War

I

Now that we're almost settled in our house
I'll name the friends that cannot sup with us
Beside a fire of turf in th' ancient tower,
And having talked to some late hour
Climb up the narrow winding stair to bed:
Discoverers of forgotten truth
Or mere companions of my youth,
All, all are in my thoughts to-night being dead.

II

Always we'd have the new friend meet the old
And we are hurt if either friend seem cold,
And there is salt to lengthen out the smart
In the affections of our heart,
And quarrels are blown up upon that head;
But not a friend that I would bring
This night can set us quarrelling,
For all that come into my mind are dead.

III

Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind,
That loved his learning bette...

At the silence of twilight's contemplative hour,
I have mused in a sorrowful mood,
On the wind-shaken weeds that embosom the bower,
Where the home of my forefathers stood.
All ruin'd and wild is their roofless abode;
And lonely the dark raven's sheltering tree;
And travell'd by few is the grass-cover'd road,
Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode,
To his hills that encircle the sea.

Yet wandering, I found on my ruinous walk,
By the dial-stone aged and green,
One rose of the wilderness left on its stalk,
To mark where a garden had been.
Like a brotherless hermit, the last of its race,
All wild in the silence of nature, it drew,
From each wandering sun-beam, a lonely embrace,
For the night-weed and thorn overshadow'd the place,
Where the flowe...

A life more bright than the sun's face, bowed
Through stress of season and coil of cloud,
Sets: and the sorrow that casts out fear
Scarce deems him dead in his chill still shroud,
Dead on the breast of the dying year,
Poet and painter and friend, thrice dear
For love of the suns long set, for love
Of song that sets not with sunset here,
For love of the fervent heart, above
Their sense who saw not the swift light move
That filled with sense of the loud sun's lyre
The thoughts that passion was fain to prove
In fervent labour of high desire
And faith that leapt from its own quenched pyre
Alive and strong as the sun, and caught
From darkness light, and from twilight fire.
Passion, deep as the depths unsought
Whence faith's own hope may redeem us nought,
...

But, Song, arise thee on a greater wing,
Nor twitter robin-like of love, nor sing
A pretty dalliance with grief - but try
Some metre like a sky,
Wherein to set
Stars that may linger yet
When I, thy master, shall have come to die.
        Twitter and tweet
            Thy carollings
            Of little things,
        Of fair and sweet;
        For it is meet,
            O robin red!
        That little theme
            Hath little song,
            That little head
        Hath little dream,
            And long.
But we have starry business, such a grief
As Autumn's, dead by some forgotten sheaf,
While all the distance echoes of the wain;
Grief as an ocean's for some sudden isle
Of living green that stayed with it a while,

Lord Byron's Memoirs, written by himself.--Reflections, when about to read them.


Let me a moment--ere with fear and hope
Of gloomy, glorious things, these leaves I ope--
As one in fairy tale to whom the key
    Of some enchanter's secret halls is given,
Doubts while he enters slowly, tremblingly,
    If he shall meet with shapes from hell or heaven--
Let me a moment think what thousands live
O'er the wide earth this instant who would give,
Gladly, whole sleepless nights to bend the brow
Over these precious leaves, as I do now.

How all who know--and where is he unknown?
To what far region have his songs not flown,
Like PSAPHON'S birds[1] speaking their master's name,
In every language syllabled by Fame?--
How all who've felt the v...

O people-chosen! are ye not
Likewise the chosen of the Lord,
To do His will and speak His word?
From the loud thunder-storm of war
Not man alone hath called ye forth,
But He, the God of all the earth!
The torch of vengeance in your hands
He quenches; unto Him belongs
The solemn recompense of wrongs.
Enough of blood the land has seen,
And not by cell or gallows-stair
Shall ye the way of God prepare.
Say to the pardon-seekers: Keep
Your manhood, bend no suppliant knees,
Nor palter with unworthy pleas.
Above your voices sounds the wail
Of starving men; we shut in vain
Our eyes to Pillow's ghastly stain.
What words can drown that bitter cry?
What tears wash out the stain of death?
What oaths confirm your broken faith?
From you alone the gu...

From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome,
From Mad to Saco river,
For patriarchs of the primal wood
We sought with vain endeavor.

And then we said: "The giants old
Are lost beyond retrieval;
This pygmy growth the axe has spared
Is not the wood primeval.

"Look where we will o'er vale and hill,
How idle are our searches
For broad-girthed maples, wide-limbed oaks,
Centennial pines and birches.

"Their tortured limbs the axe and saw
Have changed to beams and trestles;
They rest in walls, they float on seas,
They rot in sunken vessels.

"This shorn and wasted mountain land
Of underbrush and boulder,
Who thinks to see its full-grown tree
Must live a century older."

At last to us a woodland path,
To open sunset leading,

I thought that silence would be best,
But I a call have heard,
And, Victor, after all the rest,
I well might say a word:
The day and work is nearly done,
And ours the victory,
And we are resting, one by one,
In graveyards by the sea.

But then you talked of other nights,
When, gay from dusk to dawn,
You wasted hours with other lights
That went where you have gone.
You spoke not of the fair and “fast”,
But of the pure and true,
“Sweet ugly women of the past”
Who stood so well by you.

You made a jest on that last night,
I met it with a laugh:
You wondered which of us should write
The other’s epitaph.
We filled the glasses to the brim,
“The land’s own wine” you know,
And solemnly we drank to him
Who should be first to...

Legate, I had the news last night, my cohort ordered home
By ships to Portus Itius and thence by road to Rome.
I've marched the companies aboard, the arms are stowed below:
Now let another take my sword. Command me not to go!

I've served in Britain forty years, from Vectis to the Wall,
I have none other home than this, nor any life at all.
Last night I did not understand, but, now the hour draws near
That calls me to my native land, I feel that land is here.

Here where men say my name was made, here where my work was done;
Here where my dearest dead are laid, my wife, my wife and son;
Here where time, custom, grief and toil, age, memory, service, love,
Have rooted me in British soil. Ah, how can I remove?

For me this land, that sea, these airs, those folk and fi...

Bear him, comrades, to his grave;
Never over one more brave
Shall the prairie grasses weep,
In the ages yet to come,
When the millions in our room,
What we sow in tears, shall reap.
Bear him up the icy hill,
With the Kansas, frozen still
As his noble heart, below,
And the land he came to till
With a freeman's thews and will,
And his poor hut roofed with snow!

One more look of that dead face,
Of his murder's ghastly trace!
One more kiss, O widowed one!
Lay your left hands on his brow,
Lift you right hands up and vow
That his work shall yet be done.

Patience, friends! The eye of God
Every path by Murder trod
Watches, lidless, day and night;
And the dead man in his shroud,
And his widow weeping loud,
And our hearts, ...

"Pass it along, the wiring party's going out" -
And yawning sentries mumble, "Wirers going out,"
Unravelling; twisting; hammering stakes with muffled thud,
They toil with stealthy haste and anger in their blood.

The Boche sends up a flare. Black forms stand rigid there,
Stock-still like posts; then darkness, and the clumsy ghosts
Stride hither and thither, whispering, tripped by clutching snare
Of snags and tangles.
    Ghastly dawn with vaporous coasts
Gleams desolate along the sky, night's misery ended.

Young Hughes was badly hit; I heard him carried away,
Moaning at every lurch; no doubt he'll die to-day.
But we can say the front-line wire's been safely mended.

These bays be thine; and, tho' not form'd to shine
Clear as thy colour, faultless as thy line,
Yet shall the Muse essay, in humble verse,
Thy merits, lovely Painting! to rehearse.
As when the demon of the winter storm
Robs each sweet flow'ret of its beauteous form,
The Spirit of the stream, in crystal wave,
Sleeps whilst the chilling blasts above him rave,
Till the Sun spreads his animating fires,
And sullen Darkness from the scene retires,
Then mountain-nymphs discard their robes of snow,
And in green mantles smile in roseate glow,
And rivers, loosen'd from their icy chain,
Spread joy and richness thro' the verdant plain,
Thus, in those climes where skies are ever fair,
Each infant Science breath'd a genial air,
Climes where the Earth her stores to all resign...

Here is the place; right over the hill
Runs the path I took;
You can see the gap in the old wall still,
And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.

There is the house, with the gate red-barred,
And the poplars tall;
And the barn’s brown length, and the cattle-yard,
And the white horns tossing above the wall.

There are the beehives ranged in the sun;
And down by the brink
Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o’errun,
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,
Heavy and slow;
And the same rose blooms, and the same sun glows,
And the same brook sings of a year ago.

There’s the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze;
And the June sun warm
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,
Setting, as t...

Black clouds hung low and heavy,
Above the sunset glare;
And in the garden dimly
We wandered here and there.
So full of strife, of trouble
The night was dark, afraid,
Like our own love, so merely
For tears and sighings made.
That when it came to parting,
And I must mount and go,
With all my soul I wished it
That God would lay me low.

Thick rise the spear-shafts o'er the land
That erst the harvest bore;
The sword is heavy in the hand,
And we return no more.
The light wind waves the Ruddy Fox,
Our banner of the war,
And ripples in the Running Ox,
And we return no more.
Across our stubble acres now
The teams go four and four;
But out-worn elders guide the plough,
And we return no more.
And now the women heavy-eyed
Turn through the open door
From gazing down the highway wide,
Where we return no more.
The shadows of the fruited close
Dapple the feast-hall floor;
There lie our dogs and dream and doze,
And we return no more.
Down from the minster tower to-day
Fall the soft chimes of yore
Amidst the chattering jackdaws' play:

"Dear Charlie," breathed a soldier,
"O comrade true and tried,
Who in the heat of battle
Pressed closely to my side;
I feel that I am stricken,
My life is ebbing fast;
I fain would have you with me,
Dear Charlie, till the last.

"It seems so sudden, Charlie,
To think to-morrow's sun
Will look upon me lifeless,
And I not twenty-one!
I little dreamed this morning,
Twould bring my last campaign;
God's ways are not as our ways,
And I will not complain.

"There's one at home, dear Charlie,
Will mourn for me when dead,
Whose heart--it is a mother's--
Can scarce be comforted.
You'll write and tell her, Charlie,
With my dear love, that I
Fought bravely as a soldier should,
And died as he should die.

"And you will...

Almighty Power! Who through the past
    Our Nation's course has safely led;
Behold again the sky o'ercast,
    Again is heard the martial tread!
        Our stay in each contingency,
        Our Father's God, we turn to thee!

For lo! The bugle note of war
    Is wafted from a southern strand!
O Lord of Battles! we implore
    The guidance of Thy mighty hand,
        While as of yore, the hero draws
        His sword in Freedom's sacred cause!

And when at last the oaken wreath
    Shall crown afresh the victor's brow;
And Peace the conquering sword resheath,
    Be with us then, as well as now!
        Our stay in each contingency,
        In peace or war, we turn to Thee!

One memory trembles on our lips;
It throbs in every breast;
In tear-dimmed eyes, in mirth's eclipse,
The shadow stands confessed.

O silent voice, that cheered so long
Our manhood's marching day,
Without thy breath of heavenly song,
How weary seems the way!

Vain every pictured phrase to tell
Our sorrowing heart's desire, -
The shattered harp, the broken shell,
The silent unstrung lyre;

For youth was round us while he sang;
It glowed in every tone;
With bridal chimes the echoes rang,
And made the past our own.

Oh blissful dream! Our nursery joys
We know must have an end,
But love and friendship's broken toys
May God's good angels mend!

The cheering smile, the voice of mirth
And laughter's gay surprise
T...