Courage

There were four of us about that bed;
    The mass-priest knelt at the side,
I and his mother stood at the head,
    Over his feet lay the bride;
We were quite sure that he was dead,
    Though his eyes were open wide.

He did not die in the night,
    He did not die in the day,
But in the morning twilight
    His spirit pass'd away,
When neither sun nor moon was bright,
    And the trees were merely grey.

He was not slain with the sword,
    Knight's axe, or the knightly spear,
Yet spoke he never a word
    After he came in here;
I cut away the cord
    From the neck of my brother dear.

He did not strike one blow,
    For the recreants came behind,
In a place where the hornbeams grow,
    A path right hard to find,

She has laughed as softly as if she sighed,
She has counted six, and over,
Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried,
Oh, each a worthy lover!
They "give her time"; for her soul must slip
Where the world has set the grooving;
She will lie to none with her fair red lip:
But love seeks truer loving.

She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb,
As her thoughts were beyond recalling;
With a glance for one, and a glance for some,
From her eyelids rising and falling;
Speaks common words with a blushful air,
Hears bold words, unreproving;
But her silence says, what she never will swear,
And love seeks better loving.

Go, lady! lean to the night-guitar,
And drop a smile to the bringer;
Then smile as sweetly, when he is far,
At the voice of ...

If the quick spirits in your eye
Now languish and anon must die;
If every sweet and every grace
Must fly from that forsaken face;
Then, Celia, let us reap our joys
Ere Time such goodly fruit destroys.

Or if that golden fleece must grow
For ever free from aged snow;
If those bright suns must know no shade,
Nor your fresh beauties ever fade;
Then fear not, Celia, to bestow
What, still being gather'd, still must grow.

Thus either Time his sickle brings
In vain, or else in vain his wings.

So I went wrong,
Grievously wrong, but folly crushed itself,
And vanity o’ertoppling fell, and time
And healthy discipline and some neglect,
Labour and solitary hours revived
Somewhat, at least, of that original frame.
Oh, well do I remember then the days
When on some grassy slope (what time the sun
Was sinking, and the solemn eve came down
With its blue vapour upon field and wood
And elm-embosomed spire) once more again
I fed on sweet emotion, and my heart
With love o’erflowed, or hushed itself in fear
Unearthly, yea celestial. Once again
My heart was hot within me, and, me seemed,
I too had in my body breath to wind
The magic horn of song; I too possessed
Up-welling in my being’s depths a fount
Of the true poet-nectar whence to fill
The golden...

    I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.
    When I felt the bullet enter my heart
    I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail
    For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,
    Instead of running away and joining the army.
    Rather a thousand times the county jail
    Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,
    And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, "Pro Patria."
    What do they mean, anyway?

A barking sound the Shepherd hears,
A cry as of a dog or fox;
He halts and searches with his eyes
Among the scattered rocks:
And now at distance can discern
A stirring in a brake of fern;
And instantly a dog is seen,
Glancing through that covert green.

The Dog is not of mountain breed;
Its motions, too, are wild and shy;
With something, as the Shepherd thinks,
Unusual in its cry:
Nor is there any one in sight
All round, in hollow or on height;
Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear;
What is the creature doing here?

It was a cove, a huge recess,
That keeps, till June, December's snow;
A lofty precipice in front,
A silent tarn below!
Far in the bosom of Helvellyn,
Remote from public road or dwelling,
Pathway, or cultivat...

Come, let us quaff the brimming cup
Of sorrow, bitterness, and pain;
For clearly, things are warming up
Again.

Observe with what awakened powers
The vulgar Sun resumes the right
Of rising in the hallowed hours
Of night.

Bound to the village water-wheel,
The motive bullock bows his crest,
And signals forth a mute appeal
For rest.

His neck is galled beneath the yoke:
His patient eyes are very dim:
Life is a dismal sort of joke
To him.

Yet one there is, to whom the ox
Is kin; who knows, as habitat,
The cold, unsympathetic box,
Or mat;

Who urges on, with wearied arms,
The punkah's rhythmic, laboured sweep,
Nor dares to contemplate the charms
Of sleep.

Now 'mid a host of lesser thing...

I.

Let the coward shrink aside,
We'll have our own again;
Let the brawling slave deride--
Here's for our own again!
Let the tyrant bribe and lie,
March, threaten, fortify,
Loose his lawyer and his spy--
Yet we'll have our own again!
Let him soothe in silken tone,
Scold from a foreign throne:
Let him come with bugles blown--
We shall have our own again!
Let us to our purpose bide,
We'll have our own again!
Let the game be fairly tried,
We'll have our own again!


II.

Send the cry throughout the land,
"Who's for our own again?"
Summon all men to our band,--
Why not our own again?
Rich and poor, and old and young,
Sharp sword, and fiery tongue,
Soul and sinew firmly strung--
All to get our own aga...

    I just think that dreams are best,
    Just to sit and fancy things;
    Give your gold no acid test,
    Try not how your silver rings;
    Fancy women pure and good,
    Fancy men upright and true:
    Fortressed in your solitude,
    Let Life be a dream to you.

    For I think that Thought is all;
    Truth's a minion of the mind;
    Love's ideal comes at call;
    As ye seek so shall ye find.
    But ye must not seek too far;
    Things are never what they seem:
    Let a star be just a star,
    And a woman - just a dream.

    O you Dreamers, proud and pure,
    You have gleaned the sweet of life!
    Golden truths that shall endure
    Over pain and doubt and strife.
    I would rather be a fool
    Living in my ...

Dear Anna,—Between friend and friend
Prose answers every common end;
Serves, in a plain and homely way,
To express the occurrence of the day;
Our health, the weather, and the news;
What walks we take, what books we choose;
And all the floating thoughts we find
Upon the surface of the mind.
But when a poet takes the pen,
Far more alive than other men,
He feels a gentle tingling come
Down to his finger and his thumb,
Derived from nature’s noblest part,
The centre of a glowing heart:
And this is what the world, who knows
No flights above the pitch of prose,
His more sublime vagaries slighting,
Denominates an itch for writing.
No wonder I, who scribble rhyme
To catch the triflers of the time,
And tell them truths divine and clear,
Which, c...

I.
The stainless soul that smiled through glorious eyes;
The bright grave brow whereon dark fortune’s blast
Might blow, but might not bend it, nor o’ercast,
Save for one fierce fleet hour of shame, the skies
Thrilled with warm dreams of worthier days to rise
And end the whole world’s winter; here at last,
If death be death, have passed into the past;
If death be life, live, though their semblance dies.
Hope and high faith inviolate of distrust
Shone strong as life inviolate of the grave
Through each bright word and lineament serene.
Most loving righteousness and love most just
Crowned, as day crowns the dawn-enkindled wave,
With visible aureole thine unfaltering mien.

II.
Strong time and fire-swift change, with lightnings clad
And shod with thunders...

You say, "Where goest thou?" I cannot tell,
And still go on. If but the way be straight,
It cannot go amiss! before me lies
Dawn and the Day; the Night behind me; that
Suffices me; I break the bounds; I see,
And nothing more; believe, and nothing less.
My future is not one of my concerns.

PROF. E. DOWDEN.

We count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet wailing singers slumber,
But o'er their silent sister's breast
The wild-flowers who will stoop to number?
A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them: -
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!

Nay, grieve not for the dead alone
Whose song has told their hearts' sad story, -
Weep for the voiceless, who have known
The cross without the crown of glory
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep
O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow,
But where the glistening night-dews weep
On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow.

O hearts that break and give no sign
Save whitening lip and fading tresses,
Till Death pours out his longed-for wine
Slow-dropped fr...

A human skull in a church-yard lay;
For the church was a wreck, and the tombstones old
On the graves of their dead were rotting away
To the like of their long-watched mould.

And an heremite toad in this desolate seat
Had made him an hermitage long agone,
Where the ivy frail with its delicate feet
Could creep o'er his cell of bone.

And the ground was dark, and the springing dawn,
When it struck from the tottering stones of each grave
A glimmering silver, the dawn drops wan
This skull and its ivy would lave.

*    *    *    *    *    *    *

The night her crescent had thinly hung
From a single star o'er the shattered wall,
And its feeble light on the stone was flung
Where I sat to hear him call.

And I heard this heremite toad as ...

    O youth, beside thy silver-springing fountain,
    In sight and hearing of thy father's cot,
    These and the morning woods, the lonely mountain,
    These are thy peace, although thou know'st it not.
    Wander not yet where noon's unpitying glare
    Beats down the toilers in the city bare;
    Forsake not yet, not yet, the homely plot,
    O Youth, beside thy silver-springing fountain.

Rahere, King Henry’s jester, feared by all the Norman Lords
For his eye that pierced their bosoms, for his tongue that shamed their swords;
Feed and flattered by the Churchmen, well they knew how deep he stood
In dark Henry’s crooked counsels, fell upon an evil mood.

Suddenly, his days before him and behind him seemed to stand
Stripped and barren, fixed and fruitless, as those leagues of naked sand
When St. Michael’s ebb slinks outward to the bleak horizon-bound,
And the trampling wide-mouthed waters are withdrawn from sight and sound.

Then a Horror of Great Darkness sunk his spirit and, anon,
(Who had seen him wince and whiten as he turned to walk alone)
Followed Gilbert the Physician, and muttered in his ear,
‘Thou hast it, O my brother?’ ‘Yea, I have it,’ said Rahere.

There are moments when, as missions,
God reveals to us strange visions;
When, within their separate stations,
We may see the Centuries,
Like revolving constellations
Shaping out Earth's destinies.

I have gazed in Time's abysses,
Where no smallest thing Earth misses
That was hers once. 'Mid her chattels,
There the Past's gigantic ghost
Sits and dreams of thrones and battles
In the night of ages lost.

Far before her eyes, unholy
Mist was spread; that darkly, slowly
Rolled aside, like some huge curtain
Hung above the land and sea;
And beneath it, wild, uncertain,
Rose the wraiths of memory.

First I saw colossal spectres
Of dead cities: Troy once Hector's
Pride; then Babylon and Tyre;
Karnac, Carthage, and the gray
W...

I saw a silver swan swim down the Lea,
Singing a sad farewell unto the vale,
While fishes leapt to hear her melody,
And on each thorn a gentle nightingale
And many other birds forbore their notes,
Leaping from tree to tree, as she along
The panting bosom of the current floats,
Rapt with the music of her dying song:
When from a thick and all-entangled spring
A neatherd rude came with no small ado,
Dreading an ill presage to hear her sing,
And quickly struck her tender neck in two;
Whereat the birds, methought, flew thence with speed,
And inly griev'd for such a cruel deed.