Courage

'Tis true, in midst of all, there may arise
For man's society a sudden thirst,
A sense of hopeless vacancy which dries
The spirit with a loneliness accurst,
A longing irresistible to burst
The branchy brake with other birds to sing,
Or, as, from where in solemn shades immerst,
The beetle comes to wanton on the wing
Around my lamplight flame - alas! poor, foolish thing.

But here thou may'st associate, though alone,
With worthiest men, the best of every age,
Through whom the universe of thought has grown
To what it is - the noble, good, and sage.
How vain the fret, how frivolous the rage
For social rank, when thus e'en monarchs deign
In close communion gladly to engage!
Nay, more than monarchs - Still the Mantuan swain
His fadeless laurel wears - What...

Wandering at morn,
Emerging from the night, from gloomy thoughts, thee in my thoughts,
Yearning for thee, harmonious Union! thee, Singing Bird divine!
Thee, seated coil'd in evil times, my Country, with craft and black dismay, with every meanness, treason thrust upon thee;
Wandering, this common marvel I beheld, the parent thrush I watch'd, feeding its young,
(The singing thrush, whose tones of joy and faith ecstatic,
Fail not to certify and cheer my soul.)

There ponder'd, felt I,
If worms, snakes, loathsome grubs, may to sweet spiritual songs be turn'd,
If vermin so transposed, so used, so bless'd may be,
Then may I trust in you, your fortunes, days, my country;
Who knows that these may be the lessons fit for you?
From these your future Song may rise, with joyous trills,

I

Whenas, (I love that “whenas” word,
It shows I am a poet, too,)
Q. Horace Flaccus gaily stirred
The welkin with his tra-la-loo,
He little thought one donkey’s back
Would carry thus a double load,
Father and son upon one jack,
Galumphing down the Tibur Road.

II

Old is the tale, Aesop’s, I think,
Of that famed miller and his son
Whose fortunes were so “on the blink”
They had one donk, and only one;
You know the tale, the critic’s squawk
(As pater that poor ass bestrode),
“Selfish! To make thy fine son walk!”
Perhaps that was on Tibur Road?

III

You will recall how dad got down
And made the son the ass bestride:
The critics shouted with a frown:
“Shame, boy! pray let thy father ride!”
Up got the da...

Come back to your mother, ye children, for shame,
Who have wandered like truants for riches or fame!
With a smile on her face, and a sprig in her cap,
She calls you to feast from her bountiful lap.

Come out from your alleys, your courts, and your lanes,
And breathe, like young eagles, the air of our plains;
Take a whiff from our fields, and your excellent wives
Will declare it 's all nonsense insuring your lives.

Come you of the law, who can talk, if you please,
Till the man in the moon will allow it's a cheese,
And leave "the old lady, that never tells lies,"
To sleep with her handkerchief over her eyes.

Ye healers of men, for a moment decline
Your feats in the rhubarb and ipecac line;
While you shut up your turnpike, your neighbors can go
The ol...

"What beast in wilderness or cultured field
"The lively beauty of the leopard shows?
"What flower in meadow-ground or garden grows
"That to the towering lily doth not yield?
"Let both meet only on thy royal shield!
"Go forth, great King! claim what thy birth bestows;
"Conquer the Gallic lily which thy foes
"Dare to usurp; thou hast a sword to wield,
"And Heaven will crown the right." The mitred Sire
Thus spake and lo! a Fleet, for Gaul addrest,
Ploughs her bold course across the wondering seas;
For, sooth to say, ambition, in the breast
Of youthful heroes, is no sullen fire,
But one that leaps to meet the fanning breeze.

    When I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
    Little room do I find for pride.

    I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
    Has fallen short or been turned aside.

    But who shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
    The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

If one proves weak who you fancied strong,
    Or false who you fancied true,
Just ease the smart of your wounded heart
    By the thought that it is not you!

If many forget a promise made,
    And your faith falls into the dust,
Then look meanwhile in your mirror and smile,
    And say, 'I am one to trust!'

If you search in vain for an ageing face
    Unharrowed by fretful fears,
Then make right now (and keep) a vow
    To grow in grace with the years.

If you lose your faith in the word of man
    As you go from the port of youth,
Just say as you sail, 'I will not fail
    To keep to the course of truth!'

For this is the way, and the only way -
    At least so it seems to me.
IT IS UP TO YOU, TO BE, AND DO,
    WHAT YOU ...

Come long-lost blessing! heaven-lov'd seraph, haste,
On pity's wings upborne, a world's wide woes
Invoke thy smiles extatic, long effac'd,
Beneath the tear which all corrosive flows;
While reason shudders, let ambition weep,
When wounding truth records what it has done:
Records the hosts consign'd to death's cold sleep,
Conspicuous 'mid the pomp of conflicts won!
Shall not the fiend relent, while groaning age
Pours its deep sorrows o'er its offspring slain;
While sire-robb'd infants mourn the deathful rage,
In many a penury enfeebled strain?
Sweet maid, return! behold affliction's tear,
And in my theme accept a nation's prayer.

I.

At threescore years and five aroused anew
To rule in India, forth a soldier went
On whose bright-fronted youth fierce war had spent
Its iron stress of storm, till glory grew
Full as the red sun waned on Waterloo.
Landing, he met the word from England sent
Which bade him yield up rule: and he, content,
Resigned it, as a mightier warrior’s due;
And wrote as one rejoicing to record
That ‘from the first’ his royal heart was lord
Of its own pride or pain; that thought was none
Therein save this, that in her perilous strait
England, whose womb brings forth her sons so great,
Should choose to serve her first her mightiest son.



II.

Glory beyond all flight of warlike fame
Go with the warrior’s memory who preferred
To praise of...

The hoar-frost hisses 'neath the feet,
And the worm-fence's straggling length,
Smote by the morning's slanted strength,
Sparkles one rib of virgin sleet.

To withered fields the crisp breeze talks,
And silently and sadly lifts
The bronz'd leaves from the beech and drifts
Them wadded down the woodland walks.

Reluctantly and one by one
The worthless leaves sift slowly down,
And thro' the mournful vistas blown
Drop rustling, and their rest is won.

Where stands the brook beneath its fall,
Thin-scaled with ice the pool is bound,
And on the pebbles scattered 'round
The ooze is frozen; one and all

White as rare crystals shining fair.
There stirs no life: the faded wood
Mourns sighing, and the solitude
Seems shaken with a mighty c...

Sept. 17th, 1785.


    While at the stook the shearers cow'r
    To shun the bitter blaudin' show'r,
    Or in gulravage rinnin' scow'r
        To pass the time,
    To you I dedicate the hour
        In idle rhyme.

    My musie, tir'd wi' mony a sonnet
    On gown, an' ban', and douse black bonnet,
    Is grown right eerie now she's done it,
        Lest they should blame her,
    An' rouse their holy thunder on it
        And anathem her.

    I own 'twas rash, an' rather hardy,
    That I, a simple countra bardie,
    Shou'd meddle wi' a pack sae sturdy,
        Wha, if they ken me,
    Can easy, wi' a single wordie,
        Lowse hell upon me.

    But I gae mad at their grimaces,
    Their sighin' cant...

I dare not spoil this spotless page
With any feeble verse of mine;
The Poet's fire has lost its rage,
Around his lyre no myrtles twine.

The voice of fame cannot recal
Those fairy days of past delight,
When pleasure seem'd to welcome all,
And morning hail'd a welcome night.

E'en love has lost its soothing power,
Its spells no more can chain my soul;
I must not venture in the bower,
Where Wit and Verse and Wine controul.

And yet, I fear, in thoughtless mirth
I once did say, Eliza, dear!
That I would tell the world thy worth,
And write the living record here.

Come Love, and Truth, and Friendship, come,
Enwreath'd in Virtue's snowy arms,
With magic rhymes the page illume,
And fancy sketch her varied charms--

Which ...

There is singing of birds in the deep wet woods,
In the heart of the listening solitudes,
Pewees, and thrushes, and sparrows, not few,
And all the notes of their throats are true.

The thrush from the innermost ash takes on
A tender dream of the treasured and gone;
But the sparrow singeth with pride and cheer
Of the might and light of the present and here.

There is shining of flowers in the deep wet woods,
In the heart of the sensitive solitudes,
The roseate bell and the lily are there,
And every leaf of their sheaf is fair.

Careless and bold, without dream of woe,
The trilliums scatter their flags snow;
But the pale wood-daffodil covers her face,
Agloom with the doom of a sorrowful race.

With eyes hand-arched he looks into
The morning's face; then turns away
With truant feet, all wet with dew,
Out for a holiday.
The hill brook sings; incessant stars,
Foam-fashioned, on its restless breast;
And where he wades its water-bars
Its song is happiest.
A comrade of the chinquapin,
He looks into its knotty eyes
And sees its heart; and, deep within,
Its soul that makes him wise.
The wood-thrush knows and follows him,
Who whistles up the birds and bees;
And round him all the perfumes swim
Of woodland loam and trees.
Where'er he pass the silvery springs'
Foam-people sing the flowers awake;
And sappy lips of bark-clad things
Laugh ripe each berried brake.
His touch is a companionship;
His word an old authority:
He comes, a lyr...

Oh, once I walked in Heaven, all alone
Upon the sacred cliffs above the sky.
God and the angels, and the gleaming saints
Had journeyed out into the stars to die.

They had gone forth to win far citizens,
Bought at great price, bring happiness for all:
By such a harvest make a holier town
And put new life within old Zion's wall.

Each chose a far-off planet for his home,
Speaking of love and mercy, truth and right,
Envied and cursed, thorn-crowned and scourged in time,
Each tasted death on his appointed night.

Then resurrection day from sphere to sphere
Sped on, with all the POWERS arisen again,
While with them came in clouds recruited hosts
Of sun-born strangers and of earth-born men.

And on that day gray prophet saints went down
And...

I have been across the bridges of the years.
    Wet with tears
Were the ties on which I trod, going back
    Down the track
To the valley where I left, 'neath skies of Truth,
    My lost youth.

As I went, I dropped my burdens, one and all -
    Let them fall;
All my sorrows, all my wrinkles, all my care,
    My white hair,
I laid down, like some lone pilgrim's heavy pack,
    By the track.

As I neared the happy valley with light feet,
    My heart beat
To the rhythm of a song I used to know
    Long ago,
And my spirits gushed and bubbled like a fountain
    Down a mountain.

On the border of that valley I found you,
    Tried and true;
And we wandered through the golden Summer-Land
    Hand in hand.
And my pulses...

O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?

"The stars," she whispers, "blindly run;
A web is wov'n across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun:

"And all the phantom, Nature, stands--
With all the music in her tone,
A hollow echo of my own,--
A hollow form with empty hands."

And shall I take a thing so blind,
Embrace her as my natural good;
Or crush her, like a vice of blood,
Upon the threshold of the mind?

Priests of APOLLO, sacred be the Roome,
For this learn'd Meeting: Let no barbarous Groome,
    How braue soe'r he bee,
    Attempt to enter;
    But of the Muses free,
    None here may venter;
This for the Delphian Prophets is prepar'd:
The prophane Vulgar are from hence debar'd.

And since the Feast so happily begins,
Call vp those faire Nine, with their Violins;
    They are begot by IOVE,
    Then let vs place them,
    Where no Clowne in may shoue,
    That may disgrace them:
But let them neere to young APOLLO sit;
So shall his Foot-pace ouer-flow with Wit.

Where be the Graces, where be those fayre Three?
In any hand they may not absent bee:
    They to the Gods are deare,
    And they can humbly
    Teach vs, our Selues to ...