Courage

    When by a generous Public's kind acclaim,
    That dearest meed is granted, honest fame;
    When here your favour is the actor's lot,
    Nor even the man in private life forgot;
    What breast so dead to heavenly virtue's glow,
    But heaves impassion'd with the grateful throe?

    Poor is the task to please a barbarous throng,
    It needs no Siddons' powers in Southerne's song;
    But here an ancient nation fam'd afar,
    For genius, learning high, as great in war,
    Hail, CALEDONIA, name for ever dear!
    Before whose sons I'm honoured to appear!
    Where every science, every nobler art,
    That can inform the mind, or mend the heart,
    Is known; as grateful nations oft have found
    Far as the rude barbarian marks th...

Has no one said those daring
Kind eyes should be more learn'd?
Or warned you how despairing
The moths are when they are burned?
I could have warned you; but you are young,
So we speak a different tongue.
O you will take whatever's offered
And dream that all the world's a friend,
Suffer as your mother suffered,
Be as broken in the end.
But I am old and you are young,
And I speak a barbarous tongue.

And thus declared that Arab lady:
"Last night, where under the wild moon
On grassy mattress I had laid me,
Within my arms great Solomon,
I suddenly cried out in a strange tongue
Not his, not mine."
Who understood
Whatever has been said, sighed, sung,
Howled, miau-d, barked, brayed, belled, yelled, cried, crowed,
Thereon replied: "A cockerel
Crew from a blossoming apple bough
Three hundred years before the Fall,
And never crew again till now,
And would not now but that he thought,
Chance being at one with Choice at last,
All that the brigand apple brought
And this foul world were dead at last.
He that crowed out eternity
Thought to have crowed it in again.
For though love has a spider's eye
To find out some appropriate pain --
Aye, thou...

Worthy art Thou, O Lord, of praise,
But ah! It's not in me.
My sinking heart I pray Thee raise
So shall I give it Thee.

My life as spider's webb's cut off,
Thus fainting have I said,
And living man no more shall see
But be in silence laid.

My feeble spirit Thou didst revive,
My doubting Thou didst chide,
And though as dead mad'st me alive,
I here a while might 'bide.

Why should I live but to Thy praise?
My life is hid with Thee.
O Lord, no longer be my days
Than I may fruitful be.

Old trees, old trees! in your mystic gloom
There's many a warrior laid,
And many a nameless and lonely tomb
Is sheltered beneath your shade.
Old trees, old trees! without pomp or prayer
We buried the brave and the true,
We fired a volley and left them there
To rest, old trees, with you.

Old trees, old trees! keep watch and ward
Over each grass-grown bed;
'Tis a glory, old trees, to stand as guard
Over the Southern dead;
Old trees, old trees! we shall pass away
Like the leaves you yearly shed,
But ye, lone sentinels, still must stay,
Old trees, to guard "our dead".

"Great nature spoke, observant man obey'd."
Pope.


    Let other heroes boast their scars,
        The marks of sturt and strife;
    And other poets sing of wars,
        The plagues of human life;
    Shame fa' the fun; wi' sword and gun
        To slap mankind like lumber!
    I sing his name, and nobler fame,
        Wha multiplies our number.

    Great Nature spoke with air benign,
        "Go on, ye human race!
    This lower world I you resign;
        Be fruitful and increase.
    The liquid fire of strong desire
        I've pour'd it in each bosom;
    Here, in this hand, does mankind stand,
        And there, is beauty's blossom."

    The hero of these artless strains,
        A lowly bard was he,
    Who s...

I walk down the Valley of Silence --
Down the dim, voiceless valley -- alone!
And I hear not the fall of a footstep
Around me, save God's and my own;
And the hush of my heart is as holy
As hovers where angels have flown!

Long ago was I weary of voices
Whose music my heart could not win;
Long ago was I weary of noises
That fretted my soul with their din;
Long ago was I weary of places
Where I met but the human -- and sin.

I walked in the world with the worldly;
I craved what the world never gave;
And I said:    "In the world each Ideal,
That shines like a star on life's wave,
Is wrecked on the shores of the Real,
And sleeps like a dream in a grave."

And still did I pine for the Perfect,
And still found the False with the True;

    Last night I lay in an open field
    And looked at the stars with lips sealed;
    No noise moved the windless air,
    And I looked at the stars with steady stare.

    There were some that glittered and some that shone
    With a soft and equal glow, and one
    That queened it over the sprinkled round,
    Swaying the host with silent sound.

    "Calm things," I thought, "in your cavern blue,
    I will learn and hold and master you;
    I will yoke and scorn you as I can,
    For the pride of my heart is the pride of a man."

    Grass to my cheek in the dewy field,
    I lay quite still with lips sealed,
    And the pride of a man and his rigid gaze
    Stalked like swords on heaven's ways.

    But through a sudden gate there st...

Brother artist, help me; come!
    Artists are a maimed band:
    I have words but not a hand;
Thou hast hands though thou art dumb.

Had I thine, when words did fail--
    Vassal-words their hasting chief,
    On the white awaiting leaf
Shapes of power should tell the tale.

Had I hers of music-might,
    I would shake the air with storm
    Till the red clouds trailed enorm
Boreal dances through the night.

Had I his whose foresight rare
    Piles the stones with lordliest art,
    From the quarry of my heart
Love should climb a heavenly stair!

Had I his whose wooing slow
    Wins the marble's hidden child,
    Out in passion undefiled
Stood my Psyche, white as snow!

Maimed, a little help I pray;
    Words ...

    When fortunes frown, the woes, bedight
    With brooding shadows, bring the night,
        While dismal sorrows darkness dole,
        And disappointments rise and roll
    Above the longings for the light.

    Despair, with hands that curse and blight,
    Sows weakness in the hearts of might
        Until they falter near the goal,
        When fortunes frown.

    But onward still! The valleys white
    With Heaven's blossoms are in sight;
        The Holy Mountains, knoll on knoll,
        Are waiting for the Master Soul,
    And he shall conquer for the right,
        When fortunes frown!

Claudio. Know you any Hero?
Hero. None my lord!                As You Like it.


Gentle and modest Hero! I can see
Her delicate figure, and her soft blue eye,
Like a warm vision - lovely as she stood,
Veiled in the presence of young Claudio.
Modesty bows her head, and that young heart
That would endure all suffering for the love
It hideth, is as tremulous as the leaf
Forsaken of the Summer. She hath flung
Her all upon the venture of her vow,
And in her trust leans meekly, like a flower
By the still river tempted from its stem,
And on its bosom floating.
                        Once again
I see her, and she standeth in her pride,
With her soft eye enkindled, and her lip
Curled with its sweet resentment, like a line
Of li...

                            ". . . defeated, with great loss."


                    Not we the conquered!    Not to us the blame
                    Of them that flee, of them that basely yield;
                    Nor ours the shout of victory, the fame
                    Of them that vanquish in a stricken field.

                    That day of battle in the dusty heat
                    We lay and heard the bullets swish and sing
                    Like scythes amid the over-ripened wheat,
                    And we the harvest of their garnering.

                    Some yielded, No, not we!    Not we, we swear
                    By these our wounds; this trench upon the hill
                    Where all the shell-strewn earth is seamed and bare,
 ...

1

Soul of my body! what a death
For such a day of envious gloom,
Unbroken passion of the sky!
As if the pure, kind-hearted breath
Of some soft power, ever nigh,
Had, cleaving in the bitter sheath,
Burst from its grave a gorgeous bloom.


2

The majesty of clouds that swarm.
Expanding in a furious length
Of molten-metal petals, flows
Unutterable, and where the warm,
Full fire is centered, swims and glows
The evening star fresh-faced with strength,
A shimmering rain-drop of the storm.

Brother of all, with generous hand,
Of thee, pondering on thee, as o'er thy tomb, I and my Soul,
A thought to launch in memory of thee,
A burial verse for thee.

What may we chant, O thou within this tomb?
What tablets, pictures, hang for thee, O millionaire?
--The life thou lived'st we know not,
But that thou walk'dst thy years in barter, 'mid the haunts of brokers;
Nor heroism thine, nor war, nor glory.

Yet lingering, yearning, joining soul with thine,
If not thy past we chant, we chant the future,
Select, adorn the future.


Lo, Soul, the graves of heroes!
The pride of lands--the gratitudes of men,
The statues of the manifold famous dead, Old World and New,
The kings, inventors, generals, poets, (stretch wide thy vision, Soul,)
The exce...

That kind heart you were jealous of, my nurse
Who sleeps her sleep beneath the humble turf,
I'd like to give her flowers, wouldn't you?
The dead, the poor dead, have their sorrows too,
And when October trims the branches down,
Blowing its sombre wind around their stones,
The living seem ungrateful to the dead,
For sleeping as they do, warm in their beds;
Meanwhile, devoured by black imaginings,
No bedmate, and without good gossiping,
Worked by the worm, cold skeletons below
Seem to be filtering the winter's snows,
And time flows by, no family who will
Tend to the scraps that hang from iron grills.

If in the dusk, while logs would smoke and sing,
I'd see her in the armchair, pondering,
Or find her in a night of wintry gloom
Abinding in a corner of my...

    Small is the new-born plant scarce seen
    Amid the soft encircling green,
        Where yonder budding acorn rears,
    Just o'er the waving grass, its tender head:
        Slow pass along the train of years,
    And on the growing plant, their dews and showers they shed.
        Anon it rears aloft its giant form,
        And spreads its broad-brown arms to meet the storm.
    Beneath its boughs far shadowing o'er the plain,
From summer suns, repair the grateful village train.

        Nor BEDFORD will my friend survey
    The book of Nature with unheeding eye;
        For never beams the rising orb of day,
        For never dimly dies the refluent ray,
    But as the moralizer marks the sky,
He broods with strange delight upon futurity.

    ...

Under the walls of Monterey
At daybreak the bugles began to play,
            Victor Galbraith!
In the mist of the morning damp and gray,
These were the words they seemed to say:
            "Come forth to thy death,
            Victor Galbraith!"

Forth he came, with a martial tread;
Firm was his step, erect his head;
            Victor Galbraith,
He who so well the bugle played,
Could not mistake the words it said:
            "Come forth to thy death,
            Victor Galbraith!"

He looked at the earth, he looked at the sky,
He looked at the files of musketry,
            Victor Galbraith!
And he said, with a steady voice and eye,
"Take good aim; I am ready to die!"
            Thus challenges death
            Victor Galbra...

Those hearts of ours -- how strange! how strange!
How they yearn to ramble and love to range
Down through the vales of the years long gone,
Up through the future that fast rolls on.

To-days are dull -- so they wend their ways
Back to their beautiful yesterdays;
The present is blank -- so they wing their flight
To future to-morrows where all seems bright.

Build them a bright and beautiful home,
They'll soon grow weary and want to roam;
Find them a spot without sorrow or pain,
They may stay a day, but they're off again.

Those hearts of ours -- how wild! how wild!
They're as hard to tame as an Indian child;
They're as restless as waves on the sounding sea,
Like the breeze and the bird are they fickle and free.

Those hearts of ours -- how l...