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Page 186 of 1217

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Page 186 of 1217

Battle Days

I

Veteran memories rally to muster
Here at the call of the old battle days:
Cavalry clatter and cannon's hoarse bluster:
All the wild whirl of the fight's broken maze:
Clangor of bugle and flashing of sabre,
Smoke-stifled flags and the howl of the shell,
With earth for a rest place and death for a neighbor,
And dreams of a charge and the deep rebel yell.
Stern was our task in the field where the reaping
Spared the ripe harvest, but laid our men low:
Grim was the sorrow that held us from weeping:
Awful the rush of the strife's ebb and flow.
Swift came the silence - our enemy hiding
Sudden retreat in the cloud-muffled night:
Swift as a hawk-pounce our hill-and-dale riding;
Hundreds on hundreds we caught in their flight!
Hard and incessant the danger a...

George Parsons Lathrop

The Derelict

I was the staunchest of our fleet
Till the sea rose beneath my feet
Unheralded, in hatred past all measure.
Into his pits he stamped my crew,
Buffeted, blinded, bound and threw,
Bidding me eyeless wait upon his pleasure.

Man made me, and my will
Is to my maker still,
Whom now the currents con, the rollers steer,
Lifting forlorn to spy
Trailed smoke along the sky,
Falling afraid lest any keel come near!

Wrenched as the lips of thirst,
Wried, dried, and split and burst,
Bone-bleached my decks, wind-scoured to the graining;
And, jarred at every roll
The gear that was my soul
Answers the anguish of my beams' complaining.

For life that crammed me full,
Gangs of the prying gull
That shriek and scrabble on the riven hatches.

Rudyard

To A Politician

There was a moment when of you
A splendid hope I had to tell,
Believing "Here is one man who
Will serve our waiting country well."

I saw you sedulous and keen,
I heard the burning words you spoke.
It seemed that you were hard and clean,
And rapier sharp your every stroke.

Then came success, and in a night
An impish thing you stood apart,
All empty-handed for the fight,
With worse, alas! an empty heart.

Success had spoiled you, said your friends,
It was not so, for naught was there
To spoil but means to petty ends.
At last men saw you bleak and bare.

In those who give you grudging aid
These days, may we the spirits see
Who for the love of men would raid
The strongholds of iniquity?

Are these the heroes high and ...

Edward

To A Lady Who Presented The Author With The Velvet Band Which Bound Her Tresses.

1.

This Band, which bound thy yellow hair
Is mine, sweet girl! thy pledge of love;
It claims my warmest, dearest care,
Like relics left of saints above.


2.

Oh! I will wear it next my heart;
'Twill bind my soul in bonds to thee:
From me again 'twill ne'er depart,
But mingle in the grave with me.


3.

The dew I gather from thy lip
Is not so dear to me as this;
That I but for a moment sip,
And banquet on a transient bliss:


4.

This will recall each youthful scene,
E'en when our lives are on the wane;
The leaves of Love will still be green
When Memory bids them bud again.

George Gordon Byron

Testamentum Amoris

I cannot raise my eyelids up from sleep,
But I am visited with thoughts of you;
Slumber has no refreshment half so deep
As the sweet morn, that wakes my heart anew.

I cannot put away life's trivial care,
But you straightway steal on me with delight:
My purest moments are your mirror fair;
My deepest thought finds you the truth most bright.

You are the lovely regent of my mind,
The constant sky to my unresting sea;
Yet, since 'tis you that rule me, I but find
A finer freedom in such tyranny.

Were the world's anxious kingdoms govern'd so,
Lost were their wrongs, and vanish'd half their woe!

Robert Laurence Binyon

The Dreaming Wheel.

Down slant the moonbeams to the floor
Through the garret's scented air,
And show a thin-spoked spinning-wheel,
Standing ten years and more
Far from the hearth-stone's woe and weal, -
The ghost of a lost day's care!

And over the dreaming spinning-wheel,
That has not stirred so long,
The weaving spiders spin a veil,
A silvery shroud for its human zeal
And usefulness, with their fingers pale,
The shadowy lights among.

See! in the moonlight cold and gray
A thoughtful maiden stands;
And though she blames not overmuch
With her sweet lips the great world's way,
Yet sad and slow she stoops to touch
The still wheel with her hands.

"Forsaken wheel! when you first came
To clothe young hearts and old,
Our ancestors were glad to wear

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

The Burial Of The Scout.

                O not with arms reversed,
And the slow beating of the muffled drum,
And funeral marches, bring our hero home
These stormy woods where his young heart was nursed
Ring with a trumpet burst
Of jubilant music, as if he who lies
With shrouded face, and lips all white and dumb
Were a crowned conqueror entering paradise,--
This is his welcome home!

Along the reedy marge of the dim lake,
I hear the gathering horsemen of the North,
The cavalry of night and tempest wake,--
Blowing keen bugles as they issue forth,
To guard his homeward march in frost and cold,
A thousand spearmen bold!

And the deep-bosomed woods,
With their dishevelled locks all wil...

Kate Seymour Maclean

Sunset on the Mississippi.

O beautiful hills in the purple light,
That shadow the western sky,
I dream of you oft in the silent night,
As the golden days go by.

The river that flows at my longing feet
Is tinged with a deeper glow;
But the song that it sings is as sad to-day
As it was in the long ago.

The far-off clouds in the far-off sky
Are tinted with gold and red;
But the lesson they tell to the hearts of men
Is a lesson that never is said.

The star-crowned night in her sable plumes
Is veiling the eastern sky,
And she trails her robes in the dying fires
That far in the west do lie.

A single gem from her circlet old
Is lost as she wanders by,
And the beautiful star with its golden light
Shines out in the lo...

Fannie Isabelle Sherrick

Cloe Jealous

Forbear to ask Me, why I weep;
Vext Cloe to her Shepherd said:
'Tis for my Two poor stragling Sheep
Perhaps, or for my Squirrel dead.
For mind I what You late have writ?
Your subtle Questions, and Replies;
Emblems, to teach a Female Wit
The Ways, where changing Cupid flies.
Your Riddle, purpos'd to rehearse
The general Pow'r that Beauty has:
But why did no peculiar Verse
Describe one Charm of Cloe's Face?
The Glass, which was at Venus' Shrine,
With such Mysterious Sorrow laid:
The Garland (and You call it Mine)
Which show'd how Youth and Beauty fade.
Ten thousand Trifles light as These
Nor can my Rage, nor Anger move:
She shou'd be humble, who wou'd please:
And She must suffer, who can love.
When in My Glass I chanc'd to look;
Of Venus...

Matthew Prior

Come Up From The Fields, Father

Come up from the fields, father, here's a letter from our Pete;
And come to the front door, mother--here's a letter from thy dear son.

Lo, 'tis autumn;
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages, with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind;
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the trellis'd vines;
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat, where the bees were lately buzzing?)

Above all, lo, the sky, so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds;
Below, too, all calm, all vital and beautiful--and the farm prospers well.


Down in the fields all prospers well;
But now from the fields come, father--come at the daughter's call;
And come to the entry, ...

Walt Whitman

Fareweel, ye bughts

Fareweel, ye bughts, an' all your ewes,
An' fields whare bIoomin' heather grows;
Nae mair the sportin' lambs I'll see
Since my true love's forsaken me.


CHORUS.
Nae mair I'll hear wi' pleasure sing
The cheerfu' lav'rock in the Spring,
But sad in grief now I maun mourn,
Far, far frae her, o'er Logan-burn.


Alas! nae mair we'll meetings keep
At bughts, whan herds ca' in their sheep;
Nae mair amang the threshes green
We'll row, where we hae aften been.
CHORUS

Nae mair for me , ye vi'lets blaw,
Or lilies whiter than the snaw;
Nae mair your pleasures I can bear,
While I am absent frae my dear.
CHORUS

I ken the cause of my hard fate;
In courtin' her I was too blate;
I never kiss'd my las...

James Thomson

The Three Witches

All the moon-shed nights are over,
And the days of gray and dun;
There is neither may nor clover,
And the day and night are one.

Not an hamlet, not a city
Meets our strained and tearless eyes;
In the plain without a pity,
Where the wan grass droops and dies.

We shall wander through the meaning
Of a day and see no light,
For our lichened arms are leaning
On the ends of endless night.

We, the children of Astarte,
Dear abortions of the moon,
In a gay and silent party,
We are riding to you soon.

Burning ramparts, ever burning!
To the flame which never dies
We are yearning, yearning, yearning,
With our gay and tearless eyes.

In the plain without a pity,
(Not an hamlet, not a city)
Where the wan grass droop...

Ernest Christopher Dowson

The Offended Moon - (Twelve Translations From Charles Baudelaire)

    O moon, O lamp of hill and secret dale!
Thou whom our fathers, ages out of mind,
Worshipped in thy blue heaven, whilst behind
Thy stars streamed after thee a glittering trail,

Dost see the poet, weary-eyed and pale,
Or lovers on their happy beds reclined,
Showing white teeth in sleep, or vipers twined,
'Neath the dry sward; or in a golden veil

Stealest thou with faint footfall o'er the grass
As of old, to kiss from twilight unto dawn
The faded charms of thine Endymion?...

"O child of this sick century, I see
Thy grey-haired mother leering in her glass
And plastering the breast that suckled thee!"

John Collings Squire, Sir

Despair.

    We catch a glimpse of it, gaunt and gray,
When the golden sunbeams are all abroad;
We sober a moment, then softly say:
The world still lies in the hand of God.

We watch it stealthily creeping o'er
The threshold leading to somebody's soul;
A shadow, we cry, it cannot be more
When faith is one's portion and Heaven one's goal.

A ghost that comes stealing its way along,
Affrighting the weak with its gruesome air,
But who that is young and glad and strong
Fears for a moment to meet Despair?

To this heart of ours we have thought so bold
All uninvited it comes one day -
Lo! faith grows wan, and love grows cold,
And the heaven of our dreams lies far away.

Jean Blewett

Beauty Is Vain

While roses are so red,
While lilies are so white,
Shall a woman exalt her face
Because it gives delight?
She's not so sweet as a rose,
A lily's straighter than she,
And if she were as red or white
She'd be but one of three.

Whether she flush in love's summer
Or in its winter grow pale,
Whether she flaunt her beauty
Or hide it away in a veil,
Be she red or white,
And stand she erect or bowed,
Time will win the race he runs with her
And hide her away in a shroud.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Orpheus.

About the land I wander, all forlorn,
About the land, with sorrow-quenchèd eyes;
Seeking my love among the silent woods;
Seeking her by the fountains and the streams;
Calling her name unto lone mountain tops;
Sending it flying on the clouds to heaven.
I drop my tears amid the dews at morn;
I trouble all the night with prayers and sighs,
That, like a veil thick set with golden stars,
Hideth my woe, but cannot silence it;
Yet never more at morning, noon, or night,
Cometh there answer back, Eurydice,
Thy voice speaks never more, Eurydice;
O far, death-stricken, lost Eurydice!

Hear'st thou my weary cries, Eurydice?
Hearing, but answering not from out the past,
Wrapp'd in thy robe of everlasting light,
Round which the accents flutter faintingly,
Lik...

Walter R. Cassels

By That Lake, Whose Gloomy Shore.[1]

By that Lake, whose gloomy shore
Sky-lark never warbles o'er,[2]
Where the cliff hangs high and steep,
Young St. Kevin stole to sleep.
"Here, at least," he calmly said,
"Woman ne'er shall find my bed."
Ah! the good Saint little knew
What that wily sex can do."

'Twas from Kathleen's eyes he flew,--
Eyes of most unholy blue!
She had loved him well and long
Wished him hers, nor thought it wrong.
Wheresoe'er the Saint would fly,
Still he heard her light foot nigh;
East or west, where'er he turned,
Still her eyes before him burned.

On the bold cliff's bosom cast,
Tranquil now, he sleeps at last;
Dreams of heaven, nor thinks that e'er
Woman's smile can haunt him there.
But nor earth nor heaven is free,
From her power, ...

Thomas Moore

A Medley: Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead (The Princess)

Home they brought her warrior dead:
She nor swoon'd nor utter'd cry:
All her maidens, watching, said,
"She must weep or she will die."
Then they praised him, soft and low,
Call'd him worthy to be loved,
Truest friend and noblest foe;
Yet she neither spoke nor moved.
Stole a maiden from her place,
Lightly to the warrior stepped,
Took the face-cloth from the face;
Yet she neither moved nor wept.

Rose a nurse of ninety years,
Set his child upon her knee--
Like summer tempest came her tears--
"Sweet my child, I live for thee."

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Page 186 of 1217

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Page 186 of 1217