Courage

Why should man's high aspiring mind
Burn in him with so proud a breath,
When all his haughty views can find
In this world yields to death?
The fair, the brave, the vain, the wise,
The rich, the poor, the great, and small,
Are each but worm's anatomies
To strew his quiet hall.

Power may make many earthly gods,
Where gold and bribery's guilt prevails,
But death's unwelcome, honest odds
Kick o'er the unequal scales.
The flattered great may clamours raise
Of power, and their own weakness hide,
But death shall find unlooked-for ways
To end the farce of pride,

An arrow hurtled eer so high,
From een a giant's sinewy strength,
In Time's untraced eternity
Goes but a pigmy length;
Nay, whirring from the tortured string,
With all its ...

O plump head-waiter at The Cock,
To which I most resort,
How goes the time? ’Tis five o’clock.
Go fetch a pint of port:
But let it not be such as that
You set before chance-comers,
But such whose father-grape grew fat
On Lusitanian summers.

No vain libation to the Muse,
But may she still be kind,
And whisper lovely words, and use
Her influence on the mind,
To make me write my random rhymes,
Ere they be half-forgotten;
Nor add and alter, many times,
Till all be ripe and rotten.

I pledge her, and she comes and dips
Her laurel in the wine,
And lays it thrice upon my lips,
These favour’d lips of mine;
Until the charm have power to make
New life-blood warm the bosom,
And barren commonplaces break
In full and kindly blo...

How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
The village street its haunted mansion lacks,
And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name,
And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks
Are ye too changed, ye hills?
See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men
To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays!
Here came I often, often, in old days
Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then.

Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm,
Past the high wood, to where the elm-tree crowns
The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames?
The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs,
The Vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful Thames?
This winter-eve is warm,
Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring,
The tender purple spray on c...

I.

When dusk falls cool as a rained-on rose,
And a tawny tower the twilight shows,
With the crescent moon, the silver moon, the curved new moon in a space that glows,
A turret window that grows a-light;
There is a path that my Fancy knows,
A glimmering, shimmering path of night,
That far as the Land of Faery goes.

II.

And I follow the path, as Fancy leads,
Over the mountains, into the meads,
Where the firefly cities, the glowworm cities, the fairy cities are strung like beads,
Each city a twinkling star:
And I live a life of valorous deeds,
And march with the Fairy King to war,
And ride with his knights on milk-white steeds.

III.

Or it's there in the whirl of their life I sit,
Or dance in their houses with starlight lit,...

Joust First.


I.

Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies,
And the knights still hurried amain
To the tournament under the ladies' eyes,
Where the jousters were Heart and Brain.

II.

Flourished the trumpets: entered Heart,
A youth in crimson and gold.
Flourished again: Brain stood apart,
Steel-armored, dark and cold.

III.

Heart's palfrey caracoled gayly round,
Heart tra-li-ra'd merrily;
But Brain sat still, with never a sound,
So cynical-calm was he.

IV.

Heart's helmet-crest bore favors three
From his lady's white hand caught;
While Brain wore a plumeless casque; not he
Or favor gave or sought.

V.

The herald blew; Heart shot a glance
To find his lady's eye,

Crowd about me, little children -
    Come and cluster 'round my knee
While I tell a little story
    That happened once with me.

My father he had gone away
    A-sailing on the foam,
Leaving me - the merest infant -
    And my mother dear at home;

For my father was a sailor,
    And he sailed the ocean o'er
For full five years ere yet again
    He reached his native shore.

And I had grown up rugged
    And healthy day by day,
Though I was but a puny babe
    When father went away.

Poor mother she would kiss me
    And look at me and sigh
So strangely, oft I wondered
    And would ask the reason why.

And she would answer sadly,
    Between her sobs and tears, -
"You look so like your father,
    ...

It is not well
For me to dwell
On what upon that day befell,
On that dark day of fall befell;
When through the landscape, bowed and bent,
With Love and Death I slowly went,
And wild rain swept the firmament.

Ah, Love that sighed!
Ah, Joy that died!
And Heart that humbled all its pride;
In vain that humbled all its pride!
The roses ruin and rot away
Upon your grave where grasses sway,
And all is dim, and all is gray.

    1

    "Death is but a sleep"
    quaint rationalization
    even to Revolutionaries.
    Think of Robespierre
    holding his bleeding jaw
    or Marat outside -
    eyeing the inscription,
    scofula no longer distracting while
    tepidly emptying bath water.

    2
    Dreams, poetry of painting,
    deathly pastel shades alongside
    granite canyons
    entwined with rosebuds and leaves -
    bone horseshoes clanking in the dark.

    3
    Catch basin, drainage ditch
    upon which the raspberry
    parts its tendrils and
    human remains, the loathing
    of the living ("not dead yet...."
    ...appropriate obscenity:)
    scrawled on one Victorian
    mortuary, windows knocked out,
    ...

FOR MANY YEARS DEPRIVED OF SIGHT.


They say the sun is shining
In all his splendor now,
And clouds in graceful drapery,
Are sailing to an fro.

That birds of brilliant plumage,
Are soaring on the wing;
Exulting in the daylight,
Rejoicing as they sing.

They tell me too that roses,
E'en in my pathway lie;
And decked in rich apparel,
Attract the passers by.

They say the sun when setting,
Is glorious to behold;
And sheds on all at parting,
A radiant crown of gold.

And then the night's pale empress,
With all her glittering train,
The vacant throne ascending,
Resumes her peaceful reign.

That she in queenly beauty,
Subdued yet silvery light,
Makes scarcely less enchanting
Than day,...

She sat in the cottage door, and the fair June moon looked down
On a face as pure as its own, an innocent face and sweet
As the roses dewy white that grow so thick at her feet,
White royal roses, fit for a monarch's crown.

And one is clasped in her slender hand, and one on her bosom lies,
And two rare blushing buds loop up her light brown hair,
Ah, roses of June, you never looked on a face so white and fair,
Such perfectly moulded lips, such sweet and heavenly eyes.

This low-walled home is dear to her, she has come to it to-day
From the lordly groves of her palace home afar,
But not to stay; there's a light on her brow like the light of a star,
And her eyes are looking beyond the earth, far, far away.

She was born in this cottage home, the sweetest rosebud of sp...

Upon the barren sand
A single captive stood;
Around him came, with bow and brand,
The red-men of the wood.
Like him of old, his doom he hears,
Rock-bound on ocean's rim:
The chieftain's daughter knelt in tears,
And breathed a prayer for him.

Above his head in air
The savage war-club swung:
The frantic girl, in wild despair,
Her arms about him flung.
Then shook the warriors of the shade,
Like leaves on aspen limb--
Subdued by that heroic maid
Who breathed a prayer for him.

"Unbind him!" gasped the chief--
"Obey your king's decree!"
He kissed away her tears of grief,
And set the captive free.
'Tis ever thus, when, in life's storm,
Hope's star to man grows dim,
An angel kneels in woman's form,
And breathes a prayer f...

"Delicta juventutis et ignorantius ejus, quoesumus ne memineris, Domine."



I left, to earth, a little maiden fair,
With locks of gold, and eyes that shamed the light;
I prayed that God might have her in His care
And sight.

Earth's love was false; her voice, a siren's song;
(Sweet mother-earth was but a lying name)
The path she showed was but the path of wrong
And shame.

"Cast her not out!" I cry. God's kind words come,
"Her future is with Me, as was her past;
It shall be My good will to bring her home
At last."

        The hurry of the times affects us so
    In this swift rushing hour, we crowd and press
        And thrust each other backward as we go,
    And do not pause to lay sufficient stress
    Upon that good, strong, true word, Earnestness.
        In our impetuous haste, could we but know
        Its full, deep meaning, its vast import, oh,
    Then might we grasp the secret of success!
        In that receding age when men were great,
    The bone and sinew of their purpose lay
    In this one word. God likes an earnest soul -
        Too earnest to be eager. Soon or late
    It leaves the spent horde breathless by the way,
    And stands serene, triumphant at the goal.

Say, why is the stern eye averted with scorn
Of the stoic who passes along?
And why frowns the maid, else as mild as the morn.
On the victim of falsehood and wrong?

For the wretch sunk in sorrow, repentance, and shame,
The tear of compassion is won:
And alone must she forfeit the wretch's sad claim,
Because she's deceived and undone?

Oh! recal the stern look, ere it reaches her heart,
To bid its wounds rankle anew;
Oh! smile, or embalm with a tear the sad smart,
And angels will smile upon you.

Time was, when she knew nor opprobrium nor pain,
And youth could its pleasures impart,
Till some serpent distill'd through her bosom the stain,
As he wound round the strings of her heart.

Poor girl! let thy tears through thy blandishments break,

A vision as of crowded city streets,
    With human life in endless overflow;
    Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets that blow
    To battle; clamor, in obscure retreats,
Of sailors landed from their anchored fleets;
    Tolling of bells in turrets, and below
    Voices of children, and bright flowers that throw
    O'er garden-walls their intermingled sweets!
This vision comes to me when I unfold
    The volume of the Poet paramount,
    Whom all the Muses loved, not one alone;--
Into his hands they put the lyre of gold,
    And, crowned with sacred laurel at their fount,
    Placed him as Musagetes on their throne.

Where Time the measure of his hours
By changeful bud and blossom keeps,
And, like a young bride crowned with flowers,
Fair Shiraz in her garden sleeps;

Where, to her poet's turban stone,
The Spring her gift of flowers imparts,
Less sweet than those his thoughts have sown
In the warm soil of Persian hearts:

There sat the stranger, where the shade
Of scattered date-trees thinly lay,
While in the hot clear heaven delayed
The long and still and weary day.

Strange trees and fruits above him hung,
Strange odors filled the sultry air,
Strange birds upon the branches swung,
Strange insect voices murmured there.

And strange bright blossoms shone around,
Turned sunward from the shadowy bowers,
As if the Gheber's soul had found
A fi...

I took the love you gave, Ah, carelessly,
Counting it only as a rose to wear
A little moment on my heart no more,
So many roses had I worn before,
So lightly that I scarce believed them there.

But, Lo! this rose between the dusk and dawn
Hath turned to very flame upon my breast,
A flame that burns the day-long and the night,
A flame of very anguish and delight
That not for any moment yields me rest.

And I am troubled with a strange, new fear,
How would it be if even to your door
I came to cry your pitying one day,
And you should lightly laugh and lightly say,
"That was a rose I gave you--nothing more."

"Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes
Angulus Ridet."
--Hor. ii. 6.


It was an elm-tree root of yore,
With lordly trunk, before they lopped it,
And weighty, said those five who bore
Its bulk across the lawn, and dropped it
Not once or twice, before it lay.
With two young pear-trees to protect it,
Safe where the Poet hoped some day
The curious pilgrim would inspect it.

He saw him with his Poet's eye,
The stately Maori, turned from etching
The ruin of St. Paul's, to try
Some object better worth the sketching:--
He saw him, and it nerved his strength
What time he hacked and hewed and scraped it,
Until the monster grew at length
The Master-piece to which he shaped it.

To wit--a goodly garden seat,
And fit alike for Shah or Sop...