Courage

When Fate presents us with the Bays,
We prize the Praiser, not the Praise.
We scarcely think our Fame eternal
If vouched for by the Farthing Journal;
But when the Craftsman's self has spoken,
We take it for a certain Token.
This an Example best will show,
Derived from DENNIS DIDEROT.

A hackney Author, who'd essayed
All Hazards of the scribbling Trade;
And failed to live by every Mode,
From Persian Tale to Birthday Ode;
Embarked at last, thro' pure Starvation,
In Theologic Speculation.
'Tis commonly affirmed his Pen
Had been most orthodox till then;
But oft, as SOCRATES has said,
The Stomach's stronger than the Head;
And, for a sudden Change of Creed,
There is no Jesuit like Need.
Then, too, 'twas cheap; he took it all,
By force o...

She stands in front of her mirror
    With bright and joyous air,
Smoothes out with a skilful hand
    Her waves of golden hair;
But the tell tale roses on her cheek,
    So changing yet so bright,
And downcast, earnest eye betray
    New thoughts are hers to-night.

Then say what is the fairy spell,
    Around her beauty thrown,
Lending a new and softer charm
    To every look and tone?
It is the hidden consciousness -
    The blissful, joyous thought
That she, at length hath wholly won
    The heart she long had sought.

To-morrow is her bridal day,
    That day of hopes and fears,
Of partings from beloved friends,
    Of sunshine and of tears:
To-morrow will she says the words,
    Those words whose import deep
Will f...

Se Virgilio ed Omero avessin visto.

THE MOST FAMOUS POETS OF ANTIQUITY WOULD HAVE SUNG HER ONLY, HAD THEY SEEN HER.


    Had tuneful Maro seen, and Homer old,
The living sun which here mine eyes behold,
The best powers they had join'd of either lyre,
Sweetness and strength, that fame she might acquire;
Unsung had been, with vex'd Æneas, then
Achilles and Ulysses, godlike men,
And for nigh sixty years who ruled so well
The world; and who before Ægysthus fell;
Nay, that old flower of virtues and of arms,
As this new flower of chastity and charms,
A rival star, had scarce such radiance flung.
In rugged verse him honour'd Ennius sung,
I her in mine. Grant, Heaven! on my poor lays
She frown not, nor disdain my humble praise.

ANON.

On yonder verdant hilloc laid,
Where oaks and elms, a friendly shade,
O'erlook the falling stream,
O master of the Latin lyre,
Awhile with thee will i retire
From summer's noontide beam.
And, lo, within my lonely bower,
The industrious bee from many a flower
Collects her balmy dews:
“For me,” she sings, “the gems are born,
“For me their silken robe adorn,
“Their fragrant breath diffuse.”
Sweet murmurer! may no rude storm
This hospitable scene deform,
Nor check thy gladsome toils;
Still may the buds unsullied spring,
Still showers and sunshine court thy wing
To these ambrosial spoils.
Nor shall my Muse hereafter fail
Her fellow-labourer thee to hail;
And lucky be the strains!
For long ago did nature frame
Your seasons and your arts...

Few poets yet in praise of thee
    Have tuned a passing lay,
Yet art thou rich in beauties stern,
    Thou dark browed Saguenay!

And those grand charms that surely form
    For earth her rarest crown
On thee, with strangely lavish hand,
    Have all been showered down.

Thine own wild flood, so deep, so dark;
    That holds the gaze enthralled
As if by some weird spell, at once
    Entranced yet not appalled;

Seeking in vain to pierce those depths,
    Where wave and rock have met,
Those depths which, by the hand of man,
    Have ne'er been fathomed yet.

And then thy shores - thy rock bound shores,
    Where giant cliffs arise,
Raising their untrod, unknown heights
    Defiant to the skies,

And casting from the...

From centre to the circle, and so back
From circle to the centre, water moves
In the round chalice, even as the blow
Impels it, inwardly, or from without.
Such was the image glanc'd into my mind,
As the great spirit of Aquinum ceas'd;
And Beatrice after him her words
Resum'd alternate: "Need there is (tho' yet
He tells it to you not in words, nor e'en
In thought) that he should fathom to its depth
Another mystery. Tell him, if the light,
Wherewith your substance blooms, shall stay with you
Eternally, as now: and, if it doth,
How, when ye shall regain your visible forms,
The sight may without harm endure the change,
That also tell." As those, who in a ring
Tread the light measure, in their fitful mirth
Raise loud the voice, and spring with gladder bound;

Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach Thy hand,
For I am drowning in a stormier sea
Than Simon on Thy lake of Galilee:
The wine of life is spilt upon the sand,
My heart is as some famine-murdered land
Whence all good things have perished utterly,
And well I know my soul in Hell must lie
If I this night before God's throne should stand.
'He sleeps perchance, or rideth to the chase,
Like Baal, when his prophets howled that name
From morn to noon on Carmel's smitten height.'
Nay, peace, I shall behold, before the night,
The feet of brass, the robe more white than flame,
The wounded hands, the weary human face.

        All love that has not friendship for its base
    Is like a mansion built upon the sand.
    Though brave its walls as any in the land,
        And its tall turrets lift their heads in grace;
        Though skilful and accomplished artists trace
    Most beautiful designs on every hand,
    And gleaming statues in dim niches stand,
        And fountains play in some flow'r-hidden place:

        Yet, when from the frowning east a sudden gust
    Of adverse fate is blown, or sad rains fall,
    Day in, day out, against its yielding wall,
        Lo! the fair structure crumbles to the dust.
    Love, to endure life's sorrow and earth's woe,
    Needs friendship's solid mason-work below.

Ah me! in ages far away,
    The good, the heavenly land,
Though unbeheld, quite near them lay,
    And men could understand.

The dead yet find it, who, when here,
    Did love it more than this;
They enter in, are filled with cheer,
    And pain expires in bliss.

Oh, fairly shines the blessed land!
    Ah, God! I weep and pray--
The heart thou holdest in thy hand
    Loves more this sunny day.

I see the hundred thousand wait
    Around the radiant throne:
To me it is a dreary state,
    A crowd of beings lone.

I do not care for singing psalms;
    I tire of good men's talk;
To me there is no joy in palms,
    Or white-robed solemn walk.

I love to hear the wild winds meet,
    The wild old winds at night;<...

I.

Long vollies of wind and of rain
And the rain on the drizzled pane,
And the eve falls chill and murk;
But on yesterday's eve I know
How a horned moon's thorn-like bow
Stabbed rosy thro' gold and thro' glow,
Like a rich barbaric dirk.


II.

Now thick throats of the snapdragons, -
Who hold in their hues cool dawns,
Which a healthy yellow paints, -
Are filled with a sweet rain fine
Of a jaunty, jubilant shine,
A faery vat of rare wine,
Which the honey thinly taints.


III.

Now dabble the poppies shrink,
And the coxcomb and the pink;
While the candytuft's damp crown
Droops dribbled, low bowed i' the wet;
And long spikes o' the mignonette
Little musk-sacks open set,
Which the dripping o' de...

                    Ye have sung me your songs, ye have chanted your rimes
                    (I scorn your beguiling, O sea!)
                    Ye fondle me now, but to strike me betimes.
                    (A treacherous lover, the sea!)
                    Once I saw as I lay, half-awash in the night
                    A hull in the gloom -- a quick hail -- and a light
                    And I lurched o'er to leeward and saved her for spite
                    From the doom that ye meted to me.

                    I was sister to 'Terrible', seventy-four,
                    (Yo ho! for the swing of the sea!)
                    And ye sank her in fathoms a thousand or more
                    (Alas! for the might of the sea!)
                    Ye taunt me and si...

“So say the foolish!” Say the foolish so, Love?
“Flower she is, my rose” or else, “My very swan is she”
Or perhaps, “Yon maid-moon, blessing earth below, Love,
That art thou!” to them, belike: no such vain words from me.

“Hush, rose, blush! no balm like breath,” I chide it:
“Bend thy neck its best, swan, hers the whiter curve!”
Be the moon the moon: my Love I place beside it:
What is she? Her human self, no lower word will serve.

Soul of the Poet! wheresoe'er,
Reclaimed from earth, thy genius plume
Her wings of immortality;
Suspend thy harp in happier sphere,
And with thine influence illume
The gladness of our jubilee.

And fly like fiends from secret spell,
Discord and Strife, at Burn's name,
Exorcised by his memory;
For he was chief of bards that swell
The heart with songs of social flame,
And high delicious revelry.

And Love's own strain to him was given,
To warble all its ecstacies
With Pythian words unsought, unwilled,
Love, the surviving gift of Heaven
The choicest sweet of Paradise,
In life's else bitter cup distilled.

Who that has melted o'er his lay
To Mary's soul, in Heaven above ,
But pictured sees, in fancy strong,
The landscape and...

If Life were slumber on a bed of down,
Toil unimposed, vicissitude unknown,
Sad were our lot: no hunter of the hare
Exults like him whose javelin from the lair
Has roused the lion; no one plucks the rose,
Whose proffered beauty in safe shelter blows
'Mid a trim garden's summer luxuries,
With joy like his who climbs, on hands and knees,
For some rare plant, yon Headland of St. Bees.

This independence upon oar and sail,
This new indifference to breeze or gale,
This straight-lined progress, furrowing a flat lea,
And regular as if locked in certainty
Depress the hours. Up, Spirit of the storm!
That Courage may find something to perform;
That Fortitude, whose blood disdains to freeze
At Danger's bidding, may confront the seas,
Firm as the towering Headla...

As in the woodland I walk, many a strange thing I learn -
How from the dross and the drift the beautiful things return,
And the fires quenched in October in April reburn;

How foulness grows fair with the stern lustration of sleets and snows,
And rottenness changes back to the breath and the cheek of the rose,
And how gentle the wind that seems wild to each blossom that blows;

How the lost is ever found, and the darkness the door of the light,
And how soft the caress of the hand that to shape must not fear to smite,
And how the dim pearl of the moon is drawn from the gulf of the night;

How, when the great tree falls, with its empire of rustling leaves,
The earth with a thousand hands its sunlit ruin receives,
And out of the wreck of its glory each secret artist weaves...

Standing alone by the highway side,
Stately, and stalwart, and tempest-tried,
Staunch of body and strong of bough,
Fronting the sky with an honest brow,
King of the forest and field is he -
Yon way side watcher - the old Elm tree.

When kindly Summer, with smile serene,
Drapes branch and bough in her robe of green,
Ever the joyous, wild birds come
And sing 'mid the clustering leaves at home;
Ever the soft winds, to and fro,
Steal through the branches with music low,
And golden sunbeams sparkle and play,
And dance with shadows the livelong day.

Up to his forehead undimmed by time,
The morning sun-ray is first to climb,
With the tender touch of its earliest beam
To break the spell of his dewy dream;
And there the longest, when daylight dies,...

Oh, melancholy fragment of the night
Drawing thy lazy web against the sun,
Thou shouldst have waited till the day was done
With kindred glooms to build thy fane aright,
Sublime amid the ruins of the light!
But thus to shape our glories one by one
With fearful hands, ere we had well begun
To look for shadows--even in the bright!
Yet may we charm a lesson from thy breast,
A secret wisdom from thy folds of thunder:
There is a wind that cometh from the west
Will rend thy tottering piles of gloom asunder,
And fling thee ruinous along the grass,
To sparkle on us as our footsteps pass!

1.
A portal as of shadowy adamant
Stands yawning on the highway of the life
Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt;
Around it rages an unceasing strife
Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt
The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high
Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky.

2.
And many pass it by with careless tread,
Not knowing that a shadowy ...
Tracks every traveller even to where the dead
Wait peacefully for their companion new;
But others, by more curious humour led,
Pause to examine; - these are very few,
And they learn little there, except to know
That shadows follow them where'er they go.