Inspirational

A straight old fossicker was Lanky Mann,
Who clung to that in spite of friends’ advising:
A grim and grizzled worshipper of ‘pan,’
All other arts and industries despising.

Bare-boned and hard, with thin long hair and beard,
With horny hands that gripped like iron pliers;
A clear, quick eye, a heart that nothing feared,
A soul full simple in its few desires.

No hot, impatient amateur was Jo,
Sweating to turn the slides up every minute,
He knew beforehand how his stuff would go,
Could tell by instinct almost what was in it.

I’ve known him stand for hours, and rock, and rock,
A-swinging now the shovel, now the ladle,
So sphinx-like that at Time he seemed to mock,
Resolved to run creation through his cradle.

No sun-shafts pricked him throug...

All from the light of the sweet moon
Tired men lie now abed;
Actionless, full of visions, soon
Vanishing, soon sped.

The starry night aflock with beams
Of crystal light scarce stirs:
Only its birds - the cocks, the streams,
Call 'neath heaven's wanderers.

All silent; all hearts still;
Love, cunning, fire fallen low:
When faint morn straying on the hill
Sighs, and his soft airs flow.

    A tattered soldier, gone the glow and gloss,
        With wounds half healed, and sorely trembling knee,
    Homeward I come, to claim no victory-cross:
        I only faced the foe, and did not flee.

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"

Then would I bear, and clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
- Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

1866.

[1]


Fill me, boy, as deep a draught,
As e'er was filled, as e'er was quaffed;
But let the water amply flow,
To cool the grape's intemperate glow;[2]
Let not the fiery god be single,
But with the nymphs in union mingle.
For though the bowl's the grave of sadness,
Ne'er let it be the birth of madness.
No, banish from our board tonight
The revelries of rude delight;
To Scythians leave these wild excesses,
Ours be the joy that soothes and blesses!
And while the temperate bowl we wreathe,
In concert let our voices breathe,
Beguiling every hour along
With harmony of soul and song.

[1]

A Wolf, replete
With humanity sweet,
(A trait not much suspected,)
On his cruel deeds,
The fruit of his needs,
Profoundly thus reflected.

'I'm hated,' said he,
'As joint enemy,
By hunters, dogs, and clowns.
They swear I shall die,
And their hue and cry
The very thunder drowns.

'My brethren have fled,
With price on the head,
From England's merry land.
King Edgar came out,
And put them to rout,[2]
With many a deadly band.

'And there's not a squire
But blows up the fire
By hostile proclamation;
Nor a human brat,
Dares cry, but that
Its mother mocks my nation.

'And all for what?
For a sheep with the rot,
Or scabby, mangy ass,
Or some snarling cur,

"Gay go up and gay go down
To ring the Bells of London Town."
When London Town's asleep in bed
You'll hear the Bells ring overhead.
In excelsis gloria!
Ringing for Victoria,
Ringing for their mighty mistress, ten years dead!

The Bells:
Here is more gain than Gloriana guessed,
Then Gloriana guessed or Indies bring,
Then golden Indies bring. A Queen confessed,
A Queen confessed that crowned her people King.
Her people King, and crowned a11 Kings above,
Above a11 Kings have crowned their Queen their love,
Have crowned their love their Queen, their Queen their love!
Denying her, we do ourselves deny,
Disowning her are we ourselves disowned.
Mirror was she of our fidelity,
And handmaid of our destiny enthroned;
The very marrow of Youth's dream,...

Sodden and shivering, in mud and rain,
Half in the light that serves but to reveal
The blackness of an alley and the reel
Homeward of wretchedness in tattered train,
A boy stands crouched; big drops of drizzle drain
Slow from a rag that was a hat: no steel
Is harder than his look, that seems to feel
More than his small life's share of woe and pain.
The pack of papers, huddled by his arm,
Is pulp; and still he hugs the worthless lot....
A door flares open to let out a curse
And drag him in out of the night and storm.
Out of the night, you say? You know not what!
To blacker night, God knows! and hell, or worse!

OD. i. 24.


Unshamed, unchecked, for one so dear
We sorrow. Lead the mournful choir,
Melpomene, to whom thy sire
Gave harp, and song-notes liquid-clear!

Sleeps He the sleep that knows no morn?
Oh Honour, oh twin-born with Right,
Pure Faith, and Truth that loves the light,
When shall again his like be born?

Many a kind heart for Him makes moan;
Thine, Virgil, first. But ah! in vain
Thy love bids heaven restore again
That which it took not as a loan:

Were sweeter lute than Orpheus given
To thee, did trees thy voice obey;
The blood revisits not the clay
Which He, with lifted wand, hath driven

Into his dark assemblage, who
Unlocks not fate to mortal's prayer.
Hard lot! Yet light their griefs who BEAR
The ills ...

Faint amorist, what, dost thou think
To taste Love's honey, and not drink
One dram of gall? or to devour
A world of sweet, and taste no sour?
Dost thou ever think to enter
Th' Elysian fields, that dar'st not venture
In Charon's barge? a lover's mind
Must use to sail with every wind.
He that loves and fears to try,
Learns his mistress to deny.
Doth she chide thee? 'tis to show it,
That thy coldness makes her do it:
Is she silent? is she mute?
Silence fully grants thy suit:
Doth she pout, and leave the room?
Then she goes to bid thee come:
Is she sick? why then be sure,
She invites thee to the cure:
Doth she cross thy suit with "No?"
Tush, she loves to hear thee woo:
Doth she call the faith of man
In question?    Nay, she loves thee than...

When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peacè, will you, Peace? I'll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.

"Buy,--who'll buy?" In the market-place,
Out of the market din and clatter,
The quack with his puckered persuasive face
Patters away in the ancient patter.

"Buy,--who'll buy? In this flask I hold--
In this little flask that I tap with my stick, Sir--
Is the famed, infallible Water of Gold,--
The One, Original, True Elixir!

"Buy--who'll buy? There's a maiden there,--
She with the ell-long flaxen tresses,--
Here is a draught that will make you fair,
Fit for an emperor's own caresses!

"Buy,--who'll buy? Are you old and gray?
Drink but of this, and in less than a minute,
Lo! you will dance like the flowers in May,
Chirp and chirk like a new-fledged linnet!

"Buy,--who'll buy? Is a baby ill?
Drop but a drop of this in his throttle,
...

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above:
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love:
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

The antique Babel, empresse of the East,
Upreard her buildinges to the threatned skie:
And second Babell, tyrant of the West,
Her ayry towers upraised much more high.
But with the weight of their own surquedry**
They both are fallen, that all the earth did feare,
And buried now in their own ashes ly,
Yet shewing, by their heapes, how great they were.
But in their place doth now a third appeare,
Fayre Venice, flower of the last worlds delight;
And next to them in beauty draweth neare,
But farre exceedes in policie of right.
    Yet not so fayre her buildinges to behold
    As Lewkenors stile that hath her beautie told.

[1]

A bachelor caress'd his cat,
A darling, fair, and delicate;
So deep in love, he thought her mew
The sweetest voice he ever knew.
By prayers, and tears, and magic art,
The man got Fate to take his part;
And, lo! one morning at his side
His cat, transform'd, became his bride.
In wedded state our man was seen
The fool in courtship he had been.
No lover e'er was so bewitch'd
By any maiden's charms
As was this husband, so enrich'd
By hers within his arms.
He praised her beauties, this and that,
And saw there nothing of the cat.
In short, by passion's aid, he
Thought her a perfect lady.

'Twas night: some carpet-gnawing mice
Disturb'd the nuptial joys.
Excited by the noise,
The bride sprang at them in a trice;<...

(See Note 46)

Of long toil 't is a matter
Through many a silent age,
Before such power can shatter
Time-hallowed custom's cage.
The soul-fruit of the peasant,
Though seldom seed was sown,
It is our honor present, -
Our future sure foreknown.

The fjords that earnest waited
'Mid mountain-snows around
His childhood's thoughts created
And depth of life profound.
The highlands' sun that played there
On fjord and mountain snow
So wide a vision made there
As one could wish to know.

When he to Ting repairing
Would plead the peasant's right,
Each word a beam was bearing.
To make our young day bright.
It came like ancient story
Or long-lost song's refrain;
What crowned our past with glory
It made our prese...

Underneath an apple-tree
Sat a maiden and her lover;
And the thoughts within her he
Yearned, in silence, to discover.
Round them danced the sunbeams bright,
Green the grass-lawn stretched before them;
While the apple-blossoms white
Hung in rich profusion o'er them.

Naught within her eyes he read
That would tell her mind unto him;
Though their light, he after said,
Quivered swiftly through and through him;
Till at last his heart burst free
From the prayer with which 'twas laden,
And he said, "When wilt thou be
Mine for evermore, fair maiden?"

"When," said she, "the breeze of May
With white flakes our heads shall cover,
I will be thy brideling gay -
Thou shall be my husband-lover."
"How," said he, in sorrow bowed,
"Can I hope...

Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer,
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,
Ceaseless, insistent.

The grasshopper's horn, and far-off, high in the maples,
The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence
Under a moon waning and worn, broken,
Tired with summer.

Let me remember you, voices of little insects,
Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,
Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us,
Snow-hushed and heavy.

Over my soul murmur your mute benediction,
While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest,
As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to,
Lest they forget them.