War

Down in the hollow there's the whole Brigade
Camped in four groups: through twilight falling slow
I hear a sound of mouth-organs, ill-played,
And murmur of voices, gruff, confused, and low.
Crouched among thistle-tufts I've watched the glow
Of a blurred orange sunset flare and fade;
And I'm content. To-morrow we must go
To take some cursèd Wood.... O world God made!

July 3rd, 1916.

Honor and pity for the smitten field,
The valorous ranks mown down like precious corn,
Whose want must famish love morn after morn,
Till Death, the good physician, shall have healed
The craving and the tearspent eyelids sealed.
Proud be the homes that for each cannon-torn,
Encrimsoned rampart have been left forlorn;
Holy the knells o'er fallen patriots pealed.

But they, above the battle, throng a space
Of starry silences and silver rest.
Commingled ghosts, they press like brothers through
White, dove-winged portals, where one Father's face
Atones their passion, as the ethereal blue
Serenes the fiery glows of east and west.

[This and the following poem are, with some alterations, introduced in the Play of "The Robbers."]

ANDROMACHE.
Will Hector leave me for the fatal plain,
Where, fierce with vengeance for Patroclus slain,
    Stalks Peleus' ruthless son?
Who, when thou glid'st amid the dark abodes,
To hurl the spear and to revere the gods,
    Shall teach thine orphan one?

HECTOR.
Woman and wife beloved cease thy tears;
My soul is nerved the war-clang in my ears!
    Be mine in life to stand
Troy's bulwark! fighting for our hearths, to go
In death, exulting to the streams below,
    Slain for my fatherland!

ANDROMACHE.
No more I hear thy martial footsteps fall
Thine arms shall hang, dull trophies, on the wall
    Fallen the stem of Troy!
Thou goe...

In the chill grey summer dawn-light
    We pass through the empty streets;
The rattling wheels are all silent;
    No friend his fellow greets.

Here and there, at the corners,
    A man in a great-coat stands;
A bayonet hangs by his side, and
    A rifle is in his hands.

This is a conquered city;
    It speaks of war not peace;
And that's one of the English soldiers
    The English call "police."

You see, at the present moment
    That noble country of mine
Is boiling with indignation
    At the memory of a "crime."

In a path in the Phoenix Park where
    The children romped and ran,
An Irish ruffian met his doom,
    And an English gentleman.

For a hundred and over a hundred
    Years on the country side<...

This is the song for a soldier
    To sing as he rides from home
To the fields afar where the battles are
    Or over the ocean's foam:
'Whatever the dangers waiting
    In the lands I have not seen,
If I do not fall - if I come back at all,
    Then I will come back clean.

'I may lie in the mud of the trenches,
    I may reek with blood and mire,
But I will control, by the God in my soul,
    The might of my man's desire.
I will fight my foe in the open,
    But my sword shall be sharp and keen
For the foe within who would lure me to sin,
    And I will come back clean.

'I may not leave for my children
    Brave medals that I have worn,
But the blood in my veins shall leave no stains
    On bride or on babes unborn;
And the sca...

    Hail Poesie! thou Nymph reserv'd!
    In chase o' thee, what crowds hae swerv'd
    Frae common sense, or sunk enerv'd
        'Mang heaps o' clavers;
    And och! o'er aft thy joes hae starv'd
        Mid a' thy favours!

    Say, Lassie, why thy train amang,
    While loud the trump's heroic clang,
    And sock or buskin skelp alang,
        To death or marriage;
    Scarce ane has tried the shepherd-sang
        But wi' miscarriage?

    In Homer's craft Jock Milton thrives;
    Eschylus' pen Will Shakspeare drives;
    Wee Pope, the knurlin, 'till him rives
        Horatian fame;
    In thy sweet sang, Barbauld, survives
        Even Sappho's flame.

    But thee, Theocritus, wha matches?
    They're no herd's ballats, Mar...

I

I hear a voice, perchance I heard
Long ago, but all too low,
So that scarce a care it stirred
If the voice was real or no:
I heard it in my youth when first
The waters of my life outburst:
But now their stream ebbs faint, I hear
That voice, still low but fatal-clear
As if all Poets, God ever meant
Should save the world, and therefore lent
Great gifts to, but who, proud, refused
To do His work, or lightly used
Those gifts, or failed through weak endeavour,
So, mourn cast off by Him for ever,
As if these leaned in airy ring
To take me; this the song they sing.

‘Lost, lost! yet come,
With our wan troop make thy home.
Come, come! for we
Will not breathe, so much as breathe
Reproach to thee!
Knowing what thou sink’st bene...

Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
    And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
    Alternate come and go;

Or where the denser grove receives
    No sunlight from above,
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
    The shadows hardly move.

Beneath some patriarchal tree
    I lay upon the ground;
His hoary arms uplifted he,
And all the broad leaves over me
Clapped their little hands in glee,
    With one continuous sound--

A slumberous sound,--a sound that brings
    The feelings of a dream--
As of innumerable wings,
As, when a bell no longer swings,
Paint the holl...

By the trim taper, and the blazing hearth,
(While loud without the blast of winter sung),
Now thrill'd with awe, and now relax'd with mirth,
Paris, I've roam'd thy varied haunts among,
Loitering where Fashion's insect myriads spread
Their painted wings, and sport their little day;
Anon, by beckoning recollection led
To the dark shadow of the stern ABBAYE,
Pale Fancy heard the petrifying shriek
Of midnight Murder from its turrets bleak,
And to her horrent eye came passing on
Phantoms of those dark times, elapsed and gone,
When Rapine yell'd o'er his defenceless prey,
As unchain'd Anarchy her tocsin rung,
And France! in dust and blood thy throne and altars lay!

Oh! thou, thus skill'd with absolute controul,
Where'er thou wilt to lead th' admiring soul,

Read At The Two Hundredth Anniversary

Is it a weanling's weakness for the past
That in the stormy, rebel-breeding town,
Swept clean of relics by the levelling blast,

Still keeps our gray old chapel's name of "King's,"
Still to its outworn symbols fondly clings, -
Its unchurched mitres and its empty crown?

Poor harmless emblems! All has shrunk away
That made them gorgons in the patriot's eyes;
The priestly plaything harms us not to-day;
The gilded crown is but a pleasing show,
An old-world heirloom, left from long ago,
Wreck of the past that memory bids us prize,

Lightly we glance the fresh-cut marbles o'er;
Those two of earlier date our eyes enthrall:
The proud old Briton's by the western door,
And hers, the Lady of Colonial days,
...

O mater! O fils!
O brood continental!
O flowers of the prairies!
O space boundless! O hum of mighty products!
O you teeming cities! O so invincible, turbulent, proud!
O race of the future! O women!
O fathers! O you men of passion and the storm!
O native power only! O beauty!
O yourself! O God! O divine average!
O you bearded roughs! O bards! O all those slumberers!
O arouse! the dawn bird's throat sounds shrill! Do you not hear the cock crowing?
O, as I walk'd the beach, I heard the mournful notes foreboding a tempest--the low, oft-repeated shriek of the diver, the long-lived loon;
O I heard, and yet hear, angry thunder;--O you sailors! O ships! make quick preparation!
O from his masterful sweep, the warning cry of the eagle!
(Give way there, all! It is useless! Give up...

(To James McNeill Whistler)


Under a stagnant sky,
Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom,
The River, jaded and forlorn,
Welters and wanders wearily, wretchedly, on;
Yet in and out among the ribs
Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles
Of some dead lake-built city, fall of skulls,
Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories,
Lingers to babble, to a broken tune
(Once, O the unvoiced music of my heart!)
So melancholy a soliloquy
It sounds as it might tell
The secret of the unending grief-in-grain,
The terror of Time and Change and Death,
That wastes this floating, transitory world.

What of the incantation
That forced the huddled shapes on yonder short
To take and wear the night
Like a material majesty?
That touched the ...

The barrack-square, washed clean with rain,
Shines wet and wintry-grey and cold.
Young Fusiliers, strong-legged and bold,
March and wheel and march again.
The sun looks over the barrack gate,
Warm and white with glaring shine,
To watch the soldiers of the Line
That life has hired to fight with fate.

Fall out: the long parades are done.
Up comes the dark; down goes the sun.
The square is walled with windowed light.
Sleep well, you lusty Fusiliers;
Shut your brave eyes on sense and sight,
And banish from your dreamless ears
The bugle's lying notes that say,
"Another night; another day."

Priam's castle-walls had sunk,
Troy in dust and ashes lay,
And each Greek, with triumph drunk,
Richly laden with his prey,
Sat upon his ship's high prow,
On the Hellespontic strand,
Starting on his journey now,
Bound for Greece, his own fair land.
Raise the glad exulting shout!
Toward the land that gave them birth
Turn they now the ships about,
As they seek their native earth.

And in rows, all mournfully,
Sat the Trojan women there,
Beat their breasts in agony,
Pallid, with dishevelled hair.
In the feast of joy so glad
Mingled they the song of woe,
Weeping o'er their fortunes sad,
In their country's overthrow.
"Land beloved, oh, fare thee well!
By our foreign masters led,
Far from home we're doomed to dwell,
Ah, how hap...

[During an anti-saloon campaign, in central Illinois.]


    In the midst of the battle I turned,
    (For the thunders could flourish without me)
    And hid by a rose-hung wall,
    Forgetting the murder about me;
    And wrote, from my wound, on the stone,
    In mirth, half prayer, half play: -
    "Send me a picture book,
    Send me a song, to-day."

    I saw him there by the wall
    When I scarce had written the line,
    In the enemy's colors dressed
    And the serpent-standard of wine
    Writhing its withered length
    From his ghostly hands o'er the ground,
    And there by his shadowy breast
    The glorious poem I found.

    This was his world-old cry:
    Thus read the famous prayer:
    "Wine, wine, wine a...

Sadly as some old mediaeval knight
    Gazed at the arms he could no longer wield,
    The sword two-handed and the shining shield
    Suspended in the hall, and full in sight,
While secret longings for the lost delight
    Of tourney or adventure in the field
    Came over him, and tears but half concealed
    Trembled and fell upon his beard of white,
So I behold these books upon their shelf,
    My ornaments and arms of other days;
    Not wholly useless, though no longer used,
For they remind me of my other self,
    Younger and stronger, and the pleasant ways
    In which I walked, now clouded and confused.

Delicious gloom! asylum of repose!
Within your verdant shades, your tranquil bound,
A wretched fugitive[A], oppress'd by woes,
The balm of peace, that long had left him, found.

Ne'er does the trump of war disturb this grove;
Throughout its deep recess the warbling bird
Discourses sweetly of its happy lore,
Or distant sounds of rural joy are heard.

Life's checquer'd scene is softly pictur'd here;
Here the proud moss-rose spreads its transient pride;
Close by, the willow drops a dewy tear,
And gaudy flow'rs the modest lily hide.

Alas! poor Hermit! happy had it been
For thee, if in these shades thy days had past,
If, well contented with the happy scene,
Thou ne'er again had fac'd life's stormy blast!

And Pity oft shall shed the ...

Shouts, and the noise of war!
Far o'er the land hath been my flight,
O'er many a forest dark as night,
O'er champaigns where the Tartar speeds,
O'er Wolga's wild and giant reeds,
O'er the Carpathian summits hoar,
Beneath whose snows and shadows frore,
Poland's level length unfolds
Her trackless woods and wildering wolds,
Like a spirit, seeking rest,
I have passed from east to west,
While sounds of discord and lament
Rose from the earth where'er I went.
I care not; hurrying, as in scorn,
I shook my lance, and blew my horn;
The day shows clear; and merrily
Along the Atlantic now I fly.
Who comes in soft and spicy vest,
From the mild regions of the West?
An azure veil bends waving o'er his head,
And showers of violets from his hands are shed.<...