Courage

Thrice hath the spring beheld thy faded fame
Since I exulting grasp'd the tuneful shell:
Eager through endless years to sound thy name,
Proud that my memory with thine should dwell.
How hast thou stain'd the splendor of my choice!
Those godlike forms which hover'd round thy voice,
Laws, freedom, glory, whither are they flown?
What can I now of thee to time report,
Save thy fond country made thy impious sport,
Her fortune and her hope the victims of thy own?
There are with eyes unmov'd and reckless heart
Who saw thee from thy summit fall thus low,
Who deem'd thy arm extended but to dart
The public vengeance on thy private foe.
But, spite of every gloss of envious minds,
The owl-ey'd race whom Virtue's lustre blinds,
Who sagely prove that each man hath his price...

        Willie speaks.

Is it wrong, the wish to be great,
    For I do wish it so?
I have asked already my sister Kate;
    She says she does not know.

Yestereve at the gate I stood
    Watching the sun in the west;
When I saw him look so grand and good
    It swelled up in my breast.

Next from the rising moon
    It stole like a silver dart;
In the night when the wind began his tune
    It woke with a sudden start.

This morning a trumpet blast
    Made all the cottage quake;
It came so sudden and shook so fast
    It blew me wide awake.

It told me I must make haste,
    And some great glory win,
For every day was running to waste,
    And at once I must begin.

I want to be great and strong,

O take this world away from me;
Its strife I cannot bear to see,
Its very praises hurt me more
Than een its coldness did before,
Its hollow ways torment me now
And start a cold sweat on my brow,
Its noise I cannot bear to hear,
Its joy is trouble to my ear,
Its ways I cannot bear to see,
Its crowds are solitudes to me.
O, how I long to be agen
That poor and independent man,
With labour's lot from morn to night
And books to read at candle light;
That followed labour in the field
From light to dark when toil could yield
Real happiness with little gain,
Rich thoughtless health unknown to pain:
Though, leaning on my spade to rest,
I've thought how richer folks were blest
And knew not quiet was the best.

Go with your tauntings, go;

When in brave days of old, Theology
Flourished with utmost sap and energy,
A celebrated doctor, it is said,
When he had force-fed some indifferent heads;
Had stirred them in their blackest lethargy
Vaulted himself towards holy ecstasy
By mystic processes he scarcely knew,
A state pure souls alone were welcomed to.
This man who'd tried to grasp beyond his reach,
Flushed with Satanic pride, made bold in speech:
'O little Jesus! I have raised you high!
But if I chose to take the other side,
Thou helpless one, I'd bring thy glory low,
The Christ child an outlandish embryo!'

At once his Reason's sentence had begun.
Shrouded in crepe was this once-blazing sun;
All chaos rolled in this intelligence
Before, a temple, ordered, opulent,
Where he'd held f...

                    He wrought in poverty, the dull grey days,
                    But with the night his little lamp-lit room
                    Was bright with battle flame, or through a haze
                    Of smoke that stung his eyes he heard the boom
                    Of Bluecher's guns; he shared Almeida's scars,
                    And from the close-packed deck, about to die,
                    Looked up and saw the "Birkenhead"'s tall spars
                    Weave wavering lines across the Southern sky:

                    Or in the stifling 'tween decks, row on row,
                    At Aboukir, saw how the dead men lay;
                        Charged with the fiercest in Busaco's strife,
                    Brave dreams are his -- the flick'ring lamp bur...

Cold, cold is the blast when December is howling,
Cold are the damps on a dying man's brow, -
Stern are the seas when the wild waves are rolling,
And sad is the grave where a loved one lies low;
But colder is scorn from the being who loved thee,
More stern is the sneer from the friend who has proved thee,
More sad are the tears when their sorrows have moved thee,
Which mixed with groans anguish and wild madness flow -

And ah! poor - has felt all this horror,
Full long the fallen victim contended with fate:
'Till a destitute outcast abandoned to sorrow,
She sought her babe's food at her ruiner's gate -
Another had charmed the remorseless betrayer,
He turned laughing aside from her moans and her prayer,
She said nothing, but wringing the wet from her hair,
Cros...

Day! Faster and more fast,
O'er night's brim, day boils at last:
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim.
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.

All service ranks the same with God:
If now, as formerly He trod
Paradise, His presence fills
Our earth, each only as God wills
Can work God's puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first.

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn:
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pea...

On The Memorable Victory Gained By The Duke Over The Hollanders, June 3, 1665. And On Her Journey Afterwards Into The North.

    Madam,
    When, for our sakes, your hero you resign'd
    To swelling seas, and every faithless wind;
    When you released his courage, and set free
    A valour fatal to the enemy;
    You lodged your country's cares within your breast
    (The mansion where soft love should only rest):
    And, ere our foes abroad were overcome,
    The noblest conquest you had gain'd at home.
    Ah, what concerns did both your souls divide!
    Your honour gave us what your love denied:
    And 'twas for him much easier to subdue
    Those foes he fought with, than to part from you.
    That glorious day, which two such navies saw,
    As each...

In this sombre garden close
What has come and passed, who knows?
What red passion, what white pain
Haunted this dim walk in vain?

Underneath the ivied wall,
Where the silent shadows fall,
Lies the pathway chill and damp
Where the world-quit dreamers tramp.

Just across, where sunlight burns,
Smiling at the mourning ferns,
Stand the roses, side by side,
Nodding in their useless pride.

Ferns and roses, who shall say
What you witness day by day?
Covert smile or dropping eye,
As the monks go pacing by.

Has the novice come to-day
Here beneath the wall to pray?
Has the young monk, lately chidden,
Sung his lyric, sweet, forbidden?

Tell me, roses, did you note
That pale father's throbbing throat?
Did you hear ...

Where rise the brakes of bramble there,
Wrapped with the trailing rose;
Through cane where waters ramble, there
Where deep the sword-grass grows,
Who knows?
Perhaps, unseen of eyes of man,
Hides Pan.

Perhaps the creek, whose pebbles make
A foothold for the mint,
May bear, where soft its trebles make
Confession, some vague hint,
(The print,
Goat-hoofed, of one who lightly ran,)
Of Pan.

Where, in the hollow of the hills
Ferns deepen to the knees,
What sounds are those above the hills,
And now among the trees?
No breeze!
The syrinx, haply, none may scan,
Of Pan.

In woods where waters break upon
The hush like some soft word;
Where sun-shot shadows shake upon
The moss, who has not heard
No bird!
Th...

The grey gulls drift across the bay
Softly and still as flakes of snow
Against the thinning fog. All day
I sat and watched them come and go;
And now at last the sun was set,
Filling the waves with colored fire
Till each seemed like a jewelled spire
Thrust up from some drowned city. Soon
From peak and cliff and minaret
The city's lights began to wink,
Each like a friendly word. The moon
Began to broaden out her shield,
Spurting with silver. Straight before
The brown hills lay like quiet beasts
Stretched out beside a well-loved door,
And filling earth and sky and field
With the calm heaving of their breasts.

Nothing was gone, nothing was changed,
The smallest wave was unestranged
By all the long ache of the years
Since last I saw them, ...

Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries,
For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed most, I bring;
Forth from the army, the war emerging a book I have made,
The words of my book nothing the drift of it everything;
A book separate, not link'd with the rest, nor felt by the intellect,
But you, ye untold latencies, will thrill to every page;
Through Space and Time fused in a chant, and the flowing, eternal Identity,
To Nature, encompassing these, encompassing God to the joyous, electric All,
To the sense of Death and accepting, exulting in Death, in its turn, the same as life,
The entrance of Man I sing.

1.
Swifter far than summer's flight -
Swifter far than youth's delight -
Swifter far than happy night,
Art thou come and gone -
As the earth when leaves are dead,
As the night when sleep is sped,
As the heart when joy is fled,
I am left lone, alone.

2.
The swallow summer comes again -
The owlet night resumes her reign -
But the wild-swan youth is fain
To fly with thee, false as thou. -
My heart each day desires the morrow;
Sleep itself is turned to sorrow;
Vainly would my winter borrow
Sunny leaves from any bough.

3.
Lilies for a bridal bed -
Roses for a matron's head -
Violets for a maiden dead -
Pansies let MY flowers be:
On the living grave I bear
Scatter them without a tear -
Let no friend, however d...

Catch her and hold her if you can,
See, she defies you with her fan,
Shuts, opens, and then holds it spread
In threatening guise over your head.
Ah! why did you not start before
She reached the porch and closed the door?
Simpleton! Will you never learn
That girls and time will not return;
Of each you should have made the most;
Once gone, they are forever lost.
In vain your knuckles knock your brow,
In vain will you remember how
Like a slim brook the gamesome maid
Sparkled, and ran into the shade.

Alone in Rome. Why, Rome is lonely too;--
Besides, you need not be alone; the soul
Shall have society of its own rank.
Be great, be true, and all the Scipios,
The Catos, the wise patriots of Rome,
Shall flock to you and tarry by your side,
And comfort you with their high company.
Virtue alone is sweet society,
It keeps the key to all heroic hearts,
And opens you a welcome in them all.
You must be like them if you desire them,
Scorn trifles and embrace a better aim
Than wine or sleep or praise;
Hunt knowledge as the lover wooes a maid,
And ever in the strife of your own thoughts
Obey the nobler impulse; that is Rome:
That shall command a senate to your side;
For there is no might in the universe
That can contend with love. It reigns forever.
Wait...

FATE OF GENEVA IN THE YEAR 1782.

A FRAGMENT.


Yes--if there yet live some of those,
Who, when this small Republic rose,
Quick as a startled hive of bees,
Against her leaguering enemies--[1]
When, as the Royal Satrap shook
    His well-known fetters at her gates,
Even wives and mothers armed and took
    Their stations by their sons and mates;
And on these walls there stood--yet, no,
    Shame to the traitors--would have stood
As firm a band as e'er let flow
    At Freedom's base their sacred blood;
If those yet live, who on that night
When all were watching, girt for fight,
Stole like the creeping of a pest
From rank to rank, from breast to breast,
Filling the weak, the old with fears,
Turning the heroine's zea...

The waters leap,
The waters roar;
And on the shore
One sycamore
Stands, towering hoar.

The mountains heap
Gaunt pines and crags
That hoar-frost shags;
And, pierced with snags,
Like horns of stags,
The water lags,
The water drags,
Where trees, like hags,
Lean from the steep.

The mist begins
To swirl; then spins
'Mid outs and ins
Of heights; and thins
Where the torrent dins;
And lost in sweep
Of its whiteness deep
The valleys sleep.

Now morning strikes
On wild rampikes
Of forest spikes,
And, down dim dykes
Of dawn, like sheep,
Scatters the mists,
And amethysts
With light, that twists,
And rifts that run
Azure with sun,
Wild-whirled and spun,
The foggy dun
...

Now joy for you who from the towers
Of Brancepeth look in doubt and fear,
Telling melancholy hours!
Proclaim it, let your Masters hear
That Norton with his band is near!
The watchmen from their station high
Pronounced the word, and the Earls descry,
Well-pleased, the armed Company
Marching down the banks of Were.
Said fearless Norton to the pair
Gone forth to greet him on the plain
"This meeting, noble Lords! looks fair,
I bring with me a goodly train;
Their hearts are with you: hill and dale
Have helped us: Ure we crossed, and Swale,
And horse and harness followed see
The best part of their Yeomanry!
Stand forth, my Sons! these eight are mine,
Whom to this service I commend;
Which way soe'er our fate incline,
These will be faithful to the ...