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Page 234 of 1791

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Page 234 of 1791

Fragment Of Chorus Of A Dejaneira

O frivolous mind of man,
Light ignorance, and hurrying, unsure thoughts,
Though man bewails you not,
How I bewail you!

Little in your prosperity
Do you seek counsel of the Gods.
Proud, ignorant, self-adored, you live alone.
In profound silence stern
Among their savage gorges and cold springs
Unvisited remain
The great oracular shrines.

Thither in your adversity
Do you betake yourselves for light,
But strangely misinterpret all you hear.
For you will not put on
New hearts with the inquirer’s holy robe,
And purged, considerate minds.

And him on whom, at the end
Of toil and dolour untold,
The Gods have said that repose
At last shall descend undisturb’d,
Him you expect to behold
In an easy old age, in a happy home;

Matthew Arnold

A Noontide Lyric

The dinner-bell, the dinner-bell
Is ringing loud and clear;
Through hill and plain, through street and lane,
It echoes far and near;
From curtained hall and whitewashed stall,
Wherever men can hide,
Like bursting waves from ocean caves,
They float upon the tide.

I smell the smell of roasted meat!
I hear the hissing fry
The beggars know where they can go,
But where, oh where shall I?
At twelve o'clock men took my hand,
At two they only stare,
And eye me with a fearful look,
As if I were a bear!

The poet lays his laurels down,
And hastens to his greens;
The happy tailor quits his goose,
To riot on his beans;
The weary cobbler snaps his thread,
The printer leaves his pi;
His very devil hath a home,
But what, oh what ...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Familist's Hymn

Father! to Thy suffering poor
Strength and grace and faith impart,
And with Thy own love restore
Comfort to the broken heart!
Oh, the failing ones confirm
With a holier strength of zeal!
Give Thou not the feeble worm
Helpless to the spoiler's heel!

Father! for Thy holy sake
We are spoiled and hunted thus;
Joyful, for Thy truth we take
Bonds and burthens unto us
Poor, and weak, and robbed of all,
Weary with our daily task,
That Thy truth may never fall
Through our weakness, Lord, we ask.

Round our fired and wasted homes
Flits the forest-bird unscared,
And at noon the wild beast comes
Where our frugal meal was shared;
For the song of praises there
Shrieks the crow the livelong day;
For the sound of evening prayer
Ho...

John Greenleaf Whittier

First Epistle To Robert Graham, Esq. Of Fintray.

    When Nature her great master-piece designed,
And fram'd her last, best work, the human mind,
Her eye intent on all the mazy plan,
She form'd of various parts the various man.

Then first she calls the useful many forth;
Plain plodding industry, and sober worth:
Thence peasants, farmers, native sons of earth,
And merchandise' whole genus take their birth:
Each prudent cit a warm existence finds,
And all mechanics' many-apron'd kinds.
Some other rarer sorts are wanted yet,
The lead and buoy are needful to the net;
The caput mortuum of gross desires
Makes a material for mere knights and squires;
The martial phosphorus is taught to flow,
She kneads the lumpish philosophic dough,
Then m...

Robert Burns

Written In The Highlands Of Scotland, September 1, 1812.

Blue was the loch, [1] the clouds were gone,
Ben-Lomond in his glory shone,
When, Luss, I left thee; when the breeze
Bore me from thy silver sands,
Thy kirk-yard wall among the trees,
Where, grey with age, the dial stands;
That dial so well-known to me!
--Tho' many a shadow it had shed,
Beloved Sister, since with thee
The legend on the stone was read.
The fairy-isles fled far away;
That with its woods and uplands green,
Where shepherd-huts are dimly seen,
And songs are heard at close of day;
That too, the deer's wild covert, fled,
And that, the Asylum of the Dead:
While, as the boat went merrily,
Much of ROB ROY [2] the boat-man told;
His arm that fell below his knee,
His cattle-ford and mountain-hold.
Tarbet, [3] thy shore I climb'...

Samuel Rogers

The Tale of the Tiger Tree

A Fantasy, dedicated to the little poet Alice Oliver Henderson, ten years old.

The Fantasy shows how tiger-hearts are the cause of war in all ages.
It shows how the mammoth forces may be either friends or enemies of the struggle for peace. It shows how the dream of peace is unconquerable and eternal.


I

Peace-of-the-Heart, my own for long,
Whose shining hair the May-winds fan,
Making it tangled as they can,
A mystery still, star-shining yet,
Through ancient ages known to me
And now once more reborn with me: -

This is the tale of the Tiger Tree
A hundred times the height of a man,
Lord of the race since the world began.

This is my city Springfield,
My home on the breast of the plain.
The state house towers to heaven,
By an ars...

Vachel Lindsay

Regret.

        There is a haunting phantom called Regret,
A shadowy creature robed somewhat like Woe,
But fairer in the face, whom all men know
By her sad mien and eyes forever wet.
No heart would seek her; but once having met,
All take her by the hand, and to and fro
They wander through those paths of long ago -
Those hallowed ways 'twere wiser to forget.

One day she led me to that lost land's gate
And bade me enter; but I answered "No!
I will pass on with my bold comrade, Fate;
I have no tears to waste on thee - no time;
My strength I hoard for heights I hope to climb:
No friend art thou for souls that would be great."

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Chant For Autumn.

    Veiled in visionary haze,
Behold, the ethereal autumn days
Draw near again!
In broad array,
With a low, laborious hum
These ministers of plenty come,
That seem to linger, while they steal away.

O strange, sweet charm
Of peaceful pain,
When yonder mountain's bended arm
Seems wafting o'er the harvest-plain
A message to the heart that grieves,
And round us, here, a sad-hued rain
Of leaves that loosen without number
Showering falls in yellow, umber,
Red, or russet, 'thwart the stream!
Now pale Sorrow shall encumber
All too soon these lands, I deem;
Yet who at heart believes
The autumn, a false friend,
Can bring us fatal harm?
Ah, mist-hung avenues in dream
Not more uncertainly extend

George Parsons Lathrop

Hyperion. Book III

Thus in altemate uproar and sad peace,
Amazed were those Titans utterly.
O leave them, Muse! O leave them to their woes;
For thou art weak to sing such tumults dire:
A solitary sorrow best befits
Thy lips, and antheming a lonely grief.
Leave them, O Muse! for thou anon wilt find
Many a fallen old Divinity
Wandering in vain about bewildered shores.
Meantime touch piously the Delphic harp,
And not a wind of heaven but will breathe
In aid soft warble from the Dorian flute;
For lo! 'tis for the Father of all verse.
Flush everything that hath a vermeil hue,
Let the rose glow intense and warm the air,
And let the clouds of even and of morn
Float in voluptuous fleeces o'er the hills;
Let the red wine within the goblet boil,
Cold as a bubbling well; let fain...

John Keats

Art Versus Cupid

[A room in a private house.    A maiden sitting before a fire meditating.]

MAIDEN

Now have I fully fixed upon my part.
Good-bye to dreams; for me a life of art!
Beloved art! Oh, realm serene and fair,
Above the mean and sordid world of care,
Above earth's small ambitions and desires!
Art! art! the very word my soul inspires!
From foolish memories it sets me free.
Not what has been, but that which is to be
Absorbs me now. Adieu to vain regret!
The bow is tensely drawn - the target set.
[A knock at the door.]

MAID (aside)

The night is dark and chill; the hour is late.
(Aloud)
Who knocks upon my door?

A Voice Outside

'Tis I, your fate!

MAID

Thou dost deceive, not me, but thine own self.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

March of the Deathless Dead

Gather the sacred dust
Of the warriors tried and true,
Who bore the flag of a Nation's trust
And fell in a cause, though lost, still just,
And died for me and you.

Gather them one and all,
From the private to the chief;
Come they from hovel or princely hall,
They fell for us, and for them should fall
The tears of a Nation's grief.

Gather the corpses strewn
O'er many a battle plain;
From many a grave that lies so lone,
Without a name and without a stone,
Gather the Southern slain.

We care not whence they came,
Dear in their lifeless clay!
Whether unknown, or known to fame,
Their cause and country still the same;
They died -- and wore the Gray.

Wherever the brave have died,
They...

Abram Joseph Ryan

Love Letters of a Violinist. Letter VI. Despair.

Letter VI. Despair, Love Letters of a Violinist by Eric MacKay, illustration by James Fagan

Letter VI. Despair.


I.

I am undone. My hopes have beggar'd me,
For I have lov'd where loving was denied.
To-day is dark, and Yesterday has died,
And when To-morrow comes, erect and free,
Like some great king, whose tyrant will he be,
And whose defender in the days of pride?


II.

I am not cold, and yet November bands
Compress my heart. I know the month is May,
And that the sun will warm me if I stay.
But who is this? Oh, who is this that stands
Straight in my path, and with his bony ha...

Eric Mackay

Abner And The Widow Jones, - A Familiar Ballad.

Well! I'm determin'd; that's enough: -
Gee, Bayard! move your poor old bones,
I'll take to-morrow, smooth or rough,
To go and court the Widow Jones.

Our master talks of stable-room,
And younger horses on his grounds;
'Tis easy to foresee thy doom,
Bayard, thou'lt go to feed the hounds.

The first Determination.

But could I win the widow's hand,
I'd make a truce 'twixt death and thee;
For thou upon the best of land
Should'st feed, and live, and die with me.

And must the pole-axe lay thee low?
And will they pick thy poor old bones?
No - hang me if it shall be so, -
If I can win the Widow Jones.

Twirl went his stick; his curly pate
A bran-new hat uplifted bore;
And Abner, as he leapt the gate,
Had never look'd so g...

Robert Bloomfield

President Lincoln's Burial Hymn

When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd

When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.

O powerful, western, fallen star!
O shades of night! O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear'd! O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless! O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud, that will not free my soul!

In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the white-wash'd palings,
Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

Walt Whitman

Sonnet

        To-day was but a dead day in my hands.
Hour by hour did nothing more than pass,
Mere idle winds above the faded grass.
And I, as though a captive held in bands,
Who, seeing a pageant, wonders much, but stands
Apart, saw the sun blaze his course with brass
And sink into his fabled sea of glass
With glory of farewell to many lands.

Thou knowest, thou who talliest life by days,
That I have suffered more than pain of toil,
Ah, more than they whose wounds are soothed with oil,
And they who see new light on beaten ways!
The prisoner I, who grasps his iron bars
And stares out into depth on depth of stars!

John Charles McNeill

Romaunt Of The Oak

"I rode to death, for I fought for shame--
The Lady Maurine of noble name,

"The fair and faithless!--Though life be long
Is love the wiser?--Love made song

"Of all my life; and the soul that crept
Before, arose like a star and leapt:

"Still leaps with the love that it found untrue,
That it found unworthy.--Now run me through!

"Yea, run me through! for meet and well,
And a jest for laughter of fiends in hell,

"It is that I, who have done no wrong,
Should die by the hand of Hugh the Strong,

"Of Hugh her leman!--What else could be
When the devil was judge twixt thee and me?

"He splintered my lance, and my blade he broke--
Now finish me thou 'neath the trysting oak!" ...

The crest of his foeman,--a heart of white

Madison Julius Cawein

Council Of Horses.

        A steed with mutiny inspired
The stud which grazed the mead, and fired
A colt, whose eyes then blazing fire,
Stood forth and thus expressed his ire:

"How abject is the equine race,
Condemned to slavery's disgrace!
Consider, friends, the deep reproach -
Harnessed to drag the gilded coach,
To drag the plough, to trot the road,
To groan beneath the pack-horse load!
Whom do we serve? - a two-legged man,
Of feeble frame, of visage wan.
What! must our noble jaws submit
To champ and foam their galling bit?
He back and spur me? Let him first
Control the lion - tiger's thirst:
I here avow that I disdain
His might, th...

John Gay

Avitor

What was it filled my youthful dreams,
In place of Greek or Latin themes,
Or beauty’s wild, bewildering beams?
Avitor!

What visions and celestial scenes
I filled with aerial machines,
Montgolfier’s and Mr. Green’s!
Avitor!

What fairy tales seemed things of course!
The roc that brought Sindbad across,
The Calendar’s own winged horse!
Avitor!

How many things I took for facts,
Icarus and his conduct lax,
And how he sealed his fate with wax!
Avitor!

The first balloons I sought to sail,
Soap-bubbles fair, but all too frail,
Or kites, but thereby hangs a tail.
Avitor!

What made me launch from attic tall
A kitten and a parasol,
And watch their bitter, frightful fall?
Avitor!

What youthful dre...

Bret Harte

Page 234 of 1791

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Page 234 of 1791