Who hath a heart courageous
Will fight with right good cheer;
For well may he his foes out-face
Who owns no foe called Fear!

Who hath a heart courageous
Will fight as knight of old
For that which he doth count his own -
Against the world to hold.

Who hath a heart courageous
Will fight both night and day,
Against the Host Invisible -
That holds his soul at bay,

Who hath a heart courageous
Rests with tranquillity,
For Time he counts not as his foe,
Nor Death his enemy.

I

Low and mournful be the strain,
Haughty thought be far from me;
Tones of penitence and pain,
Meanings of the tropic sea;
Low and tender in the cell
Where a captive sits in chains.
Crooning ditties treasured well
From his Afric's torrid plains.
Sole estate his sire bequeathed,--
Hapless sire to hapless son,--
Was the wailing song he breathed,
And his chain when life was done.

What his fault, or what his crime?
Or what ill planet crossed his prime?
Heart too soft and will too weak
To front the fate that crouches near,--
Dove beneath the vulture's beak;--
Will song dissuade the thirsty spear?
Dragged from his mother's arms and breast,
Displaced, disfurnished here,
His wistful toil to do his best
Chilled by a ribald jeer...

List, the winds of March are blowing;
Her ground-flowers shrink, afraid of showing
Their meek heads to the nipping air,
Which ye feel not, happy pair!
Sunk into a kindly sleep.
We, meanwhile, our hope will keep;
And if Time leagued with adverse Change
(Too busy fear!) shall cross its range,
Whatsoever check they bring,
Anxious duty hindering,
To like hope our prayers will cling.

Thus, while the ruminating spirit feeds
Upon the events of home as life proceeds,
Affections pure and holy in their source
Gain a fresh impulse, run a livelier course;
Hopes that within the Father's heart prevail,
Are in the experienced Grandsire's slow to fail;
And if the harp pleased his gay youth, it rings
To his grave touch with no unready strings,
While though...

Discreet and prudent we that discord call
That either profits, or not hurts at all.

Across a world where all men grieve
And grieving strive the more,
The great days range like tides and leave
Our dead on every shore.
Heavy the load we undergo,
And our own hands prepare,
If we have parley with the foe,
The load our sons must bear.
Before we loose the word
That bids new worlds to birth,
Needs must we loosen first the sword
Of Justice upon earth;
Or else all else is vain
Since life on earth began,
And the spent world sinks back again
Hopeless of God and Man.
A People and their King
Through ancient sin grown strong,
Because they feared no reckoning
Would set no bound to wrong;
But now their hour is past,
And we who bore it find Evil
Incarnate hell at last
To answer to mankind.
For agony and spoil
Of na...

In the fair days when God
By man as godlike trod,
And each alike was Greek, alike was free,
God’s lightning spared, they said,
Alone the happier head
Whose laurels screened it; fruitless grace for thee,
To whom the high gods gave of right
Their thunders and their laurels and their light.

Sunbeams and bays before
Our master’s servants wore,
For these Apollo left in all men’s lands;
But far from these ere now
And watched with jealous brow
Lay the blind lightnings shut between God’s hands,
And only loosed on slaves and kings
The terror of the tempest of their wings.

Born in those younger years
That shone with storms of spears
And shook in the wind blown from a dead world’s pyre,
When by her back-blown hair
Napoleon caught the fair<...

Off with the fetters
That chafe and restrain!
Off with the chain!
Here Art and Letters,
Music and wine,
And Myrtle and Wanda,
The winsome witches,
Blithely combine.
Here are true riches,
Here is Golconda,
Here are the Indies,
Here we are free--
Free as the wind is,
Free, as the sea.
Free!

Houp-la!

What have we
To do with the way
Of the Pharisee?
We go or we stay
At our own sweet will;
We think as we say,
And we say or keep still
At our own sweet will,
At our own sweet will.

Here we are free
To be good or bad,
Sane or mad,
Merry or grim
As the mood may be,--
Free as the whim
Of a spook on a spree,--
Free to be oddities,
Not mere commodities,
Stupid and sa...

Bear and forbear, I counsel thee,
Forgive and be forgiven,
For Charity is the golden key
That opens the gate of heaven.

    Grant me, indulgent Heav'n, that I may live
    To see the miscreants feel the pains they give,
    Deal Freedom's sacred treasures free as air,
    Till slave and despot be but things which were.

I.
Doubt no longer that the Highest is the wisest and the best,
Let not all that saddens Nature blight thy hope or break thy rest,
Quail not at the fiery mountain, at the shipwreck, or the rolling
Thunder, or the rending earthquake, or the famine, or the pest!

II.
Neither mourn if human creeds be lower than the heart’s desire!
Thro’ the gates that bar the distance comes a gleam of what is higher.
Wait till Death has flung them open, when the man will make the Maker
Dark no more with human hatreds in the glare of deathless fire!

I

The wise and great of every clime,
Through all the spacious walks of Time,
Where'er the Muse her power display'd,
With joy have listen'd and obey'd.
For taught of heaven, the sacred Nine
Persuasive numbers, forms divine,
To mortal sense impart:
They best the soul with glory fire;
They noblest counsels, boldest deeds inspire;
And high o'er Fortune's rage inthrone the fixed heart.


Nor less prevailing is their charm
The vengeful bosom to disarm;
To melt the proud with human woe,
And prompt unwilling tears to flow.

Can wealth a power like this afford?
Can Cromwell's arts, or Marlborough's sword,
An equal empire claim?
No, Hastings. Thou my words wilt own:
Thy breast the gifts of every Muse hath known;
Nor shall the giv...

All hail the dawn of a new day breaking,
When a strong-armed nation shall take away
The weary burdens from backs that are aching
With maximum labour and minimum pay;
When no man is honoured who hoards his millions;
When no man feasts on another's toil;
And God's poor suffering, striving billions
Shall share His riches of sun and soil.

There is gold for all in the earth's broad bosom,
There is food for all in the land's great store;
Enough is provided if rightly divided;
Let each man take what he needs - no more.
Shame on the miser with unused riches,
Who robs the toiler to swell his hoard,
Who beats down the wage of the digger of ditches,
And steals the bread from the poor man's board.

Shame on the owner of mines whose cruel
And selfish measur...

There is not anything more wonderful
Than a great people moving towards the deep
Of an unguessed and unfeared future; nor
Is aught so dear of all held dear before
As the new passion stirring in their veins
When the destroying Dragon wakes from sleep.

Happy is England now, as never yet!
And though the sorrows of the slow days fret
Her faithfullest children, grief itself is proud.
Ev'n the warm beauty of this spring and summer
That turns to bitterness turns then to gladness
Since for this England the beloved ones died.

Happy is England in the brave that die
For wrongs not hers and wrongs so sternly hers;
Happy in those that give, give, and endure
The pain that never the new years may cure;
Happy in all her dark woods, green fields, towns,
Her hi...

I am thinking of fern forests that once did towering stand,
Crowning all the barren mountains, shading all the dreary land.

Oh, the dreadful, quiet brooding, the solitude sublime,
That reigned like shadowy spectres o'er the third great day of time.

In long, low lines the tideless seas on dull gray shores did break,
No song of bird, no gleam of wing, o'er wood or reedy lake -

No flowers perfumed the pulseless air, no stars, no moon, no sun
To tell in silver language, night was past, or day was done.

Only silence rising with the ghostly morning's misty light,
Silence, silence, settling down upon the moonless, starless night.

And the ferns, and giant mosses, noiseless sentinels did stand,
Looking o'er the tideless ocean, watching o'er the dreary land.
<...

I.

They who maintained their rights,
Through storm and stress,
And walked in all the ways
That God made known,
Led by no wandering lights,
And by no guess,
Through dark and desolate days
Of trial and moan:
Here let their monument
Rise, like a word
In rock commemorative
Of our Land's youth;
Of ways the Puritan went,
With soul love-spurred
To suffer, die, and live
For faith and truth.
Here they the corner-stone
Of Freedom laid;
Here in their hearts' distress
They lit the lights
Of Liberty alone;
Here, with God's aid,
Conquered the wilderness,
Secured their rights.
Not men, but giants, they,
Who wrought with toil
And sweat of brawn and brain
Their freehold here;
Who, with their blood, each day...

No Berserk thirst of blood had they,
No battle-joy was theirs, who set
Against the alien bayonet
Their homespun breasts in that old day.

Their feet had trodden peaceful, ways;
They loved not strife, they dreaded pain;
They saw not, what to us is plain,
That God would make man's wrath his praise.

No seers were they, but simple men;
Its vast results the future hid
The meaning of the work they did
Was strange and dark and doubtful then.

Swift as their summons came they left
The plough mid-furrow standing still,
The half-ground corn grist in the mill,
The spade in earth, the axe in cleft.

They went where duty seemed to call,
They scarcely asked the reason why;
They only knew they could but die,
And death was not the worst of ...

Perhaps too far in these considerate days
Has patience carried her submissive ways;
Wisdom has taught us to be calm and meek,
To take one blow, and turn the other cheek;
It is not written what a man shall do,
If the rude caitiff smite the other too!

Land of our fathers, in thine hour of need
God help thee, guarded by the passive creed!
As the lone pilgrim trusts to beads and cowl,
When through the forest rings the gray wolf's howl;
As the deep galleon trusts her gilded prow
When the black corsair slants athwart her bow;
As the poor pheasant, with his peaceful mien,
Trusts to his feathers, shining golden-green,
When the dark plumage with the crimson beak
Has rustled shadowy from its splintered peak, -
So trust thy friends, whose babbling tongues would cha...

An ancient Chronicle has told
That, in the famous days of old,
    In Antioch under ground
    The self-same lance was found -
    Unbitten by corrosive rust -
The lance the Roman soldier thrust
    In CHRIST'S bare side upon the Tree;
    And that it brought
    A mighty spell
    To those who fought
    The Infidel
    And mighty victory.

    And so this day
    To you I say -
Speaking for millions of true Southern men -
    In words that have no undertow -
    I say, and say agen:
    Come weal, or woe,
    Should this Republic ever fight,
    By land, or sea,
For present law, or ancient right
    The South will be
    As was that lance,
    Albeit not found
    Hid under ground
But in the forefront of the ...