Courage

The King of Yellow Butterflies,
The King of Yellow Butterflies,
The King of Yellow Butterflies,
Now orders forth his men.
He says "The time is almost here
When violets bloom again."
Adown the road the fickle rout
Goes flashing proud and bold,
Adown the road the fickle rout
Goes flashing proud and bold,
Adown the road the fickle rout
Goes flashing proud and bold,
They shiver by the shallow pools,
They shiver by the shallow pools,
They shiver by the shallow pools,
And whimper of the cold.
They drink and drink. A frail pretense!
They love to pose and preen.
Each pool is but a looking glass,
Where their sweet wings are seen.
Each pool is but a looking glass,
Where their sweet wings are seen.
Each pool is but a looking glass,
Wher...

Ite, caldi sospiri, al freddo core.

HE IMPLORES MERCY OR DEATH.


    Go, my warm sighs, go to that frozen breast,
Burst the firm ice, that charity denies;
And, if a mortal prayer can reach the skies,
Let death or pity give my sorrows rest!
Go, softest thoughts! Be all you know express'd
Of that unnoticed by her lovely eyes,
Though fate and cruelty against me rise,
Error at least and hope shall be repress'd.
Tell her, though fully you can never tell,
That, while her days calm and serenely flow,
In darkness and anxiety I dwell;
Love guides your flight, my thoughts securely go,
Fortune may change, and all may yet be well;
If my sun's aspect not deceives my woe.

CHARLEMONT.


    Go, burning sighs, to her cold bosom go,...

Traveller! on thy journey toiling
By the swift Powow,
With the summer sunshine falling
On thy heated brow,
Listen, while all else is still,
To the brooklet from the hill.

Wild and sweet the flowers are blowing
By that streamlet's side,
And a greener verdure showing
Where its waters glide,
Down the hill-slope murmuring on,
Over root and mossy stone.

Where yon oak his broad arms flingeth
O'er the sloping hill,
Beautiful and freshly springeth
That soft-flowing rill,
Through its dark roots wreathed and bare,
Gushing up to sun and air.

Brighter waters sparkled never
In that magic well,
Of whose gift of life forever
Ancient legends tell,
In the lonely desert wasted,
And by mortal lip untasted.

Waters wh...

Two children in two neighbor villages
Playing mad pranks along the heathy leas;
Two strangers meeting at a festival;
Two lovers whispering by an orchard wall:
Two lives bound fast in one with golden ease;
Two graves grass-green beside a gray church-tower,
Wash’d with still rains and daisy-blossomed;
Two children in one hamlet born and bred:
So runs the round of life from hour to hour.

It's Oh, for the hills, where the wind's some one
With a vagabond foot that follows!
And a cheer-up hand that he claps upon
Your arm with the hearty words, "Come on!
We'll soon be out of the hollows,
My heart!
We'll soon be out of the hollows!"

It's Oh, for the songs, where the hope's some one
With a renegade foot that doubles!
And a kindly look that he turns upon
Your face with the friendly laugh, "Come on!
We'll soon be out of the troubles,
My heart!
We'll soon be out of the troubles!"

            I

    I hate this yoke; for the world's sake here put it on:
    Knowing 'twill weigh as much on you till life is gone.
    Knowing you love your freedom dear, as I love mine -
    Knowing that love unchained has been our life's great wine:
    Our one great wine (yet spent too soon, and serving none;
    Of the two cups free love at last the deadly one).


            II

    We grant our meetings will be tame, not honey-sweet
    No longer turning to the tryst with flying feet.
    We know the toil that now must come will spoil the bloom
    And tenderness of passion's touch, and in its room
    Will come tame habit, deadly calm, sorrow and gloom.
    Oh, how the battle scars the best who enter life!
    Each soldier comes out blind or...

If, yet regardful of your native land,
Old Shakespeare's tongue you deign to understand,
Lo, from the blissful bowers where heaven rewards
Instructive sages and unblemish'd bards,
I come, the ancient founder of the stage,
Intent to learn, in this discerning age,
What form of wit your fancies have imbrac'd,
And whither tends your elegance of taste,
That thus at length our homely toils you spurn,
That thus to foreign scenes you proudly turn,
That from my brow the laurel wreath you claim
To crown the rivals of your country's fame.

What, though the footsteps of my devious Muse
The measur'd walks of Grecian art refuse?
Or though the frankness of my hardy style
Mock the nice touches of the critic's file?
Yet, what my age and climate held to view,
Impartia...

    The idea danced before us as a flag;
    The sound of martial music;
    The thrill of carrying a gun;
    Advancement in the world on coming home;
    A glint of glory, wrath for foes;
    A dream of duty to country or to God.
    But these were things in ourselves, shining before us,
    They were not the power behind us,
    Which was the Almighty hand of Life,
    Like fire at earth's center making mountains,
    Or pent up waters that cut them through.
    Do you remember the iron band
    The blacksmith, Shack Dye, welded
    Around the oak on Bennet's lawn,
    From which to swing a hammock,
    That daughter Janet might repose in, reading
    On summer afternoons?
    And that the growing tree at last
    Sundered the iron band?
    ...

Tacer non posso, e temo non adopre.

HE RECALLS HER MANY GRACES.


    Fain would I speak--too long has silence seal'd
Lips that would gladly with my full heart move
With one consent, and yield
Homage to her who listens from above;
Yet how can I, without thy prompting, Love,
With mortal words e'er equal things divine,
And picture faithfully
The high humility whose chosen shrine
Was that fair prison whence she now is free?
Which held, erewhile, her gentle spirit, when
So in my conscious heart her power began.
That, instantly, I ran,
--Alike o' th' year and me 'twas April then--
From these gay meadows round sweet flowers to bind,
Hoping rich pleasure at her eyes to find.

The walls were alabaster, the roof gold,
Ivory the doo...

Through rain, through snow,
Through tempest go!
'Mongst streaming caves,
O'er misty waves,
On, on! still on!
Peace, rest have flown!

Sooner through sadness

I'd wish to be slain,
Than all the gladness

Of life to sustain
All the fond yearning

That heart feels for heart,
Only seems burning

To make them both smart.

How shall I fly?
Forestwards hie?
Vain were all strife!
Bright crown of life.
Turbulent bliss,
Love, thou art this!

With failing feet and shoulders bowed
    Beneath the weight of happier days,
He lagged among the heedless crowd,
    Or crept along suburban ways.
But still through all his heart was young,
    His mood a joy that nought could mar,
A courage, a pride, a rapture, sprung
    Of the strength and splendour of England's war.

From ill-requited toil he turned
    To ride with Picton and with Pack,
Among his grammars inly burned
    To storm the Afghan mountain-track.
When midnight chimed, before Quebec
    He watched with Wolfe till the morning star;
At noon he saw from Victory's deck
    The sweep and splendour of England's war.

Beyond the book his teaching sped,
    He left on whom he taught the trace
Of kinship with the deathless dead...

As I lay awake at night-time
In an ancient country barrack known to ancient cannoneers,
And recalled the hopes that heralded each seeming brave and bright time
Of my primal purple years,

Much it haunted me that, nigh there,
I had borne my bitterest loss - when One who went, came not again;
In a joyless hour of discord, in a joyless-hued July there -
A July just such as then.

And as thus I brooded longer,
With my faint eyes on the feeble square of wan-lit window frame,
A quick conviction sprung within me, grew, and grew yet stronger,
That the month-night was the same,

Too, as that which saw her leave me
On the rugged ridge of Waterstone, the peewits plaining round;
And a lapsing twenty years had ruled that - as it were to grieve me -
I should near ...

Oh, youthful bearer of my palanquin,
Thy glossy hair lies loosened on thy neck,
The "tears of labour" gem thy velvet skin,
Whose even texture knows no other fleck.

Thy slender shoulder strains beneath my weight;
Too fair thou art for work, sweet slave of mine.
Would that this idle breast, reversing fate,
A willing serf to love, supported thine!

I smell the savage scent of sun-warmed fur
Close in the Jungle, musky, hot and sweet. -
The air comes from thy shoulder, even as myrrh,
Would we were as the panthers, free to meet.

The Temple road is steep; I grieve to see
Thy slender ankles bruised among the clods.
Oh, my Beloved, if I might worship thee!
Beauty is greater far than all the Gods.

In an old world garden dreaming,
Where the flowers had human names,
Methought, in fantastic seeming,
They disported as squires and dames.

Of old in Rosamond's Bower,
With it's peacock hedges of yew,
One could never find the flower
Unless one was given the clue;
So take the key of the wicket,
Who would follow my fancy free,
By formal knot and clipt thicket,
And smooth greensward so fair to see

And while Time his scythe is whetting,
Ere the dew from the grass has gone,

The Four Seasons' flight forgetting,
As they dance round the dial stone;

With a leaf from an old English book,
A Jonquil will serve for a pen.

Let us note from the green arbour's nook,
Flowers masking like women and men.


FIRST in VENUS'...

Lonely and sadly one night in November
    I laid down my weary head in search of repose
On my wallet of straw, which I long shall remember,
    Tired and weary I fell into a doze.
            Tired from working hard
            Down in the labour yard,
Night brought relief to my sad, aching brain.
            Locked in my prison cell,
            Surely an earthly hell,
I fell asleep and began for to dream.

I dreamt that I stood on the green fields of Erin,
    In joyous meditation that victory was won.
Surrounded by comrades, no enemy fearing.
    “Stand,” was the cry, “every man to his gun.”
            On came the Saxons then,
            Fighting our Fenian men,
Soon they’ll reel back from our piked volunteers.
            Loud was the fight an...

Here is fresh matter, poet,
Matter for old age meet;
Might of the Church and the State,
Their mobs put under their feet.
O but heart's wine shall run pure,
Mind's bread grow sweet.
That were a cowardly song,
Wander in dreams no more;
What if the Church and the State
Are the mob that howls at the door!
Wine shall run thick to the end,
Bread taste sour.

Think me not unkind and rude
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood
To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band,
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery
But 'tis figured in the flowers;
Was never secret history
But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field
Homeward brought the oxen strong;
A second crop thine acres yield,
Which I gather in a song.

Around me broods the dim, mysterious Night,
    Star-lit and still.
No whisper comes across the Plain,
Asleep beneath the breezes light,
Which scarcely stir the growing grain.
Slow chimes the quiet midnight hour
In some unseen and distant tower,
While round me broods the vague, mysterious Night,
    Star-lit, and cool, and still.

And I must desecrate this silent time
    Of drowsy dreams!
On mighty wings towards the sky,
Towards the stars, I have to climb
And o'er the sleeping country fly,
And such far-echoing clamour make
That all the villages must wake.
So must I desecrate this quiet time
    Of soft and drowsy dreams!

The hour comes ... soon must I say farewell
    To this fair earth.
Then to my little room I go
Where I ...