War

Tears! tears! tears!
In the night, in solitude, tears;
On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck'd in by the sand;
Tears not a star shining all dark and desolate;
Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head:
O who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears?
What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch'd there on the sand?
Streaming tears sobbing tears throes, choked with wild cries;
O storm, embodied, rising, careering, with swift steps along the beach;
O wild and dismal night storm, with wind! O belching and desperate!
O shade, so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and regulated pace;
But away, at night, as you fly, none looking O then the unloosen'd ocean,
Of tears! tears! tears!

Adieu, Rydalian Laurels! that have grown
And spread as if ye knew that days might come
When ye would shelter in a happy home,
On this fair Mount, a Poet of your own,
One who ne'er ventured for a Delphic crown
To sue the God; but, haunting your green shade
All seasons through, is humbly pleased to braid
Ground-flowers, beneath your guardianship, self-sown.
Farewell! no Minstrels now with harp new-strung
For summer wandering quit their household bowers;
Yet not for this wants Poesy a tongue
To cheer the Itinerant on whom she pours
Her spirit, while he crosses lonely moors,
Or musing sits forsaken halls among.

    Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
    Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel -
    Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens -
    But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
    Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
    Ballades by the score with the same old thought:
    The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
    And what is love but a rose that fades?
    Life all around me here in the village:
    Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
    Courage, constancy, heroism, failure -
    All in the loom, and oh what patterns!
    Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers -
    Blind to all of it all my life long.
    Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
    Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,
    W...

It came with the threat of a waning moon
And the wail of an ebbing tide,
But many a woman has lived for less,
And many a man has died;
For life upon life took hold and passed,
Strong in a fate set free,
Out of the deep, into the dark,
On for the years to be.

Between the gleam of a waning moon
And the song of an ebbing tide,
Chance upon chance of love and death
Took wing for the world so wide.
Leaf out of leaf is the way of the land,
Wave out of wave of the sea;
And who shall reckon what lives may live
In the life that we bade to be?

Hence, my epistle skim the Deep fly o'er
Yon smooth expanse to the Teutonic shore!
Haste lest a friend should grieve for thy delay
And the Gods grant that nothing thwart thy way!
I will myself invoke the King2 who binds
In his Sicanian ecchoing vault the winds,
With Doris3 and her Nymphs, and all the throng
Of azure Gods, to speed thee safe along.
But rather, to insure thy happier haste,
Ascend Medea's chariot,4 if thou may'st,
Or that whence young Triptolemus5 of yore
Descended welcome on the Scythian shore.
The sands that line the German coast descried,
To opulent Hamburg turn aside,
So call'd, if legendary fame be true,
From Hama,6 whom a club-arm'd Cimbrian slew.
There lives, deep-learn'd and primitive...

Over the din of battle,
Over the cannons' rattle,
Over the strident voices of men and their dying groans,
I hear the falling of thrones.

Out of the wild disorder
That spreads from border to border,
I see a new world rising from ashes of ancient towns;
And the Rulers wear no crowns.

Over the blood-charged water,
Over the fields of slaughter,
Down to the hidden vaults of Time, where lie the worn-out things
I see the passing of Kings.

Peace to the slumberers!
    They lie on the battle-plain.
With no shroud to cover them;
    The dew and the summer rain
Are all that weep over them.
            Peace to the slumberers!

Vain was their bravery!--
    The fallen oak lies where it lay,
Across the wintry river;
    But brave hearts, once swept away,
Are gone, alas! forever.
            Vain was their bravery!

Woe to the conqueror!
    Our limbs shall lie as cold as theirs
Of whom his sword bereft us.
    Ere we forget the deep arrears
Of vengeance they have left us!
            Woe to the conqueror!

There was a time in Europe long ago
When no man died for freedom anywhere,
But England's lion leaping from its lair
Laid hands on the oppressor! it was so
While England could a great Republic show.
Witness the men of Piedmont, chiefest care
Of Cromwell, when with impotent despair
The Pontiff in his painted portico
Trembled before our stern ambassadors.
How comes it then that from such high estate
We have thus fallen, save that Luxury
With barren merchandise piles up the gate
Where noble thoughts and deeds should enter by:
Else might we still be Milton's heritors.

Soft, shadowy moon-beam! by the light
Sleeps the wide meer serenely pale:
How various are the sounds of night,
Borne on the scarely-rising gale!

The swell of distant brook is heard,
Whose far-off waters faintly roll;
And piping of the shrill small bird,
Arrested by the wand’ring owl.

Come hither! let us thread with care
The maze of this green path, which binds
The beauties of the broad parterre,
And thro’ yon fragrant alley winds.

Or on this old bench will we sit,
Round which the clust’ring woodine wreathes;
While birds of night around us flit;
And thro’ each lavish wood-walk breathes,

Unto my ravish’d senses, brought
From yon thick-woven odorous bowers,
The still rich breeze, with incense fraught
Of glowing fruits and sp...

    I sing no idle songs of dalliance days,
    No dreams Elysian inspire my rhyming;
    I have no Celia to enchant my lays,
    No pipes of Pan have set my heart to chiming.
    I am no wordsmith dripping gems divine
    Into the golden chalice of a sonnet;
    If love songs witch you, close this book of mine,
        Waste no time on it.

    Yet bring I to my work an eager joy,
    A lusty love of life and all things human;
    Still in me leaps the wonder of the boy,
    A pride in man, a deathless faith in woman.
    Still red blood calls, still rings the valiant fray;
    Adventure beacons through the summer gloaming:
    Oh long and long and long will be the day
        Ere I come homing!

    This earth is ours to love: lute...