Courage

To every gentle Muse in vain allied,
In youth's full early morning HEADLEY died!
Too long had sickness left her pining trace,
With slow, still touch, on each decaying grace:
Untimely sorrow marked his thoughtful mien!
Despair upon his languid smile was seen!
Yet Resignation, musing on the grave,
(When now no hope could cheer, no pity save),
And Virtue, that scarce felt its fate severe,
And pale Affection, dropping soft a tear
For friends beloved, from whom she soon must part,
Breathed a sad solace on his aching heart.
Nor ceased he yet to stray, where, winding wild,
The Muse's path his drooping steps beguiled,
Intent to rescue some neglected rhyme,
Lone-blooming, from the mournful waste of time;
And cull each scattered sweet, that seemed to smile
Like flo...

Passa la nave mia colma d' oblio.

UNDER THE FIGURE OF A TEMPEST-TOSSED VESSEL, HE DESCRIBES HIS OWN SAD STATE.


    My bark, deep laden with oblivion, rides
O'er boisterous waves, through winter's midnight gloom,
'Twixt Scylla and Charybdis, while, in room
Of pilot, Love, mine enemy, presides;
At every oar a guilty fancy bides,
Holding at nought the tempest and the tomb;
A moist eternal wind the sails consume,
Of sighs, of hopes, and of desire besides.
A shower of tears, a fog of chill disdain
Bathes and relaxes the o'er-wearied cords,
With error and with ignorance entwined;
My two loved lights their wonted aid restrain;
Reason or Art, storm-quell'd, no help affords,
Nor hope remains the wish'd-for port to find.

CHARLEMONT.
<...

Up there, upon yonder mountain,
Stands a castle old, in the gorse,
Where once, behind doors and portals,
Lurking lay knight and horse.

Burnt are the doors and the portals;
All round it is very still;
Its old walls, tumbled in ruins,
I scramble about at my will.

Close hereby lay a cellar
Full of wine that was old and rare;
But the cheery maid with the pitchers
No more comes down the stair;

No more in the hall, sedately
Sets the beaker before the guest;
No more at the festival stately,
The flagon fills for the priest;

No more to the page so thirsty
Gives a draught in the corridor;
And receives for the hurried favour
The hurried thanks no more.

For every rafter and ceiling
Long ago were to ashes burned,
...

Swags up! and yet I turn upon the way.
The yellow hill against a dapple sky,
With tufts and clumps of thorn, the bush whereby
All through the wonder-pregnant night I lay
Until the silver stars were merged in grey
Our fragrant camp, demand a parting sigh:
New tracks, new camps, and hearts for ever high,
Yet brief regret with every welcome day.
Dear dreamy earth, receding flickering lamp,
Dear dust wherein I found this night a home,
Still for a memory’s sake I turn and cling,
Then take the road for many a distant camp,
Among what hills, by what pale whispering foam,
With eager faith for ever wandering.

I am afraid, oh I am so afraid!
The cold black fear is clutching me to-night
As long ago when they would take the light
And leave the little child who would have prayed,
Frozen and sleepless at the thought of death.
My heart that beats too fast will rest too soon;
I shall not know if it be night or noon,
Yet shall I struggle in the dark for breath?
Will no one fight the Terror for my sake,
The heavy darkness that no dawn will break?
How can they leave me in that dark alone,
Who loved the joy of light and warmth so much,
And thrilled so with the sense of sound and touch,
How can they shut me underneath a stone?

Robin Hood is an outlaw bold
Under the greenwood tree;
Bird, nor stag, nor morning air
Is more at large than he.

They sent against him twenty men,
Who joined him laughing-eyed;
They sent against him thirty more,
And they remained beside.

All the stoutest of the train,
That grew in Gamelyn wood,
Whether they came with these or not,
Are now with Robin Hood.

And not a soul in Locksley town
Would speak him an ill word;
The friars raged; but no man's tongue,
Nor even feature stirred;

Except among a very few
Who dined in the Abbey halls;
And then with a sigh bold Robin knew
His true friends from his false.

There was Roger the monk, that used to make
All monkery his glee;
And Midge, on whom Robin had never t...

I climbed the dark brow of the mighty Hellvellyn,
Lakes and mountains beneath me gleamed misty and wide;
All was still, save by fits, when the eagle was yelling,
And starting around me the echoes replied.
On the right, Striding-edge round the Red-tarn was bending,
And Catchedicam its left verge was defending,
One huge nameless rock in the front was ascending,
When I marked the sad spot where the wanderer had died.

Dark green was that spot 'mid the brown mountain heather,
Where the Pilgrim of Nature lay stretched in decay,
Like the corpse of an outcast abandoned to weather,
Till the mountain winds wasted the tenantless clay.
Nor yet quite deserted, though lonely extended,
For, faithful in death, his mute favourite attended,
The much-loved remains of her master defe...

Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs
No school of long experience, that the world
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares,
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood
And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm
To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here
Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men
And made thee loathe thy life. The primal curse
Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth,
But not in vengeance. God hath yoked to guilt
Her pale tormentor, misery. Hence, these shades
Are still the abodes of gladness; the thick roof
Of green and stirring branches is alive
And musical with birds, that ...

They say, in all kindness, I’m out of the hunt,
Too old and too deaf to be sent to the Front.
A scribbler of stories, a maker of songs,
To the fireside and armchair my valour belongs!
Yet in campaigns all hopeless, in bitterest strife,
I have been at the Front all the days of my life.

Oh, your girl feels a princess, your people are proud,
As you march down the street, ’midst the cheers of the crowd;
And the Nation’s behind you and cloudless your sky,
And you come back to Honour, or gloriously die;
While for each thing that brightens, and each thing that cheers,
I have starved in the trenches these forty long years.

The cities were silent, the people were glum,
No sound of a bugle, no tap of a drum;
Our enemies mighty and Parliaments sour,
Our Land’s lov...

Say, what is Honour? 'Tis the finest sense
Of 'justice' which the human mind can frame,
Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim,
And guard the way of life from all offence
Suffered or done. When lawless violence
Invades a Realm, so pressed that in the scale
Of perilous war her weightiest armies fail,
Honour is hopeful elevation, whence
Glory, and triumph. Yet with politic skill
Endangered States may yield to terms unjust;
Stoop their proud heads, but not unto the dust
A Foe's most favourite purpose to fulfil:
Happy occasions oft by self-mistrust
Are forfeited; but infamy doth kill.

        Her brown hair knew no royal crest,
            No gems nor jeweled charms,
        No roses her bright cheek caressed,
            No lilies kissed her arms.
        In simple, modest womanhood
            Clad, as was meet, in white,
        The fairest flower of all, she stood
            Amid the softest light.

        It had been worth a perilous quest
            To see the court she drew,--
        My rose, my gem, my royal crest,
            My lily moist with dew;
        Worth heaven, when, with farewells from each
            The gay throng let us be,
        To see her turn at last and reach
            Her white hands out to me.

I should not dare to leave my friend,
Because -- because if he should die
While I was gone, and I -- too late --
Should reach the heart that wanted me;

If I should disappoint the eyes
That hunted, hunted so, to see,
And could not bear to shut until
They "noticed" me -- they noticed me;

If I should stab the patient faith
So sure I 'd come -- so sure I 'd come,
It listening, listening, went to sleep
Telling my tardy name, --

My heart would wish it broke before,
Since breaking then, since breaking then,
Were useless as next morning's sun,
Where midnight frosts had lain!

Love alone is great in might,
Makes the heavy burden light,
Smooths rough ways to weary feet,
Makes the bitter morsel sweet:
Love alone is strength!

Might that is not born of Love
Is not Might born from above,
Has its birthplace down below
Where they neither reap nor sow:
Love alone is strength!

Love is stronger than all force,
Is its own eternal source;
Might is always in decay,
Love grows fresher every day:
Love alone is strength!

Little ones, no ill can chance;
Fear ye not, but sing and dance;
Though the high-heaved heaven should fall
God is plenty for us all:
God is Love and Strength!

1

Friends
The old word is dead.
The old books are dead.
Our speech with holes like worn-out shoes is dead.
Dead is the mind that led to defeat.

2

Our poetry has gone sour.
Women's hair, nights, curtains and sofas
Have gone sour.
Everything has gone sour.

3

My grieved country,
In a flash
You changed me from a poet who wrote love poems
To a poet who writes with a knife

4

What we feel is beyond words:
We should be ashamed of our poems.

5

Stirred by Oriental bombast,
By boastful swaggering that never killed a fly,
By the fiddle and the drum,
We went to war,
And lost.

6

Our shouting is louder than out actions,
Our swords are taller than us,
...

(HORACE, III. 7.)

"Quid fles, Asterie, quem tibi candidi
Primo restituent vere Favonii--
Gygen?"


Come, Laura, patience. Time and Spring
Your absent Arthur back shall bring,
Enriched with many an Indian thing
Once more to woo you;
Him neither wind nor wave can check,
Who, cramped beneath the "Simla's" deck,
Still constant, though with stiffened neck,
Makes verses to you.

Would it were wave and wind alone!
The terrors of the torrid zone,
The indiscriminate cyclone,
A man might parry;
But only faith, or "triple brass,"
Can help the "outward-bound" to pass
Safe through that eastward-faring class
Who sail to marry.

For him fond mothers, stout and fair,
Ascend the tortuous cabin stair
Only to hold around hi...

My neighbor lives on the hill,
And I in the valley dwell,
My neighbor must look down on me,
Must I look up?--ah, well,
My neighbor lives on the hill,
And I in the valley dwell.

My neighbor reads, and prays,
And I--I laugh, God wot,
And sing like a bird when the grass is green
In my small garden plot;
But ah, he reads and prays,
And I--I laugh, God wot.

His face is a book of woe,
And mine is a song of glee;
A slave he is to the great "They say,"
But I--I am bold and free;
No wonder he smacks of woe,
And I have the tang of glee.

My neighbor thinks me a fool,
"The same to yourself," say I;
"Why take your books and take your prayers,
Give me the open sky;"
My neighbor thinks me a fool,
"The same to yourself," sa...

(Time, Noon.)


HUMPHREY:

See'st thou not William that the scorching Sun
By this time half his daily race has run?
The savage thrusts his light canoe to shore
And hurries homeward with his fishy store.
Suppose we leave awhile this stubborn soil
To eat our dinner and to rest from toil!


WILLIAM:

Agreed. Yon tree whose purple gum bestows
A ready medicine for the sick-man's woes,
Forms with its shadowy boughs a cool retreat
To shield us from the noontide's sultry heat.
Ah Humphrey! now upon old England's shore
The weary labourer's morning work is o'er:
The woodman now rests from his measur'd stroke
Flings down his axe and sits beneath the oak,
Savour'd with hunger there he eats his food,
There drinks the cooling streamle...

Come, let's climb into our attic,
In our house that's old and gray!
Life, you're old and I'm rheumatic,
And it's close of day.

Lay aside your rags and tatters,
Shirt and shoes so soiled with clay!
They're no use now. Nothing matters
It is close of day.

Let's to bed. It's cold. No fire.
And no lamp to make a ray.
Where's our servant, young Desire?
Gone at close of day.

Oft she served us with fine glances,
Helped us out at work and play:
She is gone now; better chances;
And it's close of day.

Where is Hope, who flaunted scarlet?
Hope, who led us oft astray?
Has she proved herself a harlot
At the close of day?

What's become of Dream and Vision?
Friends we thought were here to stay?
Has life clapped the t...