Courage

My grand-dame, vigorous at eighty-one,
Delights in talking of her only son,
My gallant father, long since dead and gone.
'Ah, but he was the lad!'
She says, and sighs, and looks at me askance.
How well I read the meaning of that glance -
    'Poor son of such a dad;
    Poor weakling, dull and sad.'
I could, but would not tell her bitter truth
About my father's youth.

She says:    'Your father laughed his way through earth:
He laughed right in the doctor's face at birth,
Such joy of life he had, such founts of mirth.
    Ah, what a lad was he!'
And then she sighs.    I feel her silent blame,
Because I brought her nothing but his name.
    Because she does not see
    Her worshipped son in me.
I could, but would not, speak in my defence,
An...

When thou must home to shades of underground,
And there arrived, a new admirèd guest,
The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round,
White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest,
To hear the stories of thy finished love
From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move,

Then wilt thou speak of banqueting delights,
Of masques and revels which sweet youth did make,
Of tourneys and great challenges of knights,
And all these triumphs for thy beauty's sake;
When thou hast told these honors done to thee,
Then tell, Oh tell, how thou didst murther me.

Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest
He who has found our hid security,
Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest,
And heard our word, 'Who is so safe as we?'
We have found safety with all things undying,
The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,
The deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying,
And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth.
We have built a house that is not for Time's throwing.
We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever.
War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,
Secretly armed against all death's endeavour;
Safe though all safety's lost; safe where men fall;
And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.

Thinking of these, of beautiful brief things,
Of things that are of sense and spirit made,
Of meadow flowers, dense hedges and dark bushes
With roses trailing over nests of thrushes;

Of dews so pure and bright and flush'd and cool,
And like the flowers as brief as beautiful;
Thinking of the tall grass and daisies tall
And whispered music of the waving bents;

Of these that like a simple child I love
Since they are life and life is flowers and grass;
Thinking of trees, and water at their feet
Answering the trees with murmur childlike sweet;

Thinking of those high thoughts that passed like the wind
Yet left their brightness lying on the mind,
As the white blossoms the raw airs shake down
That lie awhile yet lovely on the chill grass;

Think...

Pommi ove 'l sol occide i fiori e l' erba.

HIS INVINCIBLE CONSTANCY.


    Place me where herb and flower the sun has dried,
Or where numb winter's grasp holds sterner sway:
Place me where Phoebus sheds a temperate ray,
Where first he glows, where rests at eventide.
Place me in lowly state, in power and pride,
Where lour the skies, or where bland zephyrs play
Place me where blind night rules, or lengthened day,
In age mature, or in youth's boiling tide:
Place me in heaven, or in the abyss profound,
On lofty height, or in low vale obscure,
A spirit freed, or to the body bound;
Bank'd with the great, or all unknown to fame,
I still the same will be! the same endure!
And my trilustral sighs still breathe the same!

DACRE.

Upon the wreckage of thy yesterday
Design the structure of to-morrow.    Lay
Strong corner stones of purpose, and prepare
Great blocks of wisdom, cut from past despair.
Shape mighty pillars of resolve, to set
Deep in the tear-wet mortar of regret.
Work on with patience.    Though thy toil be slow,
Yet day by day the edifice shall grow.
Believe in God - in thine own self believe.
All that thou hast desired thou shalt achieve.

I slept upon the Rice-boat
That, reef protected, lay
At anchor, where the palm-trees
Infringe upon the bay.
The windless air was heavy
With cinnamon and rose,
The midnight calm seemed waiting,
Too fateful for repose.

One joined me on the Rice-boat
With wild and waving hair,
Whose vivid words and laughter
Awoke the silent air.
Oh, beauty, bare and shining,
Fresh washen in the bay,
One well may love by moonlight
What one would not love by day!

Above among the cordage
The night wind hardly stirred,
The lapping of the ripples
Was all the sound we heard.
Love reigned upon the Rice-boat,
And Peace controlled the sea,
The spirit's consolation,
The senses' ecstasy.

Though many things and mighty
Are further...

I.

Moonlight silvers the tops of trees,
Moonlight whitens the lilac shadowed wall
And through the evening fall,
Clearly, as if through enchanted seas,
Footsteps passing, an infinite distance away,
In another world and another day.
Moonlight turns the purple lilacs blue,
Moonlight leaves the fountain hoar and old,
And the boughs of elms grow green and cold,
Our footsteps echo on gleaming stones,
The leaves are stirred to a jargon of muted tones.
This is the night we have kept, you say:
This is the moonlit night that will never die.
Through the grey streets our memories retain
Let us go back again.

II.

Mist goes up from the river to dim the stars,
The river is black and cold; so let us dance
To flare of horns, and clang of cymbal...

        Reading over your letters I find you wrote me
    "My dear boy," or at times "dear boy," and the envelope
    Said "master" - all as I had been your very son,
    And not the orphan whom you adopted.
    Well, you were father to me! And I can recall
    The things you did for me or gave me:
    One time we rode in a box car to Springfield
    To see the greatest show on earth;
    And one time you gave me redtop boots,
    And one time a watch, and one time a gun.
    Well, I grew to gawkiness with a voice
    Like a rooster trying to crow in August
    Hatched in April, we'll say.
    And you went about wrapped up in silence
    With eyes aflame, and I heard little rumors
    Of what they were doing to you, and how
    They wronged you - and we were p...

        --"Throughout the day, I walk,
My path o'ershadowed by vain dreams of him."
                --Italian Girl's Hymn to the Virgin.


Mother, gazing on thy son,
He, thy precious only one,
Look into his azure eyes,
Clearer than the summer skies.
Mark his course; on scrolls of fame
Read his proud ancestral name;
Pause! a cloud that path will dim,
Thou hast dreamt vain dreams of him.

Young bride, for the altar crowned,
Now thy lot with one is bound,
Will he keep each solemn vow?
Will he ever love as now?
Ah! a dreamy shadow lies
In the depths of those bright eyes;
Time will this day's glory dim,
Thou hast dreamt vain dreams of him.

Sister, has thy brother gone,
To the fields where fights are won;
O...

How sweet the cadence of his lyre!
    What melody of words!
They strike a pulse within the heart
    Like songs of forest-birds,
Or tinkling of the shepherd's bell
    Among the mountain-herds.

His mind's a cultured garden,
    Where Nature's hand has sown
The flower-seeds of poesy--
    And they have freshly grown,
Imbued with beauty and perfume
    To other plants unknown.

A bright career's before him--
    All tongues pronounce his praise;
All hearts his inspiration feel,
    And will in after-days;
For genius breathes in every line
    Of his soul-thrilling lays.

A nameless grace is round him--
    A something, too refined
To be described, yet must be felt
    By all of human kind--
An emanation of the soul,...

Lost in the swamp and welter of the pit,
He flounders off the duck-boards; only he knows
Each flash, and spouting crash, - each instant lit
When gloom reveals the streaming rain. He goes
Heavily, blindly on. And, while he blunders,
"Could anything be worse than this!" - he wonders,
Remembering how he saw those Germans run,
Screaming for mercy among the stumps of trees:
Green-faced, they dodged and darted: there was one
Livid with terror, clutching at his knees...
Our chaps were sticking 'em like pigs... "O hell!"
He thought - "there's things in war one dare not tell
Poor father sitting safe at home, who reads
Of dying heroes and their deathless deeds."

Suggested by a very early recollection of a prose story by the noble woman and imaginative writer, Jane Taylor, of Norwich, (more correctly, of Ongar].
- R. B.


How I lived, ere my human life began
In this world of yours, like you, made man,
When my home was the Star of my God Rephan?

Come then around me, close about,
World-weary earth-born ones! Darkest doubt
Or deepest despondency keeps you out?

Nowise! Before a word I speak,
Let my circle embrace your worn, your weak,
Brow-furrowed old age, youth’s hollow cheek.

Diseased in the body, sick in soul,
Pinched poverty, satiate wealth, your whole
Array of despairs! Have I read the roll?

All here? Attend, perpend! O Star
Of my God Rephan, what wonders are
In thy brilliance...

With a bridegroom's joyous bearing,

Mounts Sir Curt his noble beast,
To his mistress' home repairing,

There to hold his wedding feast;
When a threatening foe advances

From a desert, rocky spot;
For the fray they couch their lances,

Not delaying, speaking not.

Long the doubtful fight continues,

Victory then for Curt declares;
Conqueror, though with wearied sinews,

Forward on his road he fares.
When he sees, though strange it may be,

Something 'midst the foliage move;
'Tis a mother, with her baby,

Stealing softly through the grove!

And upon the spot she beckons

"Wherefore, love, this speed so wild?
Of the wealth thy storehouse reckons,

Hast thou nought to give thy child!"

To E. H.


The dawn of night more fair than morning rose,
Stars hurrying forth on stars, as snows on snows
Haste when the wind and winter bid them speed.
Vague miles of moorland road behind us lay
Scarce traversed ere the day
Sank, and the sun forsook us at our need,
Belated. Where we thought to have rested, rest
Was none; for soft Maree's dim quivering breast,
Bound round with gracious inland girth of green
And fearless of the wild wave-wandering West,
Shone shelterless for strangers; and unseen
The goal before us lay
Of all our blithe and strange and strenuous day.
For when the northering road faced westward, when
The dark sharp sudden gorge dropped seaward, then,
Beneath the stars, between the steeps, the track
We followed, lighted not...

I stood in the forest on HURON HILL
When the night was old and the world was still.

The Wind was a wizard who muttering strode
In a raven cloak on a haunted road.

The Sound of Water, a witch who crooned
Her spells to the rocks the rain had runed.

And the Gleam of the Dew on the fern's green tip
Was a sylvan passing with robe a-drip.

The Light of the Stars was a glimmering maid
Who stole, an elfin, from glade to glade.

The Scent of the Woods in the delicate air,
A wildflower shape with chilly hair.

And Silence, a spirit who sat alone
With a lifted finger and eyes of stone.

And it seemed to me these six were met
To greet a greater who came not yet.

And the speech they spoke, that I listened to,
Was the archety...

Cheer, though you part at morn!
Cheer, though you never part:
Sigh not, nor look forlorn;
Never lose heart!
For, to the hope you don,
Face that your soul puts on,
Whether in sun or storm,
Will the world's face conform.
Sing from the start.
Never lose heart.

Were they but dreams?    Upon the darkening world
Evening comes down, the wings of fire are furled,
On which the day soared to the sunny west:
The moon sits calmly, like a soul at rest,
Looking upon the never-resting earth;
All things in heaven wait on the solemn birth
Of night, but where has fled the happy dream
That at this hour, last night, our life did seem?
Where are the mountains with their tangled hair,
The leafy hollow, and the rocky stair?
Where are the shadows of the solemn hills,
And the fresh music of the summer rills?
Where are the wood-paths, winding, long and steep,
And the great, glorious river, broad and deep,
And the thick copses, where soft breezes meet,
And the wild torrent's snowy, leaping feet,
The rustling, rocking boughs, the running st...