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Victor-Marie Hugo | The Poet's Love For Liveliness. | ("Moi, quelque soit le monde.")
[XV., May 11, 1830.]
For me, whate'er my life and lot may show,
Years blank with gloom or cheered by mem'ry's glow,
Turmoil or peace; never be it mine, I pray,
To be a dweller of the peopled earth,
Save 'neath a roof alive with children's mirth | Loud through the livelong day.
So, if my hap it be to see once more
Those scenes my footsteps tottered in before,
An infant follower in Napoleon's train:
Rodrigo's holds, Valencia and Leon,
And both Castiles, and mated Aragon;
Ne'er be it mine, O Spain!
To pass thy plains with cities scant between,
Thy stately arches flung o'er deep ravine,
Thy palaces, of Moor's or Roman's time;
Or the swift makings of thy Guadalquiver,
Save in those gilded cars, where bells forever
Ring their melodious chime.
Fraser's Magazine |
Ella Wheeler Wilcox | The Optimist | The fields were bleak and sodden. Not a wing
Or note enlivened the depressing wood,
A soiled and sullen, stubborn snowdrift stood
Beside the roadway. Winds came muttering | Of storms to be, and brought the chilly sting
Of icebergs in their breath. Stalled cattle mooed
Forth plaintive pleadings for the earth's green food.
No gleam, no hint of hope in anything.
The sky was blank and ashen, like the face
Of some poor wretch who drains life's cup too fast.
Yet, swaying to and fro, as if to fling
About chilled Nature its lithe arms of grace,
Smiling with promise in the wintry blast,
The optimistic Willow spoke of spring. |
Violet Jacob | The Bird In The Valley | Above the darkened house the night is spread,
The hidden valley holds
Vapour and dew and silence in its folds,
And waters sighing on the river-bed.
No wandering wind there is
To swing the star-wreaths of the clematis
Against the stone;
Out of the hanging woods, above the shores,
One liquid voice of throbbing crystal pours,
Singing alone. | A stream of magic through the heart of night
Its unseen passage cleaves;
Into the darkened room below the eaves
It falls from out the woods upon the height,
A strain of ecstasy
Wrought on the confines of eternity,
Glamour and pain,
And echoes gathered from a world of years,
Old phantoms, dim like mirage seen through tears,
But young again.
"Peace, peace," the bird sings on amid the woods,
"Peace, from the land that is the spirit's goal, -
The land that nonce may see but with his soul, -
Peace on the darkened house above the floods."
Pale constellations of the clematis,
Hark to that voice of his
That will not cease,
Swing low, droop low your spray,
Light with your white stars all the shadowed way
To peace, peace! |
Robert Burns | My Ain Kind Dearie O. | I.
When o'er the hill the eastern star
Tells bughtin-time is near, my jo;
And owsen frae the furrow'd field
Return sae dowf and weary, O!
Down by the burn, where scented birks[1]
Wi' dew are hanging clear, my jo;
I'll meet thee on the lea-rig,
My ain kind dearie O! | II.
In mirkest glen, at midnight hour,
I'd rove, and ne'er be eerie, O;
If thro' that glen I gaed to thee,
My ain kind dearie O!
Altho' the night were ne'er sae wild,
And I were ne'er sae wearie, O,
I'd meet thee on the lea-rig,
My ain kind dearie O!
III.
The hunter lo'es the morning sun,
To rouse the mountain deer, my jo;
At noon the fisher seeks the glen,
Alang the burn to steer, my jo;
Gie me the hour o' gloamin gray,
It maks my heart sae cheery, O,
To meet thee on the lea-ring,
My ain kind dearie O! |
Walter De La Mare | The Ruin | When the last colours of the day
Have from their burning ebbed away,
About that ruin, cold and lone, | The cricket shrills from stone to stone;
And scattering o'er its darkened green,
Bands of the fairies may be seen,
Chattering like grasshoppers, their feet
Dancing a thistledown dance round it:
While the great gold of the mild moon
Tinges their tiny acorn shoon. |
Jonathan Swift | On Psyche[1] | At two afternoon for our Psyche inquire,
Her tea-kettle's on, and her smock at the fire:
So loitering, so active; so busy, so idle;
Which has she most need of, a spur or a bridle? | Thus a greyhound outruns the whole pack in a race,
Yet would rather be hang'd than he'd leave a warm place.
She gives you such plenty, it puts you in pain;
But ever with prudence takes care of the main.
To please you, she knows how to choose a nice bit;
For her taste is almost as refined as her wit.
To oblige a good friend, she will trace every market,
It would do your heart good, to see how she will cark it.
Yet beware of her arts; for, it plainly appears,
She saves half her victuals, by feeding your ears. |
Rudyard Kipling | The Way Through The Woods | They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones. | Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate.
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods....
But there is no road through the woods. |
Algernon Charles Swinburne | After Sunset - Sonnets | 'Si quis piorum Manibus locus.'
I.
Straight from the sun's grave in the deep clear west
A sweet strong wind blows, glad of life: and I,
Under the soft keen stardawn whence the sky
Takes life renewed, and all night's godlike breast
Palpitates, gradually revealed at rest
By growth and change of ardours felt on high,
Make onward, till the last flame fall and die
And all the world by night's broad hand lie blest.
Haply, meseems, as from that edge of death,
Whereon the day lies dark, a brightening breath
Blows more of benediction than the morn,
So from the graves whereon grief gazing saith
That half our heart of life there lies forlorn | May light or breath at least of hope be born.
II.
The wind was soft before the sunset fled:
Now, while the cloud-enshrouded corpse of day
Is lowered along a red funereal way
Down to the dark that knows not white from red,
A clear sheer breeze against the night makes head,
Serene, but sure of life as ere a ray
Springs, or the dusk of dawn knows red from grey,
Being as a soul that knows not quick from dead.
From far beyond the sunset, far above,
Full toward the starry soundless east it blows
Bright as a child's breath breathing on a rose,
Smooth to the sense as plume of any dove;
Till more and more as darkness grows and glows
Silence and night seem likest life and love.
III.
If light of life outlive the set of sun
That men call death and end of all things, then
How should not that which life held best for men
And proved most precious, though it seem undone
By force of death and woful victory won,
Be first and surest of revival, when
Death shall bow down to life arisen again?
So shall the soul seen be the self-same one
That looked and spake with even such lips and eyes
As love shall doubt not then to recognise,
And all bright thoughts and smiles of all time past
Revive, transfigured, but in spirit and sense
None other than we knew, for evidence
That love's last mortal word was not his last |
Madison Julius Cawein | Frogs At Night | I heard the toads and frogs last night
When snug in bed, and all was still;
I lay and listened there until
It seemed a church where one, with might,
Was preaching high and very shrill:
"The will of God!
The will of God!"
To which a voice, below the hill, | Basso-profundo'd deep, "The will!"
"The will of God!
The will of God!"
"The will! The will!"
They croaked and chorused hoarse or shrill.
It made me sleepy; sleepier
Than any sermon ever heard:
And so I turned upon my ear
And went to-sleep and never stirred:
But in my sleep I seemed to hear:
"The word of God!
The word of God!"
Chanted and quavered, chirped and purred,
To which one deep voice croaked, "The word!"
"The word of God!
The word of God!"
"The word! The word!"
And I slept on and never stirred. |
Thomas Runciman | A Hamadryad Dies. Sonnet | Low mourned the Oread round the Arcadian hills;
The Naiad murmured and the Dryad moaned;
The meadow-maiden left her daffodils
To join the Hamadryades who groaned | Over a sister newly fallen dead.
That Life might perish out of Arcady
From immemorial times was never said;
Yet here one lay dead by her dead oak-tree.
"Who made our Hamadryad cold and mute?"
The others cried in sorrow and in wonder.
"I," answered Death, close by in ashen suit;
"Yet fear not me for this, nor start asunder;
Arcadian life shall keep its ancient zest
Though I be here. My name? - is it not Rest?" |
Robert Lee Frost | The Door In The Dark | In going from room to room in the dark,
I reached out blindly to save my face,
But neglected, however lightly, to lace | My fingers and close my arms in an arc.
A slim door got in past my guard,
And hit me a blow in the head so hard
I had my native simile jarred.
So people and things don't pair any more
With what they used to pair with before. |
Jonathan Swift | Fabula Canis Et Umbrae | ORE cibum portans catulus dum spectat in undis,
Apparet liquido praedae melioris imago: | Dum speciosa diu damna admiratur, et alt'
Ad latices inhiat, cadit imo vortice praeceps
Ore cibus, nee non simulacrum corripit una.
Occupat ille avidus deceptis faucibus umbram;
Illudit species, ac dentibus a'ra mordet. |
Robert Herrick | The Bride-Cake | This day, my Julia, thou must make
For Mistress Bride the wedding-cake: | Knead but the dough, and it will be
To paste of almonds turn'd by thee;
Or kiss it thou but once or twice,
And for the bride-cake there'll be spice. |
Clara Doty Bates | Aladdin | Versified by Clara Doty Bates
I see a little group about my chair,
Lovers of stories all!
First, Saxon Edith, of the corn-silk hair,
Growing so strong and tall!
Then little brother, on whose sturdy face
Soft baby dimples fly,
As fear or pleasure give each other place
When wonders multiply;
Then Gold-locks--summers nine their goldenest
Have showered on her head,
And tinted it, of all the colors best,
Warm robin-red breast red;
Then, close at hand, on lowly haunches set,
With pricked up, tasseled ear,
Is Tony, little cleared-eyed spaniel pet,
Waiting, like them, to hear.
I say I have no story--all are told!
Not to be daunted thus,
They only crowd more confident and bold,
And laugh, incredulous.
And so, remembering how, once on a time,
I, too, loved such delights,
I choose this one and put it into rhyme,
From the "Arabian Nights."
A poor little lad was Aladdin!
His mother was wretchedly poor;
A widow, who scarce ever had in
Her cupboard enough of a store
To frighten the wolf from the door.
No doubt he was quite a fine fellow
For the country he lived in--but, ah!
His skin was a dull, dusky yellow,
And his hair was as long as 'twould grow.
('Tis the fashion in China, you know.)
But however he looked, or however
He fared, a strange fortune was his.
None of you, dears, though fair-faced and clever,
Can have anything like to this,
So grand and so marvelous it is!
Well, one day--for so runs the tradition--
While idling and lingering about
The low city streets, a Magician
From Africa, swarthy and stout,
With his wise, prying eyes spied him out,
And went up to him very politely,
And asked what his name was and cried:
"My lad, if I judge of you rightly,
You're the son of my brother who died--
My poor Mustafa!"--and he sighed.
"Ah, yes, Mustafa was my father,"
Aladdin cried back, "and he's dead!"
"Well, then, both yourself and your mother
I will care for forever," he said,
"And you never shall lack wine nor bread."
And thus did the wily old wizard
Deceive with his kindness the two
For a deed of dark peril and hazard | He had for Aladdin to do,
At the risk of his life, too, he knew.
Far down in the earth's very centre
There burned a strange lamp at a shrine;
Great stones marked the one place to enter;
Down under t'was dark as a mine;
What further--no one could divine!
And that was the treasure Aladdin
Was sent to secure. First he tore
The huge stones away, for he had in
An instant the strength of a score;
Then he stepped through the cavern-like door.
Down, down, through the darkness so chilly!
On, on, through the long galleries!
Coming now upon gardens of lilies,
And now upon fruit-burdened trees,
Filled full of the humming of bees.
But, ah, should one tip of his finger
Touch aught as he passed, it was death!
Not a fruit on the boughs made him linger,
Nor the great heaps of gold underneath.
But on he fled, holding his breath,
Until he espied, brightly burning,
The mystical lamp in its place!
He plucked the hot wick out, and, turning,
With triumph and joy in his face,
Set out his long way to retrace.
At last he saw where daylight shed a
Soft ray through a chink overhead,
Where the crafty Magician was ready
To catch the first sound of his tread.
"Reach the lamp up to me, first!" he said.
Aladdin with luck had grown bolder,
And he cried, "Wait a bit, and we'll see!"
Then with huge, ugly push of his shoulder,
And with strong, heavy thrust of his knee,
The wizard--so angry was he--
Pried up the great rock, rolled it over
The door with an oath and a stamp;
"Stay there under that little cover,
And die of the mildew and damp,"
He shouted, "or give me the lamp!"
Aladdin saw darkness fall o'er him;
He clutched at the lamp in his hand,
And, happening to rub it, before him
A Genius stood, stately and grand.
Whence he came he could not understand.
"I obey you," it said, "and whatever
You ask for, or wish, you shall have!
Rub the lamp but the least bit soever,
It calls me, for I am its slave!"
Aladdin said, "Open this cave!"
He was freed from the place in a minute;
And he rubbed once again: "Take me home!"
Home he was. And as blithe as a linnet
Rubbed again for the Genius with: "Come,
I am dying for food; get me some!"
Thus at first he but valued his treasure
Because simple wants it supplied.
Grown older it furnished him pleasure;
And then it brought riches beside;
And, at last, it secured him his bride.
Now the Princess most lovely of any
Was Badroulboudour, (what a name!)
Who, though sought for and sued for by many,
No matter how grandly they came,
Yet merrily laughed them to shame,
Until with his riches and splendor,
Aladdin as lover enrolled!
For the first thing he did was to send her
Some forty great baskets of gold,
And all the fine gems they would hold.
Then he built her a palace, set thickly
With jewels at window and door;
And all was completed so quickly
She saw bannered battlements soar
Where was nothing an hour before.
There millions of servants attended,
Black slaves and white slaves, thick as bees,
Obedient, attentive, and splendid
In purple and gold liveries,
Fine to see, swift to serve, sure to please!
Him she wedded. They lived without trouble
As long as the lamp was their own;
But one day, like the burst of a bubble,
The palace and Princess were gone;
Without wings to fly they had flown!
And Aladdin, dismayed to discover
That the lamp had been stolen away,
Bent all of his strength to recover
The treasure, and day after day,
He journeyed this way and that way;
And at last, after terrible hazard,
After many a peril and strife,
He found that the vengeful old wizard,
Who had made the attempt on his life,
Had stolen lamp, princess and wife.
With a shrewdness which would have done credit
To even a Yankee boy, he
Sought the lamp where the wizard had hid it,
And, turning a mystical key,
Brought it forth, and then, rubbing with glee,
"Back to China!" he cried. In a minute
The marvellous palace uprose,
With the Princess Badroulboudour in it
Unruffled in royal repose,
With her jewels and cloth-of-gold clothes;
And with gay clouds of banners and towers,
With its millions of slaves, white and black.
It was borne by obedient Powers,
As swift as the wind on its track,
And ere one could count ten it was back!
And ever thereafter, Aladdin
Clung close to the lamp of his fate,
Whatever the robe he was clad in,
Or whether he fasted or ate;
And at all hours, early and late!
Right lucky was Lord Aladdin! |
Unknown | Nursery Rhyme. DLVI. Natural History. | Pitty Patty Polt, | Shoe the wild colt!
Here a nail;
And there a nail;
Pitty Patty Polt. |
Walter De La Mare | I Saw Three Witches | I saw three witches
That bowed down like barley,
And took to their brooms 'neath a louring sky,
And, mounting a storm-cloud,
Aloft on its margin,
Stood black in the silver as up they did fly.
I saw three witches
That mocked the poor sparrows | They carried in cages of wicker along,
Till a hawk from his eyrie
Swooped down like an arrow,
And smote on the cages, and ended their song.
I saw three witches
That sailed in a shallop,
All turning their heads with a truculent smile,
Till a bank of green osiers
Concealed their grim faces,
Though I heard them lamenting for many a mile.
I saw three witches
Asleep in a valley,
Their heads in a row, like stones in a flood,
Till the moon, creeping upward,
Looked white through the valley,
And turned them to bushes in bright scarlet bud. |
Thomas Moore | Oh, Days Of Youth. (French Air.) | Oh, days of youth and joy, long clouded,
Why thus for ever haunt my view?
When in the grave your light lay shrouded,
Why did not Memory die there too?
Vainly doth hope her strain now sing me, | Telling of joys that yet remain--
No, never more can this life bring me
One joy that equals youth's sweet pain.
Dim lies the way to death before me,
Cold winds of Time blow round my brow;
Sunshine of youth! that once fell o'er me,
Where is your warmth, your glory now?
'Tis not that then no pain could sting me;
'Tis not that now no joys remain;
Oh, 'tis that life no more can bring me
One joy so sweet as that worst pain. |
Unknown | Nursery Rhyme. DXXXII. Natural History. | Once I saw a little bird,
Come hop, hop, hop; | So I cried, little bird,
Will you stop, stop, stop?
And was going to the window,
To say how do you do?
But he shook his little tail,
And far away he flew. |
Lewis Carroll | Prologue | All in the golden afternoon
Full leisurely we glide;
For both our oars, with little skill,
By little arms are plied,
While little hands make vain pretense
Our wanderings to guide.
Ah, cruel Three! In such an hour
Beneath such dreamy weather,
To beg a tale of breath too weak
To stir the tiniest feather!
Yet what can one poor voice avail
Against three tongues together?
Imperious Prima flashes forth
Her edict `to begin it': | In gentler tones Secunda hopes
`There will be nonsense in it!'
While Tertia interrupts the tale
Not more than once a minute.
Anon, to sudden silence won,
In fancy they pursue
The dream-child moving through a land
Of wonders wild and new,
In friendly chat with bird or beast,
And half believe it true.
And ever, as the story drained
The wells of fancy dry,
And faintly strove that weary one
To put the subject by
`The rest next time' `It is next time!'
The happy voices cry.
Thus grew the tale of Wonderland:
Thus slowly, one by one,
Its quaint events were hammered out,
And now the tale is done,
And home we steer, a merry crew,
Beneath the setting sun.
Alice! A childish story take,
And with a gentle hand,
Lay it where Childhoood's dreams are twined
In Memory's mystic band,
Like pilgrim's wither'd wreath of flowers
Pluck'd in a far-off land. |
Walt Whitman | Pioneers! O Pioneers! | Come, my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!
For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O you youths, western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you, western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
All the past we leave behind;
We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go, the unknown ways,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
We primeval forests felling,
We the rivers stemming, vexing we, and piercing deep the mines within;
We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Colorado men are we,
From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,
From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood intervein'd; | All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O resistless, restless race!
O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!
O I mourn and yet exult I am rapt with love for all,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress, (bend your heads all,)
Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon'd mistress,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
See, my children, resolute children,
By those swarms upon our rear, we must never yield or falter,
Ages back in ghostly millions, frowning there behind us urging,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
On and on, the compact ranks,
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill'd,
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O to die advancing on!
Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill'd,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
All the pulses of the world,
Falling in, they beat for us, with the western movement beat;
Holding single or together, steady moving, to the front, all for us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Life's involv'd and varied pageants,
All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
All the hapless silent lovers,
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
I too with my soul and body,
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,
Through these shores, amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Lo! the darting bowling orb!
Lo! the brother orbs around! all the clustering suns and planets,
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
These are of us, they are with us,
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind,
We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O you daughters of the west!
O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Minstrels latent on the prairies!
(Shrouded bards of other lands! you may sleep you have done your work;)
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Not for delectations sweet;
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious;
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged, nodding on our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you, in your tracks to pause oblivious,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the day-break call hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind;
Swift! to the head of the army! swift! spring to your places, Pioneers! O pioneers. |
Alfred Castner King | Life's Mystery | I live, I move, I know not how, nor why, | Float as a transient bubble on the air,
As fades the eventide I, too, must die;
I came, I know not whence; I journey, where? |
Robert Herrick | The Scare-Fire. | Water, water I desire,
Here's a house of flesh on fire; | Ope the fountains and the springs,
And come all to bucketings:
What ye cannot quench pull down;
Spoil a house to save a town:
Better 'tis that one should fall,
Than by one to hazard all. |
Ella Wheeler Wilcox | A Holiday | The Wife
The house is like a garden,
The children are the flowers,
The gardener should come methinks
And walk among his bowers,
Oh! lock the door on worry
And shut your cares away,
Not time of year, but love and cheer,
Will make a holiday.
The Husband
Impossible! You women do not know
The toil it takes to make a business grow.
I cannot join you until very late,
So hurry home, nor let the dinner wait.
The Wife | The feast will be like Hamlet
Without a Hamlet part:
The home is but a house, dear,
Till you supply the heart.
The Xmas gift I long for
You need not toil to buy;
Oh! give me back one thing I lack -
The love-light in your eye.
The Husband
Of course I love you, and the children too
Be sensible, my dear, it is for you
I work so hard to make my business pay.
There, now, run home, enjoy your holiday.
The Wife (Turning)
He does not mean to wound me,
I know his heart is kind.
Alas! that man can love us
And be so blind, so blind.
A little time for pleasure,
A little time for play;
A word to prove the life of love
And frighten Care away!
Tho' poor my lot in some small cot
That were a holiday.
The Husband (Musing)
She has not meant to wound me, nor to vex -
Zounds! but 'tis difficult to please the sex.
I've housed and gowned her like a very queen
Yet there she goes, with discontented mien.
I gave her diamonds only yesterday:
Some women are like that, do what you may. |
Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell | Renouncement | I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,
I shun the thought that lurks in all delight--
The thought of thee--and in the blue Heaven's height,
And in the sweetest passage of a song. | Oh, just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng
This breast, the thought of thee waits, hidden yet bright;
But it must never, never come in sight;
I must stop short of thee the whole day long.
But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,
When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,
Must doff my will as raiment laid away,--
With the first dream that comes with the first sleep
I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart. |
Robert William Service | Going Home | I'm goin' 'ome to Blighty - ain't I glad to 'ave the chance!
I'm loaded up wiv fightin', and I've 'ad my fill o' France;
I'm feelin' so excited-like, I want to sing and dance,
For I'm goin' 'ome to Blighty in the mawnin'.
I'm goin' 'ome to Blighty: can you wonder as I'm gay?
I've got a wound I wouldn't sell for 'alf a year o' pay;
A harm that's mashed to jelly in the nicest sort o' way,
For it takes me 'ome to Blighty in the mawnin'. | 'Ow everlastin' keen I was on gettin' to the front!
I'd ginger for a dozen, and I 'elped to bear the brunt;
But Cheese and Crust! I'm crazy, now I've done me little stunt,
To sniff the air of Blighty in the mawnin'.
I've looked upon the wine that's white, and on the wine that's red;
I've looked on cider flowin', till it fairly turned me 'ead;
But oh, the finest scoff will be, when all is done and said,
A pint o' Bass in Blighty in the mawnin'.
I'm goin' back to Blighty, which I left to strafe the 'Un;
I've fought in bloody battles, and I've 'ad a 'eap of fun;
But now me flipper's busted, and I think me dooty's done,
And I'll kiss me gel in Blighty in the mawnin'.
Oh, there be furrin' lands to see, and some of 'em be fine;
And there be furrin' gels to kiss, and scented furrin' wine;
But there's no land like England, and no other gel like mine:
Thank Gawd for dear old Blighty in the mawnin'. |
William Cowper | On A Spaniel, Called Beau, Killing A Young Bird. | 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? |
George MacDonald | A Prayer | Thou who mad'st the mighty clock
Of the great world go;
Mad'st its pendulum swing and rock,
Ceaseless to and fro;
Thou whose will doth push and draw | Every orb in heaven,
Help me move by higher law
In my spirit graven.
Like a planet let me swing--
With intention strong;
In my orbit rushing sing
Jubilant along;
Help me answer in my course
To my seasons due;
Lord of every stayless force,
Make my Willing true. |
Thomas Gent | Epigram. Auri Sacra Fames. | I knew a being once, his peaked head
With a few lank and greasy hairs was spread;
His visage blue, in length was like your own
Seen in the convex of a table-spoon.
His mouth, or rather gash athwart his face,
To stop at either ear had just the grace,
A hideous rift: his teeth were all canine,
And just like Death's (in Milton) was his grin.
One shilling, and one fourteen-penny leg,
(This shorter was than that, and not so big), | He had; and they, when meeting at his knees,
An angle formed of ninety-eight degrees.
Nature, in scheming how his back to vary,
A hint had taken from the dromedary:
His eyes an inward, screwing vision threw,
Striving each other through his nose to view.
His intellect was just one ray above
The idiot Cymon's ere he fell in love.
At school they Taraxippus[1] called the wight;
The Misses, when they met him, shriek'd with fright.
But, spite of all that Nature had denied,
When sudden Fortune made the cub her pride,
And gave him twenty thousand pounds a-year,
Then, from the pretty Misses you might hear,
"His face was not the finest, and, indeed,
He was a little, they must own, in-kneed;
His shoulders, certainly, were rather high,
But, then, he had a most expressive eye;
Nor were their hearts by outward charms inclined:
Give them the higher beauties of the mind!" |
Kate Seymour Maclean | Thanksgiving. | The Autumn hills are golden at the top,
And rounded as a poet's silver rhyme;
The mellow days are ruby ripe, that drop
One after one into the lap of time.
Dead leaves are reddening in the woodland copse,
And forest boughs a fading glory wear;
No breath of wind stirs in their hazy tops,
Silence and peace are brooding everywhere.
The long day of the year is almost done, | And nature in the sunset musing stands,
Gray-robed, and violet-hooded like a nun,
Looking abroad o'er yellow harvest lands:
O'er tents of orchard boughs, and purple vines
With scarlet flecked, flung like broad banners out
Along the field paths where slow-pacing lines
Of meek-eyed kine obey the herdboy's shout;
Where the tired ploughman his dun oxen turns,
Unyoked, afield, mid dewy grass to stray,
While over all the village church spire burns--
A shaft of flame in the last beams of day.
Empty and folded are her busy hands;
Her corn and wine and oil are safely stored,
As in the twilight of the year she stands,
And with her gladness seems to thank the Lord.
Thus let us rest awhile from toil and care,
In the sweet sabbath of this autumn calm,
And lift our hearts to heaven in grateful prayer,
And sing with nature our thanksgiving psalm. |
Mary Hannay Foott | Watch-Night | Midnight, musical and splendid,
And the Old Year's life is ended,
And the New, 'born in the purple,' babe yet crowned, among us dwells;
While Creation's welcome swells,
Starlight all the heavens pervading,
And the whole world serenading
Him, at birth, with all its bells!
Round the cradle of the tender
Flows the music, shines the splendor;
It is early yet for counsel, but bethink how Hermes gave,
(While the Myths were bright and brave),
Thwarted Phoebus no small battle,
Seeking back his lifted cattle,
Hour-old Hermes, in his cave! | New Year, if thy youth should blind us
Thy swift feet, perchance, may find us
Sleeping in the dark, unguarded, as the sun-god's herds were found!
Lest, unready, on his round
We be hurried, World, take warning
That already it is morning
And a giant is unbound!
Idle-handed yet, but willing,
Let us ponder ere the filling
Of his empty eager fingers with our heedless hot behest.
Be our failures frank-confessed,
'Mid the gush of gladsome greeting
Requiem in our hearts repeating
For the years that died unblest.
How they came to us, so precious!
How abode with us, so gracious!
Blindly doing all our bidding; stronger, swifter than we thought.
Like the sprites by magic brought;
Shaping dream to action for us;
Till we stood, beset with sorrows,
Wondering what ourselves had wrought!
Ere the tightening of the tether
Bind THIS YEAR and us together,
Let us pause awhile and ponder, 'Whither tend we side by side,
He who gallops, we who guide?
Once we start, like lost LENORE,
Sung in B?rger's ballad-story,
Fast as ODIN'S Hunt, we ride! |
William Cowper | Epitaph On A Free But Tame Redbreast, A Favourite Of Miss Sally Hurdis. | These are not dewdrops, these are tears,
And tears by Sally shed
For absent Robin, who she fears,
With too much cause, is dead.
One morn he came not to her hand
As he was wont to come,
And, on her finger perch'd, to stand
Picking his breakfast-crumb. | Alarm'd, she call'd him, and perplex'd,
She sought him, but in vain'
That day he came not , nor the next,
Nor ever came again.
She therefore raised him here a tomb,
Though where he fell, or how,
None knows'so secret was his doom,
Nor where he moulders now.
Had half a score of coxcombs died
In social Robin's stead,
Poor Sally's tears had soon been dried,
Or haply never shed.
But Bob was neither rudely bold
Nor spiritlessly tame;
Nor was, like theirs, his bosom cold,
But always in a flame. |
William Butler Yeats | The Rose Tree | "O words are lightly spoken,"
Said Pearse to Connolly,
"Maybe a breath of politic words
Has withered our Rose Tree;
Or maybe but a wind that blows
Across the bitter sea." | "It needs to be but watered,"
James Connolly replied,
"To make the green come out again
And spread on every side,
And shake the blossom from the bud
To be the garden's pride."
"But where can we draw water,"
Said Pearse to Connolly,
"When all the wells are parched away?
O plain as plain can be
There's nothing but our own red blood
Can make a right Rose Tree." |
Thomas Moore | Love And The Sun-Dial. | Young Love found a Dial once in a dark shade
Where man ne'er had wandered nor sunbeam played;
"Why thus in darkness lie?" whispered young Love,
"Thou, whose gay hours in sunshine should move."
"I ne'er," said the Dial, "have seen the warm sun,
"So noonday and midnight to me, Love, are one." | Then Love took the Dial away from the shade,
And placed her where Heaven's beam warmly played.
There she reclined, beneath Love's gazing eye,
While, marked all with sunshine, her hours flew by.
"Oh, how," said the Dial, "can any fair maid
"That's born to be shone upon rest in the shade?"
But night now comes on and the sunbeam's o'er,
And Love stops to gaze on the Dial no more.
Alone and neglected, while bleak rain and winds
Are storming around her, with sorrow she finds
That Love had but numbered a few sunny hours,--
Then left the remainder to darkness and showers! |
George MacDonald | Born Of Water | Methought I stood among the stars alone,
Watching a grey parched orb which onward flew
Half blinded by the dusty winds that blew,
Empty as Death and barren as a stone, | The pleasant sound of water all unknown!
When, as I looked in wonderment, there grew,
High in the air above, a drop of dew,
Which, gathering slowly through long cycles, shone
Like a great tear; and then at last it fell
Clasping the orb, which drank it greedily,
With a delicious noise and upward swell
Of sweet cool joy that tossed me like a sea;
And then the thick life sprang as from a grave,
With trees, flowers, boats upon the bounding wave! |
John Greenleaf Whittier | Haverhill | O river winding to the sea!
We call the old time back to thee;
From forest paths and water-ways
The century-woven veil we raise.
The voices of to-day are dumb,
Unheard its sounds that go and come;
We listen, through long-lapsing years,
To footsteps of the pioneers.
Gone steepled town and cultured plain,
The wilderness returns again,
The drear, untrodden solitude,
The gloom and mystery of the wood!
Once more the bear and panther prowl,
The wolf repeats his hungry howl,
And, peering through his leafy screen,
The Indian's copper face is seen.
We see, their rude-built huts beside,
Grave men and women anxious-eyed,
And wistful youth remembering still
Dear homes in England's Haverhill.
We summon forth to mortal view
Dark Passaquo and Saggahew,
Wild chiefs, who owned the mighty sway
Of wizard Passaconaway.
Weird memories of the border town,
By old tradition handed down,
In chance and change before us pass
Like pictures in a magic glass,
The terrors of the midnight raid,
The-death-concealing ambuscade,
The winter march, through deserts wild,
Of captive mother, wife, and child.
Ah! bleeding hands alone subdued
And tamed the savage habitude
Of forests hiding beasts of prey,
And human shapes as fierce as they.
Slow from the plough the woods withdrew,
Slowly each year the corn-lands grew;
Nor fire, nor frost, nor foe could kill
The Saxon energy of will.
And never in the hamlet's bound | Was lack of sturdy manhood found,
And never failed the kindred good
Of brave and helpful womanhood.
That hamlet now a city is,
Its log-built huts are palaces;
The wood-path of the settler's cow
Is Traffic's crowded highway now.
And far and wide it stretches still,
Along its southward sloping hill,
And overlooks on either hand
A rich and many-watered land.
And, gladdening all the landscape, fair
As Pison was to Eden's pair,
Our river to its valley brings
The blessing of its mountain springs.
And Nature holds with narrowing space,
From mart and crowd, her old-time grace,
And guards with fondly jealous arms
The wild growths of outlying farms.
Her sunsets on Kenoza fall,
Her autumn leaves by Saltonstall;
No lavished gold can richer make
Her opulence of hill and lake.
Wise was the choice which led out sires
To kindle here their household fires,
And share the large content of all
Whose lines in pleasant places fall.
More dear, as years on years advance,
We prize the old inheritance,
And feel, as far and wide we roam,
That all we seek we leave at home.
Our palms are pines, our oranges
Are apples on our orchard trees;
Our thrushes are our nightingales,
Our larks the blackbirds of our vales.
No incense which the Orient burns
Is sweeter than our hillside ferns;
What tropic splendor can outvie
Our autumn woods, our sunset sky?
If, where the slow years came and went,
And left not affluence, but content,
Now flashes in our dazzled eyes
The electric light of enterprise;
And if the old idyllic ease
Seems lost in keen activities,
And crowded workshops now replace
The hearth's and farm-field's rustic grace;
No dull, mechanic round of toil
Life's morning charm can quite despoil;
And youth and beauty, hand in hand,
Will always find enchanted land.
No task is ill where hand and brain
And skill and strength have equal gain,
And each shall each in honor hold,
And simple manhood outweigh gold.
Earth shall be near to Heaven when all
That severs man from man shall fall,
For, here or there, salvation's plan
Alone is love of God and man.
O dwellers by the Merrimac,
The heirs of centuries at your back,
Still reaping where you have not sown,
A broader field is now your own.
Hold fast your Puritan heritage,
But let the free thought of the age
Its light and hope and sweetness add
To the stern faith the fathers had.
Adrift on Time's returnless tide,
As waves that follow waves, we glide.
God grant we leave upon the shore
Some waif of good it lacked before;
Some seed, or flower, or plant of worth,
Some added beauty to the earth;
Some larger hope, some thought to make
The sad world happier for its sake.
As tenants of uncertain stay,
So may we live our little day
That only grateful hearts shall fill
The homes we leave in Haverhill.
The singer of a farewell rhyme,
Upon whose outmost verge of time
The shades of night are falling down,
I pray, God bless the good old town |
Jean de La Fontaine | The Cat And The Fox. | The cat and fox, when saints were all the rage,
Together went on pilgrimage.
Arch hypocrites and swindlers, they,
By sleight of face and sleight of paw,
Regardless both of right and law,
Contrived expenses to repay,
By eating many a fowl and cheese,
And other tricks as bad as these.
Disputing served them to beguile
The road of many a weary mile.
Disputing! but for this resort,
The world would go to sleep, in short.
Our pilgrims, as a thing of course,
Disputed till their throats were hoarse.
Then, dropping to a lower tone,
They talk'd of this, and talk'd of that, | Till Renard whisper'd to the cat,
'You think yourself a knowing one:
How many cunning tricks have you?
For I've a hundred, old and new,
All ready in my haversack.'
The cat replied, 'I do not lack,
Though with but one provided;
And, truth to honour, for that matter,
I hold it than a thousand better.'
In fresh dispute they sided;
And loudly were they at it, when
Approach'd a mob of dogs and men.
'Now,' said the cat, 'your tricks ransack,
And put your cunning brains to rack,
One life to save; I'll show you mine -
A trick, you see, for saving nine.'
With that, she climb'd a lofty pine.
The fox his hundred ruses tried,
And yet no safety found.
A hundred times he falsified
The nose of every hound. -
Was here, and there, and everywhere,
Above, and under ground;
But yet to stop he did not dare,
Pent in a hole, it was no joke,
To meet the terriers or the smoke.
So, leaping into upper air,
He met two dogs, that choked him there.
Expedients may be too many,
Consuming time to choose and try.
On one, but that as good as any,
'Tis best in danger to rely. |
Hilaire Belloc | Lord Lundy | Who was too Freely Moved to Tears, and thereby ruined his Political Career
Lord Lundy from his earliest years
Was far too freely moved to Tears.
For instance if his Mother said,
"Lundy! It's time to go to Bed!"
He bellowed like a Little Turk.
Or if his father Lord Dunquerque
Said "Hi!" in a Commanding Tone,
"Hi, Lundy! Leave the Cat alone!"
Lord Lundy, letting go its tail,
Would raise so terrible a wail
As moved His Grandpapa the Duke
To utter the severe rebuke:
"When I, Sir! was a little Boy,
An Animal was not a Toy!"
His father's Elder Sister, who
Was married to a Parvenoo,
Confided to Her Husband, Drat!
The Miserable, Peevish Brat!
Why don't they drown the Little Beast?"
Suggestions which, to say the least,
Are not what we expect to hear
From Daughters of an English Peer.
His Grandmamma, His Mother's Mother,
Who had some dignity or other,
The Garter, or no matter what, | I can't remember all the Lot!
Said "Oh! That I were Brisk and Spry
To give him that for which to cry!"
(An empty wish, alas! For she
Was Blind and nearly ninety-three).
The Dear Old Butler thought-but there!
I really neither know nor care
For what the Dear Old Butler thought!
In my opinion, Butlers ought
To know their place, and not to play
The Old Retainer night and day.
I'm getting tired and so are you,
Let's cut the poem into two!
Second Part
It happened to Lord Lundy then,
As happens to so many men:
Towards the age of twenty-six,
They shoved him into politics;
In which profession he commanded
The Income that his rank demanded
In turn as Secretary for
India, the Colonies, and War.
But very soon his friends began
To doubt is he were quite the man:
Thus if a member rose to say
(As members do from day to day),
"Arising out of that reply . . .!"
Lord Lundy would begin to cry.
A Hint at harmless little jobs
Would shake him with convulsive sobs.
While as for Revelations, these
Would simply bring him to his knees,
And leave him whimpering like a child.
It drove his colleagues raving wild!
They let him sink from Post to Post,
From fifteen hundred at the most
To eight, and barely six, and then
To be Curator of Big Ben!. . .
And finally there came a Threat
To oust him from the Cabinet!
The Duke, his aged grand-sire, bore
The shame till he could bear no more.
He rallied his declining powers,
Summoned the youth to Brackley Towers,
And bitterly addressed him thus,
"Sir! you have disappointed us!
We had intended you to be
The next Prime Minister but three:
The stocks were sold; the Press was squared:
The Middle Class was quite prepared.
But as it is! . . . My language fails!
Go out and govern New South Wales!"
The Aged Patriot groaned and died:
And gracious! how Lord Lundy cried! |
Abram Joseph Ryan | What Ails the World? | "What ails the world?" the poet cried;
"And why does death walk everywhere?
And why do tears fall anywhere?
And skies have clouds, and souls have care?"
Thus the poet sang, and sighed.
For he would fain have all things glad,
All lives happy, all hearts bright;
Not a day would end in night,
Not a wrong would vex a right --
And so he sang -- and he was sad.
Thro' his very grandest rhymes
Moved a mournful monotone --
Like a shadow eastward thrown
From a sunset -- like a moan
Tangled in a joy-bell's chimes.
"What ails the world?" he sang and asked --
And asked and sang -- but all in vain;
No answer came to any strain, | And no reply to his refrain --
The mystery moved 'round him masked.
"What ails the world?" An echo came --
"Ails the world?" The minstrel bands,
With famous or forgotten hands,
Lift up their lyres in all the lands,
And chant alike, and ask the same
From him whose soul first soared in song,
A thousand, thousand years away,
To him who sang but yesterday,
In dying or in deathless lay --
"What ails the world?" comes from the throng.
They fain would sing the world to rest;
And so they chant in countless keys,
As many as the waves of seas,
And as the breathings of the breeze,
Yet even when they sing their best --
When o'er the list'ning world there floats
Such melody as 'raptures men --
When all look up entranced -- and when
The song of fame floats forth, e'en then
A discord creepeth through the notes --
Their sweetest harps have broken strings,
Their grandest accords have their jars,
Like shadows on the light of stars,
And somehow, something ever mars
The songs the greatest minstrel sings.
And so each song is incomplete,
And not a rhyme can ever round
Into the chords of perfect sound
The tones of thought that e'er surround
The ways walked by the poet's feet.
"What ails the world?" he sings and sighs;
No answer cometh to his cry.
He asks the earth and asks the sky --
The echoes of his song pass by
Unanswered -- and the poet dies. |
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni | To Vittoria Colonna. A Matchless Courtesy. | Felice spirto.
Blest spirit, who with loving tenderness
Quickenest my heart so old and near to die,
Who mid thy joys on me dost bend an eye
Though many nobler men around thee press! | As thou wert erewhile wont my sight to bless,
So to console my mind thou now dost fly;
Hope therefore stills the pangs of memory,
Which coupled with desire my soul distress.
So finding in thee grace to plead for me--
Thy thoughts for me sunk in so sad a case--
He who now writes, returns thee thanks for these.
Lo, it were foul and monstrous usury
To send thee ugliest paintings in the place
Of thy fair spirit's living phantasies. |
Robert Herrick | His Litany, To The Holy Spirit | In the hour of my distress,
When temptations me oppress,
And when I my sins confess,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
When I lie within my bed,
Sick in heart, and sick in head,
And with doubts discomforted,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
When the house doth sigh and weep,
And the world is drown'd in sleep,
Yet mine eyes the watch do keep,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
When the artless doctor sees
No one hope, but of his fees,
And his skill runs on the lees,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me! | When his potion and his pill,
Has, or none, or little skill,
Meet for nothing but to kill,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
When the passing-bell doth toll,
And the furies in a shoal
Come to fright a parting soul,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
When the tapers now burn blue,
And the comforters are few,
And that number more than true,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
When the priest his last hath pray'd,
And I nod to what is said,
'Cause my speech is now decay'd,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
When, God knows, I'm tost about
Either with despair, or doubt;
Yet, before the glass be out,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
When the tempter me pursu'th
With the sins of all my youth,
And half damns me with untruth,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
When the flames and hellish cries
Fright mine ears, and fright mine eyes,
And all terrors me surprise,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
When the Judgment is reveal'd,
And that open'd which was seal'd;
When to Thee I have appeal'd,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me! |
Rupert Brooke | Wagner | Creeps in half wanton, half asleep,
One with a fat wide hairless face.
He likes love-music that is cheap;
Likes women in a crowded place;
And wants to hear the noise they're making. | His heavy eyelids droop half-over,
Great pouches swing beneath his eyes.
He listens, thinks himself the lover,
Heaves from his stomach wheezy sighs;
He likes to feel his heart's a-breaking.
The music swells. His gross legs quiver.
His little lips are bright with slime.
The music swells. The women shiver.
And all the while, in perfect time,
His pendulous stomach hangs a-shaking. |
Walt Whitman | Warble Of Lilac-Time | Warble me now, for joy of Lilac-time,
Sort me, O tongue and lips, for Nature's sake, and sweet life's sake, and death's the same as life's,
Souvenirs of earliest summer, birds' eggs, and the first berries;
Gather the welcome signs, (as children, with pebbles, or stringing shells;)
Put in April and May, the hylas croaking in the ponds, the elastic air,
Bees, butterflies, the sparrow with its simple notes,
Blue-bird, and darting swallow, nor forget the high-hole flashing his golden wings,
The tranquil sunny haze, the clinging smoke, the vapor,
Spiritual, airy insects, humming on gossamer wings,
Shimmer of waters, with fish in them, the cerulean above;
All that is jocund and sparkling, the brooks running, | The maple woods, the crisp February days, and the sugar-making;
The robin, where he hops, bright-eyed, brown-breasted,
With musical clear call at sunrise, and again at sunset,
Or flitting among the trees of the apple-orchard, building the nest of his mate;
The melted snow of March, the willow sending forth its yellow-green sprouts;
For spring-time is here! the summer is here! and what is this in it and from it?
Thou, Soul, unloosen'd, the restlessness after I know not what;
Come! let us lag here no longer, let us be up and away!
O for another world! O if one could but fly like a bird!
O to escape, to sail forth, as in a ship!
To glide with thee, O Soul, o'er all, in all, as a ship o'er the waters!
Gathering these hints, these preludes, the blue sky, the grass, the morning drops of dew;
(With additional songs, every spring will I now strike up additional songs,
Nor ever again forget, these tender days, the chants of Death as well as Life;)
The lilac-scent, the bushes, and the dark green, heart-shaped leaves,
Wood violets, the little delicate pale blossoms called innocence,
Samples and sorts not for themselves alone, but for their atmosphere,
To tally, drench'd with them, tested by them,
Cities and artificial life, and all their sights and scenes,
My mind henceforth, and all its meditations, my recitatives,
My land, my age, my race, for once to serve in songs,
(Sprouts, tokens ever of death indeed the same as life,)
To grace the bush I love, to sing with the birds,
A warble for joy of Lilac-time. |
Rudyard Kipling | Beast And Man In India | Written for John Lockwood Kipling's
They killed a Child to please the Gods
In Earth's young penitence,
And I have bled in that Babe's stead
Because of innocence.
I bear the sins of sinful men
That have no sin of my own,
They drive me forth to Heaven's wrath
Unpastured and alone.
I am the meat of sacrifice,
The ransom of man's guilt,
For they give my life to the altar-knife
Wherever shrine is built.
The Goat.
Between the waving tufts of jungle-grass,
Up from the river as the twilight falls,
Across the dust-beclouded plain they pass
On to the village walls.
Great is the sword and mighty is the pen,
But over all the labouring ploughman's blade, | For on its oxen and its husbandmen
An Empire's strength is laid.
The Oxen.
The torn boughs trailing o'er the tusks aslant,
The saplings reeling in the path he trod,
Declare his might--our lord the Elephant,
Chief of the ways of God.
The black bulk heaving where the oxen pant,
The bowed head toiling where the guns careen,
Declare our might, our slave the Elephant,
And servant of the Queen.
The Elephant.
Dark children of the mere and marsh,
Wallow and waste and lea,
Outcaste they wait at the village gate
With folk of low degree.
Their pasture is in no man's land,
Their food the cattle's scorn;
Their rest is mire and their desire
The thicket and the thorn.
But woe to those that break their sleep,
And woe to those that dare
To rouse the herd-bull from his keep,
The wild boar from his lair!
Pigs and Buffaloes.
The beasts are very wise,
Their mouths are clean of lies,
They talk one to the other,
Bullock to bullock's brother
Resting after their labours,
Each in stall with his neighbours.
But man with goad and whip,
Breaks up their fellowship,
Shouts in their silky ears
Filling their soul with fears.
When he has ploughed the land,
He says: "They understand."
But the beasts in stall together,
Freed from the yoke and tether,
Say as the torn flanks smoke:
"Nay, 'twas the whip that spoke." |
William McKendree Carleton | The Editor's Guests. | The Editor sat in his sanctum, his countenance furrowed with care,
His mind at the bottom of business, his feet at the top of a chair,
His chair-arm an elbow supporting, his right hand upholding his head,
His eyes on his dusty old table, with different documents spread:
There were thirty long pages from Howler, with underlined capitals topped,
And a short disquisition from Growler, requesting his newspaper stopped;
There were lyrics from Gusher, the poet, concerning sweet flow'rets and zephyrs,
And a stray gem from Plodder, the farmer, describing a couple of heifers;
There were billets from beautiful maidens, and bills from a grocer or two,
And his best leader hitched to a letter, which inquired if he wrote it, or who?
There were raptures of praises from writers of the weakly mellifluous school,
And one of his rival's last papers, informing him he was a fool;
There were several long resolutions, with names telling whom they were by,
Canonizing some harmless old brother who had done nothing worse than to die;
There were traps on that table to catch him, and serpents to sting and to smite him;
There were gift enterprises to sell him, and bitters attempting to bite him;
There were long staring "ads" from the city, and money with never a one,
Which added, "Please give this insertion, and send in your bill when you're done;"
There were letters from organizations - their meetings, their wants, and their laws -
Which said, "Can you print this announcement for the good of our glorious cause?"
There were tickets inviting his presence to festivals, parties, and shows,
Wrapped in notes with "Please give us a notice" demurely slipped in at the close;
In short, as his eye took the table, and ran o'er its ink-spattered trash,
There was nothing it did not encounter, excepting perhaps it was cash.
The Editor dreamily pondered on several ponderous things.
On different lines of action, and the pulling of different strings;
Upon some equivocal doings, and some unequivocal duns;
On how few of his numerous patrons were quietly prompt-paying ones;
On friends who subscribed "just to help him," and wordy encouragement lent,
And had given him plenty of counsel, but never had paid him a cent;
On vinegar, kind-hearted people were feeding him every hour,
Who saw not the work they were doing, but wondered that "printers are sour:"
On several intelligent townsmen, whose kindness was so without stint
That they kept an eye out on his business, and told him just what he should print;
On men who had rendered him favors, and never pushed forward their claims,
So long as the paper was crowded with "locals" containing their names;
On various other small matters, sufficient his temper to roil,
And finely contrived to be making the blood of an editor boil;
And so one may see that his feelings could hardly be said to be smooth,
And he needed some pleasant occurrence his ruffled emotions to soothe:
He had it; for lo! on the threshold, a slow and reliable tread,
And a farmer invaded the sanctum, and these are the words that he said:
"Good-mornin', sir, Mr. Printer; how is your body to-day? | I'm glad you're to home; for you fellers is al'ays a runnin' away.
Your paper last week wa'n't so spicy nor sharp as the one week before:
But I s'pose when the campaign is opened, you'll be whoopin' it up to 'em more.
That feller that's printin' The Smasher is goin' for you perty smart;
And our folks said this mornin' at breakfast, they thought he was gettin' the start.
But I hushed 'em right up in a minute, and said a good word for you;
I told 'em I b'lieved you was tryin' to do just as well as you knew;
And I told 'em that some one was sayin', and whoever 'twas it is so,
That you can't expect much of no one man, nor blame him for what he don't know.
But, layin' aside pleasure for business, I've brought you my little boy Jim;
And I thought I would see if you couldn't make an editor outen of him.
"My family stock is increasin', while other folks' seems to run short.
I've got a right smart of a family - it's one of the old-fashioned sort:
There's Ichabod, Isaac, and Israel, a-workin' away on the farm -
They do 'bout as much as one good boy, and make things go off like a charm.
There's Moses and Aaron are sly ones, and slip like a couple of eels;
But they're tol'able steady in one thing - they al'ays git round to their meals.
There's Peter is busy inventin' (though what he invents I can't see),
And Joseph is studyin' medicine - and both of 'em boardin' with me.
There's Abram and Albert is married, each workin' my farm for myself,
And Sam smashed his nose at a shootin', and so he is laid on the shelf.
The rest of the boys are all growin', 'cept this little runt, which is Jim,
And I thought that perhaps I'd be makin' an editor outen o' him.
"He ain't no great shakes for to labor, though I've labored with him a good deal,
And give him some strappin' good arguments I know he couldn't help but to feel;
But he's built out of second-growth timber, and nothin' about him is big
Exceptin' his appetite only, and there he's as good as a pig.
I keep him a-carryin' luncheons, and fillin' and bringin' the jugs,
And take him among the pertatoes, and set him to pickin' the bugs;
And then there is things to be doin' a-helpin' the women indoors;
There's churnin' and washin' of dishes, and other descriptions of chores;
But he don't take to nothin' but victuals, and he'll never be much, I'm afraid,
So I thought it would be a good notion to larn him the editor's trade.
His body's too small for a farmer, his judgment is rather too slim,
But I thought we perhaps could be makin' an editor outen o' him!
"It ain't much to get up a paper - it wouldn't take him long for to learn;
He could feed the machine, I'm thinkin', with a good strappin' fellow to turn.
And things that was once hard in doin', is easy enough now to do;
Just keep your eye on your machinery, and crack your arrangements right through.
I used for to wonder at readin' and where it was got up, and how;
But 'tis most of it made by machinery - I can see it all plain enough now.
And poetry, too, is constructed by machines of different designs,
Each one with a gauge and a chopper to see to the length of the lines;
And I hear a New York clairvoyant is runnin' one sleeker than grease,
And a-rentin' her heaven-born productions at a couple of dollars apiece;
An' since the whole trade has growed easy, 'twould be easy enough, I've a whim,
If you was agreed, to be makin' an editor outen of Jim!"
The Editor sat in his sanctum and looked the old man in the eye,
Then glanced at the grinning young hopeful, and mournfully made his reply:
"Is your son a small unbound edition of Moses and Solomon both?
Can he compass his spirit with meekness, and strangle a natural oath?
Can he leave all his wrongs to the future, and carry his heart in his cheek?
Can he do an hour's work in a minute, and live on a sixpence a week?
Can he courteously talk to an equal, and browbeat an impudent dunce?
Can he keep things in apple-pie order, and do half a dozen at once?
Can he press all the springs of knowledge, with quick and reliable touch,
And be sure that he knows how much to know, and knows how to not know too much?
Does he know how to spur up his virtue, and put a check-rein on his pride?
Can he carry a gentleman's manners within a rhinoceros' hide?
Can he know all, and do all, and be all, with cheerfulness, courage, and vim?
If so, we perhaps can be makin an editor 'outen of him.'"
The farmer stood curiously listening, while wonder his visage o'erspread;
And he said, "Jim, I guess we'll be goin'; he's probably out of his head."
But lo! on the rickety stair-case, another reliable tread,
And entered another old farmer, and these are the words that he said:
"Good-morning, sir, Mr. Editor, how is the folks to-day?
I owe you for next year's paper; I thought I'd come in and pay.
And Jones is agoin' to take it, and this is his money here;
I shut down on lendin' it to him, and coaxed him to try it a year.
And here is a few little items that happened last week in our town:
I thought they'd look good for the paper, and so I just jotted 'em down.
And here is a basket of cherries my wife picked expressly for you;
And a small bunch of flowers from Jennie - she thought she must send somethin' too.
You're doin' the politics bully, as all of our family agree;
Just keep your old goose-quill a-floppin', and give 'em a good one for me.
And now you are chuck full of business, and I won't be takin' your time;
I've things of my own I must 'tend to - good-day, sir, I b'lieve I will climb."
The Editor sat in his sanctum and brought down his fist with a thump:
"God bless that old farmer," he muttered, "he's a regular Editor's trump."
And 'tis thus with our noble profession, and thus it will ever be, still;
There are some who appreciate its labors, and some who perhaps never will.
But in the great time that is coming, when loudly the trumpet shall sound,
And they who have labored and rested shall come from the quivering ground;
When they who have striven and suffered to teach and ennoble the race,
Shall march at the front of the column, each one in his God-given place,
As they pass through the gates of The City with proud and victorious tread,
The editor, printer, and "devil," will travel not far from the head. |
Charles Baudelaire | The Ghost | Softly as brown-eyed Angels rove
I will return to thy alcove,
And glide upon the night to thee,
Treading the shadows silently. | And I will give to thee, my own,
Kisses as icy as the moon,
And the caresses of a snake
Cold gliding in the thorny brake.
And when returns the livid morn
Thou shalt find all my place forlorn
And chilly, till the falling night.
Others would rule by tenderness
Over thy life and youthfulness,
But I would conquer thee by fright! |
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | Two Worlds. | It makes no difference abroad,
The seasons fit the same,
The mornings blossom into noons,
And split their pods of flame. | Wild-flowers kindle in the woods,
The brooks brag all the day;
No blackbird bates his jargoning
For passing Calvary.
Auto-da-fe and judgment
Are nothing to the bee;
His separation from his rose
To him seems misery. |
Joseph Victor von Scheffel | The Basalt | Mag der basaltene Mohrenstein
Zum Schreck es erz'hlen im Lande,
Wie er gebrodelt in Flammenschein
Und geschw'rzt entstiegen dem Brande:
Brenn's drunten noch Jahr aus Jahr ein
Beim Wein soll uns nicht bange sein,
Nein, nein!
Soll uns nicht bange sein!
F. v. Kobell. Urzeit der Erde, p. 33.
Es war der Basalt ein j'ngerer Sohn
Aus altvulcanischem Hause,
Er lebte lang verkannt und gedr'ckt
In erdtief verborgener Clause.
Sir basalt was a younger son
Of that oldest race, the Vulcanian,
And he lived for ages oppressed and unknown
In a cavern deep subterranean.
So they goaded and jeered the lover forlorn, -
'Art thou yearning for rainy weather? | You will get but a mitten, and the scorn
Of all the formations together.
'Uncle Rocksalt said to the Lime and smiled,
And the billows sneer it higher,
"How can the Ocean's third-born child
Be a bride to this scum of Fire?"'
What happened next was never known;
But at once into madness crashing,
In a fiery blaze he was upwards thrown,
His wild veins glaring and flashing.
Loud raving he sprang to the air in haste,
And scorching all, fast hurried;
Bursting the strata's mountain waste
Beneath which he long was buried.
And she whom he once had worshipped, broke,
And was crushed as a mere obstruction;
He laughed in scorn, and whirling in smoke,
Stormed on to fresh destruction.
And blow on blow - a terrible roar
Of thousands of storms wild crashing;
The earth burst open and trembled all o'er.
With a shaking and breaking and dashing.
Till in majesty the fiery flood
Flew up from the rifts in fountains,
And scattered with ruins land and flood
Bowed down to the columned mountains.
There he stood and gazed on the blue air free,
And the sun with its sweet attraction,
Then heavily sighed - it blew cool from the sea -
And he sank in petrifaction.
Yet still in the rock may be heard in rhyme
A wondrous tuning and ringing,
As though he would from his youthful time
A song of love be singing.
And a gold yellow drop of natrolite
From the dark stone oft comes peeping;
Those are the tears which Sir Bas'lt
For his crushed love ever is weeping.
Translated From The German Of Joseph Victor Scheffel By Charles G. Leland. |
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni | To Pope Julius II. | Signor, se vero '.
My Lord! if ever ancient saw spake sooth,
Hear this which saith: Who can, doth never will.
Lo! thou hast lent thine ear to fables still,
Rewarding those who hate the name of truth. | I am thy drudge and have been from my youth--
Thine, like the rays which the sun's circle fill;
Yet of my dear time's waste thou think'st no ill:
The more I toil, the less I move thy ruth.
Once 'twas my hope to raise me by thy height;
But 'tis the balance and the powerful sword
Of Justice, not false Echo, that we need.
Heaven, as it seems, plants virtue in despite
Here on the earth, if this be our reward--
To seek for fruit on trees too dry to breed. |
Robert William Service | Men of the High North | Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing;
Islands of opal float on silver seas;
Swift splendors kindle, barbaric, amazing;
Pale ports of amber, golden argosies.
Ringed all around us the proud peaks are glowing;
Fierce chiefs in council, their wigwam the sky;
Far, far below us the big Yukon flowing,
Like threaded quicksilver, gleams to the eye.
Men of the High North, you who have known it;
You in whose hearts its splendors have abode;
Can you renounce it, can you disown it?
Can you forget it, its glory and its goad?
Where is the hardship, where is the pain of it?
Lost in the limbo of things you've forgot;
Only remain the guerdon and gain of it;
Zest of the foray, and God, how you fought! | You who have made good, you foreign faring;
You money magic to far lands has whirled;
Can you forget those days of vast daring,
There with your soul on the Top o' the World?
Nights when no peril could keep you awake on
Spruce boughs you spread for your couch in the snow;
Taste all your feasts like the beans and the bacon
Fried at the camp-fire at forty below?
Can you remember your huskies all going,
Barking with joy and their brushes in air;
You in your parka, glad-eyed and glowing,
Monarch, your subjects the wolf and the bear?
Monarch, your kingdom unravisht and gleaming;
Mountains your throne, and a river your car;
Crash of a bull moose to rouse you from dreaming;
Forest your couch, and your candle a star.
You who this faint day the High North is luring
Unto her vastness, taintlessly sweet;
You who are steel-braced, straight-lipped, enduring,
Dreadless in danger and dire in defeat:
Honor the High North ever and ever,
Whether she crown you, or whether she slay;
Suffer her fury, cherish and love her -
He who would rule he must learn to obey.
Men of the High North, fierce mountains love you;
Proud rivers leap when you ride on their breast.
See, the austere sky, pensive above you,
Dons all her jewels to smile on your rest.
Children of Freedom, scornful of frontiers,
We who are weaklings honor your worth.
Lords of the wilderness, Princes of Pioneers,
Let's have a rouse that will ring round the earth. |
Thomas Carew | Ingrateful Beauty Threatened | Know Celia, since thou art so proud,
'Twas I that gave thee thy renown;
Thou hadst, in the forgotten crowd
Of common beauties, liv'd unknown,
Had not my verse exhal'd thy name,
And with it imp'd the wings of fame. | That killing power is none of thine,
I gave it to thy voice, and eyes;
Thy sweets, thy graces, all are mine;
Thou art my star, shin'st in my skies;
Then dart not from thy borrow'd sphere
Lightning on him that fix'd thee there.
Tempt me with such affrights no more,
Lest what I made, I uncreate;
Let fools thy mystic forms adore,
I'll know thee in thy mortal state;
Wise poets that wrapp'd Truth in tales,
Knew her themselves, through all her veils. |
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | Drowning Is Not So Pitiful | Drowning is not so pitiful
As the attempt to rise.
Three times, 't is said, a sinking man
Comes up to face the skies, | And then declines forever
To that abhorred abode
Where hope and he part company, --
For he is grasped of God.
The Maker's cordial visage,
However good to see,
Is shunned, we must admit it,
Like an adversity. |
D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards) | Firelight And Nightfall | The darkness steals the forms of all the queens,
But oh, the palms of his two black hands are red,
Inflamed with binding up the sheaves of dead
Hours that were once all glory and all queens. | And I remember all the sunny hours
Of queens in hyacinth and skies of gold,
And morning singing where the woods are scrolled
And diapered above the chaunting flowers.
Here lamps are white like snowdrops in the grass;
The town is like a churchyard, all so still
And grey now night is here; nor will
Another torn red sunset come to pass. |
George MacDonald | To The Same (Lady Noel Byron ) | Dead, why defend thee, who in life
For thy worst foe hadst died; | Who, thy own name a word of strife,
Didst silent stand aside?
Grand in forgiveness, what to thee
The big world's puny prate!
Or thy great heart hath ceased to be
Or loveth still its mate! |
Friedrich Schiller | The Impulses. | Fear with his iron staff may urge the slave onward forever; | Rapture, do thou lead me on ever in roseate chains! |
James McIntyre | Captain's Adventure. | Three years ago my vessel lay
In a port of Hudson Bay,
I started off for the trading post,
But on the way back I then got lost.
And the thought soon gave me the blues,
Trudging along on my snow shoes,
Over the wastes of drifting snow,
While the wind it did fiercely blow.
I feared that I would be froze hard,
For it was a fearful blizzard,
I was growing faint and weary,
Not the slightest hopes to cheer me.
Without compass to bearing,
My yells were beyond crews' hearing,
But at last to my loud halloo
There came a mournful ho, ho.
From creature white I thought 'twas ghost,
And that I was forever lost, | I heard horrid creature flutter,
As it those strange sounds did utter.
At last I found that all this howl
Was from a noble large white owl,
And a happy apparition,
So runs the Indian tradition.
It guides the lost one in distress
And leads him out of wilderness,
This strange bird I soon follow,
And it still kept up its halloo.
It seem'd that it cried to cheer me,
I thought the ship was now near me,
As I walked o'er the banks of snow
I kept up a feeble halloo.
And but a little ways beyond
From my own crew I got respond,
With joy I was received by crew,
So happy all at my rescue.
It must be that some gentle soul
Did then inhabit that strange fowl,
But O to me 'twas wondrous fair,
For it thus saved me from despair.
The man's my foe who now doth growl
At the strange sounds made by the owl,
The sailors all they took delight
To feed this bird so pure and white.
But soon the poor bird was o'erfed,
Early one morn we found it dead,
And my breast it heaved with sighs,
And the tears poured from mine eyes.
But precious relic in glass case
I oft gaze on its kindly face,
And grateful memories it brings,
When I behold its glorious wings.
To stuff such birds I knew the art
On it I worked with my whole heart,
To preserve each grace and feature
Full of charms to me is creature. |
Michael Drayton | Amour 43 | Why doe I speake of ioy, or write of loue,
When my hart is the very Den of horror,
And in my soule the paynes of hell I proue,
With all his torments and infernall terror? | Myne eyes want teares thus to bewayle my woe,
My brayne is dry with weeping all too long;
My sighes be spent with griefe and sighing so,
And I want words for to expresse my wrong.
But still, distracted in loues lunacy,
And Bedlam like thus rauing in my griefe,
Now rayle vpon her hayre, now on her eye,
Now call her Goddesse, then I call her thiefe;
Now I deny her, then I doe confesse her,
Now I doe curse her, then againe I blesse her. |
John Greenleaf Whittier | O. W. Holmes On His Eightieth Birth-Day | Climbing a path which leads back never more
We heard behind his footsteps and his cheer;
Now, face to face, we greet him standing here
Upon the lonely summit of Fourscore | Welcome to us, o'er whom the lengthened day
Is closing and the shadows colder grow,
His genial presence, like an afterglow,
Following the one just vanishing away.
Long be it ere the table shall be set
For the last breakfast of the Autocrat,
And love repeat with smiles and tears thereat
His own sweet songs that time shall not forget.
Waiting with us the call to come up higher,
Life is not less, the heavens are only higher! |
Walter Crane | The Man That Pleased None | Through the town this good Man & his Son
Strove to ride as to please everyone: | Self, Son, or both tried,
Then the Ass had a ride;
While the world, at their efforts, poked fun.
You Cannot Hope To Please All--Don't Try |
Archibald Lampman | Solitude. | How still it is here in the woods. The trees
Stand motionless, as if they did not dare
To stir, lest it should break the spell. The air
Hangs quiet as spaces in a marble frieze. | Even this little brook, that runs at ease,
Whispering and gurgling in its knotted bed,
Seems but to deepen with its curling thread
Of sound the shadowy sun-pierced silences.
Sometimes a hawk screams or a woodpecker
Startles the stillness from its fix'd mood
With his loud careless tap. Sometimes I hear
The dreamy white-throat from some far off tree
Pipe slowly on the listening solitude
His five pure notes succeeding pensively. |
James Joyce | Tutto ' Sciolto | A birdless heaven, seadusk, one lone star
Piercing the west,
As thou, fond heart, love's time, so faint, so far,
Rememberest. | The clear young eyes' soft look, the candid brow,
The fragrant hair,
Falling as through the silence falleth now
Dusk of the air.
Why then, remembering those shy
Sweet lures, repine
When the dear love she yielded with a sigh
Was all but thine? |
William Wordsworth | Upon Seeing A Coloured Drawing Of The Bird Of Paradise In An Album | Who rashly strove thy Image to portray?
Thou buoyant minion of the tropic air;
How could he think of the live creature gay
With a divinity of colours, drest
In all her brightness, from the dancing crest
Far as the last gleam of the filmy train
Extended and extending to sustain
The motions that it graces and forbear
To drop his pencil! Flowers of every clime
Depicted on these pages smile at time;
And gorgeous insects copied with nice care
Are here, and likenesses of many a shell
Tossed ashore by restless waves,
Or in the diver's grasp fetched up from caves | Where sea-nymphs might be proud to dwell:
But whose rash hand (again I ask) could dare,
'Mid casual tokens and promiscuous shows,
To circumscribe this Shape in fixed repose;
Could imitate for indolent survey,
Perhaps for touch profane,
Plumes that might catch, but cannot keep, a stain;
And, with cloud-streaks lightest and loftiest, share
The sun's first greeting, his last farewell ray!
Resplendent Wanderer! followed with glad eyes
Where'er her course; mysterious Bird!
To whom, by wondering Fancy stirred,
Eastern Islanders have given
A holy name, the Bird of Heaven!
And even a title higher still,
The Bird of God! whose blessed will
She seems performing as she flies
Over the earth and through the skies
In never-wearied search of Paradise
Region that crowns her beauty with the name
She bears for 'us' for us how blest,
How happy at all seasons, could like aim
Uphold our Spirits urged to kindred flight
On wings that fear no glance of God's pure sight,
No tempest from his breath, their promised rest
Seeking with indefatigable quest
Above a world that deems itself most wise
When most enslaved by gross realities! |
George Pope Morris | Mary. | One balmy summer night, Mary,
Just as the risen moon
Had thrown aside her fleecy veil,
We left the gay saloon;
And in a green, sequestered spot,
Beneath a drooping tree,
Fond words were breathed, by you forgot,
That still are dear to me, Mary,
That still are dear to me.
Oh, we were happy, then, Mary--
Time lingered on his way,
To crowd a lifetime in a night, | Whole ages in a day!
If star and sun would set and rise
Thus in our after years,
The world would be a paradise,
And not a vale of tears, Mary,
And not a vale of tears.
I live but in the past, Mary--
The glorious day of old!
When love was hoarded in the heart,
As misers hoard their gold:
And often like a bridal train,
To music soft and low,
The by-gone moments cross my brain,
In all their summer glow, Mary,
In all their summer glow.
These visions form and fade, Mary,
As age comes stealing on,
To bring the light and leave the shade
Of days for ever gone!
The poet's brow may wear at last
The bays that round it fall;
But love has rose-buds of the past
Far dearer than them all, Mary,
Far dearer than them all! |
Robert William Service | The Faceless Man | I'm dead.
Officially I'm dead. Their hope is past.
How long I stood as missing! Now, at last
I'm dead.
Look in my face - no likeness can you see,
No tiny trace of him they knew as "me".
How terrible the change!
Even my eyes are strange.
So keyed are they to pain,
That if I chanced to meet
My mother in the street
She'd look at me in vain.
When she got home I think she'd say:
"I saw the saddest sight to-day -
A poilu with no face at all.
Far better in the fight to fall
Than go through life like that, I think.
Poor fellow! how he made me shrink.
No face. Just eyes that seemed to stare
At me with anguish and despair.
This ghastly war! I'm almost cheered
To think my son who disappeared,
My boy so handsome and so gay,
Might have come home like him to-day."
I'm dead. I think it's better to be dead
When little children look at you with dread;
And when you know your coming home again
Will only give the ones who love you pain.
Ah! who can help but shrink? One cannot blame.
They see the hideous husk, not, not the flame
Of sacrifice and love that burns within;
While souls of satyrs, riddled through with sin,
Have bodies fair and excellent to see.
Mon Dieu! how different we all would be
If this our flesh was ordained to express
Our spirit's beauty or its ugliness.
(Oh, you who look at me with fear to-day,
And shrink despite yourselves, and turn away -
It was for you I suffered woe accurst; | For you I braved red battle at its worst;
For you I fought and bled and maimed and slew;
For you, for you!
For you I faced hell-fury and despair;
The reeking horror of it all I knew:
I flung myself into the furnace there;
I faced the flame that scorched me with its glare;
I drank unto the dregs the devil's brew -
Look at me now - for you and you and you. . . .)
. . . . .
I'm thinking of the time we said good-by:
We took our dinner in Duval's that night,
Just little Jacqueline, Lucette and I;
We tried our very utmost to be bright.
We laughed. And yet our eyes, they weren't gay.
I sought all kinds of cheering things to say.
"Don't grieve," I told them. "Soon the time will pass;
My next permission will come quickly round;
We'll all meet at the Gare du Montparnasse;
Three times I've come already, safe and sound."
(But oh, I thought, it's harder every time,
After a home that seems like Paradise,
To go back to the vermin and the slime,
The weariness, the want, the sacrifice.
"Pray God," I said, "the war may soon be done,
But no, oh never, never till we've won!")
Then to the station quietly we walked;
I had my rifle and my haversack,
My heavy boots, my blankets on my back;
And though it hurt us, cheerfully we talked.
We chatted bravely at the platform gate.
I watched the clock. My train must go at eight.
One minute to the hour . . . we kissed good-by,
Then, oh, they both broke down, with piteous cry.
I went. . . . Their way was barred; they could not pass.
I looked back as the train began to start;
Once more I ran with anguish at my heart
And through the bars I kissed my little lass. . . .
Three years have gone; they've waited day by day.
I never came. I did not even write.
For when I saw my face was such a sight
I thought that I had better . . . stay away.
And so I took the name of one who died,
A friendless friend who perished by my side.
In Prussian prison camps three years of hell
I kept my secret; oh, I kept it well!
And now I'm free, but none shall ever know;
They think I died out there . . . it's better so.
To-day I passed my wife in widow's weeds.
I brushed her arm. She did not even look.
So white, so pinched her face, my heart still bleeds,
And at the touch of her, oh, how I shook!
And then last night I passed the window where
They sat together; I could see them clear,
The lamplight softly gleaming on their hair,
And all the room so full of cozy cheer.
My wife was sewing, while my daughter read;
I even saw my portrait on the wall.
I wanted to rush in, to tell them all;
And then I cursed myself: "You're dead, you're dead!"
God! how I watched them from the darkness there,
Clutching the dripping branches of a tree,
Peering as close as ever I might dare,
And sobbing, sobbing, oh, so bitterly!
But no, it's folly; and I mustn't stay.
To-morrow I am going far away.
I'll find a ship and sail before the mast;
In some wild land I'll bury all the past.
I'll live on lonely shores and there forget,
Or tell myself that there has never been
The gay and tender courage of Lucette,
The little loving arms of Jacqueline.
A man lonely upon a lonely isle,
Sometimes I'll look towards the North and smile
To think they're happy, and they both believe
I died for France, and that I lie at rest;
And for my glory's sake they've ceased to grieve,
And hold my memory sacred. Ah! that's best.
And in that thought I'll find my joy and peace
As there alone I wait the Last Release. |
John Clare | Poets Love Nature--A Fragment | Poets love Nature, and themselves are love.
Though scorn of fools, and mock of idle pride.
The vile in nature worthless deeds approve,
They court the vile and spurn all good beside. | Poets love Nature; like the calm of Heaven,
Like Heaven's own love, her gifts spread far and wide:
In all her works there are no signs of leaven
* * * *
Her flowers * * * *
They are her very Scriptures upon earth,
And teach us simple mirth where'er we go.
Even in prison they can solace me,
For where they bloom God is, and I am free. |
William Butler Yeats | All Souls' Night | i(Epilogue to "A Vision')
Midnight has come, and the great Christ Church Bell
And may a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls' Night,
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost's right,
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath
While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.
I need some mind that, if the cannon sound
From every quarter of the world, can stay
Wound in mind's pondering
As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound;
Because I have a marvellous thing to say,
A certain marvellous thing
None but the living mock,
Though not for sober ear;
It may be all that hear
Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.
Horton's the first I call. He loved strange thought
And knew that sweet extremity of pride
That's called platonic love,
And that to such a pitch of passion wrought
Nothing could bring him, when his lady died,
Anodyne for his love.
Words were but wasted breath;
One dear hope had he:
The inclemency
Of that or the next winter would be death.
Two thoughts were so mixed up I could not tell
Whether of her or God he thought the most, | But think that his mind's eye,
When upward turned, on one sole image fell;
And that a slight companionable ghost,
Wild with divinity,
Had so lit up the whole
Immense miraculous house
The Bible promised us,
It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl.
On Florence Emery I call the next,
Who finding the first wrinkles on a face
Admired and beautiful,
And knowing that the future would be vexed
With 'minished beauty, multiplied commonplace,
preferred to teach a school
Away from neighbour or friend,
Among dark skins, and there
permit foul years to wear
Hidden from eyesight to the unnoticed end.
Before that end much had she ravelled out
From a discourse in figurative speech
By some learned Indian
On the soul's journey. How it is whirled about,
Wherever the orbit of the moon can reach,
Until it plunge into the sun;
And there, free and yet fast,
Being both Chance and Choice,
Forget its broken toys
And sink into its own delight at last.
And I call up MacGregor from the grave,
For in my first hard springtime we were friends.
Although of late estranged.
I thought him half a lunatic, half knave,
And told him so, but friendship never ends;
And what if mind seem changed,
And it seem changed with the mind,
When thoughts rise up unbid
On generous things that he did
And I grow half contented to be blind!
He had much industry at setting out,
Much boisterous courage, before loneliness
Had driven him crazed;
For meditations upon unknown thought
Make human intercourse grow less and less;
They are neither paid nor praised.
but he d object to the host,
The glass because my glass;
A ghost-lover he was
And may have grown more arrogant being a ghost.
But names are nothing. What matter who it be,
So that his elements have grown so fine
The fume of muscatel
Can give his sharpened palate ecstasy
No living man can drink from the whole wine.
I have mummy truths to tell
Whereat the living mock,
Though not for sober ear,
For maybe all that hear
Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.
Such thought -- such thought have I that hold it tight
Till meditation master all its parts,
Nothing can stay my glance
Until that glance run in the world's despite
To where the damned have howled away their hearts,
And where the blessed dance;
Such thought, that in it bound
I need no other thing,
Wound in mind's wandering
As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound. |
Henry Lawson | Our Mistress And Our Queen | We set no right above hers,
No earthly light nor star,
She hath had many lovers,
But not as lovers are:
They all were gallant fellows
And died all deaths for her,
And never one was jealous
But comrades true they were.
Oh! each one is a brother,
Though all the lands they claim,
For her or for each other
They've died all deaths the same
Young, handsome, old and ugly,
Free, married or divorced,
Where springtime bard or Thug lie
Her lover's feet have crossed.
'Mid buttercups and daisies
With fair girls by their side,
Young poets sang her praises
While day in starlight died.
In smoke and fire and dust, and
With red eyes maniac like,
Those same young poets thrust and,
Wrenched out the reeking pike!
She is as old as ages,
But she is ever young.
Upon her birthday pages
They've writ in every tongue;
Her charms have never vanished
Nor beauty been defiled,
Her lovers ne'er were banished,
Can never be exiled.
Ah! thousands died who kissed her,
But millions died who scorned
Our Sweetheart, Queen and Sister,
Whom slaves and C'sars spurned!
And thousands lost her for her
Own sweet sake, and the world,
Her first most dread adorer,
From Heaven's high state was hurled.
No sign of power she beareth,
In silence doth she tread,
But evermore she weareth
A cap of red rose red.
Her hair is like the raven,
Her soul is like the sea,
Her blue eyes are a haven
That watch Eternity.
She claimed her right from Heaven,
She claims her right from earth,
She claimed it hell-ward driven,
Before her second birth.
No real man lives without her,
No real man-child thrives,
Sweet sin may cling about her,
But purity survives. | She claims the careless girl, and
She claims the master mind;
She whispers to the Earl, and
She whispers to the hind!
No ruler knoweth which man
His sword for her might draw;
Her whisper wakes the rich man,
The peasant on his straw.
She calls us from the prison,
She calls us from the plain,
To towns where men have risen
Again, again, again!
She calls us from our pleasures,
She calls us from our cares,
She calls us from our treasures,
She calls us from our prayers.
From seas and oceans over
Our long-lost sons she draws,
She calls the careless rover,
She calls us from our wars.
The hermit she discovers
To lead her bravest brave, ,
The spirit of dead lovers,
She calls them from the grave!
We leave the squalid alley,
Our women and our vice,
We leave the pleasant valley,
Life-lust or sacrifice.
The gold hunt in the mountains,
The power-lust on the sea,
The land-lust by earth's fountains,
Defeat or victory.
No means of peace discover
Her strength on 'Nights Before',
She has her secret lover
That guards the Grand Duke's door.
No power can resist hers,
No massacre deter,
Small brothers and wee sisters
Of lovers, watch for her!
Old dotards undetected,
School boys that never tire,
And lone hags unsuspected
That drone beside the fire.
The youth in love's first passion,
The girl in day-dream mood,
And, in the height of fashion,
The 'butterfly' and 'dude'.
The millionaire heart-broken,
The beggar with his whine,
And each one hath a token,
And each one hath a sign.
And when the time is ripe and
The hells of earth in power,
The dotard drops his pipe, and,
The maiden drops a flower!
Oh, bloody our revivals!
And swift our vengeance hurled,
We've laid our dear-loved rivals
In trenches round the world!
We've flung off fair arms clinging,
Health, wealth, and life's grand whole,
And marched out to her singing,
A passion of our soul.
Her lovers fought on ice fields
With stone clubs long ago,
Her lovers slave in rice fields
And in the ''lectric's' glow.
Her lovers pine wherever
The lust for Nothing is,
They starve where light is never,
And starve in palaces.
They've gathered, crowded and scattered,
With heads and scythe-blades low,
Through fir and pine clump spattered,
Like ink blots on the snow.
With broken limbs and shattered
They've crushed like hunted brute,
And died in hellish torture
In holes beneath the roof.
They've coursed through streets of cities
The fleeing Parliaments,
And songs that were not ditties
They've sung by smouldering tents.
And trained in caps and sashes
They've heard the head drums roll,
They've danced on kings-blood splashes
The dreadful carmagnole.
By mountains, and by stations,
Out where wide levels are,
They've baulked the march of nations
And ridden lone and far.
The whip stroke of the bullet,
The short grunt of distress,
The saddled pony grazing
Alone and riderless.
The plain in sunlight blazing,
No signal of distress,
Unseen by far scouts gazing,
And still, with wide eyes glazing:
Dead lover of our mistress,
Dead comrade of his rivals,
Dead champion of his country,
Dead soldier of his widow
And of his fatherless.
She pauses by her writers,
And whispers, through the years,
The poems that delight us
And bring the glorious tears.
The song goes on unbroken
Through worlds of senseless drones,
Until the words are spoken
By Emperors on their thrones. |
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni | Love's Loadstone. Second Reading. | Non so se s' ' l' immaginata luce.
I know not if it be the fancied light
Which every man or more or less doth feel;
Or if the mind and memory reveal
Some other beauty for the heart's delight; | Or if within the soul the vision bright
Of her celestial home once more doth steal,
Drawing our better thoughts with pure appeal
To the true Good above all mortal sight:
This light I long for and unguided seek;
This fire that burns my heart, I cannot find;
Nor know the way, though some one seems to lead.
This, since I saw thee, lady, makes me weak:
A bitter-sweet sways here and there my mind;
And sure I am thine eyes this mischief breed. |
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni | The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - On The Lord'S Prayer. No. I. | Vilissima progenie.
Ye vile offscourings! with unblushing face
Dare ye claim sonship to our heavenly Sire,
Who serve brute vices, crouching in the mire
To hounds and conies, beasts that ape our race? | Such truckling is called virtue by the base
Hucksters of sophistry, the priest and friar,--
Gilt claws of tyrant brutes,--who lie for hire,
Preaching that God delights in this disgrace.
Look well, ye brainless folk! Do fathers hold
Their children slaves to serfs? Do sheep obey
The witless ram? Why make a beast your king?
If there are no archangels, let your fold
Be governed by the sense of all: why stray
From men to worship every filthy thing? |
Richard Le Gallienne | Ah! Did You Ever Hear The Spring | Ah! did you ever hear the Spring
Calling you through the snow,
Or hear the little blackbird sing | Inside its egg - or go
To that green land where grass begins,
Each tiny seed, to grow?
O have you heard what none has heard,
Or seen what none has seen;
O have you been to that strange land
Where no one else has been! |
William Wordsworth | Companion To The Foregoing | Never enlivened with the liveliest ray
That fosters growth or checks or cheers decay,
Nor by the heaviest rain-drops more deprest,
This Flower, that first appeared as summer's guest,
Preserves her beauty 'mid autumnal leaves
And to her mournful habits fondly cleaves.
When files of stateliest plants have ceased to bloom,
One after one submitting to their doom,
When her coevals each and all are fled, | What keeps her thus reclined upon her lonesome bed?
The old mythologists, more impressed than we
Of this late day by character in tree
Or herb, that claimed peculiar sympathy,
Or by the silent lapse of fountain clear,
Or with the language of the viewless air
By bird or beast made vocal, sought a cause
To solve the mystery, not in Nature's laws
But in Man's fortunes. Hence a thousand tales
Sung to the plaintive lyre in Grecian vales.
Nor doubt that something of their spirit swayed
The fancy-stricken Youth or heart-sick Maid,
Who, while each stood companionless and eyed
This undeparting Flower in crimson dyed,
Thought of a wound which death is slow to cure,
A fate that has endured and will endure,
And, patience coveting yet passion feeding,
Called the dejected Lingerer, 'Loves lies bleeding'. |
John Drinkwater | Olton Pools | Now June walks on the waters,
And the cuckoo's last enchantment
Passes from Olton pools.
Now dawn comes to my window
Breathing midsummer roses, | And scythes are wet with dew.
Is it not strange for ever
That, bowered in this wonder,
Man keeps a jealous heart?...
That June and the June waters,
And birds and dawn-lit roses,
Are gospels in the wind,
Fading upon the deserts,
Poor pilgrim revelations?...
Hist ... over Olton pools! |
William Wordsworth | Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - XLIV - The Same | What awful perspective! while from our sight
With gradual stealth the lateral windows hide
Their Portraitures, their stone-work glimmers, dyed
In the soft chequerings of a sleepy light. | Martyr, or King, or sainted Eremite,
Whoe'er ye be, that thus, yourselves unseen,
Imbue your prison-bars with solemn sheen,
Shine on, until ye fade with coming Night!
But, from the arms of silence, list! O list!
The music bursteth into second life;
The notes luxuriate, every stone is kissed
By sound, or ghost of sound, in mazy strife;
Heart-thrilling strains, that cast, before the eye
Of the devout, a veil of ecstasy! |
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick | Moonlight. | Oh, what so subtle as the spell
The silvery moonlight weaves?
Oh, what so sad and what so glad,
And what so soon deceives.
A vision of the long ago--
Long years of pain between;
A mocking dream of happier days--
A veil of silver sheen.
A passing gleam of falling stars-- | An idle summer's dream;
The sudden waking of a heart--
Things are not as they seem.
Oh, silver moon, indeed you hold
The secrets of the heart;
And none can know and none can guess
The mystery of thy art.
A silver length of rippling waves,
A glance from happy eyes;
A strain of music low and sweet--
The heart in rapture lies.
Yet, ah, how faithless are the vows
Made 'neath the summer moon;
As changing as the falling rays
That fade away as soon.
For love is like the subtle spell
The sliver moonlight weaves;
And what so sad and what so glad
And what so soon deceives? |
George Parsons Lathrop | O Wholesome Death | O wholesome Death, thy sombre funeral-car
Looms ever dimly on the lengthening way
Of life; while, lengthening still, in sad array,
My deeds in long procession go, that are | As mourners of the man they helped to mar.
I see it all in dreams, such as waylay
The wandering fancy when the solid day
Has fallen in smoldering ruins, and night's star,
Aloft there, with its steady point of light
Mastering the eye, has wrapped the brain in sleep.
Ah, when I die, and planets hold their flight
Above my grave, still let my spirit keep
Sometimes its vigil of divine remorse,
'Midst pity, praise, or blame heaped o'er my corse! |
Thomas Hardy | Before Knowledge | When I walked roseless tracks and wide,
Ere dawned your date for meeting me,
O why did you not cry Halloo
Across the stretch between, and say:
"We move, while years as yet divide, | On closing lines which - though it be
You know me not nor I know you -
Will intersect and join some day!"
Then well I had borne
Each scraping thorn;
But the winters froze,
And grew no rose;
No bridge bestrode
The gap at all;
No shape you showed,
And I heard no call! |
John Collings Squire, Sir | A Chant | Gently the petals fall as the tree gently sways
That has known many springs and many petals fall
Year after year to strew the green deserted ways
And the statue and the pond and the low, broken wall. | Faded is the memory of old things done,
Peace floats on the ruins of ancient festival;
They lie and forget in the warmth of the sun,
And a sky silver-blue arches over all.
O softly, O tenderly, the heart now stirs
With desires faint and formless; and, seeking not, I find
Quiet thoughts that flash like azure kingfishers
Across the luminous, tranquil mirror of the mind. |
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni | The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - The Millennium. | Non piaccia a Dio.
Nay, God forbid that mid these tragic throes
To idle comedy my thought should bend,
When torments dire and warning woes portend
Of this our world the instantaneous close! | The day approaches which shall discompose
All earthly sects, the elements shall blend
In utter ruin, and with joy shall send
Just spirits to their spheres in heaven's repose.
The Highest comes in Holy Land to hold
His sovran court and synod sanctified,
As all the psalms and prophets have foretold:
The riches of his grace He will spread wide
Through his own realm, that seat and chosen fold
Of worship and free mercies multiplied. |
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