Courage

A shadow glided down the way
Where sunset groped among the trees,
And all the woodland bower, asway
With trouble of the evening breeze.

A shape, it moved with head held down;
I knew it not, yet seemed to know
Its form, its carriage of a clown,
Its raiment of the long-ago.

It never turned or spoke a word,
But fixed its gaze on something far,
As if within its heart it heard
The summons of the evening star.

I turned to it and tried to speak;
To ask it of the thing it saw,
Or heard, beyond Earth's outmost peak
The dream, the splendor, and the awe.

What beauty or what terror there
Still bade its purpose to ascend
Above the sunset's sombre glare,
The twilight and the long day's end.

It looked at me but said no word:<...

This last denial of my faith,
Thou, solemn Priest, hast heard;
And, though upon my bed of death,
I call not back a word.
Point not to thy Madonna, Priest,
Thy sightless saint of stone;
She cannot, from this burning breast,
Wring one repentant moan.

Thou say'st, that when a sinless child,
I duly bent the knee,
And prayed to what in marble smiled
Cold, lifeless, mute, on me.
I did. But listen! Children spring
Full soon to riper youth;
And, for Love's vow and Wedlock's ring,
I sold my early truth.

'Twas not a grey, bare head, like thine,
Bent o'er me, when I said,
"That land and God and Faith are mine,
For which thy fathers bled."
I see thee not, my eyes are dim;
But well I hear thee say,
"O daughter cease to think of him...

Too frail to keep the lofty vow
That must have followed when his brow
Was wreathed "The Vision" tells us how
With holly spray,
He faltered, drifted to and fro,
And passed away.

Well might such thoughts, dear Sister, throng
Our minds when, lingering all too long,
Over the grave of Burns we hung
In social grief
Indulged as if it were a wrong
To seek relief.

But, leaving each unquiet theme
Where gentlest judgments may misdeem,
And prompt to welcome every gleam
Of good and fair,
Let us beside this limpid Stream
Breathe hopeful air.

Enough of sorrow, wreck, and blight;
Think rather of those moments bright
When to the consciousness of right
His course was true,
When Wisdom prospered in his sight
And virtue grew.

'Tis gone, with old belief and dream
That round it clung, and tempting scheme
Released from fear and doubt;
And the bright landscape too must lie,
By this blank wall, from every eye,
Relentlessly shut out.

Bear witness ye who seldom passed
That opening, but a look ye cast
Upon the lake below,
What spirit-stirring power it gained
From faith which here was entertained,
Though reason might say no.

Blest is that ground, where, o'er the springs
Of history, Glory claps her wings,
Fame sheds the exulting tear;
Yet earth is wide, and many a nook
Unheard of is, like this, a book
For modest meanings dear.

It was in sooth a happy thought
That grafted, on so fair a spot,
So confident a token
Of coming good; the charm is fled,

Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see,
By dawn or sunset shone across,
When the ebb of the sea has left them free,
To dry their fringes of gold-green moss
For there the river comes winding down,
From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown,
And waves on the outer rocks afoam
Shout to its waters, “Welcome home!”

And fair are the sunny isles in view
East of the grisly Head of the Boar,
And Agamenticus lifts its blue
Disk of a cloud the woodlands o’er;
And southerly, when the tide is down,
’Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown,
The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheel
Over a floor of burnished steel.

Once, in the old Colonial days,
Two hundred years ago and more,
A boat sailed down through the winding ways
Of Hampton River to that low...

Over the darkened city, the city of towers,
The city of a thousand gates,
Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers,
Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates,
The slow wind flows, drearily streams and falls,
With a mournful sound down rain-dark walls.
On one side purples the lustrous dusk of the sea,
And dreams in white at the city’s feet;
On one side sleep the plains, with heaped-up hills.
Oaks and beeches whisper in rings about it.
Above the trees are towers where dread bells beat.

The fisherman draws his streaming net from the sea
And sails toward the far-off city, that seems
Like one vague tower.
The dark bow plunges to foam on blue-black waves,
And shrill rain seethes like a ghostly music about him
In a quiet shower.

Rain wi...

Bright scenes must all depart as they've departed,
Unshadowed years will fly as they have flown,
And fairer visions leave us silent-hearted,
Keen, lashing blasts must blow as they have blown.

Old mem'ries must grow dim and fade away,
Across the world's wide wastes the sun shall set,
Thou shalt press forward on thy toil-trod way,
Nor leave me one, just one, one sad regret.

Ah, where shall I be then?--forgot--estranged,
When years have rolled their glory at thy feet,
When friends and kindred all, yea, all have changed
And others come their chosen one to greet.

And yet what prayer from me could now implore,
Could crave for all it would, for words have fled?
May Heaven preserve thee as thou wast before,
And multiply all blessings on thy head.

That second time they hunted me
From hill to plain, from shore to sea,
And Austria, hounding far and wide
Her blood-hounds thro’ the country-side,
Breathed hot and instant on my trace,
I made six days a hiding-place
Of that dry green old aqueduct
Where I and Charles, when boys, have plucked
The fire-flies from the roof above,
Bright creeping thro’ the moss they love:
How long it seems since Charles was lost!
Six days the soldiers crossed and crossed
The country in my very sight;
And when that peril ceased at night,
The sky broke out in red dismay
With signal fires; well, there I lay
Close covered o’er in my recess,
Up to the neck in ferns and cress,
Thinking on Metternich our friend,
And Charles’s miserable end,
And much beside, two days; t...

The woods of Arcady are dead,
And over is their antique joy;
Of old the world on dreaming fed;
Grey Truth is now her painted toy;
Yet still she turns her restless head:
But O, sick children of the world,
Of all the many changing things
In dreary dancing past us whirled,
To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,
Words alone are certain good.
Where are now the warring kings,
Word be-mockers? -- By the Rood,
Where are now the watering kings?
An idle word is now their glory,
By the stammering schoolboy said,
Reading some entangled story:
The kings of the old time are dead;
The wandering earth herself may be
Only a sudden flaming word,
In clanging space a moment heard,
Troubling the endless reverie.
Then nowise worship dusty deeds,
Nor s...

Weep, Israel! your tardy meed outpour
Of grateful homage on his fallen head,
That never coronal of triumph wore,
Untombed, dishonored, and unchapleted.
If Victory makes the hero, raw Success
The stamp of virtue, unremembered
Be then the desperate strife, the storm and stress
Of the last Warrior Jew. But if the man
Who dies for freedom, loving all things less,
Against world-legions, mustering his poor clan;
The weak, the wronged, the miserable, to send
Their death-cry's protest through the ages' span -
If such an one be worthy, ye shall lend
Eternal thanks to him, eternal praise.
Nobler the conquered than the conqueror's end!

I like a church; I like a cowl;
I love a prophet of the soul;
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles
Yet not for all his faith can see
Would I that cowlèd churchman be.

Why should the vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure?

Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
Never from lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle;
Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below,--
The canticles of love and woe:
The hand that rounded Peter's dome
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome
Wrought in a sad sincerity;
Himself from God he could...

Give me to-night to hide me in the shade,
    That neither moon nor star
May see the secret place where I am laid,
    Nor watch me from afar.

Let not the dark its prying ghosts employ
    To peer on my retreat,
And see the fragments of my broken toy
    Lie scattered at my feet.

I fashioned it, that idol of my own,
    Of metal strange and bright;
I made my toy a god - I raised a throne
    To honour my delight.

This haunted byway of the grove was lit
    With lamps my hand had trimmed,
Before the altar in the midst of it
    I kept their flame undimmed.

My steps turned ever to the hidden shrine;
    Aware or unaware,
My soul dwelt only in that spot divine,
    And now a wreck lies there.

Give me to-night to w...

SEVEN YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH

I shiver, Spirit fierce and bold,
At thought of what I now behold:
As vapours breathed from dungeons cold,
Strike pleasure dead,
So sadness comes from out the mould
Where Burns is laid.

And have I then thy bones so near,
And thou forbidden to appear?
As if it were thyself that's here
I shrink with pain;
And both my wishes and my fear
Alike are vain.

Off weight, nor press on weight! away
Dark thoughts! they came, but not to stay;
With chastened feelings would I pay
The tribute due
To him, and aught that hides his clay
From mortal view.

Fresh as the flower, whose modest worth
He sang, his genius "glinted" forth,
Rose like a star that touching earth,
For so it seems,
Doth glori...

Oh, well may Essex sit forlorn
Beside her sea-blown shore;
Her well beloved, her noblest born,
Is hers in life no more!

No lapse of years can render less
Her memory's sacred claim;
No fountain of forgetfulness
Can wet the lips of Fame.

A grief alike to wound and heal,
A thought to soothe and pain,
The sad, sweet pride that mothers feel
To her must still remain.

Good men and true she has not lacked,
And brave men yet shall be;
The perfect flower, the crowning fact,
Of all her years was he!

As Galahad pure, as Merlin sage,
What worthier knight was found
To grace in Arthur's golden age
The fabled Table Round?

A voice, the battle's trumpet-note,
To welcome and restore;
A hand, that all unwilling smote,

Deep is the sea, and deep is hell, but Pride mineth deeper;
It is coiled as a poisonous worm about the foundations of the soul.
If thou expose it in thy motives, and track it in thy springs of thought,
Complacent in its own detection, it will seem indignant virtue;
Smoothly will it gratulate thy skill, O subtle anatomist of self.
And subtle at its very being, while it nestleth the deeper in thy bosom.
Pride is a double traitor, and betrayeth itself to entrap thee,
Making thee vain of thy self knowledge; proud of thy discoveries of pride.
Fruitlessly thou strainest for humility, by darkly diving into self;
Rather look away from innate evil, and gaze upon extraneous good:
For in sounding the deep things of the heart, thou shalt learn to be vain of its capacities.
But in viewing the heig...

Subtly conscious, all awake,
Let us clear our eyes, and break
Through the cloudy chrysalis,
See the wonder as it is.
Down a narrow alley, blind,
Touch and vision, heart and mind;
Turned sharply inward, still we plod,
Till the calmly smiling god
Leaves us, and our spirits grow
More thin, more acrid, as we go.
Creeping by the sullen wall,
We forego the power to see,
The threads that bind us to the All,
God or the Immensity;
Whereof on the eternal road
Man is but a passing mode.

Too blind we are, too little see
Of the magic pageantry,
Every minute, every hour,
From the cloudflake to the flower,
Forever old, forever strange,
Issuing in perpetual change
From the rainbow gates of Time.

But he who through this common air...

XI. Love's Ambition.


    I must invoke thee for my spirit's good,
    And prove myself un-guilty of the crime
    Of mere self-seeking, though with this imbued.
    I sing as sings the mavis in a wood,
    Content to be alive at harvest time.
    Had I its wings I should not be withstood!
    But I will weave my fancies into rhyme,
    And greet afar the heights I cannot climb.
    I will invoke thee, Love! though far away,
    And pay thee homage, as becomes a knight
    Who longs to keep his true-love in his sight.
    Yea, I will soar to thee, i...

The farmer's goose, who in the stubble
Has fed without restraint or trouble,
Grown fat with corn and sitting still,
Can scarce get o'er the barn-door sill;
And hardly waddles forth to cool
Her belly in the neighbouring pool!
Nor loudly cackles at the door;
For cackling shows the goose is poor.
    But, when she must be turn'd to graze,
And round the barren common strays,
Hard exercise, and harder fare,
Soon make my dame grow lank and spare;
Her body light, she tries her wings,
And scorns the ground, and upward springs;
While all the parish, as she flies,
Hear sounds harmonious from the skies.
    Such is the poet fresh in pay,
The third night's profits of his play;
His morning draughts till noon can swill,
Among his brethren of the quill:
W...