Courage

We come with peace and reason,
We come with love and light,
To banish black self-treason
And everlasting night.

We know no god nor devil,
We neither drive nor lead,
We come to banish evil
In thought as well as deed.

And this our grandest mission,
And this our purest worth;
To banish superstition,
The blackest curse on earth.

We come to pass no sentence,
For ours is not the power,
The coward’s vain repentance
But wastes the waiting hour.

’Tis not for us to lengthen
The years of wasted lives;
We come to help and strengthen
The goodness that survives.

We promise nought hereafter,
We cannot conquer pain,
But work, and rest, and laughter,
Will soothe the tortured brain.

That which is lost, ...

The prison-house in which I live
    Is falling to decay,
But God renews my spirit's strength,
    Within these walls of clay.

For me a dimness slowly creeps
    Around earth's fairest light,
But heaven grows clearer to my view,
    And fairer to my sight.

It may be earth's sweet harmonies
    Are duller to my ear,
But music from my Father's house
    Begins to float more near.

Then let the pillars of my home
    Crumble and fall away;
Lo, God's dear love within my soul
    Renews it day by day.

A clamour by day and a whisper by night,
And the Summer comes with the shining noons,
With the ripple of leaves, and the passionate light
Of the falling suns and the rising moons.

And the ripple of leaves and the purple and red
Die for the grapes and the gleam of the wheat,
And then you may pause with the splendours, or tread
On the yellow of Autumn with lingering feet.

You may halt with the face to a flying sea,
Or stand like a gloom in the gloom of things,
When the moon drops down and the desolate lea
Is troubled with thunder and desolate wings.

But alas for the grey of the wintering eves,
And the pondering storms and the ruin of rains;
And alas for the Spring like a flame in the leaves,
And the green of the woods and the gold of the lanes!

Come now, my Muse, do thou inspire my pen,
To sing, with worthy strain, my country's praise,
But not to hide the faults within my ken,
By tricks of art, or studied, verbal maze,
To play on him who reads with careless gaze,
To whom each thought upon a printed page.
Is gospel truth, nor e'er with wile betrays;
From this, oh, steer me clear, nor let the rage
Of prejudic'd and narrow minds, my thoughts engage.

Oh, Canada! the land where first I saw
The blue of heav'n, and bursting light of day,
Where breezes warm and mild, and breezes raw,
First o'er my boyhood's eager face did play,
As o'er the hills I stepp'd my joyful way.
Held by a loving hand, I went along
Thro' shelter'd wood, or by some shaded bay,
And ever, as I went, I sang a song,
With sylvan ...

    The Poet meets Apollo on the hill,
    And Pan and Flora and the Paphian Queen,
    And infant naïads bathing in the rill,
    And dryad maids that dance upon the green,
    And fauns and Oreads in the silver sheen
    They wear in summer, when the air is still.
    He quaffs the wine of life, and quaffs his fill,
    And sees Creation through its mask terrene.
    The dead are wise, for they alone can see
    As see the bards, - as see, beyond the dust,
    The eyes of babes. The dead alone are just.
    There is no comfort in the bitter fee
    That scholars pay for fame. True sage is he
    Who doubts all doubt, and takes the soul on trust.

This little rill, that from the springs
Of yonder grove its current brings,
Plays on the slope a while, and then
Goes prattling into groves again,
Oft to its warbling waters drew
My little feet, when life was new,
When woods in early green were dressed,
And from the chambers of the west
The warmer breezes, travelling out,
Breathed the new scent of flowers about,
My truant steps from home would stray,
Upon its grassy side to play,
List the brown thrasher's vernal hymn,
And crop the violet on its brim,
With blooming cheek and open brow,
As young and gay, sweet rill, as thou.

And when the days of boyhood came,
And I had grown in love with fame,
Duly I sought thy banks, and tried
My first rude numbers by thy side.
Words cannot tell how br...

There are sounds of mirth in the night-air ringing,
    And lamps from every casement shown;
While voices blithe within are singing,
    That seem to say "Come," in every tone.
Ah! once how light, in Life's young season,
    My heart had leapt at that sweet lay;
Nor paused to ask of graybeard Reason
    Should I the syren call obey.

And, see--the lamps still livelier glitter,
    The syren lips more fondly sound;
No, seek, ye nymphs, some victim fitter
    To sink in your rosy bondage bound.
Shall a bard, whom not the world in arms
    Could bend to tyranny's rude control,
Thus quail at sight of woman's charms
    And yield to a smile his freeborn soul?

Thus sung the sage, while, slyly stealing,
    The nymphs their fetters around him cast,

As the dead year is clasped by a dead December,
    So let your dead sins with your dead days lie.
A new life is yours and a new hope.    Remember
    We build our own ladders to climb to the sky.

Stand out in the sunlight of promise, forgetting
    Whatever the past held of sorrow and wrong.
We waste half our strength in a useless regretting;
    We sit by old tombs in the dark too long.

Have you missed in your aim?    Well, the mark is still shining.
    Did you faint in the race?    Well, take breath for the next.
Did the clouds drive you back?    But see yonder their lining.
    Were you tempted and fell?    Let it serve for a text.

As each year hurries by, let it join that procession
    Of skeleton shapes that march down to the past,
While you ta...

(AFTER A. C. S.)

In the days of my season of salad,
    When the down was as dew on my cheek,
And for French I was bred on the ballad,
    For Greek on the writers of Greek,
Then I sang of the rose that is ruddy,
    Of 'pleasure that winces and stings,'
Of white women and wine that is bloody,
    And similar things.

Of Delight that is dear as Desi-er,
    And Desire that is dear as Delight;
Of the fangs of the flame that is fi-er,
    Of the bruises of kisses that bite;
Of embraces that clasp and that sever,
    Of blushes that flutter and flee
Round the limbs of Dolores, whoever
    Dolores may be.

I sang of false faith that is fleeting
    As froth of the swallowing seas,
Time's curse that is fatal as Keating
    Is fat...

Take up the White man's burden
Send forth the best ye breed
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man's burden
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times mad plain.
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden
The savage wars of peace
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hope to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden

Browning, old fellow,
Your leaves grow yellow,
Beginning to mellow
As seasons pass.
Your cover is wrinkled,
And stained and sprinkled,
And warped and crinkled
From sleep on the grass.

Is it a wine stain,
Or only a pine stain,
That makes such a fine stain
On your dull blue,--
Got as we numbered
The clouds that lumbered
Southward and slumbered
When day was through?

What is the dear mark
There like an earmark,
Only a tear mark
A woman let fall?--
As bending over
She bade me discover,
"Who plays the lover,
He loses all!"

With you for teacher
We learned love's feature
In every creature
That roves or grieves;
When winds were brawling,
Or bird-folk calling,
Or leaf-folk fal...

If gibbets, axes, confiscations, chains,
And racks of subtle torture, if the pains
Of shame, of fiery Hell's tempestuous wave,
Seen through the caverns of the shadowy grave,
Hurling the damned into the murky air
While the meek blest sit smiling; if Despair
And Hate, the rapid bloodhounds with which Terror
Hunts through the world the homeless steps of Error,
Are the true secrets of the commonweal
To make men wise and just;...
And not the sophisms of revenge and fear,
Bloodier than is revenge...
Then send the priests to every hearth and home
To preach the burning wrath which is to come,
In words like flakes of sulphur, such as thaw
The frozen tears...
If Satire's scourge could wake the slumbering hounds
Of Conscience, or erase the deeper wounds,
The le...

With clearer light, Cross of the South, shine forth
In blue Brazilian skies;
And thou, O river, cleaving half the earth
From sunset to sunrise,
From the great mountains to the Atlantic waves
Thy joy's long anthem pour.
Yet a few years (God make them less!) and slaves
Shall shame thy pride no more,
No fettereel feet thy shaded margins press;
But all men shall walk free
Where thou, the high-priest of the wilderness,
Hast wedded sea to sea.
And thou, great-hearted ruler, through whose mouth
The word of God is said,
Once more, "Let there be light!" Son of the South,
Lift up thy honored head,
Wear unashamed a crown by thy desert
More than by birth thy own,
Careless of watch and ward; thou art begirt
By grateful hearts alone.
The moaned wall and ...

Naked and grey the Cotswolds stand
Beneath the autumn sun,
And the stubble-fields on either hand
Where Stour and Avon run.
There is no change in the patient land
That has bred us every one.

She should have passed in cloud and fire
And saved us from this sin
Of war, red war,' twixt child and sire,
Household and kith and kin,
In the heart of a sleepy Midland shire.
With the harvest scarcely in.

But there is no change as we meet at last
On the brow-head or the plain,
And the raw astonished ranks stand fast
To slay or to be slain
By the men they knew in the kindly past
That shall never come again,

By the men they met at dance or chase,
In the tavern or the hall,
At the j ustice-bench and the market-place,
At the cudgel-pl...

Hew hard the marble from the mountain’s heart
Where hardest night holds fast in iron gloom
Gems brighter than an April dawn in bloom,
That his Memnoniah likeness thence may start
Revealed, whose hand with high funereal art
Carved night, and chiselled shadow: be the tomb
That speaks him famous graven with signs of doom
Intrenched inevitably in lines athwart,
As on some thunder-blasted Titan’s brow
His record of rebellion. Not the day
Shall strike forth music from so stern a chord,
Touching this marble: darkness, none knows how,
And stars impenetrable of midnight, may.
So locms the likeness of thy soul, John Ford.

    If I have given myself to you and you,
    And if these pale hands are not virginal,
    Nor these bright lips beneath your own lips true,
    What matters it?    I do not stand nor fall
    By your old foolish judgments of desire:
    If this were Helen's way it is not mine;
    I bring you beauty, but no Troys to fire:
    The cup I hold brims not with Borgia's wine.
    You, so soon snared of sudden brows and breasts,
    Lightly you think upon these lips, this hair.
    My thoughts are kinder: you are pity's guests:
    Compassion's bed you share.

    It was not lust delivered me to you;
    I gave my wondering mouth for pity's sake,
    For your strange, sighing lips I did but break
    Many times this bread, and poured this wine anew.
    My bo...

Behold the blossom-bosomed Day again,
With all the star-white Hours in her train,
Laughs out of pearl-lights through a golden ray,
That, leaning on the woodland wildness, blends
A sprinkled amber with the showers that lay
Their oblong emeralds on the leafy ends.
Behold her bend with maiden-braided brows
Above the wildflower, sidewise with its strain
Of dewy happiness, to kiss again
Each drop to death; or, under rainy boughs,
With fingers, fragrant as the woodland rain,
Gather the sparkles from the sycamore,
To set within each core
Of crimson roses girdling her hips,
Where each bud dreams and drips.
Smoothing her blue-black hair, where many a tusk
Of iris flashes, like the falchions' sheen
Of Faery 'round blue banners of its Queen,
Is it a Naiad singi...

Sweet the memory is to me
Of a land beyond the sea,
Where the waves and mountains meet,
Where, amid her mulberry-trees
Sits Amalfi in the heat,
Bathing ever her white feet
In the tideless summer seas.

In the middle of the town,
From its fountains in the hills,
Tumbling through the narrow gorge,
The Canneto rushes down,
Turns the great wheels of the mills,
Lifts the hammers of the forge.

'T is a stairway, not a street,
That ascends the deep ravine,
Where the torrent leaps between
Rocky walls that almost meet.
Toiling up from stair to stair
Peasant girls their burdens bear;
Sunburnt daughters of the soil,
Stately figures tall and straight,
What inexorable fate
Dooms them to this life of toil?

Lord of vineyards...