War

He hurried away, young heart of joy, under our Devon sky!
And I watched him go, my beautiful boy, and a weary woman was I.
For my hair is grey, and his was gold; he'd the best of his life to live;
And I'd loved him so, and I'm old, I'm old; and he's all I had to give.

Ah yes, he was proud and swift and gay, but oh how my eyes were dim!
With the sun in his heart he went away, but he took the sun with him.
For look! How the leaves are falling now, and the winter won't be long. . . .
Oh boy, my boy with the sunny brow, and the lips of love and of song!

How we used to sit at the day's sweet end, we two by the firelight's gleam,
And we'd drift to the Valley of Let's Pretend, on the beautiful river of Dream.
Oh dear little heart! All wealth untold would I gladly, gladly pay
Coul...

Fled are the frosts, and now the fields appear
Reclothed in fresh and verdant diaper;
Thaw'd are the snows; and now the lusty Spring
Gives to each mead a neat enamelling;
The palms put forth their gems, and every tree
Now swaggers in her leafy gallantry.
The while the Daulian minstrel sweetly sings
With warbling notes her Terean sufferings.
What gentle winds perspire! as if here
Never had been the northern plunderer
To strip the trees and fields, to their distress,
Leaving them to a pitied nakedness.
And look how when a frantic storm doth tear
A stubborn oak or holm, long growing there,
But lull'd to calmness, then succeeds a breeze
That scarcely stirs the nodding leaves of trees;
So when this war, which tempest-like doth spoil
Our salt, our corn, our hon...

O thicker, deeper, darker growing,
The solemn vista to the tomb
Must know henceforth another shadow,
And give another cypress room.

In love surpassing that of brothers,
We walked, O friend, from childhood’s day;
And, looking back o’er fifty summers,
Our footprints track a common way.

One in our faith, and one our longing
To make the world within our reach
Somewhat the better for our living,
And gladder for our human speech.

Thou heard’st with me the far-off voices,
The old beguiling song of fame,
But life to thee was warm and present,
And love was better than a name.

To homely joys and loves and friendships
Thy genial nature fondly clung;
And so the shadow on the dial
Ran back and left thee always young.

And wh...

I.

Fallen with autumn's falling leaf
Ere yet his summer's noon was past,
Our friend, our guide, our trusted chief, -
What words can match a woe so vast!

And whose the chartered claim to speak
The sacred grief where all have part,
Where sorrow saddens every cheek
And broods in every aching heart?

Yet Nature prompts the burning phrase
That thrills the hushed and shrouded hall,
The loud lament, the sorrowing praise,
The silent tear that love lets fall.

In loftiest verse, in lowliest rhyme,
Shall strive unblamed the minstrel choir, - -
The singers of the new-born time,
And trembling age with outworn lyre.

No room for pride, no place for blame, -
We fling our blossoms on the grave,
Pale, - scentless, - faded, - all we cl...

The shadows grow and deepen round me,
I feel the deffall in the air;
The muezzin of the darkening thicket,
I hear the night-thrush call to prayer.

The evening wind is sad with farewells,
And loving hands unclasp from mine;
Alone I go to meet the darkness
Across an awful boundary-line.

As from the lighted hearths behind me
I pass with slow, reluctant feet,
What waits me in the land of strangeness?
What face shall smile, what voice shall greet?

What space shall awe, what brightness blind me?
What thunder-roll of music stun?
What vast processions sweep before me
Of shapes unknown beneath the sun?

I shrink from unaccustomed glory,
I dread the myriad-voiced strain;
Give me the unforgotten faces,
And let my lost ones speak agai...

An incident of the Sepoy mutiny.


Pipes of the misty moorlands,
Voice of the glens and hills;
The droning of the torrents,
The treble of the rills!
Not the braes of bloom and heather,
Nor the mountains dark with rain,
Nor maiden bower, nor border tower,
Have heard your sweetest strain!

Dear to the Lowland reaper,
And plaided mountaineer,
To the cottage and the castle
The Scottish pipes are dear;
Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch
O'er mountain, loch, and glade;
But the sweetest of all music
The pipes at Lucknow played.

Day by day the Indian tiger
Louder yelled, and nearer crept;
Round and round the jungle-serpent
Near and nearer circles swept.
'Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,
Pray to-day!' the soldi...

The night too quickly passes
And we are growing old,
So let us fill our glasses
And toast the Days of Gold;
When finds of wondrous treasure
Set all the South ablaze,
And you and I were faithful mates
All through the roaring days!

Then stately ships came sailing
From every harbour's mouth,
And sought the land of promise
That beaconed in the South;
Then southward streamed their streamers
And swelled their canvas full
To speed the wildest dreamers
E'er borne in vessel's hull.

Their shining Eldorado,
Beneath the southern skies,
Was day and night for ever
Before their eager eyes.
The brooding bush, awakened,
Was stirred in wild unrest,
And all the year a human stream
Went pouring to the West.

The rough bush ...

Lady! a Pen (perhaps with thy regard,
Among the Favoured, favoured not the least)
Left, 'mid the Records of this Book inscribed,
Deliberate traces, registers of thought
And feeling, suited to the place and time
That gave them birth: months passed, and still this hand,
That had not been too timid to imprint
Words which the virtues of thy Lord inspired,
Was yet not bold enough to write of Thee.
And why that scrupulous reserve? In sooth
The blameless cause lay in the Theme itself.
Flowers are there many that delight to strive
With the sharp wind, and seem to court the shower,
Yet are by nature careless of the sun
Whether he shine on them or not; and some,
Where'er he moves along the unclouded sky,
Turn a broad front full on his flattering beams:
Others do ra...

I.

Nature, so far as in her lies,
Imitates God, and turns her face
To every land beneath the skies,
Counts nothing that she meets with base,
But lives and loves in every place;



II.

Fills out the homely quickset-screens,
And makes the purple lilac ripe,
Steps from her airy hill, and greens
The swamp, where humm’d the dropping snipe,
With moss and braided marish-pipe;



III.

And on thy heart a finger lays,
Saying, ‘Beat quicker, for the time
Is pleasant, and the woods and ways
Are pleasant, and the beech and lime
Put forth and feel a gladder clime.’



IV.

And murmurs of a deeper voice,
Going before to some far shrine,
Teach that sick heart the stronger choice,

It was late in mild October, and the long autumnal rain
Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with grass again;
The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the woodlands gay
With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the meadow flowers of May.
Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the sun rose broad and red,
At first a rayless disk of fire, he brightened as he sped;
Yet, even his noontide glory fell chastened and subdued,
On the cornfields and the orchards, and softly pictured wood.
And all that quiet afternoon, slow sloping to the night,
He wove with golden shuttle the haze with yellow light;
Slanting through the painted beeches, he glorified the hill;
And, beneath it, pond and meadow lay brighter, greener still.
And shouting boys in woodland haunts caught glimpses of tha...

No aimless wanderers, by the fiend Unrest
Goaded from shore to shore;
No schoolmen, turning, in their classic quest,
The leaves of empire o'er.
Simple of faith, and bearing in their hearts
The love of man and God,
Isles of old song, the Moslem's ancient marts,
And Scythia's steppes, they trod.
Where the long shadows of the fir and pine
In the night sun are cast,
And the deep heart of many a Norland mine
Quakes at each riving blast;
Where, in barbaric grandeur, Moskwa stands,
A baptized Scythian queen,
With Europe's arts and Asia's jewelled hands,
The North and East between!
Where still, through vales of Grecian fable, stray
The classic forms of yore,
And beauty smiles, new risen from the spray,
And Dian weeps once more;
Where every tongue i...

BEING AN EXCELLENT NEW SONG UPON THE SURRENDER OF DUNKIRK TO GENERAL HILL
1712

To the tune of "The King shall enjoy his own again."

Spite of Dutch friends and English foes,
Poor Britain shall have peace at last:
Holland got towns, and we got blows;
    But Dunkirk's ours, we'll hold it fast.
        We have got it in a string,
        And the Whigs may all go swing,
For among good friends I love to be plain;
        All their false deluded hopes
        Will, or ought to end in ropes;
"But the Queen shall enjoy her own again."

Sunderland’s run out of his wits,
    And Dismal double Dismal looks;
Wharton can only swear by fits,
    And strutting Hal is off the hooks;
        Old Godolphin, full of spleen,
        Made false moves, an...

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood
In brighter light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race, of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the...

In yonder old cathedral
Two lovely coffins lie;
In one, the head of the state lies dead,
And a singer sleeps hard by.

Once had that King great power
And proudly ruled the land--
His crown e'en now is on his brow
And his sword is in his hand.

How sweetly sleeps the singer
With calmly folded eyes,
And on the breast of the bard at rest
The harp that he sounded lies.

The castle walls are falling
And war distracts the land,
But the sword leaps not from that mildewed spot
There in that dead king's hand.

But with every grace of nature
There seems to float along--
To cheer again the hearts of men
The singer's deathless song.

I.

'Twas in that memorable year
France threaten'd to put off in
Flat-bottom'd boats, intending each
To be a British coffin,
To make sad widows of our wives,
And every babe an orphan: -


II.

When coats were made of scarlet cloaks,
And heads were dredg'd with flour,
I listed in the Lawyer's Corps,
Against the battle hour;
A perfect Volunteer - for why?
I brought my "will and pow'r."


III.

One dreary day - a day of dread,
Like Cato's, over-cast -
About the hour of six, (the morn
And I were breaking fast,)
There came a loud and sudden sound,
That struck me all aghast!


IV.

A dismal sort of morning roll,
That was not to be eaten;
Although it was no skin of mine,
Bu...

I.

A Sea of onyx are the skies,
Cloud-islanded with fire;
Such nacre-colored flame as dyes
A sea-shell's rosy spire;
And at its edge one star sinks slow,
Burning, into the overglow.

II.

Save for the cricket in the grass,
Or passing bird that twitters,
The world is hushed. Like liquid glass
The soundless river glitters
Between the hills that hug and hold
Its beauty like a hoop of gold.

III.

The glory deepens; and, meseems,
A vasty canvas, painted
With revelations of God's dreams
And visions symbol-sainted,
The west is, that each night-cowled hill
Kneels down before in worship still.

IV.

There is no thing to wake unrest;
No sight or sound to jangle
The peace that evening in the bre...

        Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
            This is the thing I find to be:
        That I am weary of words and people,
            Sick of the city, wanting the sea;

        Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
            Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
        Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
            Of the big surf that breaks all day.

        Always before about my dooryard,
            Marking the reach of the winter sea,
        Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood,
            Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea;

        Always I climbed the wave at morning,
            Shook the sand from my shoes at night,
        That now am caught beneath great buildings,
            Stricken with noise, confused ...

I am all alone in the house to-night;
    They would not have gone away
Had they known of the terrible, bloodless fight
    I have held with my heart to-day.
With the old sweet love and the old fierce pain
    I have battled hour by hour;
But the fates have willed that the strife is vain.
Alone in the hour my thoughts have reign,
    And I yield myself to their power.

Yield myself to the old time charm
    Of a dream of vanished bliss,
The thrill of a voice, and the fold of an arm,
    And a red lip's lingering kiss.
It all comes back like a flowing tide;
    That brief, but beautiful day.
Though it oft is checked by the dam of pride,
Till the waters flow back to the other side,
    To-night it has broken away.

I gave you all that I had t...