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We Are Seven | William Wordsworth | A simple child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
I met a little cottage girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.
She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad;
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
'Her beauty made me glad.
"Sisters and brothers, little maid,
How many may you be?"
"How many? Seven in all," she said,
And wondering looked at me.
"And where are they? I pray you tell."
She answered, "Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.
"Two of us in the churchyard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And in the churchyard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother."
"You say that two at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea,
Yet ye are seven! I pray you tell,
Sweet maid, how this may be."
Then did the little maid reply,
"Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the churchyard lie,
Beneath the churchyard tree."
"You run about, my little maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the churchyard laid,
Then ye are only five."
"Their graves are green, they may be seen,"
The little maid replied,
"Twelve steps or more from my mother's door,
And they are side by side.
"My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit,
And sing a song to them.
"And often after sunset, sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.
"The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.
"So in the churchyard she was laid;
And, when the grass was dry,
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I.
"And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go,
And he lies by her side."
"How many are you, then," said I,
"If they two are in heaven?"
Quick was the little maid's reply,
"O master! we are seven."
"But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
'T was throwing words away; for still
The little maid would have her will,
And say, "Nay, we are seven!" |
The Troll's Nosegay | Robert von Ranke Graves | A simple nosegay! was that much to ask?
(Winter still gloomed, with scarce a bud yet showing).
He loved her ill, if he resigned the task.
'Somewhere,' she cried, 'there must be blossom blowing.'
It seems my lady wept and the troll swore
By Heaven he hated tears: he'd cure her spleen;
Where she had begged one flower, he'd shower four-score,
A haystack bunch to amaze a China Queen.
Cold fog-drawn Lily, pale mist-magic Rose
He conjured, and in a glassy cauldron set
With elvish unsubstantial Mignonette
And such vague bloom as wandering dreams enclose.
But she?
Awed,
Charmed to tears,
Distracted,
Yet,
Even yet, perhaps, a trifle piqued, who knows?
|
The Glen of Arrawatta | Henry Kendall | A sky of wind! And while these fitful gusts
Are beating round the windows in the cold,
With sullen sobs of rain, behold I shape
A settler's story of the wild old times:
One told by camp-fires when the station drays
Were housed and hidden, forty years ago;
While swarthy drivers smoked their pipes, and drew,
And crowded round the friendly gleaming flame
That lured the dingo, howling, from his caves,
And brought sharp sudden feet about the brakes.
A tale of Love and Death. And shall I say
A tale of love in death for all the patient eyes
That gathered darkness, watching for a son
And brother, never dreaming of the fate
The fearful fate he met alone, unknown,
Within the ruthless Australasian wastes?
For in a far-off, sultry summer, rimmed
With thundercloud and red with forest fires,
All day, by ways uncouth and ledges rude,
The wild men held upon a stranger's trail,
Which ran against the rivers and athwart
The gorges of the deep blue western hills.
And when a cloudy sunset, like the flame
In windy evenings on the Plains of Thirst
Beyond the dead banks of the far Barcoo,
Lay heavy down the topmost peaks, they came,
With pent-in breath and stealthy steps, and crouched,
Like snakes, amongst the grasses, till the night
Had covered face from face, and thrown the gloom
Of many shadows on the front of things.
There, in the shelter of a nameless glen,
Fenced round by cedars and the tangled growths
Of blackwood, stained with brown and shot with grey,
The jaded white man built his fire, and turned
His horse adrift amongst the water-pools
That trickled underneath the yellow leaves
And made a pleasant murmur, like the brooks
Of England through the sweet autumnal noons.
Then, after he had slaked his thirst and used
The forest fare, for which a healthful day
Of mountain life had brought a zest, he took
His axe, and shaped with boughs and wattle-forks
A wurley, fashioned like a bushman's roof:
The door brought out athwart the strenuous flame
The back thatched in against a rising wind.
And while the sturdy hatchet filled the clifts
With sounds unknown, the immemorial haunts
Of echoes sent their lonely dwellers forth,
Who lived a life of wonder: flying round
And round the glen what time the kangaroo
Leapt from his lair and huddled with the bats
Far scattering down the wildly startled fells.
Then came the doleful owl; and evermore
The bleak morass gave out the bittern's call,
The plover's cry, and many a fitful wail
Of chilly omen, falling on the ear
Like those cold flaws of wind that come and go
An hour before the break of day.
Anon
The stranger held from toil, and, settling down,
He drew rough solace from his well-filled pipe,
And smoked into the night, revolving there
The primal questions of a squatter's life;
For in the flats, a short day's journey past
His present camp, his station yards were kept,
With many a lodge and paddock jutting forth
Across the heart of unnamed prairie-lands,
Now loud with bleating and the cattle bells,
And misty with the hut-fire's daily smoke.
Wide spreading flats, and western spurs of hills
That dipped to plains of dim perpetual blue;
Bold summits set against the thunder heaps;
And slopes behacked and crushed by battling kine,
Where now the furious tumult of their feet
Gives back the dust, and up from glen and brake
Evokes fierce clamour, and becomes indeed
A token of the squatter's daring life,
Which, growing inland growing year by year
Doth set us thinking in these latter days,
And makes one ponder of the lonely lands
Beyond the lonely tracks of Burke and Wills,
Where, when the wandering Stuart fixed his camps
In central wastes, afar from any home
Or haunt of man, and in the changeless midst
Of sullen deserts and the footless miles
Of sultry silence, all the ways about
Grew strangely vocal, and a marvellous noise
Became the wonder of the waxing glooms.
Now, after darkness, like a mighty spell
Amongst the hills and dim, dispeopled dells,
Had brought a stillness to the soul of things,
It came to pass that, from the secret depths
Of dripping gorges, many a runnel-voice
Came, mellowed with the silence, and remained
About the caves, a sweet though alien sound;
Now rising ever, like a fervent flute
In moony evenings, when the theme is love;
Now falling, as ye hear the Sunday bells
While hastening fieldward from the gleaming town.
Then fell a softer mood, and memory paused
With faithful love, amidst the sainted shrines
Of youth and passion in the valleys past
Of dear delights which never grow again.
And if the stranger (who had left behind
Far anxious homesteads in a wave-swept isle,
To face a fierce sea-circle day by day,
And hear at night the dark Atlantic's moan)
Now took a hope and planned a swift return,
With wealth and health and with a youth unspent,
To those sweet ones that stayed with want at home,
Say who shall blame him though the years are long,
And life is hard, and waiting makes the heart grow old?
Thus passed the time, until the moon serene
Stood over high dominion like a dream
Of peace: within the white, transfigured woods;
And o'er the vast dew-dripping wilderness
Of slopes illumined with her silent fires.
Then, far beyond the home of pale red leaves
And silver sluices, and the shining stems
Of runnel blooms, the dreamy wanderer saw,
The wilder for the vision of the moon,
Stark desolations and a waste of plain,
All smit by flame and broken with the storms;
Black ghosts of trees, and sapless trunks that stood
Harsh hollow channels of the fiery noise,
Which ran from bole to bole a year before,
And grew with ruin, and was like, indeed,
The roar of mighty winds with wintering streams
That foam about the limits of the land
And mix their swiftness with the flying seas.
Now, when the man had turned his face about
To take his rest, behold the gem-like eyes
Of ambushed wild things stared from bole and brake
With dumb amaze and faint-recurring glance,
And fear anon that drove them down the brush;
While from his den the dingo, like a scout
In sheltered ways, crept out and cowered near
To sniff the tokens of the stranger's feast
And marvel at the shadows of the flame.
Thereafter grew the wind; and chafing depths
In distant waters sent a troubled cry
Across the slumb'rous forest; and the chill
Of coming rain was on the sleeper's brow,
When, flat as reptiles hutted in the scrub,
A deadly crescent crawled to where he lay
A band of fierce, fantastic savages
That, starting naked round the faded fire,
With sudden spears and swift terrific yells,
Came bounding wildly at the white man's head,
And faced him, staring like a dream of Hell!
Here let me pass! I would not stay to tell
Of hopeless struggles under crushing blows;
Of how the surging fiends, with thickening strokes,
Howled round the stranger till they drained his strength;
How Love and Life stood face to face with Hate
And Death; and then how Death was left alone
With Night and Silence in the sobbing rains.
So, after many moons, the searchers found
The body mouldering in the mouldering dell
Amidst the fungi and the bleaching leaves,
And buried it, and raised a stony mound
Which took the mosses. Then the place became
The haunt of fearful legends and the lair
Of bats and adders.
There he lies and sleeps
From year to year in soft Australian nights,
And through the furnaced noons, and in the times
Of wind and wet! Yet never mourner comes
To drop upon that grave the Christian's tear
Or pluck the foul, dank weeds of death away.
But while the English autumn filled her lap
With faded gold, and while the reapers cooled
Their flame-red faces in the clover grass,
They looked for him at home: and when the frost
Had made a silence in the mourning lanes
And cooped the farmers by December fires,
They looked for him at home: and through the days
Which brought about the million-coloured Spring,
With moon-like splendours, in the garden plots,
They looked for him at home: while Summer danced,
A shining singer, through the tasselled corn,
They looked for him at home. From sun to sun
They waited. Season after season went,
And Memory wept upon the lonely moors,
And hope grew voiceless, and the watchers passed,
Like shadows, one by one away.
And he
Whose fate was hidden under forest leaves
And in the darkness of untrodden dells
Became a marvel. Often by the hearths
In winter nights, and when the wind was wild
Outside the casements, children heard the tale
Of how he left their native vales behind
(Where he had been a child himself) to shape
New fortunes for his father's fallen house;
Of how he struggled how his name became,
By fine devotion and unselfish zeal,
A name of beauty in a selfish land;
And then of how the aching hours went by,
With patient listeners praying for the step
Which never crossed the floor again. So passed
The tale to children; but the bitter end
Remained a wonder, like the unknown grave,
Alone with God and Silence in the hills. |
A Sickness Of This World It Most Occasions | Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | A sickness of this world it most occasions
When best men die;
A wishfulness their far condition
To occupy.
A chief indifference, as foreign
A world must be
Themselves forsake contented,
For Deity. |
In Memory of Very Rev. J. B. Etienne | Abram Joseph Ryan | Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity.
A shadow slept folded in vestments,
The dream of a smile on its face,
Dim, soft as the gleam after sunset
That hangs like a halo of grace
Where the daylight hath died in the valley,
And the twilight hath taken its place.
A shadow! but still on the mortal
There rested the tremulous trace
Of the joy of a spirit immortal,
Passed up to its God in His grace.
A shadow! hast seen in the summer
A cloud wear the smile of the sun?
On the shadow of death there is flashing
The glory of noble deeds done;
On the face of the dead there is glowing
The light of a holy race run;
And the smile of the face is reflecting
The gleam of the crown he has won.
Still, shadow! sleep on in the vestments
Unstained by the priest who has gone.
And thro' all the nations the children
Of Vincent de Paul wail his loss;
But the glory that crowns him in heaven
Illumines the gloom of their cross.
They send to the shadow the tribute
Of tears, from the fountains of love,
And they send from their altars sweet prayers
To the throne of their Father above.
Yea! sorrow weeps over the shadow,
But faith looks aloft to the skies;
And hope, like a rainbow, is flashing
O'er the tears that rain down from their eyes.
They murmur on earth "De Profundis",
The low chant is mingled with sighs;
"Laudate" rings out through the heavens --
The dead priest hath won his faith's prize.
His children in sorrow will honor
His grave; every tear is a gem,
And their prayers round his brow in the heavens
Will brighten his fair diadem.
I kneel at his grave and remember,
In love, I am ~still~ one of them. |
The Shepherd And The Sea. | Jean de La Fontaine | [1]
A shepherd, neighbour to the sea,
Lived with his flock contentedly.
His fortune, though but small,
Was safe within his call.
At last some stranded kegs of gold
Him tempted, and his flock he sold,
Turn'd merchant, and the ocean's waves
Bore all his treasure - to its caves.
Brought back to keeping sheep once more,
But not chief shepherd, as before,
When sheep were his that grazed the shore,
He who, as Corydon or Thyrsis,
Might once have shone in pastoral verses,
Bedeck'd with rhyme and metre,
Was nothing now but Peter.
But time and toil redeem'd in full
Those harmless creatures rich in wool;
And as the lulling winds, one day,
The vessels wafted with a gentle motion,
'Want you,' he cried, 'more money, Madam Ocean?
Address yourself to some one else, I pray;
You shall not get it out of me!
I know too well your treachery.'
This tale's no fiction, but a fact,
Which, by experience back'd,
Proves that a single penny,
At present held, and certain,
Is worth five times as many,
Of Hope's, beyond the curtain;
That one should be content with his condition,
And shut his ears to counsels of ambition,
More faithless than the wreck-strown sea, and which
Doth thousands beggar where it makes one rich, -
Inspires the hope of wealth, in glorious forms,
And blasts the same with piracy and storms. |
Meditations Divine And Moral | Anne Bradstreet | A ship that bears much sail, and little ballast, is easily overset; and that man, whose head hath great abilities, and his heart little or no grace, is in danger of foundering.
The finest bread has the least bran; the purest honey, the least wax; and the sincerest Christian, the least self-love.
Sweet words are like honey; a little may refresh, but too much gluts the stomach.
Divers children have their different natures: some are like flesh which nothing but salt will keep from putrefaction; some again like tender fruits that are best preserved with sugar. Those parents are wise that can fit their nurture according to their nature.
Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.
The reason why Christians are so loath to exchange this world for a better, is because they have more sense than faith: they see what they enjoy, they do but hope for that which is to come.
Dim eyes are the concomitants of old age; and short- sightedness, in those that are the eyes of a Republic, foretells a declining State.
Wickedness comes to its height by degrees. He that dares say of a less sin, Is it not a little one? will erelong say of a greater, Tush, God regards it not.
Fire hath its force abated by water, not by wind; and anger must be allayed by cold words and not by blustering threats.
The gifts that God bestows on the sons of men, are not only abused, but most commonly employed for a clean contrary end than that which they were given for; as health, wealth, and honor, which might be so many steps to draw men to God in consideration of his bounty towards them, but have driven them the further from him, that they are ready to say, We are lords, we will come no more at thee.
If outward blessings be not as wings to help us mount upwards, they will certainly prove clogs and weights that will pull us lower downward.
|
A Woman's Love. | John Milton Hay | A sentinel angel sitting high in glory
Heard this shrill wail ring out from Purgatory:
"Have mercy, mighty angel, hear my story!
"I loved, - and, blind with passionate love, I fell.
Love brought me down to death, and death to Hell.
For God is just, and death for sin is well.
"I do not rage against His high decree,
Nor for myself do ask that grace shall be;
But for my love on earth who mourns for me.
"Great Spirit! let me see my love again
And comfort him one hour, and I were fain
To pay a thousand years of fire and pain."
Then said the pitying angel, "Nay, repent
That wild vow! Look, the dial-finger's bent
Down to the last hour of thy punishment!"
But still she wailed, "I pray thee, let me go!
I cannot rise to peace and leave him so.
Oh, let me soothe him in his bitter woe!"
The brazen gates ground sullenly ajar,
And upward, joyous, like a rising star,
She rose and vanished in the ether far.
But soon adown the dying sunset sailing,
And like a wounded bird her pinions trailing,
She fluttered back, with broken-hearted wailing.
She sobbed, "I found him by the summer sea
Reclined, his head upon a maiden's knee, -
She curled his hair and kissed him. Woe is me!"
She wept, "Now let my punishment begin!
I have been fond and foolish. Let me in
To expiate my sorrow and my sin."
The angel answered, "Nay, sad soul, go higher!
To be deceived in your true heart's desire
Was bitterer than a thousand years of fire!" |
The Suicide. | Rose Hawthorne Lathrop | A shadowed form before the light,
A gleaming face against the night,
Clutched hands across a halo bright
Of blowing hair, - her fixed sight
Stares down where moving black, below,
The river's deathly waves in murmurous silence flow.
The moon falls fainting on the sky,
The dark woods bow their heads in sorrow,
The earth sends up a misty sigh:
A soul defies the morrow! |
The Furniture Of A Woman's Mind | Jonathan Swift | A set of phrases learn'd by rote;
A passion for a scarlet coat;
When at a play, to laugh or cry,
Yet cannot tell the reason why;
Never to hold her tongue a minute,
While all she prates has nothing in it;
Whole hours can with a coxcomb sit,
And take his nonsense all for wit;
Her learning mounts to read a song,
But half the words pronouncing wrong;
Has every repartee in store
She spoke ten thousand times before;
Can ready compliments supply
On all occasions cut and dry;
Such hatred to a parson's gown,
The sight would put her in a swoon;
For conversation well endued,
She calls it witty to be rude;
And, placing raillery in railing,
Will tell aloud your greatest failing;
Nor make a scruple to expose
Your bandy leg, or crooked nose;
Can at her morning tea run o'er
The scandal of the day before;
Improving hourly in her skill,
To cheat and wrangle at quadrille.
In choosing lace, a critic nice,
Knows to a groat the lowest price;
Can in her female clubs dispute,
What linen best the silk will suit,
What colours each complexion match,
And where with art to place a patch.
If chance a mouse creeps in her sight,
Can finely counterfeit a fright;
So sweetly screams, if it comes near her,
She ravishes all hearts to hear her.
Can dext'rously her husband teaze,
By taking fits whene'er she please;
By frequent practice learns the trick
At proper seasons to be sick;
Thinks nothing gives one airs so pretty,
At once creating love and pity;
If Molly happens to be careless,
And but neglects to warm her hair-lace,
She gets a cold as sure as death,
And vows she scarce can fetch her breath;
Admires how modest women can
Be so robustious like a man.
In party, furious to her power;
A bitter Whig, or Tory sour;
Her arguments directly tend
Against the side she would defend;
Will prove herself a Tory plain,
From principles the Whigs maintain;
And, to defend the Whiggish cause,
Her topics from the Tories draws.
O yes! if any man can find
More virtues in a woman's mind,
Let them be sent to Mrs. Harding;[1]
She'll pay the charges to a farthing;
Take notice, she has my commission
To add them in the next edition;
They may outsell a better thing:
So, holla, boys; God save the King! |
The Shadow | Madison Julius Cawein | A shadow glided down the way
Where sunset groped among the trees,
And all the woodland bower, asway
With trouble of the evening breeze.
A shape, it moved with head held down;
I knew it not, yet seemed to know
Its form, its carriage of a clown,
Its raiment of the long-ago.
It never turned or spoke a word,
But fixed its gaze on something far,
As if within its heart it heard
The summons of the evening star.
I turned to it and tried to speak;
To ask it of the thing it saw,
Or heard, beyond Earth's outmost peak
The dream, the splendor, and the awe.
What beauty or what terror there
Still bade its purpose to ascend
Above the sunset's sombre glare,
The twilight and the long day's end.
It looked at me but said no word:
Then suddenly I saw the truth:
This was the call that once I heard
And failed to follow in my youth.
Now well I saw that this was I
My own dead self who walked with me,
Who died in that dark hour gone by
With all the dreams that used to be. |
Singer And Song. | Freeman Edwin Miller | A singer sang in sorrow long
And breathed his life into his song.
Unknown, unheard, the song went wide,
Until the singer, starving, died.
Now in their hearts the nations write
And wear the singer's song of might.
Ah, singers fail and fall from view,
But songs are always, always new!
If garlands none to singers cling,
Bays wreathe above the songs they sing. |
Fragment Of A Ghost Story. | Percy Bysshe Shelley | A shovel of his ashes took
From the hearth's obscurest nook,
Muttering mysteries as she went.
Helen and Henry knew that Granny
Was as much afraid of Ghosts as any,
And so they followed hard -
But Helen clung to her brother's arm,
And her own spasm made her shake. |
The Runes Of Weland's Sword | Rudyard Kipling | A smith makes me
To betray my Man
In my first fight.
To gather Gold
At the world's end
I am sent.
The Gold I gather
Comes into England
Out of deep Water.
Like a shining Fish
Then it descends
Into deep Water.
It is not given
For goods or gear,
But for The Thing.
The Gold I gather
A King covets
For an ill use
The Gold I gather
Is drawn up
Out of deep Water.
Like a shining Fish
Then it descends
Into deep Water.
It is not given
For goods or gear,
But for The Thing. |
Smokestack | Paul Cameron Brown | A small fish,
its colors
embers
amid the swirling water;
reminiscent of a
caf' in darkness -
the smokestack tablecloth fluttering
in the matchbox breeze. |
Stonewall Jackson's Grave.[A] | Margaret J. Preston | A simple, sodded mound of earth,
Without a line above it;
With only daily votive flowers
To prove that any love it:
The token flag that silently
Each breeze's visit numbers,
Alone keeps martial ward above
The hero's dreamless slumbers.
No name? - no record? Ask the world;
The world has read his story -
If all its annals can unfold
A prouder tale of glory: -
If ever merely human life
Hath taught diviner moral, -
If ever round a worthier brow
Was twined a purer laurel!
A twelvemonth only, since his sword
Went flashing through the battle -
A twelvemonth only, since his ear
Heard war's last deadly rattle -
And yet, have countless pilgrim-feet
The pilgrim's guerdon paid him,
And weeping women come to see
The place where they have laid him.
Contending armies bring, in turn,
Their meed of praise or honor,
And Pallas here has paused to bind
The cypress wreath upon her:
It seems a holy sepulchre,
Whose sanctities can waken
Alike the love of friend or foe, -
Of Christian or of pagan.
THEY come to own his high emprise,
Who fled in frantic masses,
Before the glittering bayonet
That triumphed at Manassas:
Who witnessed Kernstown's fearful odds,
As on their ranks he thundered,
Defiant as the storied Greek,
Amid his brave three hundred!
They well recall the tiger spring,
The wise retreat, the rally,
The tireless march, the fierce pursuit,
Through many a mountain valley:
Cross Keys unlock new paths to fame,
And Port Republic's story
Wrests from his ever-vanquish'd foes,
Strange tributes to his glory.
Cold Harbor rises to their view, -
The Cedars' gloom is o'er them;
Antietam's rough and rugged heights,
Stretch mockingly before them:
The lurid flames of Fredericksburg
Right grimly they remember,
That lit the frozen night's retreat,
That wintry-wild December!
The largess of their praise is flung
With bounty, rare and regal;
- Is it because the vulture fears
No longer the dead eagle?
Nay, rather far accept it thus, -
An homage true and tender,
As soldier unto soldier's worth, -
As brave to brave will render,
But who shall weigh the wordless grief
That leaves in tears its traces,
As round their leader crowd again,
The bronzed and veteran faces!
The "Old Brigade" he loved so well -
The mountain men, who bound him
With bays of their own winning, ere
A tardier fame had crowned him;
The legions who had seen his glance
Across the carnage flashing,
And thrilled to catch his ringing "charge"
Above the volley crashing; -
Who oft had watched the lifted hand,
The inward trust betraying,
And felt their courage grow sublime,
While they beheld him praying!
Good knights and true as ever drew
Their swords with knightly Roland;
Or died at Sobieski's side,
For love of martyr'd Poland;
Or knelt with Cromwell's Ironsides;
Or sang with brave Gustavus;
Or on the plain of Austerlitz,
Breathed out their dying AVES!
Rare fame! rare name! - If chanted praise,
With all the world to listen, -
If pride that swells a nation's soul, -
If foemen's tears that glisten, -
If pilgrims' shrining love, - if grief
Which nought may soothe or sever, -
If THESE can consecrate, - this spot
Is sacred ground forever! |
A Smile And A Sigh | Christina Georgina Rossetti | (Macmillan's Magazine, May 1868.)
A smile because the nights are short!
And every morning brings such pleasure
Of sweet love-making, harmless sport:
Love, that makes and finds its treasure;
Love, treasure without measure.
A sigh because the days are long!
Long long these days that pass in sighing,
A burden saddens every song:
While time lags who should be flying,
We live who would be dying. |
Banwell Hill; A Lay Of The Severn Sea. Part Second | William Lisle Bowles | PART SECOND.
REFLECTIONS ON THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS STATE OF PARISHES, PAST AND PRESENT.
A shower, even while we gaze, steals o'er the scene,
Shrouding it, and the sea-view is shout out,
Save where, beyond the holms, one thread of light
Hangs, and a pale and sunny stream shoots on,
O'er the dim vapours, faint and far away,
Like Hope's still light beyond the storms of Time.
Come, let us rest a while in this rude seat!
I was a child when first I heard the sound
Of the great sea. 'Twas night, and journeying far,
We were belated on our road, 'mid scenes 10
New and unknown, - a mother and her child,
Now first in this wide world a wanderer: -
My father came, the pastor of the church[16]
That crowns the high hill crest, above the sea;
When, as the wheels went slow, and the still night
Seemed listening, a low murmur met the ear,
Not of the winds: - my mother softly said,
Listen! it is the sea! With breathless awe,
I heard the sound, and closer pressed her hand.
Much of the sea, in infant wonderment, 20
I oft had heard, and of the shipwrecked man,
Who sees, on some lone isle, day after day,
The sun sink o'er the solitude of waves,
Like Crusoe; and the tears would start afresh,
Whene'er my mother kissed my cheek, and told
The story of that desolate wild man, 26
And how the speaking bird, when he returned
After long absence to his cave forlorn,
Said, as in tones of human sympathy,
Poor Robin Crusoe!
Thoughts like these arose,
When first I heard, at night, the distant sound,
Great Ocean, "of thy everlasting voice!"[17]
Where the white parsonage, among the trees,
Peeped out, that night I restless passed. The sea
Filled all my thoughts; and when slow morning came,
And the first sunbeam streaked the window-pane,
I rose unnoticed, and with stealthy pace,
Straggling along the village green, explored
Alone my fearful but adventurous way; 40
When, having turned the hedgerow, I beheld,
For the first time, thy glorious element,
Old Ocean, glittering in the beams of morn,
Stretching far off, and, westward, without bound,
Amid thy sole dominion, rocking loud!
Shivering I stood, and tearful; and even now,
When gathering years have marked my look, - even now
I feel the deep impression of that hour,
As but of yesterday!
Spirit of Time, 50
A moment pause, and I will speak to thee!
Dark clouds are round thee; but, lo! Memory waves
Her wand, - the clouds disperse, as the gray rack
Disperses while we gaze, and light steals out,
While the gaunt phantom almost seems to drop
His scythe! Now shadows of the past, distinct,
Are thronging round; the voices of the dead
Are heard; and, lo! the very smoke goes up -
For so it seems - from yonder tenement, 60
Where leads the slender pathway to the door.
Enter that small blue parlour: there sits one,
A female, and a child is in her arms;
A child leans at her side, intent to show
A pictured book, and looks upon her face;
One, from the green, comes with a cowslip ball;[18]
And one,[19] a hero, sits sublime and horsed,
Upon a rocking-steed, from Banwell-fair;
This,[20] drives his tiny wheel-barrow, without,
On the green garden-sward; whilst one,[21] apart,
Sighs o'er his solemn task - the spelling-book - 70
Half moody, half in tears. Some lines of thought
Are on that matron's brow; yet placidness,
Such as resigned religion gives, is there,
Mingled with sadness; for who e'er beheld,
Without one stealing sigh, a progeny
Of infants clustering round maternal knees,
Nor felt some boding fears, how they might fare
In the wide world, when they who loved them most
Were silent in their graves!
Nay! pass not on, 80
Till thou hast marked a book - the leaf turned down -
Night Thoughts on Death and Immortality!
This book, my mother! in the weary hours
Of life, in every care, in every joy,
Was thy companion: next to God's own Word,
The book that bears this name,[22] thou didst revere,
Leaving a stain of tears upon the page,
Whose lessons, with a more emphatic truth,
Touched thine own heart!
That heart has long been still! 90
But who is he, of aspect more severe,
Yet with a manly kindness in his mien,
He, who o'erlooks yon sturdy labourer
Delving the glebe! My father as he lived!
That father, and that mother, "earth to earth,
And dust to dust," the inevitable doom
Hath long consigned! And where is he, the son,
Whose future fate they pondered with a sigh?
Long, nor unprosperous, has been his way
Through life's tumultuous scenes, who, when a child, 100
Played in that garden platform in the sun;
Or loitered o'er the common, and pursued
The colts among the sand-hills; or, intent
On hardier enterprise, his pumpkin-ship,
New-rigged, and buoyant, with its tiny sail,
Launched on the garden pond; or stretched his hand,
At once forgetting all this glorious toil,
When the bright butterfly came wandering by.
But never will that day pass from his mind,
When, scarcely breathing for delight, at Wells, 110
He saw the horsemen of the clock[23] ride round,
As if for life; and ancient Blandifer,[24]
Seated aloft, like Hermes, in his chair
Complacent as when first he took his seat,
Some hundred years ago; saw him lift up,
As if old Time was cowering at his feet,
Solemn lift up his mace, and strike the bell,
Himself for ever silent in his seat.
How little thought I then, the hour would come,
When the loved prelate of that beauteous fane, 120
At whose command I write, might placidly
Smile on this picture, in my future verse, 122
When Blandifer had struck so many hours
For me, his poet, in this vale of years,
Himself unchanged and solemn as of yore!
My father was the pastor, and the friend
Of all who, living then - the scene is closed -
Now silent in that rocky churchyard sleep,
The aged and the young! A village then
Was not as villages are now. The hind, 130
Who delved, or "jocund drove his team a-field,"
Had then an independence in his look
And heart; and, plodding on his lowly path,
Disdained a parish dole, content, though poor.
He was the village monitor: he taught
His children to be good, and read their book,
And in the gallery took his Sunday place, -
To-morrow, with the bee, to work.
So passed
His days of cheerful, independent toil; 140
And when the pastor came that way, at eve,
He had a ready present for the child
Who read his book the best; and that poor child
Remembered it, when, treading the same path
In which his father trod, he so grew up
Contented, till old Time had blanched his locks,
And he was borne - whilst the bell tolled - to sleep
In the same churchyard where his father slept!
His daughter walked content, and innocent
As lovely, in her lowly path. She turned 150
The hour-glass, while the humming wheel went round,
Or went "a-Maying" o'er the fields in spring,
Leading her little brother by the hand,
Along the village lane, and o'er the stile,
To gather cowslips; and then home again,
To turn her wheel, contented, through the day. 156
Or, singing low, bend where her brother slept,
Rocking the cradle, to "sweet William's grave!"[25]
No lure could tempt her from the woodbine shed,
Where she grew up, and folded first her hands 160
In infant prayer: yet oft a tear would steal
Down her young cheek, to think how desolate
That home would be when her poor mother died;
Still praying that she ne'er might cause a pain,
Undutiful, to "bring down her gray hairs
With sorrow to the grave!"
Now mark this scene!
The fuming factory's polluted air
Has stained the country! See that rural nymph,
An infant in her arms! She claims the dole 170
From the cold parish, which her faithless swain
Denies: he stands aloof, with clownish leer;
The constable behind - and mark his brow -
Beckons the nimble clerk; the justice, grave,
Turns from his book a moment, with a look
Of pity, signs the warrant for her pay,
A weekly eighteen pence; she, unabashed,
Slides from the room, and not a transient blush,
Far less the accusing tear, is on her cheek!
A different scene comes next: That village maid 180
Approaches timidly, yet beautiful;
A tear is on her lids, when she looks down
Upon her sleeping child. Her heart was won,
The wedding-day was fixed, the ring was bought!
'Tis the same story - Colin was untrue!
He ruined, and then left her to her fate.
Pity her, she has not a friend on earth,
And that still tear speaks to all human hearts
But his, whose cruelty and treachery 189
Caused it to flow! So crime still follows crime.
Ask we the cause? See, where those engines heave,
That spread their giant arms o'er all the land!
The wheel is silent in the vale! Old age
And youth are levelled by one parish law!
Ask why that maid, all day, toils in the field,
Associate with the rude and ribald clown,
Even in the shrinking April of her youth?
To earn her loaf, and eat it by herself.
Parental love is smitten to the dust;
Over a little smoke the aged sire 200
Holds his pale hands - and the deserted hearth
Is cheerless as his heart: but Piety
Points to the Bible! Shut the book again:
The ranter is the roving gospel now,
And each his own apostle! Shut the book:
A locust-swarm of tracts darken its light,
And choke its utterance; while a Babel-rout
Of mock-religionists, turn where we will,
Have drowned the small still voice, till Piety,
Sick of the din, retires to pray alone. 210
But though abused Religion, and the dole
Of pauper-pay, and vomitories huge
Of smoke, are each a steam-engine of crime,
Polluting, far and wide, the wholesome air,
And withering life's green verdure underneath,
Full many a poor and lowly flower of want
Has Education nursed, like a pure rill,
Winding through desert glens, and bade it live
To grace the cottage with its mantling sweets.
There was a village girl, I knew her well, 220
From five years old and upwards; all her friends
Were dead, and she was to the workhouse left,
And there a witness to such sounds profane 223
As might turn virtue pale! When Sunday came,
Assembled with the children of the poor,
Upon the lawn of my own parsonage,
She stood among them: they were taught to read
In companies and groups, upon the green,
Each with its little book; her lighted eyes
Shone beautiful where'er they turned; her form 230
Was graceful; but her book her sole delight![26]
Instructed thus she went a serving-maid
Into the neighbouring town, - ah! who shall guide
A friendless maid, so beautiful and young,
From life's contagions! But she had been taught
The duties of her humble lot, to pray
To God, and that one heavenly Father's eye
Was over rich and poor! On Sunday night,
She read her Bible, turning still away
From those who flocked, inflaming and inflamed, 240
To nightly meetings; but she never closed
Her eyes, or raised them to the light of morn,
Without a prayer to Him who "bade the sun
Go forth," a giant, from his eastern gate!
No art, no bribe, could lure her steps astray
From the plain path, and lessons she had learned,
A village child. She is a mother now,
And lives to prove the blessings and the fruits
Of moral duty, on the poorest child,
When duty, and when sober piety, 250
Impressing the young heart, go hand in hand.
No villager was then a disputant
In Calvinistic and contentious creeds;
No pale mechanic, from a neighbouring sink
Of steam and rank debauchery and smoke, 255
Crawled forth upon a Sunday morn, with looks
Saddening the very sunshine, to instruct
The parish poor in evangelic lore;
To teach them to cast off, "as filthy rags,"
Good works! and listen to such ministers, 260
Who all (be sure) "are worthy of their hire;"
Who only preach for good of their poor souls,
That they may turn "from darkness unto light,"
And, above all, fly, as the gates of hell,
Morality![27] and Baal's steeple house,
Where, without "heart-work," Doctor Littlegrace
Drones his dull requiem to the snoring clerk!"[28]
True; he who drawls his heartless homily
For one day's work, and plods, on wading stilts,
Through prosing paragraphs, with inference, 270
Methodically dull, as orthodox,
Enforcing sagely that we all must die
When God shall call - oh, what a pulpit drone
Is he! The blue fly might as well preach "Hum,"
And "so conclude!"
But save me from the sight
Of curate fop, half jockey and half clerk,
The tandem-driving Tommy of a town,
Disdaining books, omniscient of a horse,
Impatient till September comes again, 280
Eloquent only of "the pretty girl
With whom he danced last night!" Oh! such a thing
Is worse than the dull doctor, who performs
Duly his stinted task, and then to sleep,
Till Sunday asks another homily
Against all innovations of the age,
Mad missionary zeal, and Bible clubs, 287
And Calvinists and Evangelicals!
Yes! Evangelicals! Oh, glorious word!
But who deserves that awful name? Not he
Who spits his puny Puritanic spite
On harmless recreation; who reviles
All who, majestic in their distant scorn,
Bear on in silence their calm Christian course.
He only is the Evangelical
Who holds in equal scorn dogmas and dreams,
The Shibboleth of saintly magazines,
Decked with most grim and godly visages;
The cobweb sophistry, or the dark code
Of commentators, who, with loathsome track, 300
Crawl o'er a text, or on the lucid page,
Beaming with heavenly love and God's own light,
Sit like a nightmare![29] Soon a deadly mist
Creeps o'er our eyes and heart, till angel forms
Turn into hideous phantoms, mocking us,
Even when we look for comfort at the spring
And well of life, while dismal voices cry,
Death! Reprobation! Woe! Eternal woe!
He only is the Evangelical
Who from the human commentary turns 310
With tranquil scorn, and nearer to his heart
Presses the Bible, till repentant tears,
In silence, wet his cheek, and new-born faith,
And hope, and charity, with radiant smile,
Visit his heart, - all pointing to the cross!
He only is the Evangelical, 316
Who, with eyes fixed upon that spectacle,
Christ and him crucified, with ardent hope,
And holier feelings, lifts his thoughts from earth,
And cries, My Father! Meantime, his whole heart 320
Is on God's Word: he preaches Faith, and Hope,
And Charity, - these three, and not that one!
And Charity, the greatest of these three![30]
Give me an Evangelical like this! But now
The blackest crimes in tract-religion's code
Are moral virtues! Spare the prodigal, -
He may awake when God shall "call;" but, hell,
Roll thy avenging flames, to swallow up
The son who never left his father's home
Lest he should trust to morals when he dies! 330
Let him not lay the unction to his soul,
That his upbraiding conscience tells no tale
At that dread hour; bid him confess his sin,
The greater that, with humble hope, he looks
Back on a well-spent life! Bid him confess
That he hath broken all God's holy laws, -
In vain hath he done justly, - loved, in vain,
Mercy, and hath walked humbly with his God!
These are mere works; but faith is everything,
And all in all! The Christian code contains 340
No "if" or "but!"[31] Let tabernacles ring,
And churches too,[32] with sanctimonious strains
Baneful as these; and let such strains be heard
Through half the land; and can we shut our eyes,
And, sadly wondering, ask the cause of crimes, 345
When infidelity stands lowering here,
With open scorn, and such a code as this,
So baneful, withers half the charities
Of human hearts! Oh! dear is Mercy's voice
To man, a mourner in the vale of sin 350
And death: how dear the still small voice of Faith,
That bids him raise his look beyond the clouds
That hang o'er this dim earth; but he who tears
Faith from her heavenly sisterhood, denies
The gospel, and turns traitor to the cause
He has engaged to plead. Come, Faith, and Hope,
And Charity! how dear to the sad heart,
The consolations and the glorious views
That animate the Christian in his course!
But save, oh! save me from the tract-led Miss, 360
Who trots to every Bethel club, and broods
O'er some black missionary's monstrous tale,
Reckless of want around her!
But the priest,
Who deems the Almighty frowns upon his throne,
Because two pair of harmless dowagers,
Whose life has passed without a stain, beguile
An evening hour with cards; who deems that hell
Burns fiercer for a saraband; that thou -
Thou, my sweet Shakspeare - thou, whose touch awakes
The inmost heart of virtuous sympathy, - 371
Thou, O divinest poet! at whose voice
Sad Pity weeps, or guilty Terror drops
The blood-stained dagger from his palsied hand, -
That thou art pander to the criminal!
He who thus edifies his Christian flock,
Moves, more than even the Bethel-trotting Miss,
My pity, my aversion, and my scorn.
Cry aloud! - Oh, speak in thunder to the soul 379
That sleeps in sin! Harrow the inmost heart
Of murderous intent, till dew-drops stand
Upon his haggard brow! Call conscience up,
Like a stern spectre, whose dim finger points
To dark misdeeds of yore! Wither the arm
Of the oppressor, at whose feet the slave
Crouches, and pleading lifts his fettered hands!
Thou violator of the innocent
Hide thee! Hence! hide thee in the deepest cave,
From man's indignant sight! Thou hypocrite!
Trample in dust thy mask, nor cry faith, faith, 390
Making it but a hollow tinkling sound,
That stirs not the foul heart! Horrible wretch!
Look not upon the face of that sweet child,
With thoughts which hell would tremble to conceive!
Oh, shallow, and oh, senseless! In a world
Where rank offences turn the good man pale,
Who leave the Christian's sternest code, to vent
Their petty ire on petty trespasses,
If trespasses they are; - when the wide world
Groans with the burthen of offence; when crimes 400
Stalk on, with front defying, o'er the land,
Whilst, her own cause betraying, Christian zeal
Thus swallows camels, straining at a gnat!
Therefore, without a comment, or a note,
We love the Bible; and we prize the more
The spirit of its pure unspotted page,
As pure from the infectious breath that stains,
Like a foul fume, its hallowed light, we hail
The radiant car of heaven, amidst the clouds
Of mortal darkness, and of human mist, 410
Sole, as the sun in heaven![33]
Oh! whilst the car 412
Of God's own glory rolls along in light,
We join the loud song of the Christian host,
(All puny systems shrinking from the blaze),
Hosannah to the car of light! Roll on!
Saldanna's[34] rocks have echoed to the hymns
Of Faith, and Hope, and Charity! Roll on!
Till the wild wastes of inmost Africa,
Where the long Niger's track is lost, respond, 420
Hosannah to the car of light! Roll on!
From realm to realm, from shore to farthest shore,
O'er dark pagodas, and huge idol-fanes,
That frown along the Ganges' utmost stream,
Till the poor widow, from the burning pile
Starting, shall lift her hands to heaven, and weep
That she has found a Saviour, and has heard
The sounds of Christian love! Oh, horrible!
The pile is smoking! - the bamboos lie there,
That held her down when the last struggle shook 430
The blazing pile![35] Hasten, O car of light!
Alas for suffering nature! Juggernaut,
Armed, in his giant car goes also forth,
Goes forth amid his red and reeling priests,
While thousands gasp and die beneath the wheels,
As they go groaning on, 'mid cries, and drums,
And flashing cymbals, and delirious songs
Of tinkling dancing girls, and all the rout
Of frantic superstition! Turn away!
And is not Juggernaut himself with us? 440
Not only cold insidious sophistry
Comes, blinking with its taper-fume, to light,
If so he may, the sun in the mid heaven!
Not only blind and hideous blasphemy
Scowls in his cloak, and mocks the glorious orb,
Ascending, in its silence, o'er a world
Of sin and sorrow; but a hellish brood
Of imps, and fiends, and phantoms, ape the form
Of godliness, till godliness itself
Seems but a painted monster, and a name 450
For darker crimes, at which the shuddering heart
Shrinks; while the ranting rout, as they march on,
Mock Heaven with hymns, till, see! pale Belial
Sighs o'er a filthy tract, and Moloch marks,
With gouts of blood, his brandished magazine!
Start, monster, from the dismal dream! Look up!
Oh! listen to the apostolic voice,
That, like a voice from heaven, proclaims, To faith
Add virtue! There is no mistaking here;
Whilst moral education by the hand 460
Shall lead the children to the house of God,
Nor sever Christian faith from Christian love.
If we would see the fruits of charity,
Look at that village group, and paint the scene!
Surrounded by a clear and silent stream,
Where the swift trout shoots from the sudden ray,
A rural mansion on the level lawn
Uplifts its ancient gables, whose slant shade
Is drawn, as with a line, from roof to porch,
Whilst all the rest is sunshine. O'er the trees 470
In front, the village church, with pinnacles
And light gray tower, appears; whilst to the right,
An amphitheatre of oaks extends
Its sweep, till, more abrupt, a wooded knoll, 474
Where once a castle frowned, closes the scene.
And see! an infant troop, with flags and drum,
Are marching o'er that bridge, beneath the woods,
On to the table spread upon the lawn,
Raising their little hands when grace is said;
Whilst she who taught them to lift up their hearts 480
In prayer, and to "remember, in their youth,"
God, "their Creator," mistress of the scene
(Whom I remember once as young), looks on,
Blessing them in the silence of her heart.
And we too bless them. Oh! away, away!
Cant, heartless cant, and that economy,
Cold, and miscalled "political," away!
Let the bells ring - a Puritan turns pale
To hear the festive sound: let the bells ring -
A Christian loves them; and this holiday 490
Remembers him, while sighs unbidden steal,
Of life's departing and departed days,
When he himself was young, and heard the bells,
In unison with feelings of his heart -
His first pure Christian feelings, hallowing
The harmonious sound!
And, children, now rejoice, -
Now, for the holidays of life are few;
Nor let the rustic minstrel tune, in vain,
The cracked church-viol, resonant to-day 500
Of mirth, though humble! Let the fiddle scrape
Its merriment, and let the joyous group
Dance in a round, for soon the ills of life
Will come! Enough, if one day in the year,
If one brief day, of this brief life, be given
To mirth as innocent as yours! But, lo!
That ancient woman, leaning on her staff! 507
Pale, on her crutch she rests one withered hand;
One withered hand, which Gerard Dow might paint,
Even its blue veins! And who is she? The nurse
Of the fair mistress of the scene: she led
Her tottering steps in infancy - she spelt
Her earliest lesson to her; and she now
Leans from that open window, while she thinks -
When summer comes again, the turf will lie
On my cold breast; but I rejoice to see
My child thus leading on the progeny
Of her poor neighbours in the peaceful path
Of humble virtue! I shall be at rest,
Perhaps, when next they meet; but my last prayer 520
Is with them, and the mistress of this home.
"The innocent are gay,"[36] gay as the lark
That sings in morn's first sunshine; and why not?
But may they ne'er forget, as life steals on,
In age, the lessons they have learned in youth!
How false the charge, how foul the calumny
On England's generous aristocracy,
That, wrapped in sordid, selfish apathy,
They feel not for the poor!
Ask, is it true? 530
Lord of the whirling wheels, the charge is false![37]
Ten thousand charities adorn the land,
Beyond thy cold conception, from this source.
What cottage child but has been neatly clad,
And taught its earliest lesson, from their care?
Witness that schoolhouse, mantled with festoon
Of various plants, which fancifully wreath 537
Its window-mullions, and that rustic porch,
Whence the low hum of infant voices blend
With airs of spring, without. Now, all alive,
The green sward rings with play, among the shrubs -
Hushed the long murmur of the morning task,
Before the pensive matron's desk!
But turn,
And mark that aged widow! By her side
Is God's own Word; and, lo! the spectacles
Are yet upon the page. Her daughter kneels
And prays beside her! Many years have shed
Their snow so silently and softly down
Upon her head, that Time, as if to gaze, 550
Seems for a moment to suspend his flight
Onward, in reverence to those few gray hairs,
That steal beneath her cap, white as its snow.
Whilst the expiring lamp is kept alive,
Thus feebly, by a duteous daughter's love,
Her last faint prayer, ere all is dark on earth,
Will to the God of heaven ascend, for those
Whose comforts smoothed her silent bed.
And thou,
Witness Elysian Tempe of Stourhead! 560
Oh, not because, with bland and gentle smile,
Adding a radiance to the look of age,
Like eve's still light, thy liberal master spreads
His lettered treasures; - not because his search
Has dived the Druid mound, illustrating
His country's annals, and the monuments
Of darkest ages; - not because his woods
Wave o'er the dripping cavern of Old Stour,
Where classic temples gleam along the edge
Of the clear waters, winding beautiful; - 570
Oh! not because the works of breathing art, 571
Of Poussin, Rubens, Rembrandt, Gainsborough,
Start, like creations, from the silent walls;
To thee, this tribute of respect and love,
Beloved, benevolent, and generous Hoare,
Grateful I pay; - but that, when thou art dead
(Late may it be!) the poor man's tear will fall,
And his voice falter, when he speaks of thee.[38]
And witness thou, magnificent abode,
Where virtuous Ken,[39] with his gray hairs and shroud, 580
Came, for a shelter from the world's rude storm,
In his old age, leaving his palace-throne,
Having no spot where he might lay his head,
In all the earth! Oh, witness thou, the seat
Of his first friend, his friend from schoolboy days!
Oh! witness thou, if one who wanted bread
Has not found shelter there; if one poor man
Has been deserted in his hour of need;
Or one poor child been left without a guide,
A father, an instructor, and a friend; 590
In him, the pastor, and distributor[40]
Of bounties large, yet falling silently
As dews on the cold turf! And witness thou,
Marston,[41] the seat of my kind, honoured friend -
My kind and honoured friend, from youthful days.
Then wandering on the banks of Rhine, we saw
Cities and spires, beneath the mountains blue,
Gleaming; or vineyards creep from rock to rock; 599
Or unknown castles hang, as if in clouds:
Or heard the roaring of the cataract,
Far off, beneath the dark defile or gloom
Of ancient forests; till behold, in light,
Foaming and flashing, with enormous sweep,
Through the rent rocks - where, o'er the mist of spray
The rainbow, like a fairy in her bower,
Is sleeping, while it roars - that volume vast,
White, and with thunder's deafening roar, comes down.
Live long, live happy, till thy journey close,
Calm as the light of day! Yet witness thou, 610
The seat of noble ancestry, the seat
Of science, honoured by the name of Boyle,
Though many sorrows, since we met in youth,
Have pressed thy generous master's manly heart,
Witness, the partner of his joys and griefs;
Witness the grateful tenantry, the home
Of the poor man, the children of that school -
Still warm benevolence sits smiling there.
And witness, the fair mansion, on the edge
Of those chalk hills, which, from my garden walk, 620
Daily I see, whose gentle mistress droops[42]
With her own griefs, yet never turns her look
From others' sorrows; on whose lids the tear
Shines yet more lovely than the light of youth.
And many a cottage-garden smiles, whose flowers
Invite the music of the morning bee.
And many a fireside has shot out, at eve,
Its light upon the old man's withered hand
And pallid cheek from their benevolence -
Sad as is still the parish-pauper's home - 630
Who shed around their patrimonial seats
The light of heaven-descending Charity. 632
And every feeling of the Christian heart
Would rise accusing, could I pass unsung,
Thee,[43] fair as Charity's own form, who late
Didst stand beneath the porch of that gray fane,
Soliciting[44] a mite from all who passed,
With such a smile, as to refuse would seem
To do a wrong to Charity herself.
How many blessings, silent and unheard, 640
The mistress of the lonely parsonage
Dispenses, when she takes her daily round
Among the aged and the sick, whose prayers
And blessings are her only recompense!
How many pastors, by cold obloquy
And senseless hate reviled, tread the same path
Of charity in silence, taught by Him
Who was reviled not to revile again;
And leaving to a righteous God their cause!
Come, let us, with the pencil in our hand, 650
Portray a character. What book is this?
Rector of Overton![45] I know him not;
But well I know the Vicar, and a man
More worthy of that name, and worthier still
To grace a higher station of our Church,
None knows; - a friend and father to the poor,
A scholar, unobtrusive, yet profound,
"As e'er my conversation coped withal;"
His piety unvarnished, but sincere.[46]
Killarney's lake,[47] and Scotia's hills,[48] have heard 660
His summer-wandering reed; nor on the themes
Of hallowed inspiration[49] has his harp 662
Been silent, though ten thousand jangling strings -
When all are poets in this land of song,
And every field chinks with its grasshopper -
Have well-nigh drowned the tones; but poesy
Mingles, at eventide, with many a mood
Of stirring fancy, on his silent heart
When o'er those bleak and barren downs, in rain
Or sunshine, where the giant Wansdeck sweeps, 670
Homewards he bends his solitary way.
Live long; and late may the old villager
Look on thy stone, amid the churchyard grass,
Remembering years of kindness, and the tongue,
Eloquent of his Maker, when he sat
At church, and heard the undivided code
Of apostolic truth - of hope, of faith,
Of charity - the end and test of all.
Live long; and though I proudly might recall
The names of many friends - like thee, sincere 680
And pious, and in solitude adorned
With rare accomplishments - this grateful praise
Accept, congenial to the poet's theme;
For well I know, haply when I am dead,
And in my shroud, whene'er thy homeward path
Lies o'er those hills, and thou shalt cast a look
Back on our garden-slope, and Bremhill tower,
Thou wilt remember me, and many a day
There passed in converse and sweet harmony.
A truce to satire, and to harsh reproof, 690
Severer arguments, that have detained
The unwilling Muse too long: - come, while the clouds
Work heavy and the winds at intervals,
Pipe, and at intervals sink in a sigh,
As breathed o'er sounds and shadows of the past - 695
Change we our style and measure, to relate
A village tale of a poor Cornish maid,
And of her prayer-book. It is sad, but true;
And simply told, though not in lady phrase
Of modish song, may touch some gentle heart, 700
And wake an interest, when description fails. |
Rules and Regulations | Lewis Carroll | A short direction
To avoid dejection,
By variations
In occupations,
And prolongation
Of relaxation,
And combinations
Of recreations,
And disputation
On the state of the nation
In adaptation
To your station,
By invitations
To friends and relations,
By evitation
Of amputation,
By permutation
In conversation ,
And deep reflection
You'll avoid dejection.
Learn well your grammar,
And never stammer,
Write well and neatly,
And sing most sweetly,
Be enterprising ,
Love early rising,
Go walk of six miles,
Have ready quick smiles,
With lightsome laughter,
Soft flowing after.
Drink tea, not coffee;
Never eat toffy.
Eat bread with butter.
Once more, don't stutter.
Don't waste your money,
Abstain from honey.
Shut doors behind you,
(Don't slam them, mind you.)
Drink beer, not porter.
Don't enter the water
Till to swim you are able.
Sit close to the table.
Take care of a candle.
Shut a door by the handle,
Don't push with your shoulder
Until you are older.
Lose not a button.
Refuse cold mutton.
Starve your canaries.
Believe in fairies.
If you are able,
Don't have a stable
With any mangers.
Be rude to strangers.
Moral: Behave. |
The Serpent And The File. | Jean de La Fontaine | [1]
A serpent, neighbour to a smith,
(A neighbour bad to meddle with,)
Went through his shop, in search of food,
But nothing found, 'tis understood,
To eat, except a file of steel,
Of which he tried to make a meal.
The file, without a spark of passion,
Address'd him in the following fashion: -
'Poor simpleton! you surely bite
With less of sense than appetite;
For ere from me you gain
One quarter of a grain,
You'll break your teeth from ear to ear.
Time's are the only teeth I fear.'
This tale concerns those men of letters,
Who, good for nothing, bite their betters.
Their biting so is quite unwise.
Think you, ye literary sharks,
Your teeth will leave their marks
Upon the deathless works you criticise?
Fie! fie! fie! men!
To you they're brass - they're steel - they're diamond! |
The Shepherd And His Dog. | Jean de La Fontaine | A shepherd, with a single dog,
Was ask'd the reason why
He kept a dog, whose least supply
Amounted to a loaf of bread
For every day. The people said
He'd better give the animal
To guard the village seignior's hall;
For him, a shepherd, it would be
A thriftier economy
To keep small curs, say two or three,
That would not cost him half the food,
And yet for watching be as good.
The fools, perhaps, forgot to tell
If they would fight the wolf as well.
The silly shepherd, giving heed,
Cast off his dog of mastiff breed,
And took three dogs to watch his cattle,
Which ate far less, but fled in battle.
Not vain our tale, if it convinces
Small states that 'tis a wiser thing
To trust a single powerful king,
Than half a dozen petty princes. |
Lucy V | William Wordsworth | A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seem'd a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees. |
An August Midnight | Thomas Hardy | I
A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:
On this scene enter - winged, horned, and spined -
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;
While 'mid my page there idly stands
A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands . . .
II
Thus meet we five, in this still place,
At this point of time, at this point in space.
- My guests parade my new-penned ink,
Or bang at the lamp-glass, whirl, and sink.
"God's humblest, they!" I muse. Yet why?
They know Earth-secrets that know not I.
MAX GATE, 1899. |
A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal | William Wordsworth | A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees. |
Near Avalon | William Morris | A ship with shields before the sun,
Six maidens round the mast,
A red-gold crown on every one,
A green gown on the last.
The fluttering green banners there
Are wrought with ladies' heads most fair,
And a portraiture of Guenevere
The middle of each sail doth bear.
A ship which sails before the wind,
And round the helm six knights,
Their heaumes are on, whereby, half blind,
They pass by many sights.
The tatter'd scarlet banners there,
Right soon will leave the spear-heads bare.
Those six knights sorrowfully bear,
In all their heaumes some yellow hair. |
A Pearl, A Girl | Robert Browning | A simple ring with a single stone,
To the vulgar eye no stone of price:
Whisper the right word, that alone,
Forth starts a sprite, like fire from ice,
And lo, you are lord (says an Eastern scroll)
Of heaven and earth, lord whole and sole
Through the power in a pearl.
A woman ('tis I this time that say)
With little the world counts worthy praise
Utter the true word, out and away
Escapes her soul: I am wrapt in blaze,
Creation's lord, of heaven and earth
Lord whole and sole, by a minute's birth,
Through the love in a girl! |
A Shady Friend For Torrid Days | Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | A shady friend for torrid days
Is easier to find
Than one of higher temperature
For frigid hour of mind.
The vane a little to the east
Scares muslin souls away;
If broadcloth breasts are firmer
Than those of organdy,
Who is to blame? The weaver?
Ah! the bewildering thread!
The tapestries of paradise
So notelessly are made! |
Thyrsis And Amaranth (Prose Fable) | Jean de La Fontaine | A shepherd who was deeply in love with a shepherdess was sitting one day by her side trying to find words to express the emotions her charms created in his breast.
"Ah! Amaranth, dear," he sighed, "could you but feel, as I do, a certain pain which, whilst it tears the heart, is so delightful that it enchants, you would say that nothing under heaven is its equal. Let me tell you of it. Believe me, trust me. Would I deceive you? You, for whom I am filled with the tenderest sentiments the heart can feel!"
"And what, my Thyrsis, is the name you give this pleasing pain?"
"It is called love," said Thyrsis.
"Ah!" responded the maiden, "that is a beautiful name. Tell me by what signs I may know it, if it come to me. What are the feelings it gives one?"
Thyrsis, taking heart of grace, replied with much ardour: "One feels an anguish beside which the joys of kings are but dull and insipid. One forgets oneself, and takes pleasure in the solitudes of the woods. To glance into a brook is to see, not oneself, but an ever-haunting image. To any other form one's eyes are blind. It may be that there is a shepherd in the village at whose voice, at the mention of whose name, you will blush; at the thought of whom you will sigh. Why, one knows not! To see him will be a burning desire, and yet you would shrink from him."
"Oho!" said Amaranth. "Is this then the pain you have preached so much! It is hardly new to me. I seem to know something of it." The heart of Thyrsis leapt, for he thought that at last he had gained his end; when the fair one added, "'Tis just in this way that I feel for Cladimant!"
Imagine the vexation and misery of poor Thyrsis!
How many like him, intending to work solely for themselves, prove only to have been stepping stones for others.
|
May Garden | John Drinkwater | A shower of green gems on my apple tree
This first morning of May
Has fallen out of the night, to be
Herald of holiday -
Bright gems of green that, fallen there,
Seem fixed and glowing on the air.
Until a flutter of blackbird wings
Shakes and makes the boughs alive,
And the gems are now no frozen things,
But apple-green buds to thrive
On sap of my May garden, how well
The green September globes will tell.
Also my pear tree has its buds,
But they are silver-yellow,
Like autumn meadows when the floods
Are silver under willow,
And here shall long and shapely pears
Be gathered while the autumn wears.
And there are sixty daffodils
Beneath my wall....
And jealousy it is that kills
This world when all
The spring's behaviour here is spent
To make the world magnificent
|
A Sight In Camp | Walt Whitman | A sight in camp in the day-break grey and dim,
As from my tent I emerge so early, sleepless,
As slow I walk in the cool fresh air, the path near by the hospital
tent,
Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there, untended
lying,
Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woollen blanket,
Grey and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.
Curious, I halt, and silent stand;
Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest, the first,
just lift the blanket:
Who are you, elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-grey'd hair,
and flesh all sunken about the eyes?
Who are you, my dear comrade?
Then to the second I step--And who are you, my child and darling?
Who are you, sweet boy, with cheeks yet blooming?
Then to the third--a face nor child, nor old, very calm, as of
beautiful yellow-white ivory;
Young man, I think I know you--I think this face of yours is the face
of the Christ himself;
Dead and divine, and brother of all, and here again he lies. |
The Morning Visit | Oliver Wendell Holmes | A sick man's chamber, though it often boast
The grateful presence of a literal toast,
Can hardly claim, amidst its various wealth,
The right unchallenged to propose a health;
Yet though its tenant is denied the feast,
Friendship must launch his sentiment at least,
As prisoned damsels, locked from lovers' lips,
Toss them a kiss from off their fingers' tips.
The morning visit, - not till sickness falls
In the charmed circles of your own safe walls;
Till fever's throb and pain's relentless rack
Stretch you all helpless on your aching back;
Not till you play the patient in your turn,
The morning visit's mystery shall you learn.
'T is a small matter in your neighbor's case,
To charge your fee for showing him your face;
You skip up-stairs, inquire, inspect, and touch,
Prescribe, take leave, and off to twenty such.
But when at length, by fate's transferred decree,
The visitor becomes the visitee,
Oh, then, indeed, it pulls another string;
Your ox is gored, and that's a different thing!
Your friend is sick: phlegmatic as a Turk,
You write your recipe and let it work;
Not yours to stand the shiver and the frown,
And sometimes worse, with which your draught goes down.
Calm as a clock your knowing hand directs,
Rhei, jalapae ana grana sex,
Or traces on some tender missive's back,
Scrupulos duos pulveris ipecac;
And leaves your patient to his qualms and gripes,
Cool as a sportsman banging at his snipes.
But change the time, the person, and the place,
And be yourself "the interesting case,"
You'll gain some knowledge which it's well to learn;
In future practice it may serve your turn.
Leeches, for instance, - pleasing creatures quite;
Try them, - and bless you, - don't you find they bite?
You raise a blister for the smallest cause,
But be yourself the sitter whom it draws,
And trust my statement, you will not deny
The worst of draughtsmen is your Spanish fly!
It's mighty easy ordering when you please,
Infusi sennae capiat uncias tres;
It's mighty different when you quackle down
Your own three ounces of the liquid brown.
Pilula, pulvis, - pleasant words enough,
When other throats receive the shocking stuff;
But oh, what flattery can disguise the groan
That meets the gulp which sends it through your own!
Be gentle, then, though Art's unsparing rules
Give you the handling of her sharpest tools;
Use them not rashly, - sickness is enough;
Be always "ready," but be never "rough."
Of all the ills that suffering man endures,
The largest fraction liberal Nature cures;
Of those remaining, 't is the smallest part
Yields to the efforts of judicious Art;
But simple Kindness, kneeling by the bed
To shift the pillow for the sick man's head,
Give the fresh draught to cool the lips that burn,
Fan the hot brow, the weary frame to turn, -
Kindness, untutored by our grave M. D.'s,
But Nature's graduate, when she schools to please,
Wins back more sufferers with her voice and smile
Than all the trumpery in the druggist's pile.
Once more, be quiet: coming up the stair,
Don't be a plantigrade, a human bear,
But, stealing softly on the silent toe,
Reach the sick chamber ere you're heard below.
Whatever changes there may greet your eyes,
Let not your looks proclaim the least surprise;
It's not your business by your face to show
All that your patient does not want to know;
Nay, use your optics with considerate care,
And don't abuse your privilege to stare.
But if your eyes may probe him overmuch,
Beware still further how you rudely touch;
Don't clutch his carpus in your icy fist,
But warm your fingers ere you take the wrist.
If the poor victim needs must be percussed,
Don't make an anvil of his aching bust;
(Doctors exist within a hundred miles
Who thump a thorax as they'd hammer piles;)
If you must listen to his doubtful chest,
Catch the essentials, and ignore the rest.
Spare him; the sufferer wants of you and art
A track to steer by, not a finished chart.
So of your questions: don't in mercy try
To pump your patient absolutely dry;
He's not a mollusk squirming in a dish,
You're not Agassiz; and he's not a fish.
And last, not least, in each perplexing case,
Learn the sweet magic of a cheerful face;
Not always smiling, but at least serene,
When grief and anguish cloud the anxious scene.
Each look, each movement, every word and tone,
Should tell your patient you are all his own;
Not the mere artist, purchased to attend,
But the warm, ready, self-forgetting friend,
Whose genial visit in itself combines
The best of cordials, tonics, anodynes.
Such is the visit that from day to day
Sheds o'er my chamber its benignant ray.
I give his health, who never cared to claim
Her babbling homage from the tongue of Fame;
Unmoved by praise, he stands by all confest,
The truest, noblest, wisest, kindest, best.
1849. |
A Rose. | Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | A sepal, petal, and a thorn
Upon a common summer's morn,
A flash of dew, a bee or two,
A breeze
A caper in the trees, --
And I'm a rose! |
Wild Boar And Ram. | John Gay | A sheep lay tethered, and her life
Fast ebbing on the butcher's knife;
The silly flock looked on with dread.
A wild boar, passing them, then said:
"O cowards! cowards! will nought make
The courage of your hearts awake?
What, with the butcher in your sight,
Flaying - ere life be parted quite -
Your lambs and dams! O stolid race!
Who ever witnessed souls so base?"
The patriarch ram then answered him:
"My face and bearing are not grim,
But we are not of soul so tame
As to deny Revenge her claim:
We have no whetted tusks to kill,
Yet are not powerless of ill.
Vengeance, the murdering hand pursues,
And retribution claims her dues;
She sends the plagues of war and law,
Where men will battle for a straw -
And our revenge may rest contented,
Since drums and parchment were invented."
|
Ye Fairy Ship | Walter Crane | 1
A ship, a ship a-sailing,
A-sailing on the sea,
And it was deeply laden
With pretty things for me;
There were raisins in the cabin,
And almonds in the hold;
The sails were made of satin,
And the mast it was of gold.
2
The four-and-twenty sailors
That stood between the decks,
Were four-and-twenty white mice
With rings about their necks.
The captain was a duck, a duck,
With a jacket on his back,
And when this fairy ship set sail,
The captain he said, "Quack!" |
Mysterious Disapperance. (Prose) | John Hartley | A short time ago Mr. Fitzivitz, of Rank end, was seen to be swimming at a great rate and making a most extensive spread in the river plate. Several friends cautioned him not to go so far out of his depth, but he was utterly heedless of advice, he dived still deeper, and was observed to sink over head and ears in debt, leaving a large circle of friends to bewail his loss. His body has since been recovered, but all that could have comforted his anxious friends had fled, alas for ever.
|
Sunset. | Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | A sloop of amber slips away
Upon an ether sea,
And wrecks in peace a purple tar,
The son of ecstasy. |
Voyage Of The Jettie | John Greenleaf Whittier | A shallow stream, from fountains
Deep in the Sandwich mountains,
Ran lake ward Bearcamp River;
And, between its flood-torn shores,
Sped by sail or urged by oars
No keel had vexed it ever.
Alone the dead trees yielding
To the dull axe Time is wielding,
The shy mink and the otter,
And golden leaves and red,
By countless autumns shed,
Had floated down its water.
From the gray rocks of Cape Ann,
Came a skilled seafaring man,
With his dory, to the right place;
Over hill and plain he brought her,
Where the boatless Beareamp water
Comes winding down from White-Face.
Quoth the skipper: 'Ere she floats forth;
I'm sure my pretty boat's worth,
At least, a name as pretty.'
On her painted side he wrote it,
And the flag that o'er her floated
Bore aloft the name of Jettie.
On a radiant morn of summer,
Elder guest and latest comer
Saw her wed the Bearcamp water;
Heard the name the skipper gave her,
And the answer to the favor
From the Bay State's graceful daughter.
Then, a singer, richly gifted,
Her charmed voice uplifted;
And the wood-thrush and song-sparrow
Listened, dumb with envious pain,
To the clear and sweet refrain
Whose notes they could not borrow.
Then the skipper plied his oar,
And from off the shelving shore,
Glided out the strange explorer;
Floating on, she knew not whither,
The tawny sands beneath her,
The great hills watching o'er her.
On, where the stream flows quiet
As the meadows' margins by it,
Or widens out to borrow a
New life from that wild water,
The mountain giant's daughter,
The pine-besung Chocorua.
Or, mid the tangling cumber
And pack of mountain lumber
That spring floods downward force,
Over sunken snag, and bar
Where the grating shallows are,
The good boat held her course.
Under the pine-dark highlands,
Around the vine-hung islands,
She ploughed her crooked furrow
And her rippling and her lurches
Scared the river eels and perches,
And the musk-rat in his burrow.
Every sober clam below her,
Every sage and grave pearl-grower,
Shut his rusty valves the tighter;
Crow called to crow complaining,
And old tortoises sat craning
Their leathern necks to sight her.
So, to where the still lake glasses
The misty mountain masses
Rising dim and distant northward,
And, with faint-drawn shadow pictures,
Low shores, and dead pine spectres,
Blends the skyward and the earthward,
On she glided, overladen,
With merry man and maiden
Sending back their song and laughter,
While, perchance, a phantom crew,
In a ghostly birch canoe,
Paddled dumb and swiftly after!
And the bear on Ossipee
Climbed the topmost crag to see
The strange thing drifting under;
And, through the haze of August,
Passaconaway and Paugus
Looked down in sleepy wonder.
All the pines that o'er her hung
In mimic sea-tones sung
The song familiar to her;
And the maples leaned to screen her,
And the meadow-grass seemed greener,
And the breeze more soft to woo her.
The lone stream mystery-haunted,
To her the freedom granted
To scan its every feature,
Till new and old were blended,
And round them both extended
The loving arms of Nature.
Of these hills the little vessel
Henceforth is part and parcel;
And on Bearcamp shall her log
Be kept, as if by George's
Or Grand Menan, the surges
Tossed her skipper through the fog.
And I, who, half in sadness,
Recall the morning gladness
Of life, at evening time,
By chance, onlooking idly,
Apart from all so widely,
Have set her voyage to rhyme.
Dies now the gay persistence
Of song and laugh, in distance;
Alone with me remaining
The stream, the quiet meadow,
The hills in shine and shadow,
The sombre pines complaining.
And, musing here, I dream
Of voyagers on a stream
From whence is no returning,
Under sealed orders going,
Looking forward little knowing,
Looking back with idle yearning.
And I pray that every venture
The port of peace may enter,
That, safe from snag and fall
And siren-haunted islet,
And rock, the Unseen Pilot
May guide us one and all. |
Summer - The Second Pastoral; or Alexis | Alexander Pope | A Shepherd's Boy (he seeks no better name)
Led forth his flocks along the silver Thame,
Where dancing sun-beams n the waters play'd,
And verdant alders form'd a quiv'ring shade.
Soft as he mourn'd, the streams forgot to flow,
The flocks around a dumb compassion show,
The Naiads wept in ev'ry wat'ry bow'r,
And Jove consented in a silent show'r.
Accept, O Garth, the Muse's early lays,
That adds this wreath of Ivy to thy Bays;
Hear what from Love unpractis'd hearts endure,
From Love, the sole disease thou canst not cure.
Ye shady beeches, and ye cooling streams,
Defence from Phoebus, not from Cupid's beams,
To you I mourn, nor to the deaf I sing,
The woods shall answer, and their echo ring.
The gills and rocks attend my doleful lay,
Why art thou prouder and more hard than they?
The bleating sheep with my complaints agree,
They parch'd with heat, and I inflam'd by thee.
The sultry Sirius burns the thirsty plains,
While in thy heart eternal winter reigns.
Where stray ye, Muses, in what lawn or grove,
While your Alexis pines in hopeless love?
In those fair fields where sacred Isis glides,
Or else where Cam his winding vales divides?
As in the crystal spring I view my face,
Fresh rising blushes paint the wat'ry glass;
But since those graces please thy eyes no more,
I shun the fountains which I sought before.
Once I was skill'd in ev'ry herb that grew,
And ev'ry plant that drinks the morning dew;
Ah wretched shepherd, what avails thy art,
To cure thy lambs, but not to heal thy heart!
Let other swains attend the rural care,
Feed fairer flocks, or richer fleeces shear:
But nigh yon' mountain let me tune my lays,
Embrace my Love, and bind my brows with bays.
That flute is mine which Colin's tuneful breath
Inspir'd when living, and bequeath'd in death;
He said; Alexis, take this pipe, the same
That taught the groves my Rosalinda's name:
But now the reeds shall hang on yonder tree,
For ever silent, since despis'd by thee.
Oh! were I made by some transforming pow'r
The captive bird that sings within thy bow'r!
Then might my voice thy list'ning ears employ,
And I those kisses he receives, enjoy.
And yet my numbers please the rural throng,
Rough Satyrs dance, and Pan applauds the song:
The Nymphs, forsaking ev'ry cave and spring,
Their early fruit, and milk-white turtles bring;
Each am'rous nymph prefers her gifts in vain,
On you their gifts are all bestow'd again.
For you the swains the fairest flow'rs design,
And in one garland all their beauties join;
Accept the wreath which you deserve alone,
In whom all beauties are compris'd in one.
See what delights in sylvan scenes appear!
Descending Gods have found Elysium here.
In woods bright Venus with Adonis stray'd,
And chaste Diana haunts the forest shade.
Come lovely nymph, and bless the silent hours,
When swains from shearing seek their nightly bow'rs;
When weary reapers quit the sultry field,
And crown'd with corn, their thanks to Ceres yield.
This harmless grove no lurking viper hides,
But in my breast the serpent Love abides.
Here bees from blossoms sip the rosy dew,
But your Alexis knows no sweets but you.
Oh deign to visit our forsaken seats,
The mossy fountains, and the green retreats!
Where-e'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade,
Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade,
Where-e'er you tread, the blushing flow'rs shall rise,
And all things flourish where you turn your eyes.
Oh! How I long with you to pass my days,
Invoke the muses, and resound your praise;
Your praise the birds shall chant in ev'ry grove,
And winds shall waft it to the pow'rs above.
But wou'd you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain,
The wond'ring forests soon shou'd dance again,
The moving mountains hear the pow'rful call,
And headlong streams hang list'ning in their fall!
But see, the shepherds shun the noon-day heat,
The lowing herds to murm'ring brooks retreat,
To closer shades the panting flocks remove,
Ye Gods! And is there no relief for Love?
But soon the sun with milder rays descends
To the cool ocean, where his journey ends;
On me Love's fiercer flames for every prey,
By night he scorches, as he burns by day. |
Confession | Ringgold Wilmer Lardner | A sleuth like Pinkerton or Burns
Is told that there has been a crime.
He runs down clues and leads, and learns
Who did the deed, in course of time.
It's just the other way with me:
The first thing I am sure of is
The criminal's identity,
And then I learn what crime was his.
When Son comes up with hanging head
And smiles a certain kind of smile,
When he's affectionate instead
Of playful; when he stalls awhile
And starts to speak and stops again,
Or, squirming like a mouse that's caught,
Asserts, "I am a GOOD boy," then
I look to see what harm's been wrought. |
Louvain | Thomas O'Hagan | A shrine, where saints and scholars met
And held aloft the torch of truth,
Lies smouldering 'neath fair Brabant's skies,
A ruined heap - war's prize in sooth!
The Pilates of Teutonic blood
That fired the brand and flung the bomb
Now wash their hands of evil deed,
While all the world stands ghast and dumb.
Is this your culture, sons of Kant,
And ye who kneel 'round Goethe's throne?
To carry in your knapsacks death?
To feel for man nor ruth nor moan?
What 'vails it now your mighty guns
If God be mightier in the sky?
What 'vail your cities, walls and towers
If half your progress be a lie?
The smoking altars, ruined arch
Of ancient church and Gothic fane
Have felt the death stings of your shells,
And speak in pity thro' Louvain.
Wheel back your guns, your howitzers melt,
Forget your "World-Power's" cursed plan
And sign in peace and not in blood
Dread Sinai's pact 'twixt God and Man.
For His Eminence Cardinal Merrier.
|
Galatea | Henry Kendall | A silver slope, a fall of firs, a league of gleaming grasses,
And fiery cones, and sultry spurs, and swarthy pits and passes!
. . . . .
The long-haired Cyclops bated breath, and bit his lip and hearkened,
And dug and dragged the stone of death, by ways that dipped and darkened.
Across a tract of furnaced flints there came a wind of water,
From yellow banks with tender hints of Tethys' white-armed daughter.
She sat amongst wild singing weeds, by beds of myrrh and moly;
And Acis made a flute of reeds, and drew its accents slowly;
And taught its spirit subtle sounds that leapt beyond suppression,
And paused and panted on the bounds of fierce and fitful passion.
Then he who shaped the cunning tune, by keen desire made bolder,
Fell fainting, like a fervent noon, upon the sea-nymph's shoulder.
Sicilian suns had laid a dower of light and life about her:
Her beauty was a gracious flower the heart fell dead without her.
'Ah, Galate,' said Polypheme, 'I would that I could find thee
Some finest tone of hill or stream, wherewith to lull and bind thee!
'What lyre is left of marvellous range, whose subtle strings, containing
Some note supreme, might catch and change, or set thy passion waning?
'Thy passion for the fair-haired youth whose fleet, light feet perplex me
By ledges rude, on paths uncouth, and broken ways that vex me?
'Ah, turn to me! else violent sleep shall track the cunning lover;
And thou wilt wait and thou wilt weep when I his haunts discover.'
But golden Galatea laughed, and Thosa's son, like thunder,
Broke through a rifty runnel shaft, and dashed its rocks asunder,
And poised the bulk, and hurled the stone, and crushed the hidden Acis,
And struck with sorrow drear and lone the sweetest of all faces.
To Zeus, the mighty Father, she, with plaint and prayer, departed:
Then from fierce Aetna to the sea a fountained water started
A lucent stream of lutes and lights cool haunt of flower and feather,
Whose silver days and yellow nights made years of hallowed weather.
Here Galatea used to come, and rest beside the river;
Because, in faint, soft, blowing foam, her shepherd lived for ever. |
Paulus: An Epigram | Jonathan Swift | BY MR. LINDSAY[1]
Dublin, Sept. 7, 1728.
"A SLAVE to crowds, scorch'd with the summer's heats,
In courts the wretched lawyer toils and sweats;
While smiling Nature, in her best attire,
Regales each sense, and vernal joys inspire.
Can he, who knows that real good should please,
Barter for gold his liberty and ease?" -
This Paulus preach'd: - When, entering at the door,
Upon his board the client pours the ore:
He grasps the shining gift, pores o'er the cause,
Forgets the sun, and dozes on the laws. |
Airship Over Suburb | John Collings Squire, Sir | A smooth blue sky with puffed motionless clouds.
Standing over the plain of red roofs and bushy trees
The bright coloured shell of the large enamelled sky.
Out of the distance pointing, a cut dark shape
That moves this way at leisure, then hesitates and turns:
And its darkness suddenly dies as it turns and shows
A gleaming silver, white against even the whitest cloud.
Across the blue and the low small clouds it moves
Level, with a floating cloud-like motion of its own,
Peaceful, sunny and slow, a thing of summer itself,
Above the basking earth, travelling the clouds and the sky.
|
Skim-Milk | James Stephens | A small part only of my grief I write;
And if I do not give you all the tale
It is because my gloom gets some respite
By just a small bewailing: I bewail
That I with sly and stupid folk must bide
Who steal my food and ruin my inside.
Once I had books, each book beyond compare,
But now no book at all is left to me,
And I am spied and peeped on everywhere,
And my old head, stuffed with latinity,
And with the poet's load of grave and gay
Will not get me skim-milk for half a day.
Wild horse or quiet, not a horse have I,
But to the forest every day I go
Bending beneath a load of wood, that high!
Which raises on my back a sorry row
Of raw, red blisters; so I cry, alack,
The rider that rides me will break my back.
Ossian, when he was old and near his end,
Met Patrick by good luck, and he was stayed;
I am a poet too and seek a friend,
A prop, a staff, a comforter, an aid,
A Patrick who will lift me from despair,
In Cormac Uasal Mac Donagh of the golden hair.
|
The Tearful Tale Of Captain Dan | Ellis Parker Butler | A sinner was old Captain Dan;
His wives guv him no rest:
He had one wife to East Skiddaw
And one to Skiddaw West.
Now Ann Eliza was the name
Of her at East Skiddaw;
She was the most cantankerous
Female you ever saw.
I don't know but one crosser-grained,
And of this Captain Dan
She was the wife at Skiddaw West,
She was Eliza Ann.
Well, this old skeesicks, Captain Dan,
He owned a ferryboat;
From East Skiddaw to Skiddaw West
That vessel used to float.
She was as trim a ferry-craft
As ever I did see,
And on each end a p'inted bow
And pilothouse had she.
She had two bows that way, so when
She went acrost the sound
She could, to oncet, run back ag'in
Without a-turnin' round.
Now Captain Dan he sailed that boat
For nigh on twenty year
Acrost that sound and back ag'in,
Like I have stated here.
And never oncet in all them years
Had Ann Eliza guessed
That Dan he had another wife
So nigh as Skiddaw West.
Likewise, Eliza Ann was blind,
Howas she never saw
As Dan he had another wife
Acrost to East Skiddaw.
The way he fooled them female wives
Was by a simple plan
That come into the artful brain
Of that there Captain Dan.
With paint upon that ferry-craft,
In letters plain to see,
Upon the bow, to wit, both ends,
Her name he painted she.
Upon the bow toward East Skiddaw
This sinful Captain Dan
He painted just one single word,
The same which it was 'Ann';
And on the bow toward Skiddaw West
He likewise put one name,
And not no more; and I will state
'Eliza' was that same.
Thus, when she berthed to Skiddaw West
Eliza Ann could see
How Dan for love and gratitood
Had named her after she;
And likewise when to East Skiddaw
That boat bow-foremost came,
His Ann Eliza plain could see
The vessel bore her name.
Thuswise for nigh on twenty year,
As I remarked before
Dan cumfuscated them two wives
And sailed from shore to shore.
I reckon he might, to this day,
Have kept his sinful ways
And fooled them trustin' female wives,
Except there come a haze:
It was a thick November haze
Accompanied by frost,
And Dan, in steerin' 'crost the sound,
He got his bearin's lost.
So Dan he cast his anchor out,
And anchored on the sound;
And when the haze riz some next day,
His boat had swung clean round.
So, not bethinkin' how it was,
Dan steered for Skiddaw West;
For he had sot up all that night,
And shorely needed rest.
Well, when into his ferry-slip
His ferry-craft he ran,
Upon the shore he seen his wife:
To wit, Eliza Ann.
Says he, 'I'll tie this vessel up
And rest about a week;
I need a rest,' and 't was just then
He heard an awful shriek.
'O Villyun!' shrieked Eliza Ann.
'Oh! What, what do I see?
You don't not love me any more!
You've done deserted me!'
She pointed to that ferry-craft
With one wild, vicious stare.
Dan looked and seen the telltale name
Of 'Ann' a-painted there!
What could he do? He done his best!
'Lost! Lost! Alas!' he cried;
And, kicking off his rubber boots,
Jumped overboard, and died!
|
Erskine | John Le Gay Brereton | A singing voice is in my dream
The voice of Erskine, on his boulders,
Babbling and shouting till he shoulders
Stoutly against the heavier stream.
No longer now my curtained sight,
On serried books and pictures dwelling,
Of long-neglected work is telling,
But looks beyond the travelling night.
And here no longer is my home,
For you and I are far asunder:
I hear again the cascade thunder
And watch the little pool of foam.
And where the water, pouring sleek,
In sudden whiteness flings his treasure,
I see you sitting, Queen of Pleasure,
Clad only by the glittering creek.
I hold my arms to you once more,
For O my longing flesh is aching,
And you, your rocky throne forsaking,
Come cool and radiant to the shore.
I see my girl of girls recline
On smooth rock sloping to the water;
Then savagely have leapt and caught her,
And limpid eyes look up at mine.
Love, Love, O Love, the embracing sun,
The trees, the creek, the earth our mother,
Who made that hour, give such another,
And make us'see us'know us one. |
A Shepherd's Dream | Nicholas Breton | A silly shepherd lately sat
Among a flock of sheep;
Where musing long on this and that,
At last he fell asleep.
And in the slumber as he lay,
He gave a piteous groan;
He thought his sheep were run away,
And he was left alone.
He whoop'd, he whistled, and he call'd,
But not a sheep came near him;
Which made the shepherd sore appall'd
To see that none would hear him.
But as the swain amaz'd stood,
In this most solemn vein,
Came Phyllida forth of the wood,
And stood before the swain.
Whom when the shepherd did behold
He straight began to weep,
And at the heart he grew a-cold,
To think upon his sheep.
For well he knew, where came the queen,
The shepherd durst not stay:
And where that he durst not be seen,
The sheep must needs away.
To ask her if she saw his flock,
Might happen patience move,
And have an answer with a mock,
That such demanders prove.
Yet for because he saw her come
Alone out of the wood,
He thought he would not stand as dumb,
When speech might do him good;
And therefore falling on his knees,
To ask but for his sheep,
He did awake, and so did leese
The honour of his sleep.
|
The Burning Glass | George William Russell | A shaft of fire that falls like dew,
And melts and maddens all my blood,
From out thy spirit flashes through
The burning glass of womanhood.
Only so far; here must I stay:
Nearer I miss the light, the fire:
I must endure the torturing ray,
And, with all beauty, all desire.
Ah, time-long must the effort be,
And far the way that I must go
To bring my spirit unto thee,
Behind the glass, within the glow. |
On The Death Of Edward Payson, D.D. | Nathaniel Parker Willis | A servant of the living God is dead!
His errand hath been well and early done,
And early hath he gone to his reward.
He shall come no more forth, but to his sleep
Hath silently lain down, and so shall rest.
Would ye bewail our brother? He hath gone
To Abraham's bosom. He shall no more thirst,
Nor hunger, but forever in the eye,
Holy and meek, of Jesus, he may look,
Unchided, and untempted, and unstained.
Would ye bewail our brother? He hath gone
To sit down with the prophets by the clear
And crystal waters; he hath gone to list
Isaiah's harp and David's, and to walk
With Enoch, and Elijah, and the host
Of the just men made perfect. He shall bow
At Gabriel's Hallelujah, and unfold
The scroll of the Apocalypse with John,
And talk of Christ with Mary, and go back
To the last supper, and the garden prayer
With the belov'd disciple. He shall hear
The story of the Incarnation told
By Simeon, and the Triune mystery
Burning upon the fervent lips of Paul.
He shall have wings of glory, and shall soar
To the remoter firmaments, and read
The order and the harmony of stars;
And, in the might of knowledge, he shall bow
In the deep pauses of Archangel harps,
And humble as the Seraphim, shall cry -
Who by his searching, finds thee out, Oh God!
There shall he meet his children who have gone
Before him, and as other years roll on,
And his loved flock go up to him, his hand
Again shall lead them gently to the Lamb,
And bring them to the living waters there.
Is it so good to die! and shall we mourn
That he is taken early to his rest?
Tell me! Oh mourner for the man of God!
Shall we bewail our brother that he died?
|
Maktoob | Alan Seeger | A shell surprised our post one day
And killed a comrade at my side.
My heart was sick to see the way
He suffered as he died.
I dug about the place he fell,
And found, no bigger than my thumb,
A fragment of the splintered shell
In warm aluminum.
I melted it, and made a mould,
And poured it in the opening,
And worked it, when the cast was cold,
Into a shapely ring.
And when my ring was smooth and bright,
Holding it on a rounded stick,
For seal, I bade a Turco write
'Maktoob' in Arabic.
'Maktoob!' "'Tis written!" . . . So they think,
These children of the desert, who
From its immense expanses drink
Some of its grandeur too.
Within the book of Destiny,
Whose leaves are time, whose cover, space,
The day when you shall cease to be,
The hour, the mode, the place,
Are marked, they say; and you shall not
By taking thought or using wit
Alter that certain fate one jot,
Postpone or conjure it.
Learn to drive fear, then, from your heart.
If you must perish, know, O man,
'Tis an inevitable part
Of the predestined plan.
And, seeing that through the ebon door
Once only you may pass, and meet
Of those that have gone through before
The mighty, the elite - -
Guard that not bowed nor blanched with fear
You enter, but serene, erect,
As you would wish most to appear
To those you most respect.
So die as though your funeral
Ushered you through the doors that led
Into a stately banquet hall
Where heroes banqueted;
And it shall all depend therein
Whether you come as slave or lord,
If they acclaim you as their kin
Or spurn you from their board.
So, when the order comes: "Attack!"
And the assaulting wave deploys,
And the heart trembles to look back
On life and all its joys;
Or in a ditch that they seem near
To find, and round your shallow trough
Drop the big shells that you can hear
Coming a half mile off;
When, not to hear, some try to talk,
And some to clean their guns, or sing,
And some dig deeper in the chalk -
I look upon my ring:
And nerves relax that were most tense,
And Death comes whistling down unheard,
As I consider all the sense
Held in that mystic word.
And it brings, quieting like balm
My heart whose flutterings have ceased,
The resignation and the calm
And wisdom of the East. |
The Flag of our Union. | George Pope Morris | "A song for our banner?"--The watchword recall
Which gave the Republic her station:
"United we stand--divided we fall!"--
It made and preserves us a nation!
The union of lakes--the union of lands--
The union of States none can sever--
The union of hearts--the union of hands--
And the Flag of the Union for ever
And ever!
The Flag of our Union for ever!
What God in his mercy and wisdom designed,
And armed with his weapons of thunder,
Not all the earth's despots and factions combined
Have the power to conquer or sunder!
The union of lakes--the union of lands--
The union of states none can sever--
The union of hearts--the union of hands--
And the Flag of the Union for ever
And ever!
The Flag of our Union for ever!
Oh, keep that flag flying!--The pride of the van!
To all other nations display it!
The ladies for union are all to a--MAN!
But not to the man who'd betray it.
Then the union of lakes--the union of lands--
The union of states none can sever--
The union of hearts--the union of hands--
And the Flag of the Union for ever
And ever!
The Flag of our Union for ever! |
Love, Time, And Will | Ella Wheeler Wilcox | A soul immortal, Time, God everywhere,
Without, within -how can a heart despair,
Or talk of failure, obstacles, and doubt?
(What proofs of God? The little seeds that sprout,
Life, and the solar system, and their laws.
Nature? Ah, yes; but what was Nature's cause?)
All mighty words are short: God, life, and death,
War, peace, and truth, are uttered in a breath.
And briefly said are love, and will, and time;
Yet in them lies a majesty sublime.
Love is the vast constructive power of space;
Time is the hour which calls it into place;
Will is the means of using time and love,
And bringing forth the heart's desires thereof.
The way is love, the time is now, and will
The patient method. Let this knowledge fill
Thy consciousness, and fate and circumstance,
Environment, and all the ills of chance
Must yield before the concentrated might
Of those three words, as shadows yield to light.
Go, charge thyself with love; be infinite
And opulent with thy large use of it:
'Tis from free sowing that full harvest springs;
Love God and life and all created things.
Learn time's great value; to this mandate bow,
The hour of opportunity is Now,
And from thy will, as from a well-strung bow,
Let the swift arrows of thy wishes go.
Though sent into the distance and the dark,
The dawn shall prove thy arrows hit the mark. |
Gray Days | John Charles McNeill | A soaking sedge,
A faded field, a leafless hill and hedge,
Low clouds and rain,
And loneliness and languor worse than pain.
Mottled with moss,
Each gravestone holds to heaven a patient Cross.
Shrill streaks of light
Two sycamores' clean-limbed, funereal white,
And low between,
The sombre cedar and the ivy green.
Upon the stone
Of each in turn who called this land his own
The gray rain beats
And wraps the wet world in its flying sheets,
And at my eaves
A slow wind, ghostlike, comes and grieves and grieves. |
Smears | Paul Cameron Brown | A snowy morning
unfolding
I smear my eyes
the crimson details
from my life. |
A Triumph Of Order. | John Milton Hay | A squad of regular infantry,
In the Commune's closing days,
Had captured a crowd of rebels
By the wall of Pere-la-Chaise.
There were desperate men, wild women,
And dark-eyed Amazon girls,
And one little boy, with a peach-down cheek
And yellow clustering curls.
The captain seized the little waif,
And said, "What dost thou here?"
"Sapristi, Citizen captain!
I'm a Communist, my dear!"
"Very well! Then you die with the others!"
- "Very well! That's my affair;
But first let me take to my mother,
Who lives by the wine-shop there,
"My father's watch. You see it;
A gay old thing, is it not?
It would please the old lady to have it;
Then I'll come back here, and be shot."
"That is the last we shall see of him,"
The grizzled captain grinned,
As the little man skimmed down the hill
Like a swallow down the wind.
For the joy of killing had lost its zest
In the glut of those awful days,
And Death writhed, gorged like a greedy snake,
From the Arch to Pere-la-Chaise.
But before the last platoon had fired
The child's shrill voice was heard;
"Houp-la! the old girl made such a row
I feared I should break my word."
Against the bullet-pitted wall
He took his place with the rest,
A button was lost from his ragged blouse,
Which showed his soft white breast.
"Now blaze away, my children!
With your little one-two-three!"
The Chassepots tore the stout young heart,
And saved Society. |
Wedded. | Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | A solemn thing it was, I said,
A woman white to be,
And wear, if God should count me fit,
Her hallowed mystery.
A timid thing to drop a life
Into the purple well,
Too plummetless that it come back
Eternity until. |
Cur And Mastiff. | John Gay | A sneaking cur caused much disaster
By pandering scandal for his master.
The hound was beaten, mastiff chidden,
Puss in disgrace, and pug forbidden.
Each of his dearest chum grew shy.
And none could tell a reason why.
Burglars to rob the house laid wait.
Betty in love, undid the gate;
The cur was won by dint of meat;
Remained the mastiff dog to cheat.
The mastiff dog refused the bribe,
And tore the hand of one beside.
The cur off with the tidings ran,
And told how he had bit a man.
The master said: "Hanged he shall be!"
They dragged poor Trusty to the tree:
He met his master, and averred
That he had been condemned unheard.
His lord then sat to hear the trial:
The mastiff pleaded his denial;
The cur then, special pleading, stated
The case - unduly aggravated.
When evidence on either side
Concluded was, the dog replied,
And ended with this peroration:
"Trust not to curs of basest station,
With itching palms - a plot is laid,
And man and master are betrayed."
The mastiff had with truth harangued:
The truth appeared; the cur was hanged.
|
The Unsung Heroes | Paul Laurence Dunbar | A song for the unsung heroes who rose in the country's need,
When the life of the land was threatened by the slaver's cruel greed,
For the men who came from the cornfield, who came from the plough and the flail,
Who rallied round when they heard the sound of the mighty man of the rail.
They laid them down in the valleys, they laid them down in the wood,
And the world looked on at the work they did, and whispered, "It is good."
They fought their way on the hillside, they fought their way in the glen,
And God looked down on their sinews brown, and said, "I have made them men."
They went to the blue lines gladly, and the blue lines took them in,
And the men who saw their muskets' fire thought not of their dusky skin.
The gray lines rose and melted beneath their scathing showers,
And they said, "'T is true, they have force to do, these old slave boys of ours."
Ah, Wagner saw their glory, and Pillow knew their blood,
That poured on a nation's altar, a sacrificial flood.
Port Hudson heard their war-cry that smote its smoke-filled air,
And the old free fires of their savage sires again were kindled there.
They laid them down where the rivers the greening valleys gem.
And the song of the thund'rous cannon was their sole requiem,
And the great smoke wreath that mingled its hue with the dusky cloud,
Was the flag that furled o'er a saddened world, and the sheet that made their shroud.
Oh, Mighty God of the Battles Who held them in Thy hand,
Who gave them strength through the whole day's length, to fight for their native land,
They are lying dead on the hillsides, they are lying dead on the plain,
And we have not fire to smite the lyre and sing them one brief strain.
Give, Thou, some seer the power to sing them in their might,
The men who feared the master's whip, but did not fear the fight;
That he may tell of their virtues as minstrels did of old,
Till the pride of face and the hate of race grow obsolete and cold.
A song for the unsung heroes who stood the awful test,
When the humblest host that the land could boast went forth to meet the best;
A song for the unsung heroes who fell on the bloody sod,
Who fought their way from night to day and struggled up to God. |
New Version, The | W. J. Lampton | A soldier of the Russians
Lay japanned at Tschrtzvkjskivitch,
There was lack of woman's nursing
And other comforts which
Might add to his last moments
And smooth the final way;
But a comrade stood beside him
To hear what he might say.
The japanned Russian faltered
As he took that comrade's hand,
And he said: "I never more shall see
My own, my native land;
Take a message and a token
To some distant friends of mine,
For I was born at Smnlxzrskgqrxzski,
Fair Smnlxzrskgqrxzski on the Irkztrvzkimnov." |
Sonnet X | Alan Seeger | A splendor, flamelike, born to be pursued,
With palms extent for amorous charity
And eyes incensed with love for all they see,
A wonder more to be adored than wooed,
On whom the grace of conscious womanhood
Adorning every little thing she does
Sits like enchantment, making glorious
A careless pose, a casual attitude;
Around her lovely shoulders mantle-wise
Hath come the realm of those old fabulous queens
Whose storied loves are Art's rich heritage,
To keep alive in this our latter age
That force that moving through sweet Beauty's means
Lifts up Man's soul to towering enterprise. |
The Spider. | Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | A spider sewed at night
Without a light
Upon an arc of white.
If ruff it was of dame
Or shroud of gnome,
Himself, himself inform.
Of immortality
His strategy
Was physiognomy. |
The Ballad Of The Elder Son | Henry Lawson | A son of elder sons I am,
Whose boyhood days were cramped and scant,
Through ages of domestic sham
And family lies and family cant.
Come, elder brothers mine, and bring
Dull loads of care that you have won,
And gather round me while I sing
The ballad of the elder son.
'Twas Christ who spake in parables,
To picture man was his intent;
A simple tale He simply tells,
And He Himself makes no comment.
A morbid sympathy is felt
For prodigals, the selfish ones,
The crooked world has ever dealt
Unjustly by the elder sons.
The elder son on barren soil,
Where life is crude and lands are new,
Must share the father's hardest toil,
And share the father's troubles too.
With no child-thoughts to meet his own
His childhood is a lonely one:
The youth his father might have known
Is seldom for the eldest son.
It seems so strange, but fate is grim,
And Heaven's ways are hard to track,
Though ten young scamps come after him
The rod falls heaviest on his back.
And, well I'll say it might be caused
By a half-sense of injustice done,
That vague resentment parents feel
So oft towards the eldest son.
He, too, must bear the father's name,
He loves his younger brother, too,
And feels the younger brother's shame
As keenly as his parents do.
The mother's prayers, the father's curse,
The sister's tears have all been done,
We seldom see in prose or verse
The prayers of the elder son.
But let me to the parable
With eyes on facts but fancy free;
And don't belie me if I tell
The story as it seems to me,
For, mind, I do not mean to sneer
(I was religious when a child),
I wouldn't be surprised to hear
That Christ himself had sometimes smiled.
A certain squatter had two sons
Up Canaan way some years ago.
The graft was hard on those old runs,
And it was hot and life was slow.
The younger brother coolly claimed
The portion that he hadn't earned,
And sought the 'life' for which untamed
And high young spirits always yearned.
A year or so he knocked about,
And spent his cheques on girls and wine,
And, getting stony in the drought,
He took a job at herding swine,
And though he is a hog that swigs
And fools with girls till all is blue,
'Twas rather rough to shepherd pigs
And have to eat their tucker too.
'When he came to himself,' he said
(I take my Bible from the shelf:
There's nothing like a feed of husks
To bring a young man to himself.
And when you're done with wine and girls,
Right here a moral seems to shine,
And are hard up, you'll find no pearls
Are cast by friends before your swine),
When he came to himself, he said,
He reckoned pretty shrewdly, too,
'The rousers in my father's shed
'Have got more grub than they can chew;
'I've been a fool, but such is fate,
'I guess I'll talk the guv'nor round:
''I've acted cronk,' I'll tell him straight;
'(He's had his time too, I'll be bound).
'I'll tell him straight I've had my fling,
'I'll tell him 'I've been on the beer,
''But put me on at anything,
''I'll graft with any bounder here.''
He rolled his swag and struck for home,
He was by this time pretty slim
And, when the old man saw him come,
Well, you know how he welcomed him.
They've brought the best robe in the house,
The ring, and killed the fatted calf,
And now they hold a grand carouse,
And eat and drink and dance and laugh:
And from the field the elder son,
Whose character is not admired,
Comes plodding home when work is done,
And very hot and very tired.
He asked the meaning of the sound
Of such unwonted revelry,
They said his brother had been 'found'
(He'd found himself it seemed to me);
'Twas natural in the elder son
To take the thing a little hard
And brood on what was past and done
While standing outside in the yard.
Now he was hungry and knocked out
And would, if they had let him be,
Have rested and cooled down, no doubt,
And hugged his brother after tea,
And welcomed him and hugged his dad
And filled the wine cup to the brim,
But, just when he was feeling bad
The old man came and tackled him.
He well might say with bitter tears
While music swelled and flowed the wine,
'Lo, I have served thee many years
'Nor caused thee one grey hair of thine.
'Whate'er thou bad'st me do I did
'And for my brother made amends;
'Thou never gavest me a kid
'That I might make merry with my friends.'
(He was no honest clod and glum
Who could not trespass, sing nor dance,
He could be merry with a chum,
It seemed, if he had half a chance;
Perhaps, if further light we seek,
He knew, and herein lay the sting,
His brother would clear out next week
And promptly pop the robe and ring).
The father said, 'The wandering one,
'The lost is found, this son of mine,
'But thou art always with me, son,
'Thou knowest all I have is thine.'
(It seemed the best robe and the ring,
The love and fatted calf were not;
But this was just a little thing
The old man in his joy forgot.)
The father's blindness in the house,
The mother's fond and foolish way
Have caused no end of ancient rows
Right back to Cain and Abel's day.
The world will blame the eldest born,
But, well, when all is said and done,
No coat has ever yet been worn
That had no colour more than one.
Oh! if I had the power to teach,
The strength for which my spirit craves,
The cant of parents I would preach
Who slave and make their children slaves.
For greed of gain, and that alone
Their youth they steal, their hearts they break
And then, the wretched misers moan,
'We did it for our children's sake.'
'And all I have', the paltry bribe
That he might slave contented yet
While envied by his selfish tribe
The birthright he might never get:
The worked-out farm and endless graft,
The mortgaged home, the barren run,
The heavy, hopeless overdraft,
The portion of the elder son.
He keeps his parents when they're old,
He keeps a sister in distress,
His wife must work and care for them
And bear with all their pettishness.
The mother's moan is ever heard,
And, whining for the worthless one,
She seldom has a kindly word
To say about her eldest son.
'Tis he, in spite of sneer and jibe,
Who stands the friend when others fail:
He bears the burdens of his tribe
And keeps his brother out of jail.
He lends the quid and pays the fine,
And for the family pride he smarts,
For reasons I cannot divine
They hate him in their heart of hearts.
A satire on this world of sin,
Where parents seldom understand,
That night the angels gathered in
The firstborn of that ancient land.
Perhaps they thought, in those old camps,
While suffering for the blow that fell,
They might have better spared the scamps
And Josephs that they loved so well.
Sometimes the Eldest takes the track
When things at home have got too bad,
He comes not crawling, canting back
To seek the blind side of his dad.
He always finds a knife and fork
And meat between on which to dine,
And, though he sometimes deals in pork,
You'll never catch him herding swine.
The happy home, the overdraft,
His birthright and his prospects gay,
And likewise his share of the graft,
He leaves the rest to grab. And they,
Who'd always do the thing by halves,
If anything for him was done,
Would kill a score of fatted calves
To welcome home the eldest son. |
On A Spaniel, Called Beau, Killing A Young Bird. | William Cowper | A Spaniel, Beau, that fares like you,
Well fed, and at his ease,
Should wiser be than to pursue
Each trifle that he sees.
But you have kill'd a tiny bird,
Which flew not till to-day,
Against my orders, whom you heard
Forbidding you the prey.
Nor did you kill that you might eat
And ease a doggish pain,
For him, though chased with furious heat,
You left where he was slain.
Nor was he of the thievish sort,
Or one whom blood allures,
But innocent was all his sport
Whom you have torn for yours.
My dog! what remedy remains,
Since teach you all I can,
I see you, after all my pains,
So much resemble man?
|
Rosy Hannah. | Robert Bloomfield | A Spring o'erhung with many a flow'r,
The grey sand dancing in its bed,
Embank'd beneath a Hawthorn bower,
Sent forth its waters near my head:
A rosy Lass approach'd my view;
I caught her blue eye's modest beam:
The stranger nodded 'How d'ye do!'
And leap'd across the infant stream.
The water heedless pass'd away:
With me her glowing image stay'd.
I strove, from that auspicious day,
To meet and bless the lovely Maid.
I met her where beneath our feet
Through downy Moss the Wild-Thyme grew;
Nor Moss elastic, flow'rs though sweet,
Match'd Hannah's cheek of rosy hue.
I met her where the dark Woods wave,
And shaded verdure skirts the plain;
And when the pale Moon rising gave
New glories to her cloudy train.
From her sweet Cot upon the Moor
Our plighted vows to Heaven are flown;
Truth made me welcome at her door,
And rosy Hannah is my own. |
The Horse (The Adventures Of Seumas Beg) | James Stephens | A sparrow hopped about the street,
And he was not a bit afraid;
He flew between a horse's feet,
And ate his supper undismayed:
I think myself the horse knew well
The bird came for the grains that fell.
For his eye was looking down,
And he danced the corn about
In his nose-bag, till the brown
Grains of corn were tumbled out;
And I fancy that he said,
"Eat it up, young Speckle-Head!"
The driver then came back again,
He climbed into the heavy dray;
And he tightened up the rein,
Cracked his whip and drove away.
But when the horse's ribs were hit,
The sparrow did not care a bit.
|
The Poet And His Song | Paul Laurence Dunbar | A song is but a little thing,
And yet what joy it is to sing!
In hours of toil it gives me zest,
And when at eve I long for rest;
When cows come home along the bars,
And in the fold I hear the bell,
As Night, the shepherd, herds his stars,
I sing my song, and all is well.
There are no ears to hear my lays,
No lips to lift a word of praise;
But still, with faith unfaltering,
I live and laugh and love and sing.
What matters yon unheeding throng?
They cannot feel my spirit's spell,
Since life is sweet and love is long,
I sing my song, and all is well.
My days are never days of ease;
I till my ground and prune my trees.
When ripened gold is all the plain,
I put my sickle to the grain.
I labor hard, and toil and sweat,
While others dream within the dell;
But even while my brow is wet,
I sing my song, and all is well.
Sometimes the sun, unkindly hot,
My garden makes a desert spot;
Sometimes a blight upon the tree
Takes all my fruit away from me;
And then with throes of bitter pain
Rebellious passions rise and swell;
But--life is more than fruit or grain,
And so I sing, and all is well. |
The Clock Of The Years | Thomas Hardy | "A spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up."
And the Spirit said,
"I can make the clock of the years go backward,
But am loth to stop it where you will."
And I cried, "Agreed
To that. Proceed:
It's better than dead!"
He answered, "Peace";
And called her up - as last before me;
Then younger, younger she freshed, to the year
I first had known
Her woman-grown,
And I cried, "Cease! -
"Thus far is good -
It is enough - let her stay thus always!"
But alas for me. He shook his head:
No stop was there;
And she waned child-fair,
And to babyhood.
Still less in mien
To my great sorrow became she slowly,
And smalled till she was nought at all
In his checkless griff;
And it was as if
She had never been.
"Better," I plained,
"She were dead as before! The memory of her
Had lived in me; but it cannot now!"
And coldly his voice:
"It was your choice
To mar the ordained."
1916. |
'Ware Holes | Arthur Conan Doyle | [''Ware Holes!' is the expression used in the hunting-field to warn those behind against rabbit-burrows or other suck dangers.]
A sportin' death! My word it was!
An' taken in a sportin' way.
Mind you, I wasn't there to see;
I only tell you what they say.
They found that day at Shillinglee,
An' ran 'im down to Chillinghurst;
The fox was goin' straight an' free
For ninety minutes at a burst.
They 'ad a check at Ebernoe
An' made a cast across the Down,
Until they got a view 'ullo
An' chased 'im up to Kirdford town.
From Kirdford 'e run Bramber way,
An' took 'em over 'alf the Weald.
If you 'ave tried the Sussex clay,
You'll guess it weeded out the field.
Until at last I don't suppose
As 'arf a dozen, at the most,
Came safe to where the grassland goes
Switchbackin' southwards to the coast.
Young Captain 'Eadley, 'e was there,
And Jim the whip an' Percy Day;
The Purcells an' Sir Charles Adair,
An' this 'ere gent from London way.
For 'e 'ad gone amazin' fine,
Two 'undred pounds between 'is knees;
Eight stone he was, an' rode at nine,
As light an' limber as you please.
'E was a stranger to the 'Unt,
There weren't a person as 'e knew there;
But 'e could ride, that London gent -
'E sat 'is mare as if 'e grew there.
They seed the 'ounds upon the scent,
But found a fence across their track,
And 'ad to fly it; else it meant
A turnin' and a 'arkin' back.
'E was the foremost at the fence,
And as 'is mare just cleared the rail
He turned to them that rode be'ind,
For three was at 'is very tail.
''Ware 'oles!' says 'e, an' with the word,
Still sittin' easy on his mare,
Down, down 'e went, an' down an' down,
Into the quarry yawnin' there.
Some say it was two 'undred foot;
The bottom lay as black as ink.
I guess they 'ad some ugly dreams,
Who reined their 'orses on the brink.
'E'd only time for that one cry;
''Ware 'oles!' says 'e, an' saves all three.
There may be better deaths to die,
But that one's good enough for me.
For mind you, 'twas a sportin' end,
Upon a right good sportin' day;
They think a deal of 'im down 'ere,
That gent what came from London way. |
Songs In A Cornfield | Christina Georgina Rossetti | A song in a cornfield
Where corn begins to fall,
Where reapers are reaping,
Reaping one, reaping all.
Sing pretty Lettice,
Sing Rachel, sing May;
Only Marian cannot sing
While her sweetheart's away.
Where is he gone to
And why does he stay?
He came across the green sea
But for a day,
Across the deep green sea
To help with the hay.
His hair was curly yellow
And his eyes were grey,
He laughed a merry laugh
And said a sweet say.
Where is he gone to
That he comes not home?
To-day or to-morrow
He surely will come.
Let him haste to joy
Lest he lag for sorrow,
For one weeps to-day
Who'll not weep to-morrow:
To-day she must weep
For gnawing sorrow,
To-night she may sleep
And not wake to-morrow.
May sang with Rachel
In the waxing warm weather,
Lettice sang with them,
They sang all together: -
'Take the wheat in your arm
Whilst day is broad above,
Take the wheat to your bosom,
But not a false love.
Out in the fields
Summer heat gloweth,
Out in the fields
Summer wind bloweth,
Out in the fields
Summer friend showeth,
Out in the fields
Summer wheat groweth;
But in the winter
When summer heat is dead
And summer wind has veered
And summer friend has fled,
Only summer wheat remaineth,
White cakes and bread.
Take the wheat, clasp the wheat
That's food for maid and dove;
Take the wheat to your bosom,
But not a false false love.'
A silence of full noontide heat
Grew on them at their toil:
The farmer's dog woke up from sleep,
The green snake hid her coil.
Where grass stood thickest, bird and beast
Sought shadows as they could,
The reaping men and women paused
And sat down where they stood;
They ate and drank and were refreshed,
For rest from toil is good.
While the reapers took their ease,
Their sickles lying by,
Rachel sang a second strain,
And singing seemed to sigh: -
'There goes the swallow -
Could we but follow!
Hasty swallow stay,
Point us out the way;
Look back swallow, turn back swallow, stop swallow.
'There went the swallow -
Too late to follow:
Lost our note of way,
Lost our chance to-day;
Good bye swallow, sunny swallow, wise swallow.
'After the swallow
All sweet things follow:
All things go their way,
Only we must stay,
Must not follow; good bye swallow, good swallow.'
Then listless Marian raised her head
Among the nodding sheaves;
Her voice was sweeter than that voice;
She sang like one who grieves:
Her voice was sweeter than its wont
Among the nodding sheaves;
All wondered while they heard her sing
Like one who hopes and grieves: -
'Deeper than the hail can smite,
Deeper than the frost can bite,
Deep asleep through day and night,
Our delight.
'Now thy sleep no pang can break,
No to-morrow bid thee wake,
Not our sobs who sit and ache
For thy sake.
'Is it dark or light below?
Oh, but is it cold like snow?
Dost thou feel the green things grow
Fast or slow?
'Is it warm or cold beneath,
Oh, but is it cold like death?
Cold like death, without a breath,
Cold like death?'
If he comes to-day
He will find her weeping;
If he comes to-morrow
He will find her sleeping;
If he comes the next day
He'll not find her at all,
He may tear his curling hair,
Beat his breast and call. |
Song Of Enchantment | Walter De La Mare | A Song of Enchantment I sang me there,
In a green - green wood, by waters fair,
Just as the words came up to me
I sang it under the wildwood tree.
Widdershins turned I, singing it low,
Watching the wild birds come and go;
No cloud in the deep dark blue to be seen
Under the thick-thatched branches green.
Twilight came; silence came;
The planet of Evening's silver flame;
By darkening paths I wandered through
Thickets trembling with drops of dew.
But the music is lost and the words are gone
Of the song I sang as I sat alone,
Ages and ages have fallen on me -
On the wood and the pool and the elder tree. |
A Considerable Speck | Robert Lee Frost | A speck that would have been beneath my sight
On any but a paper sheet so white
Set off across what I had written there.
And I had idly poised my pen in air
To stop it with a period of ink
When something strange about it made me think,
This was no dust speck by my breathing blown,
But unmistakably a living mite
With inclinations it could call its own.
It paused as with suspicion of my pen,
And then came racing wildly on again
To where my manuscript was not yet dry;
Then paused again and either drank or smelt,
With loathing, for again it turned to fly.
Plainly with an intelligence I dealt.
It seemed too tiny to have room for feet,
Yet must have had a set of them complete
To express how much it didn't want to die.
It ran with terror and with cunning crept.
It faltered: I could see it hesitate;
Then in the middle of the open sheet
Cower down in desperation to accept
Whatever I accorded it of fate.
I have none of the tenderer-than-thou
Collectivistic regimenting love
With which the modern world is being swept.
But this poor microscopic item now!
Since it was nothing I knew evil of
I let it lie there till I hope it slept.
I have a mind myself and recognize
Mind when I meet with it in any guise
No one can know how glad I am to find
On any sheet the least display of mind. |
The Snake & The File | Walter Crane | A Snake, in a fix, tried a File
For a dinner. "'Tis not worth your while,"
Said the steel, "don't mistake;
I'm accustomed to take,
To give's not the way of a File."
We May Meet Our Match |
To Neobule | Eugene Field | A sorry life, forsooth, these wretched girls are undergoing,
Restrained from draughts of pleasant wine, from loving favors showing,
For fear an uncle's tongue a reprimand will be bestowing!
Sweet Cytherea's winged boy deprives you of your spinning,
And Hebrus, Neobule, his sad havoc is beginning,
Just as Minerva thriftily gets ready for an inning.
Who could resist this gallant youth, as Tiber's waves he breasted,
Or when the palm of riding from Bellerophon he wrested,
Or when with fists and feet the sluggers easily he bested?
He shot the fleeing stags with regularity surprising;
The way he intercepted boars was quite beyond surmising,--
No wonder that your thoughts this youth has been monopolizing!
So I repeat that with these maids fate is unkindly dealing,
Who never can in love's affair give license to their feeling,
Or share those sweet emotions when a gentle jag is stealing. |
Exactly So | Lady T. Hastings | A speech, both pithy and concise,
Marks a mind acute and wise;
What speech, my friend, say, do you know,
Can stand before "Exactly so?"
I have a dear and witty friend
Who turns this phrase to every end;
None can deny that "Yes" or "No"
Is meant in this "Exactly so."
Or when a bore his ear assails,
Good-humour in his bosom fails,
No response from his lips will flow,
Save, now and then, "Exactly so."
Is there remark on matters grave
That he may wish perchance to waive,
Or thinks perhaps is rather slow,
He stops it by "Exactly so."
It saves the trouble of a thought -
No sour dispute can thence be sought;
It leaves the thing in statu quo,
This beautiful "Exactly so."
It has another charm, this phrase,
For it implies the speaker's praise
Of what has just been said - ergo -
It pleases, this "Exactly so."
Nor need the conscience feel distress,
By answ'ring wrongly "No" or "Yes;"
It 'scapes a falsehood, which is low,
And substitutes "Exactly so."
Each mortal loves to think he's right,
That his opinion, too, is bright;
Then, Christian, you may soothe your foe
By chiming in "Exactly so."
Whoe'er these lines may chance peruse,
Of this famed word will see the use,
And mention where'er he may go,
The praises of "Exactly so."
Of this more could my muse relate,
But you, kind reader, I'll not sate;
For if I did you'd cry "Hallo!
I've heard enough" - "Exactly so."
Lady T. Hastings.
|
What Of The Day | John Greenleaf Whittier | A sound of tumult troubles all the air,
Like the low thunders of a sultry sky
Far-rolling ere the downright lightnings glare;
The hills blaze red with warnings; foes draw nigh,
Treading the dark with challenge and reply.
Behold the burden of the prophet's vision;
The gathering hosts, the Valley of Decision,
Dusk with the wings of eagles wheeling o'er.
Day of the Lord, of darkness and not light!
It breaks in thunder and the whirlwind's roar!
Even so, Father! Let Thy will be done;
Turn and o'erturn, end what Thou hast begun
In judgment or in mercy: as for me,
If but the least and frailest, let me be
Evermore numbered with the truly free
Who find Thy service perfect liberty!
I fain would thank Thee that my mortal life
Has reached the hour (albeit through care and pain)
When Good and Evil, as for final strife,
Close dim and vast on Armageddon's plain;
And Michael and his angels once again
Drive howling back the Spirits of the Night.
Oh for the faith to read the signs aright
And, from the angle of Thy perfect sight,
See Truth's white banner floating on before;
And the Good Cause, despite of venal friends,
And base expedients, move to noble ends;
See Peace with Freedom make to Time amends,
And, through its cloud of dust, the threshing-floor,
Flailed by the thunder, heaped with chaffless grain! |
Ned the Larrikin | Henry Kendall | A song that is bitter with grief a ballad as pale as the light
That comes with the fall of the leaf, I sing to the shadows to-night.
The laugh on the lyrical lips is sadder than laughter of ghosts
Chained back in the pits of eclipse by wailing unnameable coasts.
I gathered this wreath at the close of day that was dripping with dew;
The blossom you take for a rose was plucked from the branch of a yew.
The flower you fancy is sweet has black in the place of the red;
For this is a song of the street the ballad of larrikin Ned.
He stands at the door of the sink that gapes like a fissure of death:
The face of him fiery with drink, the flame of its fume in his breath.
He thrives in the sickening scenes that the devil has under his ban;
A rascal not out of his teens with the voice of a vicious old man.
A blossom of blackness, indeed of Satan a sinister fruit!
Far better the centipede's seed the spawn of the adder or newt.
Than terror of talon or fang this imp of the alleys is worse:
His speech is a poisonous slang his phrases are coloured with curse.
The prison, the shackles, and chain are nothing to him and his type:
He sings in the shadow of pain, and laughs at the impotent stripe.
There under the walls of the gaols the half of his life has been passed.
He was born in the bosom of bale he will go to the gallows at last.
No angel in Paradise kneels for him at the feet of the Lord;
A Nemesis follows his heels in the flame of a sinister sword.
The sins of his fathers have brought this bitterness into his days
His life is accounted as naught; his soul is a brand for the blaze.
Did ever his countenance change? Did ever a moment supreme
Illumine his face with a strange ineffably beautiful dream?
Before he was caught in the breach in the pits of iniquity grim,
Did ever the Deity reach the hand of a Father to him?
Behold, it is folly to say the evil was born in the blood;
The rose that is cankered to-day was once an immaculate bud!
There might have been blossom and fruit a harvest exceedingly fair,
Instead of the venomous root, and flowers that startle and scare.
The burden the burden is their's who, watching this garden about,
Assisted the thistle and tares, and stamped the divinity out!
A growth like the larrikin Ned a brutal unqualified clod,
Is what ye are helping who'd tread on the necks of the prophets of God.
No more than a damnable weed ye water and foster, ye fools,
Whose aim is to banish indeed the beautiful Christ from the schools.
The merciful, wonderful light of the seraph Religion behold
These evil ones shut from the sight of the children who weep in the cold!
But verily trouble shall fall on such, and their portion shall be
A harvest of hyssop and gall, and sorrow as wild as the sea.
For the rose of a radiant star is over the hills of the East,
And the fathers are heartened for war the prophet, the Saint, and the priest.
For a spirit of Deity makes the holy heirophants strong;
And a morning of majesty breaks, and blossoms in colour and song.
Yea, now, by the altars august the elders are shining supreme;
And brittle and barren as dust is the spiritless secular dream.
It's life as a vapour shall end as a fog in the fall of the year;
For the Lord is a Father and Friend, and the day of His coming is near. |
A Song Of The Yorkshire Dales | Frederic William Moorman | A song I sing o' t' Yorkshire dales,
That winnd frae t' moors to t' sea;
Frae t' breast o' t' fells, wheer t' cloud-rack sails,
Their becks flow merrily.
Their banks are breet wi' moss an' broom,
An' sweet is t' scent o' t' thyme;
You can hark to t' bees' saft, dreamy soom(1)
I' t' foxglove bells an' t' lime.
Chorus
O! Swawdill's good for horses, an' Wensladill for cheese,
An' Airedill fowk are busy as a bee;
But wheersoe'er I wander,
My owd heart aye grows fonder
O Whardill, wheer I'll lig me down an' dee.
Reet bonny are our dales i' March,
When t' curlews tak to t' moors,
There's ruddy buds on ivery larch,
Primroses don their floors.
But bonnier yet when t' August sun
Leets up yon plats o' ling;
An' gert white fishes lowp an' scun,(2)
Wheer t' weirs ower t' watter hing.
O! Swawdills good...
By ivery beck an abbey sleeps,
An' t' ullet is t' owd prior.
A jackdaw thruf each windey peeps,
An' bigs his nest i' t' choir.
In ivery dale a castle stands--
Sing, Clifford, Percy, Scrope!--
They threaped amang theirsels for t' lands,
But fowt for t' King or t' Pope.
O! Swawdill's good...
O! Eastward ho! is t' song o' t' gales,
As they sweep ower fell an' lea;
And Eastward ho! is t' song o' t' dales,
That winnd frae t' moors to t' sea.
Coom winter frost, coom summer druft,
Their watters munnot bide;
An' t' rain that's fall'n when bould winds soughed
Sal iver seawards glide.
O! Swawdill' s good... |
The Spaniel And Chameleon. | John Gay | A spaniel mightily well bred,
Ne'er taught to labour for his bread,
But to play tricks and bear him smart,
To please his lady's eyes and heart,
Who never had the whip for mischief,
But praises from the damsel - his chief.
The wind was soft, the morning fair,
They issued forth to take the air.
He ranged the meadows, where a green
Cameleon - green as grass - was seen.
"Halloa! you chap, who change your coat,
What do you rowing in this boat?
Why have you left the town? I say
You're wrong to stroll about this way:
Preferment, which your talent crowns,
Believe me, friend, is found in towns."
"Friend," said the sycophant, "'tis true
One time I lived in town like you.
I was a courtier born and bred,
And kings have bent to me the head.
I knew each lord and lady's passion,
And fostered every vice in fashion.
But Jove was wrath - loves not the liar -
He sent me here to cool my fire,
Retained my nature - but he shaped
My form to suit the thing I aped,
And sent me in this shape obscene,
To batten in a sylvan scene.
How different is your lot and mine!
Lo! how you eat, and drink, and dine;
Whilst I, condemned to thinnest fare,
Like those I flattered, feed on air.
Jove punishes what man rewards; -
Pray you accept my best regards."
|
A Carol Of Harvest, For 1867 | Walt Whitman | A song of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms'a song of the soil of fields.
A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork;
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk'd maize.
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself,
Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields,
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee,
Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart,
Tuning a verse for thee.
O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice!
O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths!
O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb!
A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee.
Ever upon this stage,
Is acted God's calm, annual drama,
Gorgeous processions, songs of birds,
Sunrise, that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul,
The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves,
The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees,
The flowers, the grass, the lilliput, countless armies of the grass,
The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages,
The scenery of the snows, the winds' free orchestra,
The stretching, light-hung roof of clouds'the clear cerulean, and the bulging, silvery fringes,
The high dilating stars, the placid, beckoning stars,
The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows,
The shows of all the varied lands, and all the growths and products.
Fecund America! To-day,
Thou art all over set in births and joys!
Thou groan'st with riches! thy wealth clothes thee as with a swathing garment!
Thou laughest loud with ache of great possessions!
A myriad-twining life, like interlacing vines, binds all thy vast demesne!
As some huge ship, freighted to water's edge, thou ridest into port!
As rain falls from the heaven, and vapors rise from earth, so have the precious values fallen upon thee, and risen out of thee!
Thou envy of the globe! thou miracle!
Thou, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty!
Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil barns!
Thou Prairie Dame that sittest in the middle, and lookest out upon thy world, and lookest East, and lookest West!
Dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles'that giv'st a million farms, and missest nothing!
Thou All-Acceptress'thou Hospitable'(thou only art hospitable, as God is hospitable.)
When late I sang, sad was my voice;
Sad were the shows around me, with deafening noises of hatred, and smoke of conflict;
In the midst of the armies, the Heroes, I stood,
Or pass'd with slow step through the wounded and dying.
But now I sing not War,
Nor the measur'd march of soldiers, nor the tents of camps,
Nor the regiments hastily coming up, deploying in line of battle.
No more the dead and wounded;
No more the sad, unnatural shows of War.
Ask'd room those flush'd immortal ranks? the first forth-stepping armies?
Ask room, alas, the ghastly ranks'the armies dread that follow'd.
(Pass'pass, ye proud brigades!
So handsome, dress'd in blue'with your tramping, sinewy legs;
With your shoulders young and strong'with your knapsacks and your muskets;
How elate I stood and watch'd you, where, starting off, you march'd!
Pass; then rattle, drums, again!
Scream, you steamers on the river, out of whistles loud and shrill, your salutes!
For an army heaves in sight'O another gathering army!
Swarming, trailing on the rear'O you dread, accruing army!
O you regiments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhoea! with your fever!
O my land's maimed darlings! with the plenteous bloody bandage and the crutch!
Lo! your pallid army follow'd!)
But on these days of brightness,
On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes, the high-piled farm-wagons, and the fruits and barns,
Shall the dead intrude?
Ah, the dead to me mar not'they fit well in Nature;
They fit very well in the landscape, under the trees and grass,
And along the edge of the sky, in the horizon's far margin.
Nor do I forget you, departed;
Nor in winter or summer, my lost ones;
But most, in the open air, as now, when my soul is rapt and at peace'like pleasing phantoms,
Your dear memories, rising, glide silently by me.
I saw the day, the return of the Heroes;
(Yet the Heroes never surpass'd, shall never return;
Them, that day, I saw not.)
I saw the interminable Corps'I saw the processions of armies,
I saw them approaching, defiling by, with divisions,
Streaming northward, their work done, camping awhile in clusters of mighty camps.
No holiday soldiers!'youthful, yet veterans;
Worn, swart, handsome, strong, of the stock of homestead and workshop,
Harden'd of many a long campaign and sweaty march,
Inured on many a hard-fought, bloody field.
A pause'the armies wait;
A million flush'd, embattled conquerors wait;
The world, too, waits'then, soft as breaking night, and sure as dawn,
They melt'they disappear.
Exult, indeed, O lands! victorious lands!
Not there your victory, on those red, shuddering fields;
But here and hence your victory.
Melt, melt away, ye armies! disperse, ye blue-clad soldiers!
Resolve ye back again'give up, for good, your deadly arms;
Other the arms, the fields henceforth for you, or South or North, or East or West,
With saner wars'sweet wars'life-giving wars.
Loud, O my throat, and clear, O soul!
The season of thanks, and the voice of full-yielding;
The chant of joy and power for boundless fertility.
All till'd and untill'd fields expand before me;
I see the true arenas of my race'or first, or last,
Man's innocent and strong arenas.
I see the Heroes at other toils;
I see, well-wielded in their hands, the better weapons.
I see where America, Mother of All,
Well-pleased, with full-spanning eye, gazes forth, dwells long,
And counts the varied gathering of the products.
Busy the far, the sunlit panorama;
Prairie, orchard, and yellow grain of the North,
Cotton and rice of the South, and Louisianian cane;
Open, unseeded fallows, rich fields of clover and timothy,
Kine and horses feeding, and droves of sheep and swine,
And many a stately river flowing, and many a jocund brook,
And healthy uplands with their herby-perfumed breezes,
And the good green grass'that delicate miracle, the ever-recurring grass.
Toil on, Heroes! harvest the products!
Not alone on those warlike fields, the Mother of All,
With dilated form and lambent eyes, watch'd you.
Toil on, Heroes! toil well! Handle the weapons well!
The Mother of All'yet here, as ever, she watches you.
Well-pleased, America, thou beholdest,
Over the fields of the West, those crawling monsters,
The human-divine inventions, the labor-saving implements:
Beholdest, moving in every direction, imbued as with life, the revolving hay-rakes,
The steam-power reaping-machines, and the horse-power machines,
The engines, thrashers of grain, and cleaners of grain, well separating the straw'the nimble work of the patent pitch-fork;
Beholdest the newer saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin, and the rice-cleanser.
Beneath thy look, O Maternal,
With these, and else, and with their own strong hands, the Heroes harvest.
All gather, and all harvest;
(Yet but for thee, O Powerful! not a scythe might swing, as now, in security;
Not a maize-stalk dangle, as now, its silken tassels in peace.)
Under Thee only they harvest'even but a wisp of hay, under thy great face, only;
Harvest the wheat of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin'every barbed spear, under thee;
Harvest the maize of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee'each ear in its light-green sheath,
Gather the hay to its myriad mows, in the odorous, tranquil barns,
Oats to their bins'the white potato, the buckwheat of Michigan, to theirs;
Gather the cotton in Mississippi or Alabama'dig and hoard the golden, the sweet potato of Georgia and the Carolinas,
Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania,
Cut the flax in the Middle States, or hemp, or tobacco in the Borders,
Pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the trees, or bunches of grapes from the vines,
Or aught that ripens in all These States, or North or South,
Under the beaming sun, and under Thee. |
Moritura | Ernest Christopher Dowson | A song of the setting sun!
The sky in the west is red,
And the day is all but done:
While yonder up overhead,
All too soon,
There rises, so cold, the cynic moon.
A song of a winter day!
The wind of the north doth blow,
From a sky that's chill and gray,
On fields where no crops now grow,
Fields long shorn
Of bearded barley and golden corn.
A song of an old, old man!
His hairs are white and his gaze,
Long bleared in his visage wan,
With its weight of yesterdays,
Joylessly
He stands and mumbles and looks at me,
A song of a faded flower!
'Twas plucked in the tender bud,
And fair and fresh for an hour,
In a lady's hair it stood.
Now, ah, now,
Faded it lies in the dust and low. |
Home. | Marietta Holley | A spirit is out to-night!
His steeds are the winds; oh, list,
How he madly sweeps o'er the clouds,
And scatters the driving mist.
We will let the curtains fall
Between us and the storm;
Wheel the sofa up to the hearth,
Where the fire is glowing warm.
Little student, leave your book,
And come and sit by my side;
If you dote on Tennyson so,
I'll be jealous of him, my bride.
There, now I can call you my own!
Let me push back the curls from your brow,
And look in your dark eyes and see
What my bird is thinking of now.
Is she thinking of some high perch
Of freedom, and lofty flight?
You smile; oh, little wild bird,
You are hopelessly bound to-night!
You are bound with a golden ring,
And your captor, like some grim knight,
Will lock you up in the deepest cell
Of his heart, and hide you from sight.
Sweetheart, sweetheart, do you hear far away
The mournful voice of the sea?
It is telling me of the time
When I thought you were lost to me.
Nay, love, do not look so sad;
It is over, the doubt and the pain;
Hark! sweet, to the song of the fire,
And the whisper of the rain. |
Spring | Lola Ridge | A spring wind on the Bowery,
Blowing the fluff of night shelters
Off bedraggled garments,
And agitating the gutters, that eject little spirals of vapor
Like lewd growths.
Bare-legged children stamp in the puddles, splashing each other,
One - with a choir-boy's face
Twits me as I pass...
The word, like a muddied drop,
Seems to roll over and not out of
The bowed lips,
Yet dewy red
And sweetly immature.
People sniff the air with an upward look -
Even the mite of a girl
Who never plays...
Her mother smiles at her
With eyes like vacant lots
Rimming vistas of mean streets
And endless washing days...
Yet with sun on the lines
And a drying breeze.
The old candy woman
Shivers in the young wind.
Her eyes - littered with memories
Like ancient garrets,
Or dusty unaired rooms where someone died -
Ask nothing of the spring.
But a pale pink dream
Trembles about this young girl's body,
Draping it like a glowing aura.
She gloats in a mirror
Over her gaudy hat,
With its flower God never thought of...
And the dream, unrestrained,
Floats about the loins of a soldier,
Where it quivers a moment,
Warming to a crimson
Like the scarf of a toreador...
But the delicate gossamer breaks at his contact
And recoils to her in strands of shattered rose. |
Two Songs Of A Fool | William Butler Yeats | A speckled cat and a tame hare
Eat at my hearthstone
And sleep there;
And both look up to me alone
For learning and defence
As I look up to Providence.
I start out of my sleep to think
Some day I may forget
Their food and drink;
Or, the house door left unshut,
The hare may run till it's found
The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound.
I bear a burden that might well try
Men that do all by rule,
And what can I
That am a wandering witted fool
But pray to God that He ease
My great responsibilities?
II
I slept on my three-legged stool by the fire,
The speckled cat slept on my knee;
We never thought to enquire
Where the brown hare might be,
And whether the door were shut.
Who knows how she drank the wind
Stretched up on two legs from the mat,
Before she had settled her mind
To drum with her heel and to leap:
Had I but awakened from sleep
And called her name she had heard,
It may be, and had not stirred,
That now, it may be, has found
The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound. |
Seven Times Seven. Longing For Home. | Jean Ingelow | I.
A song of a boat: -
There was once a boat on a billow:
Lightly she rocked to her port remote,
And the foam was white in her wake like snow,
And her frail mast bowed when the breeze would blow
And bent like a wand of willow.
II.
I shaded mine eyes one day when a boat
Went curtseying over the billow,
I marked her course till a dancing mote
She faded out on the moonlit foam,
And I stayed behind in the dear loved home;
And my thoughts all day were about the boat,
And my dreams upon the pillow.
III.
I pray you hear my song of a boat,
For it is but short: -
My boat, you shall find none fairer afloat,
In river or port.
Long I looked out for the lad she bore,
On the open desolate sea,
And I think he sailed to the heavenly shore,
For he came not back to me -
Ah me!
IV.
A song of a nest: -
There was once a nest in a hollow:
Down in the mosses and knot-grass pressed,
Soft and warm, and full to the brim -
Vetches leaned over it purple and dim,
With buttercup buds to follow.
V.
I pray you hear my song of a nest,
For it is not long: -
You shall never light, in a summer quest
The bushes among -
Shall never light on a prouder sitter,
A fairer nestful, nor ever know
A softer sound than their tender twitter
That wind-like did come and go.
VI.
I had a nestful once of my own,
Ah happy, happy I!
Right dearly I loved them: but when they were grown
They spread out their wings to fly -
O, one after one they flew away
Far up to the heavenly blue,
To the better country, the upper day,
And - I wish I was going too.
VII.
I pray you, what is the nest to me,
My empty nest?
And what is the shore where I stood to see
My boat sail down to the west?
Can I call that home where I anchor yet,
Though my good man has sailed?
Can I call that home where my nest was set,
Now all its hope hath failed?
Nay, but the port where my sailor went,
And the land where my nestlings be:
There is the home where my thoughts are sent,
The only home for me -
Ah me! |
The Lay Of The Laborer. | Thomas Hood | A spade! a rake! a hoe!
A pickaxe, or a bill!
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will -
And here's a ready hand
To ply the needful tool,
And skill'd enough, by lessons rough,
In Labor's rugged school.
To hedge, or dig the ditch,
To lop or fell the tree,
To lay the swarth on the sultry field,
Or plough the stubborn lea;
The harvest stack to bind,
The wheaten rick to thatch,
And never fear in my pouch to find
The tinder or the match.
To a flaming barn or farm
My fancies never roam;
The fire I yearn to kindle and burn
Is on the hearth of Home;
Where children huddle and crouch
Through dark long winter days,
Where starving children huddle and crouch,
To see the cheerful rays,
A-glowing on the haggard cheek,
And not in the haggard's blaze!
To Him who sends a drought
To parch the fields forlorn,
The rain to flood the meadows with mud,
The blight to blast the corn,
To Him I leave to guide
The bolt in its crooked path,
To strike the miser's rick, and show
The skies blood-red with wrath.
A spade! a rake! a hoe!
A pickaxe, or a bill!
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will -
The corn to thrash, or the hedge to plash,
The market-team to drive,
Or mend the fence by the cover side,
And leave the game alive.
Ay, only give me work,
And then you need not fear
That I shall snare his Worship's hare,
Or kill his Grace's deer;
Break into his lordship's house,
To steal the plate so rich;
Or leave the yeoman that had a purse
To welter in a ditch.
Wherever Nature needs,
Wherever Labor calls,
No job I'll shirk of the hardest work,
To shun the workhouse walls;
Where savage laws begrudge
The pauper babe its breath,
And doom a wife to a widow's life,
Before her partner's death.
My only claim is this,
With labor stiff and stark,
By lawful turn, my living to earn,
Between the light and dark;
My daily bread, and nightly bed,
My bacon, and drop of beer -
But all from the hand that holds the land,
And none from the overseer!
No parish money, or loaf,
No pauper badges for me,
A son of the soil, by right of toil
Entitled to my fee.
No alms I ask, give me my task:
Here are the arm, the leg,
The strength, the sinews of a Man,
To work, and not to beg.
Still one of Adam's heirs,
Though doom'd by chance of birth
To dress so mean, and to eat the lean
Instead of the fat of the earth;
To make such humble meals
As honest labor can,
A bone and a crust, with a grace to God,
And little thanks to man!
A spade! a rake! a hoe!
A pickaxe, or a bill!
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will -
Whatever the tool to ply,
Here is a willing drudge,
With muscle and limb, and woe to him
Who does their pay begrudge!
Who every weekly score
Docks labor's little mite,
Bestows on the poor at the temple door,
But robb'd them over night.
The very shilling he hoped to save,
As health and morals fail,
Shall visit me in the new Bastille,
The Spital, or the Gaol! |
Song: 'A Spirit Haunts The Year's Last Hours | Alfred Lord Tennyson | I.
A spirit haunts the year's last hours
Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers:
To himself he talks;
For at eventide, listening earnestly,
At his work you may hear him sob and sigh
In the walks;
Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks
Of the mouldering flowers:
Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.
II.
The air is damp, and hush'd, and close,
As a sick man's room when he taketh repose
An hour before death;
My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves
At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves,
And the breath
Of the fading edges of box beneath,
And the year's last rose.
Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily. |
Aileen | Henry Kendall | A splendid sun betwixt the trees
Long spikes of flame did shoot,
When turning to the fragrant South,
With longing eyes and burning mouth,
I stretched a hand athwart the drouth,
And plucked at cooling fruit.
So thirst was quenched, and hastening on
With strength returned to me,
I set my face against the noon,
And reached a denser forest soon;
Which dipped into a still lagoon
Hard by the sooming sea.
All day the ocean beat on bar
And bank of gleaming sand;
Yet that lone pool was always mild,
It never moved when waves were wild,
But slumbered, like a quiet child,
Upon the lap of land.
And when I rested on the brink,
Amongst the fallen flowers,
I lay in calm; no leaves were stirred
By breath of wind, or wing of bird;
It was so still, you might have heard
The footfalls of the hours.
Faint slumbrous scents of roses filled
The air which covered me:
My words were low 'she loved them so,
In Eden vales such odours blow:
How strange it is that roses grow
So near the shores of Sea!'
A sweeter fragrance never came
Across the Fields of Yore!
And when I said 'we here would dwell,'
A low voice on the silence fell
'Ah! if you loved the roses well,
You loved Aileen the more.'
'Ay, that I did, and now would turn,
And fall and worship her!
But Oh, you dwell so far so high!
One cannot reach, though he may try,
The Morning land, and Jasper sky
The balmy hills of Myrrh.
'Why vex me with delicious hints
Of fairest face, and rarest blooms;
You Spirit of a darling Dream
Which links itself with every theme
And thought of mine by surf or stream,
In glens or caverned glooms?'
She said, 'thy wishes led me down,
From amaranthine bowers:
And since my face was haunting thee
With roses (dear which used to be),
They all have hither followed me,
The scents and shapes of flowers.'
'Then stay, mine own evangel, stay!
Or, going, take me too;
But let me sojourn by your side,
If here we dwell or there abide,
It matters not!' I madly cried
'I only care for you.'
Oh, glittering Form that would not stay!
Oh, sudden, sighing breeze!
A fainting rainbow dropped below
Far gleaming peaks and walls of snow
And there, a weary way, I go,
Towards the Sunrise seas. |
Leaves Of Grass. A Carol Of Harvest For 1867 | Walt Whitman | A song of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms - a song of the soil of fields.
A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork;
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk'd maize.
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself,
Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields,
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee,
Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart,
Tuning a verse for thee.
O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice!
O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths!
O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb!
A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee.
Ever upon this stage,
Is acted God's calm, annual drama,
Gorgeous processions, songs of birds,
Sunrise, that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul,
The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves,
The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees,
The flowers, the grass, the lilliput, countless armies of the grass,
The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages,
The scenery of the snows, the winds' free orchestra,
The stretching, light-hung roof of clouds - the clear cerulean, and
the bulging, silvery fringes,
The high dilating stars, the placid, beckoning stars,
The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows,
The shows of all the varied lands, and all the growths and products.
Fecund America! To-day,
Thou art all over set in births and joys!
Thou groan'st with riches! thy wealth clothes thee as with a swathing garment!
Thou laughest loud with ache of great possessions!
A myriad-twining life, like interlacing vines, binds all thy vast demesne!
As some huge ship, freighted to water's edge, thou ridest into port!
As rain falls from the heaven, and vapors rise from earth, so have the precious values fallen upon thee, and risen out of thee!
Thou envy of the globe! thou miracle!
Thou, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty!
Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil barns!
Thou Prairie Dame that sittest in the middle, and lookest out upon thy world, and lookest East, and lookest West!
Dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles - that giv'st a million farms, and missest nothing!
Thou All-Acceptress - thou Hospitable - (thou only art hospitable, as God is hospitable.)
When late I sang, sad was my voice;
Sad were the shows around me, with deafening noises of hatred, and smoke of conflict;
In the midst of the armies, the Heroes, I stood,
Or pass'd with slow step through the wounded and dying.
But now I sing not War,
Nor the measur'd march of soldiers, nor the tents of camps,
Nor the regiments hastily coming up, deploying in line of battle.
No more the dead and wounded;
No more the sad, unnatural shows of War.
Ask'd room those flush'd immortal ranks? the first forth-stepping armies?
Ask room, alas, the ghastly ranks - the armies dread that follow'd.
(Pass - pass, ye proud brigades!
So handsome, dress'd in blue - with your tramping, sinewy legs;
With your shoulders young and strong - with your knapsacks and your muskets;
- How elate I stood and watch'd you, where, starting off, you march'd!
Pass; - then rattle, drums, again!
Scream, you steamers on the river, out of whistles loud and shrill, your salutes!
For an army heaves in sight - O another gathering army!
Swarming, trailing on the rear - O you dread, accruing army!
O you regiments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhoea! with your fever!
O my land's maimed darlings! with the plenteous bloody bandage and the crutch!
Lo! your pallid army follow'd!)
But on these days of brightness,
On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes, the high-piled farm-wagons, and the fruits and barns,
Shall the dead intrude?
Ah, the dead to me mar not - they fit well in Nature;
They fit very well in the landscape, under the trees and grass,
And along the edge of the sky, in the horizon's far margin.
Nor do I forget you, departed;
Nor in winter or summer, my lost ones;
But most, in the open air, as now, when my soul is rapt and at peace - like pleasing phantoms,
Your dear memories, rising, glide silently by me.
I saw the day, the return of the Heroes;
(Yet the Heroes never surpass'd, shall never return;
Them, that day, I saw not.)
I saw the interminable Corps - I saw the processions of armies,
I saw them approaching, defiling by, with divisions,
Streaming northward, their work done, camping awhile in clusters of mighty camps.
No holiday soldiers! - youthful, yet veterans;
Worn, swart, handsome, strong, of the stock of homestead and workshop,
Harden'd of many a long campaign and sweaty march,
Inured on many a hard-fought, bloody field.
A pause - the armies wait;
A million flush'd, embattled conquerors wait;
The world, too, waits - then, soft as breaking night, and sure as dawn,
They melt - they disappear.
Exult, indeed, O lands! victorious lands!
Not there your victory, on those red, shuddering fields;
But here and hence your victory.
Melt, melt away, ye armies! disperse, ye blue-clad soldiers!
Resolve ye back again - give up, for good, your deadly arms;
Other the arms, the fields henceforth for you, or South or North, or
East or West,
With saner wars - sweet wars - life-giving wars.
Loud, O my throat, and clear, O soul!
The season of thanks, and the voice of full-yielding;
The chant of joy and power for boundless fertility.
All till'd and untill'd fields expand before me;
I see the true arenas of my race - or first, or last,
Man's innocent and strong arenas.
I see the Heroes at other toils;
I see, well-wielded in their hands, the better weapons.
I see where America, Mother of All,
Well-pleased, with full-spanning eye, gazes forth, dwells long,
And counts the varied gathering of the products.
Busy the far, the sunlit panorama;
Prairie, orchard, and yellow grain of the North,
Cotton and rice of the South, and Louisianian cane;
Open, unseeded fallows, rich fields of clover and timothy,
Kine and horses feeding, and droves of sheep and swine,
And many a stately river flowing, and many a jocund brook,
And healthy uplands with their herby-perfumed breezes,
And the good green grass - that delicate miracle, the ever-recurring grass.
Toil on, Heroes! harvest the products!
Not alone on those warlike fields, the Mother of All,
With dilated form and lambent eyes, watch'd you.
Toil on, Heroes! toil well! Handle the weapons well!
The Mother of All - yet here, as ever, she watches you.
Well-pleased, America, thou beholdest,
Over the fields of the West, those crawling monsters,
The human-divine inventions, the labor-saving implements:
Beholdest, moving in every direction, imbued as with life, the revolving hay-rakes,
The steam-power reaping-machines, and the horse-power machines,
The engines, thrashers of grain, and cleaners of grain, well separating the straw - the nimble work of the patent pitch-fork;
Beholdest the newer saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin, and the rice-cleanser.
Beneath thy look, O Maternal,
With these, and else, and with their own strong hands, the Heroes harvest.
All gather, and all harvest;
(Yet but for thee, O Powerful! not a scythe might swing, as now, in security;
Not a maize-stalk dangle, as now, its silken tassels in peace.)
Under Thee only they harvest - even but a wisp of hay, under thy great face, only;
Harvest the wheat of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin - every barbed spear, under thee;
Harvest the maize of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee - each ear in its light-green sheath,
Gather the hay to its myriad mows, in the odorous, tranquil barns,
Oats to their bins - the white potato, the buckwheat of Michigan, to theirs;
Gather the cotton in Mississippi or Alabama - dig and hoard the golden, the sweet potato of Georgia and the Carolinas,
Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania,
Cut the flax in the Middle States, or hemp, or tobacco in the Borders,
Pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the trees, or bunches of grapes from the vines,
Or aught that ripens in all These States, or North or South,
Under the beaming sun, and under Thee. |
A Visit From Abroad (The Adventures Of Seumas Beg) | James Stephens | A speck went blowing up against the sky
As little as a leaf: then it drew near
And broadened. "It's a bird," said I,
And fetched my bow and arrows. It was queer!
It grew up from a speck into a blot,
And squattered past a cloud; then it flew down
All crumply, and waggled such a lot
I thought the thing would fall., It was a brown
Old carpet where a man was sitting snug
Who, when he reached the ground, began to sew
A big hole in the middle of the rug,
And kept on peeping everywhere to know
Who might be coming, then he gave a twist
And flew away.... I fired at him but missed.
|
The Pageant | John Greenleaf Whittier | A sound as if from bells of silver,
Or elfin cymbals smitten clear,
Through the frost-pictured panes I hear.
A brightness which outshines the morning,
A splendor brooking no delay,
Beckons and tempts my feet away.
I leave the trodden village highway
For virgin snow-paths glimmering through
A jewelled elm-tree avenue;
Where, keen against the walls of sapphire,
The gleaming tree-bolls, ice-embossed,
Hold up their chandeliers of frost.
I tread in Orient halls enchanted,
I dream the Saga's dream of caves
Gem-lit beneath the North Sea waves!
I walk the land of Eldorado,
I touch its mimic garden bowers,
Its silver leaves and diamond flowers!
The flora of the mystic mine-world
Around me lifts on crystal stems
The petals of its clustered gems!
What miracle of weird transforming
In this wild work of frost and light,
This glimpse of glory infinite!
This foregleam of the Holy City
Like that to him of Patmos given,
The white bride coming down from heaven!
How flash the ranked and mail-clad alders,
Through what sharp-glancing spears of reeds
The brook its muffled water leads!
Yon maple, like the bush of Horeb,
Burns unconsumed: a white, cold fire
Rays out from every grassy spire.
Each slender rush and spike of mullein,
Low laurel shrub and drooping fern,
Transfigured, blaze where'er I turn.
How yonder Ethiopian hemlock
Crowned with his glistening circlet stands!
What jewels light his swarthy hands!
Here, where the forest opens southward,
Between its hospitable pines,
As through a door, the warm sun shines.
The jewels loosen on the branches,
And lightly, as the soft winds blow,
Fall, tinkling, on the ice below.
And through the clashing of their cymbals
I hear the old familiar fall
Of water down the rocky wall,
Where, from its wintry prison breaking,
In dark and silence hidden long,
The brook repeats its summer song.
One instant flashing in the sunshine,
Keen as a sabre from its sheath,
Then lost again the ice beneath.
I hear the rabbit lightly leaping,
The foolish screaming of the jay,
The chopper's axe-stroke far away;
The clamor of some neighboring barn-yard,
The lazy cock's belated crow,
Or cattle-tramp in crispy snow.
And, as in some enchanted forest
The lost knight hears his comrades sing,
And, near at hand, their bridles ring,
So welcome I these sounds and voices,
These airs from far-off summer blown,
This life that leaves me not alone.
For the white glory overawes me;
The crystal terror of the seer
Of Chebar's vision blinds me here.
Rebuke me not, O sapphire heaven!
Thou stainless earth, lay not on me,
Thy keen reproach of purity,
If, in this August presence-chamber,
I sigh for summer's leaf-green gloom
And warm airs thick with odorous bloom!
Let the strange frost-work sink and crumble,
And let the loosened tree-boughs swing,
Till all their bells of silver ring.
Shine warmly down, thou sun of noontime,
On this chill pageant, melt and move
The winter's frozen heart with love.
And, soft and low, thou wind south-blowing,
Breathe through a veil of tenderest haze
Thy prophecy of summer days.
Come with thy green relief of promise,
And to this dead, cold splendor bring
The living jewels of the spring! |
Epistle To James Craggs, Esq., Secretary Of State. | Alexander Pope | A soul as full of worth, as void of pride,
Which nothing seeks to show, or needs to hide,
Which nor to guilt nor fear its caution owes,
And boasts a warmth that from no passion flows.
A face untaught to feign; a judging eye,
That darts severe upon a rising lie,
And strikes a blush through frontless flattery.
All this thou wert; and being this before,
Know, kings and fortune cannot make thee more.
Then scorn to gain a friend by servile ways,
Nor wish to lose a foe these virtues raise;
But candid, free, sincere, as you began,
Proceed--a minister, but still a man.
Be not (exalted to whate'er degree)
Ashamed of any friend, not even of me:
The patriot's plain, but untrod path pursue;
If not, 'tis I must be ashamed of you. |
My Shadow And I. | Freeman Edwin Miller | A something, not of earth or sky,
Beside me walks the ways I go,
And I--I never truly know,
If I am it or it is I.
It soothes me with its tender speech,
It guides me with its gentle hand,
But I--I can not understand
The links that bind us each to each.
I hear the songs of golden days
Fall softly on the saddened years,
But know not whose the hungry ears
First feasted on the roundelays.
I feel the hopes, the yearnings brave,
Within my bosom surge and roll,
But know not whose the Master Soul
That called their glories from the grave.
I see the great world's greater curse,
Dark struggles on through darker days,
But know not whose the eyes that gaze
Through all the sobbing universe.
O, Shadow mine! Beneath my brow
I feel thy thoughts, and in my heart
Thy fondest longings madly start!
Thou art myself and I am thou! |
To Mandalay - Greeting | John Kendall (Dum-Dum) | (BY WALTYARD WHIPMING)
I
A song of Mandalay!
Allons, Camerados, Desperadoes, Amontillados!
Hear my Recitative, my Romanza, my Spring Onion!
II
You three-striped sergeants, you corporals, non-commissioned officers,
and men with one or more good-conduct badges,
You indifferent and bad characters, am I not also one with you?
And will you not then hear my song?
This for prelude.
III
You, O Mandalay, I sing!
For I see the pagoda, the Moulmein and essentially wotto pagoda,
And the pagoda is above the trees,
But the trees are below the pagoda.
IV
I see the flying-fish sitting on the branches, I hear them sing,
and they fly and mate and build their nests in the branches;
I see a dun-coloured aboriginal she-female, mongolian'e, petite, squat-faced,
And she has a cast in her sinister optic and a snub nose but her heart is true;
And I gaze into her heart (which is true), and I find that she is musing (as indeed I often muse) on ME,
Me Prononc', Me Imperturbe, Me Inconscionabilamente.
V
I see [a page or so unavoidably omitted for lack of space, - refer to guide-book] and ... the wind, and the palm-trees idly swaying to and fro in the wind (now to, now fro), and I hear the bells of a temple, and I know that they are singing, and what it is that they would say.
VI
What is it that they would say do you ask Me?
VII
How shall I tell you, how shall I make you understand?
For I know that you do not love Me, you do not comprehend Me, you say that this sort of thing does you harm;
But I will even now do my darndest (as indeed I always do more or less), and if you do not like it,
Waal, Soldados?
VIII
Behold, I will write it as a song and put it in italics, so that even you will know that it is a song;
So listen, listen, Camerados! for I am about to spout and my song shall be masculine and virile. A bas your metre, ' la lanterne your rhyme, conspuez your punctuation,
I say pooh-pooh! |
Buxom Joan | William Congreve | A soldier and a sailor,
A tinker and a tailor,
Had once a doubtful strife, sir,
To make a maid a wife, sir,
Whose name was Buxom Joan.
For now the time was ended,
When she no more intended
To lick her lips at men, sir,
And gnaw the sheets in vain, sir,
And lie o' nights alone.
The soldier swore like thunder,
He loved her more than plunder;
And showed her many a scar, sir,
That he had brought from far, sir,
With fighting for her sake.
The tailor thought to please her,
With offering her his measure.
The tinker too with mettle,
Said he could mend her kettle,
And stop up every leak.
But while these three were prating,
The sailor slily waiting,
Thought if it came about, sir,
That they should all fall out, sir,
He then might play his part.
And just e'en as he meant, sir,
To loggerheads they went, sir,
And then he let fly at her
A shot 'twixt wind and water,
That won this fair maid's heart. |
A Song Of Long Ago. | James Whitcomb Riley | A song of Long Ago:
Sing it lightly - sing it low -
Sing it softly - like the lisping of the lips we used to know
When our baby-laughter spilled
From the glad hearts ever filled
With music blithe as robin ever trilled!
Let the fragrant summer-breeze,
And the leaves of locust-trees,
And the apple-buds and blossoms, and the wings of honey-bees,
All palpitate with glee,
Till the happy harmony
Brings back each childish joy to you and me.
Let the eyes of fancy turn
Where the tumbled pippins burn
Like embers in the orchard's lap of tangled grass and fern, -
There let the old path wind
In and out and on behind
The cider-press that chuckles as we grind.
Blend in the song the moan
Of the dove that grieves alone,
And the wild whir of the locust, and the bumble's drowsy drone;
And the low of cows that call
Through the pasture-bars when all
The landscape fades away at evenfall.
Then, far away and clear,
Through the dusky atmosphere,
Let the wailing of the kildee be the only sound we hear:
O sad and sweet and low
As the memory may know
Is the glad-pathetic song of Long Ago! |
A Nameless Grave | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | "A soldier of the Union mustered out,"
Is the inscription on an unknown grave
At Newport News, beside the salt-sea wave,
Nameless and dateless; sentinel or scout
Shot down in skirmish, or disastrous rout
Of battle, when the loud artillery drave
Its iron wedges through the ranks of brave
And doomed battalions, storming the redoubt.
Thou unknown hero sleeping by the sea
In thy forgotten grave! with secret shame
I feel my pulses beat, my forehead burn,
When I remember thou hast given for me
All that thou hadst, thy life, thy very name,
And I can give thee nothing in return. |
The Willow. | Freeman Edwin Miller | A song for the willow, the wild weeping willow,
That murmurs a dirge to the rapturous days,
And moans when the kiss of the breeze laden billow
Entangles and dangles among the sad sprays!
A musical ditty to scatter the sadness,
A warble of wildness to banish its tears,
Till tremulous measures of bountiful gladness
Be sounding and bounding through all of the years.
The beautiful brooks, as they waken from slumbers,
Pause under the shadows that fall from the boughs,
And weave their caresses in passionate numbers,
While soothing and smoothing the frowns from its brows;
But chained in the desolate sorrows of weeping
Its heart never warms to the raptures of mirth,
And over its bosom no pleasures are creeping
While wending and blending their joys with the earth.
Then sing for the willow, the wild weeping willow,
That droops in the smiles of the summer-born times,
And mourns in the kiss of the sweet-scented billow,
When beaming and gleaming are dripping with chimes!
While melodies move where their happiness lingers,
They surely will gladden the tear-laden sprays,
And music that flutters from fairy-like fingers
Will lighten and brighten the burdensome days. |
Snake | D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards) | A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.
Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second-comer, waiting.
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.
And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel honoured?
I felt so honoured.
And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid you would kill him.
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,
But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.
He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered further,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste,
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.
And I thought of the albatross,
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.
|
Psalm Of The Day. | Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | A something in a summer's day,
As sIow her flambeaux burn away,
Which solemnizes me.
A something in a summer's noon, --
An azure depth, a wordless tune,
Transcending ecstasy.
And still within a summer's night
A something so transporting bright,
I clap my hands to see;
Then veil my too inspecting face,
Lest such a subtle, shimmering grace
Flutter too far for me.
The wizard-fingers never rest,
The purple brook within the breast
Still chafes its narrow bed;
Still rears the East her amber flag,
Guides still the sun along the crag
His caravan of red,
Like flowers that heard the tale of dews,
But never deemed the dripping prize
Awaited their low brows;
Or bees, that thought the summer's name
Some rumor of delirium
No summer could for them;
Or Arctic creature, dimly stirred
By tropic hint, -- some travelled bird
Imported to the wood;
Or wind's bright signal to the ear,
Making that homely and severe,
Contented, known, before
The heaven unexpected came,
To lives that thought their worshipping
A too presumptuous psalm. |
Lausanne | Thomas Hardy | - In Gibbon's Old Garden: 11-12 P.M. June 27, 1897
(The 110th anniversary of the completion of the "Decline and Fall" at the same hour and place)
A spirit seems to pass,
Formal in pose, but grave and grand withal:
He contemplates a volume stout and tall,
And far lamps fleck him through the thin acacias.
Anon the book is closed,
With "It is finished!" And at the alley's end
He turns, and soon on me his glances bend;
And, as from earth, comes speech - small, muted, yet composed.
"How fares the Truth now? - Ill?
- Do pens but slily further her advance?
May one not speed her but in phrase askance?
Do scribes aver the Comic to be Reverend still?
"Still rule those minds on earth
At whom sage Milton's wormwood words were hurled:
'Truth like a bastard comes into the world
Never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth'?" |