Courage

To this city joy reveal it!

Peace as its first signal peal it!

(Song of the Bell concluding lines.)

And so it proved! The nation felt, ere long,

That peaceful signal, and, with blessings fraught,
A new-born joy appear'd; in gladsome song

To hail the youthful princely pair we sought;
While in a living, ever-swelling throng

Mingled the crowds from ev'ry region brought,
And on the stage, in festal pomp array'd
The HOMAGE OF THE ARTS * we saw displayed.

(* The title of a lyric piece composed by Schiller in honour of
the marriage of the hereditary Prince of Weimar to the Princess
Maria of Russia, and performed in 1804.)

When, lo! a fearful midnight sound I hear,

That with a dull and mournful echo rings.
And can ...

I.

Floating!
Floating--and all the stillness waits
And listens at the ivory gates,
Full of a dim uncertain presage
Of some strange, undelivered message.
There is no sound save from the bush
The alto of the shy wood-thrush,
And ever and anon the dip
Of a lazy oar.

The rhythmic drowsiness keeps time
To hazy subtleties of rhyme
That seem to slip
Through the lulled soul to seek the sleepy shore.
The idle clouds go floating by;
Above us sky, beneath us sky;
The sun shines on us as we lie
Floating.

It is a dream.
It is a dream, my love; see how
The ripples quiver at the prow,
And all the long reflections shake
Unsteadily beneath the lake.
The mists about the uplands show
Dim violet towers that come and go.

These winter days on Lettermore
The brown west wind it sweeps the bay,
And icy rain beats on the bare
Unhomely fields that perish there:
The stony fields of Lettermore
That drink the white Atlantic spray.

And men who starve on Lettermore,
Cursing the haggard, hungry surf,
Will souse the autumn's bruiséd grains
To light dark fires within their brains
And fight with stones on Lettermore
Or sprawl beside the smoky turf.

When spring blows over Lettermore
To bloom the ragged furze with gold,
The lovely south wind's living breath
Is laden with the smell of death:
For fever breeds on Lettermore
To waste the eyes of young and old.

A black van comes to Lettermore;
The horses stumble on the stones,
The drivers curse, - for it is har...

A Lion, old, and impotent with gout,
Would have some cure for age found out.
This king, from every species, -
Call'd to his aid the leeches.
They came, from quacks without degree
To doctors of the highest fee.
Advised, prescribed, talk'd learnedly;
But with the rest
Came not Sir Cunning Fox, M.D.
Sir Wolf the royal couch attended,
And his suspicions there express'd.
Forthwith his majesty, offended,
Resolved Sir Cunning Fox should come,
And sent to smoke him from his home.
He came, was duly usher'd in,
And, knowing where Sir Wolf had been,
Said, "Sire, abused your royal ear
Has been by rumours insincere;
To wit, that I've been self-exempt
From coming here, through sheer contempt.
But, sire, your royal health to aid,
I vow'd to make a pi...

[1]


Tell me, why, my sweetest dove,
Thus your humid pinions move,
Shedding through the air in showers
Essence of the balmiest flowers?
Tell me whither, whence you rove,
Tell me all, my sweetest dove.

Curious stranger, I belong
To the bard of Teian song;
With his mandate now I fly
To the nymph of azure eye;--
She, whose eye has maddened many,
But the poet more than any,
Venus, for a hymn of love,
Warbled in her votive grove,[2]
('Twas, in sooth a gentle lay,)
Gave me to the bard away.
See me now his faithful minion,--
Thus with softly-gliding pinion,
To his lovely girl I bear
Songs of passion through the air.
Oft he blandly whispers me,
"Soon, my bird, I'll set you free."
But in vain he'...

1.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies...

[Written for a picture]


    The Youth speaks: -
    "Why do you seek the sun
    In your bubble-crown ascending?
    Your chariot will melt to mist.
    Your crown will have an ending."

    The Goddess replies: -
    "Nay, sun is but a bubble,
    Earth is a whiff of foam -
    To my caves on the coast of Thule
    Each night I call them home.
    Thence Faiths blow forth to angels
    And loves blow forth to men -
    They break and turn to nothing
    And I make them whole again.
    On the crested waves of chaos
    I ride them back reborn:
    New stars I bring at evening
    For those that burst at morn:
    My soul is the wind of Thule
    And evening is the sign -
    The sun is but a bubble,
    A fragile...

I


When all the world was Mayday,
And all the skies were blue,
Young innocence made playday
Among the flowers and dew;
Then all of life was Mayday,
And clouds were none or few.


II


When all the world was Summer,
And morn shone overhead,
Love was the sweet newcomer
Who led youth forth to wed;
Then all of life was Summer,
And clouds were golden red.


III


When earth was all October,
And days were gray with mist,
On woodways, sad and sober,
Grave memory kept her tryst;
Then life was all October,
And clouds were twilight-kissed.


IV


Now all the world's December,
And night is all alarm,
Above the last dim ember
Grief bends to keep him warm;

Only one old post is standing,
Solid yet, but only one,
Where the milking, and the branding,
And the slaughtering were done.
Later years have brought dejection,
Care, and sorrow; but we knew
Happy days on that selection
Underneath old Bukaroo.

Then the light of day commencing
Found us at the gully's head,
Splitting timber for the fencing,
Stripping bark to roof the shed.
Hands and hearts the labour strengthened;
Weariness we never knew,
Even when the shadows lengthened
Round the base of Bukaroo.

There for days below the paddock
How the wilderness would yield
To the spade, and pick, and mattock,
While we toiled to win the field.
Bronzed hands we used to sully
Till they were of darkest hue,
`Burning off' down in the gull...

[From Arthur Selwyn's Note-book.]

        Through these broad streets do I fly -
        Furlongs and miles I defy,
        Till the "magnificent distance"
        Vanishes out of existence.
        Let me with pencil prolong
        Strains of the Bicycler's Song:


[The Silent Wheel.]

    Good-morning, good Pedestrian - I'm glad to see you out;
    The day is full of healthfulness, the birds are all about;
    There is a quiet breeziness in all the pleasant air -
    I hope this happy exercise will drive away your care.
                                    For I am a pedestrian -
                                    A very good pedestrian -
    And all the glowing benefit of walking I can share;
    Although I tread the atmosphere, and ...

BEING AN EXCELLENT NEW SONG UPON THE SURRENDER OF DUNKIRK TO GENERAL HILL
1712

To the tune of "The King shall enjoy his own again."

Spite of Dutch friends and English foes,
Poor Britain shall have peace at last:
Holland got towns, and we got blows;
    But Dunkirk's ours, we'll hold it fast.
        We have got it in a string,
        And the Whigs may all go swing,
For among good friends I love to be plain;
        All their false deluded hopes
        Will, or ought to end in ropes;
"But the Queen shall enjoy her own again."

Sunderland’s run out of his wits,
    And Dismal double Dismal looks;
Wharton can only swear by fits,
    And strutting Hal is off the hooks;
        Old Godolphin, full of spleen,
        Made false moves, an...

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad, --
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless, as they swim.

I laid my inventory at the hand
Of Death, who in his gloomy arbour sate;
And while he conned it, sweet and desolate
I heard Love singing in that quiet land.
He read the record even to the end -
The heedless, livelong injuries of Fate,
The burden of foe, the burden of love and hate;
The wounds of foe, the bitter wounds of friend:

All, all, he read, ay, even the indifference,
The vain talk, vainer silence, hope and dream.
He questioned me: "What seek'st thou then instead?"
I bowed my face in the pale evening gleam.
Then gazed he on me with strange innocence:
"Even in the grave thou wilt have thyself," he said.

Out of work and out of money,out of friends that means, you bet,
Out of firewood, togs and tucker, out of everything but debt,
And I loathe the barren pavements, and the crowds a fellow meets,
And the maddening repetition of the suffocating streets.

With their stinks my soul is tainted, and the tang is on my tongue
Of that sour and smoky suburb and the push we’re thrown among,
And I sicken at the corners polished free of paint and mirk
By the shoulders of the men who’re always hanging round for work.

Home,good Lord! a three-roomed hovel ’twixt a puddle and a drain,
In harmonious connection on the left with Liver Lane,
Where a crippled man is dying, and a horde of children fight,
And a woman in the horrors howls remorsefully at night.

It has stables close behind ...

In youth’s spring, it was my lot
To haunt of the wide earth a spot
The which I could not love the less;
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound.
And the tall pines that tower’d around.
But when the night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the wind would pass me by
In its stilly melody,
My infant spirit would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.
Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight,
And a feeling undefin’d,
Springing from a darken’d mind.
Death was in that poison’d wave
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his dark imagining;
Whose wild’ring thought could even make
An Eden of that dim lake

"Take with all my heart, friend, this,
    The labour of my past,
Though the heart here hidden is
And the soul's eternities
    Hold the present fast.

"Take it, still, with soul and heart,
    Pledge of that dear day
When the shadows stir and start,
By the bright Sun burst apart -
    Young Australia!"

I

This is the Month, and this the happy morn
Wherin the Son of Heav'ns eternal King,
Of wedded Maid, and Virgin Mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That he our deadly forfeit should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.

II

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty,
Wherwith he wont at Heav'ns high Councel-Table,
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside; and here with us to be,
Forsook the Courts of everlasting Day,
And chose with us a darksom House of mortal Clay.

III

Say Heav'nly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no vers, no hymn, or solemn strein,

Of all the Kings that euer here did raigne,
Edward, nam'd fourth, as first in praise I name:
Not for his faire outside, nor well-lin'd braine,
Although lesse gifts impe feathers oft on fame.
Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame
His sires reuenge, ioyn'd with a kingdomes gaine;
And gain'd by Mars, could yet mad Mars so tame,
That balance weigh'd, what sword did late obtaine.
Nor that he made the floure-de-luce so 'fraid,
(Though strongly hedg'd) of bloudy lyons pawes,
That wittie Lewes to him a tribute paid:
Nor this, nor that, nor any such small cause;
But only for this worthy King durst proue
To lose his crowne, rather than faile his loue.