Courage

Of all the speechless friends of man
    The faithful dog I deem
Deserving from the human clan
    The tenderest esteem:

This feeling creature form'd to love,
    To watch, and to defend,
Was given to man by powers above,
    A guardian, and a friend!

I sing, of all e'er known to live
    The truest friend canine;
And glory if my verse may give,
    Brave Fido! it is thine.

A dog of many a sportive trick,
    Tho' rough and large of limb.
Fido would chase the floating stick
    When Lucy cried, "go swim."

And what command could Lucy give,
    Her dog would not obey?
For her it seemed his pride to live,
    Blest in her gentle sway!

For conscious of her every care
    He strain'd each feeling nerve,
To...

    All sights and sounds of every year,
All groups and forms, each leaf and gem,
Are thine, O God, nor need I fear
To speak to Thee of them.

    Too great thy heart is to despise;
Thy day girds centuries about;
From things which we count small, thine eyes
See great things looking out.

    Therefore this prayerful song I sing
May come to Thee in ordered words;
Therefore its sweet sounds need not cling
In terror to their chords.

            *            *            *            *            *

    I know that nothing made is lost;
That not a moon hath ever shone,
That not a cloud my eyes hath crost,
But to my soul hath gone.

    That all the dead years garnered lie
In this gem-casket, my dim soul;
And that thy hand m...

Look now on that Adventurer who hath paid
His vows to Fortune; who, in cruel slight
Of virtuous hope, of liberty, and right,
Hath followed wheresoe'er a way was made
By the blind Goddess, ruthless, undismayed;
And so hath gained at length a prosperous height,
Round which the elements of worldly might
Beneath his haughty feet, like clouds, are laid.
O joyless power that stands by lawless force!
Curses are 'his' dire portion, scorn, and hate,
Internal darkness and unquiet breath;
And, if old judgments keep their sacred course,
Him from that height shall Heaven precipitate
By violent and ignominious death.

In that desolate land and lone,
Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone
    Roar down their mountain path,
By their fires the Sioux Chiefs
Muttered their woes and griefs
    And the menace of their wrath.

"Revenge!" cried Rain-in-the-Face,
"Revenue upon all the race
    Of the White Chief with yellow hair!"
And the mountains dark and high
From their crags re-echoed the cry
    Of his anger and despair.

In the meadow, spreading wide
By woodland and riverside
    The Indian village stood;
All was silent as a dream,
Save the rushing a of the stream
    And the blue-jay in the wood.

In his war paint and his beads,
Like a bison among the reeds,
    In ambush the Sitting Bull
Lay with three thousand braves
Crouched in the c...

This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane.
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;
Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat,
Sired of a bulldog parent, steeled in the furnace heat.
Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones;
Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons;
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat;
But the others - the misfits, the failures - I trample under my feet.
Dissolute, damned, and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
Ye would send me the spawn of your gutters - Go! take back your spawn again.

"Wild and wi...

If the bird knew how through the wintry weather
An empty nest would swing by day and night,
It would not weave the strands so close together
Or sing for such delight.

And if the rosebud dreamed e'er its awaking
How soon its perfumed leaves would drift apart,
Perchance 'twould fold them close to still the aching
Within its golden heart.

If the brown brook that hurries through the grasses
Knew of drowned sailors - and of storms to be -
Methinks 'twould wait a little e'er it passes
To meet the old grey sea.

If youth could understand the tears and sorrow,
The sombre days that age and knowledge bring,
It would not be so eager for the morrow
Or spendthrift of the spring.

If love but learned how soon life treads its measure,
How short and...

"Sleep, weary ones, while ye may,
Sleep, oh, sleep!"
Eugene Field.



Thro' May time blossoms, with whisper low,
The soft wind sang to the dead below:
"Think not with regret on the Springtime's song
And the task ye left while your hands were strong.
The song would have ceased when the Spring was past,
And the task that was joyous be weary at last."

To the winter sky when the nights were long
The tree-tops tossed with a ceaseless song:
"Do ye think with regret on the sunny days
And the path ye left, with its untrod ways?
The sun might sink in a storm cloud's frown
And the path grow rough when the night came down."

In the grey twilight of the autumn eves,
It sighed as it sang through the dying leaves:
"Ye think with regret that th...

Non men gran grasia, donna.


Too much good luck no less than misery
        May kill a man condemned to mortal pain,
        If, lost to hope and chilled in every vein,
        A sudden pardon comes to set him free.
Thus thy unwonted kindness shown to me
        Amid the gloom where only sad thoughts reign,
        With too much rapture bringing light again,
        Threatens my life more than that agony.
Good news and bad may bear the self-same knife;
        And death may follow both upon their flight;
        For hearts that shrink or swell, alike will break.
Let then thy beauty, to preserve my life,
        Temper the source of this supreme delight,
        Lest joy so poignant slay a soul so weak.

When I beheld the Poet blind, yet bold,
In slender Book his vast Design unfold,
Messiah Crown'd, Gods Reconcil'd Decree,
Rebelling Angels, the Forbidden Tree,
Heav'n, Hell, Earth, Chaos, All; the Argument
Held me a while misdoubting his Intent,
That he would ruine (for I saw him strong)
The sacred Truths to Fable and old Song
(So Sampson groap'd the Temples Posts in spight)
The World o'rewhelming to revenge his sight.

Yet as I read soon growing less severe,
I lik'd his Project, the success did fear;
Through that wide Field how he his way should find
O're which lame Faith leads Understanding blind;
Lest he perplex'd the things he would explain,
And what was easie he should render vain.

Or if a Work so infinite he spann'd,
Jealous I was that som...

The dirge is played, the throbbing death-peal rung,
The sad-voiced requiem sung;
On each white urn where memory dwells
The wreath of rustling immortelles
Our loving hands have hung,
And balmiest leaves have strown and tenderest blossoms flung.

The birds that filled the air with songs have flown,
The wintry blasts have blown,
And these for whom the voice of spring
Bade the sweet choirs their carols sing
Sleep in those chambers lone
Where snows untrodden lie, unheard the night-winds moan.

We clasp them all in memory, as the vine
Whose running stems intwine
The marble shaft, and steal around
The lowly stone, the nameless mound;
With sorrowing hearts resign
Our brothers true and tried, and close our broken line.

How fast the lamps of li...

Inland, within a hollow vale, I stood;
And saw, while sea was calm and air was clear,
The coast of France, the coast of France how near!
Drawn almost into frightful neighbourhood.
I shrunk; for verily the barrier flood
Was like a lake, or river bright and fair,
A span of waters; yet what power is there!
What mightiness for evil and for good!
Even so doth God protect us if we be
Virtuous and wise. Winds blow, and waters roll,
Strength to the brave, and Power, and Deity;
Yet in themselves are nothing! One decree
Spake laws to 'them', and said that by the soul
Only, the Nations shall be great and free.

I'm with you once again, my friends,
No more my footsteps roam;
Where it began my journey ends,
Amid the scenes of home.
No other clime has skies so blue,
Or streams so broad and clear,
And where are hearts so warm and true
As those that meet me here?

Since last with spirits, wild and free,
I pressed my native strand,
I've wandered many miles at sea,
And many miles on land.
I've seen fair realms of the earth
By rude commotion torn,
Which taught me how to prize the worth
Of that where I was born.

In other countries, when I heard
The language of my own,
How fondly each familiar word
Awoke an answering tone!
But when our woodland songs were sung
Upon a foreign mart,
The vows that faltered on the tongue
With rapture t...

A fantasy that came to me
    As wild and wantonly designed
As ever any dream might be
    Unraveled from a madman's mind, -
A tangle-work of tissue, wrought
    By cunning of the spider-brain,
    And woven, in an hour of pain,
To trap the giddy flies of thought.

I stood beneath a summer moon
    All swollen to uncanny girth,
And hanging, like the sun at noon,
    Above the center of the earth;
    But with a sad and sallow light,
    As it had sickened of the night
And fallen in a pallid swoon.
Around me I could hear the rush
    Of sullen winds, and feel the whir
Of unseen wings apast me brush
    Like phantoms round a sepulcher;
And, like a carpeting of plush,0
    A lawn unrolled beneath my feet,
    Bespangled o'er with flo...

Against a robber fox, a tree
Some turkeys served as citadel.
That villain, much provoked to see
Each standing there as sentinel,
Cried out, 'Such witless birds
At me stretch out their necks, and gobble!
No, by the powers! I'll give them trouble.'
He verified his words.
The moon, that shined full on the oak,
Seem'd then to help the turkey folk.
But fox, in arts of siege well versed,
Ransack'd his bag of tricks accursed.
He feign'd himself about to climb;
Walk'd on his hinder legs sublime;
Then death most aptly counterfeited,
And seem'd anon resuscitated.
A practiser of wizard arts
Could not have fill'd so many parts.
In moonlight he contrived to raise
His tail, and make it seem a blaze:
And countless other tricks like that.
Meanwhile, n...

The spirits of our fathers rise not from every wave,
They left the sea behind them long ago;
It was many years of “slogging,” where strong men must be brave,
For the sake of unborn children, and, maybe, a soul to save,
And the end a tidy homestead, and four panels round a grave,
And, the bones of poor old Someone down below.

Some left happy homes in old lands when they heard the New Land call
(Some were gentlemen and some were social wrecks)
Some left squalor and starvation, they were soldiers one and all,
And their weapons were the cross-cut and the wedges and the maul.
(How we used to run as children when we heard the big trees fall!
While they paused to wipe their faces and their necks.)

They were buried by our uncles where the ground was hard to dig
(It was l...

    Beauty beloved, who hast my heart inspired,
    Seen from afar, or with thy face concealed,
    Save, when in visions of the night revealed,
    Or seen in daydreams bright,
    When all the fields are filled with light,
    And Nature's smile is sweet,
    Say, hast thou blessed
    Some golden age of innocence,
    And floatest, now, a shadow, o'er the earth?
    Or hath Fate's envious doom
    Reserved thee for some happier day to come?

    To see thee e'er alive,
    No hope remains to me;
    Unless perchance, when from this body free,
    My wandering spirit, lone,
    O'er some new path, to some new world hath flown.
    E'en here, at first, I, at the dawn
    Of this, my day, so dreary and forlorn,
    Sought thee, to guide me on my...

I.

O Dark-Eyed goddess of the marble brow,
Whose look is silence and whose touch is night,
Who walkest lonely through the world, O thou,
Who sittest lonely with Life's blown-out light;
Who in the hollow hours of night's noon
Criest like some lost child;
Whose anguish-fevered eyeballs seek the moon
To cool their pulses wild.
Thou who dost bend to kiss Joy's sister cheek,
Turning its rose to alabaster; yea,
Thou who art terrible and mad and meek,
Why in my heart art thou enshrined to-day?
O Sorrow say, O say!

II.

Now Spring is here and all the world is white,
I will go forth, and where the forest robes
Itself in green, and every hill and height
Crowns its fair head with blossoms, spirit globes
Of hyacinth and crocus dashed with d...

I and my Soul are alone to-day,
    All in the shining weather;
We were sick of the world, and put it away,
    So we could rejoice together.

Our host, the Sun, in the blue, blue sky
    Is mixing a rare, sweet wine,
In the burnished gold of this cup on high,
    For me, and this Soul of mine.

We find it a safe and royal drink,
    And a cure for every pain;
It helps us to love, and helps us to think,
    And strengthens body and brain.

And sitting here, with my Soul alone,
    Where the yellow sun-rays fall,
Of all the friends I have ever known
    I find it the BEST of all.

We rarely meet when the world is near,
    For the World hath a pleasing art
And brings me so much that is bright and dear
    That my Soul it keepe...