Courage

Here I have heard on hills the battle clash
Roar to the windy sea that roared again:
When, drunk with wrath, upon the clanking plain
Barbaric kings did meet in war and dash
Their mailéd thousands down, heard onset crash
Like crags contending 'gainst the battering main.
Torrents of helms, beaming like streams of rain,
Blue-billowing 'neath the pale moon's fitful flash;
Saw the scared moon hang over the black wood
Like a pale wreath of foam; shields, spears, and swords
Shoot green as meteors thro' the steely flood,
Or shine like ripples 'round their heathen lords
Standing like stubborn rocks, whence the wild wave
Of war circled in steel and foamed out brave on brave.

Many a day and night my bark stood ready laden;
Waiting fav'ring winds, I sat with true friends round me,
Pledging me to patience and to courage,
In the haven.

And they spoke thus with impatience twofold:
"Gladly pray we for thy rapid passage,
Gladly for thy happy voyage; fortune
In the distant world is waiting for thee,
In our arms thoult find thy prize, and love too,
When returning."

And when morning came, arose an uproar,
And the sailors' joyous shouts awoke us;
All was stirring, all was living, moving,
Bent on sailing with the first kind zephyr.

And the sails soon in the breeze are swelling,
And the sun with fiery love invites us;
Fill'd the sails are, clouds on high are floating,
On the shore each friend exulting raises
Songs o...

    No warrior he, a village lad,
            needing nor words nor other prod
    To point his duty; he was glad
            to tread the path his fathers trod.
    Week days he worked in wood and field;
            with homely joys he decked his life;
    The sword of hate he would not wield,
            nor take a part in cankering strife.
    On Sunday in the little choir
            he sang of Peace and brotherly love,
    And as his thoughts soared higher and higher,
            they reached unmeasured heights above.

    A cry for Freedom rent the Land -
            "Our Country calls, come, come, 'tis War;
    Together let us firmly stand;"
            he answered, though his heart beat sore
    At leaving home, and kin, and one
            i...

You in the flesh and here,
Your very self! Now, wait!
One word! May I hope or fear?
Must I speak in love or hate?
Stay while I ruminate!

The fact and each circumstance
Dare you disown? Not you!
That vast dome, that huge dance,
And the gloom which overgrew
A possibly festive crew!

For why should men dance at all
Why women a crowd of both
Unless they are gay? Strange ball
Hands and feet plighting troth,
Yet partners enforced and loth!

Of who danced there, no shape
Did I recognize: thwart, perverse,
Each grasped each, past escape
In a whirl or weary or worse:
Man’s sneer met woman’s curse,

While he and she toiled as if
Their guardian set galley-slaves
To supple chained limbs grown stiff:
Unmanacled trulls...

Hide me, Mother! my Fathers belong’d to the church of old,
I am driven by storm and sin and death to the ancient fold,
I cling to the Catholic Cross once more, to the Faith that saves,
My brain is full of the crash of wrecks, and the roar of waves,
My life itself is a wreck, I have sullied a noble name,
I am flung from the rushing tide of the world as a waif of shame,
I am roused by the wail of a child, and awake to a livid light,
And a ghastlier face than ever has haunted a grave by night,
I would hide from the storm without, I would flee from the storm within,
I would make my life one prayer for a soul that died in his sin,
I was the tempter, Mother, and mine was the deeper fall;
I will sit at your feet, I will hide my face, I will tell you all.

II.
He that they gave...

When storms arise
And dark'ning skies
About me threat'ning lower,
To thee, O Lord, I raise mine eyes,
To thee my tortured spirit flies
For solace in that hour.

The mighty arm
Will let no harm
Come near me nor befall me;
Thy voice shall quiet my alarm,
When life's great battle waxeth warm--
No foeman shall appall me.

Upon thy breast
Secure I rest,
From sorrow and vexation;
No more by sinful cares oppressed,
But in thy presence ever blest,
O God of my salvation.

Let us go in: the air is dank and chill
With dewy midnight, and the moon rides high
O'er ghostly fields, pale stream, and spectral hill.


This hour the dawn seems farthest from the sky
So weary long the space that lies between
That sacred joy and this dark mystery


Of earth and heaven: no glimmering is seen,
In the star-sprinkled east, of coming day,
Nor, westward, of the splendor that hath been.


Strange fears beset us, nameless terrors sway
The brooding soul, that hungers for her rest,
Out worn with changing moods, vain hopes' delay,


With conscious thought o'erburdened and oppressed.
The mystery and the shadow wax too deep;
She longs to merge both sense and thought in sleep.

My dryad hath her hiding place
Among ten thousand trees.
    She flies to cover
    At step of a lover,
And where to find her lovely face
Only the woodland bees
    Ever discover,
Bringing her honey
From meadows sunny,
    Cowslip and clover.

Vainly on beech and oak I knock
Amid the silent boughs;
    Then hear her laughter,
    The moment after,
Making of me her laughing-stock
Within her hidden house.

The young moon with her wand of pearl
Taps on her hidden door,
    Bids her beauty flower
    In that woodland bower,
All white like a mortal girl,
With moonshine hallowed o'er.

Yet were there thrice ten thousand trees
To hide her face from me,
    Not all her fleeing
    Should 'scape my seeing,

At the time when the stars are grey,
And the gold of the molten moon
Fades, and the twilight is thinned,
And the sun leaps up, and the wind,
A light rose, not of the day,
A stronger light than of noon.

As the light of a face much loved
Was the face of the light that clomb;
As a mother’s whitened with woes
Her adorable head that arose;
As the sound of a God that is moved,
Her voice went forth upon Rome.

At her lips it fluttered and failed
Twice, and sobbed into song,
And sank as a flame sinks under;
Then spake, and the speech was thunder,
And the cheek as he heard it paled
Of the wrongdoer grown grey with the wrong.

“Is it time, is it time appointed,
Angel of time, is it near?
For the spent night aches into day
When th...

Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o’er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!    
But there’s a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne;
Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,
And turn those limpid eyes on mine,    
And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul.

Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?        
I knew the mass of men conceal’d
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal’d
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reprov’d;
I knew they ...

A bugler boy from barrack (it is over the hill
There) - boy bugler, born, he tells me, of Irish
Mother to an English sire (he
Shares their best gifts surely, fall how things will),

This very very day came down to us after a boon he on
My late being there begged of me, overflowing
Boon in my bestowing,
Came, I say, this day to it - to a First Communion.

Here he knelt then ín regimental red.
Forth Christ from cupboard fetched, how fain I of feet
To his youngster take his treat!
Low-latched in leaf-light housel his too huge godhead.

There! and your sweetest sendings, ah divine,
By it, heavens, befall him! as a heart Christ's darling, dauntless;
Tongue true, vaunt- and tauntless;
Breathing bloom of a chastity in mansex fine.

Frowning and fo...

Sir, since the last Elizabethan died,
Or, rather, that more Paradisal muse,
Blind with much light, passed to the light more glorious
Or deeper blindness, no man's hand, as thine,
Has, on the world's most noblest chord of song,
Struck certain magic strains. Ears satiate
With the clamorous, timorous whisperings of to-day,
Thrilled to perceive once more the spacious voice
And serene utterance of old. We heard
    With rapturous breath half-held, as a dreamer dreams
Who dares not know it dreaming, lest he wake
The odorous, amorous style of poetry,
The melancholy knocking of those lines,
The long, low soughing of pentameters,
    Or the sharp of rhyme as a bird's cry
And the innumerable truant polysyllables
Multitudinously twittering like a bee.
Fulfilled our ...

Strike hands, young men!
We know not when
Death or disaster comes,
Mightier than battle-drums
To summon us away.
Death bids us say farewell
To all we love, nor stay
For tears; - and who can tell
How soon misfortune's hand
May smite us where we stand,
Dragging us down, aloof,
Under the swift world's hoof?

Strike hands for faith, and power
To gladden the passing hour;
To wield the sword, or raise a song; -
To press the grape; or crush out wrong.
And strengthen right.
Give me the man of sturdy palm
And vigorous brain;
Hearty, companionable, sane,
'Mid all commotions calm,
Yet filled with quick, enthusiastic fire; -
Give me the man
Whose impulses aspire,
And all his features seem to say, "I can!"

Strike hand...

It happened thus: my slab, though new,
Was getting weather-stained, beside,
Herbage, balm, peppermint, o’ergrew
Letter and letter: till you tried
Somewhat, the Name was scarce descried.

That strong stern man my lover came:
Was he my lover? Call him, pray,
My life’s cold critic bent on blame
Of all poor I could do or say
To make me worth his love one day,

One far day when, by diligent
And dutiful amending faults,
Foibles, all weaknesses which went
To challenge and excuse assaults
Of culture wronged by taste that halts,

Discrepancies should mar no plan
Symmetric of the qualities
Claiming respect from, say, a man
That’s strong and stem. “Once more he pries
Into me with those critic eyes!”

No question! so, “Conclude, con...

    When the low heavy sky weighs like a lid
        Upon the spirit aching for the light
    And all the wide horizon's line is hid
        By a black day sadder than any night;

    When the changed earth is but a dungeon dank
        Where batlike Hope goes blindly fluttering
    And, striking wall and roof and mouldered plank,
        Bruises his tender head and timid wing;

    When like grim prison-bars stretch down the thin,
        Straight, rigid pillars of the endless rain,
    And the dumb throngs of infamous spiders spin
        Their meshes in the caverns of the brain;,

    Suddenly, bells leap forth into the air,
        Hurling a hideous uproar to the sky
    As 'twere a band of homeless spirits who fare
        Through the strange he...

The lioness had lost her young;
A hunter stole it from the vale;
The forests and the mountains rung
Responsive to her hideous wail.
Nor night, nor charms of sweet repose,
Could still the loud lament that rose
From that grim forest queen.
No animal, as you might think,
With such a noise could sleep a wink.
A bear presumed to intervene.
'One word, sweet friend,' quoth she,
'And that is all, from me.
The young that through your teeth have pass'd,
In file unbroken by a fast,
Had they nor dam nor sire?'
'They had them both.' 'Then I desire,
Since all their deaths caused no such grievous riot,
While mothers died of grief beneath your fiat,
To know why you yourself cannot be quiet?'
'I quiet! - I! - a wretch bereaved!
My only son! - such anguish b...

"Emam tua carmina sanus?"--MARTIAL.

F.    OF H. I want a verse. It gives you little pains;--
You just sit down, and draw upon your brains.

Come, now, be amiable.

R.    To hear you talk,
You'd make it easier to fly than walk.
You seem to think that rhyming is a thing
You can produce if you but touch a spring;

That fancy, fervour, passion--and what not,

Are just a case of "penny in the slot."
You should reflect that no evasive bird
Is half so shy as is your fittest word;
And even similes, however wrought,
Like hares, before you cook them, must be caught;--

Impromptus, too, require elaboration,
And (unlike eggs) grow fresh by incubation;
Then,--as to epigrams,..

F. of H.    Nay, nay, I've done.
I did but make pe...

CONNAL,    CRIMORA,

CRIMORA.

Who cometh from the hill, like
a cloud tinged with the beam
of the west? Whose voice is that, loud
as the wind, but pleasant as the harp of
Carryl? It is my love in the light of
steel; but sad is his darkened brow.
Live the mighty race of Fingal? or
what disturbs my Connal?

CONNAL.

They live. I saw them return from
the chace, like a stream of light. The
sun was on their shields: In a line they
descended the hill. Loud is the voice of
the youth; the war, my love, is near.
To-morrow the enormous Dargo comes
to try the force of our race. The race of
Fingal he defies; the race of battle and
wounds.

CRIMORA.
Connal, I saw his sails like grey mist
on the sable wave. They came to...