War

In these rapid, restless shadows,
Once I walked at eventide,
When a gentle, silent maiden,
Walked in beauty at my side.
She alone there walked beside me
All in beauty, like a bride.

Pallidly the moon was shining
On the dewy meadows nigh;
On the silvery, silent rivers,
On the mountains far and high,,
On the ocean’s star-lit waters,
Where the winds a-weary die.

Slowly, silently we wandered
From the open cottage door,
Underneath the elm’s long branches
To the pavement bending o’er;
Underneath the mossy willow
And the dying sycamore.

With the myriad stars in beauty
All bedight, the heavens were seen,
Radiant hopes were bright around me,
Like the light of stars serene;
Like the mellow midnight splendor
Of the Nig...

Reveille sang its call among the barracks' paths,
And moving air disturbed the tall, commanding lamps.

It was the time when dreams of lust and swarming heat
Set brown young adolescents twisting in their sheets;
When, like a bloody eye that pulses as it stares,
The lamp will cast a stain of red throughout the air;
When spirits, in the burden of the body's sway,
Mimic the struggles of the lamplight and the day.
The air, a face in tears that breeezes will wipe dry,
Is full of tremors of escaping things that fly,
And he is tired of writing, she of making love.

This house and that began to send their smoke above.
With ghastly painted eyes, the women of the streets,
Mouths gaping open, lay within their stupid sleep.
Poor women, slack breasts dangling, cold and lea...

Thou who singest through the earth,
    All the earth's wild creatures fly thee,
Everywhere thou marrest mirth.
    Dumbly they defy thee.
There is something they deny thee.

Pines thy fallen nature ever
For the unfallen Nature sweet.
But she shuns thy long endeavour,
    Though her flowers and wheat
Throng and press thy pausing feet.

Though thou tame a bird to love thee,
Press thy face to grass and flowers,
All these things reserve above thee
    Secrets in the bowers,
Secrets in the sun and showers.

Sing thy sorrow, sing thy gladness.
In thy songs must wind and tree
Bear the fictions of thy sadness,
    Thy humanity.
For their truth is not for thee.

Wait, and many a secret nest,
Many a hoarded winter-store

The warm pulse of the nation has grown chill;
    The muffled heart of Freedom, like a knell,
Throbs solemnly for one whose earthly will
    Wrought every mission well.

Whose glowing reason towered above the sea
    Of dark disaster like a beacon light,
And led the Ship of State, unscathed and free,
    Out of the gulfs of night.

When Treason, rabid-mouthed, and fanged with steel,
    Lay growling o'er the bones of fallen braves,
And when beneath the tyrant's iron heel
    Were ground the hearts of slaves,

And War, with all his train of horrors, leapt
    Across the fortress-walls of Liberty
With havoc e'en the marble goddess wept
    With tears of blood to see.

Throughout it all his brave and kingly mind
    Kept loyal vigil o'er ...

    Late crippl'd of an arm, and now a leg,
    About to beg a pass for leave to beg:
    Dull, listless, teas'd, dejected, and deprest,
    (Nature is adverse to a cripple's rest;)
    Will generous Graham list to his Poet's wail?
    (It soothes poor misery, hearkening to her tale,)
    And hear him curse the light he first survey'd,
    And doubly curse the luckless rhyming trade?

    Thou, Nature, partial Nature! I arraign;
    Of thy caprice maternal I complain:
    The lion and the bull thy care have found,
    One shakes the forests, and one spurns the ground:
    Thou giv'st the ass his hide, the snail his shell,
    Th' envenom'd wasp, victorious, guards his cell;
    Thy minions, kings, defend, control, devour,
    In all th' omnipotence of rule and...

To every gentle Muse in vain allied,
In youth's full early morning HEADLEY died!
Too long had sickness left her pining trace,
With slow, still touch, on each decaying grace:
Untimely sorrow marked his thoughtful mien!
Despair upon his languid smile was seen!
Yet Resignation, musing on the grave,
(When now no hope could cheer, no pity save),
And Virtue, that scarce felt its fate severe,
And pale Affection, dropping soft a tear
For friends beloved, from whom she soon must part,
Breathed a sad solace on his aching heart.
Nor ceased he yet to stray, where, winding wild,
The Muse's path his drooping steps beguiled,
Intent to rescue some neglected rhyme,
Lone-blooming, from the mournful waste of time;
And cull each scattered sweet, that seemed to smile
Like flo...

This is the Chapel: here, my son,
    Your father thought the thoughts of youth,
And heard the words that one by one
    The touch of Life has turned to truth.
Here in a day that is not far,
    You too may speak with noble ghosts
Of manhood and the vows of war
    You made before the Lord of Hosts.

To set the cause above renown,
    To love the game beyond the prize,
To honour, while you strike him down,
    The foe that comes with fearless eyes;
To count the life of battle good,
    And dear the land that gave you birth,
And dearer yet the brotherhood
    That binds the brave of all the earth---

My son, the oath is yours: the end
    Is His, Who built the world of strife,
Who gave His children Pain for friend,
    And Death for sur...

To the Author of the "Songs of the Army of the Night."

We - who, encircled in sleepless sadness
    With ears laid close to the Austral earth,
Have heard far cries of wrong-wrought madness,
    Of hopeless anguish and murd'rous mirth
Beneath all noise of maudlin gladness
    Awail, environ the world's wide girth -

Almost arise with Hope's keen urging
    When out the vasty and night-bound North
Red rays ascend, and Songs resurging
    Through all the darkness and chill, come forth!

The comet climbs until it scorches
    The sacred dais that skies the great,
Until it gleams on palace porches,
    Where blissful aeons-to-be hold state -
Fades, and we know it one of the torches
    Madmen a moment elevate!

And, closer cl...

I'd watched the sorrow of the evening sky,
And smelt the sea, and earth, and the warm clover,
And heard the waves, and the seagull's mocking cry.

And in them all was only the old cry,
That song they always sing, "The best is over!
You may remember now, and think, and sigh,
O silly lover!"
And I was tired and sick that all was over,
And because I,
For all my thinking, never could recover
One moment of the good hours that were over.
And I was sorry and sick, and wished to die.

Then from the sad west turning wearily,
I saw the pines against the white north sky,
Very beautiful, and still, and bending over
Their sharp black heads against a quiet sky.
And there was peace in them; and I
Was happy, and forgot to play the lover,
And laughed, and d...

They said that Fame her clarion dropped
Because great deeds were done no more -
That even Duty knew no shining ends,
And Glory - 'twas a fallen star!
But battle can heroes and bards restore.
Nay, look at Kenesaw:
Perils the mailed ones never knew
Are lightly braved by the ragged coats of blue,
And gentler hearts are bared to deadlier war.

Oh, children of the tropics,
    Amid our pain and wrong
Have you no other mission
    Than music, dance, and song?

When through the weary ages
    Our dripping tears still fall,
Is this a time to dally
    With pleasure's silken thrall?

Go, muffle all your viols;
    As heroes learn to stand,
With faith in God's great justice
    Nerve every heart and hand.

Dream not of ease nor pleasure,
    Nor honor, wealth, nor fame,
Till from the dust you've lifted
    Our long-dishonored name;

And crowned that name with glory
    By deeds of holy worth,
To shine with light emblazoned,
    The noblest name on earth.

Count life a dismal failure,
    Unblessing and unblest,
That seeks 'mid ease inglorious
   ...

Though dead the flower,
That, from her tower,
Love flung you in some perfect hour:
Though quenched the light,
That, on the height,
Faith built, a beacon in the fight:
Though gone the star,
That, seen afar,
Hope lit to guide you through the war:
Yet draw your sword,
And shout your word,
And plunge into the battling horde!
Give Fate the lie!
And, live or die,
Yours, yours shall be the victory!

I.

The last rose falls, wrecked of the wind and rain;
Where once it bloomed the thorns alone remain:
Dead in the wet the slow rain strews the rose.
The day was dim; now eve comes on again,
Grave as a life weighed down by many woes, -
So is the joy dead, and alive the pain.

The brown leaf flutters where the green leaf died;
Bare are the boughs, and bleak the forest side:
The wind is whirling with the last wild leaf.
The eve was strange; now dusk comes weird and wide,
Gaunt as a life that lives alone with grief, -
So doth the hope go and despair abide.

An empty nest hangs where the wood-bird pled;
Along the west the dusk dies, stormy red:
The frost is subtle as a serpent's breath.
The dusk was sad; now night is overhead,
Grim as a soul bro...

Just as those final words were penned, the sun broke out in power,
And gladdened all things; but, as chanced, within that very hour,
Air blackened, thunder growled, fire flashed from clouds that hid the sky,
And, for the Subject of my Verse, I heaved a pensive sigh.

Nor could my heart by second thoughts from heaviness be cleared,
For bodied forth before my eyes the cross-crowned hut appeared;
And, while around it storm as fierce seemed troubling earth and air,
I saw, within, the Norman Boy kneeling alone in prayer.

The Child, as if the thunder's voice spake with articulate call,
Bowed meekly in submissive fear, before the Lord of All;
His lips were moving; and his eyes, up-raised to sue for grace,
With soft illumination cheered the dimness of that place.

How bea...

(See Note 51)

A still procession goes
Amid the battle's booming,
Its arm the red cross shows;
It prays in many forms of speech,
And, bending o'er the fallen,
Brings peace and home to each.

Not only is it found
Where bleed the wounds of battle,
But all the world around.
It is the love the whole world feels
In noble hearts and tender,
While gentle pity kneels; -

It is all labor's dread
Of war's mad waste and murder,
Praying that peace may spread;
It is all sufferers who heed
The sighing of a brother,
And know his sorrow's need; -

It is each groan of pain
Heard from the sick and wounded,
'T is Christian prayer humane;
It is their cry who lonely grope,
'T is the oppressed man's moaning,
The dying brea...

O Poesy is on the wane,
For Fancy's visions all unfitting;
I hardly know her face again,
Nature herself seems on the flitting.
The fields grow old and common things,
The grass, the sky, the winds a-blowing;
And spots, where still a beauty clings,
Are sighing "going! all a-going!"
O Poesy is on the wane,
I hardly know her face again.

The bank with brambles overspread,
And little molehills round about it,
Was more to me than laurel shades,
With paths of gravel finely clouted;
And streaking here and streaking there,
Through shaven grass and many a border,
With rutty lanes had no compare,
And heaths were in a richer order.
But Poesy is on the wane,
I hardly know her face again.

I sat beside the pasture stream,
When Beauty's sel...

Nella stagion che 'l ciel rapido inchina.

NIGHT BRINGS REPOSE TO OTHERS, BUT NOT TO HIM.


    In that still season, when the rapid sun
Drives down the west, and daylight flies to greet
Nations that haply wait his kindling flame;
In some strange land, alone, her weary feet
The time-worn pilgrim finds, with toil fordone,
Yet but the more speeds on her languid frame;
Her solitude the same,
When night has closed around;
Yet has the wanderer found
A deep though short forgetfulness at last
Of every woe, and every labour past.
But ah! my grief, that with each moment grows,
As fast, and yet more fast,
Day urges on, is heaviest at its close.

When Phoebus rolls his everlasting wheels
To give night room; and from encircling wood,
B...

    In days of old did law and rime
        A common pathway follow,
    For Themis in the mythic time
        Was sister of Apollo.

    The Hindu statutes tripped in feet
        As daintily as Dryads,
    And law in Wales to be complete
        Was versified in triads.

    The wise Alfonso of Castile
        Composed his code in metre
    Thereby to make its flavour feel
        A little bit the sweeter.

    But law and rime were found to be
        A trifle inconsistent,
    And now in statutes poetry
        Is wholly non-existent.

    Still here and there some advocate
        Before his fellows know it
    Has had bestowed on him by fate
        The laurel of the poet.

    Let him who has been honoured so...