Courage

Her heart is still and leaps no more
With holy passion when the breeze,
Her whilom playmate, as before,
Comes with the language of the bees,
Sad songs her mountain cedars sing,
And water-music murmuring.

Her calm white feet, - erst fleet and fast
As Daphne's when a god pursued, -
No more will dance like sunlight past
The gold-green vistas of the wood,
Where every quailing floweret
Smiled into life where they were set.

Hers were the limbs of living light,
And breasts of snow; as virginal
As mountain drifts; and throat as white
As foam of mountain waterfall;
And hyacinthine curls, that streamed
Like crag-born mists, and gloomed and gleamed.

Her presence breathed such scents as haunt
Moist, mountain dells and solitudes;
Aroma...

Strangers drawn from the ends of the earth, jewelled and plumed were we;
I was Lord of the Inca race, and she was Queen of the Sea.
Under the stars beyond our stars where the new-forged meteors glow,
Hotly we stormed Valhalla, a million years ago!

Ever ’neath high Valhalla Hall the well-tuned horns begin,
When the swords are out in the underworld, and the weary Gods come in.
Ever through high Valhalla Gate the Patient Angel goes
He opens the eyes that are blind with hate, he joins the hands of foes.

Dust of the stars was under our feet, glitter of stars above,
Wrecks of our wrath dropped reeling down as we fought and we spurned and we strove.
Worlds upon worlds we tossed aside, and scattered them to and fro,
The night that we stormed Valhalla, a million years ago!

We know the Rocket’s upward whizz;
We know the Boom before the Bust.
We know the whistling Wail which is
The Stick returning to the Dust.
We know how much to take on trust
Of any promised Paradise.
We know the Pie, likewise the Crust.
We know the Bonfire on the Ice.

We know the Mountain and the Mouse.
We know Great Cry and Little Wool.
We know the purseless Ears of Sows.
We know the Frog that aped the Bull.
We know, whatever Trick we pull,
(Ourselves have gambled once or twice)
A Bobtailed Flush is not a Full.
We know the Bonfire on the Ice.

We know that Ones and Ones make Twos,
Till Demos votes them Three or Nought.
We know the Fenris Wolf is loose.
We know what Fight has not been fought.
We know the Father to the Thought
...

His heart's a burning censer, filled with spice
From fairer vales than those of Araby,
Breathing such prayers to heaven, that the nice
Discriminating ear of Deity
Can cull sweet praises from the rare perfume.
Man cannot know what starry lights illume
The soaring spirit of his brother man!
He judges harshly with his mind's eyes closed;
His loftiest understanding cannot scan
The heights where Poet-souls have oft reposed;
He cannot feel the chastened influence
Divine, that lights the Ideal atmosphere,
And never to his uninspirèd sense
Rolls the majestic hymn that inspirates the Seer.

During a heavy storm it chanced
That from his room a cockney glanced
At the fierce tempest as it broke,
While to his neighbour thus he spoke:
"The thunder has our awe inspired,
Our barns by lightning have been fired,
Our sins to punish, I suppose;
But in return, to soothe our woes,
See how the rain in torrents fell,
Making the harvest promise well!
But is't a rainbow that I spy
Extending o'er the dark-grey sky?
With it I'm sure we may dispense,
The colour'd cheat! The vain pretence!"
Dame Iris straightway thus replied:
"Dost dare my beauty to deride?
In realms of space God station'd me
A type of better worlds to be
To eyes that from life's sorrows rove
In cheerful hope to Heav'n above,
And, through the mists that hover here
God and his...

Vital spark of heav'nly flame,
Quit, oh, quit, this mortal frame!
Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying,
Oh, the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life!

Hark! they whisper; Angels say,
Sister Spirit, come away.
What is this absorbs me quite,
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my Soul! can this be Death?

The world recedes; it disappears;
Heav'n opens on my eyes; my ears
With sounds seraphic ring:
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy Victory?
O Death! where is thy Sting?

Doom’d, as I am, in solitude to waste
The present moments, and regret the past;
Deprived of every joy I valued most,
My friend torn from me, and my mistress lost;
Call not this gloom I wear, this anxious mien,
The dull effect of humour, or of spleen!
Still, still I mourn, with each returning day,
Him[1] snatch’d by fate in early youth away;
And her—thro’ tedious years of doubt and pain,
Fix’d in her choice, and faithful—but in vain!
O prone to pity, generous, and sincere,
Whose eye ne’er yet refused the wretch a tear;
Whose heart the real claim of friendship knows;
Nor thinks a lover’s are but fancied woes;
See me—ere yet my destined course half done,
Cast forth a wand’rer on a world unknown!
See me neglected on the world’s rude coast,
Each dea...

One moment past our bodies cast
No shadow on the plain;
Now clear and black they stride our track,
And we run home again.
In morning-hush, each rock and bush
Stands hard, and high, and raw:
Then give the Call: "Good rest to all
That keep the Jungle Law!"

Now horn and pelt our peoples melt
In covert to abide;
Now, crouched and still, to cave and hill
Our Jungle Barons glide.
Now, stark and plain, Man's oxen strain,
That draw the new-yoked plough;
Now, stripped and dread, the dawn is red
Above the lit talao.

Ho! Get to lair! The sun's aflare
Behind the breathing grass:
And creaking through the young bamboo
The warning whispers pass.
By day made strange, the woods we range
With blinking eyes we scan;
While down the skies ...

For the mountains' hoarse greetings came hollow
From stormy wind-chasms and caves,
And I heard their wild cataracts wallow
Huge bulks in long spasms of waves,
And that Demon said, "Lo! you must follow!
And our path is o'er myriads of graves."

Then I felt that the black earth was porous
And rotten with worms and with bones;
And I knew that the ground that now bore us
Was cadaverous with Death's skeletons;
And I saw horrid eyes, heard sonorous
And dolorous gnashings and groans.

But the night of the tempest and thunder,
The might of the terrible skies,
And the fire of Hell that, - coiled under
The hollow Earth, - smoulders and sighs,
And the laughter of stars and their wonder
Mingled and mixed in its eyes.

And we clomb - and the moon o...

True as the church clock hand the hour pursues
He plods about his toils and reads the news,
And at the blacksmith's shop his hour will stand
To talk of "Lunun" as a foreign land.
For from his cottage door in peace or strife
He neer went fifty miles in all his life.
His knowledge with old notions still combined
Is twenty years behind the march of mind.
He views new knowledge with suspicious eyes
And thinks it blasphemy to be so wise.
On steam's almighty tales he wondering looks
As witchcraft gleaned from old blackletter books.
Life gave him comfort but denied him wealth,
He toils in quiet and enjoys his health,
He smokes a pipe at night and drinks his beer
And runs no scores on tavern screens to clear.
He goes to market all the year about
And keeps one hou...

November, 1863

A kindling impulse seized the host
Inspired by heaven's elastic air;
Their hearts outran their General's plan,
Though Grant commanded there--
Grant, who without reserve can dare;
And, "Well, go on and do your will,"
He said, and measured the mountain then:
So master-riders fling the rein--
But you must know your men.

On yester-morn in grayish mist,
Armies like ghosts on hills had fought,
And rolled from the cloud their thunders loud
The Cumberlands far had caught:
To-day the sunlit steeps are sought.
Grant stood on cliffs whence all was plain,
And smoked as one who feels no cares;
But mastered nervousness intense
Alone such calmness wears.

The summit-cannon plunge their flame
Sheer down the primal wall,

As one who cons at evening o'er an album all alone,
And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known,
So I turn the leaves of fancy till, in shadowy design,
I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine.

The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise,
As I turn it low to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes,
And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to yoke
Its fate with my tobacco and to vanish with the smoke.

'Tis a fragrant retrospection - for the loving thoughts that start
Into being are like perfume from the blossom of the heart;
And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine -
When my truant fancy wanders with that old sweetheart of mine.

Though I hear, beneath my study, like a fluttering of wings,
The voices o...

Fools can parrot-cry the prophet when the proof is close at hand,
And the blind can see the danger when the foe is in the land!
Truth was never cynicism, death or ruin’s not a joke,
“Told-you-so” is not a warning, Patriotism not a croak.

Blame will aid no man nor country when the dark days come at last,
As with men so with a nation, and the warning time is past.
Our great sins were of omission, and the dogs of war are loosed,
And we all must stand together when those sins come home to roost.

Since the cities are the cities and shall stand for evermore,
Let us justify our being, be it peace or be it war.
For because we are the townsfolk, and have never ridden far
Shall we call the bush to aid us that has made us what we are?

Westward went our brothers, fighting d...

We are desert leagues apart;
Time is misty ages now
Since the warmth of heart to heart
Chased the shadows from my brow.

Oh, I am so old, meseems
I am next of kin to Time,
The historian of her dreams
From the long forgotten prime.

You have come a path of flowers.
What a way was mine to roam!
Many a fallen empire's towers,
Many a ruined heart my home.

No, there is no comfort, none;
All the dewy tender breath
Idly falls when life is done
On the starless brow of death.

Though the dream of love may tire,
In the ages long agone
There were ruby hearts of fire--
Ah, the daughters of the dawn!

Though I am so feeble now,
I remember when our pride
Could not to the Mighty bow;
We would sweep His stars aside....

When God drave the ruthless waters
From our cornfields to the sea,
Came she where our wives and daughters
Sobbed their thanks on bended knee.
Hidden faces! there ye found her
Mute as death, and staring wild
At the shadow waxing round her
Like the presence of her child
Of her drenched and drowning child!

Dark thoughts live when tears won’t gather;
Who can tell us what she felt?
It was human, O my Father,
If she blamed Thee while she knelt!
Ever, as a benediction
Fell like balm on all and each,
Rose a young face whose affliction
Choked and stayed the founts of speech
Stayed and shut the founts of speech!

Often doth she sit and ponder
Over gleams of happy hair!
How her white hands used to wander,
Like a flood of moonlight ther...

The nearer camp fires lighted,
The distant beacons bright,
The horsemen on the skyline
Are closing in to-night!
My brothers, Oh my brothers!
Lie down and rest at last,
The Years of Reparation
Have rushed upon us fast.

Oh, ride and ride, you riders,
Who rode ere I was born,
While blink-and-blink the star-dust
That blinks before the morn.
And glow and glow you camp fires,
And flash, you beacons bright!
They’re riding round the wronged ones
And riding round the right!

My brothers, Oh my brothers!
With dried and haggard eyes,
In gaol for just blows stricken,
In gaol for women’s lies!
Lie down and pace no longer
But bathe your eyes in tears
For Years of Retribution
That shall be seven years!

Their lovers and...

                    Beneath her window in the fragrant night
                    I half forget how truant years have flown
                    Since I looked up to see her chamber-light,
                    Or catch, perchance, her slender shadow thrown
                    Upon the casement; but the nodding leaves
                    Sweep lazily across the unlit pane,
                    And to and fro beneath the shadowy eaves,
                    Like restless birds, the breath of coming rain
                    Creeps, lilac-laden, up the village street
                    When all is still, as if the very trees
                    Were listening for the coming of her feet
                    That come no more; yet, lest I weep, the breeze
                    Sings some forgo...

I. Off Gilbatrar

Beyond the sleepy hills of Spain,
The sun goes down in yellow mist,
The sky is fresh with dewy stars
Above a sea of amethyst.
Yet in the city of my love
High noon burns all the heavens bare
For him the happiness of light,
For me a delicate despair.

II. Off Algeirs

Oh give me neither love nor tears,
Nor dreams that sear the night with fire,
Go lightly on your pilgrimage
Unburdened by desire.
Forget me for a month, a year,
But, oh, beloved, think of me
When unexpected beauty burns
Like sudden sunlight on the sea.

III. Naples

Nisida and Prosida are laughing in the light,
Capri is a dewy flower lifting into sight,
Posilipo kneels and looks in the burnished sea,
Naples crowds her million r...