Courage

In all faith, we did our part:
generated punctually, prepared adequately,
ejected promptly,
and swam in the approved manner
in the appropriate direction;
did all instinctive things well,
even eagerly
an exemplary start.

But then the barrier: unexpectedness
unexpectedly.
(They did not tell us this).
To go back impossible, unnatural:
so round; many times;
we tired ourselves.
Where were the promised homes,
embedded in the soft wall?
Or the anticipated achievement
so momentous, fulfilling?

So we died:
what else was there to do?
But in all faith, we did our part!

(For the Rev. John J. Burke, C. S. P.)



There was a murkier tinge in London's air
As if the honest fog blushed black for shame.
Fools sang of sin, for other fools' acclaim,
And Milton's wreath was tossed to Baudelaire.
The flowers of evil blossomed everywhere,
But in their midst a radiant lily came
Candescent, pure, a cup of living flame,
Bloomed for a day, and left the earth more fair.

And was it Charles, thy "fair and fatal King",
Who bade thee welcome to the lovely land?
Or did Lord David cease to harp and sing
To take in his thine emulative hand?
Or did Our Lady's smile shine forth, to bring
Her lyric Knight within her choir to stand?

    Gently the petals fall as the tree gently sways
    That has known many springs and many petals fall
    Year after year to strew the green deserted ways
    And the statue and the pond and the low, broken wall.

    Faded is the memory of old things done,
    Peace floats on the ruins of ancient festival;
    They lie and forget in the warmth of the sun,
    And a sky silver-blue arches over all.

    O softly, O tenderly, the heart now stirs
    With desires faint and formless; and, seeking not, I find
    Quiet thoughts that flash like azure kingfishers
    Across the luminous, tranquil mirror of the mind.

He lived beyond men, and so stood
Admitted to the brotherhood
Of beauty: dreams, with which he trod
Companioned like some sylvan god.
And oft men wondered, when his thought
Made all their knowledge seem as naught,
If he, like Uther's mystic son,
Had not been born for Avalon.
When wandering mid the whispering trees,
His soul communed with every breeze;
Heard voices calling from the glades,
Bloom-words of the Leimoniäds;
Or Dryads of the ash and oak,
Who syllabled his name and spoke
With him of presences and powers
That glimpsed in sunbeams, gloomed in showers.
By every violet-hallowed brook,
Where every bramble-matted nook
Rippled and laughed with water sounds,
He walked like one on sainted grounds,
Fearing intrusion on the spell
That k...

    Climbing the heights of Berkeley
    Nightly I watch the West.
    There lies new San Francisco,
    Sea-maid in purple dressed,
    Wearing a dancer's girdle
    All to inflame desire:
    Scorning her days of sackcloth,
    Scorning her cleansing fire.

    See, like a burning city
    Sets now the red sun's dome.
    See, mystic firebrands sparkle
    There on each store and home.
    See how the golden gateway
    Burns with the day to be -
    Torch-bearing fiends of portent
    Loom o'er the earth and sea.

    Not by the earthquake daunted
    Nor by new fears made tame,
    Painting her face and laughing
    Plays she a new-found game.
    Here on her half-cool cinders
    'Frisco abides in mirth,
    Plannin...

I have come with my verses - I think I may claim
It is not the first time I have tried on the same.
They were puckered in rhyme, they were wrinkled in wit;
But your hearts were so large that they made them a fit.

I have come - not to tease you with more of my rhyme,
But to feel as I did in the blessed old time;
I want to hear him with the Brobdingnag laugh -
We count him at least as three men and a half.

I have come to meet judges so wise and so grand
That I shake in my shoes while they're shaking my hand;
And the prince among merchants who put back the crown
When they tried to enthrone him the King of the Town.

I have come to see George - Yes, I think there are four,
If they all were like these I could wish there were more.
I have come to see one whom...

Thou who hast follow'd far with eyes of love
The shy and virgin sights of Spring to-day,
Sad soul, what dost thou in this happy grove?
Hast thou no pipe to touch, no strain to play,
Where Nature smiles so fair and seems to ask a lay?

Ah! she needs none! she is too beautiful.
How should I sing her? for my heart would tire,
Seeking a lovelier verse each time to cull,
In striving still to pitch my music higher:
Lovelier than any muse is she who gives the fire!

No impulse I beseech; my strains are vile:
To escape thee, Nature, restless here I rove.
Look not so sweet on me, avert thy smile!
O cease at length this fever'd breast to move!
I have loved thee in vain; I cannot speak my love.

Here sense with apathy seems gently wed:
The gloom is starr'd...

The town, the churchyard, and the setting sun,
The clouds, the trees, the rounded hills all seem,
Though beautiful, cold, strange, as in a dream
I dreamed long ago, now new begun.
The short-liv'd, paly summer is but won
From winter's ague for one hour's gleam;
Through sapphire warm their stars do never beam:
All is cold Beauty; pain is never done.
For who has mind to relish, Minos-wise,
The real of Beauty, free from that dead hue
Sickly imagination and sick pride
Cast wan upon it? Burns! with honour due
I oft have honour'd thee. Great shadow, hide
Thy face; I sin against thy native skies.

    I would enshrine in silvern song
    The charm that bore our souls along,
        As in the sun-flushed days of summer
    We felt the pulsings of nature's throng;

    When flecks of foam of flying spray
    Smote white the red sun's torrid ray,
        Or wimpling fogs toyed with the mountain,
    Aërial spirits of dew at play;

    When hovering stars, poised in the blue,
    Came down and ever closer drew;
        Or, in the autumn air astringent,
    Glimmered the pearls of the moonlit dew.


    We talked of bird and flower and tree,
    Of God and man and destiny.
        The years are wise though days be foolish,
    We said, as swung to its goal the sea.

    Our spirits knew keen fellowship
    Of light and shadow, h...

To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life
Among strangèrs. Father and mother dear,
Brothers and sisters are in Christ not near
And he my peace my parting, sword and strife.
England, whose honour O all my heart woos, wife
To my creating thought, would neither hear
Me, were I pleading, plead nor do I: I wear-
y of idle a being but by where wars are rife.

I am in Ireland now; now I am at a thírd
Remove. Not but in all removes I can
Kind love both give and get. Only what word
Wisest my heart breeds dark heaven's baffling ban
Bars or hell's spell thwarts. This to hoard unheard,
Heard unheeded, leaves me a lonely began.

As the funeral train with its honoured dead
    On its mournful way went sweeping,
While a sorrowful nation bowed its head
    And the whole world joined in weeping,
I thought, as I looked on the solemn sight,
    Of the one fond heart despairing,
And I said to myself, as in truth I might,
    "How sad must be this SHARING."

To share the living with even Fame,
    For a heart that is only human,
Is hard, when Glory asserts her claim
    Like a bold, insistent woman;
Yet a great, grand passion can put aside
    Or stay each selfish emotion,
And watch, with a pleasure that springs from pride,
    Its rival - the world's devotion.

But Death should render to love its own,
    And my heart bowed down and sorrowed
For the stricken woman who wep...

O, tomb of the past
Where buried hopes lie,
In my visions I see
Thy phantoms pass by!
A form, long departed,
    Before me appears;
A sweet voice, long silent,
    Again greets my ears.

Fond memory dwells
    On the things that have been;
And my eyes calmly gaze
    On a long vanished scene;
A scene such as memory
    Stores deep in the breast,
Which only appears
    In a season of rest.

Once more we wander,
    Her fair hand in mine;
Once more her promise,
    "I'll ever be thine";
Once more the parting,
    The shroud, and the pall,
The sods' hollow thump
    As they coffinward fall.

The reverie ends--
    All the fancies have flown;
And my sad, lonely heart,
    Now seems doubly alone;...

THE quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping,
Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame;
Above them, exultant, the pee-wits are sweeping:
They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screamings proclaim.

Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie
Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten down to the quick.
Are they asleep? - Are they alive? - Now see, when I
Move my arms the hill bursts and heaves under their spurting kick.

The common flaunts bravely; but below, from the rushes
Crowds of glittering king-cups surge to challenge the blossoming bushes;
There the lazy streamlet pushes
Its curious course mildly; here it wakes again, leaps, laughs, and gushes.

Into a deep pond, an old sheep-dip,
Dark, overgrown with willows, cool, with the...

I am worn out with dreams;
A weather-worn, marble triton
Among the streams;
And all day long I look
Upon this lady’s beauty
As though I had found in book
A pictured beauty,
Pleased to have filled the eyes
Or the discerning ears,
Delighted to be but wise,
For men improve with the years;
And yet and yet
Is this my dream, or the truth?
O would that we had met
When I had my burning youth;
But I grow old among dreams,
A weather-worn, marble triton
Among the streams.

AN ANECDOTE OF HELICON.

Once the nine all weeping came
To the god of song
"Oh, papa!" they there exclaim
"Hear our tale of wrong!

"Young ink-lickers swarm about
Our dear Helicon;
There they fight, manoeuvre, shout,
Even to thy throne.

"On their steeds they galop hard
To the spring to drink,
Each one calls himself a bard
Minstrels only think!

"There they how the thing to name!
Would our persons treat
This, without a blush of shame,
We can ne'er repeat;

"One, in front of all, then cries,
'I the army lead!'
Both his fists he wildly plies,
Like a bear indeed!

"Others wakes he in a trice
With his whistlings rude;
But none follow, though he twice
Has those sounds renewed.

"He'll r...

Get you away! Is not the rose at flow'r?
    And list that song! The bird is in the sky!
Ah, foolish one, I know your final hour,
    I know the very place where you shall lie.

Silence! The music, and the bridal-train!
    Do you not see the maidens in their white?
Along that whiteness, lo, I am the stain,
    And darken where the Lord of all shall smite!

Yet leave me, Shadow, leave the day dear-bought
    When the swift runner reaches to the goal!
That day is mine, and at the end, unsought,
    I ask the runner's body from his soul.

Then hast thou all! The beautiful, the brave!
    Nothing untouched, dark Visitant, of thee!
Oh blinded Reason! Sweeter for the grave.
    And fair a thousand-fold because of me!

"We had a dream which was not all a dream." - Byron.


        I laid me down one day in June,
        It was late long afternoon,
        A very sultry summer's eve,
        Such times the senses oft deceive,
        The place was 'neath a maple tree,
        Soon from all cares and troubles free,
        By a gentle, kindly slumber,
        No more our sorrows we could number,
        But we heard a plaintive wail
        Such as we find in fairy tale,
        It was the genius of the tree
        Who in sad guise appeared to me,
        And then she sadly did give vent
        Unto this awful grave lament:
        Though I am gay in month of June,
        All decked in green, yet very soon,
        Alas my beauty will be faded
        An...

Over the hills, as the pewee flies,
Under the blue of the Southern skies;
Over the hills, where the red-bird wings
Like a scarlet blossom, or sits and sings:

Under the shadow of rock and tree,
Where the warm wind drones with the honey-bee;
And the tall wild-carrots around you sway
Their lace-like flowers of cloudy gray:

By the black-cohosh with its pearly plume
A-nod in the woodland's odorous gloom;
By the old rail-fence, in the elder's shade,
That the myriad hosts of the weeds invade:

Where the butterfly-weed, like a coal of fire,
Blurs orange-red through bush and brier;
Where the pennyroyal and mint smell sweet,
And blackberries tangle the summer heat,

The old road leads; then crosses the creek,
Where the minnow dartles, a silver...