Courage

Fame writes ever its song and story,
For heroes of war, in letters of glory.

But where is the story and where is the song
For the heroes of peace and the martyrs of wrong?

They fight their battles in shop and mine;
They die at their posts and make no sign.

They herd like beasts in a slaughter pen;
They live like cattle and suffer like men.

Why, set by the horrors of such a life,
Like a merry-go-round seems the battle's strife,

And the open sea, and the open boat,
And the deadly cannon with bellowing throat.

Oh, what are they all, with death thrown in,
To the life that has nothing to lose or win -

The life that has nothing to hope or gain
But ill-paid labour and beds of pain?

Fame, where is your story and where is...

Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire,
From passionate pain to deadlier delight,
I am too young to live without desire,
Too young art thou to waste this summer night
Asking those idle questions which of old
Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.

For, sweet, to feel is better than to know,
And wisdom is a childless heritage,
One pulse of passion youth's first fiery glow,
Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage:
Vex not thy soul with dead philosophy,
Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love and eyes to see!

Dost thou not hear the murmuring nightingale,
Like water bubbling from a silver jar,
So soft she sings the envious moon is pale,
That high in heaven she is hung so far
She cannot hear that love-enraptured tune,
Mark how ...

Ite, rime dolenti, al duro sasso.

HE PRAYS THAT SHE WILL BE NEAR HIM AT HIS DEATH, WHICH HE FEELS APPROACHING.


    Go, plaintive verse, to the cold marble go,
Which hides in earth my treasure from these eyes;
There call on her who answers from yon skies,
Although the mortal part dwells dark and low.
Of life how I am wearied make her know,
Of stemming these dread waves that round me rise:
But, copying all her virtues I so prize,
Her track I follow, yet my steps are slow.
I sing of her, living, or dead, alone;
(Dead, did I say? She is immortal made!)
That by the world she should be loved, and known.
Oh! in my passage hence may she be near,
To greet my coming that's not long delay'd;
And may I hold in heaven the rank herself holds there!
...

        Let there be many windows to your soul,
        That all the glory of the universe
        May beautify it. Not the narrow pane
        Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays
        That shine from countless sources. Tear away
        The blinds of superstition; let the light
        Pour through fair windows broad as Truth itself
        And high as God.

    Why should the spirit peer
        Through some priest-curtained orifice, and grope
        Along dim corridors of doubt, when all
        The splendor from unfathomed seas of space
        Might bathe it with the golden waves of Love?
        Sweep up the debris of decaying faiths;
        Sweep down the cobwebs of worn-out beliefs,
        And throw your soul wide open to the light
...

    Divinely strong and beautiful in soul!
        With more than melody of mortal voice!
    The free thy spirit's majesty extol,
        When Liberty is made thy Muse's choice.
    And then how pure and pleasing is thy song,
        When Beauty - goddess of thy mind - its theme!
    But most to thee those sweet, sad strains belong,
        Where Truth we find through musing's fitful dream:
    And trace Uncertainty and how it gropes
        Through this and time to come with faltering feet,
    And vanity of Pleasure, and the Hopes
        Which Fear enfeebles and the Fates defeat:
    Strains oft as if at thy once-sung desire
        The wild west wind had ta'en thee for its lyre.

Far, far away is mirth withdrawn
'Tis three long hours before the morn
And I watch lonely, drearily
So come thou shade commune with me

Deserted one! thy corpse lies cold
And mingled with a foreign mould
Year after year the grass grows green
Above the dust where thou hast been.

I will not name thy blighted name
Tarnished by unforgotton shame
Though not because my bosom torn
Joins the mad world in all its scorn

Thy phantom face is dark with woe
Tears have left ghastly traces there,
Those ceaseless tears! I wish their flow
Could quench thy wild despair.

They deluge my heart like the rain
On cursed Gomorrah's howling plain
Yet when I hear thy foes deride
I must cling closely to thy side

Our mutual foes, they will n...

Not your martyrs anointed of heaven -
        The ages are red where they trod -
But the Hunted - the world's bitter leaven -
        Who smote at your imbecile God -

A being to pander and fawn to,
        To propitiate, flatter and dread
As a thing that your souls are in pawn to,
        A Dealer who traffics the dead;

A Trader with greed never sated,
        Who barters the souls in his snares,
That were trapped in the lusts he created,
        For incense and masses and prayers -

They are crushed in the coils of your halters;
        'Twere well - by the creeds ye have nursed -
That ye send up a cry from your altars,
        A mass for the Martyrs Accursed;

A passionate prayer from reprieval
        For the Brotherhood not under...

There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gipsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: "Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs,
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelo...

Eternal power of earth and air,
Unseen, yet seen in all around,
Remote, but dwelling everywhere,
Though silent, heard in every sound.

If e'er thine ear in mercy bent
When wretched mortals cried to thee,
And if indeed thy Son was sent
To save lost sinners such as me.

Then hear me now, while kneeling here;
I lift to thee my heart and eye
And all my soul ascends in prayer;
O give me, give me Faith I cry.

Without some glimmering in my heart,
I could not raise this fervent prayer;
But O a stronger light impart,
And in thy mercy fix it there!

While Faith is with me I am blest;
It turns my darkest night to day;
But while I clasp it to my breast
I often feel it slide away.

Then cold and dark my spirit sinks,
To se...

Pass, pass, you fiery spirit! Never bland
And halting never! Hosted round to-night,
At the great wall, with spears of lifted light,
Held by embattled seraphim, who stand
To greet their friend, their comrade, and their own!
Doubtless, spirit made for burning war.
Doubtless your God has need of you afar.
To lead, for Him, some heav'nly fight and lone.
And therefore knights you, thus, before the throne!

        Two pompous owls together sat
        In the solemnity of chat:

        "Respect to wisdom, all is fled;
        The Grecian sages all are dead.
        They gave our fathers honour due;
        The dignity of owls they knew.
        Upon our merit they conferred
        The title of 'The Athenian bird.'"

        "Brother, they did; you reason right,"
        Answered his chum with winking sight.
        "For Athens was the seat of learning.
        Academicians were discerning.
        They placed us on Minerva's helm,
        And strove with rank to overwhelm
        Our worth, which now is quite neglected, -
        Ay, a cock-sparrow's more respected."

        A sparrow who was passing by,
        And heard the speech,...

Captive! Is there a hell to him like this?
A taunt more galling than the Huron's hiss?
He - proud and scornful, he - who laughed at law,
He - scion of the deadly Iroquois,
He - the bloodthirsty, he - the Mohawk chief,
He - who despises pain and sneers at grief,
Here in the hated Huron's vicious clutch,
That even captive he disdains to touch!

Captive! But never conquered; Mohawk brave
Stoops not to be to any man a slave;
Least, to the puny tribe his soul abhors,
The tribe whose wigwams sprinkle Simcoe's shores.
With scowling brow he stands and courage high,
Watching with haughty and defiant eye
His captors, as they council o'er his fate,
Or strive his boldness to intimidate.
Then fling they unto him the choice;

            "Wilt t...

“Me too, perchance, in future days,
The sculptured stone shall show,
With Paphian myrtle or with bays
Parnassian on my brow.


“But I, or ere that season come,
Escaped from every care,
Shall reach my refuge in the tomb,
And sleep securely there.”


So sang, in Roman tone and style,
The youthful bard, ere long
Ordain’d to grace his native isle
With her sublimest song.


Who then but must conceive disdain,
Hearing the deed unblest
Of wretches who have dared profane
His dread sepulchral rest?


Ill fare the hands that heaved the stones
Where Milton’s ashes lay,
That trembled not to grasp his bones
And steal his dust away!


O ill requited bard! neglect
Thy living worth repaid,
And bli...

When the clouds in the Western sky
Flush red with the setting sun,--
When the veil of twilight falls,
And the busy day is done,--
I sit and watch the clouds,
With their crimson hues alight,
And ponder with anxious heart,
Oh, where is my boy to-night?

It is just a year to-day
Since he bade me a gay good-by,
To march where banners float,
And the deadly missiles fly.
As I marked his martial step
I felt my color rise
With all a mother's pride,
And my heart was in my eyes.

There's a little room close by,
Where I often used to creep
In the hush of the summer night
To watch my boy asleep.
But he who used to rest
Beneath the spread so white
Is far away from me now,--
Oh, where is my boy to-night?

Perchance in t...

Still in thy streets, O Paris! doth the stain
Of blood defy the cleansing autumn rain;
Still breaks the smoke Messina's ruins through,
And Naples mourns that new Bartholomew,
When squalid beggary, for a dole of bread,
At a crowned murderer's beck of license, fed
The yawning trenches with her noble dead;
Still, doomed Vienna, through thy stately halls
The shell goes crashing and the red shot falls,
And, leagued to crush thee, on the Danube's side,
The bearded Croat and Bosniak spearman ride;
Still in that vale where Himalaya's snow
Melts round the cornfields and the vines below,
The Sikh's hot cannon, answering ball for ball,
Flames in the breach of Moultan's shattered wall;
On Chenab's side the vulture seeks the slain,
And Sutlej paints with blood its banks ag...

I asked if I should pray.
But the Brahmin said,
"pray for nothing, say
Every night in bed,
""I have been a king,
I have been a slave,
Nor is there anything.
Fool, rascal, knave,
That I have not been,
And yet upon my breast
A myriad heads have lain.'''
That he might Set at rest
A boy's turbulent days
Mohini Chatterjee
Spoke these, or words like these,
I add in commentary,
"Old lovers yet may have
All that time denied --
Grave is heaped on grave
That they be satisfied --
Over the blackened earth
The old troops parade,
Birth is heaped on Birth
That such cannonade
May thunder time away,
Birth-hour and death-hour meet,
Or, as great sages say,
Men dance on deathless feet.'

WRITTEN FOR "THE SPECTATOR"

There's a brave little berry-brown man
At the opposite side of the earth;
Of the White, and the Black, and the Tan,
He's the smallest in compass and girth.
O! he's little, and lively, and Tan,
And he's showing the world what he's worth.
For his nation is born, and its birth
Is for hardihood, courage, and sand,
    So you take off your cap
    To the brave little Jap
Who fights for Chrysanthemum Land.

Near the house that the little man keeps,
There's a Bug-a-boo building its lair;
It prowls, and it growls, and it sleeps
At the foot of his tiny back stair.
But the little brown man never sleeps,
For the Brownie will battle the Bear -
He has soldiers and ships to command;
    So take off you cap
    To th...

Browning contributed the money he earned by this poem to the people of Paris suffering from the Franco-Prussian War. Hervé Riel appeared in the Cornhill Magazine for March, 1871, and the publisher, Mr. George Smith, paid one hundred pounds for the poem.


I
On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two,
Did the English fight the French, woe to France!
And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue,
Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue,
Came crowding ship on ship to Saint Malo on the Rance,
With the English fleet in view.

II
’Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase;
First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville;
Close on him fled, great and small,
Twenty-two good ships ...