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Distich | Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator) | Your face upon a drop of purple wine
Shows like my soul poised on a bead of blood.
From the Turkic of Hussein Baikrani. |
The Cushion | Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator) | Your arm should only be
A spring night's dream;
If I accepted it to rest my head upon
There would be rumours
And no delight.
From the Japanese of the daughter of Taira-no Tsu-gu-naka. |
Lines To An Infidel, After Having Read His Book Against Christianity | Thomas Oldham | Your book I've read: I would that I had not!
For what instruction, pleasure, have I got?
Amid that artful labyrinth of doubt
Long, long I wander'd, striving to get out;
Your thread of sophistry, my only clue,
I fondly hoped would guide me rightly through:
That spider's web entangled me the more:
With desperate courage onward still I went,
Until my head was turn'd, my patience spent:
Now, now, at last, thank God! the task is o'er.
I've been a child, who whirls himself about,
Fancying he sees both earth and heaven turn round;
Till giddy, panting, sick, and wearied out,
He falls, and rues his folly on the ground. |
The Forest Rill. | Susanna Moodie | Young Naiad of the sparry grot,
Whose azure eyes before me burn,
In what sequestered lonely spot
Lies hid thy flower-enwreathed urn?
Beneath what mossy bank enshrined,
Within what ivy-mantled nook,
Sheltered alike from sun and wind,
Lies hid thy source, sweet murmuring brook?
Deep buried lies thy airy shell
Beneath thy waters clear;
Far echoing up the woodland dell
Thy wind-swept harp I hear.
I catch its soft and mellow tones
Amid the long grass gliding,
Now broken 'gainst the rugged stones,
In hoarse, deep accents chiding.
The wandering breeze that stirs the grove,
In plaintive moans replying,
To every leafy bough above
His tender tale is sighing;
Ruffled beneath his viewless wing
Thy wavelets fret and wimple,
Now forth rejoicingly they spring
In many a laughing dimple.
To nature's timid lovely queen
Thy sylvan haunts are known;
She seeks thy rushy margin green
To weave her flowery zone;
Light waving o'er thy fairy flood
In all their vernal pride,
She sees her crown of opening buds
Reflected in the tide.
On--on!--for ever brightly on!
Thy lucid waves are flowing,
Thy waters sparkle as they run,
Their long, long journey going;
Bright flashing in the noon-tide beam
O'er stone and pebble breaking,
And onward to some mightier stream
Their slender tribute taking.
Oh such is life! a slender rill,
A stream impelled by Time;
To death's dark caverns flowing still,
To seek a brighter clime.
Though blackened by the stains of earth,
And broken be its course,
From life's pure fount we trace its birth,
Eternity its source!
While floating down the tide of years,
The Christian will not mourn her lot;
There is a hand will dry her tears,
A land where sorrows are forgot.
Though in the crowded page of time
The record of her name may die,
'Tis traced in annals more sublime,
The volume of Eternity! |
Mary And Gabriel | Rupert Brooke | Young Mary, loitering once her garden way,
Felt a warm splendour grow in the April day,
As wine that blushes water through. And soon,
Out of the gold air of the afternoon,
One knelt before her: hair he had, or fire,
Bound back above his ears with golden wire,
Baring the eager marble of his face.
Not man's nor woman's was the immortal grace
Rounding the limbs beneath that robe of white,
And lighting the proud eyes with changeless light,
Incurious. Calm as his wings, and fair,
That presence filled the garden.
She stood there,
Saying, "What would you, Sir?"
He told his word,
"Blessed art thou of women!" Half she heard,
Hands folded and face bowed, half long had known,
The message of that clear and holy tone,
That fluttered hot sweet sobs about her heart;
Such serene tidings moved such human smart.
Her breath came quick as little flakes of snow.
Her hands crept up her breast. She did but know
It was not hers. She felt a trembling stir
Within her body, a will too strong for her
That held and filled and mastered all. With eyes
Closed, and a thousand soft short broken sighs,
She gave submission; fearful, meek, and glad. . . .
She wished to speak. Under her breasts she had
Such multitudinous burnings, to and fro,
And throbs not understood; she did not know
If they were hurt or joy for her; but only
That she was grown strange to herself, half lonely,
All wonderful, filled full of pains to come
And thoughts she dare not think, swift thoughts and dumb,
Human, and quaint, her own, yet very far,
Divine, dear, terrible, familiar . . .
Her heart was faint for telling; to relate
Her limbs' sweet treachery, her strange high estate,
Over and over, whispering, half revealing,
Weeping; and so find kindness to her healing.
'Twixt tears and laughter, panic hurrying her,
She raised her eyes to that fair messenger.
He knelt unmoved, immortal; with his eyes
Gazing beyond her, calm to the calm skies;
Radiant, untroubled in his wisdom, kind.
His sheaf of lilies stirred not in the wind.
How should she, pitiful with mortality,
Try the wide peace of that felicity
With ripples of her perplexed shaken heart,
And hints of human ecstasy, human smart,
And whispers of the lonely weight she bore,
And how her womb within was hers no more
And at length hers?
Being tired, she bowed her head;
And said, "So be it!"
The great wings were spread
Showering glory on the fields, and fire.
The whole air, singing, bore him up, and higher,
Unswerving, unreluctant. Soon he shone
A gold speck in the gold skies; then was gone.
The air was colder, and grey. She stood alone. |
De Gustibus -- | Robert Browning | Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,
(If our loves remain)
In an English lane,
By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
Hark, those two in the hazel coppice
A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,
Making love, say,
The happier they!
Draw yourself up from the light of the moon,
And let them pass, as they will too soon,
With the bean-flowers' boon,
And the blackbird's tune,
And May, and June!
What I love best in all the world
Is a castle, precipice-encurled,
In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine
Or look for me, old fellow of mine,
(If I get my head from out the mouth
O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands,
And come again to the land of lands)
In a sea-side house to the farther South,
Where the baked cicala dies of drouth,
And one sharp tree 'tis a cypress stands,
By the many hundred years red-rusted,
Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted,
My sentinel to guard the sands
To the water's edge. For, what expands
Before the house, but the great opaque
Blue breadth of sea without a break?
While, in the house, for ever crumbles
Some fragment of the frescoed walls,
From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.
A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles
Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons,
And says there's news to-day the king
Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing,
Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling:
She hopes they have not caught the felons.
Italy, my Italy!
Queen Mary's saying serves for me
(When fortune's malice
Lost her, Calais)
Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, 'Italy.'
Such lovers old are I and she:
So it always was, so it still shall be! |
To The Dean Of St. Patrick'S | Jonathan Swift | SIR,
Your Billingsgate Muse methinks does begin
With much greater noise than a conjugal din.
A pox of her bawling, her tempora et mores!
What are times now to me; a'nt I one of the Tories?
You tell me my verses disturb you at prayers;
Oh, oh, Mr. Dean, are you there with your bears?
You pray, I suppose, like a Heathen, to Phoebus,
To give his assistance to make out my rebus:
Which I don't think so fair; leave it off for the future;
When the combat is equal, this God should be neuter.
I'm now at the tavern, where I drink all I can,
To write with more spirit; I'll drink no more Helicon;
For Helicon is water, and water is weak;
'Tis wine on the gross lee, that makes your Muse speak.
This I know by her spirit and life; but I think
She's much in the wrong to scold in her drink.
Her damn'd pointed tongue pierced almost to my heart;
Tell me of a cart, - tell me of a - - ,
I'd have you to tell on both sides her ears,
If she comes to my house, that I'll kick her down stairs:
Then home she shall limping go, squalling out, O my knee;
You shall soon have a crutch to buy for your Melpomene.
You may come as her bully, to bluster and swagger;
But my ink is my poison, my pen is my dagger:
Stand off, I desire, and mark what I say to you,
If you come I will make your Apollo shine through you.
Don't think, sir, I fear a Dean, as I would fear a dun;
Which is all at present from yours,
THOMAS SHERIDAN. |
Your Heart Has Trembled To My Tongue | William Ernest Henley | Your heart has trembled to my tongue,
Your hands in mine have lain,
Your thought to me has leaned and clung,
Again and yet again,
My dear,
Again and yet again.
Now die the dream, or come the wife,
The past is not in vain,
For wholly as it was your life
Can never be again,
My dear,
Can never be again.
1876 |
Philiper Flash | James Whitcomb Riley | Young Philiper Flash was a promising lad,
His intentions were good - but oh, how sad
For a person to think
How the veriest pink
And bloom of perfection may turn out bad.
Old Flash himself was a moral man,
And prided himself on a moral plan,
Of a maxim as old
As the calf of gold,
Of making that boy do what he was told.
And such a good mother had Philiper Flash;
Her voice was as soft as the creamy plash
Of the milky wave
With its musical lave
That gushed through the holes of her patent churn-dash; -
And the excellent woman loved Philiper so,
She could cry sometimes when he stumped his toe, -
And she stroked his hair
With such motherly care
When the dear little angel learned to swear.
Old Flash himself would sometimes say
That his wife had "such a ridiculous way, -
She'd, humor that child
Till he'd soon be sp'iled,
And then there'd be the devil to pay!"
And the excellent wife, with a martyr's look,
Would tell old Flash himself "he took
No notice at all
Of the bright-eyed doll
Unless when he spanked him for getting a fall!"
Young Philiper Flash, as time passed by,
Grew into "a boy with a roguish eye":
He could smoke a cigar,
And seemed by far
The most promising youth. - "He's powerful sly,
Old Flash himself once told a friend,
"Every copper he gets he's sure to spend -
And," said he, "don't you know
If he keeps on so
What a crop of wild oats the boy will grow!"
But his dear good mother knew Philiper's ways
So - well, she managed the money to raise;
And old Flash himself
Was "laid on the shelf,"
(In the manner of speaking we have nowadays).
For "gracious knows, her darling child,
If he went without money he'd soon grow wild."
So Philiper Flash
With a regular dash
"Swung on to the reins," and went "slingin' the cash."
As old Flash himself, in his office one day,
Was shaving notes in a barberous way,
At the hour of four
Death entered the door
And shaved the note on his life, they say.
And he had for his grave a magnificent tomb,
Though the venturous finger that pointed "Gone Home,"
Looked white and cold
From being so bold,
As it feared that a popular lie was told.
Young Philiper Flash was a man of style
When he first began unpacking the pile
Of the dollars and dimes
Whose jingling chimes
Had clinked to the tune of his father's smile;
And he strewed his wealth with such lavish hand,
His rakish ways were the talk of the land,
And gossipers wise
Sat winking their eyes
(A certain foreboding of fresh surprise).
A "fast young man" was Philiper Flash,
And wore "loud clothes" and a weak mustache,
And "done the Park,"
For an "afternoon lark,"
With a very fast horse of "remarkable dash."
And Philiper handled a billiard-cue
About as well as the best he knew,
And used to say
"He could make it pay
By playing two or three games a day."
And Philiper Flash was his mother's joy,
He seemed to her the magic alloy
That made her glad,
When her heart was sad,
With the thought that "she lived for her darling boy."
His dear good mother wasn't aware
How her darling boy relished a "tare." -
She said "one night
He gave her a fright
By coming home late and ACTING tight."
Young Philiper Flash, on a winterish day,
Was published a bankrupt, so they say -
And as far as I know
I suppose it was so,
For matters went on in a singular way;
His excellent mother, I think I was told,
Died from exposure and want and cold;
And Philiper Flash,
With a horrible slash,
Whacked his jugular open and went to smash. |
Honey | Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator) | Young man,
If you try to eat honey
On the blade of a knife,
You will cut yourself.
If you try to taste honey
On the kiss of a woman,
Taste with the lips only,
If not, young man,
You will bite your own heart.
Song of the Tatars. |
To A Young Mother On The Birth Of Her First-Born Child. | Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon | Young mother! proudly throbs thine heart, and well may it rejoice,
Well may'st thou raise to Heaven above in grateful prayer thy voice:
A gift hath been bestowed on thee, a gift of priceless worth,
Far dearer to thy woman's heart than all the wealth of earth.
What store of deep and holy joy is opened to thy thought -
Glad, sunny dreams of future days, with bliss and rapture fraught;
Of hopes as varied, yet as bright, as beams of April sun,
And plans and wishes centred all within thy darling one!
While others seek in changing scenes earth's happiness to gain,
In fashion's halls to win a joy as dazzling as 'tis vain -
A bliss more holy far is thine, far sweeter and more deep,
To watch beside thine infant's couch and bend above his sleep.
What joy for thee to ling'ring gaze within those cloudless eyes,
Turning upon thee with a glance of such sweet, strange surprise,
Or press a mother's loving kiss upon that fair, white brow,
Of all earth's weight of sin and care and pain unconscious now.
Then, as thy loved one's sleeping breath so softly fans thy cheek,
And gazing on that tiny form, so lovely, yet so weak,
A dream comes o'er thee of the time when nobly at thy side
Thy cherished son shall proudly stand, in manhood's lofty pride.
Yet a sad change steals slowly o'er thy tender, loving eye,
Thou twin'st him closer to thy heart, with fond and anxious sigh,
Feeling, however bright his course he too must suff'ring know,
Like all earth's children taste alike life's cup of care and woe.
But, oh! it lies within thy power to give to him a spell
To guard him in the darkest hour from sorrow safe and well;
Thou'lt find it in the narrow path the great and good have trod -
And thou thyself wilt teach it him - the knowledge of his God! |
The Chilterns | Rupert Brooke | Your hands, my dear, adorable,
Your lips of tenderness
Oh, I've loved you faithfully and well,
Three years, or a bit less.
It wasn't a success.
Thank God, that's done! and I'll take the road,
Quit of my youth and you,
The Roman road to Wendover
By Tring and Lilley Hoo,
As a free man may do.
For youth goes over, the joys that fly,
The tears that follow fast;
And the dirtiest things we do must lie
Forgotten at the last;
Even Love goes past.
What's left behind I shall not find,
The splendour and the pain;
The splash of sun, the shouting wind,
And the brave sting of rain,
I may not meet again.
But the years, that take the best away,
Give something in the end;
And a better friend than love have they,
For none to mar or mend,
That have themselves to friend.
I shall desire and I shall find
The best of my desires;
The autumn road, the mellow wind
That soothes the darkening shires.
And laughter, and inn-fires.
White mist about the black hedgerows,
The slumbering Midland plain,
The silence where the clover grows,
And the dead leaves in the lane,
Certainly, these remain.
And I shall find some girl perhaps,
And a better one than you,
With eyes as wise, but kindlier,
And lips as soft, but true.
And I daresay she will do. |
Hands | John Frederick Freeman | Your hands, your hands,
Fall upon mine as waves upon the sands.
O, soft as moonlight on the evening rose,
That but to moonlight will its sweet unclose,
Your hands, your hands,
Fall upon mine, and my hands open as
That evening primrose opens when the hot hours pass.
Your hands, your hands,
They are like towers that in far southern lands
Look at pale dawn over gloom-valley'd miles,
White temple towers that gleam through mist at whiles.
Your hands, your hands,
With the south wind fall kissing on my brow,
And all past joy and future is summed in this great "Now!" |
To Eleonora Duse II | Sara Teasdale | Your beauty lives in mystic melodies,
And all the light about you breathes a song.
Your voice awakes the dreaming airs that throng
Within our music-haunted memories.
The sirens' strain that sank within the seas
When men forgot to listen, floats along
Your voice's undercurrent soft and strong.
Sicilian shepherds pipe beneath the trees;
Along the purple hills of drifted sand,
A lone Egyptian plays an ancient flute;
At dawn the Memnon gives his old salute
Beside the Nile, by desert breezes fanned.
The music faints about you as you stand,
And with the Orphean lay it trembles mute. |
The Epic of Sadness | Nizar Qabbani | Your love taught me to grieve
and I have been in need, for centuries
a woman to make me grieve
for a woman, to cry upon her arms
like a sparrow
for a woman to gather my pieces
like shards of broken crystal
Your love has taught me, my lady, the worst habits
it has taught me to read my coffee cups
thousands of times a night
to experiment with alchemy,
to visit fortune tellers
It has taught me to leave my house
to comb the sidewalks
and search your face in raindrops
and in car lights
and to peruse your clothes
in the clothes of unknowns
and to search for your image
even.... even....
even in the posters of advertisements
your love has taught me
to wander around, for hours
searching for a gypsies hair
that all gypsies women will envy
searching for a face, for a voice
which is all the faces and all the voices...
Your love entered me... my lady
into the cities of sadness
and I before you, never entered
the cities of sadness
I did not know...
that tears are the person
that a person without sadness
is only a shadow of a person...
Your love taught me
to behave like a boy
to draw your face with chalk
upon the wall
upon the sails of fishermen's boats
on the Church bells, on the crucifixes,
your love taught me, how love,
changes the map of time...
Your love taught me, that when I love
the earth stops revolving,
Your love taught me things
that were never accounted for
So I read children's fairytales
I entered the castles of Jennies
and I dreamt that she would marry me
the Sultan's daughter
those eyes...
clearer than the water of a lagoon
those lips...
more desirable than the flower of pomegranates
and I dreamt that I would kidnap her like a knight
and I dreamt that I would give
her necklaces of pearl and coral
Your love taught me, my lady,
what is insanity
it taught me... how life may pass
without the Sultan's daughter arriving
Your love taught me
How to love you in all things
in a bare winter tree,
in dry yellow leaves
in the rain, in a tempest,
in the smallest cafe, we drank in,
in the evenings... our black coffee
Your love taught me... to seek refuge
to seek refuge in hotels without names
in churches without names...
in cafes without names...
Your love taught me... how the night
swells the sadness of strangers
It taught me... how to see Beirut
as a woman... a tyrant of temptation
as a woman, wearing every evening
the most beautiful clothing she possesses
and sprinkling upon her breasts perfume
for the fisherman, and the princes
Your love taught me how to cry without crying
It taught me how sadness sleeps
Like a boy with his feet cut off
in the streets of the Rouche and the Hamra
Your love taught me to grieve
and I have been needing, for centuries
a woman to make me grieve
for a woman, to cry upon her arms
like a sparrow
for a woman to gather my pieces
like shards of broken crystal |
Answered By Dr. Sheridan (To Lady Carteret) | Jonathan Swift | Your house of hair, and lady's hand,
At first did put me to a stand.
I have it now - 'tis plain enough -
Your hairy business is a muff.
Your engine fraught with cooling gales,
At once so like your masts and sails;
Your thing of various shape and hue
Must be some painted toy, I knew;
And for the rhyme to you're the man,
What fits it better than a fan? |
To Sappho II | Sara Teasdale | Your lines that linger for us down the years,
Like sparks that tell the glory of a flame,
Still keep alight the splendor of your name,
And living still, they sting us into tears.
Sole perfect singer that the world has heard,
Let fall from that far heaven of thine
One golden word.
Oh tell us we shall find beside the Nile,
Held fast in some Egyptian's dusty hand,
Deep covered by the centuries of sand,
The songs long written that were lost awhile
Sole perfect singer that the world has heard,
Let fall from that far heaven of thine
This golden word. |
Proposal Of Marriage | Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator) | Your eyes are black like water-melon pips,
Your lips are red like the red flesh of water-melons,
Your loins are smooth like smooth-rind water-melons.
You are more beautiful than my favourite among mares,
Your buttocks are sleeker and firmer,
Like her your movements are on legs of light steel.
Come and sit at my hearth, and I will celebrate your coming;
I will choose from the hundred flocks of each a hundred,
Passing at the foot of the Himalaya,
The two most silky and most beautiful great sheep.
We will go to the temple and sacrifice one of the two
To the god Pandu, that you may have many children;
And I will kill the other and roast it whole,
My most fair rose-tree serving as a spit.
I will ask the prettiest eaters and the prettiest drinkers;
And while they eat and drink greatly for three days,
I will wind silver rings upon your arms and feet
And hang a chain of river gold about your neck.
Popular Song of Kafiristan. |
Unbelief | Theodosia Garrison | Your chosen grasp the torch of faith--the key
Of very certainty is theirs to hold.
They read Your word in messages of gold.
Lord, what of us who have no light to see
And in the darkness doubt, whose hands may be
Broken upon the door, who find but cold
Ashes of words where others see enscrolled,
The glorious promise of Life's victory.
Oh, well for those to whom You gave the light
(The light we may not see by) whose award
Is that sure key--that message luminous,
Yet we, your people stumbling in the night,
Doubting and dumb and disbelieving--Lord,
Is there no word for us--no word for us? |
To Aasmund Olafsen Vinje | Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson | (SUNG AT HIS WIFE'S GRAVE)
(See Note 48)
Your house to guests has shelter lent,
While you with pen were seated.
In silent quest they came and went,
You saw them not, nor greeted.
But when now they
Were gone away,
Your babe without a mother lay,
And you had lost your helpmate.
The home you built but yesterday
In death to-day is sinking,
And you stand sick and worn and gray
On ruins of your thinking.
Your way lay bare
Since child you were,
The shelter that you first could share
Was this that now is shattered.
But know, the guests that to you came
In sorrow's waste will meet you;
Though shy you shrink, they still will claim
The right with love to treat you.
For where you go
To you they show
The world in radiant light aglow
Of great and wondrous visions.
What once you saw, now passing o'er,
Will but be made the clearer;
It is the far eternal shore,
That on your way draws nearer.
Your poet-sight
Will see in light
All that the clouds have wrapped in night; -
Great doubts will find an answer.
And later when you leave again
The waste of woe thought-pregnant,
Whom you have met shall teach us then.
Your pen in power regnant.
From sorrow's weal
With purer zeal,
Inspiring light, and pain's appeal
Shall shine your wondrous visions. |
The Glass | John Frederick Freeman | Your face has lost
The clearness it once wore,
And your brow smooth and white
Its look of light;
Your eyes that were
So careless, are how deep with care!
O, what has done
This cruelty to you?
Is it only Time makes strange
Your look with change,
Or something more
Than the worst pang Time ever bore?--
Regret, regret!
So bitter that it changes
Bright youth to madness,
Poisoning mere sadness ...
O, vain glass that shows
Less than the bitterness the heart knows. |
Two Birthdays | Richard Le Gallienne | Your birthday, sweetheart, is my birthday too,
For, had you not been born,
I who began to live beholding you
Up early as the morn,
That day in June beside the rose-hung stream,
Had never lived at all -
We stood, do you remember? in a dream
There by the water-fall.
You were as still as all the other flowers
Under the morning's spell;
Sudden two lives were one, and all things "ours" -
How we can never tell.
Surely it had been fated long ago -
What else, dear, could we think?
It seemed that we had stood for ever so,
There by the river's brink.
And all the days that followed seemed as days
Lived side by side before,
Strangely familiar all your looks and ways,
The very frock you wore;
Nothing seemed strange, yet all divinely new;
Known to your finger tips,
Yet filled with wonder every part of you,
Your hair, your eyes, your lips.
The wise in love say love was ever thus
Through endless Time and Space,
Heart linked to heart, beloved, as with us,
Only one face - one face -
Our own to love, however fair the rest;
'Tis so true lovers are,
For ever breast to breast,
On - on - from star to star. |
Mahone's Brigade.[1] - A Metrical Address. | James Barron Hope | "In pace decus, in bello praesidium." - Tacitus.
I.
Your arms are stacked, your splendid colors furled,
Your drums are still, aside your trumpets laid,
But your dumb muskets once spoke to the world -
And the world listened to Mahone's Brigade.
Like waving plume upon Bellona's crest,
Or comet in red majesty arrayed,
Or Persia's flame transported to the West,
Shall shine the glory of Mahone's Brigade.
Not once, in all those years so dark and grim,
Your columns from the path of duty strayed;
No craven act made your escutcheon dim -
'Twas burnished with your blood, Mahone's Brigade.
Not once on post, on march, in camp, or field,
Was your brave leader's trust in you betrayed,
And never yet has old Virginia's shield
Suffered dishonor through Mahone's Brigade.
Who has forgotten at the deadly Mine,
How our great Captain of great Captains bade
Your General to retake the captured line?
How it was done, you know, Mahone's Brigade.
Who has forgotten how th' undying dead,
And you, yourselves, won that for which Lee prayed?
Who has forgotten how th' Immortal said:
That "heroes" swept that field, Mahone's Brigade?
From the far right, beneath the "stars and bars,"
You marched amain to Bushrod Johnson's aid,
And when you charged - an arrow shot by Mars
Went forward in your rush, Mahone's Brigade.
In front stood death. Such task as yours before
By mortal man has rarely been essayed,
There you defeated Burnside's boasted corps,
And did an army's work, Mahone's Brigade.
And those who led you, field, or line, or staff,
Showed they were fit for more than mere parade;
Their motto: "Victory or an epitaph,"
And well they did their part, Mahone's Brigade.
II.
Were mine the gift to coin my heart of hearts
In living words, fit tribute should be paid
To all the heroes whose enacted parts
Gave fame immortal to Mahone's Brigade.
But he who bore the musket is the man
Whose figure should for future time be made -
Cleft from a rock by some new Thorwaldsen -
The Private Soldier of Mahone's Brigade.
His was that sense of duty only felt
By souls heroic. In the modest shade
He lived, or fell; but his, Fame's Starry Belt -
His, Fame's own Galaxy, Mahone's Brigade.
And in that Belt - all luminous with stars,
Unnamed and woven in a wondrous braid -
A blaze of glory in the sky of Mars -
Your orbs are thickly set, Mahone's Brigade.
The Private Soldier is the man who comes
From mart, or plain, or grange, or sylvan glade,
To answer calls of trumpets and of drums -
So came the Soldier of Mahone's Brigade.
His messmate, hunger; comrades, heat and cold;
His decorations, death or wounds, conveyed
To the brave patriot in ways manifold -
But yet he flinched not in Mahone's Brigade.
When needing bread, Fate gave him but a stone;
Ragged, he answered when the trumpet brayed;
Barefoot he marched, or died without a groan;
True to his battle-flag, Mahone's Brigade.
Could some Supreme Intelligence proclaim,
Arise from all the pomp of rank and grade,
War's truest heroes, oft we'd hear some name,
Unmentioned by the world, Mahone's Brigade.
And yet they have a name, enriched with thanks
And tears and homage - which shall never fade -
Their name is simply this: Men of the Ranks -
The Knights without their spurs - Mahone's Brigade.
And though unbelted and without their spurs,
To them is due Fame's splendid accolade;
And theirs the story which to-day still stirs
The pulses of your heart, Mahone's Brigade.
Men of the Ranks, step proudly to the front,
'Twas yours unknown through sheeted flame to wade,
In the red battle's fierce and deadly brunt;
Yours be full laurels in Mahone's Brigade.
III.
For those who fell be yours the sacred trust
To see forgetfulness, shall not invade
The spots made holy by their noble dust;
Green keep them in your hearts, Mahone's Brigade.
Oh, keep them green with patriotic tears!
Forget not, now war's fever is allayed,
Those valiant men, who, in the vanished years,
Kept step with you in ranks, Mahone's Brigade.
Each circling year, in the sweet month of May,
Your countrywomen - matron and fair maid -
Still pay their tribute to the Soldier's clay,
And strew his grave with flow'rs, Mahone's Brigade.
Join in the task, with retrospective eye;
Men's mem'ries should not perish 'neath the spade;
Pay homage to the dead, whose dying cry
Was for the Commonwealth, Mahone's Brigade.
Raise up, O State! a shaft to pierce the sky,
To him, the Private, who was but afraid
To fail in his full duty - not to die;
And on its base engrave, "Mahone's Brigade."
IV.
Now that the work of blood and tears is done,
Whether of stern assault, or sudden raid,
Yours is a record second yet to none -
None takes your right in line, Mahone's Brigade.
Now that we've lost, as was fore-doomed, the day -
Now that the good by ill has been outweighed -
Let us plant olives on the rugged way,
Once proudly trodden by Mahone's Brigade.
And when some far-stretchen future folds the past,
To us so recent, in its purple shade,
High up, as if on some "tall Admiral's mast,"
Shall fly your battle-flags, Mahone's Brigade.
V.
Each battle-flag shall float abroad and fling
A radiance round, as from a new-lit star;
Or light the air about, as when a King
Flashes in armor in his royal car;
And Fame's own vestibule I see inlaid
With their proud images, Mahone's Brigade.
Your battle-flags shall fly throughout all time,
By History's self exultingly unfurled;
And stately prose, and loud-resounding rhyme,
Nobler than mine, shall tell to all the world
How dauntless moved, and how all undismayed,
Through good and ill stood Mahone's Brigade.
O glorious flags! No victory could stain
Your tattered folds with one unworthy deed,
O glorious flags! No country shall again
Fly nobler symbols in its hour of need.
Success stained not, nor could defeat degrade;
Spotless they float to-day, Mahone's Brigade.
Immortal flags, upon Time's breezes flung,
Seen by the mind in forests, or in marts,
Cherished in visions, praised from tongue to tongue,
Wrapped in the very fibres of your hearts,
And gazing on them, none may dare upbraid
Your Leader, or your men, Mahone's Brigade.
VI.
That splendid Leader's name is yours, and he
Flesh of your flesh, himself bone of your bone,
His simple name maketh a history,
Which stands, itself grand, glorious and alone,
Or, 'tis a trophy, splendidly arrayed,
With all your battle-flags, Mahone's Brigade.
His name itself a history? Yes, and none
May halt me here. In war and peace
It challenges the full rays of the sun;
And when the passions of our day shall cease,
'Twill stand undying, for all time displayed,
Itself a battle-flag, Mahone's Brigade.
He rose successor of that mighty man
Who was the "right arm" [2] of immortal Lee;
Whose genius put defeat beneath a ban;
Who swept the field as tempest sweeps the sea;
Who fought full hard, and yet full harder prayed.
You knew that man full well, Mahone's Brigade.
And here that great man's shadow claims a place;
Within my mind I see his image rise,
With Cromwell's will and Havelock's Christian grace;
As daring as the Swede, as Frederick wise;
Swift as Napoleon ere his hopes decayed;
You knew the hero well, Mahone's Brigade.
And when he fell his fall shook all the land,
As falling oak shakes mountain side and glen;
But soon men saw his good sword in the hand
Of one, himself born leader among men, -
Of him who led you through the fusilade,
The storm of shot and shell, Mahone's Brigade.
Immortal Lee, who triumphed o'er despair,
Greater than all the heroes I have named.
Whose life has made a Westminster where'er
His name is spoken; he, so wise and famed,
Gave Jackson's duties unto him whose blade
Was lightning to your storms, Mahone's Brigade.
Ere Jackson fell Mahone shone day by day,
A burnished lance amid that crop of spears, -
None rose above him in that grand array;
And Lee, who stood Last of the Cavaliers,
Knew he had found of War's stupendous trade,
A Master at your head, Mahone's Brigade.
O Countrymen! I see the coming days
When he, above all hinderances and lets
Shall stand in Epic form, lit by the rays
Of Fame's eternal sun that never sets,
The first great chapter of his life is made,
And spoken in two words - "Mahone's Brigade."
O Countrymen! I see historic brass
Leap from the furnace in a blazing tide;
I see it through strange transformations pass
Into a form of energy and pride;
Beneath our Capitol's majestic shade
In bronze I see Mahone - Mahone's Brigade.
O Countrymen! When dust has gone to dust.
Still shall he live in story and in rhyme;
Then History's self shall multiply his bust,
And he defy the silent Conqueror, Time.
My song is sung: My prophecy is made -
The State will make it good, Mahone's Brigade. |
Love's Treacherous Pool | Victor-Marie Hugo | ("Jeune fille, l'amour c'est un miroir.")
[XXVI., February, 1835.]
Young maiden, true love is a pool all mirroring clear,
Where coquettish girls come to linger in long delight,
For it banishes afar from the face all the clouds that besmear
The soul truly bright;
But tempts you to ruffle its surface; drawing your foot
To subtilest sinking! and farther and farther the brink
That vainly you snatch - for repentance, 'tis weed without root, -
And struggling, you sink! |
In the Turret. | Herman Melville | (March, 1862.)
Your honest heart of duty, Worden,
So helped you that in fame you dwell;
You bore the first iron battle's burden
Sealed as in a diving-bell.
Alcides, groping into haunted hell
To bring forth King Admetus' bride,
Braved naught more vaguely direful and untried.
What poet shall uplift his charm,
Bold Sailor, to your height of daring,
And interblend therewith the calm,
And build a goodly style upon your bearing.
Escaped the gale of outer ocean -
Cribbed in a craft which like a log
Was washed by every billow's motion -
By night you heard of Og
The huge; nor felt your courage clog
At tokens of his onset grim:
You marked the sunk ship's flag-staff slim,
Lit by her burning sister's heart;
You marked, and mused: "Day brings the trial:
Then be it proved if I have part
With men whose manhood never took denial."
A prayer went up - a champion's. Morning
Beheld you in the Turret walled
by adamant, where a spirit forewarning
And all-deriding called:
"Man, darest thou - desperate, unappalled -
Be first to lock thee in the armored tower?
I have thee now; and what the battle-hour
To me shall bring - heed well - thou'lt share;
This plot-work, planned to be the foeman's terror,
To thee may prove a goblin-snare;
Its very strength and cunning - monstrous error!"
"Stand up, my heart; be strong; what matter
If here thou seest thy welded tomb?
And let huge Og with thunders batter -
Duty be still my doom,
Though drowning come in liquid gloom;
First duty, duty next, and duty last;
Ay, Turret, rivet me here to duty fast! - "
So nerved, you fought wisely and well;
And live, twice live in life and story;
But over your Monitor dirges swell,
In wind and wave that keep the rites of glory.
|
On A Picture Of A Black Centaur By Edmund Dulac | William Butler Yeats | Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood,
Even where horrible green parrots call and swing.
My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.
I knew that horse-play, knew it for a murderous thing.
What wholesome sun has ripened is wholesome food to eat,
And that alone; yet I, being driven half insane
Because of some green wing, gathered old mummy wheat
In the mad abstract dark and ground it grain by grain
And after baked it slowly in an oven; but now
I bring full-flavoured wine out of a barrel found
Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew
When Alexander's empire passed, they slept so sound.
Stretch out your limbs and sleep a long Saturnian sleep;
I have loved you better than my soul for all my words,
And there is none so fit to keep a watch and keep
Unwearied eyes upon those horrible green birds. |
Poor Honest Men | Rudyard Kipling | Your jar of Virginny
Will cost you a guinea,
Which you reckon too much by five shillings or ten;
But light your churchwarden
And judge it according,
When I've told you the troubles of poor honest men.
From the Capes of the Delaware,
As you are well aware,
We sail which tobacco for England-but then,
Our own British cruisers,
They watch us come through, sirs,
And they press half a score of us poor honest men!
Or if by quick sailing
(Thick weather prevailing)
We leave them behind (as we do now and then)
We are sure of a gun from
Each frigate we run from,
Which is often destruction to poor honest men!
Broadsides the Atlantic
We tumble short-handed,
With shot-holes to plug and new canvas to bend;
And off the Azores,
Dutch, Dons and Monsieurs
Are waiting to terrify poor honest men.
Napoleon's embargo
Is laid on all cargo
Which comfort or aid to King George may intend;
And since roll, twist and leaf,
Of all comforts is chief,
They try for to steal it from poor honest men!
With no heart for fight,
We take refuge in flight,
But fire as we run, our retreat to defend;
Until our stern-chasers
Cut up her fore-braces,
And she flies off the wind from us poor honest men!
'Twix' the Forties and Fifties,
South-eastward the drift is,
And so, when we think we are making Land's End
Alas, it is Ushant
With half the King's Navy
Blockading French ports against poor honest men!
But they may not quit station
(Which is our salvation)
So swiftly we stand to the Nor'ard again;
And finding the tail of
A homeward-bound convoy,
We slip past the Scillies like poor honest men.
'Twix' the Lizard and Dover,
We hand our stuff over,
Though I may not inform how we do it, nor when.
But a light on each quarter,
Low down on the water,
Is well understanded by poor honest men.
Even then we have dangers,
From meddlesome strangers,
Who spy on our business and are not content
To take a smooth answer,
Except with a handspike...
And they say they are murdered by poor honest men!
To be drowned or be shot
Is our natural lot,
Why should we, moreover, be hanged in the end,
After all our great pains
For to dangle in chains
As though we were smugglers, not poor honest men? |
Love Song | Alfred Lichtenstein | Your eyes are bright lands.
Your looks are little birds,
Handkerchiefs gently waving goodbye.
In your smile I rest as though in bobbing boats.
Your little stories are made of silk.
I must behold you always. |
Vagabonds | Madison Julius Cawein | Your heart's a-tune with April and mine a-tune with June,
So let us go a-roving beneath the summer moon:
Oh, was it in the sunlight, or was it in the rain,
We met among the blossoms within the locust lane?
All that I can remember's the bird that sang aboon,
And with its music in our hearts we'll rove beneath the moon.
A love-word of the wind, dear, of which we'll read the rune,
While we still go a-roving beneath the summer moon:
A love-kiss of the water we'll often stop to hear,
The echoed words and kisses of our own love, my dear:
And all our path shall blossom with wild-rose sweets that swoon,
And with their fragrance in our hearts we'll rove beneath the moon.
It will not be forever, yet merry goes the tune
While we still go a-roving beneath the summer moon:
A cabin, in the clearing, of flickering firelight
When old-time lanes we strolled in the winter snows make white:
Where we can nod together above the logs and croon
The songs we sang when roving beneath the summer moon.
|
To A Woman Of Malabar | Charles Baudelaire | Your feet are as slender as hands, your hips, to me,
wide enough for the sweetest white girl's envy:
to the wise artist your body is sweet and dear,
and your great velvet eyes black without peer.
In the hot blue lands where God gave you your nature
your task is to light a pipe for your master,
to fill up the vessels with cool fragrance
and chase the mosquitoes away when they dance,
and when dawn sings in the plane-trees, afar,
fetch bananas and pineapples from the bazaar.
All day your bare feet go where they wish
as you hum old lost melodies under your breath,
and when evening's red cloak descends overhead
you lie down sweetly on a straw bed,
where humming birds fill your floating dreams,
as graceful and flowery as you it seems.
Happy child, why do you long to see France
our suffering, and over-crowded land,
and trusting your life to the sailors, your friends,
say a fond goodbye to your dear tamarinds?
Scantily dressed, in muslins, frail,
shivering under the snow and hail,
how you'd pine for your leisure, sweet and free,
body pinned in a corset's brutality,
if you'd to glean supper amongst our vile harms,
selling the scent of exotic charms,
sad pensive eyes searching our fog-bound sleaze,
for the lost ghosts of your coconut-trees |
Mentana. [1] | Victor-Marie Hugo | (VICTOR HUGO TO GARIBALDI.)
("Ces jeunes gens, combien 'taient-ils.")
[LA VOIX DE GUERNESEY, December, 1868.]
I.
Young soldiers of the noble Latin blood,
How many are ye - Boys? Four thousand odd.
How many are there dead? Six hundred: count!
Their limbs lie strewn about the fatal mount,
Blackened and torn, eyes gummed with blood, hearts rolled
Out from their ribs, to give the wolves of the wold
A red feast; nothing of them left but these
Pierced relics, underneath the olive trees,
Show where the gin was sprung - the scoundrel-trap
Which brought those hero-lads their foul mishap.
See how they fell in swathes - like barley-ears!
Their crime? to claim Rome and her glories theirs;
To fight for Right and Honor; - foolish names!
Come - Mothers of the soil! Italian dames!
Turn the dead over! - try your battle luck!
(Bearded or smooth, to her that gave him suck
The man is always child) - Stay, here's a brow
Split by the Zouaves' bullets! This one, now,
With the bright curly hair soaked so in blood,
Was yours, ma donna! - sweet and fair and good.
The spirit sat upon his fearless face
Before they murdered it, in all the grace
Of manhood's dawn. Sisters, here's yours! his lips,
Over whose bloom the bloody death-foam slips,
Lisped house-songs after you, and said your name
In loving prattle once. That hand, the same
Which lies so cold over the eyelids shut,
Was once a small pink baby-fist, and wet
With milk beads from thy yearning breasts.
Take thou
Thine eldest, - thou, thy youngest born. Oh, flow
Of tears never to cease! Oh, Hope quite gone,
Dead like the dead! - Yet could they live alone -
Without their Tiber and their Rome? and be
Young and Italian - and not also free?
They longed to see the ancient eagle try
His lordly pinions in a modern sky.
They bore - each on himself - the insults laid
On the dear foster-land: of naught afraid,
Save of not finding foes enough to dare
For Italy. Ah; gallant, free, and rare
Young martyrs of a sacred cause, - Adieu!
No more of life - no more of love - for you!
No sweet long-straying in the star-lit glades
At Ave-Mary, with the Italian maids;
No welcome home!
II.
This Garibaldi now, the Italian boys
Go mad to hear him - take to dying - take
To passion for "the pure and high"; - God's sake!
It's monstrous, horrible! One sees quite clear
Society - our charge - must shake with fear,
And shriek for help, and call on us to act
When there's a hero, taken in the fact.
If Light shines in the dark, there's guilt in that!
What's viler than a lantern to a bat?
III.
Your Garibaldi missed the mark! You see
The end of life's to cheat, and not to be
Cheated: The knave is nobler than the fool!
Get all you can and keep it! Life's a pool,
The best luck wins; if Virtue starves in rags,
I laugh at Virtue; here's my money-bags!
Here's righteous metal! We have kings, I say,
To keep cash going, and the game at play;
There's why a king wants money - he'd be missed
Without a fertilizing civil list.
Do but try
The question with a steady moral eye!
The colonel strives to be a brigadier,
The marshal, constable. Call the game fair,
And pay your winners! Show the trump, I say!
A renegade's a rascal - till the day
They make him Pasha: is he rascal then?
What with these sequins? Bah! you speak to Men,
And Men want money - power - luck - life's joy -
Those take who can: we could, and fobbed Savoy;
For those who live content with honest state,
They're public pests; knock we 'em on the pate!
They set a vile example! Quick - arrest
That Fool, who ruled and failed to line his nest.
Just hit a bell, you'll see the clapper shake -
Meddle with Priests, you'll find the barrack wake -
Ah! Princes know the People's a tight boot,
March 'em sometimes to be shot and to shoot,
Then they'll wear easier. So let them preach
The righteousness of howitzers; and teach
At the fag end of prayer: "Now, slit their throats!
My holy Zouaves! my good yellow-coats!"
We like to see the Holy Father send
Powder and steel and lead without an end,
To feed Death fat; and broken battles mend.
So they!
IV.
But thou, our Hero, baffled, foiled,
The Glorious Chief who vainly bled and toiled.
The trust of all the Peoples - Freedom's Knight!
The Paladin unstained - the Sword of Right!
What wilt thou do, whose land finds thee but jails!
The banished claim the banished! deign to cheer
The refuge of the homeless - enter here,
And light upon our households dark will fall
Even as thou enterest. Oh, Brother, all,
Each one of us - hurt with thy sorrows' proof,
Will make a country for thee of his roof.
Come, sit with those who live as exiles learn:
Come! Thou whom kings could conquer but not yet turn.
We'll talk of "Palermo"[2] - "the Thousand" true,
Will tell the tears of blood of France to you;
Then by his own great Sea we'll read, together,
Old Homer in the quiet summer weather,
And after, thou shalt go to thy desire
While that faint star of Justice grows to fire.[3]
V.
Oh, Italy! hail your Deliverer,
Oh, Nations! almost he gave Rome to her!
Strong-arm and prophet-heart had all but come
To win the city, and to make it "Rome."
Calm, of the antique grandeur, ripe to be
Named with the noblest of her history.
He would have Romanized your Rome - controlled
Her glory, lordships, Gods, in a new mould.
Her spirits' fervor would have melted in
The hundred cities with her; made a twin
Vesuvius and the Capitol; and blended
Strong Juvenal's with the soul, tender and splendid,
Of Dante - smelted old with new alloy -
Stormed at the Titans' road full of bold joy
Whereby men storm Olympus. Italy,
Weep! - This man could have made one Rome of thee!
VI.
But the crime's wrought! Who wrought it?
Honest Man -
Priest Pius? No! Each does but what he can.
Yonder's the criminal! The warlike wight
Who hides behind the ranks of France to fight,
Greek Sinon's blood crossed thick with Judas-Jew's,
The Traitor who with smile which true men woos,
Lip mouthing pledges - hand grasping the knife -
Waylaid French Liberty, and took her life.
Kings, he is of you! fit companion! one
Whom day by day the lightning looks upon
Keen; while the sentenced man triples his guard
And trembles; for his hour approaches hard.
Ye ask me "when?" I say soon! Hear ye not
Yon muttering in the skies above the spot?
Mark ye no coming shadow, Kings? the shroud
Of a great storm driving the thunder-cloud?
Hark! like the thief-catcher who pulls the pin,
God's thunder asks to speak to one within!
VII.
And meanwhile this death-odor - this corpse-scent
Which makes the priestly incense redolent
Of rotting men, and the Te Deums stink -
Reeks through the forests - past the river's brink,
O'er wood and plain and mountain, till it fouls
Fair Paris in her pleasures; then it prowls,
A deadly stench, to Crete, to Mexico,
To Poland - wheresoe'er kings' armies go:
And Earth one Upas-tree of bitter sadness,
Opening vast blossoms of a bloody madness.
Throats cut by thousands - slain men by the ton!
Earth quite corpse-cumbered, though the half not done!
They lie, stretched out, where the blood-puddles soak,
Their black lips gaping with the last cry spoke.
"Stretched;" nay! sown broadcast; yes, the word is "sown."
The fallows Liberty - the harsh wind blown
Over the furrows, Fate: and these stark dead
Are grain sublime, from Death's cold fingers shed
To make the Abyss conceive: the Future bear
More noble Heroes! Swell, oh, Corpses dear!
Rot quick to the green blade of Freedom! Death!
Do thy kind will with them! They without breath,
Stripped, scattered, ragged, festering, slashed and blue,
Dangle towards God the arms French shot tore through
And wait in meekness, Death! for Him and You!
VIII.
Oh, France! oh, People! sleeping unabashed!
Liest thou like a hound when it was lashed?
Thou liest! thine own blood fouling both thy hands,
And on thy limbs the rust of iron bands,
And round thy wrists the cut where cords went deep.
Say did they numb thy soul, that thou didst sleep?
Alas! sad France is grown a cave for sleeping,
Which a worse night than Midnight holds in keeping,
Thou sleepest sottish - lost to life and fame -
While the stars stare on thee, and pale for shame.
Stir! rouse thee! Sit! if thou know'st not to rise;
Sit up, thou tortured sluggard! ope thine eyes!
Stretch thy brawn, Giant! Sleep is foul and vile!
Art fagged, art deaf, art dumb? art blind this while?
They lie who say so! Thou dost know and feel
The things they do to thee and thine. The heel
That scratched thy neck in passing - whose? Canst say?
Yes, yes, 'twas his, and this is his f'te-day.
Oh, thou that wert of humankind - couched so -
A beast of burden on this dunghill! oh!
Bray to them, Mule! Oh, Bullock! bellow then!
Since they have made thee blind, grope in thy den!
Do something, Outcast One, that wast so grand!
Who knows if thou putt'st forth thy poor maimed hand,
There may be venging weapon within reach!
Feel with both hands - with both huge arms go stretch
Along the black wall of thy cellar. Nay,
There may be some odd thing hidden away?
Who knows - there may! Those great hands might so come
In course of ghastly fumble through the gloom,
Upon a sword - a sword! The hands once clasp
Its hilt, must wield it with a Victor's grasp.
EDWIN ARNOLD, C.S.I. |
Rory O'More; Or, Good Omens | Samuel Lover | Young Rory O'More, courted Kathleen Bawn,
He was bold as a hawk,--she as soft as the dawn;
He wish'd in his heart pretty Kathleen to please,
And he thought the best way to do that was to tease.
"Now, Rory, be aisy," sweet Kathleen would cry,
(Reproof on her lip, but a smile in her eye),
"With your tricks I don't know, in troth, what I'm about,
Faith you've teased till I've put on my cloak inside out."
"Oh, jewel," says Rory, "that same is the way
You've thrated my heart for this many a day;
And 'tis plaz'd that I am, and why not to be sure?
For 'tis all for good luck," says bold Rory O'More.
"Indeed, then," says Kathleen, "don't think of the like,
For I half gave a promise to soothering Mike;
The ground that I walk on he loves, I'll be bound."
"Faith," says Rory, "I'd rather love you than the ground."
"Now, Rory, I'll cry if you don't let me go;
Sure I drame ev'ry night that I'm hating you so!"
"Oh," says Rory, "that same I'm delighted to hear,
For drames always go by conthraries, my dear;
Oh! jewel, keep draming that same till you die,
And bright morning will give dirty night the black lie!
And 'tis plaz'd that I am, and why not, to be sure?
Since 'tis all for good luck," says bold Rory O'More.
"Arrah, Kathleen, my darlint, you've teas'd me enough,
Sure I've thrash'd for your sake Dinny Grimes and Jim Duff;
And I've made myself, drinking your health, quite a baste,
So I think, after that, I may talk to the praste."
Then Rory, the rogue, stole his arm around her neck,
So soft and so white, without freckle or speck,
And he look'd in her eyes that were beaming' with light,
And he kiss'd her sweet lips; don't you think he was right?
"Now, Rory, leave off, sir; you'll hug me no more,
That's eight times to-day you have kiss'd me before."
"Then here goes another," says he, "to make sure,
For there's luck in odd numbers," says Rory O'More. |
The Merciful Hand | Vachel Lindsay | Written to Miss Alice L. F. Fitzgerald, Edith Cavell memorial nurse, going to the front.
Your fine white hand is Heaven's gift
To cure the wide world, stricken sore,
Bleeding at the breast and head,
Tearing at its wounds once more.
Your white hand is a prophecy,
A living hope that Christ shall come
And make the nations merciful,
Hating the bayonet and drum.
Each desperate burning brain you soothe,
Or ghastly broken frame you bind,
Brings one day nearer our bright goal,
The love-alliance of mankind.
|
The Sonnets CXII - Your love and pity doth the impression fill | William Shakespeare | Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all-the-world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others' voices, that my adder's sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
That all the world besides methinks are dead. |
To An Oak At Newstead. [1] | George Gordon Byron | 1.
Young Oak! when I planted thee deep in the ground,
I hoped that thy days would be longer than mine;
That thy dark-waving branches would flourish around,
And ivy thy trunk with its mantle entwine.
2.
Such, such was my hope, when in Infancy's years,
On the land of my Fathers I rear'd thee with pride;
They are past, and I water thy stem with my tears, -
Thy decay, not the weeds that surround thee can hide.
3.
I left thee, my Oak, and, since that fatal hour,
A stranger has dwelt in the hall of my Sire;
Till Manhood shall crown me, not mine is the power,
But his, whose neglect may have bade thee expire.
4.
Oh! hardy thou wert - even now little care
Might revive thy young head, and thy wounds gently heal:
But thou wert not fated affection to share -
For who could suppose that a Stranger would feel?
5.
Ah, droop not, my Oak! lift thy head for a while;
Ere twice round yon Glory this planet shall run,
The hand of thy Master will teach thee to smile,
When Infancy's years of probation are done.
6.
Oh, live then, my Oak! tow'r aloft from the weeds,
That clog thy young growth, and assist thy decay,
For still in thy bosom are Life's early seeds,
And still may thy branches their beauty display.
7.
Oh! yet, if Maturity's years may be thine,
Though I shall lie low in the cavern of Death,
On thy leaves yet the day-beam of ages may shine,
Uninjured by Time, or the rude Winter's breath.
8.
For centuries still may thy boughs lightly wave
O'er the corse of thy Lord in thy canopy laid;
While the branches thus gratefully shelter his grave,
The Chief who survives may recline in thy shade.
9.
And as he, with his boys, shall revisit this spot,
He will tell them in whispers more softly to tread.
Oh! surely, by these I shall ne'er be forgot;
Remembrance still hallows the dust of the dead.
10.
And here, will they say, when in Life's glowing prime,
Perhaps he has pour'd forth his young simple lay,
And here must he sleep, till the moments of Time
Are lost in the hours of Eternity's day. |
Young Peggy. | Robert Burns | Tune - "Last time I cam o'er the muir."
I.
Young Peggy blooms our bonniest lass,
Her blush is like the morning,
The rosy dawn, the springing grass,
With early gems adorning:
Her eyes outshone the radiant beams
That gild the passing shower,
And glitter o'er the crystal streams,
And cheer each fresh'ning flower.
II.
Her lips, more than the cherries bright,
A richer dye has graced them;
They charm th' admiring gazer's sight,
And sweetly tempt to taste them:
Her smile is, as the evening mild,
When feather'd tribes are courting,
And little lambkins wanton wild,
In playful bands disporting.
III.
Were fortune lovely Peggy's foe,
Such sweetness would relent her,
As blooming spring unbends the brow
Of surly, savage winter.
Detraction's eye no aim can gain,
Her winning powers to lessen;
And fretful envy grins in vain
The poison'd tooth to fasten.
IV.
Ye powers of honour, love, and truth,
From every ill defend her;
Inspire the highly-favour'd youth,
The destinies intend her:
Still fan the sweet connubial flame
Responsive in each bosom,
And bless the dear parental name
With many a filial blossom. |
The Mystery | Sara Teasdale | Your eyes drink of me,
Love makes them shine,
Your eyes that lean
So close to mine.
We have long been lovers,
We know the range
Of each other's moods
And how they change;
But when we look
At each other so
Then we feel
How little we know;
The spirit eludes us,
Timid and free,
Can I ever know you
Or you know me? |
Nursery Rhyme. CCCCLXXI. Love And Matrimony. | Unknown | Young Roger came tapping at Dolly's window,
Thumpaty, thumpaty, thump!
He asked for admittance, she answered him "No!"
Frumpaty, frumpaty, frump!
"No, no, Roger, no! as you came you may go!"
Stumpaty, stumpaty, stump! |
Young Men And Women, Strong And Sound | Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson | Young men and women, strong and sound,
Adorn with beautiful excess
Of play and song and flower-dress
Our fatherland's ancestral ground.
They dream great deeds of ages older,
They long to lead to battles bolder.
Young men and women, strong and sound,
Our nation's honor are, in whom
Our whole life has its better bloom,
Rebirth upon our fathers' ground
Of them of yore. Anew there flower
The old in young folks' summer-power.
Young men and women, strong and sound,
Can doubly do our deeds and fill
With higher hope for all we will, -
Are growth in character's deep ground,
To larger life drawn by the spirit
They from our forefathers inherit. |
Rupert Brooke | Wilfrid Wilson Gibson | Your face was lifted to the golden sky
Ablaze beyond the black roofs of the square,
As flame on flame leapt, flourishing in air
Its tumult of red stars exultantly,
To the cold constellations dim and high;
And as we neared, the roaring ruddy flare
Kindled to gold your throat and brow and hair
Until you burned, a flame of ecstasy.
The golden head goes down into the night
Quenched in cold gloom - and yet again you stand
Beside me now with lifted face alight,
As, flame to flame, and fire to fire you burn ...
Then, recollecting, laughingly you turn,
And look into my eyes and take my hand.
|
Ephemera | William Butler Yeats | "Your eyes that once were never weary of mine
Are bowed in sotrow under pendulous lids,
Because our love is waning."
And then She:
"Although our love is waning, let us stand
By the lone border of the lake once more,
Together in that hour of gentleness
When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.
How far away the stars seem, and how far
Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!"
Pensive they paced along the faded leaves,
While slowly he whose hand held hers replied:
"Passion has often worn our wandering hearts."
The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves
Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once
A rabbit old and lame limped down the path;
Autumn was over him: and now they stood
On the lone border of the lake once more:
Turning, he saw that she had thrust dead leaves
Gathered in silence, dewy as her eyes,
In bosom and hair.
"Ah, do not mourn," he said,
"That we are tired, for other loves await us;
Hate on and love through unrepining hours.
Before us lies eternity; our souls
Are love, and a continual farewell." |
The Pilgrim. | Friedrich Schiller | Youth's gay springtime scarcely knowing
Went I forth the world to roam
And the dance of youth, the glowing,
Left I in my father's home,
Of my birthright, glad-believing,
Of my world-gear took I none,
Careless as an infant, cleaving
To my pilgrim staff alone.
For I placed my mighty hope in
Dim and holy words of faith,
"Wander forth the way is open,
Ever on the upward path
Till thou gain the golden portal,
Till its gates unclose to thee.
There the earthly and the mortal,
Deathless and divine shall be!"
Night on morning stole, on stealeth,
Never, never stand I still,
And the future yet concealeth,
What I seek, and what I will!
Mount on mount arose before me,
Torrents hemmed me every side,
But I built a bridge that bore me
O'er the roaring tempest-tide.
Towards the east I reached a river,
On its shores I did not rest;
Faith from danger can deliver,
And I trusted to its breast.
Drifted in the whirling motion,
Seas themselves around me roll
Wide and wider spreads the ocean,
Far and farther flies the goal.
While I live is never given
Bridge or wave the goal to near
Earth will never meet the heaven,
Never can the there be here! |
Sonnet | Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell | Your own fair youth, you care so little for it,
Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances
Of time and change upon your happiest fancies.
I keep your golden hour, and will restore it.
If ever, in time to come, you would explore it-
Your old self whose thoughts went like last year's pansies,
Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances;
In my unfailing praises now I store it.
To keep all joys of yours from Time's estranging,
I shall be then a treasury where your gay,
Happy, and pensive past for ever is.
I shall be then a garden charmed from changing,
In which your June has never passed away.
Walk there awhile among my memories. |
On The Slain Collegians | Herman Melville | Youth is the time when hearts are large,
And stirring wars
Appeal to the spirit which appeals in turn
To the blade it draws.
If woman incite, and duty show
(Though made the mask of Cain),
Or whether it be Truth's sacred cause,
Who can aloof remain
That shares youth's ardor, uncooled by the snow
Of wisdom or sordid gain?
The liberal arts and nurture sweet
Which give his gentleness to man--
Train him to honor, lend him grace
Through bright examples meet--
That culture which makes never wan
With underminings deep, but holds
The surface still, its fitting place,
And so gives sunniness to the face
And bravery to the heart; what troops
Of generous boys in happiness thus bred--
Saturnians through life's Tempe led,
Went from the North and came from the South,
With golden mottoes in the mouth,
To lie down midway on a bloody bed.
Woe for the homes of the North,
And woe for the seats of the South:
All who felt life's spring in prime,
And were swept by the wind of their place and time--
All lavish hearts, on whichever side,
Of birth urbane or courage high,
Armed them for the stirring wars--
Armed them--some to die.
Apollo-like in pride.
Each would slay his Python--caught
The maxims in his temple taught--
Aflame with sympathies whose blaze
Perforce enwrapped him--social laws,
Friendship and kin, and by-gone days--
Vows, kisses--every heart unmoors,
And launches into the seas of wars.
What could they else--North or South?
Each went forth with blessings given
By priests and mothers in the name of Heaven;
And honor in both was chief.
Warred one for Right, and one for Wrong?
So be it; but they both were young--
Each grape to his cluster clung,
All their elegies are sung.
The anguish of maternal hearts
Must search for balm divine;
But well the striplings bore their fated parts
(The heavens all parts assign)--
Never felt life's care or cloy.
Each bloomed and died an unabated Boy;
Nor dreamed what death was--thought it mere
Sliding into some vernal sphere.
They knew the joy, but leaped the grief,
Like plants that flower ere comes the leaf--
Which storms lay low in kindly doom,
And kill them in their flush of bloom. |
To The Sighing Strephon. [1] | George Gordon Byron | 1.
Your pardon, my friend,
If my rhymes did offend,
Your pardon, a thousand times o'er;
From friendship I strove,
Your pangs to remove,
But, I swear, I will do so no more.
2.
Since your beautiful maid,
Your flame has repaid,
No more I your folly regret;
She's now most divine,
And I bow at the shrine,
Of this quickly reform'd coquette.
3.
Yet still, I must own,
I should never have known,
From your verses, what else she deserv'd;
Your pain seem'd so great,
I pitied your fate,
As your fair was so dev'lish reserv'd.
4.
Since the balm-breathing kiss
Of this magical Miss,
Can such wonderful transports produce;
Since the "world you forget,
When your lips once have met,"
My counsel will get but abuse.
5.
You say, "When I rove,"
"I know nothing of love;"
Tis true, I am given to range;
If I rightly remember,
I've lov'd a good number;
Yet there's pleasure, at least, in a change.
6.
I will not advance,
By the rules of romance,
To humour a whimsical fair;
Though a smile may delight,
Yet a frown will affright,
Or drive me to dreadful despair.
7.
While my blood is thus warm,
I ne'er shall reform,
To mix in the Platonists' school;
Of this I am sure,
Was my Passion so pure,
Thy Mistress would think me a fool.
8.
And if I should shun,
Every woman for one,
Whose image must fill my whole breast;
Whom I must prefer,
And sigh but for her,
What an insult 'twould be to the rest!
9.
Now Strephon, good-bye;
I cannot deny,
Your passion appears most absurd;
Such love as you plead,
Is pure love, indeed,
For it only consists in the word. |
The Briar Rose | Madison Julius Cawein | Youth, with an arrogant air,
Passes me by:
Age, on his tottering staff,
Stops with a sigh.
"Here is a flower, "he says,
"I knew when young:
It keeps its oldtime place
The woods among.
"Fresh and fragrant as when
I was a boy;
Still is it young as then,
And full of joy.
"Years have not changed it, no;
In leaf and bloom
It keeps the selfsame glow,
And the same perfume.
"Time, that has grayed my hair,
And bowed my form,
Retains it young and fair
And full of charm.
"The root from which it grows
Is firm and fit,
And every year bestows
New strength on it.
"Not so with me. The years
Have changed me much;
And care and pain and tears
Have left their touch.
"It keeps a sturdy stock,
And blooms the same,
Beside the selfsame rock
Where I carved my name.
"My name? I do not know
It is my own.
'T was carved so long ago,
'T is moss-o'ergrown."
(He stoops beside the flower.
He feels its need.
And for a thoughtful hour
He gives it heed.
(It beggars him, it seems,
In heart and mind,
Of memories and dreams
Of days once kind.)
"It gives and I must take
Thoughts sweet with pain;
And feel again the ache
Of the all-in-vain.
"If it could understand
All it implies
Of loss to me who planned
In life's emprise,
"It would not look so fair,
Nor flaunt its youth,
But strip its branches bare,
And die of ruth.
"Ah me! days come and go;
And I am old
This wild rose tells me so,
As none has told.
"Had it not played a part
In a love long past,
It would not break my heart
With loss at last." |
The Progress Of Poesy - A Variation | Matthew Arnold | Youth rambles on life's arid mount,
And strikes the rock, and finds the vein,
And brings the water from the fount,
The fount which shall not flow again.
The man mature with labour chops
For the bright stream a channel grand,
And sees not that the sacred drops
Ran off and vanish'd out of hand.
And then the old man totters nigh
And feebly rakes among the stones.
The mount is mute, the channel-dry;
And down he lays his weary bones |
To The Sighing Strephon. | George Gordon Byron | 1.
Your pardon my friend,
If my rhymes did offend,
Your pardon a thousand times o'er,
From friendship I strove,
Your pangs to remove,
But I swear I will do so no more.
2.
Since your beautiful maid
Your flame has repaid,
No more I your folly regret;
She's now most divine,
And I bow at the shrine,
Of this quickly reformed coquette.
3.
But still I must own,
I should never have known,
From your verses what else she deserv'd,
Your pain seem'd so great,
I pitied your fate,
As your fair was so dev'lish reserv'd.
4.
But since the chaste kiss,
Of this magical Miss,
Such wonderful transports produce,
Since the "world you forget,"
"When your lips once have met,"
My Counsel will get but abuse.
5.
You say "when I rove"
"I know nothing of love,"
'Tis true I am given to range,
If I rightly remember,
I've kiss'd a good number,
But there's pleasure at least in a change.
6.
I ne'er will advance,
By the rules of romance,
To humour a whimsical fair,
Though a smile may delight,
Yet a frown wont affright,
Or drive me to dreadful despair.
7.
Whilst my blood is thus warm,
I ne'er shall reform,
To mix in the Platonist's school;
Of this I am sure,
Was my passion so pure,
My mistress must think me a fool.
8.
Though the kisses are sweet,
Which voluptuously meet,
Of kissing I ne'er was so fond,
As to make me forget,
Though our lips oft have met,
That still there was something beyond.
9.
And if I should shun,
Every woman for one,
Whose image must fill my whole breast;
Whom I must prefer,
And sigh but for her,
What an insult 'twould be to the rest!
10.
Now, Strephon, good bye,
I cannot deny,
Your passion appears most absurd,
Such love as you plead,
Is pure love indeed,
For it only consists in the word. |
The Three Glorious Days. | Victor-Marie Hugo | ("Fr'res, vous avez vos journ'es.")
[I., July, 1830.]
Youth of France, sons of the bold,
Your oak-leaf victor-wreaths behold!
Our civic-laurels - honored dead!
So bright your triumphs in life's morn,
Your maiden-standards hacked and torn,
On Austerlitz might lustre shed.
All that your fathers did re-done -
A people's rights all nobly won -
Ye tore them living from the shroud!
Three glorious days bright July's gift,
The Bastiles off our hearts ye lift!
Oh! of such deeds be ever proud!
Of patriot sires ye lineage claim,
Their souls shone in your eye of flame;
Commencing the great work was theirs;
On you the task to finish laid
Your fruitful mother, France, who bade
Flow in one day a hundred years.
E'en chilly Albion admires,
The grand example Europe fires;
America shall clap her hands,
When swiftly o'er the Atlantic wave,
Fame sounds the news of how the brave,
In three bright days, have burst their bands!
With tyrant dead your fathers traced
A circle wide, with battles graced;
Victorious garland, red and vast!
Which blooming out from home did go
To Cadiz, Cairo, Rome, Moscow,
From Jemappes to Montmirail passed!
Of warlike Lyceums[1] ye are
The favored sons; there, deeds of war
Formed e'en your plays, while o'er you shook
The battle-flags in air aloft!
Passing your lines, Napoleon oft
Electrified you with a look!
Eagle of France! whose vivid wing
Did in a hundred places fling
A bloody feather, till one night
The arrow whelmed thee 'neath the wave!
Look up - rejoice - for now thy brave
And worthy eaglets dare the light.
ELIZABETH COLLINS. |
Odes Of Anacreon - Ode LXI. | Thomas Moore | [1]
Youth's endearing charms are fled;
Hoary locks deform my head;
Bloomy graces, dalliance gay,
All the flowers of life decay.[2]
Withering age begins to trace
Sad memorials o'er my face;
Time has shed its sweetest bloom
All the future must be gloom.
This it is that sets me sighing;
Dreary is the thought of dying![3]
Lone and dismal is the road,
Down to Pluto's dark abode;
And, when once the journey's o'er,
Ah! we can return no more! |
Love's Service. | Jean Blewett | Your presence is a psalm of praise,
And as its measure grandly rings
God's finger finds my heart and plays
A te deum upon its strings.
I never see you but I feel
That I in gratitude must kneel.
Your head down-bent, the brow of snow
Crowned with the shining braids of hair,
To me, because I love you so,
Is in itself a tender prayer,
All faith, all meekness, and all trust -
"Amen!" I cry, because I must.
Your clear eyes hold the text apart,
And shame my love of place and pelf
With, "Love the Lord with all thine heart,
And love thy neighbor as thyself!"
Dear eyes and true, - I sorely need
More knowledge of your gracious creed.
About your lips the summer lies -
Who runs may read each subtle lure
To draw me nearer to the skies,
And make me strong, and keep me pure.
I loathe my worldliness and guile
Each time your red lips on me smile.
The benediction of your face -
Your lifted face - doth make a road
For white-robed peace and golden grace
To reach my heart and take its load.
Dear woman saint, I bow the knee,
And give God thanks for love and thee! |
Rhymes for Gloriana - III. On Receiving One of Gloriana's Letters | Vachel Lindsay | Your pen needs but a ruffle
To be Pavlova whirling.
It surely is a scalawag
A-scamping down the page.
A pretty little May-wind
The morning buds uncurling.
And then the white sweet Russian,
The dancer of the age.
Your pen's the Queen of Sheba,
Such serious questions bringing,
That merry rascal Solomon
Would show a sober face: -
And then again Pavlova
To set our spirits singing,
The snowy-swan bacchante
All glamour, glee and grace. |
The Amulet | Ralph Waldo Emerson | Your picture smiles as first it smiled;
The ring you gave is still the same;
Your letter tells, O changing child!
No tidings since it came.
Give me an amulet
That keeps intelligence with you,--
Red when you love, and rosier red,
And when you love not, pale and blue.
Alas! that neither bonds nor vows
Can certify possession;
Torments me still the fear that love
Died in its last expression. |
Father William | William F. Kirk | "Yu ban old, Fader Olaf," a young geezer
say, "yure hair it ban whiter sum snow;
Ay lak yu to tal me how yu keep so young.
By Yudas! Ay ant hardly know."
"Ven ay ban a young kid," Fader Olaf he
say, "ay never hang out in saloon;
Ay never ban smoking dese har cigarettes, or
sitting on sofa and spoon!"
"Yu ban slim, Fader Olaf," the young faller
say: "old fallers ban mostly dam fat.
Yu measure 'bout tventy-sax inches reund
vaist, vat for ban the reason of dat?"
"In the days of my youth," Fader Olaf
reply, "ay ant drenk no lager from cup;
Ay let all my frends fight dis bourbon and
rye, and alvays pass breakfast fude up!"
"Fader Olaf, yure eyes ban so bright sum a
star, yu ant vear no glasses at all;
Ay lak yu to tal me gude reason for dis;
ay hope yu don't give me no stall."
"All the days of my life," Fader Olaf den
say, "ay never ban going to shows,
And straining my eyes vatching dese chorus
girls vich ant veering wery much clo'es!"
Den young faller say, "Fader Olaf, ay tenk
yu ban full of yinger, old pal;
But yu had to be missing gude times all yure
life, so ay skol keep on raising hal!" |
Gow's Watch : Act II. Scene 2. | Rudyard Kipling | ACT II. SCENE 2.
The pavilion in the Gardens. Enter FERDINAND and the KING
FERDINAND. Your tiercel's too long at hack, Sir. He's no eyass
But a passage-hawk that footed ere we caught him,
Dangerously free o' the air. 'Faith were he mine
(As mine's the glove he binds to for his tirings)
I'd fly him with a make-hawk. He's in yarak
Plumed to the very point. So manned so, weathered!
Give him the firmament God made him for
And what shall take the air of him?
THE KING. A young wing yet
Bold, overbold on the perch but, think you, Ferdinand,
He can endure the raw skies yonder? Cozen
Advantage out of the teeth of the hurricane?
Choose his own mate against the lammer-geier?
Ride out a night-long tempest, hold his pitch
Between the lightning and the cloud it leaps from,
Never too pressed to kill?
FERDINAND. I'll answer for him.
Bating all parable, I know the Prince.
There's a bleak devil in the young, my Lord;
God put it there to save 'em from their elders
And break their father's heart, but bear them scatheless
Through mire and thorns and blood if need be. Think
What our prime saw! Such glory, such achievements
As now our children, wondering at, examine
Themselves to see if they shall hardly equal.
But what cared we while we wrought the wonders? Nothing!
The rampant deed contented.
THE KING. Little enough. God knows! But afterwards., after,
Then comes the reckoning. I would save him that.
FERDINAND. Save him dry scars that ache of winternights,
Worn out self-pity and as much of knowledge
As makes old men fear judgment? Then loose him, loose him
A' God's name loose him to adventure early!
And trust some random pike, or half-backed horse,
Besides what's caught in Italy, to save him.
THE KING. I know. I know. And yet. . . . What stirs in the garden?
Enter GOW and a GARDENER bearing the Prince's body
FERDINAND. (Gods give me patience!) Gow and a gardener
Bearing some load along in the dusk to the dunghill.
Nay, a dead branch, But as I said, the Prince, ,
THE KING. They've laid it down. Strange they should work so late.
GOW (setting down the body). Heark, you unsanctified fool while I set out our story. We found it, this side the North Park wall which it had climbed to pluck nectarines from the alley. Heark again! There was a nectarine in its hand when we found it, and the naughty brick that slipped from the coping beneath its foot and so caused its death, lies now under the wall for the King to see.
THE KING (above). The King to see! Why should he? Who's the man?
GOW. That is your tale. Swerve from it by so much as the breadth of my dagger and here's your instant reward. You heard not, saw not, and by the Horns of ninefold-cuckolded Jupiter you thought not nor dreamed not anything more or other!
THE KING. Ninefold-cuckolded Jupiter. That's a rare oath! Shall we look closer?
FERDINAND. Not yet, my Lord! (I cannot hear him breathe.)
GARDENER. The North Park wall? It was so. Plucking nectarines. It shall be. But how shall I say if any ask why our Lady the Queen, ,
GOW (stabs him). Thus! Hie after the Prince and tell him y'are the first fruits of his nectarine tree. Bleed there behind the laurels.
THE KING. Why did Gow buffet the clown? What said he? I'll go look.
FERDINAND (above). Save yourself! It is the King!
Enter the KING and FERDINAND to GOW
GOW. God save you! This was the Prince!
THE KING. The Prince! Not a dead branch? (Uncovers the face.)
My flesh and blood! My son! my son! my son!
FERDINAND (to Gow). I had feared something of this. And that fool yonder?
GOW. Dead, or as good. He cannot speak.
FERDINAND. Better so.
THE KING. 'Loosed to adventure early!' Tell the tale.
GOW. Saddest truth alack! I came upon him not a half hour since, fallen from the North Park wall over against the Deerpark side, dead, dead!, a nectarine in his hand that the dear lad must have climbed for, and plucked the very instant, look you, that a brick slipped on the coping. 'Tis there now. So I lifted him, but his neck was as you see, and already cold.
THE KING. Oh, very cold. But why should he have troubled to climb? He was free of all the fruit in my garden God knows! . . . What, Gow?
GOW. Surely, God knows!
THE KING. A lad's trick. But I love him the better for it . . . . True, he's past loving . . . . And now we must tell our Queen. What a coil at the day's end! She'll grieve for him. Not as I shall, Ferdinand, but as youth for youth. They were much of the same age. Playmate for playmate. See, he wears her colours. That is the knot she gave him last, last . . . . Oh God! When was yesterday?
FERDINAND. Come in! Come in, my Lord. There's a dew falling.
THE KING. He'll take no harm of it. I'll follow presently.
He's all his mother's now and none of mine,
Her very face on the bride-pillow. Yet I tricked her.
But that was later, and she never guessed.
I do not think he sinned much, he's too young,
Much the same age as my Queen. God must not judge him
Too hardly for such slips as youth may fall in.
But I'll entreat that Throne.
(Prays by the body.)
GOW. The Heavens hold up still. Earth opens not and this dew's mere water. What shall a man think of it all? (To GARDENER.) Not dead yet, sirrah? I bade you follow the Prince. Despatch!
GARDENER. Some kind soul pluck out the dagger. Why did you slay me? I'd done no wrong. I'd ha' kept it secret till my dying day. But not now, not now! I'm dying. The Prince fell from the Queen's chamber window. I saw it in the nut-alley. He was, ,
FERDINAND. But what made you in the nut-alley at that hour?
GARDENER. No wrong. No more than another man's wife. Jocasta of the still-room. She'd kissed me good-night too; but that's over with the rest . . . . I've stumbled on the Prince's beastly loves, and I pay for all. Let me pass!
GOW. Count it your fortune, honest man. You would have revealed it to your woman at the next meeting. You fleshmongers are all one feather. (Plucks out the dagger.)
Go in peace and lay your death to Fortune's door. He's sped, thank Fortune!
FERDINAND. Who knows not Fortune, glutted on easy thrones,
Stealing from feasts as rare to coney-catch
Privily in the hedgerows for a clown,
With that same cruel-lustful hand and eye,
Those nails and wedges, that one hammer and lead,
And the very gerb of long-stored lightning loosed.
Yesterday 'gainst some King.
THE KING. I have pursued with prayers where my heart warns me
My soul shall overtake,
Enter the QUEEN
THE KING. Look not! Wait till I tell you, dearest. . . .
Air! . . .
'Loosed to adventure early'
. . . I go late. (Dies.)
GOW. So! God hath cut off the Prince in his pleasures. Gow, to save the King, hath silenced one poor fool who knew how it befell, and, now the King's dead, 'needs only that the Queen should kill Gow and all's safe for her this side o' the judgment . . . . Se'or Ferdinand, the wind's easterly. I'm for the road.
FERDINAND. My horse is at the gate. God speed you. Whither?
GOW. To the Duke, if the Queen does not lay hands on me before. However it goes, I charge you bear witness, Se'or Ferdinand, I served the old King faithfully. To the death, Se'or Ferdinand, to the death! |
Roses And Pearls | Paul Laurence Dunbar | Your spoken words are roses fine and sweet,
The songs you sing are perfect pearls of sound.
How lavish nature is about your feet,
To scatter flowers and jewels both around.
Blushing the stream of petal beauty flows,
Softly the white strings trickle down and shine.
Oh! speak to me, my love, I crave a rose.
Sing me a song, for I would pearls were mine. |
The Fudge Family In Paris Letter VI. From Phil. Fudge, Esq., To His Brother Tim Fudge, Esq., Barrister At Law. | Thomas Moore | Yours of the 12th received, just now--
Thanks, for the hint, my trusty brother!
'Tis truly pleasing to see how
We, FUDGES, stand by one another.
But never fear--I know my chap,
And he knows me too--verbum sap,
My Lord and I are kindred spirits,
Like in our ways as two young ferrets;
Both fashioned, as that supple race is,
To twist into all sorts of places;--
Creatures lengthy, lean and hungering,
Fond of blood and burrow-mongering.
As to my Book in 91,
Called "Down with Kings, or, Who'd have thought it?"
Bless you! the Book's long dead and gone,--
Not even the Attorney-General bought it.
And tho' some few seditious tricks
I played in '95 and '6,
As you remind me in your letter,
His Lordship likes me all the better;--
We proselytes, that come with news full,
Are, as he says, so vastly useful!
REYNOLDS and I--(you know TOM REYNOLDS--
Drinks his claret, keeps his chaise--
Lucky the dog that first unkennels
Traitors and Luddites now-a-days;
Or who can help to bag a few,
When SIDMOUTH wants a death, or two;)
REYNOLDS and I and some few more,
All men like us of information,
Friends whom his Lordship keeps in store,
As under-saviors of the nation[1]--
Have, formed a Club this season, where
His Lordship sometimes takes the chair,
And gives us many a bright oration
In praise of our sublime vocation;
Tracing it up to great King MIDAS,
Who, tho' in fable typified as
A royal Ass, by grace, divine
And right of ears, most asinine,
Was yet no more, in fact historical,
Than an exceeding well-bred tyrant;
And these, his ears, but allegorical,
Meaning Informers, kept at high rent--
Gem'men, who touched the Treasury glisteners,
Like us, for being trusty listeners;
And picking up each tale and fragment,
For royal MIDAS'S Green Bag meant.
"And wherefore," said this best of Peers,
"Should not the REGENT too have ears,
"To reach as far, as long and wide as
"Those of his model, good King MIDAS?"
This speech was thought extremely good,
And (rare for him) was understood--
Instant we drank "The REGENT'S Ears,"
With three times three illustrious cheers,
Which made the room resound like thunder--
"The REGENT'S Ears, and may he ne'er
"From foolish shame, like MIDAS, wear
"Old paltry wigs to keep them[2] under!"
This touch at our old friends, the Whigs,
Made us as merry all as grigs.
In short (I'll thank you not to mention
These things again), we get on gayly;
And thanks to pension and Suspension,
Our little Club increases daily.
CASTLES, and OLIVER, and such,
Who don't as yet full salary touch,
Nor keep their chaise and pair, nor buy
Houses and lands, like TOM and I,
Of course don't rank with us salvators,[3]
But merely serve the Club as waiters,
Like Knights, too, we've our collar days,
(For us, I own, an awkward phrase,)
When, in our new costume adorned,--
The REGENT'S buff-and-blue coats turned--
We have the honor to give dinners
To the chief Rats in upper stations:
Your WEMYS, VAUGHANS,--half-fledged sinners,
Who shame us by their imitations;
Who turn, 'tis true--but what of that?
Give me the useful peaching Rat;
Not things as mute as Punch, when bought,
Whose wooden heads are all they've brought;
Who, false enough to shirk their friends,
But too faint-hearted to betray,
Are, after all their twists and bends,
But souls in Limbo, damned half way.
No, no, we nobler vermin are
A genus useful as we're rare;
Midst all the things miraculous
Of which your natural histories brag,
The rarest must be Rats like us,
Who let the cat out of the bag.
Yet still these Tyros in the cause
Deserve, I own, no small applause;
And they're by us received and treated
With all due honors--only seated
In the inverse scale of their reward,
The merely promised next my Lord;
Small pensions then, and so on, down,
Rat after rat, they graduate
Thro' job, red ribbon and silk gown,
To Chancellorship and Marquisate.
This serves to nurse the ratting spirit;
The less the bribe the more the merit.
Our music's good, you may be sure;
My Lord, you know, 's an amateur[4]--
Takes every part with perfect ease,
Tho' to the Base by nature suited;
And, formed for all, as best may please,
For whips and bolts, or chords and keys,
Turns from his victims to his glees,
And has them both well executed.[5]
HERTFORD, who, tho' no Rat himself,
Delights in all such liberal arts,
Drinks largely to the House of Guelph,
And superintends the Corni parts.
While CANNING, who'd be first by choice,
Consents to take an under voice;
And GRAVES,[6] who well that signal knows,
Watches the Volti Subitos.[7]
In short, as I've already hinted,
We take of late prodigiously;
But as our Club is somewhat stinted
For Gentlemen, like TOM and me,
We'll take it kind if you'll provide
A few Squireens[8] from t'other side;--
Some of those loyal, cunning elves
(We often tell the tale with laughter),
Who used to hide the pikes themselves,
Then hang the fools who found them after.
I doubt not you could find us, too,
Some Orange Parsons that might do:
Among the rest, we've heard of one,
The Reverend--something--HAMILTON,
Who stuft a figure of himself
(Delicious thought!) and had it shot at,
To bring some Papists to the shelf,
That couldn't otherwise be got at--
If he'll but join the Association,
We'll vote him in by acclamation.
And now, my brother, guide and friend,
This somewhat tedious scrawl must end.
I've gone into this long detail,
Because I saw your nerves were shaken
With anxious fears lest I should fail
In this new, loyal, course I've taken.
But, bless your heart! you need not doubt--
We FUDGES know what we're about.
Look round and say if you can see
A much more thriving family.
There's JACK, the Doctor--night and day
Hundreds of patients so besiege him,
You'd swear that all the rich and gay
Fell sick on purpose to oblige him.
And while they think, the precious ninnies,
He's counting o'er their pulse so steady,
The rogue but counts how many guineas
He's fobbed for that day's work already.
I'll ne'er forget the old maid's alarm,
When, feeling thus Miss Sukey Flirt, he
Said, as he dropt her shrivelled arm,
"Damned bad this morning--only thirty!"
Your dowagers, too, every one,
So generous are, when they call him in,
That he might now retire upon
The rheumatisms of three old women.
Then whatsoe'er your ailments are,
He can so learnedly explain ye'em--
Your cold of course is a catarrh,
Your headache is a hemi-cranium:--
His skill too in young ladies' lungs,
The grace with which, most mild of men,
He begs them to put out their tongues.
Then bids them--put them in again;
In short, there's nothing now like JACK!--
Take all your doctors great and small,
Of present times and ages back,
Dear Doctor FUDGE is worth them all.
So much for physic--then, in law too,
Counsellor TIM, to thee we bow;
Not one of us gives more 'clat to
The immortal name of FUDGE than thou.
Not to expatiate on the art
With which you played the patriot's part,
Till something good and snug should offer;--
Like one, who, by the way he acts
The enlightening part of candle-snuffer,
The manager's keen eye attracts,
And is promoted thence by him
To strut in robes, like thee, my TIM!--
Who shall describe thy powers of face,
Thy well-fed zeal in every case,
Or wrong or right--but ten times warmer
(As suits thy calling) in the former--
Thy glorious, lawyer-like delight
In puzzling all that's clear and right,
Which, tho' conspicuous in thy youth,
Improves so with a wig and band on,
That all thy pride's to waylay Truth,
And leave her not a leg to stand on.
Thy patent prime morality,--
Thy cases cited from the Bible--
Thy candor when it falls to thee
To help in trouncing for a libel;--
"God knows, I, from my soul, profess
"To hate all bigots and be-nighters!
"God knows, I love, to even excess,
"The sacred Freedom of the Press,
"My only aim's to--crush the writers."
These are the virtues, TIM, that draw
The briefs into thy bag so fast;
And these, oh TIM--if Law be Law--
Will raise thee to the Bench at last.
I blush to see this letter's length--
But 'twas my wish to prove to thee
How full of hope, and wealth, and strength,
Are all our precious family.
And, should affairs go on as pleasant
As, thank the Fates, they do at present--
Should we but still enjoy the sway
Of SIDMOUTH and of CASTLEREAGH,
I hope, ere long, to see the day
When England's wisest statesmen, judges,
Lawyers, peers, will all be--FUDGES!
Good-by--my paper's out so nearly,
I've room only for
Yours sincerely. |
On A Bust | Edgar Lee Masters | Your speeches seemed to answer for the nonce,
They do not justify your head in bronze!
Your essays! talent's failures were to you
Your philosophic gamut, but things true,
Or beautiful, oh never! What's the pons
For you to cross to fame? Your head in bronze?
What has the artist caught? The sensual chin
That melts away in weakness from the skin,
Sagging from your indifference of mind;
The sullen mouth that sneers at human kind
For lack of genius to create or rule;
The superficial scorn that says "you fool!"
The deep-set eyes that have the mud-cat look
Which might belong to Tolstoi or a crook.
The nose half-thickly fleshed and half in point,
And lightly turned awry as out of joint;
The eyebrows pointing upward satyr-wise,
Scarce like Mephisto, for you scarcely rise
To cosmic irony in what you dream,
More like a tomcat sniffing yellow cream.
The brow! 'Tis worth the bronze it's molded in
Save for the flat-top head and narrow thin
Backhead which shows your spirit has not soared.
You are a Packard engine in a Ford,
Which wrecks itself and turtles with its load,
Too light and powerful to keep the road.
The master strength for twisting words is caught
In the swift turning wheels of iron thought.
With butcher knives your hands can vivisect
Our butterflies, but you can not erect
Temples of beauty, wisdom. You can crawl
Hungry and subtle over Eden's wall,
And shame half grown up truth, or make a lie
Full grown as good. You cannot glorify
Our dreams, or aspirations, or deep thirst.
To you the world's a fig tree which is curst.
You have preached every faith but to betray;
The artist shows us you have had your day.
A giant as we hoped, in truth a dwarf;
A barrel of slop that shines on Lethe's wharf,
Which seemed at first a vessel with sweet wine
For thirsty lips. So down the swift decline
You went through sloven spirit, craven heart
And cynic indolence. And here the art
Of molding clay has caught you for the nonce
And made your shame our shame - your head in bronze!
Some day this bust will lie amid old metals
Old copper boilers, wires, faucets, kettles.
Some day it will be melted up and molded
In door knobs, inkwells, paper knives, or folded
In leaves and wreaths around the capitals
Of marble columns, or for arsenals
Fashioned in something, or in course of time
Successively made each of these, from grime
Rescued successively, or made a bell
For fire or worship, who on earth can tell?
One thing is sure, you will not long be dust
When this bronze will be broken as a bust
And given to the junkman to re-sell.
You know this and the thought of it is hell!
|
A Confession To A Friend In Trouble | Thomas Hardy | Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less
Here, far away, than when I tarried near;
I even smile old smiles with listlessness -
Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.
A thought too strange to house within my brain
Haunting its outer precincts I discern:
- That I will not show zeal again to learn
Your griefs, and sharing them, renew my pain . . .
It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer
That shapes its lawless figure on the main,
And each new impulse tends to make outflee
The unseemly instinct that had lodgment here;
Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be
Than that, though banned, such instinct was in me!
1866. |
To Virginia (on Her Birthday) | Abram Joseph Ryan | Your past is past and never to return,
The long bright yesterday of life's first years,
Its days are dead -- cold ashes in an urn.
Some held for you a chalice for your tears,
And other days strewed flowers upon your way.
They all are gone beyond your reach,
And thus they are beyond my speech.
I know them not, so that your first gone times
To me unknown, lie far beyond my rhymes.
But I can bless your soul and aims to-day,
And I can ask your future to be sweet,
And I can pray that you may never meet
With any cross, you are too weak to bear.
Virginia, Virgin name, and may you wear
Its virtues and its beauties, fore'er and fore'er.
I breathe this blessing, and I pray this prayer. |
"Your Riches Taught Me Poverty." | Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | Your riches taught me poverty.
Myself a millionnaire
In little wealths, -- as girls could boast, --
Till broad as Buenos Ayre,
You drifted your dominions
A different Peru;
And I esteemed all poverty,
For life's estate with you.
Of mines I little know, myself,
But just the names of gems, --
The colors of the commonest;
And scarce of diadems
So much that, did I meet the queen,
Her glory I should know:
But this must be a different wealth,
To miss it beggars so.
I 'm sure 't is India all day
To those who look on you
Without a stint, without a blame, --
Might I but be the Jew!
I 'm sure it is Golconda,
Beyond my power to deem, --
To have a smile for mine each day,
How better than a gem!
At least, it solaces to know
That there exists a gold,
Although I prove it just in time
Its distance to behold!
It 's far, far treasure to surmise,
And estimate the pearl
That slipped my simple fingers through
While just a girl at school! |
Olaf | William F. Kirk | Yust two years ago last venter
Ay meet Olaf op in camp;
Ve ban lumberyacks togedder.
Every morning we skol tramp
'Bout sax miles yust after breakfast
Till we come to big pine-trees;
Den our straw boss he skol make us
Vork lak little busy bees.
Olaf, he ban yolly faller,
He skol taling yoke all day;
Sometimes he sing dis har ragtime,
Yust to passing time avay.
And at night, ven we ban smoking
After supper, he skol make
All us lumberyacks to laughing
Till our belts skol nearly break.
Me and Olaf bunked together,
And sometimes he taling me
'Bout his vife and little Torger,
Who ban living cross big sea.
"Ay ban saving dough," say Olaf;
"And next summer, ef ay can,
Ay skol send for vife and baby;
Den ay ban a happy man!"
One night Olaf getting letter
Ven we coming back to camp;
He yust tal me, "Little Torger,"
And his eyes ban gude and damp.
Dis ban how ay know vy Olaf
Never taling no more yoke, -
Vy he yust sit down at night-time,
Close by me, var he skol smoke. |
What Grandfather Said | Alfred Noyes | (An epistle from a narrow-minded old gentleman to a young artist of superior intellect and intense realism.)
Your thoughts are for the poor and weak?
Ah, no, the picturesque's your passion!
Your tongue is always in your cheek
At poverty that's not in fashion.
You like a ploughman's rugged face,
Or painted eyes in Piccadilly;
But bowler hats are commonplace,
And thread-bare tradesmen simply silly.
The clerk that sings "God save the King,"
And still believes his Tory paper,--
You hate the an'mic fool? I thought
You loved the weak! Was that all vapour?
Ah, when you sneer, dear democrat,
At such a shiny-trousered Tory
Because he doffs his poor old hat
To what he thinks his country's glory,
To you it's just a coloured rag.
You hate the "patriots" that bawl so.
Well, my Ulysses, there's a flag
That lifts men in Republics also.
No doubt his thoughts are cruder far;
And, where those linen folds are shaking,
Perhaps he sees a kind of star
Because his eyes are tired and aching.
Banal enough! Banal as truth!
But I'm not thinking of his banners.
I'm thinking of his pinched white youth
And your disgusting "new art" manners.
His meek submission stirs your hate?
Better, my lad, if you're so fervent,
Turn your cold steel against the State
Instead of sneering at the servant.
He does his job. He draws his pay.
You sneer, and dine with those that pay him;
And then you write a snobbish play
For democrats, in which you play him.
Ah, yes, you like simplicity
That sucks its cheeks to make the dimple.
But this domestic bourgeoisie
You hate,--because it's all too simple.
You hate the hearth, the wife, the child,
You hate the heavens that bend above them.
Your simple folk must all run wild
Like jungle-beasts before you love them.
You own a house in Cheyne Walk,
(You say it costs three thousand fully)
Where subtle snobs can talk and talk
And play the intellectual bully.
Yes. I say "snobs." Are names alone
Free from all change? Your word "Victorian"
Could bite and sting in ninety one
But now--it's deader than the saurian.
You think I live in yesterday,
Because I think your way the wrong one;
But I have hewed and ploughed my way,
And--unlike yours--it's been a long one.
I let Victoria toll her bell,
And went with Strindberg for a ride, sir.
I've fought through your own day as well,
And come out on the other side, sir,--
The further side, the morning side,
I read free verse (the Psalms) on Sunday.
But I've decided (you'll decide)
That there is room for song on Monday.
I've seen the new snob on his way,
The intellectual snob I mean, sir,
The artist snob, in book and play,
Kicking his mother round the scene, sir.
I've heard the Tories talk like fools;
And the rich fool that apes the Tory.
I've seen the shopmen break your rules
And die like Christ, in Christ's own glory.
But, as for you, that liberal sneer
Reminds me of the poor old Kaiser.
He was a "socialist," my dear.
Well, I'm your grandson. You'll grow wiser. |
Belphegor Addressed To Miss De Chammelay | Jean de La Fontaine | YOUR name with ev'ry pleasure here I place,
The last effusions of my muse to grace.
O charming Phillis! may the same extend
Through time's dark night: our praise together blend;
To this we surely may pretend to aim
Your acting and my rhymes attention claim.
Long, long in mem'ry's page your fame shall live;
You, who such ecstacy so often give;
O'er minds, o'er hearts triumphantly you reign:
In Berenice, in Phaedra, and Chimene,
Your tears and plaintive accents all engage:
Beyond compare in proud Camilla's rage;
Your voice and manner auditors delight;
Who strong emotions can so well excite?
No fine eulogium from my pen expect:
With you each air and grace appear correct
My first of Phillis's you ought to be;
My sole affection had been placed on thee;
Long since, had I presumed the truth to tell;
But he who loves would fain be loved as well.
NO hope of gaining such a charming fair,
Too soon, perhaps, I ceded to despair;
Your friend, was all I ventured to be thought,
Though in your net I more than half was caught.
Most willingly your lover I'd have been;
But time it is our story should be seen.
ONE, day, old Satan, sov'reign dread of hell;
Reviewed his subjects, as our hist'ries tell;
The diff'rent ranks, confounded as they stood,
Kings, nobles, females, and plebeian blood,
Such grief expressed, and made such horrid cries,
As almost stunned, and filled him with surprise.
The monarch, as he passed, desired to know
The cause that sent each shade to realms below.
Some said - my HUSBAND; others WIFE replied;
The same was echoed loud from ev'ry side.
His majesty on this was heard to say:
If truth these shadows to my ears convey,
With ease our glory we may now augment:
I'm fully bent to try th' experiment.
With this design we must some demon send,
Who wily art with prudence well can blend;
And, not content with watching Hymen's flock,
Must add his own experience to the stock.
THE sable senate instantly approved
The proposition that the monarch moved;
Belphegor was to execute the work;
The proper talent in him seemed to lurk:
All ears and eyes, a prying knave in grain
In short, the very thing they wished to gain.
THAT he might all expense and cost defray,
They gave him num'rous bills without delay,
And credit too, in ev'ry place of note,
With various things that might their plan promote.
He was, besides, the human lot to fill,
Of pleasure and of pain: - of good and ill;
In fact, whate'er for mortals was designed,
With his legation was to be combined.
He might by industry and wily art,
His own afflictions dissipate in part;
But die he could not, nor his country see,
Till he ten years complete on earth should be.
BEHOLD him trav'lling o'er th' extensive space;
Between the realms of darkness and our race.
To pass it, scarcely he a moment took;
On Florence instantly he cast a look; -
Delighted with the beauty of the spot,
He there resolved to fix his earthly lot,
Regarding it as proper for his wiles,
A city famed for wanton freaks and guiles.
Belphegor soon a noble mansion hired,
And furnished it with ev'ry thing desired;
As signor Roderick he designed to pass;
His equipage was large of ev'ry class;
Expense anticipating day by day,
What, in ten years, he had to throw away.
HIS noble entertainments raised surprise;
Magnificence alone would not suffice;
Delightful pleasures he dispensed around,
And flattery abundantly was found,
An art in which a demon should excel:
No devil surely e'er was liked so well.
His heart was soon the object of the FAIR;
To please Belphegor was their constant care.
WHO lib'rally with presents smoothes the road,
Will meet no obstacles to LOVE'S abode.
In ev'ry situation they are sweet,
I've often said, and now the same repeat:
The primum mobile of human kind,
Are gold and silver, through the world we find.
OUR envoy kept two books, in which he wrote
The names of all the married pairs of note;
But that assigned to couples satisfied,
He scarcely for it could a name provide,
Which made the demon almost blush to see,
How few, alas! in wedlock's chains agree;
While presently the other, which contained
Th' unhappy - not a leaf in blank remained.
No other choice Belphegor now had got,
Than - try himself the hymeneal knot.
In Florence he beheld a certain fair,
With charming face and smart engaging air;
Of noble birth, but puffed with empty pride;
Some marks of virtue, though not much beside.
For Roderick was asked this lofty dame;
The father said Honesta* (such her name)
Had many eligible offers found;
But, 'mong the num'rous band that hovered round,
Perhaps his daughter, Rod'rick's suit might take,
Though he should wish for time the choice to make.
This approbation met, and Rod'rick 'gan
To use his arts and execute his plan.
THE entertainments, balls, and serenades,
Plays, concerts, presents, feasts, and masquerades,
Much lessened what the demon with him brought;
He nothing grudged: - whate'er was wished he bought.
The dame believed high honour she bestowed,
When she attention to his offer showed;
And, after prayers, entreaties, and the rest,
To be his wife she full assent expressed.
BUT first a pettifogger to him came,
Of whom (aside) Belphegor made a game;
What! said the demon, is a lady gained
just like a house? - these scoundrels have obtained
Such pow'r and sway, without them nothing's done;
But hell will get them when their course is run.
He reasoned properly; when faith's no more,
True honesty is forced to leave the door;
When men with confidence no longer view
Their fellow-mortals, - happiness adieu!
The very means we use t' escape the snare,
Oft deeper plunge us in the gulph of care;
Avoid attorneys, if you comfort crave
Who knows a PETTIFOGGER, knows a KNAVE;
Their contracts, filled with IFS and FORS, appear
The gate through which STRIFE found admittance here.
In vain we hope again the earth 'twill leave
Still STRIFE remains, and we ourselves deceive:
In spite of solemn forms and laws we see,
That LOVE and HYMEN often disagree.
The heart alone can tranquilize the mind;
In mutual passion ev'ry bliss we find.
HOW diff'rent things in other states appear!
With friends - 'tis who can be the most sincere;
With lovers - all is sweetness, balm of life;
While all is IRKSOMENESS with man and wife.
We daily see from DUTY springs disgust,
And PLEASURE likes true LIBERTY to trust.
ARE happy marriages for ever flown?
On full consideration I will own,
That when each other's follies couples bear;
They then deserve the name of HAPPY PAIR.
ENOUGH of this: - no sooner had our wight
The belle possessed, and passed the month's delight;
But he perceived what marriage must be here,
With such a demon in our nether sphere.
For ever jars and discords rang around;
Of follies, ev'ry class our couple found;
Honesta often times such noise would make,
Her screams and cries the neighbours kept awake,
Who, running thither, by the wife were told: -
Some paltry tradesman's daughter, coarse and bold,
He should have had: - not one of rank like me;
To treat me thus, what villain he must be!
A wife so virtuous, could he e'er deserve!
My scruples are too great, or I should swerve;
Indeed, without dispute, 'twould serve him right: -
We are not sure she nothing did in spite;
These prudes can make us credit what they please:
Few ponder long when they can dupe with ease.
THIS wife and husband, as our hist'ries say,
Each moment squabbled through the passing day;
Their disagreements often would arise
About a petticoat, cards, tables, pies,
Gowns, chairs, dice, summer-houses, in a word,
Things most ridiculous and quite absurd.
WELL might this spouse regret his Hell profound,
When he considered what he'd met on ground.
To make our demon's wretchedness complete,
Honesta's relatives, from ev'ry street,
He seemed to marry, since he daily fed
The father, mother, sister (fit to wed,)
And little brother, whom he sent to school;
While MISS he portioned to a wealthy fool.
His utter ruin, howsoe'er, arose
From his attorney-steward that he chose.
What's that? you ask - a wily sneaking knave,
Who, while his master spends, contrives to save;
Till, in the end, grown rich, the lands he buys,
Which his good lord is forced to sacrifice.
IF, in the course of time, the master take
The place of steward, and his fortune make,
'Twould only to their proper rank restore,
Those who become just what they were before.
POOR Rod'rick now no other hope had got,
Than what the chance of traffick might allot;
Illusion vain, or doubtful at the best: -
Though some grow rich, yet all are not so blessed.
'Twas said our husband never would succeed;
And truly, such it seemed to be decreed.
His agents (similar to those we see
In modern days) were with his treasure free;
His ships were wrecked; his commerce came to naught;
Deceived by knaves, of whom he well had thought;
Obliged to borrow money, which to pay,
He was unable at th' appointed day,
He fled, and with a farmer shelter took,
Where he might hope the bailiffs would not look.
HE told to Matthew, (such the farmer's name,)
His situation, character, and fame:
By duns assailed, and harassed by a wife,
Who proved the very torment of his life,
He knew no place of safety to obtain,
Like ent'ring other bodies, where 'twas plain,
He might escape the catchpole's prowling eye,
Honesta's wrath, and all her rage defy.
From these he promised he would thrice retire;
Whenever Matthew should the same desire:
Thrice, but no more, t'oblige this worthy man,
Who shelter gave when from the fiends he ran.
THE AMBASSADOR commenced his form to change: -
From human frame to frame he 'gan to range;
But what became his own fantastick state,
Our books are silent, nor the facts relate.
AN only daughter was the first he seized,
Whose charms corporeal much our demon pleased;
But Matthew, for a handsome sum of gold,
Obliged him, at a word, to quit his hold.
This passed at Naples - next to Rome he came,
Where, with another fair, he did the same;
But still the farmer banished him again,
So well he could the devil's will restrain;
Another weighty purse to him was paid
Thrice Matthew drove him out from belle and maid.
THE king of Naples had a daughter fair,
Admired, adored: - her parents' darling care;
In wedlock oft by many princes sought;
Within her form, the wily demon thought
He might be sheltered from Honesta's rage;
And none to drive him thence would dare engage.
NAUGHT else was talked of, in or out of town,
But devils driven by the cunning clown;
Large sums were offered, if, by any art,
He'd make the demon from the fair depart.
AFFLICTED much was Matthew, now to lose
The gold thus tendered, but he could not choose,
For since Belphegor had obliged him thrice,
He durst not hope the demon to entice;
Poor man was he, a sinner, who, by chance,
(He knew not how, it surely was romance,)
Had some few devils, truly, driven out:
Most worthy of contempt without a doubt.
But all in vain: - the man they took by force;
Proceed he must, or hanged he'd be of course.
THE demon was before our farmer placed;
The sight was by the prince in person graced;
The wond'rous contest numbers ran to see,
And all the world spectators fain would be.
IF vanquished by the devil: - he must swing;
If vanquisher: - 'twould thousands to him bring:
The gallows was, no doubt, a horrid view;
Yet, at the purse, his glances often flew;
The evil spirit laughed within his sleeve,
To see the farmer tremble, fret, and grieve.
He pleaded that the wight he'd thrice obeyed;
The demon was by Matthew often prayed;
But all in vain, - the more he terror showed,
The more Belphegor ridicule bestowed.
AT length the clown was driven to declare,
The fiend he was unable to ensnare;
Away they Matthew to the gallows led;
But as he went, it entered in his head,
And, in a sort of whisper he averred
(As was in fact the case) a drum he heard.
THE demon, with surprise, to Matthew cried;
What noise is that? Honesta, he replied,
Who you demands, and every where pursues,
The spouse who treats her with such vile abuse.
THESE words were thunder to Belphegor's ears,
Who instantly took flight, so great his fears;
To hell's abyss he fled without delay,
To tell adventures through the realms of day.
Sire, said the demon, it is clearly true,
Damnation does the marriage knot pursue.
Your highness often hither sees arrive,
Not squads, but regiments, who, when alive,
By Hymen were indissolubly tied: -
In person I the fact have fully tried.
Th' institution, perhaps, most just could be:
Past ages far more happiness might see;
But ev'ry thing, with time, corruption shows;
No jewel in your crown more lustre throws.
BELPHEGOR'S tale by Satan was believed;
Reward he got: the term, which-sorely grieved,
Was now reduced; indeed, what had he done,
That should prevent it? - If away he'd run,
Who would not do the same who weds a shrew?
Sure worse below the devil never knew!
A brawling woman's tongue, what saint can bear?
E'en Job, Honesta would have taught despair.
WHAT is the inference? you ask: - I'll tell; -
Live single, if you know you are well;
But if old Hymen o'er your senses reign,
Beware Honestas, or you'll rue the chain.
* By this character La Fontaine is supposed to have meant his own wife. |
To Her | Paul Laurence Dunbar | Your presence like a benison to me
Wakes my sick soul to dreamful ecstasy,
I fancy that some old Arabian night
Saw you my houri and my heart's delight.
And wandering forth beneath the passionate moon,
Your love-strung zither and my soul in tune,
We knew the joy, the haunting of the pain
That like a flame thrills through me now again.
To-night we sit where sweet the spice winds blow,
A wind the northland lacks and ne'er shall know,
With clasped hands and spirits all aglow
As in Arabia in the long ago. |
Last Words To Miriam | D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards) | Yours is the shame and sorrow
But the disgrace is mine;
Your love was dark and thorough,
Mine was the love of the sun for a flower
He creates with his shine.
I was diligent to explore you,
Blossom you stalk by stalk,
Till my fire of creation bore you
Shrivelling down in the final dour
Anguish - then I suffered a balk.
I knew your pain, and it broke
My fine, craftsman's nerve;
Your body quailed at my stroke,
And my courage failed to give you the last
Fine torture you did deserve.
You are shapely, you are adorned,
But opaque and dull in the flesh,
Who, had I but pierced with the thorned
Fire-threshing anguish, were fused and cast
In a lovely illumined mesh.
Like a painted window: the best
Suffering burnt through your flesh,
Undrossed it and left it blest
With a quivering sweet wisdom of grace: but now
Who shall take you afresh?
Now who will burn you free
From your body's terrors and dross,
Since the fire has failed in me?
What man will stoop in your flesh to plough
The shrieking cross?
A mute, nearly beautiful thing
Is your face, that fills me with shame
As I see it hardening,
Warping the perfect image of God,
And darkening my eternal fame. |
Wolf And Hound | Adam Lindsay Gordon | 'The hills like giants at a hunting lay
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay.'
- Browning.
You'll take my tale with a little salt,
But it needs none, nevertheless,
I was foil'd completely, fairly at fault,
Dishearten'd, too, I confess.
At the splitters' tent I had seen the track
Of horse-hoofs fresh on the sward,
And though Darby Lynch and Donovan Jack
(Who could swear through a ten-inch board)
Solemnly swore he had not been there,
I was just as sure that they lied,
For to Darby all that is foul was fair,
And Jack for his life was tried.
We had run him for seven miles and more
As hard as our nags could split;
At the start they were all too weary and sore,
And his was quite fresh and fit.
Young Marsden's pony had had enough
On the plain, where the chase was hot;
We breasted the swell of the Bittern's Bluff,
And Mark couldn't raise a trot;
When the sea, like a splendid silver shield,
To the south-west suddenly lay;
On the brow of the Beetle the chestnut reel'd,
And I bid good-bye to M'Crea,
And I was alone when the mare fell lame,
With a pointed flint in her shoe,
On the Stony Flats: I had lost the game,
And what was a man to do?
I turned away with no fixed intent
And headed for Hawthorndell;
I could neither eat in the splitters' tent,
Nor drink at the splitters' well;
I knew that they gloried in my mishap,
And I cursed them between my teeth,
A blood-red sunset through Brayton's Gap
Flung a lurid fire on the heath.
Could I reach the Dell? I had little reck,
And with scarce a choice of my own
I threw the reins on Miladi's neck,
I had freed her foot from the stone.
That season most of the swamps were dry,
And after so hard a burst,
In the sultry noon of so hot a sky,
She was keen to appease her thirst,
Or by instinct urged or impelled by fate,
I care not to solve these things,
Certain it is that she took me straight
To the Warrigal water springs.
I can shut my eyes and recall the ground
As though it were yesterday,
With a shelf of the low, grey rocks girt round,
The springs in their basin lay;
Woods to the east and wolds to the north
In the sundown sullenly bloom'd;
Dead black on a curtain of crimson cloth
Large peaks to the westward loomed.
I led Miladi through weed and sedge,
She leisurely drank her fill;
There was something close to the water's edge,
And my heart with one leap stood still,
For a horse's shoe and a rider's boot
Had left clean prints on the clay;
Someone had watered his beast on foot.
'Twas he, he had gone. Which way?
Then the mouth of the cavern faced me fair,
As I turned and fronted the rocks;
So, at last, I had pressed the wolf to his lair,
I had run to his earth the fox.
I thought so. Perhaps he was resting. Perhaps
He was waiting, watching for me.
I examined all my revolver caps,
I hitched my mare to a tree,
I had sworn to have him, alive or dead,
And to give him a chance was loth.
He knew his life had been forfeited,
He had even heard of my oath.
In my stocking soles to the shelf I crept,
I crawl'd safe into the cave,
All silent, if he was there he slept
Not there. All dark as the grave.
Through the crack I could hear the leaden hiss!
See the livid face through the flame!
How strange it seems that a man should miss
When his life depends on his aim!
There couldn't have been a better light
For him, nor a worse for me.
We were coop'd up, caged like beasts for a fight,
And dumb as dumb beasts were we.
Flash! flash! bang! bang! and we blazed away,
And the grey roof reddened and rang;
Flash! flash! and I felt his bullet flay
The tip of my ear. Flash! bang!
Bang! flash! and my pistol arm fell broke;
I struck with my left hand then,
Struck at a corpse through a cloud of smoke,
I had shot him dead in his den! |
Ianthe's Troubles | Walter Savage Landor | Your pleasures spring like daisies in the grass,
Cut down and up again as blithe as ever;
From you, Ianthe, little troubles pass
Like little ripples in a sunny river. |
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet XXI | Philip Sidney (Sir) | Your words, my friend, (right healthfull caustiks), blame
My young mind marde, whom Loue doth windlas so;
That mine owne writings, like bad seruants, show
My wits quicke in vaine thoughts, in vertue lame;
That Plato I read for nought but if he tame
Such coltish yeeres; that to my birth I owe
Nobler desires, lest else that friendly foe,
Great expectation, wear a train of shame:
For since mad March great promise made of mee,
If now the May of my yeeres much decline,
What can be hop'd my haruest-time will be?
Sure, you say well, Your wisedomes golden myne
Dig deepe with Learnings spade. Now tell me this:
Hath this world aught so fair as Stella is? |
The Old Man's Lament | John Clare | Youth has no fear of ill, by no cloudy days annoyed,
But the old man's all hath fled, and his hopes have met their doom:
The bud hath burst to flower, and the flower been long destroyed,
The root also is withered; I no more can look for bloom.
So I have said my say, and I have had my day,
And sorrow, like a young storm, creeps dark upon my brow;
Hopes, like to summer clouds, have all blown far away,
And the world's sunny side is turned over with me now,
And I am left a lame bird upon a withered bough.
I look upon the past: 't is as black as winter days,
But the worst is not yet over; there are blacker, days to come.
O, I would I had but known of the wide world's many ways,
But youth is ever blind, so I e'en must meet my doom.
Joy once gave brightest forecasts of prospects that are past,
But now, like a looking glass that's turned to the wall,
Life is nothing but a blank, and the sunny shining past
Is overcast in glooms that my every hope enthrall,
While troubles daily thicken in the wind ere they fall.
Life smiled upon me once, as the sun upon the rose;
My heart, so free and open, guessed in every face a friend:
Though the sweetest flower must fade, and the sweetest season close,
Yet I never gave it thought that my happiness would end,
Till the warmest-seeming friends grew the coldest at the close,
As the sun from lonely night hides its haughty shining face,
Yet I could not think them gone, for they turned not open foes,
While memory fondly mused, former favours to retrace,
So I turned, but only found that my shadow kept its place.
And this is nought but common life, which everybody finds
As well as I, or more's the luck of those that better speed.
I'll mete my lot to bear with the lot of kindred minds,
And grudge not those who say they for sorrow have no need.
Why should I, when I know that it will not aid a nay?
For Summer is the season; even then the little fly
Finds friends enow, indeed, both for leisure and for play;
But on the winter window it must crawl alone to die:
Such is life, and such am I--a wounded, stricken fly. |
Mabel Osborne | Edgar Lee Masters | Your red blossoms amid green leaves
Are drooping, beautiful geranium!
But you do not ask for water.
You cannot speak!
You do not need to speak -
Everyone knows that you are dying of thirst,
Yet they do not bring water!
They pass on, saying:
"The geranium wants water."
And I, who had happiness to share
And longed to share your happiness;
I who loved you, Spoon River,
And craved your love,
Withered before your eyes, Spoon River -
Thirsting, thirsting,
Voiceless from chasteness of soul to ask you for love,
You who knew and saw me perish before you,
Like this geranium which someone has planted over me,
And left to die.
|
The Woodman And Mercury. | Jean de La Fontaine | [1]
To M. The Chevalier De Bouillon.[2]
Your taste has served my work to guide;
To gain its suffrage I have tried.
You'd have me shun a care too nice,
Or beauty at too dear a price,
Or too much effort, as a vice.
My taste with yours agrees:
Such effort cannot please;
And too much pains about the polish
Is apt the substance to abolish;
Not that it would be right or wise
The graces all to ostracize.
You love them much when delicate;
Nor is it left for me to hate.
As to the scope of Aesop's plan,[3]
I fail as little as I can.
If this my rhymed and measured speech
Availeth not to please or teach,
I own it not a fault of mine;
Some unknown reason I assign.
With little strength endued
For battles rough and rude,
Or with Herculean arm to smite,
I show to vice its foolish plight.
In this my talent wholly lies;
Not that it does at all suffice.
My fable sometimes brings to view
The face of vanity purblind
With that of restless envy join'd;
And life now turns upon these pivots two.
Such is the silly little frog
That aped the ox upon her bog.
A double image sometimes shows
How vice and folly do oppose
The ways of virtue and good sense;
As lambs with wolves so grim and gaunt,
The silly fly and frugal ant.
Thus swells my work - a comedy immense -
Its acts unnumber'd and diverse,
Its scene the boundless universe.
Gods, men, and brutes, all play their part
In fields of nature or of art,
And Jupiter among the rest.
Here comes the god who's wont to bear
Jove's frequent errands to the fair,
With winged heels and haste;
But other work's in hand to-day.
A man that labour'd in the wood
Had lost his honest livelihood;
That is to say,
His axe was gone astray.
He had no tools to spare;
This wholly earn'd his fare.
Without a hope beside,
He sat him down and cried,
'Alas, my axe! where can it be?
O Jove! but send it back to me,
And it shall strike good blows for thee.'
His prayer in high Olympus heard,
Swift Mercury started at the word.
'Your axe must not be lost,' said he:
'Now, will you know it when you see?
An axe I found upon the road.'
With that an axe of gold he show'd.
'Is't this?' The woodman answer'd, 'Nay.'
An axe of silver, bright and gay,
Refused the honest woodman too.
At last the finder brought to view
An axe of iron, steel, and wood.
'That's mine,' he said, in joyful mood;
'With that I'll quite contented be.'
The god replied, 'I give the three,
As due reward of honesty.'
This luck when neighbouring choppers knew,
They lost their axes, not a few,
And sent their prayers to Jupiter
So fast, he knew not which to hear.
His winged son, however, sent
With gold and silver axes, went.
Each would have thought himself a fool
Not to have own'd the richest tool.
But Mercury promptly gave, instead
Of it, a blow upon the head.
With simple truth to be contented,
Is surest not to be repented;
But still there are who would
With evil trap the good, -
Whose cunning is but stupid,
For Jove is never dup'd. |
The Expert | Rudyard Kipling | Youth that trafficked long with Death,
And to second life returns,
Squanders little time or breath
On his fellow man's concerns.
Earned peace is all he asks
To fulfill his broken tasks.
Yet, if he find war at home
(Waspish and importunate),
He hath means to overcome
Any warrior at his gate;
For the past he buried brings
Back unburiable things.
Nights that he lay out to spy,
Whence and when the raid might start;
Or prepared in secrecy
Sudden blows to break its heart,
All the lore of No-Man's Land
Steels his soul and arms his hand.
So, if conflict vex his life
Where he thought all conflict done,
He, resuming ancient strife,
Springs his mine or trains his gun;
And, in mirth more dread than wrath,
Wipes the nuisance from his path! |
At A Banquet For Professor Ludv. Kr. Daa | Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson | (See Note 58)
Youthful friends here a circle form,
Elder foes now surrender.
Feel among us in safety, warm,
Toward you our hearts are tender.
Once again on a hard-fought day
Hero-like you have led the way,
Smiting all that before you stood; -
But now be good!
With no hubbub, without champagne,
Dress-suit, and party-collar,
We would honor o'er viands plain
Grateful our "grand old scholar"!
When all quiet are wind and wave,
Seldom we see this pilot brave; -
When storm-surges our ship might whelm,
He takes the helm!
- Takes the helm and through thick and thin
(Clear are his old eyes burning),
Steers the course with his trusty "grin,"
Straight, where the others are turning!
Thanks gave to him I know not who,
For he scolded the skipper, too! -
Back he went to his home right soon:
We had the boon.
He has felt what it is to go
Hated, till truth gains the battle;
He has felt what it is to know
Blows that from both sides rattle.
He has felt what the cost is, so
Forward the present its path to show:
He, whose strength had such heights attained,
Stood all disdained.
Would that Norway soon grew so great
That it with justice rewarded
Heroes who its true weal create,
Who are no laggards sordid.
Shall we always so slowly crawl,
Split forever in factions small,
Idly counting each ill that ails? -
No! Set the sails!
Set the sails for the larger life,
Whereto our nation has power!
Daily life is with death but rife,
If there's not growth every hour.
Rally to war for the cause of right,
Sing 'neath the standard of honor bright,
Sail with faith in our God secure,
And strong endure |
Verses In Reply To An Invitation To Dinner At Dr. Baker's. | Oliver Goldsmith | 'This 'is' a poem! This 'is' a copy of verses!'
Your mandate I got,
You may all go to pot;
Had your senses been right,
You'd have sent before night;
As I hope to be saved,
I put off being shaved;
For I could not make bold,
While the matter was cold,
To meddle in suds,
Or to put on my duds;
So tell Horneck and Nesbitt,
And Baker and his bit,
And Kauffmann beside,
And the Jessamy Bride,
With the rest of the crew,
The Reynoldses two,
Little Comedy's face,
And the Captain in lace,
(By-the-bye you may tell him,
I have something to sell him;
Of use I insist,
When he comes to enlist.
Your worships must know
That a few days ago,
An order went out,
For the foot guards so stout
To wear tails in high taste,
Twelve inches at least:
Now I've got him a scale
To measure each tail,
To lengthen a short tail,
And a long one to curtail.)
Yet how can I when vext,
Thus stray from my text?
Tell each other to rue
Your Devonshire crew,
For sending so late
To one of my state.
But 'tis Reynolds's way
From wisdom to stray,
And Angelica's whim
To be frolick like him,
But, alas! Your good worships, how could they be wiser,
When both have been spoil'd in to-day's 'Advertiser'?
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. |
The Charge Of The Light Brigade | William F. Kirk | Yoyfully, yoyfully,
Yoyfully onvard,
In dis har walley of death
Rode the sax hundred!
It ban a cinch, ay tenk,
Some geezer blundered.
"Hustle, yu Light Brigade!
Yump!" Maester Olson said;
Den in the walley of death
Go the sax hundred.
Cannon on right of dem,
Cannon on left of dem,
Cannon on top of dem,
Wolleyed and t'undered;
Smashed vith dis shot and shal,
Dey ant do wery val;
Most of dem ketching hal, -
Nearly sax hundred!
Yes, all dem sabres bare
Flash purty gude in air;
Each faller feel his hair
Standing. No vonder!
Yudas! It ant ban yob
For any coward slob,
Fighting dis Russian mob.
Ay tenk ay vudn't stand
Yeneral's blunder.
Cannon on right of dem,
Cannon on top of dem,
Cannon behind dem, tu,
Wolleyed and t'undered.
Finally say Captain Brenk,
"Ve got enuff, ay tenk,
Let's go and getting drenk."
'Bout tventy-sax com back
Out of sax hundred.
Ven skol deir glory fade?
It ban gude charge dey made,
Every von vondered.
Every von feeling blue,
'Cause dey ban brave old crew,
Yolly gude fallers, tu,
Dis har sax hundred! |
Stealing A Ride | William F. Kirk | Yumping over crossings,
Bumping over svitches,
Till ay tenk dis enyine
Going to fall in ditches;
Hiding vith some cattle,
Ay tenk 'bout saxty-eight;
Yiminy! Dis ban yolly, -
Stealing ride on freight
Ay ban yust tru treshing
Op in Nort Dakota;
Now ay guess ay'm going
Back to old Mansota.
Now dis train ban stopping,
'Bout sax hours to vait;
Yiminy! Dis ban yolly, -
Stealing ride on freight.
Ay skol stretch a little
Yust to tak a sleep;
Den my head bump into
Gude big fader sheep.
Yee! His head ban harder
Sum a china plate;
Dis ban yolly doings, -
Stealing ride on freight.
Yumping over crossings,
Bumping over svitches,
Till my side ban getting
Saxty-seven stitches.
Ay hear brakeman faller
Say, "Yust ten hours late!"
It ban hal, ay tal yu,
Stealing ride on freight. |
To One Consecrated | George William Russell | Your paths were all unknown to us:
We were so far away from you,
We mixed in thought your spirit thus--
With whiteness, stars of gold, and dew.
The mighty mother nourished you:
Her breath blew from her mystic bowers:
Their elfin glimmer floated through
The pureness of your shadowy hours.
The mighty mother made you wise;
Gave love that clears the hidden ways:
Her glooms were glory to your eyes;
Her darkness but the Fount of Days.
She made all gentleness in you,
And beauty radiant as the morn's:
She made our joy in yours, then threw
Upon your head a crown of thorns.
Your eyes are filled with tender light,
For those whose eyes are dim with tears;
They see your brow is crowned and bright,
But not its ring of wounding spears. |
The Voice Of The Ancient Bard | William Blake | Youth of delight! come hither
And see the opening morn,
Image of Truth new-born.
Doubt is fled, and clouds of reason,
Dark disputes and artful teazing.
Folly is an endless maze;
Tangled roots perplex her ways;
How many have fallen there!
They stumble all night over bones of the dead;
And feel, they know not what but care;
And wish to lead others, when they should be led. |
The Battle Of Otterburn | Frank Sidgwick | The Text is given mainly from the Cotton MS., Cleopatra C. iv. (circa 1550). It was printed by Percy in the fourth edition of the Reliques; in the first edition he gave it from Harleian MS. 293, which text also is made use of here. A separate Scottish ballad was popular at least as early as 1549, and arguments to prove that it was derived from the English ballad are as inconclusive as those which seek to prove the opposite.
The Story.--The battle of Otterburn was fought on Wednesday, August 19, 1388. The whole story is given elaborately by Froissart, in his usual lively style, but is far too long to be inserted here. It may, however, be condensed as follows.
The great northern families of Neville and Percy being at variance owing to the quarrels of Richard II. with his uncles, the Scots took the advantage of preparing a raid into England. Earl Percy, hearing of this, collected the Northumbrian powers; and, unable to withstand the force of the Scots, determined to make a counter-raid on the east or west of the border, according as the Scots should cross. The latter, hearing of the plan through a spy, foiled it by dividing their army into two parts, the main body under Archibald Douglas being directed to Carlisle. Three or four hundred picked men-at-arms, with two thousand archers and others, under James, Earl of Douglas, Earl of March and Dunbar, and the Earl of Murray, were to aim at Newcastle, and burn and ravage the bishopric of Durham. With the latter alone we are now concerned.
With his small army the Earl of Douglas passed rapidly through Northumberland, crossed the Tyne near Brancepeth, wasted the country as far as the gates of Durham, and returned to Newcastle as rapidly as they had advanced. Several skirmishes took place at the barriers of the town: and in one of these Sir Henry Percy (Hotspur) was personally opposed to Douglas. After an obstinate struggle the Earl won the pennon of the English leader, and boasted that he would carry it to Scotland, and set it high on his castle of Dalkeith. 'That,' cried Hotspur, 'no Douglas shall ever do, and ere you leave Northumberland you shall have small cause to boast.' 'Your pennon,' answered Douglas, 'shall this night be placed before my tent; come and win it if you can.' But the Scots were suffered to retreat without any hostile attempts on the part of the English, and accordingly, after destroying the tower of Ponteland, they came on the second day to the castle of Otterburn, situated in Redesdale, about thirty-two miles from Newcastle. The rest may be read in the ballad.
'Of all the battayles,' says Froissart, 'that I have made mention of here before, in all thys hystorye, great or small, thys battayle was one of the sorest, and best foughten, without cowards or faint hertes: for ther was nother knyght nor squyre but that dyde hys devoyre, and fought hand to hand.'
THE BATTLE OF OTTERBURN
1.
Yt fell abowght the Lamasse tyde,
Whan husbondes Wynnes ther haye,
The dowghtye Dowglasse bowynd hym to ryde,
In Ynglond to take a praye.
2.
The yerlle of Fyffe, wythowghten stryffe,
He bowynd hym over Sulway;
The grete wolde ever to-gether ryde;
That raysse they may rewe for aye.
3.
Over Hoppertope hyll they cam in,
And so down by Rodclyffe crage;
Vpon Grene Lynton they lyghted dowyn,
Styrande many a stage.
4.
And boldely brente Northomberlond,
And haryed many a towyn;
They dyd owr Ynglyssh men grete wrange,
To battell that were not bowyn.
5.
Than spake a berne vpon the bent,
Of comforte that was not colde,
And sayd, 'We have brente Northomberlond,
We have all welth in holde.
6.
'Now we have haryed all Bamborowe schyre,
All the welth in the world have wee;
I rede we ryde to Newe Castell,
So styll and stalworthlye.'
7.
Vpon the morowe, when it was day,
The standerds schone full bryght;
To the Newe Castell the toke the waye,
And thether they cam full ryght.
8.
Syr Henry Perssy laye at the New Castell,
I tell yow wythowtten drede;
He had byn a march-man all hys dayes,
And kepte Barwyke upon Twede.
9.
To the Newe Castell when they cam,
The Skottes they cryde on hyght,
'Syr Hary Perssy, and thow byste within,
Com to the fylde, and fyght.
10.
'For we have brente Northomberlonde,
Thy erytage good and ryght,
And syne my logeyng I have take,
Wyth my brande dubbyd many a knyght.'
11.
Syr Harry Perssy cam to the walles,
The Skottyssch oste for to se,
And sayd, 'And thow hast brente Northomberlond,
Full sore it rewyth me.
12.
'Yf thou hast haryed all Bamborowe schyre,
Thow hast done me grete envye;
For the trespasse thow hast me done,
The tone of vs schall dye.'
13.
'Where schall I byde the?' sayd the Dowglas,
'Or where wylte thow com to me?'
'At Otterborne, in the hygh way,
Ther mast thow well logeed be.
14.
'The roo full rekeles ther sche rinnes,
To make the game and glee;
The fawken and the fesaunt both,
Amonge the holtes on hye.
15.
'Ther mast thow haue thy welth at wyll,
Well looged ther mast be;
Yt schall not be long or I com the tyll,'
Sayd Syr Harry Perssye.
16.
'Ther schall I byde the,' sayd the Dowglas,
'By the fayth of my bodye':
'Thether schall I com,' sayd Syr Harry Perssy,
'My trowth I plyght to the.'
17.
A pype of wyne he gaue them over the walles,
For soth as I yow saye;
Ther he mayd the Dowglasse drynke,
And all hys ost that daye.
18.
The Dowglas turnyd hym homewarde agayne,
For soth withowghten naye;
He toke his logeyng at Oterborne,
Vpon a Wedynsday.
19.
And ther he pyght hys standerd dowyn,
Hys gettyng more and lesse,
And syne he warned hys men to goo
To chose ther geldynges gresse.
20.
A Skottysshe knyght hoved vpon the bent,
A wache I dare well saye;
So was he ware on the noble Perssy
In the dawnyng of the daye.
21.
He prycked to hys pavyleon-dore,
As faste as he myght ronne;
'Awaken, Dowglas,' cryed the knyght,
'For hys love that syttes in trone.
22.
'Awaken, Dowglas,' cryed the knyght,
'For thow maste waken wyth wynne;
Yender haue I spyed the prowde Perssye,
And seven stondardes wyth hym.'
23.
'Nay by my trowth,' the Dowglas sayed,
'It ys but a fayned taylle;
He durst not loke on my brede banner
For all Ynglonde so haylle.
24.
'Was I not yesterdaye at the Newe Castell,
That stondes so fayre on Tyne?
For all the men the Perssy had,
He coude not garre me ones to dyne.'
25.
He stepped owt at his pavelyon-dore,
To loke and it were lesse:
'Araye yow, lordynges, one and all,
For here begynnes no peysse.
26.
'The yerle of Mentaye, thow arte my eme,
The fowarde I gyve to the:
The yerlle of Huntlay, cawte and kene,
He schall be wyth the.
27.
'The lorde of Bowghan, in armure bryght,
On the other hand he schall be;
Lord Jhonstoune and Lorde Maxwell,
They to schall be with me.
28.
'Swynton, fayre fylde vpon your pryde!
To batell make yow bowen
Syr Davy Skotte, Syr Water Stewarde,
Syr Jhon of Agurstone!'
29.
The Perssy cam byfore hys oste,
Wych was ever a gentyll knyght;
Vpon the Dowglas lowde can he crye,
'I wyll holde that I haue hyght.
30.
'For thou haste brente Northomberlonde,
And done me grete envye;
For thys trespasse thou hast me done,
The tone of vs schall dye.'
31.
The Dowglas answerde hym agayne,
Wyth grett wurdes vpon hye,
And sayd, 'I have twenty agaynst thy one,
Byholde, and thou maste see.'
32.
Wyth that the Perssy was grevyd sore,
For soth as I yow saye:
He lyghted dowyn vpon his foote,
And schoote hys horsse clene awaye.
33.
Every man sawe that he dyd soo,
That ryall was ever in rowght;
Every man schoote hys horsse hym froo,
And lyght hym rowynde abowght.
34.
Thus Syr Hary Perssye toke the fylde,
For soth as I yow saye;
Jhesu Cryste in hevyn on hyght
Dyd helpe hym well that daye.
35.
But nyne thowzand, ther was no moo,
The cronykle wyll not layne;
Forty thowsande of Skottes and fowre
That day fowght them agayne.
36.
But when the batell byganne to joyne,
In hast ther cam a knyght;
The letters fayre furth hath he tayne,
And thus he sayd full ryght:
37.
'My lorde your father he gretes yow well,
Wyth many a noble knyght;
He desyres yow to byde
That he may see thys fyght.
38.
'The Baron of Grastoke ys com out of the west,
With hym a noble companye;
All they loge at your fathers thys nyght,
And the batell fayne wolde they see.'
39.
'For Jhesus love,' sayd Syr Harye Perssy,
'That dyed for yow and me,
Wende to my lorde my father agayne,
And saye thow sawe me not wyth yee.
40.
'My trowth ys plyght to yonne Skottysh knyght,
It nedes me not to layne,
That I schalde byde hym upon thys bent,
And I have hys trowth agayne.
41.
'And if that I weynde of thys growende,
For soth, onfowghten awaye,
He wolde me call but a kowarde knyght
In hys londe another daye.
42.
'Yet had I lever to be rynde and rente,
By Mary, that mykkel maye,
Then ever my manhood schulde be reprovyd
Wyth a Skotte another daye.
43.
'Wherefore schote, archars, for my sake,
And let scharpe arowes flee:
Mynstrell, playe up for your waryson,
And well quyt it schall bee.
44.
'Every man thynke on hys trewe-love,
And marke hym to the Trenite;
For to God I make myne avowe
Thys day wyll I not flee.'
45.
The blodye harte in the Dowglas armes,
Hys standerde stood on hye,
That every man myght full well knowe;
By syde stode starr's thre.
46.
The whyte lyon on the Ynglyssh perte,
For soth as I yow sayne,
The lucettes and the cressawntes both;
The Skottes faught them agayne.
47.
Vpon Sent Androwe lowde can they crye,
And thrysse they schowte on hyght,
And syne merked them one owr Ynglysshe men,
As I haue tolde yow ryght.
48.
Sent George the bryght, owr ladyes knyght,
To name they were full fayne:
Owr Ynglyssh men they cryde on hyght,
And thrysse the schowtte agayne.
49.
Wyth that scharpe arowes bygan to flee,
I tell yow in sertayne;
Men of armes byganne to joyne,
Many a dowghty man was ther slayne.
50.
The Perssy and the Dowglas mette,
That ether of other was fayne;
They swapped together whyll that the swette,
Wyth swordes of fyne collayne:
51.
Tyll the bloode from ther bassonnettes ranne,
As the roke doth in the rayne;
'Yelde the to me,' sayd the Dowglas,
'Or elles thow schalt be slayne.
52.
'For I see by thy bryght bassonet,
Thow arte sum man of myght;
And so I do by thy burnysshed brande;
Thow arte an yerle, or elles a knyght.'
53.
'By my good faythe,' sayd the noble Perssye,
'Now haste thou rede full ryght;
Yet wyll I never yelde me to the,
Whyll I may stonde and fyght.'
54.
They swapped together whyll that they swette,
Wyth sword's scharpe and long;
Ych on other so faste thee beette,
Tyll ther helmes cam in peyses dowyn.
55.
The Perssy was a man of strenghth,
I tell yow, in thys stounde;
He smote the Dowglas at the swordes length
That he fell to the growynde.
56.
The sworde was scharpe, and sore can byte,
I tell yow in sertayne;
To the harte he cowde hym smyte,
Thus was the Dowglas slayne.
57.
The stonderdes stode styll on eke a syde,
Wyth many a grevous grone;
Ther the fowght the day, and all the nyght,
And many a dowghty man was slayne.
58.
Ther was no freke that ther wolde flye,
But styffely in stowre can stond,
Ychone hewyng on other whyll they myght drye,
Wyth many a bayllefull bronde.
59.
Ther was slayne vpon the Skott's syde,
For soth and sertenly,
Syr James a Dowglas ther was slayne,
That day that he cowde dye.
60.
The yerlle of Mentaye he was slayne,
Grysely groned upon the growynd;
Syr Davy Skotte, Syr Water Stewarde,
Syr Jhon of Agurstoune.
61.
Syr Charll's Morrey in that place,
That never a fote wold flee;
Syr Hewe Maxwell, a lord he was,
Wyth the Dowglas dyd he dye.
62.
Ther was slayne upon the Skott's syde,
For soth as I yow saye,
Of fowre and forty thowsande Scottes
Went but eyghtene awaye.
63.
Ther was slayne upon the Ynglysshe syde,
For soth and sertenlye,
A gentell knyght, Syr Jhon Fechewe,
Yt was the more pety.
64.
Syr James Hardbotell ther was slayne,
For hym ther hartes were sore;
The gentyll Lovell ther was slayne,
That the Perssys standerd bore.
65.
Ther was slayne upon the Ynglyssh perte,
For soth as I yow saye,
Of nyne thowsand Ynglyssh men
Fyve hondert cam awaye.
66.
The other were slayne in the fylde;
Cryste kepe ther sowlles from wo!
Seyng ther was so fewe fryndes
Agaynst so many a foo.
67.
Then on the morne they mayde them beerys
Of byrch and haysell graye;
Many a wydowe, wyth wepyng teyres,
Ther makes they fette awaye.
68.
Thys fraye bygan at Otterborne,
Bytwene the nyght and the day;
Ther the Dowglas lost hys lyffe,
And the Perssy was lede awaye.
69.
Then was ther a Scottysh prisoner tayne,
Syr Hewe Mongomery was hys name;
For soth as I yow saye,
He borowed the Perssy home agayne.
70.
Now let us all for the Perssy praye
To Jhesu most of myght,
To bryng hys sowlle to the blysse of heven,
For he was a gentyll knyght. |
Two Minds | Sara Teasdale | Your mind and mine are such great lovers they
Have freed themselves from cautious human clay,
And on wild clouds of thought, naked together
They ride above us in extreme delight;
We see them, we look up with a lone envy
And watch them in their zone of crystal weather
That changes not for winter or the night. |
To Captain Riddel, Of Glenriddel. Extempore Lines On Returning A Newspaper. | Robert Burns | Ellisland, Monday Evening.
Your news and review, Sir, I've read through and through, Sir,
With little admiring or blaming;
The papers are barren of home-news or foreign,
No murders or rapes worth the naming.
Our friends, the reviewers, those chippers and hewers,
Are judges of mortar and stone, Sir,
But of meet or unmeet in a fabric complete,
I'll boldly pronounce they are none, Sir.
My goose-quill too rude is to tell all your goodness
Bestow'd on your servant, the Poet;
Would to God I had one like a beam of the sun,
And then all the world, Sir, should know it! |
Solvitur acris Hiems | Arthur Hugh Clough | Youth, that went, is come again,
Youth, for which we all were fain;
With soft pleasure and sweet pain
In each nerve and every vein,
Circling through the heart and brain,
Whence and wherefore come again?
Eva, tell me!
Dead and buried when we thought him,
Who the magic spell hath taught him?
Who the strong elixir brought him?
Dead and buried as we thought,
Lo! unasked for and unsought
Comes he, shall it be for nought?
Eva, tell me!
Youth that lifeless long had lain,
Youth that long we longed in vain for,
Used to grumble and complain for,
Thought at last to entertain
A decorous cool disdain for,
On a sudden see again
Comes, but will not long remain,
Comes, with whom too in his train,
Comes, and shall it be in vain?
Eva, tell me! |
To James Whitcomb Riley | Rudyard Kipling | Your trail runs to the westward,
And mine to my own place;
There is water between our lodges,
And I have not seen your face.
But since I have read your verses
'Tis easy to guess the rest,
Because in the hearts of the children
There is neither East nor West.
Born to a thousand fortunes
Of good or evil hap,
Once they were kings together,
Throned in a mother's lap.
Surely they know that secret,
Yellow and black and white,
When they meet as kings together
In innocent dreams at night.
By a moon they all can play with,
Grubby and grimed and unshod,
Very happy together,
And very near to God.
Your trail runs to the westward,
And mine to my own place:
There is water between our lodges,
And you cannot see my face.
And that is well,for crying
Should neither be written nor seen,
But if I call you Smoke-in-the-Eyes,
I know you will know what I mean. |
Sonnet | Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell | Your own fair youth, you care so little for it,
Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances
Of time and change upon your happiest fancies.
I keep your golden hour, and will restore it.
If ever, in time to come, you would explore it--
Your old self whose thoughts went like last year's pansies,
Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances;
In my unfailing praises now I store it.
To keep all joys of yours from Time's estranging,
I shall be then a treasury where your gay,
Happy, and pensive past for ever is.
I shall be then a garden charmed from changing,
In which your June has never passed away.
Walk there awhile among my memories. |
The Flight Of The Duchess | Robert Browning | I.
You're my friend:
I was the man the Duke spoke to;
I helped the Duchess to cast off his yoke, too;
So here's the tale from beginning to end,
My friend!
II.
Ours is a great wild country:
If you climb to our castle's top,
I don't see where your eye can stop;
For when you've passed the cornfield country,
Where vineyards leave off, flocks are packed,
And sheep-range leads to cattle-tract,
And cattle-tract to open-chase,
And open-chase to the very base
Of the mountain where, at a funeral pace,
Round about, solemn and slow,
One by one, row after row,
Up and up the pine-trees go,
So, like black priests up, and so
Down the other side again
To another greater, wilder country,
That's one vast red drear burnt-up plain,
Branched through and through with many a vein
Whence iron's dug, and copper's dealt;
Look right, look left, look straight before,
Beneath they mine, above they smelt,
Copper-ore and iron-ore,
And forge and furnace mould and melt,
And so on, more and ever more,
Till at the last, for a bounding belt,
Comes the salt sand hoar of the great sea-shore,
And the whole is our Duke's country!
III.
I was born the day this present Duke was
(And O, says the song, ere I was old!)
In the castle where the other Duke was
(When I was happy and young, not old!)
I in the Kennel, he in the Bower:
We are of like age to an hour.
My father was huntsman in that day;
Who has not heard my father say
That, when a boar was brought to bay,
Three times, four times out of five,
With his huntspear he'd contrive
To get the killing-place transfixed,
And pin him true, both eyes betwixt?
And that's why the old Duke would rather
He lost a salt-pit than my father,
And loved to have him ever in call;
That's why my father stood in the hall
When the old Duke brought his infant out
To show the people, and while they passed
The wondrous bantling round about,
Was first to start at the outside blast
As the Kaiser's courier blew his horn
Just a month after the babe was born.
'And,' quoth the Kaiser's courier, 'since
'The Duke has got an heir, our Prince
'Needs the Duke's self at his side: '
The Duke looked down and seemed to wince,
But he thought of wars o'er the world wide,
Castles a-fire, men on their march,
The toppling tower, the crashing arch;
And up he looked, and awhile he eyed
The row of crests and shields and banners
Of all achievements after all manners,
And 'ay,' said the Duke with a surly pride.
The more was his comfort when he died
At next year's end, in a velvet suit,
With a gilt glove on his hand, his foot
In a silken shoe for a leather boot,
Petticoated like a herald,
In a chamher next to an ante-room,
Where he breathed the breath of page and groom,
What he called stink, and they, perfume:
They should have set him on red Berold
Mad with pride, like fire to manage!
They should have got his cheek fresh tannage
Such a day as to-day in the merry sunshine!
Had they stuck on his fist a rough-foot merlin!
(Hark, the wind's on the heath at its game!
Oh for a noble falcon-lanner
To flap each broad wing like a banner,
And turn in the wind, and dance like flame!)
Had they broached a white-beer cask from Berlin
Or if you incline to prescribe mere wine
Put to his lips, when they saw him pine,
A cup of our own Moldavia fine,
Cotnar for instance, green as May sorrel
And ropy with sweet, we shall not quarrel.
IV.
So, at home, the sick tall yellow Duchess
Was left with the infant in her clutches,
She being the daughter of God knows who:
And now was the time to revisit her tribe.
Abroad and afar they went, the two,
And let our people rail and gibe
At the empty Hall and extinguished fire,
As loud as we liked, but ever in vain,
Till after long years we had our desire,
And back came the Duke and his mother again.
V.
And he came back the pertest little ape
That ever affronted human shape;
Full of his travel, struck at himself.
You'd say, he despised our bluff old ways?
Not he! For in Paris they told the elf
Our rough North land was the Land of Lays,
The one good thing left in evil days;
Since the Mid-Age was the Heroic Time,
And only in wild nooks like ours
Could you taste of it yet as in its prime,
And see true castles, with proper towers,
Young-hearted women, old-minded men,
And manners now as manners were then.
So, all that the old Dukes had been, without knowing it,
This Duke would fain know he was, without being it;
'Twas not for the joy's self, but the joy of his showing it,
Nor for the pride's self, but the pride of our seeing it,
He revived all usages thoroughly worn-out,
The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn-out:
And chief in the chase his neck he perilled
On a lathy horse, all legs and length,
With blood for bone, all speed, no strength;
They should have set him on red Berold
With the red eye slow consuming in fire,
And the thin stiff ear like an abbey-spire!
VI.
Well, such as he was, he must marry, we heard:
And out of a convent, at the word,
Came the lady, in time of spring.
Oh, old thoughts they cling, they cling!
That day, I know, with a dozen oaths
I clad myself in thick hunting-clothes
Fit for the chase of urox or buffle
In winter-time when you need to muffle.
But the Duke had a mind we should cut a figure,
And so we saw the lady arrive:
My friend, I have seen a white crane bigger!
She was the smallest lady alive,
Made in a piece of nature's madness,
Too small, almost, for the life and gladness
That over-filled her, as some hive
Out of the bears' reach on the high trees
Is crowded with its safe merry bees:
In truth, she was not hard to please!
Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead,
Straight at the castle, that's best indeed
To look at from outside the walls:
As for us, styled the 'serfs and thralls,'
She as much thanked me as if she had said it,
(With her eyes, do you understand?)
Because I patted her horse while I led it;
And Max, who rode on her other hand,
Said, no bird flew past but she inquired
What its true name was, nor ever seemed tired
If that was an eagle she saw hover,
And the green and grey bird on the field was the plover.
When suddenly appeared the Duke:
And as down she sprung, the small foot pointed
On to my hand, as with a rebuke,
And as if his backbone were not jointed,
The Duke stepped rather aside than forward,
And welcomed her with his grandest smile;
And, mind you, his mother all the while
Chilled in the rear, like a wind to Nor'ward;
And up, like a weary yawn, with its pullies
Went, in a shriek, the rusty portcullis;
And, like a glad sky the north-wind sullies,
The lady's face stopped its play,
As if her first hair had grown grey
For such things must begin some one day!
VII.
In a day or two she was well again;
As who should say, 'You labour in vain!
'This is all a jest against God, who meant
'I should ever be, as I am, content
'And glad in his sight; therefore, glad I will be.'
So, smiling as at first went she.
VIII.
She was active, stirring, all fire
Could not rest, could not tire
To a stone she might have given life!
(I myself loved once, in my day)
For a shepherd's, miner's, huntsman's wife,
(I had a wife, I know what I say)
Never in all the world such an one!
And here was plenty to be done,
And she that could do it, great or small,
She was to do nothing at all.
There was already this man in his post,
This in his station, and that in his office,
And the Duke's plan admitted a wife, at most,
To meet his eye, with the other trophies,
Now outside the hall, now in it,
To sit thus, stand thus, see and be seen,
At the proper place in the proper minute,
And die away the life between.
And it was amusing enough, each infraction
Of rule (but for after-sadness that came)
To hear the consummate self-satisfaction
With which the young Duke and the old dame
Would let her advise, and criticise,
And, being a fool, instruct the wise,
And, child-like, parcel out praise or blame:
They bore it all in complacent guise,
As though an artificer, after contriving
A wheel-work image as if it were living,
Should find with delight it could motion to strike him!
So found the Duke, and his mother like him
The Lady hardly got a rebuff
That had not been contemptuous enough,
With his cursed smirk, as he nodded applause,
And kept off the old mother-cat's claws.
IX.
So, the little lady grew silent and thin,
Paling and ever paling,
As the way is with a hid chagrin;
And the Duke perceived that she was ailing,
And said in his heart, ''Tis done to spite me,
'But I shall find in my power to right me!'
Don't swear, friend the old one, many a year,
Is in hell, and the Duke's self . . . you shall hear.
X.
Well, early in autumn, at first winter-warning,
When the stag had to break with his foot, of a morning,
A drinking-hole out of the fresh tender ice
That covered the pond till the sun, in a trice,
Loosening it, let out a ripple of gold,
And another and another, and faster and faster,
Till, dimpling to blindness, the wide water rolled:
Then it so chanced that the Duke our master
Asked himself what were the pleasures in season,
And found, since the calendar bade him be hearty,
He should do the Middle Age no treason
In resolving on a hunting-party.
Always provided, old books showed the way of it!
What meant old poets by their strictures?
And when old poets had said their say of it,
How taught old painters in their pictures?
We must revert to the proper channels,
Workings in tapestry, paintings on panels,
And gather up woodcraft's authentic traditions:
Here was food for our various ambitions,
As on each case, exactly stated
To encourage your dog, now, the properest chirrup,
Or best prayer to Saint Hubert on mounting your stirrup
We of the house hold took thought and debated.
Blessed was he whose back ached with the jerkin
His sire was wont to do forest-work in;
Blesseder he who nobly sunk 'ohs'
And 'ahs' while he tugged on his grand-sire's trunk-hose;
What signified hats if they had no rims on,
Each slouching before and behind like the scallop,
And able to serve at sea for a shallop,
Loaded with lacquer and looped with crimson?
So that the deer now, to make a short rhyme on't,
What with our Venerers, Prickers and Yerderers,
Might hope for real hunters at length and not murderers,
And oh the Duke's tailor he had a hot time on't!
XI.
Now you must know that when the first dizziness
Of flap-hats and buff-coats and jack-boots subsided,
The Duke put this question, 'The Duke's part provided,
'Had not the Duchess some share in the business?'
For out of the mouth of two or three witnesses
Did he establish all fit-or-unfitnesses:
And, after much laying of heads together,
Somebody's cap got a notable feather
By the announcement with proper unction
That he had discovered the lady's function;
Since ancient authors gave this tenet,
'When horns wind a mort and the deer is at siege,
'Let the dame of the castle prick forth on her jennet,
'And, with water to wash the hands of her liege
'In a clean ewer with a fair toweling,
' Let her preside at the disemboweling.'
Now, my friend, if you had so little religion
As to catch a hawk, some falcon-lanner,
And thrust her broad wings like a banner
Into a coop for a vulgar pigeon;
And if day by day and week by week
You cut her claws, and sealed her eyes,
And clipped her wings, and tied her beak,
Would it cause you any great surprise
If, when you decided to give her an airing,
You found she needed a little preparing?
I say, should you be such a curmudgeon,
If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dudgeon?
Yet when the Duke to his lady signified,
Just a day before, as he judged most dignified,
In what a pleasure she was to participate,
And, instead of leaping wide in flashes,
Her eyes just lifted their long lashes,
As if pressed by fatigue even he could not dissipate,
And duly acknowledged the Duke's forethought,
But spoke of her health, if her health were worth aught,
Of the weight by day and the watch by night,
And much wrong now that used to be right,
So, thanking him, declined the hunting,
Was conduct ever more affronting?
With all the ceremony settled
With the towel ready, and the sewer
Polishing up his oldest ewer,
And the jennet pitched upon, a piebald,
Black-barred, cream-coated and pink eye-balled,
No wonder if the Duke was nettled
And when she persisted nevertheless,
Well, I suppose here's the time to confess
That there ran half round our lady's chamber
A balcony none of the hardest to clamber;
And that Jacynth the tire-woman, ready in waiting,
Stayed in call outside, what need of relating?
And since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, a fervent
Adorer of Jacynth of course was your servant;
And if she had the habit to peep through the casement,
How could I keep at any vast distance?
And so, as I say, on the lady's persistence,
The Duke, dumb-stricken with amazement,
Stood for a while in a sultry smother,
And then, with a smile that partook of the awful,
Turned her over to his yellow mother
To learn what was held decorous and lawful;
And the mother smelt blood with a cat-like instinct,
As her cheek quick whitened thro' all its quince-tinct
Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once!
What meant she? Who was she? Her duty and station,
The wisdom of age and the folly of youth, at once,
Its decent regard and its fitting relation
In brief, my friend, set all the devils in hell free
And turn them out to carouse in a belfry
And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon,
And then you may guess how that tongue of hers ran on!
Well, somehow or other it ended at last
And, licking her whiskers, out she passed;
And after her, making (he hoped) a face
Like Emperor Nero or Sultan Saladin,
Stalked the Duke's self with the austere grace
Of ancient hero or modern paladin,
From door to staircase oh such a solemn
Unbending of the vertebral column!
XII.
However, at sunrise our company mustered;
And here was the huntsman bidding unkennel,
And there 'neath his bonnet the pricker blustered,
With feather dank as a bough of wet fennel;
For the court-yard walls were filled with fog
You might have cut as an axe chops a log
Like so much wool for colour and bulkiness;
And out rode the Duke in a perfect sulkiness,
Since, before breakfast, a man feels but queasily,
And a sinking at the lower abdomen
Begins the day with indifferent omen:
And lo, as he looked around uneasily,
The sun ploughed the fog up and drove it asunder
This way and that from the valley under;
And, looking through the court-yard arch,
Down in the valley, what should meet him
But a troop of Gipsies on their march?
No doubt with the annual gifts to greet him.
XIII.
Now, in your land, Gipsies reach you, only
After reaching all lands beside;
North they go, South they go, trooping or lonely,
And still, as they travel far and wide,
Catch they and keep now a trace here, trace there,
That puts you in mind of a place here, a place there.
But with us, I believe they rise out of the ground,
And nowhere else, I take it, are found
With the earth-tint yet so freshly embrowned:
Born, no doubt, like insects which breed on
The very fruit they are meant to feed on.
For the earth not a use to which they don't turn it,
The ore that grows in the mountain's womb,
Or the sand in the pits like a honeycomb,
They sift and soften it, bake it and burn it
Whether they weld you, for instance, a snaffle
With side-bars never a brute can baffle;
Or a lock that's a puzzle of wards within wards;
Or, if your colt's fore-foot inclines to curve inwards,
Horseshoes they hammer which turn on a swivel
And won't allow the hoof to shrivel.
Then they cast bells like the shell of the winkle
That keep a stout heart in the ram with their tinkle;
But the sand they pinch and pound it like otters;
Commend me to Gipsy glass-makers and potters!
Glasses they'll blow you, crystal-clear,
Where just a faint cloud of rose shall appear,
As if in pure water you dropped and let die
A bruised black-blooded mulberry;
And that other sort, their crowning pride,
With long white threads distinct inside,
Like the lake-flower's fibrous roots which dangle
Loose such a length and never tangle,
Where the bold sword-lily cuts the clear waters,
And the cup-lily couches with all the white daughters:
Such are the works they put their hand to,
The uses they turn and twist iron and sand to.
And these made the troop, which our Duke saw sally
Toward his castle from out of the valley,
Men and women, like new-hatched spiders,
Come out with the morning to greet our riders.
And up they wound till they reached the ditch,
Whereat all stopped save one, a witch
That I knew, as she hobbled from the group,
By her gait, directly, and her stoop,
I, whom Jacynth was used to importune
To let that same witch tell us our fortune.
The oldest Gipsy then above ground;
And, sure as the autumn season came round,
She paid us a visit for profit or pastime,
And every time, as she swore, for the last time.
And presently she was seen to sidle
Up to the Duke till she touched his bridle,
So that the horse of a sudden reared up
As under its nose the old witch peered up
With her worn-out eyes, or rather eye-holes
Of no use now but to gather brine,
And began a kind of level whine
Such as they used to sing to their viols
When their ditties they go grinding
Up and down with nobody minding:
And then, as of old, at the end of the humming
Her usual presents were forthcoming
A dog-whistle blowing the fiercest of trebles,
(Just a sea-shore stone holding a dozen fine pebbles,)
Or a porcelain mouth-piece to screw on a pipe-end,
And so she awaited her annual stipend.
But this time, the Duke would scarcely vouchsafe
A word in reply; and in vain she felt
With twitching fingers at her belt
For the purse of sleek pine-martin pelt,
Ready to put what he gave in her pouch safe,
Till, either to quicken his apprehension,
Or possibly with an after-intention,
She was come, she said, to pay her duty
To the new Duchess, the youthful beauty.
No sooner had she named his lady,
Than a shine lit up the face so shady,
And its smirk returned with a novel meaning
For it struck him, the babe just wanted weaning;
If one gave her a taste of what life was and sorrow,
She, foolish to-day, would be wiser tomorrow;
And who so fit a teacher of trouble
As this sordid crone bent well-nigh double?
So, glancing at her wolf-skin vesture,
(If such it was, for they grow so hirsute
That their own fleece serves for natural fur-suit)
He was contrasting, 'twas plain from his gesture,
The life of the lady so flower-like and delicate
With the loathsome squalor of this helicat.
I, in brief, was the man the Duke beckoned
From out of the throng, and while I drew near
He told the crone as I since have reckoned
By the way he bent and spoke into her ear
With circumspection and mystery,
The main of the Lady's history,
Her frowardness and ingratitude:
And for all the crone's submissive attitude
I could see round her mouth the loose plaits tightening,
And her brow with assenting intelligence brightening,
As though she engaged with hearty good-will
Whatever he now might enjoin to fulfil,
And promised the lady a thorough frightening.
And so, just giving her a glimpse
Of a purse, with the air of a man who imps
The wing of the hawk that shall fetch the hernshaw,
He bade me take the Gipsy mother
And set her telling some story or other
Of hill or dale, oak-wood or fernshaw,
To wile away a weary hour
For the lady left alone in her bower,
Whose mind and body craved exertion
And yet shrank from all better diversion.
XIV.
Then clapping heel to his horse, the mere curvetter,
Out rode the Duke, and after his hollo
Horses and hounds swept, huntsman and servitor,
And back I turned and bade the crone follow.
And what makes me confident what's to be told you
Had all along been of this crone's devising,
Is, that, on looking round sharply, behold you,
There was a novelty quick as surprising:
For first, she had shot up a full head in stature,
And her step kept pace with mine nor faultered,
As if age had foregone its usurpature,
And the ignoble mien was wholly altered,
And the face looked quite of another nature,
And the change reached too, whatever the change meant,
Her shaggy wolf-skin cloak's arrangement:
For where its tatters hung loose like sedges,
Gold coins were glittering on the edges,
Like the band-roll strung with tomans
Which proves the veil a Persian woman's:
And under her brow, like a snail's horns newly
Come out as after the rain he paces,
Two unmistakeable eye-points duly
Live and aware looked out of their places.
So, we went and found Jacynth at the entry
Of the lady's chamber standing sentry;
I told the command and produced my companion,
And Jacynth rejoiced to admit any one,
For since last night, by the same token,
Not a single word had the lady spoken:
They went in both to the presence together,
While I in the balcony watched the weather.
XV.
And now, what took place at the very first of all,
I cannot tell, as I never could learn it:
Jacynth constantly wished a curse to fall
On that little head of hers and burn it,
If she knew how she came to drop so soundly
Asleep of a sudden and there continue
The whole time sleeping as profoundly
As one of the boars my father would pin you
'Twixt the eyes where life holds garrison,
Jacynth forgive me the comparison!
But where I begin my own narration
Is a little after I took my station
To breathe the fresh air from the balcony,
And, having in those days a falcon eye,
To follow the hunt thro' the open country,
From where the bushes thinlier crested
The hillocks, to a plain where's not one tree.
When, in a moment, my ear was arrested
By was it singing, or was it saying,
Or a strange musical instrument playing
In the chamber? and to be certain
I pushed the lattice, pulled the curtain,
And there lay Jacynth asleep,
Yet as if a watch she tried to keep,
In a rosy sleep along the floor
With her head against the door;
While in the midst, on the seat of state,
Was a queen the Gipsy woman late,
With head and face downbent
On the Lady's head and face intent:
For, coiled at her feet like a child at ease,
The lady sate between her knees
And o'er them the Lady's clasped hands met,
And on those hands her chin was set,
And her upturned face met the face of the crone
Wherein the eyes had grown and grown
As if she could double and quadruple
At pleasure the play of either pupil
Very like, by her hands' slow fanning,
As up and down like a gor-crow's flappers
They moved to measure, or bell-clappers.
I said Is it blessing, is it banning,
Do they applaud you or burlesque you?
Those hands and fingers with no flesh on?
But, just as I thought to spring in to the rescue,
At once I was stopped by the lady's expression:
For it was life her eyes were drinking
From the crone's wide pair above unwinking,
Life's pure fire received without shrinking,
Into the heart and breast whose heaving
Told you no single drop they were leaving,
Life, that filling her, passed redundant
Into her very hair, back swerving
Over each shoulder, loose and abundant,
As her head thrown back showed the white throat curving;
And the very tresses shared in the pleasure,
Moving to the mystic measure,
Bounding as the bosom bounded.
I stopped short, more and more confounded,
As still her cheeks burned and eyes glistened,
As she listened and she listened,
When all at once a hand detained me,
The selfsame contagion gained me,
And I kept time to the wondrous chime,
Making out words and prose and rhyme,
Till it seemed that the music furled
Its wings like a task fulfilled, and dropped
From under the words it first had propped,
And left them midway in the world,
Word took word as hand takes hand,
I could hear at last, and understand,
And when I held the unbroken thread,
The Gipsy said:
'And so at last we find my tribe.
'And so I set thee in the midst,
'And to one and all of them describe
'What thou saidst and what thou didst,
'Our long and terrible journey through,
'And all thou art ready to say and do
'In the trials that remain:
'I trace them the vein and the other vein
'That meet on thy brow and part again,
'Making our rapid mystic mark;
'And I bid my people prove and probe
'Each eye's profound and glorious globe
'Till they detect the kindred spark
'In those depths so dear and dark,
'Like the spots that snap and burst and flee,
'Circling over the midnight sea.
'And on that round young cheek of thine
'I make them recognize the tinge,
'As when of the costly scarlet wine
'They drip so much as will impinge
'And spread in a thinnest scale afloat
'One thick gold drop from the olive's coat
'Over a silver plate whose sheen
'Still thro' the mixture shall be seen.
'For so I prove thee, to one and all,
'Fit, when my people ope their breast,
'To see the sign, and hear the call,
'And take the vow, and stand the test
'Which adds one more child to the rest
'When the breast is bare and the arms are wide,
'And the world is left outside.
'For there is probation to decree,
'And many and long must the trials be
'Thou shalt victoriously endure,
'If that brow is true and those eyes are sure;
'Like a jewel-finder's fierce assay
'Of the prize he dug from its mountain-tomb
'Let once the vindicating ray
'Leap out amid the anxious gloom,
'And steel and fire have done their part
'And the prize falls on its finder's heart;
''So, trial after trial past,
'Wilt thou fall at the very last
'Breathless, half in trance
'With the thrill of the great deliverance,
'Into our arms for evermore;
'And thou shalt know, those arms once curled
'About thee, what we knew before,
'How love is the only good in the world.
'Henceforth be loved as heart can love,
'Or brain devise, or hand approve!
'Stand up, look below,
'It is our life at thy feet we throw
'To step with into light and joy;
'Not a power of life but we employ
'To satisfy thy nature's want;
'Art thou the tree that props the plant,
'Or the climbing plant that seeks the tree
'Canst thou help us, must we help thee?
'If any two creatures grew into one,
'They would do more than the world has done.
'Though each apart were never so weak,
'Ye vainly through the world should seek
'For the knowledge and the might
'Which in such union grew their right:
'So, to approach at least that end,
'And blend, as much as may be, blend
'Thee with us or us with thee,
'As climbing plant or propping tree,
'Shall some one deck thee, over and down,
'Up and about, with blossoms and leaves?
'Fix his heart's fruit for thy garland crown,
'Cling with his soul as the gourd-vine cleaves,
'Die on thy boughs and disappear
'While not a leaf of thine is sere?
'Or is the other fate in store,
'And art thou fitted to adore,
'To give thy wondrous self away,
'And take a stronger nature's sway?
'I foresee and could foretell
'Thy future portion, sure and well
'But those passionate eyes speak true, speak true,
'Let them say what thou shalt do!
'Only be sure thy daily life,
'In its peace or in its strife,
'Never shall be unobserved:
'We pursue thy whole career,
'And hope for it, or doubt, or fear,
'Lo, hast thou kept thy path or swerved,
'We are beside thee in all thy ways,
'With our blame, with our praise,
'Our shame to feel, our pride to show,
'Glad, angry but indifferent, no!
'Whether it be thy lot to go,
'For the good of us all, where the haters meet
'In the crowded city's horrible street;
'Or thou step alone through the morass
'Where never sound yet was
'Save the dry quick clap of the stork's bill,
'For the air is still, and the water still,
'When the blue breast of the dipping coot
'Dives under, and all is mute.
'So, at the last shall come old age,
'Decrepit as befits that stage;
'How else wouldst thou retire apart
'With the hoarded memories of thy heart,
'And gather all to the very least
'Of the fragments of life's earlier feast,
'Let fall through eagerness to find
'The crowning dainties yet behind?
'Ponder on the entire past
'Laid together thus at last,
'When the twilight helps to fuse
'The first fresh with the faded hues,
'And the outline of the whole,
'As round eve's shades their framework roll,
'Grandly fronts for once thy soul.
'And then as, 'mid the dark, a glean
'Of yet another morning breaks,
'And like the hand which ends a dream,
'Death, with the might of his sunbeam,
'Touches the flesh and the soul awakes,
'Then '
Ay, then indeed something would happen!
But what? For here her voice changed like a bird's;
There grew more of the music and less of the words;
Had Jacynth only been by me to clap pen
To paper and put you down every syllable
With those clever clerkly fingers,
All I've forgotten as well as what lingers
In this old brain of mine that's but ill able
To give you even this poor version
Of the speech I spoil, as it were, with stammering
More fault of those who had the hammering
Of prosody into me and syntax,
And did it, not with hobnails but tintacks!
But to return from this excursion,
Just, do you mark, when the song was sweetest,
The peace most deep and the charm completest,
There came, shall I say, a snap
And the charm vanished!
And my sense returned, so strangely banished,
And, starting as from a nap,
I knew the crone was bewitching my lady,
With Jacynth asleep; and but one spring made I
Down from the casement, round to the portal,
Another minute and I had entered,
When the door opened, and more than mortal
Stood, with a face where to my mind centred
All beauties I ever saw or shall see,
The Duchess: I stopped as if struck by palsy.
She was so different, happy and beautiful,
I felt at once that all was best,
And that I had nothing to do, for the rest,
But wait her commands, obey and be dutiful.
Not that, in fact, there was any commanding;
I saw the glory of her eye,
And the brow's height and the breast's expanding,
And I was hers to live or to die.
As for finding what she wanted,
You know God Almighty granted
Such little signs should serve wild creatures
To tell one another all their desires,
So that each knows what his friend requires,
And does its bidding without teachers.
I preceded her; the crone
Followed silent and alone;
I spoke to her, but she merely jabbered
In the old style; both her eyes had slunk
Back to their pits; her stature shrunk;
In short, the soul in its body sunk
Like a blade sent home to its scabbard.
We descended, I preceding;
Crossed the court with nobody heeding,
All the world was at the chase,
The courtyard like a desert-place,
The stable emptied of its small fry;
I saddled myself the very palfrey
I remember patting while it carried her,
The day she arrived and the Duke married her.
And, do you know, though it's easy deceiving
Oneself in such matters, I can't help believing
The lady had not forgotten it either,
And knew the poor devil so much beneath her
Would have been only too glad for her service
To dance on hot ploughshares like a Turk dervise,
But, unable to pay proper duty where owing it,
Was reduced to that pitiful method of showing it:
For though the moment I began setting
His saddle on my own nag of Berold's begetting,
(Not that I meant to be obtrusive)
She stopped me, while his rug was shifting,
By a single rapid finger's lifting,
And, with a gesture kind but conclusive,
And a little shake of the head, refused me,
I say, although she never used me,
Yet when she was mounted, the Gipsy behind her,
And I ventured to remind her,
I suppose with a voice of less steadiness
Than usual, for my feeling exceeded me,
Something to the effect that I was in readiness
Whenever God should please she needed me,
Then, do you know, her face looked down on me
With a look that placed a crown on me,
And she felt in her bosom, mark, her bosom
And, as a flower-tree drops its blossom,
Dropped me ah, had it been a purse
Of silver, my friend, or gold that's worse,
Why, you see, as soon as I found myself
So understood, that a true heart so may gain
Such a reward, I should have gone home again,
Kissed Jacynth, and soberly drowned myself!
It was a little plait of hair
Such as friends in a convent make
To wear, each for the other's sake,
This, see, which at my breast I wear,
Ever did (rather to Jacynth's grudgment),
And ever shall, till the Day of Judgment.
And then, and then, to cut short, this is idle,
These are feelings it is not good to foster,
I pushed the gate wide, she shook the bridle,
And the palfrey bounded, and so we lost her.
XVI.
When the liquor's out, why clink the cannakin?
I did think to describe you the panic in
The redoubtable breast of our master the mannikin,
And what was the pitch of his mother's yellowness,
How she turned as a shark to snap the spare-rib
Clean off, sailors say, from a pearl-diving Carib,
When she heard, what she called the flight of the feloness
But it seems such child's play,
What they said and did with the lady away!
And to dance on, when we've lost the music,
Always made me and no doubt makes you sick.
Nay, to my mind, the world's face looked so stern
As that sweet form disappeared through the postern,
She that kept it in constant good humour,
It ought to have stopped; there seemed nothing to do more.
But the world thought otherwise and went on,
And my head's one that its spite was spent on:
Thirty years are fled since that morning,
And with them all my head's adorning.
Nor did the old Duchess die outright,
As you expect, of suppressed spite,
The natural end of every adder
Not suffered to empty its poison-bladder:
But she and her son agreed, I take it,
That no one should touch on the story to wake it,
For the wound in the Duke's pride rankled fiery,
So, they made no search and small inquiry
And when fresh Gipsies have paid us a visit, I've
Noticed the couple were never inquisitive,
But told them they're folks the Duke don't want here,
And bade them make haste and cross the frontier.
Brief, the Duchess was gone and the Duke was glad of it,
And the old one was in the young one's stead,
And took, in her place, the household's head,
And a blessed time the household had of it!
And were I not, as a man may say, cautious
How I trench, more than needs, on the nauseous,
I could favour you with sundry touches
Of the paint-smutches with which the Duchess
Heightened the mellowness of her cheek's yellowness
(To get on faster) until at last her
Cheek grew to be one master-plaster
Of mucus and focus from mere use of ceruse
In short, she grew from scalp to udder
Just the object to make you shudder.
XVII.
You're my friend
What a thing friendship is, world without end!
How it gives the heart and soul a stir-up
As if somebody broached you a glorious runlet,
And poured out, all lovelily, sparklingly, sunlit,
Our green Moldavia, the streaky syrup,
Cotnar as old as the time of the Druids
Friendship may match with that monarch of fluids;
Each supples a dry brain, fills you its ins-and-outs,
Gives your life's hour-glass a shake when the thin sand doubts
Whether to run on or stop short, and guarantees
Age is not all made of stark sloth and arrant ease!
I have seen my little Lady once more,
Jacynth, the Gipsy, Berold, and the rest of it,
For to me spoke the Duke, as I told you before;
I always wanted to make a clean breast of it:
And now it is made why, my heart's blood, that went trickle,
Trickle, but anon, in such muddy driblets,
Is pumped up brisk now, through the main ventricle,
And genially floats me about the giblets.
I'll tell you what I intend to do:
I must see this fellow his sad life thro'
He is our Duke, after all,
And I, as he says, but a serf and thrall.
My father was born here, and I inherit
His fame, a chain he bound his son with;
Could I pay in a lump I should prefer it,
But there's no mine to blow up and get done with:
So, I must stay till the end of the chapter:
For, as to our middle-age-manners-adapter,
Be it a thing to be glad on or sorry on,
Some day or other, his head in a morion
And breast in a hauberk, his heels he'll kick up,
Slain by an onslaught fierce of hiccup.
And then, when red doth the sword of our Duke rust,
And its leathern sheath lie o'ergrown with a blue crust,
Then I shall scrape together my earnings;
For, you see, in the churchyard Jacynth reposes,
And our children all went the way of the roses
It's a long lane that knows no turnings
One needs but little tackle to travel in;
So, just one stout cloak shall I indue:
And for a stall, what beats the javelin
With which his boars my father pinned you?
And then, for a purpose you shall hear presently,
Taking some Cotnar, a tight plump skinful,
I shall go journeying, who but I, pleasantly!
Sorrow is vain and despondency sinful.
What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all;
Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.
When we mind labour, then only, we're too old
What age had Methusalem when he begat Saul?
And at last, as its haven some buffeted ship sees,
(Come all the way from the north-parts with sperm oil)
I hope to get safely out of the turmoil
And arrive one day at the land of the Gipsies,
And find my lady, or hear the last news of her
From some old thief and son of Lucifer,
His forehead chapleted green with wreathy hop,
Sunburned all over like an 'thiop:
And when my Cotnar begins to operate
And the tongue of the rogue to run at a proper rate,
And our wine-skin, tight once, shows each flaccid dent,
I shall drop in with as if by accident
'You never knew, then, how it all ended,
'What fortune good or bad attended
'The little lady your Queen befriended?'
And when that's told me, what's remaining?
This world's too hard for my explaining
The same wise judge of matters equine
Who still preferred some slim four-year-old
To the big-boned stock of mighty Berold,
And for strong Cotnar drank French weak wine,
He also must be such a lady's scorner!
Smooth Jacob still robs homely Esau:
Now up, now down, the world's one see-saw.
So, I shall find out some snug corner
Under a hedge, like Orson the wood-knight,
Turn myself round and bid the world good night;
And sleep a sound sleep till the trumpet's blowing
Wakes me (unless priests cheat us laymen)
To a world where will be no furtiner throwing
Pearls before swine that can't value them. Amen! |
The Ballad Of Zacho | James Elroy Flecker | (a Greek Legend.)
Zacho the King rode out of old
(And truth is what I tell)
With saddle and spurs and a rein of gold
To find the door of Hell.
And round around him surged the dead
With soft and lustrous eyes.
"Why came you here, old friend?" they said:
"Unwise . . . unwise . . . unwise!
"You should have left to the prince your son
Spurs and saddle and rein:
Your bright and morning days are done;
You ride not out again."
"I came to greet my friends who fell
Sword-scattered from my side;
And when I've drunk the wine of Hell
I'll out again and ride!"
But Charon rose and caught his hair
In fingers sharp and long.
"Loose me, old ferryman: play fair:
Try if my arm be strong."
Thrice drave he hard on Charon's breast,
And struck him thrice to ground,
Till stranger ghosts came out o' the west
And sat like stars around.
And thrice old Charon rose up high
And seized him as before.
"Loose me! a broken man am I,
And fight with you no more.''
"Zacho, arise, my home is near;
I pray you walk with me:
I've hung my tent so full of fear
You well may shake to see.
"Home to my home come they who fight,
Who fight but not to win:
Without, my tent is black as night,
And red as fire within.
"Though winds blow cold and I grow old,
My tent is fast and fair:
The pegs are dead men's stout right arms,
The cords, their golden hair." |
To The Apennines. | William Cullen Bryant | Your peaks are beautiful, ye Apennines!
In the soft light of these serenest skies;
From the broad highland region, black with pines,
Fair as the hills of Paradise they rise,
Bathed in the tint Peruvian slaves behold
In rosy flushes on the virgin gold.
There, rooted to the a'rial shelves that wear
The glory of a brighter world, might spring
Sweet flowers of heaven to scent the unbreathed air,
And heaven's fleet messengers might rest the wing,
To view the fair earth in its summer sleep,
Silent, and cradled by the glimmering deep.
Below you lie men's sepulchres, the old
Etrurian tombs, the graves of yesterday;
The herd's white bones lie mixed with human mould,
Yet up the radiant steeps that I survey
Death never climbed, nor life's soft breath, with pain,
Was yielded to the elements again.
Ages of war have filled these plains with fear;
How oft the hind has started at the clash
Of spears, and yell of meeting, armies here,
Or seen the lightning of the battle flash
From clouds, that rising with the thunder's sound,
Hung like an earth-born tempest o'er the ground!
Ah me! what armed nations, Asian horde,
And Libyan host, the Scythian and the Gaul,
Have swept your base and through your passes poured,
Like ocean-tides uprising at the call
Of tyrant winds, against your rocky side
The bloody billows dashed, and howled, and died.
How crashed the towers before beleaguering foes,
Sacked cities smoked and realms were rent in twain;
And commonwealths against their rivals rose,
Trode out their lives and earned the curse of Cain!
While in the noiseless air and light that flowed
Round your far brows, eternal Peace abode.
Here pealed the impious hymn, and altar flames
Rose to false gods, a dream-begotten throng,
Jove, Bacchus, Pan, and earlier, fouler names;
While, as the unheeding ages passed along,
Ye, from your station in the middle skies,
Proclaimed the essential Goodness, strong and wise.
In you the heart that sighs for freedom seeks
Her image; there the winds no barrier know,
Clouds come and rest and leave your fairy peaks;
While even the immaterial Mind, below,
And thought, her winged offspring, chained by power,
Pine silently for the redeeming hour. |
Mother | Lola Ridge | I
Your love was like moonlight
turning harsh things to beauty,
so that little wry souls
reflecting each other obliquely
as in cracked mirrors...
beheld in your luminous spirit
their own reflection,
transfigured as in a shining stream,
and loved you for what they are not.
You are less an image in my mind
than a luster
I see you in gleams
pale as star-light on a gray wall...
evanescent as the reflection of a white swan
shimmering in broken water.
II
(To E. S.)
You inevitable,
Unwieldy with enormous births,
Lying on your back, eyes open, sucking down stars,
Or you kissing and picking over fresh deaths...
Filth... worms... flowers...
Green and succulent pods...
Tremulous gestation
Of dark water germinal with lilies...
All in you from the beginning...
Nothing buried or thrown away...
Only the moon like a white sheet
Spread over the dead you carry.
III
(To H.)
Speeding gull
Passing under a cloud
Caught on his white back
You... drop of crystal rain.
Now you gleam softly triumphant
Folding immensities of light.
IV
(To O. F. T.)
You have always gotten up after blows
And smiled... and shaken off the dust...
Only you could not shake the darkness
From off the bruised brown of your eyes.
V
(To E. A. R.)
Centuries shall not deflect
nor many suns
absorb your stream,
flowing immune and cold
between the banks of snow.
Nor any wind
carry the dust of cities
to your high waters
that arise out of the peaks
and return again into the mountain
and never descend. |
The Ringlet | Alfred Lord Tennyson | 'Your ringlets, your ringlets,
That look so golden-gay,
If you will give me one, but one,
To kiss it night and day,
The never chilling touch of Time
Will turn it silver-gray;
And then shall I know it is all true gold
To flame and sparkle and stream as of old.
Till all the comets in heaven are cold,
And all her stars decay.'
'Then take it, love, and put it by;
This cannot change, nor yet can I.'
'My ringlet, my ringlet,
That art so golden-gay,
Now never chilling touch of Time
Can turn thee silver-gray;
And a lad may wink, and a girl may hint,
And a fool may say his say;
For my doubts and fears were all amiss,
And I swear henceforth by this and this,
That a doubt will only come for a kiss,
And a fear to be kiss'd away.'
'Then kiss it, love, and put it by:
If this can change, why so can I.'
O Ringlet, O Ringlet,
I kiss'd you night and day,
And Ringlet, O Ringlet,
You still are golden-gay,
But Ringlet, O Ringlet,
You should be silver-gray:
For what is this which now I'm told,
I that took you for true gold,
She that gave you 's bought and sold,
Sold, sold.
O Ringlet, O Ringlet,
She blush'd a rosy red,
When Ringlet, O Ringlet
She clipt you from her head,
And Ringlet, O Ringlet,
She gave you me, and said,
'Come, kiss it, love and put it by:
If this can change, why so can I.'
O fie, you golden nothing, fie,
You golden lie.
O Ringlet, O Ringlet,
I count you much to blame,
For Ringlet, O Ringlet,
You put me much to shame,
So Ringlet, O Ringlet,
I doom you to the flame.
For what is this which now I learn,
Has given all my faith a turn?
Burn, you glossy heretic, burn,
Burn, burn. |
To Miss - - | Thomas Frederick Young | Youth is the time when all is bright;
The mind is free from care;
No thoughts of aught, save present joys,
Can find an entrance there.
And, if a thought of future years
Steal o'er the careless mind,
That thought speaks of a happier time
When years are left behind.
But when the years of youth have fled,
And life is fill'd with pain,
We think full oft of vanish'd years,
And wish them back again.
And oft this wish will soothe our pain,
And oft allay our woe,
Oh, sweet to us is mem'ry then,
When we think of long ago.
May thou live on till youth has pass'd,
And feel but little pain,
And may thou, in a blest old age,
Live o'er your youth again. |
Philosopher, A | Sam Walter Foss | Zack Bumstead useter flosserfize
About the ocean an' the skies;
An' gab an' gas f'um morn till noon
About the other side the moon;
An' 'bout the natur of the place
Ten miles beyend the end of space.
An' if his wife she'd ask the crank
Ef he wouldn't kinder try to yank
Hisself out-doors an' git some wood
To make her kitchen fire good,
So she c'd bake her beans an' pies,
He'd say, "I've gotter flosserfize."
An' then he'd set an' flosserfize
About the natur an' the size
Of angels' wings, an' think, and gawp,
An' wonder how they make 'em flop.
He'd calkerlate how long a skid
'Twould take to move the sun, he did;
An' if the skid was strong an' prime,
It couldn't be moved to supper-time.
An' w'en his wife 'd ask the lout
Ef he wouldn't kinder waltz about
An' take a rag an' shoo the flies,
He'd say, "I've gotter flosserfize."
An' then he'd set an' flosserfize
'Bout schemes for fencing in the skies,
Then lettin' out the lots to rent,
So's he could make an honest cent.
An' if he'd find it pooty tough
To borry cash fer fencin'-stuff;
An' if 'twere best to take his wealth
An' go to Europe for his health,
Or save his cash till he'd enough
To buy some more of fencin'-stuff;
Then, ef his wife she'd ask the gump
Ef he wouldn't kinder try to hump
Hisself to t'other side the door,
So she c'd come an' sweep the floor,
He'd look at her with mournful eyes,
An' say, "I've gotter flosserfize."
An' so he'd set an' flosserfize
'Bout what it wuz held up the skies,
An' how God made this earthly ball
Jest simply out er nawthin' 'tall,
An' 'bout the natur, shape, an' form
Of nawthin' that he made it from.
Then, ef his wife sh'd ask the freak
Ef he wouldn't kinder try to sneak
Out to the barn an' find some aigs,
He'd never move, nor lift his laigs;
He'd never stir, nor try to rise,
But say, "I've gotter flosserfize."
An' so he'd set an' flosserfize
About the earth, an' sea, an' skies,
An' scratch his head, an' ask the cause
Of w'at there wuz before time wuz,
An' w'at the universe 'd do
Bimeby w'en time hed all got through;
An' jest how fur we'd have to climb
Ef we sh'd travel out er time;
An' ef we'd need, w'en we got there,
To keep our watches in repair.
Then, ef his wife she'd ask the gawk
Ef he wouldn't kinder try to walk
To where she had the table spread,
An' kinder git his stomach fed,
He'd leap for that ar kitchen door,
An' say, "W'y didn't you speak afore?"
An' when he'd got his supper et,
He'd set, an' set, an' set, an' set,
An' fold his arms, an' shet his eyes,
An' set, an' set, an' flosserfize. |
To Laura In Death. Sonnet XLII. | Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) | Zefiro torna, e 'l bel tempo rimena.
RETURNING SPRING BRINGS TO HIM ONLY INCREASE OF GRIEF.
Zephyr returns; and in his jocund train
Brings verdure, flowers, and days serenely clear;
Brings Progne's twitter, Philomel's lorn strain,
With every bloom that paints the vernal year;
Cloudless the skies, and smiling every plain;
With joyance flush'd, Jove views his daughter dear;
Love's genial power pervades earth, air, and main;
All beings join'd in fond accord appear.
But nought to me returns save sorrowing sighs,
Forced from my inmost heart by her who bore
Those keys which govern'd it unto the skies:
The blossom'd meads, the choristers of air,
Sweet courteous damsels can delight no more;
Each face looks savage, and each prospect drear.
NOTT.
The spring returns, with all her smiling train;
The wanton Zephyrs breathe along the bowers,
The glistening dew-drops hang on bending flowers,
And tender green light-shadows o'er the plain:
And thou, sweet Philomel, renew'st thy strain,
Breathing thy wild notes to the midnight grove:
All nature feels the kindling fire of love,
The vital force of spring's returning reign.
But not to me returns the cheerful spring!
O heart! that know'st no period to thy grief,
Nor Nature's smiles to thee impart relief,
Nor change of mind the varying seasons bring:
She, she is gone! All that e'er pleased before,
Adieu! ye birds ye flowers, ye fields, that charm no more!
WOODHOUSELEE.
Returning Zephyr the sweet season brings,
With flowers and herbs his breathing train among,
And Progne twitters, Philomela sings,
Leading the many-colour'd spring along;
Serene the sky, and fair the laughing field,
Jove views his daughter with complacent brow;
Earth, sea, and air, to Love's sweet influence yield,
And creatures all his magic power avow:
But nought, alas! for me the season brings,
Save heavier sighs, from my sad bosom drawn
By her who can from heaven unlock its springs;
And warbling birds and flower-bespangled lawn,
And fairest acts of ladies fair and mild,
A desert seem, and its brute tenants wild.
DACRE.
Zephyr returns and winter's rage restrains,
With herbs, with flowers, his blooming progeny!
Now Progne prattles, Philomel complains,
And spring assumes her robe of various dye;
The meadows smile, heaven glows, nor Jove disdains
To view his daughter with delighted eye;
While Love through universal nature reigns,
And life is fill'd with amorous sympathy!
But grief, not joy, returns to me forlorn,
And sighs, which from my inmost heart proceed
For her, by whom to heaven its keys were borne.
The song of birds, the flower-enamell'd mead,
And graceful acts, which most the fair adorn,
A desert seem, and beasts of savage prey!
CHARLEMONT. |
The Soudan, The Sphinxes, The Cup, The Lamp. | Victor-Marie Hugo | ("Zim-Zizimi, Soudan d''gypte.")
[Bk. XVI. i.]
Zim Zizimi - (of the Soudan of burnt Egypt,
The Commander of Believers, a Bashaw
Whose very robes were from Asia's greatest stript,
More powerful than any lion with resistless paw)
A master weighed on by his immense splendor -
Once had a dream when he was at his evening feast,
When the broad table smoked like a perfumed censer,
And its grateful odors the appetite increased.
The banquet was outspread in a hall, high as vast,
With pillars painted, and with ceiling bright with gold,
Upreared by Zim's ancestors in the days long past,
And added to till now worth a sum untold.
Howe'er rich no rarity was absent, it seemed,
Fruit blushed upon the side-boards, groaning 'neath rich meats,
With all the dainties palate ever dreamed
In lavishness to waste - for dwellers in the streets
Of cities, whether Troy, or Tyre, or Ispahan,
Consume, in point of cost, food at a single meal
Much less than what is spread before this crowned man - -
Who rules his couchant nation with a rod of steel,
And whose servitors' chiefest arts it was to squeeze
The world's full teats into his royal helpless mouth.
Each hard-sought dainty that never failed to please,
All delicacies, wines, from east, west, north or south,
Are plenty here - for Sultan Zizimi drinks wine
In its variety, trying to find what never sates.
Laughs at the holy writings and the text divine,
O'er which the humble dervish prays and venerates.
There is a common saying which holds often good:
That cruel is he who is sparing in his cups.
That they are such as are most thirsty of man's blood -
Yet he will see a slave beheaded whilst he sups.
But be this as it all may, glory gilds his reign,
He has overrun Africa, the old and black;
Asia as well - holding them both beneath a rain
Of bloody drops from scaffold, pyre, the stake, or rack,
To leave his empire's confines, one must run a race
Far past the river Baxtile southward; in the north,
To the rude, rocky, barren land of Thrace,
Yet near enough to shudder when great Zim is wroth.
Conquering in every field, he finds delight
In battle-storms; his music is the shout of camps.
On seeing him the eagle speeds away in fright,
Whilst hid 'mong rocks, the grisly wolf its victim champs.
Mysore's as well as Agra's rajah is his kin;
The great sheiks of the arid sands confess him lord;
Omar, who vaunting cried: "Through me doth Allah win!"
Was of his blood - a dreaded line of fire and sword.
The waters of Nagain, sands of Sahara warm,
The Atlas and the Caucasus, snow-capped and lone,
Mecca, Marcatta, these were massed in part to form
A portion of the giant shadow of Zim's throne.
Before his might, to theirs, as hardest rock to dust,
There have recoiled a horde of savage, warlike chiefs,
Who have been into Afric's fiery furnace thrust -
Its scorching heat to his rage greatest of reliefs.
There is no being but fears Zim; to him bows down
Even the sainted Llama in the holy place;
And the wild Kasburder chieftain at his dark power
Turns pale, and seeks a foeman of some lesser race.
Cities and states are bought and sold by Soudan Zim,
Whose simple word their thousand people hold as law.
He ruins them at will, for what are men to him,
More than to stabled cattle is the sheaf of straw?
The Soudan is not pleased, for he is e'er alone,
For who may in his royal sports or joys be leagued.
He must never speak to any one in equal tones,
But be by his own dazzling weightiness fatigued.
He has exhausted all the pastimes of the earth;
In vain skilled men have fought with sword, the spear, or lance,
The quips and cranks most laughed at have to him no mirth;
He gives a regal yawn as fairest women dance;
Music has outpoured all its notes, the soft and loud,
But dully on his wearied ear its accents roll,
As dully as the praises of the servile crowd
Who falsely sing the purity of his black soul.
He has had before his da's from the prison brought
Two thieves, whose terror makes their chains to loudly ring,
Then gaping most unkingly, he dismissed his slaves,
And tranquilly, half rising, looked around to seek
In the weighty stillness - such as broods round graves -
Something within his royal scope to which to speak.
The throne, on which at length his eyes came back to rest,
Is upheld by rose-crowned Sphinxes, which lyres hold,
All cut in whitest marble, with uncovered breast,
While their eyes contain that enigma never told.
Each figure has its title carved upon its head:
Health, and Voluptuousness, Greatness, Joy, and Play,
With Victory, Beauty, Happiness, may be read,
Adorning brands they wear unblushing in the day.
The Soudan cried: "O, Sphinxes, with the torch-like eye,
I am the Conqueror - my name is high-arrayed
In characters like flame upon the vaulted sky,
Far from oblivion's reach or an effacing shade.
Upon a sheaf of thunderbolts I rest my arm,
And gods might wish my exploits with them were their own.
I live - I am not open to the points of harm,
And e'en my throne will be with age an altar-stone.
When the time comes for me to cast off earthly robe,
And enter - being Day - into the realms of light,
The gods will say, we call Zizimi from his globe
That we may have our brother nearer to our sight!
Glory is but my menial, Pride my own chained slave,
Humbly standing when Zizimi is in his seat.
I scorn base man, and have sent thousands to the grave.
They are but as a rushen carpet to my feet.
Instead of human beings, eunuchs, blacks, or mutes,
Be yours, oh, Sphinxes, with the glad names on your fronts!
The task, with voice attuned to emulate the flute's,
To charm the king, whose chase is man, and wars his hunts.
"Some portion of your splendor back on me reflect,
Sing out in praiseful chains of melodious links!
Oh, throne, which I with bloody spoils have so bedecked,
Speak to your lord! Speak you, the first rose-crested Sphinx!"
Soon on the summons, once again was stillness broke,
For the ten figures, in a voice which all else drowned,
Parting their stony lips, alternatively spoke -
Spoke clearly, with a deeply penetrative sound.
THE FIRST SPHINX.
So lofty as to brush the heavens' dome,
Upon the highest terrace of her tomb
Is Queen Nitrocis, thinking all alone,
Upon her line, long tenants of the throne,
Terrors, scourges of the Greeks and Hebrews,
Harsh and bloodthirsty, narrow in their views.
Against the pure scroll of the sky, a blot,
Stands out her sepulchre, a fatal spot
That seems a baneful breath around to spread.
The birds which chance to near it, drop down dead.
The queen is now attended on by shades,
Which have replaced, in horrid guise, her maids.
No life is here - the law says such as bore
A corpse alone may enter through yon door.
Before, behind, around the queen, her sight
Encounters but the same blank void of night.
Above, the pilasters are like to bars,
And, through their gaps, the dead look at the stars,
While, till the dawn, around Nitrocis' bones,
Spectres hold council, crouching on the stones.
THE SECOND SPHINX.
Howe'er great is pharaoh, the magi, king,
Encompassed by an idolizing ring,
None is so high as Tiglath Pileser.
Who, like the God before whom pales the star,
Has temples, with a prophet for a priest,
Who serves up daily sacrilegious feast.
His anger there are none who dare provoke,
His very mildness is looked on as a yoke;
And under his, more feared than other rules,
He holds his people bound, like tam'd bulls.
Asia is banded with his paths of war;
He is more of a scourge than Attila.
He triumphs glorious - but, day by day,
The earth falls at his feet, piecemeal away;
And the bricks for his tomb's wall, one by one,
Are being shaped - are baking in the sun.
THE THIRD SPHINX.
Equal to archangel, for one short while,
Was Nimroud, builder of tall Babel's pile.
His sceptre reached across the space between
The sites where Sol to rise and set is seen.
Baal made him terrible to all alike,
The greatest cow'ring when he rose to strike.
Unbelief had shown in ev'ry eye,
Had any dared to say: "Nimroud will die!"
He lived and ruled, but is - at this time, where?
Winds blow free o'er his realm - a desert bare!
THE FOURTH SPHINX.
There is a statue of King Chrem of old,
Of unknown date and maker, but of gold.
How many grandest rulers in his day
Chrem pluck'd down, there are now none can say.
Whether he ruled with gentle hand or rough,
None know. He once was - no longer is - enough,
Crowned Time, whose seat is on a ruined mass,
Holds, and aye turns, a strange sand in his glass,
A sand scraped from the mould, brushed from the shroud
Of all passed things, mean, great, lowly, or proud.
Thus meting with the ashes of the dead
How hours of the living have quickly fled.
The sand runs, monarchs! the clepsydra weeps.
Wherefore? They see through future's gloomy deeps,
Through the church wall, into the catacomb,
And mark the change when thrones do graves become.
THE FIFTH SPHINX.
To swerve the earth seemed from its wonted path
When marched the Four of Asia in their wrath,
And when they were bound slaves to Cyrus' car,
The rivers shrank back from their banks afar.
"Who can this be," was Nineveh's appeal;
"Who dares to drag the gods at his car-wheel?"
The ground is still there that these wheel-rims tore -
The people and the armies are no more.
THE SIXTH SPHINX.
Never again Cambyses earth will tread.
He slept, and rotted, for his ghost had fled.
So long as sovereigns live, the subjects kneel,
Crouching like spaniels at their royal heel;
But when their might flies, they are shunned by all,
Save worms, which - human-like - still to them crawl
On Troy or Memphis, on Pyrrhus the Great,
Or on Psammeticus, alike falls fate.
Those who in rightful purple are arrayed,
The prideful vanquisher, like vanquished, fade.
Death grins as he the fallen man bestrides -
And less of faults than of his glories hides.
THE SEVENTH SPHINX.
The time is come for Belus' tomb to fall,
Long has been ruined its high granite wall;
And its cupola, sister of the cloud,
Has now to lowest mire its tall head bowed.
The herdsman comes to it to choose the stones
To build a hut, and overturns the bones,
From which he has just scared a jackal pack,
Waiting to gnaw them when he turns his back.
Upon this scene the night is doubly night,
And the lone passer vainly strains his sight,
Musing: Was Belus not buried near this spot?
The royal resting-place is now forgot.
THE EIGHTH SPHINX.
The inmates of the Pyramids assume
The hue of Rhamesis, black with the gloom.
A Jailer who ne'er needs bolts, bars, or hasps,
Is Death. With unawed hand a god he grasps,
He thrusts, to stiffen, in a narrow case,
Or cell, where struggling air-blasts constant moan;
Walling them round with huge, damp, slimy stone;
And (leaving mem'ry of bloodshed as drink,
And thoughts of crime as food) he stops each chink.
THE NINTH SPHINX.
Who would see Cleopatra on her bed?
Come in. The place is filled with fog like lead,
Which clammily has settled on the frame
Of her who was a burning, dazzling flame
To all mankind - who durst not lift their gaze,
And meet the brightness of her beauty's rays.
Her teeth were pearls, her breath a rare perfume.
Men died with love on entering her room.
Poised 'twixt the world and her - acme of joys!
Antony took her of the double choice.
The ice-cold heart that passion seldom warms,
Would find heat torrid in that queen's soft arms.
She won without a single woman's wile,
Illumining the earth with peerless smile.
Come in! - but muffle closely up your face,
No grateful scents have ta'en sweet odors' place.
THE TENTH SPHINX.
What did the greatest king that e'er earth bore,
Sennacherib? No matter - he's no more!
What were the words Sardanapalus said?
Who cares to hear - that ruler long is dead.
The Soudan, turning pale, stared at the TEN aghast.
"Before to-morrow's night," he said, "in dust to rest,
These walls with croaking images shall be downcast;
I will not have fiends speak when angels are addressed."
But while Zim at the Sphinxes clenched his hand and shook,
The cup in which it seems the rich wine sweetly breathes,
The cup with jewels sparkling, met his lowered look,
Dwelling on the rim which the rippling wine enwreathes.
"Ha! You!" Zim cried, "have often cleared my heated head
Of heavy thoughts which your great lord have come to seek
And torture with their pain and weight like molten lead.
Let us two - power, I - you, wine - together speak."
THE CUP.
"Phur," spoke the Cup, "O king, dwelt as Day's god,
Ruled Alexandria with sword and rod.
He from his people drew force after force,
Leaving in ev'ry clime an army's corse.
But what gained he by having, like the sea,
Flooded with human waves to enslave the free?
Where lies the good in having been the chief
In conquering, to cause a nation's grief?
Darius, Assar-addon, Hamilcar;
Who have led men in legions out to war,
Or have o'er Time's shade cast rays from their seat,
Or throngs in worship made their name repeat,
These were, but all the cup of life have drank;
Rising 'midst clamor, they in stillness sank.
Death's dart beat down the sword - the kings high reared,
Were brought full low - judges, like culprits, feared.
The body - when the soul had ceased its sway -
Was placed where earth upon it heavy lay,
While seek the mouldering bones rare oils anoint
Claw of tree's root and tooth of rocky point.
Weeds thrive on them who made the world a mart
Of human flesh, plants force their joints apart.
No deed of eminence the greatest saves,
And of mausoleums make panthers caves."
The Cup, Zim, in his fury, dashed upon the floor,
Crying aloud for lights. Slaves, at his angry call,
In to him hastily, a candelabra bore,
And set it, branching o'er the table, in the hall,
From whose wide bounds it hunted instantly the gloom.
"Ah, light!" exclaimed the Soudan, "welcome light, all hail!
Dull witnesses were yonder Sphinxes of this room;
The Cup was always drunk, in wit did ever fail;
But you fling gleams forth brightly, dazzling as a torch;
Vainly to quell your power all Night's attempts are spent;
The murky, black-eyed clouds you eat away and scorch,
Making where'er you spring to life an Orient.
To charm your lord give voice, thou spark of paradise!
Speak forth against the Sphinxes' enigmatic word,
And 'gainst the Wine-Cup, with its sharp and biting spice!"
THE LAMP.
Oh, Crusher of Countless Cities, such as earth knew
Scarce once before him, Ninus (who his brother slew),
Was borne within the walls which, in Assyrian rite,
Were built to hide dead majesty from outer sight.
If eye of man the gift uncommon could assume,
And pierce the mass, thick, black as hearse's plume,
To where lays on a horrifying bed
What was King Ninus, now hedged round with dread,
'Twould see by what is shadow of the light,
A line of feath'ry dust, bones marble-white.
A shudder overtakes the pois'nous snakes
When they glide near that powder, laid in flakes.
Death comes at times to him - Life comes no more!
And sets a jug and loaf upon the floor.
He then with bony foot the corpse o'erturns,
And says: "It is I, Ninus! 'Tis Death who spurns!
I bring thee, hungry king, some bread and meat."
"I have no hands," Ninus replies. "Yet, eat!"
Zim pierced to the very quick by these repeated stabs,
Sprang to his feet, while from him pealed a fearful shout,
And, furious, flung down upon the marble slabs
The richly carved and golden Lamp, whose light went out -
Then glided in a form strange-shaped,
In likeness of a woman, moulded in dense smoke,
Veiled in thick, ebon fog, in utter darkness draped,
A glimpse of which, in short, one's inmost fears awoke.
Zim was alone with her, this Goddess of the Night.
The massy walls of stone like vapor part and fade,
Zim, shuddering, tried to call guard or satellite,
But as the figure grasped him firmly, "Come!" she said.
BP. ALEXANDER |
Noctambule | Robert William Service | Scarcely do I scribble that last line on the back of an old envelope when a voice hails me. It is a fellow free-lance, a short-story man called MacBean. He is having a feast of Marennes and he asks me to join him.
MacBean is a Scotsman with the soul of an Irishman. He has a keen, lean, spectacled face, and if it were not for his gray hair he might be taken for a student of theology. However, there is nothing of the Puritan in MacBean. He loves wine and women, and money melts in his fingers.
He has lived so long in the Quarter he looks at life from the Parisian angle. His knowledge of literature is such that he might be a Professor, but he would rather be a vagabond of letters. We talk shop. We discuss the American short story, but MacBean vows they do these things better in France. He says that some of the contes printed every day in the Journal are worthy of Maupassant. After that he buys more beer, and we roam airily over the fields of literature, plucking here and there a blossom of quotation. A fine talk, vivid and eager. It puts me into a kind of glow.
MacBean pays the bill from a handful of big notes, and the thought of my own empty pockets for a moment damps me. However, when we rise to go, it is well after midnight, and I am in a pleasant daze. The rest of the evening may be summed up in the following jingle:
Noctambule
Zut! it's two o'clock.
See! the lights are jumping.
Finish up your bock,
Time we all were humping.
Waiters stack the chairs,
Pile them on the tables;
Let us to our lairs
Underneath the gables.
Up the old Boul' Mich'
Climb with steps erratic.
Steady . . . how I wish
I was in my attic!
Full am I with cheer;
In my heart the joy stirs;
Couldn't be the beer,
Must have been the oysters.
In obscene array
Garbage cans spill over;
How I wish that they
Smelled as sweet as clover!
Charing women wait;
Cafes drop their shutters;
Rats perambulate
Up and down the gutters.
Down the darkened street
Market carts are creeping;
Horse with wary feet,
Red-faced driver sleeping.
Loads of vivid greens,
Carrots, leeks, potatoes,
Cabbages and beans,
Turnips and tomatoes.
Pair of dapper chaps,
Cigarettes and sashes,
Stare at me, perhaps
Desperate Apach's.
"Needn't bother me,
Jolly well you know it;
Parceque je suis
Quartier Latin po'te.
"Give you villanelles,
Madrigals and lyrics;
Ballades and rondels,
Odes and panegyrics.
Poet pinched and poor,
Pricked by cold and hunger;
Trouble's troubadour,
Misery's balladmonger."
Think how queer it is!
Every move I'm making,
Cosmic gravity's
Center I am shaking;
Oh, how droll to feel
(As I now am feeling),
Even as I reel,
All the world is reeling.
Reeling too the stars,
Neptune and Uranus,
Jupiter and Mars,
Mercury and Venus;
Suns and moons with me,
As I'm homeward straying,
All in sympathy
Swaying, swaying, swaying.
Lord! I've got a head.
Well, it's not surprising.
I must gain my bed
Ere the sun be rising;
When the merry lark
In the sky is soaring,
I'll refuse to hark,
I'll be snoring, snoring.
Strike a sulphur match . . .
Ha! at last my garret.
Fumble at the latch,
Close the door and bar it.
Bed, you graciously
Wait, despite my scorning . . .
So, bibaciously
Mad old world, good morning. |
Zwei Hasen | Walter Crane | Zwischen Berg und tiefen, tiefen Thal,
Sassen einst zwei Hasen,
Frassen ab das gr'ne, gr'ne Gras,
Frassen ab das gr'ne, gr'ne Gras
Bis auf den Rasen,
Bis auf den Rasen.
Als sie satt gefressen, 'fressen war'n
Setzten sie sich nieder,
Bis nun dann der J'ger, J'ger kam,
Und schoss sie nieder, und schoss sie nieder,
Als sie sich nun angesammelt hatt'n
Und sich besannen,
Dass sie noch Leben, Leben hatt'n
Liefen sie von dannen. |
An Ode To The Hills | Archibald Lampman | 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.' - PSALM CXXI. 1.
'ons ago ye were,
Before the struggling changeful race of man
Wrought into being, ere the tragic stir
Of human toil and deep desire began:
So shall ye still remain,
Lords of an elder and immutable race,
When many a broad metropolis of the plain,
Or thronging port by some renown'd shore,
Is sunk in nameless ruin, and its place
Recalled no more.
Empires have come and gone,
And glorious cities fallen in their prime;
Divine, far-echoing, names once writ in stone
Have vanished in the dust and void of time;
But ye, firm-set, secure,
Like Treasure in the hardness of God's palm,
Are yet the same for ever; ye endure
By virtue of an old slow-ripening word,
In your grey majesty and sovereign calm,
Untouched, unstirred.
Tempest and thunderstroke,
With whirlwinds dipped in midnight at the core,
Have torn strange furrows through your forest cloak,
And made your hollow gorges clash and roar,
And scarred your brows in vain.
Around your barren heads and granite steeps
Tempestuous grey battalions of the rain
Charge and recharge, across the plateaued floors,
Drenching the serried pines; and the hail sweeps
Your pitiless scaurs.
The long midsummer heat
Chars the thin leafage of your rocks in fire:
Autumn with windy robe and ruinous feet
On your wide forests wreaks his fell desire,
Heaping in barbarous wreck
The treasure of your sweet and prosperous days;
And lastly the grim tyrant, at whose beck
Channels are turned to stone and tempests wheel,
On brow and breast and shining shoulder lays
His hand of steel.
And yet not harsh alone,
Nor wild, nor bitter are your destinies,
O fair and sweet, for all your heart of stone,
Who gather beauty round your Titan knees,
As the lens gathers light.
The dawn gleams rosy on your splendid brows,
The sun at noonday folds you in his might,
And swathes your forehead at his going down,
Last leaving, where he first in pride bestows,
His golden crown.
In unregarded glooms,
Where hardly shall a human footstep pass,
Myriads of ferns and soft maianthemums,
Or lily-breathing slender pyrolas
Distil their hearts for you.
Far in your pine-clad fastnesses ye keep
Coverts the lonely thrush shall wander through,
With echoes that seem ever to recede,
Touching from pine to pine, from steep to steep,
His ghostly reed.
The fierce things of the wild
Find food and shelter in your tenantless rocks,
The eagle on whose wings the dawn hath smiled,
The loon, the wild-cat, and the bright-eyed fox;
For far away indeed
Are all the ominous noises of mankind,
The slaughterer's malice and the trader's greed:
Your rugged haunts endure no slavery:
No treacherous hand is there to crush or bind,
But all are free.
Therefore out of the stir
Of cities and the ever-thickening press
The poet and the worn philosopher
To your bare peaks and radiant loneliness
Escape, and breathe once more
The wind of the Eternal: that clear mood,
Which Nature and the elder ages bore,
Lends them new courage and a second prime,
At rest upon the cool infinitude
Of Space and Time.
The mists of troublous days,
The horror of fierce hands and fraudful lips,
The blindness gathered in Life's aimless ways
Fade from them, and the kind Earth-spirit strips
The bandage from their eyes,
Touches their hearts and bids them feel and see;
Beauty and Knowledge with that rare apprise
Pour over them from some divine abode,
Falling as in a flood of memory,
The bliss of God.
I too perchance some day,
When Love and Life have fallen far apart,
Shall slip the yoke and seek your upward way
And make my dwelling in your changeless heart;
And there in some quiet glade,
Some virgin plot of turf, some innermost dell,
Pure with cool water and inviolate shade,
I'll build a blameless altar to the dear
And kindly gods who guard your haunts so well
From hurt or fear.
There I will dream day-long,
And honour them in many sacred ways,
With hush'd melody and uttered song,
And golden meditation and with praise.
I'll touch them with a prayer,
To clothe my spirit as your might is clad
With all things bountiful, divine, and fair,
Yet inwardly to make me hard and true,
Wide-seeing, passionless, immutably glad,
And strong like you. |
The Death Of 'none | Alfred Lord Tennyson | 'none sat within the cave from out
Whose ivy-matted mouth she used to gaze
Down at the Troad; but the goodly view
Was now one blank, and all the serpent vines
Which on the touch of heavenly feet had risen,
And gliding thro' the branches over-bower'd
The naked Three, were wither'd long ago,
And thro' the sunless winter morning-mist
In silence wept upon the flowerless earth.
And while she stared at those dead cords that ran
Dark thro' the mist, and linking tree to tree,
But once were gayer than a dawning sky
With many a pendent bell and fragrant star,
Her Past became her Present, and she saw
Him, climbing toward her with the golden fruit,
Him, happy to be chosen judge of Gods,
Her husband in the flush of youth and dawn,
Paris, himself as beauteous as a God.
Anon from out the long ravine below,
She heard a wailing cry, that seem'd at first
Thin as the bat like shrillings of the Dead
When driven to Hades, but, in coming near,
Across the downward thunder of the brook
Sounded ''none'; and on a sudden he,
Paris, no longer beauteous as a God,
Struck by a poison'd arrow in the fight,
Lame, crooked, reeling, livid, thro' the mist
Rose, like the wraith of his dead self, and moan'd
''none, my 'none, while we dwelt
Together in this valley'happy then'
Too happy had I died within thine arms,
Before the feud of Gods had marr'd our peace,
And sunder'd each from each. I am dying now
Pierced by a poison'd dart. Save me. Thou knowest,
Taught by some God, whatever herb or balm
May clear the blood from poison, and thy fame
Is blown thro' all the Troad, and to thee
The shepherd brings his adder-bitten lamb,
The wounded warrior climbs from Troy to thee.
My life and death are in thy hand. The Gods
Avenge on stony hearts a fruitless prayer
For pity. Let me owe my life to thee.
I wrought thee bitter wrong, but thou forgive,
Forget it. Man is but the slave of Fate.
'none, by thy love which once was mine,
Help, heal me. I am poison'd to the heart.'
'And I to mine' she said ' Adulterer,
Go back to thine adulteress and die!'
He groan'd, he turn'd, and in the mist at once
Became a shadow, sank and disappear'd,
But, ere the mountain rolls into the plain,
Fell headlong dead; and of the shepherds one
Their oldest, and the same who first had found
Paris, a naked babe, among the woods
Of Ida, following lighted on him there,
And shouted, and the shepherds heard and came.
One raised the Prince, one sleek'd the squalid hair,
One kiss'd his hand, another closed his eyes,
And then, remembering the gay playmate rear'd
Among them, and forgetful of the man,
Whose crime had half unpeopled Ilion, these
All that day long labour'd, hewing the pines,
And built their shepherd-prince a funeral pile;
And, while the star of eve was drawing light
From the dead sun, kindled the pyre, and all
Stood round it, hush'd, or calling on his name.
But when the white fog vanish'd like a ghost
Before the day, and every topmost pine
Spired into bluest heaven, still in her cave,
Amazed, and ever seeming stared upon
By ghastlier than the Gorgon head, a face,'
His face deform'd by lurid blotch and blain'
There, like a creature frozen to the heart
Beyond all hope of warmth, 'none sat
Not moving, till in front of that ravine
Which drowsed in gloom, self-darken'd from the west,
The sunset blazed along the wall of Troy.
Then her head sank, she slept, and thro' her dream
A ghostly murmur floated, 'Come to me,
'none! I can wrong thee now no more,
'none, my 'none,' and the dream
Wail'd in her, when she woke beneath the stars.
What star eould burn so low? not Ilion yet.
What light was there? She rose and slowly down,
By the long torrent's ever-deepen'd roar,
Paced, following, as in trance, the silent cry.
She waked a bird of prey that scream'd and past
She roused a snake that hissing writhed away;
A panther sprang across her path, she heard
The shriek of some lost life among the pines,
But when she gain'd the broader vale, and saw
The ring of faces redden'd by the flames
Enfolding that dark body which had lain
Of old in her embrace, paused'and then ask'd
Falteringly, 'Who lies on yonder pyre?'
But every man was mute for reverence.
Then moving quickly forward till the heat
Smote on her brow, she lifted up a voice
Of shrill command, 'Who burns upon the pyre?'
Whereon their oldest and their boldest said,
'He, whom thou wouldst not heal!' and all at once
The morning light of happy marriage broke
Thro' all the clouded years of widowhood,
And muffling up her comely head, and crying
'Husband!' she leapt upon the funeral pile,
And mixt herself with him and past in fire. |
To Thaliarchus. I-9 (From The Odes Of Horace) | Helen Leah Reed | You see how our Soracte now is standing
Hoary with heavy snow, and now its weight
To bear the struggling woods are hardly able,
And with the bitter cold the streams stagnate.
The cold melt thou away, oh, Thaliarchus,
By heaping logs upon thy fire, again
Replenishing, and from a Sabine flagon
Wine of a four years' vintage draw thou then.
Leave to the gods the rest; for at the moment
They felled the winds upon the boiling sea
That battled fiercely, then there was not stirring
Or mountain-ash, or ancient cypress tree.
Cease thou to ask what is to be to-morrow,
The day that Fortune gives, score thou as gain.
As when a boy, thou shalt not scorn love's sweetness,
Nor smoothly moving dancers shalt disdain
While crabbed age from thy fresh youth is distant.
Now in the Field and in the Public Square
All the soft whisperings that come at night-fall
Shall at the trysting be repeated there.
Now, too, the tempting laugh from a far corner
That must the maiden lurking there betray!
Also the pledge that she in feigned resistance,
Lets from her arm or hand be taken away!
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