called him, to the rural dean.
As grew the gourd, as grew the stalk of bean,
So swift it seemed, betwixt these differing two
A stately trunk of confidence up-grew.
Of marriage long one night they held discourse;
Regarding it in different ways, of course.
Marriage is discipline, the wise had said,
A needful human discipline to wed;
Novels of course depict it final bliss,
Say, had it ever really once been this?
Our Yankee friend (whom, ere the night was done,
We called New England or the Pilgrim Son),
A little tired, made bold to interfere;
'Appeal,' he said, 'to me; my sentence hear.
You'll reason on till night and reason fail;
My judgment is you each shall tell a tale;
And as on marriage you can not agree,
Of love and marriage let the stories be.'
Sentence delivered, as the younger man,
My lawyer friend was called on and began.
'Infandum jubes! 'tis of long ago,
If tell I must, I tell the tale I know:
Yet the first person using for the freak,
Don't rashly judge that of myself I speak.'
So to his tale; if of himself or not
I never learnt, we thought so on the spot.
Lightly he told it as a thing of old,
And lightly I repeat it as he told.
|
A Contented Man | Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev | A young man goes skipping and bounding along a street in the capital. His movements are gay and alert; there is a sparkle in his eyes, a smirk on his lips, a pleasing flush on his beaming face.... He is all contentment and delight.
What has happened to him? Has he come in for a legacy? Has he been promoted? Is he hastening to meet his beloved? Or is it simply he has had a good breakfast, and the sense of health, the sense of well-fed prosperity, is at work in all his limbs? Surely they have not put on his neck thy lovely, eight-pointed cross, O Polish king, Stanislas?
No. He has hatched a scandal against a friend, has sedulously sown it abroad, has heard it, this same slander, from the lips of another friend, and - has himself believed it!
Oh, how contented! how kind indeed at this minute is this amiable, promising young man!
February 1878.
|
Degrees | Unknown | A young theologian named Fiddle
Refused to accept his degree;
"For," said he, "'tis enough to be Fiddle,
Without being Fiddle D.D." |
A Marine Etching | Ella Wheeler Wilcox | A yacht from its harbor ropes pulled free,
And leaped like a steed o'er the race track blue,
Then up behind her, the dust of the sea,
A gray fog drifted, and hid her from view.
|
How Hop O' My Thumb Got Rid Of An Onus | Guy Wetmore Carryl | A worthy couple, man and wife,
Dragged on a discontented life:
The reason, I should state,
That it was destitute of joys,
Was that they had a dozen boys
To feed and educate,
And nothing such patience demands
As having twelve boys on your hands!
For twenty years they tried their best
To keep those urchins neatly dressed
And teach them to be good,
But so much labor it involved
That, in the end, they both resolved
To lose them in a wood,
Though nothing a parent annoys
Like heartlessly losing his boys!
So when their sons had gone to bed,
Though bitter tears the couple shed,
They laid their little plan.
"Faut b'en que 'a s'fasse. Quand m'me,"
The woman said, "J'en suis tout' bl'me."
"'a colle!" observed the man,
"Mais 'a coute, que ces gosses fichus!
B'en, quoi! Faut qu'i's soient perdus!"
(I've quite omitted to explain
That they were natives of Touraine;
I see I must translate.)
"Of course it must be done, and still,"
The wife remarked, "it makes me ill."
"You bet!" replied her mate:
"But we've both of us counted the cost,
And the kids simply have to be lost!"
But, while they plotted, every word
The youngest of the urchins heard,
And winked the other eye;
His height was only two feet three.
(I might remark, in passing, he
Was little, but O My!)
He added: "I'd better keep mum."
(He was foxy, was Hop O' My Thumb!)
They took the boys into the wood,
And lost them, as they said they should,
And came in silence back.
Alas for them! Hop O' My Thumb
At every step had dropped a crumb,
And so retraced the track.
While the parents sat mourning their fate
He led the boys in at the gate!
He placed his hand upon his heart,
And said: "You think you're awful smart,
But I have foiled you thus!"
His parents humbly bent the knee,
And meekly said: "H. O. M. T.,
You're one too much for us!"
And both of them solemnly swore
"We won't never do so no more!"
The Moral is: While I do not
Endeavor to condone the plot,
I still maintain that one
Should have no chance of being foiled,
And having one's arrangements spoiled
By one's ingenious son.
If you turn down your children, with pain,
Take care they don't turn up again! |
The Tamed Fawn. | John Gay | A young stag in the brake was caught,
And home with corded antlers brought.
The lord was pleased: so was the clown.
When he was tipped with half-a-crown.
The stag was dragged before his wife;
The gentle lady begged its life:
"How sleek its skin! how specked like ermine!
Sure never creature was more charming."
At first within the court confined,
He fled and hid from all mankind;
Then, bolder grown, with mute amaze
He at safe distance stood to gaze;
Then munched the linen on the lines,
And off a hood or whimple dines;
Then steals my little master's bread,
Then followed servants to be fed,
Then poked his nose in fists for meat,
And though repulsed would not retreat;
Thrusts at them with his levelled horns,
And man, that was his terror, scorns.
How like unto the country maid,
Who of a red-coat, first, afraid
Will hide behind the door, to trace
The magic of the martial lace;
But soon before the door will stand,
Return the jest and strike the hand;
Then hangs with pride upon his arm, -
For gallant soldiers bear a charm, -
Then seeks to spread her conquering fame,
For custom conquers fear and shame.
|
Grief's Hero. | George Parsons Lathrop | A youth unto herself Grief took,
Whom everything of joy forsook,
And men passed with denying head,
Saying: "'T were better he were dead."
Grief took him, and with master-touch
Molded his being. I marveled much
To see her magic with the clay,
So much she gave - and took away.
Daily she wrought, and her design
Grew daily clearer and more fine,
To make the beauty of his shape
Serve for the spirit's free escape.
With liquid fire she filled his eyes.
She graced his lips with swift surmise
Of sympathy for others' woe,
And made his every fibre flow
In fairer curves. On brow and chin
And tinted cheek, drawn clean and thin,
She sculptured records rich, great Grief!
She made him loving, made him lief.
I marveled; for, where others saw
A failing frame with many a flaw,
Meseemed a figure I beheld
Fairer than anything of eld
Fashioned from sunny marble. Here
Nature was artist with no peer.
No chisel's purpose could have caught
These lines, nor brush their secret wrought.
Not so the world weighed, busily
Pursuing drossy industry;
But, saturated with success,
Well-guarded by a soft excess
Of bodily ease, gave little heed
To him that held not by their creed,
Save o'er the beauteous youth to moan:
"A pity that he is not grown
To our good stature and heavier weight,
To bear his share of our full freight."
Meanwhile, thus to himself he spoke:
"Oh, noble is the knotted oak,
And sweet the gush of sylvan streams,
And good the great sun's gladding beams,
The blush of life upon the field,
The silent might that mountains wield.
Still more I love to mix with men,
Meeting the kindly human ken;
To feel the force of faithful friends -
The thirst for smiles that never ends.
"Yet precious more than all of these
I hold great Sorrow's mysteries,
Whereby Gehenna's sultry gale
Is made to lift the golden veil
'Twixt heaven's starry-spher'd light
Of truth and our dim, sun-blent sight.
Joy comes to ripen; but 'tis Grief
That garners in the grainy sheaf.
Time was I feared to know or feel
The spur of aught but gilded weal;
To bear aloft the victor, Fame,
Would ev'n have champed a stately shame
Of bit and bridle. But my fears
Fell off in the pure bath of tears.
And now with sinews fresh and strong
I stride, to summon with a song
The deep, invigorating truth
That makes me younger than my youth.
"O Sorrow, deathless thy delight!
Deathless it were but for our slight
Endurance! Truth like thine, too rare,
We dare but take in scantiest share."
He died: the creatures of his kind
Fared on. Not one had known his mind.
But the unnamed yearnings of the air,
The eternal sky's wide-searching stare,
The undertone of brawling floods,
And the old moaning of the woods
Grew full of memory.
The sun
Many a brave heart has shone upon
Since then, of men who walked abroad
For joy and gladness praising God.
But widowed Grief lives on alone:
She hath not chosen, of them, one. |
Sequin | Paul Cameron Brown | A youthful bandit
this forest -
faltering eyelids in mud troughs
& puddles like
brisk lies
woven thru deception.
Stealing autumn into
its colours,
leaves in birchbark rustle
a full mauraud stealth
across every breeze.
Thief, thief
elf with a key,
a thousand rasping angels
their throaty javelins
hurled from branch's edge,
brief pageant robbing
summer's pantry.
Offal of the fall,
the lake a sequined glove
tossed from a careless hand;
a rowboat as a buckle
chromatic foam
for a finger's fan.
|
Iseult Of Brittany | Matthew Arnold | A year had flown, and o'er the sea away,
In Cornwall, Tristram and Queen Iseult lay;
In King Marc's chapel, in Tyntagel old
There in a ship they bore those lovers cold.
The young surviving Iseult, one bright day,
Had wander'd forth. Her children were at play
In a green circular hollow in the heath
Which borders the sea-shore a country path
Creeps over it from the till'd fields behind.
The hollow's grassy banks are soft-inclined,
And to one standing on them, far and near
The lone unbroken view spreads bright and clear
Over the waste. This cirque of open ground
Is light and green; the heather, which all round
Creeps thickly, grows not here; but the pale grass
Is strewn with rocks, and many a shiver'd mass
Of vein'd white-gleaming quartz, and here and there
Dotted with holly-trees and juniper.
In the smooth centre of the opening stood
Three hollies side by side, and made a screen,
Warm with the winter-sun, of burnish'd green
With scarlet berries gemm'd, the fell-fare's food.
Under the glittering hollies Iseult stands,
Watching her children play; their little hands
Are busy gathering spars of quartz, and streams
Of stagshorn for their hats; anon, with screams
Of mad delight they drop their spoils, and bound
Among the holly-clumps and broken ground,
Racing full speed, and startling in their rush
The fell-fares and the speckled missel-thrush
Out of their glossy coverts; but when now
Their cheeks were flush'd, and over each hot brow,
Under the feather'd hats of the sweet pair,
In blinding masses shower'd the golden hair
Then Iseult call'd them to her, and the three
Cluster'd under the holly-screen, and she
Told them an old-world Breton history.
Warm in their mantles wrapt the three stood there,
Under the hollies, in the clear still air
Mantles with those rich furs deep glistering
Which Venice ships do from swart Egypt bring.
Long they stay'd still then, pacing at their ease,
Moved up and down under the glossy trees.
But still, as they pursued their warm dry road,
From Iseult's lips the unbroken story flow'd,
And still the children listen'd, their blue eyes
Fix'd on their mother's face in wide surprise;
Nor did their looks stray once to the sea-side,
Nor to the brown heaths round them, bright and wide,
Nor to the snow, which, though 'twas all away
From the open heath, still by the hedgerows lay,
Nor to the shining sea-fowl, that with screams
Bore up from where the bright Atlantic gleams,
Swooping to landward; nor to where, quite clear,
The fell-fares settled on the thickets near.
And they would still have listen'd, till dark night
Came keen and chill down on the heather bright;
But, when the red glow on the sea grew cold,
And the grey turrets of the castle old
Look'd sternly through the frosty evening-air,
Then Iseult took by the hand those children fair,
And brought her tale to an end, and found the path,
And led them home over the darkening heath.
And is she happy? Does she see unmov'd
The days in which she might have lived and loved
Slip without bringing bliss slowly away,
One after one, to-morrow like to-day?
Joy has not found her yet, nor ever will
Is it this thought which makes her mien so still,
Her features so fatigued, her eyes, though sweet,
So sunk, so rarely lifted save to meet
Her children's? She moves slow; her voice alone
Hath yet an infantine and silver tone.
But even that comes languidly; in truth,
She seems one dying in a mask of youth.
And now she will go home, and softly lay
Her laughing children in their beds, and play
Awhile with them before they sleep; and then
She'll light her silver lamp, which fishermen
Dragging their nets through the rough waves, afar,
Along this iron coast, know like a star,
And take her broidery-frame, and there she'll sit
Hour after hour, her gold curls sweeping it;
Lifting her soft-bent head only to mind
Her children, or to listen to the wind.
And when the clock peals midnight, she will move
Her work away, and let her fingers rove
Across the shaggy brows of Tristram's hound
Who lies, guarding her feet, along the ground;
Or else she will fall musing, her blue eyes
Fixt, her slight hands clasp'd on her lap; then rise,
And at her prie-dieu kneel, until she have told
Her rosary-beads of ebony tipp'd with gold,
Then to her soft sleep and to-morrow'll be
To-day's exact repeated effigy.
Yes, it is lonely for her in her hall.
The children, and the grey-hair'd seneschal,
Her women, and Sir Tristram's aged hound,
Are there the sole companions to be found.
But these she loves; and noisier life than this
She would find ill to bear, weak as she is.
She has her children, too, and night and day
Is with them; and the wide heaths where they play,
The hollies, and the cliff, and the sea-shore,
The sand, the sea-birds, and the distant sails,
These are to her dear as to them; the tales
With which this day the children she beguiled
She gleaned from Breton grandames, when a child,
In every hut along this sea-coast wild.
She herself loves them still, and, when they are told,
Can forget all to hear them, as of old.
Dear saints, it is not sorrow, as I hear,
Not suffering, which shuts up eye and ear
To all that has delighted them before,
And lets us be what we were once no more.
No, we may suffer deeply, yet retain
Power to be moved and soothed, for all our pain,
By what of old pleased us, and will again.
No, 'tis the gradual furnace of the world,
In whose hot air our spirits are upcurl'd
Until they crumble, or else grow like steel
Which kills in us the bloom, the youth, the spring
Which leaves the fierce necessity to feel,
But takes away the power this can avail,
By drying up our joy in everything,
To make our former pleasures all seem stale.
This, or some tyrannous single thought, some fit
Of passion, which subdues our souls to it,
Till for its sake alone we live and move
Call it ambition, or remorse, or love
This too can change us wholly, and make seem
All which we did before, shadow and dream.
And yet, I swear, it angers me to see
How this fool passion gulls men potently;
Being, in truth, but a diseased unrest,
And an unnatural overheat at best.
How they are full of languor and distress
Not having it; which when they do possess,
They straightway are burnt up with fume and care,
And spend their lives in posting here and there
Where this plague drives them; and have little ease,
Are furious with themselves, and hard to please.
Like that bald Caesar, the famed Roman wight,
Who wept at reading of a Grecian knight
Who made a name at younger years than he;
Or that renown'd mirror of chivalry,
Prince Alexander, Philip's peerless son,
Who carried the great war from Macedon
Into the Soudan's realm, and thundered on
To die at thirty-five in Babylon.
What tale did Iseult to the children say,
Under the hollies, that bright winter's day?
She told them of the fairy-haunted land
Away the other side of Brittany,
Beyond the heaths, edged by the lonely sea;
Of the deep forest-glades of Broceliande,
Through whose green boughs the golden sunshine creeps,
Where Merlin by the enchanted thorn-tree sleeps.
For here he came with the fay Vivian,
One April, when the warm days first began.
He was on foot, and that false fay, his friend,
On her white palfrey; here he met his end,
In these lone sylvan glades, that April-day.
This tale of Merlin and the lovely fay
Was the one Iseult chose, and she brought clear
Before the children's fancy him and her.
Blowing between the stems, the forest-air
Had loosen'd the brown locks of Vivian's hair,
Which play'd on her flush'd cheek, and her blue eyes
Sparkled with mocking glee and exercise.
Her palfrey's flanks were mired and bathed in sweat,
For they had travell'd far and not stopp'd yet.
A brier in that tangled wilderness
Had scored her white right hand, which she allows
To rest ungloved on her green riding-dress;
The other warded off the drooping boughs.
But still she chatted on, with her blue eyes
Fix'd full on Merlin's face, her stately prize.
Her 'haviour had the morning's fresh clear grace,
The spirit of the woods was in her face.
She look'd so witching fair, that learned wight
Forgot his craft, and his best wits took flight;
And he grew fond, and eager to obey
His mistress, use her empire as she may.
They came to where the brushwood ceased, and day
Peer'd 'twixt the stems; and the ground broke away,
In a sloped sward down to a brawling brook;
And up as high as where they stood to look
On the brook's farther side was clear, but then
The underwood and trees began again.
This open glen was studded thick with thorns
Then white with blossom; and you saw the horns,
Through last year's fern, of the shy fallow-deer
Who come at noon down to the water here.
You saw the bright-eyed squirrels dart along
Under the thorns on the green sward; and strong
The blackbird whistled from the dingles near,
And the weird chipping of the woodpecker
Rang lonelily and sharp; the sky was fair,
And a fresh breath of spring stirr'd everywhere.
Merlin and Vivian stopp'd on the slope's brow,
To gaze on the light sea of leaf and bough
Which glistering plays all round them, lone and mild,
As if to itself the quiet forest smiled.
Upon the brow-top grew a thorn, and here
The grass was dry and moss'd, and you saw clear
Across the hollow; white anemonies
Starr'd the cool turf, and clumps of primroses
Ran out from the dark underwood behind.
No fairer resting-place a man could find.
'Here let us halt,' said Merlin then; and she
Nodded, and tied her palfrey to a tree.
They sate them down together, and a sleep
Fell upon Merlin, more like death, so deep.
Her finger on her lips, then Vivian rose,
And from her brown-lock'd head the wimple throws,
And takes it in her hand, and waves it over
The blossom'd thorn-tree and her sleeping lover.
Nine times she waved the fluttering wimple round,
And made a little plot of magic ground.
And in that daisied circle, as men say,
Is Merlin prisoner till the judgment-day;
But she herself whither she will can rove,
For she was passing weary of his love. |
Sestina II | Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) | Giovane donna sott' un verde lauro.
THOUGH DESPAIRING OF PITY, HE VOWS TO LOVE HER UNTO DEATH.
A youthful lady 'neath a laurel green
Was seated, fairer, colder than the snow
On which no sun has shone for many years:
Her sweet speech, her bright face, and flowing hair
So pleased, she yet is present to my eyes,
And aye must be, whatever fate prevail.
These my fond thoughts of her shall fade and fail
When foliage ceases on the laurel green;
Nor calm can be my heart, nor check'd these eyes
Until the fire shall freeze, or burns the snow:
Easier upon my head to count each hair
Than, ere that day shall dawn, the parting years.
But, since time flies, and roll the rapid years,
And death may, in the midst, of life, assail,
With full brown locks, or scant and silver hair,
I still the shade of that sweet laurel green
Follow, through fiercest sun and deepest snow,
Till the last day shall close my weary eyes.
Oh! never sure were seen such brilliant eyes,
In this our age or in the older years,
Which mould and melt me, as the sun melts snow,
Into a stream of tears adown the vale,
Watering the hard roots of that laurel green,
Whose boughs are diamonds and gold whose hair.
I fear that Time my mien may change and hair,
Ere, with true pity touch'd, shall greet my eyes
My idol imaged in that laurel green:
For, unless memory err, through seven long years
Till now, full many a shore has heard my wail,
By night, at noon, in summer and in snow.
Thus fire within, without the cold, cold snow,
Alone, with these my thoughts and her bright hair,
Alway and everywhere I bear my ail,
Haply to find some mercy in the eyes
Of unborn nations and far future years,
If so long flourishes our laurel green.
The gold and topaz of the sun on snow
Are shamed by the bright hair above those eyes,
Searing the short green of my life's vain years.
MACGREGOR. |
Providential Escape. | James McIntyre | Providential escape of Ruby and Neil McLeod, children of Angus McLeod of this town. Little Neil McKay McLeod, a child of three years of age, was carried under a covered raceway, upwards of one hundred yards, the whole distance being either covered o'er with roadway, buildings or ice.
A wondrous tale we now do trace
Of little children fell in race,
The youngest of these little dears,
The boy's age is but three years.
While coasting o'er the treacherous ice,
These precious pearls of great price,
The elder Ruby, the daughter,
Was rescued from the ice cold water.
But horrid death each one did feel,
Had sure befallen little Neil,
Consternation all did fill,
And they cried shut down the mill.
But still no person they could tell
What had the poor child befel,
The covered race, so long and dark,
Of hopes there scarcely seemed a spark.
Was he held fast as if in vice,
Wedged 'mong the timbers and the ice,
Or was there for him ample room
For to float down the narrow flume.
Had he found there a watery grave,
Or borne along on crest of wave,
Think of the mother's agony wild,
Gazing through dark tunnel for her child.
But soon as Partlo started mill,
Through crowd there ran a joyous thrill,
When he was quickly borne along,
The little hero of our song.
Alas! of life there is no trace,
And he is black all over face,
Though he then seemed as if in death,
Yet quickly they restored his breath.
Think now how mother[H] she adored
Her sweet dear child to her restored,
And her boundless gratitude
Unto the author of all good.
[H] Mrs. Mary McKay McLeod, the author of some fine poems on Scottish and Canadian subjects.
|
A Warnin. | John Hartley | A'a dear, what it is to be big!
To be big i' one's own estimation,
To think if we shake a lawse leg,
'At th' world feels a tremblin sensation.
To fancy 'at th' nook 'at we fill,
Wod be empty if we worn't in it,
'At th' universe wheels wod stand still,
If we should neglect things a minnit.
To be able to tell all we meet,
Just what they should do or leeav undone;
To be crammed full o' wisdom an wit,
Like a college professor throo Lundun.
To show statesmen ther faults an mistaks, -
To show whear philosifers blunder;
To prove parsons an doctors all quacks,
An strike men o' science wi' wonder.
But aw've nooaticed, theas varry big men,
'At strut along th' streets like a bantam,
Nivver do mich 'at meeans owt thersen,
For they're seldom at hand when yo want 'em.
At ther hooam, if yo chonce to call in,
Yo may find 'em booath humble an civil,
Wol th' wife tries to draand th' childer's din,
Bi yellin an raisin the devil.
A'a dear, what it is to be big!
But a chap 'at's a fooil needn't show it,
For th' rest o'th' world cares net a fig,
An a thaasand to one doesn't know it.
Consait, aw have often heeard say,
Is war for a chap nor consumption,
An aw'll back a plain chap onny day,
To succeed, if he's nobbut some gumpshun.
My advice to young fowk is to try
To grow honestly better an wiser;
An yo'll find yor reward by-an-by, -
True merit's its own advertiser.
False colors yo'll seldom find fast,
An a mak-believe is but a bubble,
It's sure to get brussen at last,
An contempt's all yo'll get for yor trouble. |
The Woodman And The Nightingale. | Percy Bysshe Shelley | A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune
(I think such hearts yet never came to good)
Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,
One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody; -
And as a vale is watered by a flood,
Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness - as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie
Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,
The singing of that happy nightingale
In this sweet forest, from the golden close
Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale
Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness
Of the circumfluous waters, - every sphere
And every flower and beam and cloud and wave,
And every wind of the mute atmosphere,
And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,
And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,
And every silver moth fresh from the grave
Which is its cradle - ever from below
Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,
To be consumed within the purest glow
Of one serene and unapproached star,
As if it were a lamp of earthly light,
Unconscious, as some human lovers are,
Itself how low, how high beyond all height
The heaven where it would perish! - and every form
That worshipped in the temple of the night
Was awed into delight, and by the charm
Girt as with an interminable zone,
Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm
Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion
Out of their dreams; harmony became love
In every soul but one.
...
And so this man returned with axe and saw
At evening close from killing the tall treen,
The soul of whom by Nature's gentle law
Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green
The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,
Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene
With jagged leaves, - and from the forest tops
Singing the winds to sleep - or weeping oft
Fast showers of aereal water-drops
Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft,
Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness; -
Around the cradles of the birds aloft
They spread themselves into the loveliness
Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers
Hang like moist clouds: - or, where high branches kiss,
Make a green space among the silent bowers,
Like a vast fane in a metropolis,
Surrounded by the columns and the towers
All overwrought with branch-like traceries
In which there is religion - and the mute
Persuasion of unkindled melodies,
Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute
Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast
Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,
Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed
To such brief unison as on the brain
One tone, which never can recur, has cast,
One accent never to return again.
...
The world is full of Woodmen who expel
Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,
And vex the nightingales in every dell.
NOTE:
_8 - or as a tuberose cj. A.C. Bradley. |
Euonymos - Sonnets | Algernon Charles Swinburne | A year ago red wrath and keen despair
Spake, and the sole word from their darkness sent
Laid low the lord not all omnipotent
Who stood most like a god of all that were
As gods for pride of power, till fire and air
Made earth of all his godhead. Lightning rent
The heart of empire's lurid firmament,
And laid the mortal core of manhood bare.
But when the calm crowned head that all revere
For valour higher than that which casts out fear,
Since fear came near it never, comes near death,
Blind murder cowers before it, knowing that here
No braver soul drew bright and queenly breath
Since England wept upon Elizabeth. |
The Schoolboy, The Pedant, And The Owner Of A Garden (Prose Fable) | Jean de La Fontaine | A youngster, who was doubly foolish and doubly a rogue - in which perhaps he savoured of the school he went to - was given, they say, to robbing a neighbour's garden of its fruit and flowers. This may have been because he was too young to know better, and perhaps because teachers do not always mould the minds of young people in the right way.
The owner of the garden boasted in each season the very best of what was due. In spring he could show the most delightful blossoms and in autumn the very pick of all the apples.
One day he espied this schoolboy carelessly climbing a fruit tree and knocking off the buds, those sweet and fragile forerunners of promised fruit in abundance. The urchin even broke off a bough, and did so much other damage that the owner sent a message of complaint to the boy's schoolmaster. This worthy soon appeared, and behind him a tribe of the scholars, who swarmed into the orchard and began behaving worse than the first one. The schoolmaster's plan in thus aggravating the injury was really to make an opportunity for delivering them all a good lesson, which they should remember all their lives. He quoted Virgil and Cicero; he made many scientific allusions and ran his discourse to such a length that the little wretches were able to get all over the garden and despoil it in a hundred places.
I hate pompous and pedantic speeches that are out of place and never-ending; and I do not know a worse fool in the world than a naughty schoolboy - unless indeed it be the schoolmaster of such a boy. The better of them would never suit me as a neighbour.
|
To One In Success | Michael Earls | |
A Library In A Garden | Richard Le Gallienne | 'A Library in a garden! The phrase seems to contain the whole felicity of man.' - Mr. EDMUND GOSSE in Gossip in a Library.
A world of books amid a world of green,
Sweet song without, sweet song again within
Flowers in the garden, in the folios too:
O happy Bookman, let me live with you! |
A Word for the Nation | Algernon Charles Swinburne | I.
A word across the water
Against our ears is borne,
Of threatenings and of slaughter,
Of rage and spite and scorn:
We have not, alack, an ally to befriend us,
And the season is ripe to extirpate and end us:
Let the German touch hands with the Gaul,
And the fortress of England must fall;
And the sea shall be swept of her seamen,
And the waters they ruled be their graves,
And Dutchmen and Frenchmen be free men,
And Englishmen slaves.
II.
Our time once more is over,
Once more our end is near:
A bull without a drover,
The Briton reels to rear,
And the van of the nations is held by his betters,
And the seas of the world shall be loosed from his fetters,
And his glory shall pass as a breath,
And the life that is in him be death;
And the sepulchre sealed on his glory
For a sign to the nations shall be
As of Tyre and of Carthage in story,
Once lords of the sea.
III.
The lips are wise and loyal,
The hearts are brave and true,
Imperial thoughts and royal
Make strong the clamorous crew,
Whence louder and prouder the noise of defiance
Rings rage from the grave of a trustless alliance,
And bids us beware and be warned,
As abhorred of all nations and scorned,
As a swordless and spiritless nation,
A wreck on the waste of the waves.
So foams the released indignation
Of masterless slaves.
IV.
Brute throats that miss the collar,
Bowed backs that ask the whip,
Stretched hands that lack the dollar,
And many a lie-seared lip,
Forefeel and foreshow for us signs as funereal
As the signs that were regal of yore and imperial;
We shall pass as the princes they served,
We shall reap what our fathers deserved,
And the place that was England's be taken
By one that is worthier than she,
And the yoke of her empire be shaken
Like spray from the sea.
V.
French hounds, whose necks are aching
Still from the chain they crave,
In dog-day madness breaking
The dog-leash, thus may rave:
But the seas that for ages have fostered and fenced her
Laugh, echoing the yell of their kennel against her
And their moan if destruction draw near them
And the roar of her laughter to hear them;
For she knows that if Englishmen be men
Their England has all that she craves;
All love and all honour from free men,
All hatred from slaves.
VI.
All love that rests upon her
Like sunshine and sweet air,
All light of perfect honour
And praise that ends in prayer,
She wins not more surely, she wears not more proudly,
Than the token of tribute that clatters thus loudly,
The tribute of foes when they meet
That rattles and rings at her feet,
The tribute of rage and of rancour,
The tribute of slaves to the free,
To the people whose hope hath its anchor
Made fast in the sea.
VII.
No fool that bows the back he
Feels fit for scourge or brand,
No scurril scribes that lackey
The lords of Lackeyland,
No penman that yearns, as he turns on his pallet,
For the place or the pence of a peer or a valet,
No whelp of as currish a pack
As the litter whose yelp it gives back,
Though he answer the cry of his brother
As echoes might answer from caves,
Shall be witness as though for a mother
Whose children were slaves.
VIII.
But those found fit to love her,
Whose love has root in faith,
Who hear, though darkness cover
Time's face, what memory saith,
Who seek not the service of great men or small men
But the weal that is common for comfort of all men,
Those yet that in trust have beholden
Truth's dawn over England grow golden
And quicken the darkness that stagnates
And scatter the shadows that flee,
Shall reply for her meanest as magnates
And masters by sea.
IX.
And all shall mark her station,
Her message all shall hear,
When, equal-eyed, the nation
Bids all her sons draw near,
And freedom be more than tradition or faction,
And thought be no swifter to serve her than action,
And justice alone be above her,
That love may be prouder to love her,
And time on the crest of her story
Inscribe, as remembrance engraves,
The sign that subdues with its glory
Kings, princes, and slaves. |