Courage

The evening came; the golden vane
A moment in the sunset glanced,
Then darkened, and then gleamed again,
As from the east the moon advanced
And touched it with a softer light;
While underneath, with flowing mane,
Upon the sign the Red Horse pranced,
And galloped forth into the night.

But brighter than the afternoon
That followed the dark day of rain,
And brighter than the golden vane
That glistened in the rising moon,
Within the ruddy fire-light gleamed;
And every separate window-pane,
Backed by the outer darkness, showed
A mirror, where the flamelets gleamed
And flickered to and fro, and seemed
A bonfire lighted in the road.

Amid the hospitable glow,
Like an old actor on the stage,
With the uncertain voice of age,
The sing...

Sing me a hero! Quench my thirst
Of soul, ye bards!
Quoth Bard the first:
"Sir Olaf, the good knight, did don
His helm, and eke his habergeon ..."
Sir Olaf and his bard--!

"That sin-scathed brow" (quoth Bard the second),
"That eye wide ope as tho' Fate beckoned
My hero to some steep, beneath
Which precipice smiled tempting Death ..."
You too without your host have reckoned!

"A beggar-child" (let's hear this third!)
"Sat on a quay's edge: like a bird
Sang to herself at careless play,
And fell into the stream. 'Dismay!
Help, you the standers-by!' None stirred.

"Bystanders reason, think of wives
And children ere they risk their lives.
Over the balustrade has bounced
A mere instinctive dog, and pounced
Plumb on the prize. 'How...

As yet a stranger to the gentle fires
That Amathusia's smiling Queen[2] inspires,
Not seldom I derided Cupid's darts,
And scorn'd his claim to rule all human hearts.
Go, child, I said, transfix the tim'rous dove,
An easy conquest suits an infant Love;
Enslave the sparrow, for such prize shall be
Sufficient triumph to a Chief like thee;
Why aim thy idle arms at human kind?
Thy shafts prevail not 'gainst the noble mind.        
    The Cyprian[3] heard, and, kindling into ire,
(None kindles sooner) burn'd with double fire.
    It was the Spring, and newly risen day
Peep'd o'er the hamlets on the First of May;
My eyes too tender for the blaze of light,
Still sought the shelter of retiring night,
When Love approach'd, in painted plumes arraye...

"Lie there," I said, "my Sorrow! lie thou there!
And I will drink the lissome air,
And see if yet the heavens have gained their blue."
Then rose my Sorrow as an aged man,
And stared, as such a one will stare,
A querulous doubt through tears that freshly ran;
Wherefore I said: "Content! thou shalt go too."

So went we throughthe sunlit crocus-glade,
I and my Sorrow, casting shade
On all the innocent things that upward pree,
And coax for smiles: but, as I went, I bowed,
And whispered    "Be no whit afraid!
He will pass sad and gentle as a cloud,
It is my Sorrow leave him unto me’

And every floweret in that happy place
Yearned up into the weary face
With pitying love, and held its golden breath,
Regardless seeming he, as though within
Was not...

        Lives there a bard for genius famed
        Whom Envy's tongue hath not declaimed?
        Her hissing snakes proclaim her spite;
        She summons up the fiends of night;
        Hatred and malice by her stand,
        And prompt to do what she command.

        As prostrate to the orb of day
        A Persian, invocating, lay:

        "Parent of light, whose rays dispense
        The various gifts of Providence,
        Accept our praise, accept our prayer,
        Smile on our fields, and bless our year."

        A cloud passed by - a voice aloud,
        Like Envy's, issued from that cloud:

        "I can eclipse your gaudy orb,
        And every ray you ask absorb.
        Pray, then, to me - where praise is due -
   ...

He
Fill your bowl with roses: the bowl, too, have of crystal.
Sit at the western window. Take the sun
Between your hands like a ball of flaming crystal,
Poise it to let it fall, but hold it still,
And meditate on the beauty of your existence;
The beauty of this, that you exist at all.

She
The sun goes down, but without lamentation.
I close my eyes, and the stream of my sensation
In this, at least, grows clear to me:
Beauty is a word that has no meaning.
Beauty is naught to me.

He
The last blurred raindrops fall from the half-clear sky,
Eddying lightly, rose-tinged, in the windless wake of the sun.
The swallow ascending against cold waves of cloud
Seems winging upward over huge bleak stairs of stone.
The raindrop finds...

Inner not outer, without gnash of teeth
Or weeping, save quiet sobs of some who pray
And feel the Everlasting Arms beneath, -
Blackness of darkness this, but not for aye;
Darkness that even in gathering fleeteth fast,
Blackness of blackest darkness close to day.
Lord Jesus, through Thy darkened pillar cast,
Thy gracious eyes all-seeing cast on me
Until this tyranny be overpast.
Me, Lord, remember who remember Thee,
And cleave to Thee, and see Thee without sight,
And choose Thee still in dire extremity,
And in this darkness worship Thee my Light,
And Thee my Life adore in shadow of death,
Thee loved by day, and still beloved by night.
It is the Voice of my Beloved that saith:
"I am the Way, the Truth, the Life, I go
Whither that soul knows well that follow...

I

Ah, who shall sound the hero's funeral march?
And what shall be the music of his dirge?
No single voice may chant the Nation's grief,
No formal strain can give its woe relief.
The pent-up anguish of the loyal wife,
The sobs of those who, nearest in this life,
Still hold him closely in the life beyond; -
These first, with threnody of memories fond.
But look! Forth press a myriad mourners thronging,
With hearts that throb in sorrow's exaltation,
Moved by a strange, impassioned, hopeless longing
To serve him with their love's last ministration.
Make way! Make way, from wave-bound verge to verge
Of all our land, that this great multitude
With lamentation proud albeit subdued,
Deep murmuring like the ocean's mighty surge,
May pass beneath the heavens' ...

I.

Oh, what a dawn of day!
How the March sun feels like May!
All is blue again
After last night’s rain,
And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.
Only, my Love’s away!
I’d as lief that the blue were grey,

II.

Runnels, which rillets swell,
Must be dancing down the dell,
With a foaming head
On the beryl bed
Paven smooth as a hermit’s cell;
Each with a tale to tell,
Could my Love but attend as well.

III.

Dearest, three months ago!
When we lived blocked-up with snow,
When the wind would edge
In and in his wedge,
In, as far as the point could go,
Not to our ingle, though,
Where we loved each the other so!

IV.

Laughs with so little cause!
We devised games out of straws.
We...

    You will be what you will to be;
Let failure find its false content
In that poor word "environment,"
    But spirit scorns it, and is free,

    It masters time, it conquers space,
It cows that boastful trickster Chance,
And bids the tyrant Circumstance
    Uncrown and fill a servant's place.

    The human Will, that force unseen,
The offspring of a deathless Soul,
Can hew the way to any goal,
    Though walls of granite intervene.

    Be not impatient in delay,
But wait as one who understands;
When spirit rises and commands,
    The gods are ready to obey.

    The river seeking for the sea
Confronts the dam and precipice,
Yet knows it cannot fail or miss;
    You will be what you will to be!

All your wonderful inventions,
    All your houses vast and tall,
All your great gun-fronted vessels,
    Every fort and every wall,
With the passing of the ages,
    They shall pass and they shall fall.

As you sit among the idols
    That your avarice gave birth,
As you count the hoarded treasures
    That you think of priceless worth,
Time is digging tombs to hide them
    In the bosom of the earth.

There shall come a great convulsion
    Or a rushing tidal wave,
Or a sound of mighty thunders
    From a subterranean cave,
And a boasting world's possessions
    Shall be buried in one grave.

From the Centuries of Silence
    We are bringing back again
Buried vase and bust and column
    And the gods they worshipped th...

For Anne.

All the loud winds were in the garden wood,
All shadows joyfuller than lissom hounds
Doubled in chasing, all exultant clouds
That ever flung fierce mist and eddying fire
Across heavens deeper than blue polar seas
Fled over the sceptre-spikes of the chestnuts,
Over the speckle of the wych-elms' green.
She shouted; then stood still, hushed and abashed
To hear her voice so shrill in that gay roar,
And suddenly her eyelashes were dimmed,
Caught in tense tears of spiritual joy;
For there were daffodils which sprightly shook
Ten thousand ruffling heads throughout the wood,
And every flower of those delighting flowers
Laughed, nodding to her, till she clapped her hands
Crying 'O daffies, could you only speak!'

But there was more. A jay with...

1.

The Land stood still to listen all that day,
And 'mid the hush of many a wrangling tongue,
Forth from the cannon's mouth the signal rung,
That from the earth a man had pass'd away--
A mighty Man, that over many a field
Roll'd back the tide of Battle on the foe,--
Thus far, no further, shall thy billows go.
Who Freedom's falchion did right nobly wield,
Like potter's vessel smiting Tyrants down,
And from Earth's strongest snatching Victory's crown;
Upon the anvil of each Battle-plain,
Still beating swords to ploughshares. All is past,--
The glory, and the labour, and the pain--
The Conqueror is conquer'd here at last.


2.

Yet other men have wrought, and fought, and won,
Cutting with crimson sword Fame's Gordian knot,
And, dyin...

All grim and soiled and brown with tan,
I saw a Strong One, in his wrath,
Smiting the godless shrines of man
Along his path.
The Church, beneath her trembling dome,
Essayed in vain her ghostly charm:
Wealth shook within his gilded home
With strange alarm.
Fraud from his secret chambers fled
Before the sunlight bursting in:
Sloth drew her pillow o'er her head
To drown the din.
"Spare," Art implored, "yon holy pile;
That grand, old, time-worn turret spare;"
Meek Reverence, kneeling in the aisle,
Cried out, "Forbear!"
Gray-bearded Use, who, deaf and blind,
Groped for his old accustomed stone,
Leaned on his staff, and wept to find
His seat o'erthrown.
Young Romance raised his dreamy eyes,
O'erhung with paly locks of gold,
"Why smite,"...

Glowing with love, on fire for fame
A Troubadour that hated sorrow
Beneath his lady's window came,
And thus he sung his last good-morrow:
"My arm it is my country's right,
My heart is in my true-love's bower;
Gaily for love and fame to fight
Befits the gallant Troubadour."

And while he marched with helm on head
And harp in hand, the descant rung,
As faithful to his favourite maid,
The minstrel-burden still he sung:
"My arm it is my country's right,
My heart is in my lady's bower;
Resolved for love and fame to fight
I come, a gallant Troubadour."

Even when the battle-roar was deep,
With dauntless heart he hewed his way,
'Mid splintering lance and falchion-sweep,
And still was heard his warrior-lay:
"My life it is my country's rig...

Give me that man that dares bestride
The active sea-horse, and with pride
Through that huge field of waters ride.

Who with his looks, too, can appease
The ruffling winds and raging seas,
In midst of all their outrages.

This, this a virtuous man can do,
Sail against rocks, and split them too;
Ay, and a world of pikes pass through.

"The night wind is moaning with mournful sigh,
"There gleameth no moon in the misty sky
    "No star over Helle's sea;
"Yet, yet, there is shining one holy light,
"One love-kindled star thro' the deep of night,
    "To lead me, sweet Hero, to thee!"

Thus saying, he plunged in the foamy stream,
Still fixing his gaze on that distant beam
    No eye but a lover's could see;
And still, as the surge swept over his head,
"To night," he said tenderly, "living or dead,
    "Sweet Hero, I'll rest with thee!"

But fiercer around him, the wild waves speed;
Oh, Love! in that hour of thy votary's need,
    Where, where could thy Spirit be?
He struggles--he sinks--while the hurricane's breath
Bears rudely away his last farewell in death--
    "Sweet Hero, I ...

    When gods and men I saw in Cupid's chain
Promiscuous led, a long uncounted train,
By sad example taught, I learn'd at last
Wisdom's best rule--to profit from the past
Some solace in the numbers too I found,
Of those that mourn'd, like me, the common wound
That Phoebus felt, a mortal beauty's slave,
That urged Leander through the wintry wave;
That jealous Juno with Eliza shared,
Whose more than pious hands the flame prepared;
That mix'd her ashes with her murder'd spouse.
A dire completion of her nuptial vows.
(For not the Trojan's love, as poets sing,
In her wan bosom fix'd the secret string.)
And why should I of common ills complain,
Shot by a random shaft, a thoughtless swain?
Unarm'd and unprepared to meet the foe,
My naked bosom seem'd to court th...