Inspirational

Se l' onorata fronde, che prescrive.

TO STRAMAZZO OF PERUGIA, WHO INVITED HIM TO WRITE POETRY.


    If the world-honour'd leaf, whose green defies
The wrath of Heaven when thunders mighty Jove,
Had not to me prohibited the crown
Which wreathes of wont the gifted poet's brow,
I were a friend of these your idols too,
Whom our vile age so shamelessly ignores:
But that sore insult keeps me now aloof
From the first patron of the olive bough:
For Ethiop earth beneath its tropic sun
Ne'er burn'd with such fierce heat, as I with rage
At losing thing so comely and beloved.
Resort then to some calmer fuller fount,
For of all moisture mine is drain'd and dry,
Save that which falleth from mine eyes in tears.

MACGREGOR.

    With leaves twitching
    the autumn air
    and the burnt almond
    breath of landscape
    heaving relief,
    the afternoon heavy-footedly
    walks across
    evening's threshold.

    II
    A garment is held high
    as adrenalin in the marble
    glow of wintery air.
    Mud puddles reflect the faery shrimp
    of clouds while cone-shaped
    coniferous trees perch on lawns like
    starlings.

    III
    High above to skating and
    sugar-icing rinks in misty hues,
    a ginger-bread man
    manoeuvres past the ghost tails of a dead
    luna moth.

Out of the delicate dream of the distance an emerald emerges
Veiled in the violet folds of the air of the sea;
Softly the dream grows awakening, shimmering white of a city,
Splashes of crimson, the gay bougainvillea, the palms.
High in the infinite blue of its heaven a quiet cloud lingers,
Lost and forgotten of winds that have fallen asleep,
Fallen asleep to the tune of a Portuguese song in a garden.

The woman-hearted Confessor prepares
The evanescence of the Saxon line.
Hark! 'tis the tolling Curfew! the stars shine;
But of the lights that cherish household cares
And festive gladness, burns not one that dares
To twinkle after that dull stroke of thine,
Emblem and instrument, from Thames to Tyne,
Of force that daunts, and cunning that ensnares!
Yet as the terrors of the lordly bell,
That quench, from hut to palace, lamps and fires,
Touch not the tapers of the sacred quires;
Even so a thraldom, studious to expel
Old laws, and ancient customs to derange,
To Creed or Ritual brings no fatal change.

Oh! had'st thou, Jove! with adamantine locks
Fix'd fast the springs of poor Pandora's box,
Then had she, bright enchantment! bloom'd for ever
In all the charms consenting Gods could give her--
Wit, Wisdom, Beauty, she had every grace
Which makes man play the madman for a face!
But chief, bless'd gift! for him ordain'd to ask it,
The gem of gems, th' incomparable casket;
And, lo! with trembling hands and ardent eyes
The bridegroom claims it--and--behold the prize!
First, like a vapour o'er the heavens obscured,
From that dark confine, rose the fiends immured,
Then groan'd the earth, in fury swell'd the floods,
Blasts smote the harvests, lightning fired the woods;
Blue spotted Plague rode gibbering on the blast,
And nations shriek'd, and perish'd, as he pass'd.
...

We climbed to the top of Goat Point hill,
    Sweet Kitty, my sweetheart, and I;
And watched the moon make stars on the waves,
    And the dim white ships go by,
While a throne we made on a rough stone wall,
    And the king and the queen were we;
And I sat with my arm about Kitty,
    And she with her arm about me.

The water was mad in the moonlight,
    And the sand like gold where it shone,
And our hearts kept time to its music,
    As we sat in the splendour alone.
And Kitty's dear eyes twinkled brightly,
    And Kitty's brown hair blew so free,
While I sat with my arm about Kitty,
    And she with her arm about me.

Last night we drove in our carriage,
    To the wall at the top of the hill;
And though we're forty years older,
  ...

We flash across the level.
We thunder thro' the bridges.
We bicker down the cuttings.
We sway along the ridges.

A rush of streaming hedges,
Of jostling lights and shadows,
Of hurtling, hurrying stations,
Of racing woods and meadows.

We charge the tunnels headlong -
The blackness roars and shatters.
We crash between embankments -
The open spins and scatters.

We shake off the miles like water,
We might carry a royal ransom;
And I think of her waiting, waiting,
And long for a common hansom.

1876

(On hearing she was leaving the moving-pictures for the stage.)



    Mary Pickford, doll divine,
    Year by year, and every day
    At the moving-picture play,
    You have been my valentine.

    Once a free-limbed page in hose,
    Baby-Rosalind in flower,
    Cloakless, shrinking, in that hour
    How our reverent passion rose,
    How our fine desire you won.
    Kitchen-wench another day,
    Shapeless, wooden every way.
    Next, a fairy from the sun.

    Once you walked a grown-up strand
    Fish-wife siren, full of lure,
    Snaring with devices sure
    Lads who murdered on the sand.
    But on most days just a child
    Dimpled as no grown-folk are,
    Cold of kiss as some north star,
    Violet from ...

Yonder stands the hillside chapel
Mid the evergreens and rocks,
All day long it hears the song
Of the shepherd to his flocks.

Then the chapel bell goes tolling--
Knelling for a soul that's sped;
Silent and sad the shepherd lad
Hears the requiem for the dead.

Shepherd, singers of the valley,
Voiceless now, speed on before;
Soon shall knell that chapel bell
For the songs you'll sing no more.

Versified by Mrs. Clara Doty Bates.


Two-Shoes, Two-Shoes,
Little Goody Two-Shoes!
Do you know about her? Well,
I'm ready now to tell
How the little creature came
By so odd a name.

It was very long ago,
In the days of good Queen Bess,
When upon the cold world's care,
Fatherless and motherless,

There were thrown two helpless ones,
Destitute as they could be;
Tom, they called the little boy,
And the girl was Margery.

Many a day they cried for food
When the cup-board shelves were bare;
Many an hour they roamed the streets
Scarcely knowing why or where.

As to kindred, all were dead;
As to shelter, they had none;
As to shoes, Tom had a pair;
Little Margery had but one!

One-Shoe, One-Shoe,

[1]


Cupid once upon a bed
Of roses laid his weary head;
Luckless urchin not to see
Within the leaves a slumbering bee;
The bee awaked--with anger wild
The bee awaked, and stung the child.
Loud and piteous are his cries;
To Venus quick he runs, he flies;
"Oh mother!--I am wounded through--
I die with pain--in sooth I do!
Stung by some little angry thing,
Some serpent on a tiny wing--
A bee it was--for once, I know,
I heard a rustic call it so."
Thus he spoke, and she the while,
Heard him with a soothing smile;
Then said, "My infant, if so much
Thou feel the little wild-bee's touch,
How must the heart, ah, Cupid be,
The hapless heart that's stung by thee!"

Of creatures that to man attend,
    His pastime, or his wealth;
The Horse we cherish as a friend,
    To sickness and to health.

Bless them, who shield a steed from woe.
    By age from toil releas'd!
And hated be the proud, who shew
    No mercy to their beast!

A wretch once doom'd, tho' rich and strong,
    His faithful horse to bleed,
But tell his fate, my moral song,
    For that atrocious deed!

An antient knight, of Kentish race;
    Of his athletic frame
Prone to indulge the passions base,
    Sir Geoffrin his name,

Against a priest indulg'd his rage,
    Who charitably good,
To shield a widow's helpless age,
    His avarice withstood.

With abject choler fierce and hot,
    The knight perforce would...

No ship of all that under sail or steam
Have gathered people to us more and more
But Pilgrim-manned the Mayflower in a dream
Has been her anxious convoy in to shore.

Yes, thou art gone ! and never more
Thy sunny smile shall gladden me ;
But I may pass the old church door,
And pace the floor that covers thee.

May stand upon the cold, damp stone,
And think that, frozen, lies below
The lightest heart that I have known,
The kindest I shall ever know.

Yet, though I cannot see thee more,
'Tis still a comfort to have seen ;
And though thy transient life is o'er,
'Tis sweet to think that thou hast been ;

To think a soul so near divine,
Within a form so angel fair,
United to a heart like thine,
Has gladdened once our humble sphere.

Jim Duff was a ‘native,’as wild as could be;
A stealer and duffer of cattle was he,
But back in his youth he had stolen a pearl
Or a diamond rather the heart of a girl;
She served with a squatter who lived on the plain,
And the name of the girl it was Mary Lemaine.

’Twas a drear, rainy day and the twilight was done,
When four mounted troopers rode up to the run.
They spoke to the squatter he asked them all in.
The homestead was small and the walls they were thin;
And in the next room, with a cold in her head,
Our Mary was sewing on buttons in bed.

She heard a few words, but those words were enough
The troopers were all on the track of Jim Duff.
The super, his rival, was planning a trap
To capture the scamp in Maginnis’s Gap.
‘I’ve warned him before...

    Oh, let me plead with thee to have a nook,
    A garden nook, not far from thy domain,
    That there, with harp, and voice, and poet-book,
    I may be true to thee, and, passion-fain,
    Rehearse the songs of nature once again: -
    The songs of Cynthia wandering by the brook
    To soothe the raptures of a lover's pain,
    And those of Phyllis with her shepherd's crook!
    I die to serve thee, and for this alone, -
    To be thy bard-elect, from day to day, -
    I would forego the right to fill a throne.
    I would consent to be the famine-prey
    Of some fierce pard, if ere the night were flown
    I could subdue thy spirit to my sway.

I dreamed I stood upon a hill, and, lo!
The godly multitudes walked to and fro
Beneath, in Sabbath garments fitly clad,
With pious mien, appropriately sad,
While all the church bells made a solemn din,
A fire-alarm to those who lived in sin.
Then saw I gazing thoughtfully below,
With tranquil face, upon that holy show
A tall, spare figure in a robe of white,
Whose eyes diffused a melancholy light.
"God keep you, stranger," I exclaimed. "You are
No doubt (your habit shows it) from afar;
And yet I entertain the hope that you,
Like these good people, are a Christian too."
He raised his eyes and with a look so stern
It made me with a thousand blushes burn
Replied his manner with disdain was spiced:
"What! I a Christian? No, indeed! I'm Christ."

Long, too long, O land,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful, you learn'd from joys and prosperity only;
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish--advancing, grappling with direst fate, and recoiling not;
And now to conceive, and show to the world, what your children en-masse really are;
(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)