Courage

How should we praise those lads of the old Vindictive
    Who looked Death straight in the eyes,
        Till his gaze fell,
        In those red gates of hell?

England, in her proud history, proudly enrolls them,
    And the deep night in her remembering skies
        With purer glory
        Shall blazon their grim story.

There were no throngs to applaud that hushed adventure.
    They were one to a thousand on that fierce emprise.
        The shores they sought
        Were armoured, past all thought.

O, they knew fear, be assured, as the brave must know it,
    With youth and its happiness bidding their last good-byes;
        Till thoughts, more dear
        Than life, cast out all fear.

    For if, as we think, they remembe...

    I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes
    In weary, woeful, waiting times;
    In doleful hours of battle-din,
    Ere yet they brought the wounded in;
    Through vigils of the fateful night,
    In lousy barns by candle-light;
    In dug-outs, sagging and aflood,
    On stretchers stiff and bleared with blood;
    By ragged grove, by ruined road,
    By hearths accurst where Love abode;
    By broken altars, blackened shrines
    I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes.

    I've solaced me with scraps of song
    The desolated ways along:
    Through sickly fields all shrapnel-sown,
    And meadows reaped by death alone;
    By blazing cross and splintered spire,
    By headless Virgin in the mire;
    By gardens gashed amid their bloom,
   ...

Thin summer rain on grass and bush and hedge,
    Reddening the road and deepening the green
On wide, blurred lawn, and in close-tangled sedge;
    Veiling in gray the landscape stretched between
    These low broad meadows and the pale hills seen
But dimly on the far horizon's edge.


In these transparent-clouded, gentle skies,
    Wherethrough the moist beams of the soft June sun
Might any moment break, no sorrow lies,
    No note of grief in swollen brooks that run,
    No hint of woe in this subdued, calm tone
Of all the prospect unto dreamy eyes.


Only a tender, unnamed half-regret
    For the lost beauty of the gracious morn;
A yearning aspiration, fainter yet,
    For brighter suns in joyous days unborn,
    Now while brief showers ...

The hue, which coward dread on my pale cheeks
Imprinted, when I saw my guide turn back,
Chas'd that from his which newly they had worn,
And inwardly restrain'd it. He, as one
Who listens, stood attentive: for his eye
Not far could lead him through the sable air,
And the thick-gath'ring cloud. "It yet behooves
We win this fight"--thus he began--"if not--
Such aid to us is offer'd.--Oh, how long
Me seems it, ere the promis'd help arrive!"

I noted, how the sequel of his words
Clok'd their beginning; for the last he spake
Agreed not with the first. But not the less
My fear was at his saying; sith I drew
To import worse perchance, than that he held,
His mutilated speech. "Doth ever any
Into this rueful concave's extreme depth
Descend, out of the first de...

Out of the gulf into the glory,
    Father, my soul cries out to be lifted.
Dark is the woof of my dismal story,
    Thorough thy sun-warp stormily drifted!--
Out of the gulf into the glory,
Lift me, and save my story.

I have done many things merely shameful;
    I am a man ashamed, my father!
My life is ashamed and broken and blameful--
    The broken and blameful, oh, cleanse and gather!
Heartily shame me, Lord, of the shameful!
To my judge I flee with my blameful.

Saviour, at peace in thy perfect purity,
    Think what it is, not to be pure!
Strong in thy love's essential security,
    Think upon those who are never secure.
Full fill my soul with the light of thy purity:
Fold me in love's security.

O Father, O Brother, my heart i...

For a summer festival at “The Laurels” on the Merrimac.


Once more on yonder laurelled height
The summer flowers have budded;
Once more with summer’s golden light
The vales of home are flooded;
And once more, by the grace of Him
Of every good the Giver,
We sing upon its wooded rim
The praises of our river,

Its pines above, its waves below,
The west-wind down it blowing,
As fair as when the young Brissot
Beheld it seaward flowing,
And bore its memory o’er the deep,
To soothe a martyr’s sadness,
And fresco, in his troubled sleep,
His prison-walls with gladness.

We know the world is rich with streams
Renowned in song and story,
Whose music murmurs through our dreams
Of human love and glory
We know that Arno’s...

In this lone, open glade I lie,
Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand;
And at its end, to stay the eye,
Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand!

Birds here make song, each bird has his,
Across the girdling city's hum.
How green under the boughs it is!
How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!

Sometimes a child will cross the glade
To take his nurse his broken toy;
Sometimes a thrush flit overhead
Deep in her unknown day's employ.

Here at my feet what wonders pass,
What endless, active life is here!
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass!
An air-stirr'd forest, fresh and clear.

Scarce fresher is the mountain-sod
Where the tired angler lies, stretch'd out,
And, eased of basket and of rod,
Counts his day's spoil, the ...

Australia, my native land,
A stirring whisper in your ear,
'Tis time for you to understand
Your rating now is A1, dear.
You've done some rousing things of late.
That lift you from the simple state
In which you chose to vegetate.

The persons so superior,
Whose patronage no more endures,
Now have to fire a salvo for
The glory that is fairly yours.
At length you need no sort of crutch,
You stand alone, you're voted “much”,
Get busy and behave as such.

No man from Oskosh, or from Hull,
Or any other chosen place
Can rise with a distended skull,
And cast aspersions in your face.
You're given all the world to know
Your proper standing as a foe,
And hats are off, and rightly so.

You furnished heroes for the fray,
Your st...

See and not see, and if thou chance t'espy
Some aberrations in my poetry,
Wink at small faults; the greater, ne'ertheless,
Hide, and with them their father's nakedness.
Let's do our best, our watch and ward to keep;
Homer himself, in a long work, may sleep.

I.

Over heaven clouds are drifted;
In the trees the wind-witch cries;
By her sieve the rain is sifted,
And the clouds at times are rifted
By her mad broom as she flies.
Love, there's lightning in the skies,
Swift, as, in your face uplifted,
Leaps the heart-thought to your eyes.
Little face, where I can trace
Dreams for which those eyes are pages,
Whose young magic here assuages
All the heart-storm and alarm.

II.

Now the thunder tramples slowly,
Like a king, down heaven's arc;
And the clouds, like armies wholly
Vanquished, break; and, white as moly,
Sweeps the queen moon on the dark.
Love, a bird wakes; is't the lark?
Sweet as in your bosom holy
Sings the heart that now I hark.
All my soul that song makes whole,

Ah, I have changed, I do not know
Why lonely hours affect me so.
In days of yore, this were not wont,
No loneliness my soul could daunt.

For me too serious for my age,
The weighty tome of hoary sage,
Until with puzzled heart astir,
One God-giv'n night, I dreamed of her.

I loved no woman, hardly knew
More of the sex that strong men woo
Than cloistered monk within his cell;
But now the dream is lost, and hell

Holds me her captive tight and fast
Who prays and struggles for the past.
No living maid has charmed my eyes,
But now, my soul is wonder-wise.

For I have dreamed of her and seen
Her red-brown tresses' ruddy sheen,
Have known her sweetness, lip to lip,
The joy of her companionship.

When days were bleak and wi...

The year lies fallen and faded
On cliffs by clouds invaded,
With tongues of storms upbraided,
With wrath of waves bedinned;
And inland, wild with warning,
As in deaf ears or scorning,
The clarion even and morning
Rings of the south-west wind.

The wild bents wane and wither
In blasts whose breath bows hither
Their grey-grown heads and thither,
Unblest of rain or sun;
The pale fierce heavens are crowded
With shapes like dreams beclouded,
As though the old year enshrouded
Lay, long ere life were done.

Full-charged with oldworld wonders,
From dusk Tintagel thunders
A note that smites and sunders
The hard frore fields of air;
A trumpet stormier-sounded
Than once from lists rebounded
When strong men sense-confounded
Fel...

Splashing along the boggy woods all day,
And over brambled hedge and holding clay,
I shall not think of him:
But when the watery fields grow brown and dim,
And hounds have lost their fox, and horses tire,
I know that he'll be with me on my way
Home through the darkness to the evening fire.

He's jumped each stile along the glistening lanes;
His hand will be upon the mud-soaked reins;
Hearing the saddle creak,
He'll wonder if the frost will come next week.
I shall forget him in the morning light;
And while we gallop on he will not speak:
But at the stable-door he'll say good-night.

Rock and root and fern and flower
They had led him for an hour
To the inmost forest, where,
In a hollow, green with moss,
That the deep ferns trailed across,
Fell a fall, a presence fair,
Syllabling to the air,
Charming with cool sounds the bower.

It was she he used to know
In some land of Long Ago,
Some far land of Yesterday,
Where he listened to her words,
And she lured him, like the birds,
To her lips; and in his way
Danced a bubble or rainbow-ray,
Or a minnow's silvery bow.

Round him now her arms she flung,
And, as dripping there she clung,
In her gaze of green and gold
He beheld a beauty gleam,
And the shadow of a dream,
That to no man hath been told,
Like a Faery tale of old,
Rise up glimmering, ever young.<...

When low and heavy sky weighs like a lid
Upon the spirit moaning in ennui,
And when, spanning the circle of the world,
It pours a black day sadder than our nights;

When earth is changed into a sweaty cell,
In which Hope, captured, like a frantic bat,
Batters the walls with her enfeebled wing,
Striking her head against the rotting beams;

When steady rain trailing its giant train
Descends on us like heavy prison bars,
And when a silent multitude of spiders
Spins its disgusting threads deep in our brains,

Bells all at once jump out with all their force,
And hurl about a mad cacophony
As if they were those lost and homeless souls
Who send a dogged whining to the skies.

And long corteges minus drum or tone
Deploy morosely through my bei...

Man must do well out of a good intent;
Not for the servile fear of punishment.

I.

There breathes not a breath of the summer air
But the spirit of love is moving there;
Not a trembling leaf on the shadowy tree,
Flutters with hundreds in harmony,
But that spirit can part its tone from the rest,
And read the life in its beetle's breast.
When the sunshiny butterflies come and go,
Like flowers paying visits to and fro,
Not a single wave of their fanning wings
Is unfelt by the spirit that feeleth all things.
The long-mantled moths that sleep at noon
And rove in the light of the gentler moon;
And the myriad gnats that dance like a wall,
Or a moving column that will not fall;
And the dragon-flies that go burning by,
Shot like a glance from a seeking eye--
There is one being that loves them all:
Not a fly in a spider's web can fal...

To-night retired, the queen of heaven
With young Endymion stays;
And now to Hesper it is given
Awhile to rule the vacant sky,
Till she shall to her lamp supply
A stream of brighter rays.

Propitious send thy golden ray,
Thou purest light above!
Let no false flame seduce to stray
Where gulf or steep lie hid for harm;
But lead where music's healing charm
May soothe afflicted love.

To them, by many a grateful song
In happier seasons vow'd,
These lawns, Olympia's haunts, belong:
Oft by yon silver stream we walk'd,
Or fix'd, while Philomela talk'd,
Beneath yon copses stood.

Nor seldom, where the beechen boughs
That roofless tower invade,
We came, while her enchanting Muse
The radiant moon above us held:
Till, by a clam...