Courage

Raise the light, my page! that I may see her.
Thou art come at last, then, haughty Queen!
Long I’ve waited, long I’ve fought my fever;
Late thou comest, cruel thou hast been.

Iseult

Blame me not, poor sufferer! that I tarried;
Bound I was, I could not break the band.
Chide not with the past, but feel the present!
I am here we meet I hold thy hand.

Tristram

Thou art come, indeed thou hast rejoin’d me;
Thou hast dared it but too late to save.
Fear not now that men should tax thine honour!
I am dying: build (thou may’st) my grave!

Iseult

Tristram, ah, for love of Heaven, speak kindly!
What, I hear these bitter words from thee?
Sick with grief I am, and faint with travel
Take my hand dear Tristram, look on me!

Not asking or expecting aught,
    One day I went to view the court,
Unbent and free from care or thought,
    Though thither fears and hopes resort.

A piece of tapestry took my eye,
    The faded colours spoke it old;
But wrought with curious imagery,
    The figures lively seem'd and bold.

Here you might see the youth prevail,
    (In vain are eloquence and wit,)
The boy persists, Apollo's frail;
    Wisdom to nature does submit.

There mounts the eager charioteer;
    Soon from his seat he's downward hurl'd;
Here Jove in anger doth appear,
    There all, beneath, the flaming world.

What does this idle fiction mean?
    Is truth at court in such disgrace,
It may not on the walls be seen,
    Nor e'en in picture show its ...

Far in the east the rain-clouds sweep and harry,
Down the long haggard hills, formless and low,
Far in the west the shell-tints meet and marry,
Piled gray and tender blue and roseate snow;
East - like a fiend, the bolt-breasted, streaming
Storm strikes the world with lightning and with hail;
West - like the thought of a seraph that is dreaming,
Venus leads the young moon down the vale.

Through the lake furrow between the gloom and bright'ning
Firm runs our long canoe with a whistling rush,
While Potàn the wise and the cunning Silver Lightning
Break with their slender blades the long clear hush;
Soon shall I pitch my tent amid the birches,
Wise Potàn shall gather boughs of balsam fir,
While for bark and dry wood Silver Lightning searches;
Soon the smoke shall ...

(For A. K. K.)



What distant mountains thrill and glow
    Beneath our Lady Folly's tread?
Why has she left us, wise in woe,
    Shrewd, practical, uncomforted?
We cannot love or dream or sing,
    We are too cynical to pray,
There is no joy in anything
    Since Lady Folly went away.

Many a knight and gentle maid,
    Whose glory shines from years gone by,
Through ignorance was unafraid
    And as a fool knew how to die.
Saint Folly rode beside Jehanne
    And broke the ranks of Hell with her,
And Folly's smile shone brightly on
    Christ's plaything, Brother Juniper.

Our minds are troubled and defiled
    By study in a weary school.
O for the folly of the child!
    The ready courage of the fool!
Lord, c...

I have read, in some old marvellous tale,
    Some legend strange and vague,
That a midnight host of spectres pale
    Beleaguered the walls of Prague.

Beside the Moldau's rushing stream,
    With the wan moon overhead,
There stood, as in an awful dream,
    The army of the dead.

White as a sea-fog, landward bound,
    The spectral camp was seen,
And with a sorrowful, deep sound,
    The river flowed between.

No other voice nor sound was there,
    No drum, nor sentry's pace;
The mist-like banners clasped the air,
    As clouds with clouds embrace.

But, when the old cathedral bell
    Proclaimed the morning prayer,
The white pavilions rose and fell
    On the alarmed air.

Down the broad valley fast and far

Not premeditated

1853

The clock has struck noon; ere it thrice tell the hours
We shall meet round the table that blushes with flowers,
And I shall blush deeper with shame-driven blood
That I came to the banquet and brought not a bud.

Who cares that his verse is a beggar in art
If you see through its rags the full throb of his heart?
Who asks if his comrade is battered and tanned
When he feels his warm soul in the clasp of his hand?

No! be it an epic, or be it a line,
The Boys will all love it because it is mine;
I sung their last song on the morn of the day
That tore from their lives the last blossom of May.

It is not the sunset that glows in the wine,
But the smile that beams over it, makes it divine;
I scatter these drops, and b...

A brother wandered forth with me,
Beside a barren beach:
He harped on things beyond the sea,
And out of reach.

He hinted once of unknown skies,
And then I would not hark,
But turned away from steadfast eyes,
Into the dark.

And said “an ancient faith is dead
And wonder fills my mind:
I marvel how the blind have led
So long the blind.

“Behold this truth we only know
That night is on the land!
And we a weary way must go
To find God’s hand.”

I wept “Our fathers told us, Lord,
That Thou wert kind and just,
But lo! our wailings fly abroad
For broken trust.

“How many evil ones are here
Who mocking go about,
Because we are too faint with fear
To wrestle Doubt!

“Thy riddles are beyond the ken

In these rapid, restless shadows,
Once I walked at eventide,
When a gentle, silent maiden,
Walked in beauty at my side
She alone there walked beside me
All in beauty, like a bride.

Pallidly the moon was shining
On the dewy meadows nigh;
On the silvery, silent rivers,
On the mountains far and high
On the ocean’s star-lit waters,
Where the winds a-weary die.

Slowly, silently we wandered
From the open cottage door,
Underneath the elm’s long branches
To the pavement bending o’er;
Underneath the mossy willow
And the dying sycamore.

With the myriad stars in beauty
All bedight, the heavens were seen,
Radiant hopes were bright around me,
Like the light of stars serene;
Like the mellow midnight splendor
Of the Night’...

As our mother the Frigate, bepainted and fine,
Made play for her bully the Ship of the Line;
So we, her bold daughters by iron and fire,
Accost and decoy to our masters' desire.

Now, pray you, consider what toils we endure,
Night-walking wet sea-lanes, a guard and a lure;
Since half of our trade is that same pretty sort
As mettlesome wenches do practise in port.

For this is our office to spy and make room,
As hiding yet guiding the foe to their doom;
Surrounding, confounding, we bait and betray
And tempt them to battle the seas' width away.

The pot-bellied merchant foreboding no wrong
With headlight and sidelight he lieth along,
Till, lightless and lightfoot and lurking, leap we
To force him discover his business by sea.

And when we hav...

It is a pity and a shame - alas! alas! I know it is,
To tread the trodden grapes again, but so it has been, so it is;
The purple vintage long is past, with ripened clusters bursting so
They filled the wine-vats to the brim,-'t is strange you will be thirsting so!

Too well our faithful memory tells what might be rhymed or sung about,
For all have sighed and some have wept since last year's snows were flung about;
The beacon flame that fired the sky, the modest ray that gladdened us,
A little breath has quenched their light, and deepening shades have saddened us.

No more our brother's life is ours for cheering or for grieving us,
One only sadness they bequeathed, the sorrow of their leaving us;
Farewell! Farewell! - I turn the leaf I read my chiming measure in;
Who knows but...

Long since, in sore distress, I heard one pray,
"Lord, who prevailest with resistless might,
Ever from war and strife keep me away,
My battles fight!"

I know not if I play the Pharisee,
And if my brother after all be right;
But mine shall be the warrior's plea to thee--
Strength for the fight.

I do not ask that thou shalt front the fray,
And drive the warring foeman from my sight;
I only ask, O Lord, by night, by day,
Strength for the fight!

When foes upon me press, let me not quail
Nor think to turn me into coward flight.
I only ask, to make mine arms prevail,
Strength for the fight!

Still let mine eyes look ever on the foe,
Still let mine armor case me strong and bright;
And grant me, as I deal each righteous blow,
Stre...

It may be, yes, it must be, Time that brings
An end to mortal things,
That sends the beggar Winter in the train
Of Autumn's burdened wain, -
Time, that is heir of all our earthly state,
And knoweth well to wait
Till sea hath turned to shore and shore to sea,
If so it need must be,
Ere he make good his claim and call his own
Old empires overthrown, -
Time, who can find no heavenly orb too large
To hold its fee in charge,
Nor any motes that fill its beam so small,
But he shall care for all, -
It may be, must be, - yes, he soon shall tire
This hand that holds the lyre.

Then ye who listened in that earlier day
When to my careless lay
I matched its chords and stole their first-born thrill,
With untaught rudest skill
Vexing a treble from th...

The rocky ledge runs far into the sea,
    And on its outer point, some miles away,
The Lighthouse lifts its massive masonry,
    A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day.

Even at this distance I can see the tides,
    Upheaving, break unheard along its base,
A speechless wrath, that rises and subsides
    In the white lip and tremor of the face.

And as the evening darkens, lo! how bright,
    Through the deep purple of the twilight air,
Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light
    With strange, unearthly splendor in the glare!

Not one alone; from each projecting cape
    And perilous reef along the ocean's verge,
Starts into life a dim, gigantic shape,
    Holding its lantern o'er the restless surge.

Like the great giant Christop...

Part V

Winter

We, whom God sets a task,
    Striving, who ne'er attain,
We are the curst! - who ask
    Death, and still ask in vain.
We, whom God sets a task.


1

In the silence of his room. After many days.

All, all are shadows. All must pass
As writing in the sand or sea;
Reflections in a looking-glass
Are not less permanent than we.

The days that mould us - what are they?
That break us on their whirling wheel?
What but the potters! we the clay
They fashion and yet leave unreal.

Linked through the ages, one and all,
In long anthropomorphous chain,
The human and the animal
Inseparably must remain.

Within us still the monster shape
That shrieked in air and howled i...

(For Jack)


In a little ship and down the bay,
Out to the calling sea,
A young brave lad sailed off today,
To the one great war went he:
The one long war all men must know
Greater than land or gold,
Soul is the prince and flesh the foe
Of a kingdom Christ will hold.

With arms of faith and hope well-wrought
The brave lad went away,
And the voice of Christ fills all his thought,
Under two hands that pray:
The tender love of a mother's hands
That guarded all his years,
Fitted the armor, plate and bands,
And blessed them with her tears.


Older than Rhodes and Ascalon
And the farthest forts of sea,
Is the Master voice that calls him on
From the hills in Galilee:
From hills where Christ in gentle guise
Called...

Not Atlas, with his shoulders bent beneath the weighty world,
Bore such a burden as this man, on whom the Gods have hurled
The evils of old festering lands - yea, hurled them in their might
And left him standing all alone, to set the wrong things right.

It is the way the Fates have done since first Time's race began!
They open up Pandora's box before some chosen man;
And then, aloof, they wait and watch, to see if he will find
And wake the slumbering God that dwells in every mortal's mind.

Erect, our modern Atlas stands, with brave uplifted head,
And there is courage in his eyes, if in his heart be dread.
Not dread of foes, but dread of friends, who may not pull together,
To bring the lurching ship of State safe through the stormy weather.

Oh, never were there w...

My books are on their shelves again
And clouds lie low with mist and rain.
Afar the Arno murmurs low
The tale of fields of melting snow.
List to the bells of times agone
The while I wait me for the dawn.

Beneath great Giotto's Campanile
The gray ghosts throng; their whispers steal
From poets' bosoms long since dust;
They ask me now to go. I trust
Their fleeter footsteps where again
They come at night and live as men.

The rain falls on Ghiberti's gates;
The big drops hang on purple dates;
And yet beneath the ilex-shades--
Dear trysting-place for boys and maids--
There comes a form from days of old,
With Beatrice's hair of gold.

The breath of lands or lilied streams
Floats through the fabric of my dreams;
And yonder from the...

I think if you had loved me when I wanted;
If I'd looked up one day, and seen your eyes,
And found my wild sick blasphemous prayer granted,
And your brown face, that's full of pity and wise,
Flushed suddenly; the white godhead in new fear
Intolerably so struggling, and so shamed;
Most holy and far, if you'd come all too near,
If earth had seen Earth's lordliest wild limbs tamed,
Shaken, and trapped, and shivering, for MY touch,
Myself should I have slain? or that foul you?
But this the strange gods, who had given so much,
To have seen and known you, this they might not do.
One last shame's spared me, one black word's unspoken;
And I'm alone; and you have not awoken.