Inspirational

Sennuccio, i' vo' che sappi in qual maniera.

HE RELATES TO HIS FRIEND SENNUCCIO HIS UNHAPPINESS, AND THE VARIED MOOD OF LAURA.


    To thee, Sennuccio, fain would I declare,
To sadden life, what wrongs, what woes I find:
Still glow my wonted flames; and, though resign'd
To Laura's fickle will, no change I bear.
All humble now, then haughty is my fair;
Now meek, then proud; now pitying, then unkind:
Softness and tenderness now sway her mind;
Then do her looks disdain and anger wear.
Here would she sweetly sing, there sit awhile,
Here bend her step, and there her step retard;
Here her bright eyes my easy heart ensnared;
There would she speak fond words, here lovely smile;
There frown contempt;--such wayward cares I prove
By night, by day; so w...

Beauties, have ye seen this toy,
Called love, a little boy
Almost naked, wanton, blind,
Cruel now, and then as kind?
If he be amongst ye, say!
He is Venus' runaway.

He hath of marks about him plenty;
Ye shall know him among twenty;
All his body is a fire,
And his breath a flame entire,
That, being shot like lightning in,
Wounds the heart, but not the skin.

He doth bear a golden bow,
And a quiver, hanging low,
Full of arrows, that outbrave
Dian's shafts, where, if he have
Any head more sharp than other,
With that first he strikes his mother.

Trust him not: his words, though sweet,
Seldom with his heart do meet;
All his practice is deceit,
Every gift is but a bait;
Not a kiss but poison bears,
And most treason...

("Quand tu chantes.")


When the voice of thy lute at the eve
        Charmeth the ear,
In the hour of enchantment believe
        What I murmur near.
That the tune can the Age of Gold
        With its magic restore.
Play on, play on, my fair one,
        Play on for evermore.

When thy laugh like the song of the dawn
        Riseth so gay
That the shadows of Night are withdrawn
        And melt away,
I remember my years of care
        And misgiving no more.
Laugh on, laugh on, my fair one,
        Laugh on for evermore.

When thy sleep like the moonlight above
        Lulling the sea,
Doth enwind thee in visions of love,
        Perchance, of me!
I can watch so in dream that enthralled me,
        Neve...

On the black road through the wood
    As I rode,
There the Headless Horseman stood;
By the wild pool in the wood,
    As I rode.

From the shadow of an oak,
    As I rode,
Demon steed and rider broke;
By the thunder-shattered oak,
    As I rode.

On the waste road through the plain,
    As I rode,
At my back he whirled like rain;
On the tempest-blackened plain,
    As I rode.

Four fierce hoofs shod red with fire,
    As I rode,
Woke the wild rocks, dark and dire;
Eyes and nostrils streamed with fire,
    As I rode.

On the deep road through the rocks,
    As I rode,
I could reach his horse's locks;
Through the echo-hurling rocks,
    As I rode.

And again I looked behind,
    As I rod...

Mortal my mate, bearing my rock-a-heart
Warm beat with cold beat company, shall I
Earlier or you fail at our force, and lie
The ruins of, rifled, once a world of art?
The telling time our task is; time's some part,
Not all, but we were framed to fail and die -
One spell and well that one. There, ah thereby
Is comfort's carol of all or woe's worst smart.

Field-flown the departed day no morning brings
Saying 'This was yours' with her, but new one, worse.
And then that last and shortest . . .

Or ever a lick of Art was done,
    Or ever a one to care,
I was a Purple Polygon,
    And you were a Sky-Blue Square.

You yearned for me across a void,
    For I lay in a different plane,
I'd set my heart on a Red Rhomboid,
    And your sighing was in vain.

You pined for me as well I knew,
    And you faded day by day,
Until the Square that was heavenly Blue,
    Had paled to an ashen grey.

A myriad years or less or more,
    Have softly fluttered by,
Matters are much as they were before,
    Except 'tis I that sigh.

I yearn for you, but I have no chance,
    You lie in a different plane,
I break my heart for a single glance,
    And I break said heart in vain.

And ever I grow more pale and wan,
  ...

    So prodigal was I of youth,
    Forgetting I was young;
    I worshipped dead men for their strength,
    Forgetting I was strong.

    I cherished old, jejune advice;
    I thought I groped for truth;
    Those dead old languages I learned
    When I was prodigal of youth!

    Then in the sunlight stood a boy,
    Outstretching either hand,
    Palm upwards, cup-like, and between
    The fingers trickled sand.

    "Oh, why so grave" he cried to me,
    "Laugh, stern lips, laugh at last!
    Let wisdom come when wisdom may.
    The sand is running fast."

    I followed him into the sun,
    And laughed as he desired,
    And every day upon the grass
    We play till we are tired.

Shall I a daily beggar be,
For love's sake asking alms of thee?
Still shall I crave, and never get
A hope of my desired bit?
Ah, cruel maids! I'll go my way,
Whereas, perchance, my fortunes may
Find out a threshold or a door
That may far sooner speed the poor:
Where thrice we knock, and none will hear,
Cold comfort still I'm sure lives there.

In my little Green House, quite content am I,
When the hot sun pours down from the sky;
For oh, I love the country the beautiful country.
Who'd live in a London street when there's the country?

I live in a London street, then I long and long
To be the whole day the sweet Flowers among
Instead of tall chimney-pots up in the sky,
The joy of seeing Birds and Dragon Flies go by.

At home I lie in bed, and cannot go to sleep,
For the sound of cart-wheels upon the hard street.
But here my eyes close up to no sound of anything
Except it is to hear the nightingales sing.

And then I see the Chickens and the Geese go walking,
I hear the Pigs and the Ducks all talking.
And the Red and the Spotted Cows they stare at me,
As if they wondered whoever I could be.<...

No church-bell rings them from the Track,
No pulpit lights their blindness,
’Tis hardship, drought and homelessness
That teach those Bushmen kindness:
The mateship born of barren lands,
Of toil and thirst and danger,
The camp-fare for the stranger set,
The first place to the stranger.

They do the best they can to-day,
Take no thought of the morrow;
Their way is not the old-world way,
They live to lend and borrow.
When shearing’s done and cheques gone wrong,
They call it ‘time to slither’,
They saddle up and say ‘So-long!’
And ride, the Lord knows whither.

And though he may be brown or black,
Or wrong man there or right man,
The mate that’s honest to his mates
They call that man a ‘white man’!
They tramp in mateship side by side,...

"If life were caught by a clarionet,
And a wild heart, throbbing in the reed,
Should thrill its joy and trill its fret,
And utter its heart in every deed,

"Then would this breathing clarionet
Type what the poet fain would be;
For none o' the singers ever yet
Has wholly lived his minstrelsy,

"Or clearly sung his true, true thought,
Or utterly bodied forth his life,
Or out of life and song has wrought
The perfect one of man and wife;

"Or lived and sung, that Life and Song
Might each express the other's all,
Careless if life or art were long
Since both were one, to stand or fall:

"So that the wonder struck the crowd,
Who shouted it about the land:
`His song was only living aloud,
His work, a singing with his hand!'"

Realms quake by turns: proud Arbitress of grace,
The Church, by mandate shadowing forth the power
She arrogates o'er heaven's eternal door,
Closes the gates of every sacred place.
Straight from the sun and tainted air's embrace
All sacred things are covered: cheerful morn
Grows sad as night, no seemly garb is worn,
Nor is a face allowed to meet a face
With natural smiles of greeting. Bells are dumb;
Ditches are graves, funereal rites denied;
And in the churchyard he must take his bride
Who dares be wedded! Fancies thickly come
Into the pensive heart ill fortified,
And comfortless despairs the soul benumb.

Written When The News Arrived. To the March in Scipio.


Toll for the brave!
The brave that are no more;
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore!


Eight hundred of the brave,
Whose courage well was tried,
Had made the vessel heel,
And laid her on her side.


A land-breeze shook the shrouds,
And she was overset;
Down went the Royal George,
With all her crew complete.


Toll for the brave!
Brave Kempenfelt is gone;
His last sea-fight is fought;
His work of glory done.


It was not in the battle;
No tempest gave the shock;
She sprang no fatal leak;
She ran upon no rock.


His sword was in its sheath;
His fingers held the pen,
When Kempenfelt went down

The second time I lived on earth
Was several hundred years ago;
And, royal by my second birth,
I know as much as most men know.
I was a king who held the reins
As never modern monarch can;
I was a king, and I had brains,
And, what was more, I was a man!

Called to the throne in stormy times,
When things were at their very worst,
I had to fight, and not with rhymes,
My own self and my kindred first;
And after that my friends and foes,
And great abuses born of greed;
And when I’d fairly conquered those,
I ruled the land a king indeed.

I found a deal of rottenness,
Such as in modern towns we find;
I camped my poor in palaces
And tents upon the plain behind.
I marked the hovels, dens and drums
In that fair city by the sea.
...

(Life of the early settlers.)


        Canada hath wealthy yeomen
        Whose fathers overcome the foemen,
        The enemy they boldly slew
        Was mighty forests they did hew,
        And where they burned heaps of slain
        Their sons now reap the golden grain,
        But in the region of Northwest
        With prairie farms they are blest.
        Though this to them it may seem good
        Yet many blessings come from wood,
        It shelters you from the fierce storm
        And in the winter keeps you warm,
        For one who hath his forest trees
        He builds his house and barn with ease,
        And how quick he gets from thence
        Timber for bridge and for his fence.

ON THE SUPPOSED DEATH OF PARTRIDGE THE ALMANACK MAKER.[1] 1708


Well; 'tis as Bickerstaff has guest,
Though we all took it for a jest:
Partridge is dead; nay more, he dy'd,
Ere he could prove the good 'squire ly'd.
Strange, an astrologer should die
Without one wonder in the sky;
Not one of all his crony stars
To pay their duty at his hearse!
No meteor, no eclipse appear'd!
No comet with a flaming beard!
The sun hath rose and gone to bed,
Just as if Partridge were not dead;
Nor hid himself behind the moon
To make a dreadful night at noon.
He at fit periods walks through Aries,
Howe'er our earthly motion varies;
And twice a-year he'll cut th' Equator,
As if there had been no such matter.
    Some wits have wonder'd what analogy
The...

O, low shone the sun on the fair lake of Toro,
And weak were the whispers that waved the dark wood,
All as a fair maiden, bewilder'd in sorrow,
Sorely sigh'd to the breezes, and wept to the flood.
"O, saints! from the mansions of bliss lowly bending;
Now grant my petition, in anguish ascending,
My Henry restore, or let Eleanor die!"

All distant and faint were the sounds of the battle,
With the breezes they rise, with the breezes they fail,
Till the shout, and the groan, and the conflict's dread rattle,
And the chase's wild clamour, came loading the gale.
Breathless she gazed on the woodlands so dreary;
Slowly approaching a warrior was seen;
Life's ebbing tide mark'd his footsteps so weary,
Cleft was his helmet, and woe was his mien.

"O, save thee, fair ...

This moment yearning and thoughtful, sitting alone,
It seems to me there are other men in other lands, yearning and thoughtful;
It seems to me I can look over and behold them, in Germany, Italy,
France, Spain or far, far away, in China, or in Russia or
India talking other dialects;
And it seems to me if I could know those men, I should become attached to them, as I do to men in my own lands;
O I know we should be brethren and lovers,
I know I should be happy with them.