Courage

I have not any fearful tale to tell
Of fabled giant or of dragon-claw,
Or bloody deed to pilfer and to sell
To those who feed, with such, a gaping maw;
But what in yonder hamlet there befell,
Or rather what in it my fancy saw,
I will declare, albeit it may seem
Too simple and too common for a dream.

Two brothers were they, and they sat alone
Without a word, beside the winter's glow;
For it was many years since they had known
The love that bindeth brothers, till the snow
Of age had frozen it, and it had grown
An icy-withered stream that would not flow;
And so they sat with warmth about their feet
And ice about their hearts that would not beat.

And yet it was a night for quiet hope:--
A night the very last of all the year
To many a youthful...

Oh come, Eurydice!
The Stygian deeps are past
Well-nigh; the light dawns fast.
Oh come, Eurydice!

The gods have heard my song!
My love's despairing cry
Filled hell with melody, -
And the gods heard my song.

I knew no life but thee;
Persephone was moved;
She, too, hath lived, hath loved;
She saw I lived for thee.

I may not look on thee,
Such was the gods' decree; -
Till sun and earth we see
No kiss, no smile for thee!

The way is rough, is hard;
I cannot hear thy feet
Swift following; speak, my Sweet, -
Is the way rough and hard?

"Oh come, Eurydice!"
I turn: "our woe is o'er,
I will not lose thee more!"
I cry: "Eurydice!"

O father Hermes, help!
I see her fade away
Back from the...

Where dost thou careless lie,
Buried in ease and sloth?
Knowledge that sleeps doth die;
And this security,
It is the common moth
That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both.

Are all th' Aonian springs
Dried up? lies Thespia waste?
Doth Clarius' harp want strings,
That not a nymph now sings?
Or droop they as disgrac'd,
To see their seats and bowers by chatt'ring pies defac'd?

If hence thy silence be,
As 'tis too just a cause,
Let this thought quicken thee:
Minds that are great and free
Should not on fortune pause;
'Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause.

What though the greedy fry
Be taken with false baits
Of worded balladry,
And think it poesy?
They die with their conceits,
And only pi...

A Lyrical Idyl

THALASSIUS
Pan!

PAN
O sea-stray, seed of Apollo,
What word wouldst thou have with me?
My ways thou wast fain to follow
Or ever the years hailed thee
Man.
Now
If August brood on the valleys,
If satyrs laugh on the lawns,
What part in the wildwood alleys
Hast thou with the fleet-foot fauns
Thou?
See!
Thy feet are a man's not cloven
Like these, not light as a boy's:
The tresses and tendrils inwoven
That lure us, the lure of them cloys
Thee.
Us
The joy of the wild woods never
Leaves free of the thirst it slakes:
The wild love throbs in us ever
That burns in the dense hot brakes
Thus.
Life,
Eternal, passionate, awless,
Insatiable, mutable, dear,
Makes all men's l...

Before this thought the present hour recedes,
As from the beach a billow backward rolls,
And the great past, rich in heroic deeds
Illuminates our souls!

Stern Massachusetts Bay uplifts her form,
Boston the tale of Lexington repeats,
With breast unarmored she confronts the storm -
New England England meets.

I see the Middle Group by Fortune made
The bloody Flanders of the Northern Coast,
And, in a varying play of light and shade,
Host thundering fall on host.

I see the Carolinas, Georgia, mowed
By War the Reaper, and grim Ruin stalk
O'er wasted fields; - but Guilford paved the way
        That led to this same York.

Here, too, Virginia in the vision comes -
Full-bent to crown the battle's closing arch,
Her pulses trumpets and h...

(Written upon the return of General Scott from his brilliant Mexican campaign.)

Victorious the hero returns from the wars,
    His brow bound with laurels that never will fade,
While streams the free standard of stripes and of stars,
    Whose field in the battle the foeman dismayed.
When the Mexican hosts in their fury came on,
    Like a tower of strength in his might he arose,
Where danger most threatened his banner was borne,
    Waving hope to his friends and despair to his foes!

The soldier of honor and liberty hail!
    His deeds in the temple of Fame are enrolled;
His precepts, like flower-seeds sown by the gale,
    Take root in the hearts of the valiant and bold.
The warrior's escutcheon his foes seek to blot,
    But vain is the effort of partisan...

For every one
Beneath the sun,
Where Autumn walks with quiet eyes,
There is a word,
Just overheard
When hill to purple hill replies.

This afternoon,
As warm as June,
With the red apples on the bough,
I set my ear
To hark and hear
The wood-folk talking, you know how.

There comes a "Hush!"
And then a "Tush,"
As tree to scarlet tree responds,
"Babble away!
He'll not betray
The secrets of us vagabonds.

"Are we not all,
Both great and small,
Cousins and kindred in a joy
No school can teach,
No worldling reach,
Nor any wreck of chance destroy?"

And so we are,
However far
We journey ere the journey ends,
One brotherhood
With leaf and bud
And everything that wakes or wends.
<...

Come, Heraclitus and Simonides,
Come with your weeping and sad elegies:
Ye griefs and sorrows, come from all the lands
Wherein ye sigh and wail and wring your hands:
Gather ye here within my house today
And help me mourn my sweet, whom in her May
Ungodly Death hath ta'en to his estate,
Leaving me on a sudden desolate.
'Tis so a serpent glides on some shy nest
And, of the tiny nightingales possessed,
Doth glut its throat, though, frenzied with her fear,
The mother bird doth beat and twitter near
And strike the monster, till it turns and gapes
To swallow her, and she but just escapes.
"'Tis vain to weep," my friends perchance will say.
Dear God, is aught in life not vain, then? Nay,
Seek to lie soft, yet thorns will prickly be:
The life of man is naught but...

Dread hour! when, upheaved by war's sulphurous blast,
This sweet-visaged Cherub of Parian stone
So far from the holy enclosure was cast,
To couch in this thicket of brambles alone,

To rest where the lizard may bask in the palm
Of his half-open hand pure from blemish or speck;
And the green, gilded snake, without troubling the calm
Of the beautiful countenance, twine round his neck;

Where haply (kind service to Piety due!)
When winter the grove of its mantle bereaves,
Some bird (like our own honoured redbreast) may strew
The desolate Slumberer with moss and with leaves.

Fuentes once harboured the good and the brave,
Nor to her was the dance of soft pleasure unknown;
Her banners for festal enjoyment did wave
While the thrill of her fifes thro' the m...

The cat and fox, when saints were all the rage,
Together went on pilgrimage.
Arch hypocrites and swindlers, they,
By sleight of face and sleight of paw,
Regardless both of right and law,
Contrived expenses to repay,
By eating many a fowl and cheese,
And other tricks as bad as these.
Disputing served them to beguile
The road of many a weary mile.
Disputing! but for this resort,
The world would go to sleep, in short.
Our pilgrims, as a thing of course,
Disputed till their throats were hoarse.
Then, dropping to a lower tone,
They talk'd of this, and talk'd of that,
Till Renard whisper'd to the cat,
'You think yourself a knowing one:
How many cunning tricks have you?
For I've a hundred, old and new,
All ready in my haversack.'
The cat repl...

The poet's song, and the bird's,
    And the waters' that chant as they run
And the waves' that kiss the beach,
    And the wind's--they are but one.
He who may read their words,
And the secret hid in each,
May know the solemn monochords
That breathe in vast still places;
And the voices of myriad races,
    Shy, and far-off from man,
That hide in shadow and sun,
    And are seen but of him who can
To him the awful face is shown
Swathed in a cloud wind-blown
Of Him, who from His secret throne,
In some void, shadowy, and unknown land
Comes forth to lay His mighty hand
On the sounding organ keys,
    That play deep thunder-marches,
Like the rush and the roar of seas,
    And fill the cavernous arches
Of antique wildernesses hoary,
  ...

This is he, who, felled by foes,
Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows:
He to captivity was sold,
But him no prison-bars would hold:
Though they sealed him in a rock,
Mountain chains he can unlock:
Thrown to lions for their meat,
The crouching lion kissed his feet;
Bound to the stake, no flames appalled,
But arched o'er him an honoring vault.
This is he men miscall Fate,
Threading dark ways, arriving late,
But ever coming in time to crown
The truth, and hurl wrong-doers down.
He is the oldest, and best known,
More near than aught thou call'st thy own,
Yet, greeted in another's eyes,
Disconcerts with glad surprise.
This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers,
Floods with blessings unawares.
Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line
Severing rightly ...

The wider world of men that is not ours
Receives a soul whose life on earth was light.
Though darkness close the date of human hours,
Love holds the spirit and sense of life in sight,
That may not, even though death bid fly, take flight.
Faith, love, and hope fulfilled with memory, see
As clear and dear as life could bid it be
The present soul that is and is not he.
He, who held up the shield and sword of Rome
Against the ravening brood of recreant France,
Beside the man of men whom heaven took home
When earth beheld the spring's first eyebeams glance
And life and winter seemed alike a trance
Eighteen years since, in sight of heaven and spring
That saw the soul above all souls take wing,
He too now hears the heaven we hear not sing.
He too now dwells where dea...

Yes, write, if you want to, there's nothing like trying;
Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold?
I'll show you that rhyming's as easy as lying,
If you'll listen to me while the art I unfold.

Here's a book full of words; one can choose as he fancies,
As a painter his tint, as a workman his tool;
Just think! all the poems and plays and romances
Were drawn out of this, like the fish from a pool!

You can wander at will through its syllabled mazes,
And take all you want, - not a copper they cost, -
What is there to hinder your picking out phrases
For an epic as clever as "Paradise Lost"?

Don't mind if the index of sense is at zero,
Use words that run smoothly, whatever they mean;
Leander and Lilian and Lillibullero
Are much the same thing in th...

I stood on the Land's End, alone and still.
    Man might have been unmade, for no frail trace
    Of mortal labour startled the wild place,
And only sea-mews with their wailing shrill,
    Circled beneath me over the dark sea,
Flashing the waves with pinions snowy white,
That glimmer'd faintly in the gloomy light
    Betwixt the foaming furrows constantly.
It was a mighty cape, that proudly rose
    Above the world of waters, high and steep,
    With many a scar and fissure fathoms deep,
Upon whose ledges lodged the endless snows;
    A noble brow to a firm-founded world,
    That at the limits of its empire stood,
    Fronting the ocean in its roughest mood,
And all its fury calmly backward hurl'd.
    The Midnight Sun rose like an angry god,
Girt round...

Sennuccio, I would have thee know the shame
That's dealt to me, and what a life is mine.
Even as of yore, I struggle, burn and pine.
Laura transports me, I am still the same.
All meekness here, all pride she there became,
Now harsh, now kind, now cruel, now benign;
Here honor clothed her, there a grace divine;
Now gentle, now disdainful of my flame.
Here sweetly did she sing; there sat awhile;
There she turned back, she lingered in this spot.
Here with her splendid eyes my heart she clove.
She uttered there a word, and here did smile.
Here she changed color. Ah, in such fond thought,
Holds me by day and night, our master Love.

SENT TO HIM WHEN IN THE TOWER, 1716

These spirited verses, although they have not the affecting pathos of those addressed by Pope to the same great person, during his misfortunes, evince the firmness of Swift's political principles and personal attachment. - Scott. See Moral Essays, Epistle V, Pope's "Works," edit. Elwin and Courthope, iii, 191.


How blest is he who for his country dies,
Since death pursues the coward as he flies!
The youth in vain would fly from Fate's attack;
With trembling knees, and Terror at his back;
Though Fear should lend him pinions like the wind,
Yet swifter Fate will seize him from behind.
    Virtue repulsed, yet knows not to repine;
But shall with unattainted honour shine;
Nor stoops to take the staff, nor lays it down,
Just as the...

Because I sought it far from men,
In deserts and alone,
I found it burning overhead,
The jewel of a Throne.

Because I sought, I sought it so
And spent my days to find,
It blazed one moment ere it left
The blacker night behind.

We be the Gods of the East,
Older than all,
Masters of Mourning and Feast,
How shall we fall?


This I saw when the rites were done,
And the lamps were dead and the Gods alone,
And the grey snake coiled on the altar stone,
Ere I fled from a Fear that I could not see,
And the Gods of the East made mouths at me.