Inspirational

I sometimes sit beneath a tree
And read my own sweet songs;
Though naught they may to others be,
Each humble line prolongs
A tone that might have passed away
But for that scarce remembered lay.

I keep them like a lock or leaf
That some dear girl has given;
Frail record of an hour, as brief
As sunset clouds in heaven,
But spreading purple twilight still
High over memory's shadowed hill.

They lie upon my pathway bleak,
Those flowers that once ran wild,
As on a father's careworn cheek
The ringlets of his child;
The golden mingling with the gray,
And stealing half its snows away.

What care I though the dust is spread
Around these yellow leaves,
Or o'er them his sarcastic thread
Oblivion's insect weaves
Though weeds a...

From centre to the circle, and so back
From circle to the centre, water moves
In the round chalice, even as the blow
Impels it, inwardly, or from without.
Such was the image glanc'd into my mind,
As the great spirit of Aquinum ceas'd;
And Beatrice after him her words
Resum'd alternate: "Need there is (tho' yet
He tells it to you not in words, nor e'en
In thought) that he should fathom to its depth
Another mystery. Tell him, if the light,
Wherewith your substance blooms, shall stay with you
Eternally, as now: and, if it doth,
How, when ye shall regain your visible forms,
The sight may without harm endure the change,
That also tell." As those, who in a ring
Tread the light measure, in their fitful mirth
Raise loud the voice, and spring with gladder bound;

(In memory of Joseph Mary Plunkett)


("Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.")
        William Butler Yeats.



"Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave."
Then, Yeats, what gave that Easter dawn
A hue so radiantly brave?

There was a rain of blood that day,
Red rain in gay blue April weather.
It blessed the earth till it gave birth
To valour thick as blooms of heather.

Romantic Ireland never dies!
O'Leary lies in fertile ground,
And songs and spears throughout the years
Rise up where patriot graves are found.

Immortal patriots newly dead
And ye that bled in bygone years,
What banners rise before your eyes?
What is the tune that greets your ears?
...

    Small, shapeless drifts of cloud
Sail slowly northward in the soft-hued sky,
    With blur half-tints and rolling summits bright,
By the late sun caressed; slight hazes shroud
    All things afar; shineth each leaf anigh
    With its own warmth and light.


    O'erblown by Southland airs,
The summer landscape basks in utter peace:
    In lazy streams the lazy clouds are seen;
Low hills, broad meadows, and large, clear-cut squares
    Of ripening corn-fields, rippled by the breeze,
    With shifting shade and sheen.


    Hark! and you may not hear
A sound less soothing than the rustle cool
    Of swaying leaves, the steady wiry drone
Of unseen crickets, sudden chirpings clear
    Of happy birds, the tinkle of the pool,
    Chafed ...

Spoken by Miss ADA REHAN at the Lyceum Theatre, July 23, 1890, at a performance on behalf of Lady Jeune's Holiday Fund for City Children.

Before we part to alien thoughts and aims,
Permit the one brief word the occasion claims:
- When mumming and grave projects are allied,
Perhaps an Epilogue is justified.

Our under-purpose has, in truth, to-day
Commanded most our musings; least the play:
A purpose futile but for your good-will
Swiftly responsive to the cry of ill:
A purpose all too limited! to aid
Frail human flowerets, sicklied by the shade,
In winning some short spell of upland breeze,
Or strengthening sunlight on the level leas.

Who has not marked, where the full cheek should be,
Incipient lines of lank flaccidity,
Lymphatic pallor where the p...

There lies a photograph of you
Deep in a box of broken things.
This was the face I loved and knew
Five years ago, when life had wings;

Five years ago, when through a town
Of bright and soft and shadowy bowers
We walked and talked and trailed our gown
Regardless of the cinctured hours.

The precepts that we held I kept;
Proudly my ways with you I went:
We lived our dreams while others slept,
And did not shrink from sentiment.

Now I go East and you stay West
And when between us Europe lies
I shall forget what I loved best
Away from lips and hands and eyes.

But we were Gods then: we were they
Who laughed at fools, believed in friends,
And drank to all that golden day
Before us, which this poem ends.

We were two lovers; let me lie by her,
My tomb beside her tomb. On hers inscribe,
“I loved him; but my reason bade prefer
Duty to love, reject the tempter’s bribe
Of rose and lily when each path diverged,
And either I must pace to life’s far end
As love should lead me, or, as duty urged,
Plod the worn causeway arm-in-arm with friend.
So, truth turned falsehood: ‘How I loathe a flower,
How prize the pavement!’ still caressed his ear,
The deafish friend’s, through life’s day, hour by hour,
As he laughed (coughing). ‘Ay, it would appear!’
But deep within my heart of hearts there hid
Ever the confidence, amends for all,
That heaven repairs what wrong earth’s journey did,
When love from life-long exile comes at call.
Duty and love, one broad way, were the best,

FROM ALCIPHRON AT ALEXANDRIA TO CLEON AT ATHENS.


Well may you wonder at my flight
    From those fair Gardens in whose bowers
Lingers whate'er of wise and bright,
Of Beauty's smile or Wisdom's light,
    Is left to grace this world of ours.
Well may my comrades as they roam
    On such sweet eyes as this inquire
Why I have left that happy home
    Where all is found that all desire,
    And Time hath wings that never tire:
Where bliss in all the countless shapes
    That Fancy's self to bliss hath given
Comes clustering round like roadside grapes
    That woo the traveller's lip at even;
Where Wisdom flings not joy away--
As Pallas in the stream they say
Once flung her flute--but smiling owns
That woman's lip can send forth tones
Wor...

Bard of the Fleece, whose skilful genius made
That work a living landscape fair and bright;
Nor hallowed less with musical delight
Than those soft scenes through which thy childhood strayed,
Those southern tracts of Cambria, "deep embayed,
With green hills fenced, with ocean's murmur lulled;"
Though hasty Fame hath many a chaplet culled
For worthless brows, while in the pensive shade
Of cold neglect she leaves thy head ungraced,
Yet pure and powerful minds, hearts meek and still,
A grateful few, shall love thy modest Lay,
Long as the shepherd's bleating flock shall stray
O'er naked Snowdon's wide aerial waste;
Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill!

    For thee he thought,
    The Greek, who by the sea
    Lay in his lithe-limbed grace, as dreamily
    He gazed upon the sky begemmed with stars,
    And pondered mysteries. Ah, few the bars
    To stop that lofty spirit in its flight
    Compared with those that lock our souls in night.
    For thee he thought!
    For thee he wrought,
    The Tyrian, who of old
    His rich web wove of purple dye and gold;
    Whose little bark, outstanding many a storm,
    To ruder lands the spirit and the form
    Of Eastern culture bore. Ah! what we owe
    To him today, let sage and poet show.
    For thee he wrought!
    For thee he fought!
    The Saxon, who upheld
    The freedom of our race; whose broad-ax felled
    Imperial legions in the forest ...

THE COBBLER OF HAGENAU

I trust that somewhere and somehow
You all have heard of Hagenau,
A quiet, quaint, and ancient town
Among the green Alsatian hills,
A place of valleys, streams, and mills,
Where Barbarossa's castle, brown
With rust of centuries, still looks down
On the broad, drowsy land below,--
On shadowy forests filled with game,
And the blue river winding slow
Through meadows, where the hedges grow
That give this little town its name.

It happened in the good old times,
While yet the Master-singers filled
The noisy workshop and the guild
With various melodies and rhymes,
That here in Hagenau there dwelt
A cobbler,--one who loved debate,
And, arguing from a postulate,
Would say what others only felt;
A man of foreca...

    The Poet meets Apollo on the hill,
    And Pan and Flora and the Paphian Queen,
    And infant naïads bathing in the rill,
    And dryad maids that dance upon the green,
    And fauns and Oreads in the silver sheen
    They wear in summer, when the air is still.
    He quaffs the wine of life, and quaffs his fill,
    And sees Creation through its mask terrene.
    The dead are wise, for they alone can see
    As see the bards, - as see, beyond the dust,
    The eyes of babes. The dead alone are just.
    There is no comfort in the bitter fee
    That scholars pay for fame. True sage is he
    Who doubts all doubt, and takes the soul on trust.

"Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him."

Shall hearts that beat no base retreat
In youth's magnanimous years--
Ignoble hold it, if discreet
When interest tames to fears;
Shall spirits that worship light
Perfidious deem its sacred glow,
Recant, and trudge where worldlings go,
Conform and own them right?

Shall Time with creeping influence cold
Unnerve and cow? the heart
Pine for the heartless ones enrolled
With palterers of the mart?
Shall faith abjure her skies,
Or pale probation blench her down
To shrink from Truth so still, so lone
Mid loud gregarious lies?

Each burning boat in Caesar's rear,
Flames--No return through me!
So put the torch to ties though dear,
If ties but tempters be.
Nor cringe if come the...

This is our place of meeting; opposite
That towered and pillared building: look at it;
King's Chapel in the Second George's day,
Rebellion stole its regal name away, -
Stone Chapel sounded better; but at last
The poisoned name of our provincial past
Had lost its ancient venom; then once more
Stone Chapel was King's Chapel as before.
(So let rechristened North Street, when it can,
Bring back the days of Marlborough and Queen Anne!)
Next the old church your wandering eye will meet -
A granite pile that stares upon the street -
Our civic temple; slanderous tongues have said
Its shape was modelled from St. Botolph's head,
Lofty, but narrow; jealous passers-by
Say Boston always held her head too high.
Turn half-way round, and let your look survey
The white fac...

By the side of a silvery streamlet,
    That flowed through meadows green,
Lay a youth on the verge of manhood
    And a boy of fair sixteen;
And the elder spake of the future,
    That bright before them lay,
With its hopes full of golden promise
    For some sure, distant day.

And he vowed, as his dark eye kindled,
    He would climb the heights of fame,
And conquer with mind or weapon
    A proud, undying name.
On the darling theme long dwelling
    Bright fabrics did he build,
Which the hope in his ardent bosom
    With splendor helped to gild.

At length he paused, then questioned:
    "Brother, thou dost not speak;
In the vague bright page of the future
    To read dost thou never seek?"
Then the other smiled and answered,<...

The skies are strown with stars,
The streets are fresh with dew
A thin moon drifts to westward,
The night is hushed and cheerful.
My thought is quick with you.

Near windows gleam and laugh,
And far away a train
Clanks glowing through the stillness:
A great content's in all things,
And life is not in vain.

1877

In cheerful faith that fears no ill
The good man doth the world begin;
And dreams that all without shall still
Reflect the trusting soul within.
Warm with the noble vows of youth,
Hallowing his true arm to the truth;

Yet is the littleness of all
So soon to sad experience shown,
That crowds but teach him to recall
And centre thought on self alone;
Till love, no more, emotion knows,
And the heart freezes to repose.

Alas! though truth may light bestow,
Not always warmth the beams impart,
Blest he who gains the boon to know,
Nor buys the knowledge with the heart.
For warmth and light a blessing both to be,
Feel as the enthusiast as the world-wise see.

The moth and beetle wing about
The garden ways of other days;
Above the hills, a fiery shout
Of gold, the day dies slowly out,
Like some wild blast a huntsman blows:
And o'er the hills my Fancy goes,
Following the sunset's golden call
Unto a vine-hung garden wall,
Where she awaits me in the gloom,
Between the lily and the rose,
With arms and lips of warm perfume,
The dream of Love my Fancy knows.

The glowworm and the firefly glow
Among the ways of bygone days;
A golden shaft shot from a bow
Of silver, star and moon swing low
Above the hills where twilight lies:
And o'er the hills my Longing flies,
Following the star's far-arrowed gold,
Unto a gate where, as of old,
She waits amid the rose and rue,
With star-bright hair and night-...