Courage

I know!    I know!--
The ceaseless ache, the emptiness, the woe,--
The pang of loss,--
The strength that sinks beneath so sore a cross.
"--Heedless and careless, still the world wags on,
And leaves me broken ...    Oh, my son!    my son!"

Yet--think of this!--
Yea, rather think on this!--
He died as few men get the chance to die,--
Fighting to save a world's morality.
He died the noblest death a man may die,
Fighting for God, and Right, and Liberty;--
And such a death is Immortality.

"He died unnoticed in the muddy trench."
Nay,--God was with him, and he did not blench;
Filled him with holy fires that nought could quench,
And when He saw his work below was done,
He gently called to him,--"My son!    My son!
I need thee for a...

Mille piagge in un giorno e mille rivi.

TO BE NEAR HER RECOMPENSES HIM FOR ALL THE PERILS OF THE WAY.


    Love, who his votary wings in heart and feet,
To the third heaven that lightly he may soar,
In one short day has many a stream and shore
Given to me, in famed Ardennes, to meet.
Unarm'd and single to have pass'd is sweet
Where war in earnest strikes, nor tells before--
A helmless, sail-less ship 'mid ocean's roar--
My breast with dark and fearful thoughts replete;
But reach'd my dangerous journey's far extreme,
Remembering whence I came, and with whose wings,
From too great courage conscious terror springs.
But this fair country and belovèd stream
With smiling welcome reassures my heart,
Where dwells its sole light ready to depart.

They must to keep their certainty accuse
All that are different of a base intent;
Pull down established honour; hawk for news
Whatever their loose fantasy invent
And murmur it with bated breath, as though
The abounding gutter had been Helicon
Or calumny a song. How can they know
Truth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone,
And there alone, that have no Solitude?
So the crowd come they care not what may come.
They have loud music, hope every day renewed
And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb.

The mist hangs round the College tower,
    The ghostly street
Is silent at this midnight hour,
    Save for my feet.

With none to see, with none to hear,
    Downward I go
To where, beside the rugged pier,
    The sea sings low.

It sings a tune well loved and known
    In days gone by,
When often here, and not alone,
    I watched the sky.

That was a barren time at best,
    Its fruits were few;
But fruits and flowers had keener zest
    And fresher hue.

Life has not since been wholly vain,
    And now I bear
Of wisdom plucked from joy and pain
    Some slender share.

But, howsoever rich the store,
    I'd lay it down,
To feel upon my back once more
    The old red gown.

Far reaching down's a solid sea sunk everlastingly to rest,
And yet whose billows seem to be for ever heaving toward the west
The tiny fieldmice make their nests, the summer insects buzz and hum
Among the hollows and the crests of this wide ocean stricken dumb,
Whose rollers move for ever on, though sullenly, with fettered wills,
To break in voiceless wrath upon the crumbled bases of far hills,
Where rugged outposts meet the shock, stand fast, and hurl them back again,
An avalanche of earth and rock, in tumbled fragments on the plain;
But, never heeding the rebuff, to right and left they kiss the feet
Of hanging cliff and bouldered bluff till on the farther side they meet,
And once again resume their march to where the afternoon sun dips
Toward the west, and Heaven's arch salutes the ...

When I am old,
And sadly steal apart,
Into the dark and cold,
Friend of my heart!
Remember, if you can,
Not him who lingers, but that other man,
Who loved and sang, and had a beating heart,--
When I am old!

When I am old,
And all Love's ancient fire
Be tremulous and cold:
My soul's desire!
Remember, if you may,
Nothing of you and me but yesterday,
When heart on heart we bid the years conspire
To make us old.

When I am old,
And every star above
Be pitiless and cold:
My life's one love!
Forbid me not to go:
Remember nought of us but long ago,
And not at last, how love and pity strove
When I grew old!

I.

I know a Mount, the gracious Sun perceives
First, when he visits, last, too, when he leaves
The world; and, vainly favoured, it repays
The day-long glory of his steadfast gaze
By no change of its large calm front of snow.
And underneath the Mount, a Flower I know,
He cannot have perceived, that changes ever
At his approach; and, in the lost endeavour
To live his life, has parted, one by one,
With all a flower’s true graces, for the grace
Of being but a foolish mimic sun,
With ray-like florets round a disk-like face.
Men nobly call by many a name the Mount
As over many a land of theirs its large
Calm front of snow like a triumphal targe
Is reared, and still with old names, fresh names vie,
Each to its proper praise and own account:
Men call t...

"Childhood and youth are vanity."


Often o'er life's pathway straying
Come sweet strains of long ago,
To the chords of memory playing
Music sweet and music low.

When upon the gray rock musing
'Neath the tree by childhood's home,
In the wild bird's note so soothing
Tenderly these strains will come.

Gazing on the deep fringed mountain,
Distance robing it in blue,
Quaffing the familiar fountain,
Each repeats the story too.

Wandering by the streamlet flowing
Where we played in hours of glee,
Hear its murmurs coming, going,
Tell of joys that used to be.

Wandering in the leafy wildwood
Sometimes in our leisure hours,
In the sunny days of childhood
How much fairer seemed its flowers!

Watching from the ...

Autumn, thy rushing blast
    Sweeps in wild eddies by,
Whirling the sear leaves past,
    Beneath my feet, to die.
Nature her requiem sings
    In many a plaintive tone,
As to the wind she flings
    Sad music, all her own.

The murmur of the rill
    Is hoarse and sullen now,
And the voice of joy is still
    In grove and leafy bough.
There's not a single wreath,
    Of all Spring's thousand flowers,
To strew her bier in death,
    Or deck her faded bowers.

I hear a spirit sigh
    Where the meeting pines resound,
Which tells me all must die,
    As the leaf dies on the ground.
The brightest hopes we cherish,
    Which own a mortal trust,
But bloom awhile to perish
    And moulder in the dust.

Sweep on...

Dear Craoibhin Aoibhin, look into our case.
When we are high and airy hundreds say
That if we hold that flight they’ll leave the place,
While those same hundreds mock another day
Because we have made our art of common things,
So bitterly, you’d dream they longed to look
All their lives through into some drift of wings.
You’ve dandled them and fed them from the book
And know them to the bone; impart to us,
We’ll keep the secret, a new trick to please.
Is there a bridle for this Proteus
That turns and changes like his draughty seas?
Or is there none, most popular of men,
But when they mock us that we mock again?

There is a chillness in the air -
A coldness in the smile of day;
And e'en the sunbeam's crimson glare
Seems shaded with a tinge of gray.

Weary of journeys to and fro,
The sun low creeps adown the sky;
And on the shivering earth below,
The long, cold shadows grimly lie.

But there will fall a deeper shade,
More chilling than the Autumn's breath:
There is a flower that yet must fade,
And yield its sweetness up to death.

She sits upon the window-seat,
Musing in mournful silence there,
While on her brow the sunbeams meet,
And dally with her golden hair.

She gazes on the sea of light
That overflows the western skies,
Till her great soul seems plumed for flight
From out the window of her eyes.

Hopes unfulfilled have ...

Rustling among his odds and ends of knowledge
Suddenly, to his wonder, Senlin finds
How Cleopatra and Senebtisi
Were dug by many hands from ancient tombs.
Cloth after scented cloth the sage unwinds:
Delicious to see our futile modern sunlight
Dance like a harlot among these Dogs and Dooms!
First, the huge pyramid, with rock on rock
Bloodily piled to heaven; and under this
A gilded cavern, bat festooned;
And here in rows on rows, with gods about them,
Cloudily lustrous, dim, the sacred coffins,
Silver starred and crimson mooned.
What holy secret shall we now uncover?
Inside the outer coffin is a second;
Inside the second, smaller, lies a third.
This one is carved, and like a human body;
And painted over with fish and bull and bird.
Here are men walkin...

O! nothing earthly save the ray
(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty's eye,
As in those gardens where the day
Springs from the gems of Circassy,
O! nothing earthly save the thrill
Of melody in woodland rill,
Or (music of the passion-hearted)
Joy's voice so peacefully deParted
That like the murmur in the shell,
Its echo dwelleth and will dwell,
Oh, nothing of the dross of ours,
Yet all the beauty, all the flowers
That list our Love, and deck our bowers,
Adorn yon world afar, afar,
The wandering star.

'Twas a sweet time for Nesace, for there
Her world lay lolling on the golden air,
Near four bright suns, a temporary rest,
An oasis in desert of the blest.
Away, away, 'mid seas of rays that roll
Empyrean splendor o'er th' unchained soul,<...

    There's a voice in my heart that cries and cries for tears.
    It is not a voice, but a pain of many fears.
    It is not a pain, but the rune of far-off spheres.

    It may be a dæmon of pent and high emprise,
    That looks on my soul till my soul hides and cries,
    Loath to rebuke my soul and bid it arise.

    It may be myself as I was in another life,
    Fashioned to lead where strife gives way to strife,
    Pinioned here in failure by knife thrown after knife.

    The child turns o'er in the womb; and perhaps the soul
    Nurtures a dream too strong for the soul's control,
    When the dream hath eyes, and senses its destined goal.

    Deep in darkness the bulb under mould and clod
    Feels the sun in the sky and pushes above the sod;

I

In youth I have known one with whom the Earth
In secret communing held, as he with it,
In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:
Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit
From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
A passionate light such for his spirit was fit,
And yet that spirit knew, not in the hour
Of its own fervor, what had o’er it power.


II

Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought
To a ferver by the moonbeam that hangs o’er,
But I will half believe that wild light fraught
With more of sovereignty than ancient lore
Hath ever told, or is it of a thought
The unembodied essence, and no more
That with a quickening spell doth o’er us pass
As dew of the night-time, o’er the summer grass?


III
<...

Driven in by Autumn's sharpening air
From half-stripped woods and pastures bare,
Brisk Robin seeks a kindlier home:
Not like a beggar is he come,
But enters as a looked-for guest,
Confiding in his ruddy breast,
As if it were a natural shield
Charged with a blazon on the field,
Due to that good and pious deed
Of which we in the Ballad read.
But pensive fancies putting by,
And wild-wood sorrows, speedily
He plays the expert ventriloquist;
And, caught by glimpses now, now missed,
Puzzles the listener with a doubt
If the soft voice he throws about
Comes from within doors or without!
Was ever such a sweet confusion,
Sustained by delicate illusion?
He's at your elbow, to your feeling
The notes are from the floor or ceiling;
And there's a rid...

I.

What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well?
The path that takes me in the spring
Past quince-trees where the bluebirds sing,
And peonies are blossoming,
Unto a porch, wistaria-hung,
Around whose steps May-lilies blow,
A fair girl reaches down among,
Her arm more white than their sweet snow.

II.

What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well?
Another path that leads me, when
The summer time is here again,
Past hollyhocks that shame the west
When the red sun has sunk to rest;
To roses bowering a nest,
A lattice, 'neath which mignonette
And deep geraniums surge and sough,
Where, in the twilight, starless yet,
A fair girl's eyes are stars enough.

III.

...

As some spent gladiator, struck by Death,
Whose reeling vision scarce a foe defines,
For one last effort gathers all his breath,
England draws in her lines.

Her blood-red flag floats out full fair, but flows
O'er crumbling bastions, in fictitious state:
Who stands a siege Cornwallis full well knows,
        Plays at a game with Fate.

Siege means surrender at the bitter end,
From Ilium downward such the sword-made rule,
With few exceptions, few indeed amend
    This law in any school!

The student who for these has ever sought
'Mid his exceptions Cæsar counts as one,
Besieger and besieged he, victor, fought
Under a Gallic sun.

For Vircinget'rex failed, but at the wall:
He strove and failed gilded by Glory's rays
So that true sol...