Courage

[1]

'What! shall I lose them one by one,
This stupid coward throng?
And never shall the wolf have done?
They were at least a thousand strong,
But still they've let poor Robin[2] fall a prey!
Ah, woe's the day!
Poor Robin Wether lying dead!
He follow'd for a bit of bread
His master through the crowded city,
And would have follow'd, had he led,
Around the world. O! what a pity!
My pipe, and even step, he knew;
To meet me when I came, he flew;
In hedge-row shade we napp'd together;
Alas, alas, my Robin Wether!'
When Willy thus had duly said
His eulogy upon the dead
And unto everlasting fame
Consign'd poor Robin Wether's name,
He then harangued the flock at large,
From proud old chieftain rams
Down to the s...

The rage for writing has spread far and wide,
Letters on letters now are multiplied,
And every mortal, who can hold a pen,
Aspires in haste to teach his fellow men.
Paper in wasted reams, and seas of ink.
Prove how they write who never learned to think;
Some who have talents--some who have not sense;
Some who to decency make no pretence;
But, skilled in arts which better men deceive,
They spread the slander which they don't believe.
A township turned to scribblers is a sight!
Venting their malice all in black and white,
And with, apparently, no other aim
Than merely to be foaming out their shame.
--My own, my beautiful, my pride,
I must lament where strangers will deride,
O'er thy degenerate sons whose strife and hate
Will make thee as a desert desolate

When the path of my life
Lay through trouble and strife,
    And temptation encompassed me round,
As a light in the shade
Thou wast sent to mine aid;
    And a harbour of refuge was found.

I beheld in thine eye,
As a beam from on high,
    The ray of compassion revealed;
And I turned in relief
From the Valley of Grief;
    I turned to be strengthened and healed.

In the words that you breathed
All my sorrow was sheathed,
    And peace, like a dove, settled down.
And the calm of your presence,
Like mercy's pure essence,
    Recaptured the faith that had flown.

Since then, if perplexed,
If harassed or vexed,
    If tempted, afflicted or tried,
I have sought thee to cheer,
Thou hast ever been near
    To comfort...

Once through an autumn wood
I roamed in tearful mood,
By grief dismayed, doubting, and ill at ease;
When from a leafless oak,
Methought low murmurs broke,
Complaining accents, as of words like these:

"Incline thy mighty ear
Great Mother Earth, and hear
How I, thy child, am sorely vexed and tossed;
No one to heed my moan,
I shudder here, alone
With my destroyers, wind and snow, and frost.

Then low and unaware
This answer cleaved the air,
This tender answer, "Doubting one be still;
Oh trust to me, and know
The wind, the frost, the snow,
Are but my servants sent to do my will.

"For the destroyer frost,
His labor is not lost,
Rid thee he shall of many noisome things;
And thou shalt praise the snow
When drinking far b...

Fain would my Muse the flow'ry Treasures sing,
And humble glories of the youthful Spring;
Where opening Roses breathing sweets diffuse,
And soft Carnations show'r their balmy dews;
Where Lilies smile in virgin robes of white,
The thin Undress of superficial Light,
And vary'd Tulips show so dazzling gay,
Blushing in bright diversities of day.
Each painted flow'ret in the lake below
Surveys its beauties, whence its beauties grow;
And pale Narcissus on the bank, in vain
Transformed, gazes on himself again.
Here aged trees Cathedral Walks compose,
And mount the Hill in venerable rows:
There the green Infants in their beds are laid,
The Garden's Hope, and its expected shade.
Here Orange-trees with blooms and pendantis shine,
And vernal honours to their autumn ...

"Down, down, down, ten thousand fathoms deep."
Count Fathom.


Who does not know that dreadful gulf, where Niagara falls,
Where eagle unto eagle screams, to vulture vulture calls;
Where down beneath, Despair and Death in liquid darkness grope,
And upward, on the foam there shines a rainbow without Hope;
While, hung with clouds of Fear and Doubt, the unreturning wave
Suddenly gives an awful plunge, like life into the grave;
And many a hapless mortal there hath dived to bale or bliss;
One - only one - hath ever lived to rise from that abyss!
Oh, Heav'n! it turns me now to ice with chill of fear extreme,
To think of my frail bark adrift on that tumultuous stream!
In vain with desperate sinews, strung by love of life and light,
I urged that coffin, my canoe, aga...

"How shall we honor the man who creates?"
Asked the Bedouin chief, the poet Antar; -
"Who unto the truth flings open our gates,
Or fashions new thoughts from the light of a star;
Or forges with craft of his finger and brain
Some marvelous weapon we copy in vain;
Or chants to the winds a wild song that shall wander forever undying?

"See! His reward is in envies and hates;
In lips that deny, or in stabs that may kill."
"Nay," said the smith; "for there's one here who waits
Humbly to serve you with unmeasured skill,
Sure that no utmost devotion can fail,
Offered to you, nor unfriended assail
The heart of the hero and poet Antar, whose fame is undying!"

"Speak," said the chief. Then the smith: "O Antar,
It is I who would serve you! I know, by the sou...

There was a strife 'twixt man and maid,
Oh, that was at the birth of time!
But what befell 'twixt man and maid,
Oh, that's beyond the grip of rhyme.
'Twas "Sweet, I must not bide with you,"
And, "Love, I cannot bide alone";
For both were young and both were true.
And both were hard as the nether stone.

Beware the man who's crossed in love;
For pent-up steam must find its vent.
Stand back when he is on the move,
And lend him all the Continent.

Your patience, Sirs. The Devil took me up
To the burned mountain over Sicily
(Fit place for me) and thence I saw my Earth,
(Not all Earth's splendour, 'twas beyond my need,)
And that one spot I love, all Earth to me,
And her I love, my Heaven. What said I?
My love was safe from all the powers of Hell...

All write at London; shall the rage abate
Here, where it most should shine, the muses' seat?
Where, mortal or immortal, as they please,
The learn'd may choose eternity, or ease?
Has not a (66)royal patron wisely strove
To woo the muse in her Athenian grove?
Added new strings to her harmonious shell,
And given new tongues to those who spoke so well?
Let these instruct, with truth's illustrious ray,
Awake the world, and scare our owls away.
    Meanwhile, O friend! indulge me, if I give
Some needful precepts how to write, and live!
Serious should be an author's final views;
Who write for pure amusement, ne'er amuse.
    An author! 'tis a venerable name!
How few deserve it, and what numbers claim!
Unblest with sense above their peers refin'd,
Who shall stand...

Far from our home by Grasmere's quiet Lake,
From the Vale's peace which all her fields partake,
Here on the bleakest point of Cumbria's shore
We sojourn stunned by Ocean's ceaseless roar;
While, day by day, grim neighbour! huge Black Comb
Frowns deepening visibly his native gloom,
Unless, perchance rejecting in despite
What on the Plain 'we' have of warmth and light,
In his own storms he hides himself from sight.
Rough is the time; and thoughts, that would be free
From heaviness, oft fly, dear Friend, to thee;
Turn from a spot where neither sheltered road
Nor hedge-row screen invites my steps abroad;
Where one poor Plane-tree, having as it might
Attained a stature twice a tall man's height,
Hopeless of further growth, and brown and sere
Through half the summer...

Last salvo in "The Bush Controversy".

The later poem "A Voice From the Town" (Banjo Patterson) continues the theme.


The world has had enough of bards who wish that they were dead,
Tis time, the people passed a law to knock 'em on the head,
For 'twould be lovely if their friends could grant the rest they crave,
Those bards Of "tears" and "vanished hopes," those poets of the grave.
They say that life's an awful thing and full of care and gloom,
They talk of peace and restfulness connected with the tomb.

They say that man is made of dirt, and die, of course, he must;
But, all the same, a man is made of pretty solid dust,
There is a thing that they forget, so let it here be writ,
That some are made of common mud, and some are made of grit;
Some try to help the...

Far, far o'er the deep is my island throne,
Where the sea-gull roams and reigns alone;
Where nought is seen but the beetling rock,
And nought is heard but the ocean-shock,
And the scream of birds when the storm is nigh,
And the crash of the wreck, and the fearful cry
Of drowning men, in their agony.
I love to sit, when the waters sleep,
And ponder the depths of the glassy deep,
Till I dream that I float on a corse at sea,
And sing of the feast that is made for me.
I love on the rush of the storm to sail,
And mingle my scream with the hoarser gale.
When the sky is dark, and the billow high,
When the tempest sweeps in its terror by,
I love to ride on the maddening blast
To flap my wing o'er the fated mast,
And sing to the crew a song of fear,
Of the re...

"I love the Lady of Merle," he said.
"She is not for thee!" her suitor cried.
And in the valley the lovers fought
By the salt river's tide.

The braver fell on the dewy sward:
The unloved lover returned once more;
In yellow satin the lady came
And met him at the door.

"Hast thou heard, dark Edith," laughed he grim,
"Poor Hugh hath craved thee many a day?
Soon would it have been too late for him
His low-born will to say.

"I struck a blade where lay his heart's love,
And voice for thee have I left him none,
To brag he still seeks thee over the hills
When thou and I are one!"

Fearless across the wide country
Rode the dark Lady Edith of Merle;
She looked at the headlands soft with haze,
And the moor's mists of pearl.

        The home of love is her blue eyes,
        Wherein all joy, all beauty lies,
        More sweet than hopes of paradise,
                She being young.

        Speak of her with a miser's praise;
        She craves no golden speech; her ways
        Wind through charmed nights and magic days,
                She being young.

        She is so far from pain and death,
        So warm her cheek, so sweet her breath
        Glad words are all the words she saith,
                She being young.

        Seeing her face, it seems not far
        To Troy's heroic field of war,
        To Troy and all great things that are,
                She being young.

Mæcenas, I propose to fly
To realms beyond these human portals;
No common things shall be my wings,
But such as sprout upon immortals.

Of lowly birth, once shed of earth,
Your Horace, precious (so you've told him),
Shall soar away; no tomb of clay
Nor Stygian prison-house shall hold him.

Upon my skin feathers begin
To warn the songster of his fleeting;
But never mind, I leave behind
Songs all the world shall keep repeating.

Lo! Boston girls, with corkscrew curls,
And husky westerns, wild and woolly,
And southern climes shall vaunt my rhymes,
And all profess to know me fully.

Methinks the West shall know me best,
And therefore hold my memory dearer;
For by that lake a bard shall make
My subtle, hidden meanings clearer.

Thy error, Fremont, simply was to act
A brave man’s part, without the statesman’s tact,
And, taking counsel but of common sense,
To strike at cause as well as consequence.
Oh, never yet since Roland wound his horn
At Roncesvalles, has a blast been blown
Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as thine own,
Heard from the van of freedom’s hope forlorn
It had been safer, doubtless, for the time,
To flatter treason, and avoid offence
To that Dark Power whose underlying crime
Heaves upward its perpetual turbulence.
But if thine be the fate of all who break
The ground for truth’s seed, or forerun their years
Till lost in distance, or with stout hearts make
A lane for freedom through the level spears,
Still take thou courage! God has spoken through thee,
Irrevocable,...

When God's wrath-cloud is o'er me,
Affrighting heart and mind;
When days seem dark before me,
And days seem black behind;
Those friends who think they know me,
Who deem their insight keen,
They ne'er forget to show me
The man I might have been.

He's rich and independent,
Or rising fast to fame;
His bright star is ascendant,
The country knows his name;
His houses and his gardens
Are splendid to be seen;
His fault the wise world pardons,
The man I might have been.

His fame and fortune haunt me;
His virtues wave me back;
His name and prestige daunt me
When I would take the track;
But you, my friend true-hearted,
God keep our friendship green!,
You know how I was parted
From all I might have been.

But what ...

    A small part only of my grief I write;
        And if I do not give you all the tale
    It is because my gloom gets some respite
        By just a small bewailing: I bewail
    That I with sly and stupid folk must bide
    Who steal my food and ruin my inside.

    Once I had books, each book beyond compare,
        But now no book at all is left to me,
    And I am spied and peeped on everywhere,
        And my old head, stuffed with latinity,
    And with the poet's load of grave and gay
    Will not get me skim-milk for half a day.

    Wild horse or quiet, not a horse have I,
        But to the forest every day I go
    Bending beneath a load of wood, that high!
        Which raises on my back a sorry row
    Of raw, red blisters; so I cry, ...