Theodore Roosevelt

"The interpreter then called for a man-servant of his, one Great-Heart." - Bunyan's' Pilgrim's Progess.

Concerning brave Captains
Our age hath made known
For all men to honour,
One standeth alone,
Of whom, o'er both oceans,
Both peoples may say:
"Our realm is diminished
With Great-Heart away."

In purpose unsparing,
In action no less,
The labours he praised
He would seek and profess
Through travail and battle,
At hazard and pain....
And our world is none the braver
Since Great-Heart was ta'en!

Plain speech with plain folk,
And plain words for false things,
Plain faith in plain dealing
'Twixt neighbours or kings,
He used and he followed,
However it sped....
Oh, our world is none m...

Once, at night, in the manor wood
My Love and I long silent stood,
Amazed that any heavens could
Decree to part us, bitterly repining.
My Love, in aimless love and grief,
Reached forth and drew aside a leaf
That just above us played the thief
And stole our starlight that for us was shining.

A star that had remarked her pain
Shone straightway down that leafy lane,
And wrought his image, mirror-plain,
Within a tear that on her lash hung gleaming.
"Thus Time," I cried, "is but a tear
Some one hath wept 'twixt hope and fear,
Yet in his little lucent sphere
Our star of stars, Eternity, is beaming."


Macon, Georgia, 1867. Revised in 1879.

The long winter wanes. On the wings
of the spring come the geese and the mallards;
On the bare oak the red-robin sings,
and the crocus peeps up on the prairies,
And the bobolink pipes, but he brings
of the blue-eyed, brave White Chief no tidings.
With the waning of winter, alas,
waned the life of the aged Ta-té-psin;
Ere the wild pansies peeped from the grass,
to the Land of the Spirits he journeyed;
Like a babe in its slumber he passed,
or the snow from the hill-tops of April;
And the dark-eyed Winona, at last,
stood alone by the graves of her kindred.
When their myriad mouths opened the trees
to the sweet dew of heaven and the raindrops,
And the April showers fell on the leas,
on his mound fell the tears of Winona.
Round her drooping form gathered ...

    Sitting patient in the shadow
    Till the blessed light shall come,
    A serene and saintly presence
    Sanctifies our troubled home.
    Earthly joys and hopes and sorrows
    Break like ripples on the strand
    Of the deep and solemn river
    Where her willing feet now stand.


    O my sister, passing from me,
    Out of human care and strife,
    Leave me, as a gift, those virtues
    Which have beautified your life.
    Dear, bequeath me that great patience
    Which has power to sustain
    A cheerful, uncomplaining spirit
    In its prison-house of pain.


    Give me, for I need it sorely,
    Of that courage, wise and sweet,
    Which has made the path of duty
    Green beneath your willing feet.
    Gi...

Sweet Emma Moreland of yonder town
Met me walking on yonder way;
‘And have you lost your heart?’ she said;
‘And are you married yet, Edward Gray?’

Sweet Emma Moreland spoke to me;
Bitterly weeping I turn’d away:
‘Sweet Emma Moreland, love no more
Can touch the heart of Edward Gray.

‘Ellen Adair she loved me well,
Against her father’s and mother’s will;
To-day I sat for an hour and wept
By Ellen’s grave, on the windy hill.

‘Shy she was, and I thought her cold,
Thought her proud, and fled over the sea;
Fill’d I was with folly and spite,
When Ellen Adair was dying for me.

‘Cruel, cruel the words I said!
Cruelly came they back to-day:
“You’re too slight and fickle,” I said,
“To trouble the heart of Edward Gray.”

‘T...

Summer's pleasures they are gone like to visions every one,
And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on.
I tried to call them back, but unbidden they are gone
Far away from heart and eye and forever far away.
Dear heart, and can it be that such raptures meet decay?
I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay,
I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play
On its bank at "clink and bandy," "chock" and "taw" and "ducking stone,"
Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own
Like a ruin of the past all alone.

When I used to lie and sing by old Eastwell's boiling spring,
When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a swing,
And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a thing,
With heart just like a feather, now as heav...

Non numero horas nisi serenas

When Fall drowns morns in mist, it seems
In soul I am a part of it;
A portion of its humid beams,
A form of fog, I seem to flit
From dreams to dreams....

An old château sleeps 'mid the hills
Of France: an avenue of sorbs
Conceals it: drifts of daffodils
Bloom by a 'scutcheoned gate with barbs
Like iron bills.

I pass the gate unquestioned; yet,
I feel, announced. Broad holm-oaks make
Dark pools of restless violet.
Between high bramble banks a lake, -
As in a net

The tangled scales twist silver, - shines....
Gray, mossy turrets swell above
A sea of leaves. And where the pines
Shade ivied walls, there lies my love,
My heart divines.

I know her window, slimly seen
From...

WRITTEN ON RETURNING A BLANK BOOK.


Take back the virgin page,
    White and unwritten still;
Some hand, more calm and sage,
    The leaf must fill.
Thoughts come, as pure as light
    Pure as even you require:
But, oh! each word I write
    Love turns to fire.

Yet let me keep the book:
    Oft shall my heart renew,
When on its leaves I look,
    Dear thoughts of you.
Like you, 'tis fair and bright;
    Like you, too bright and fair
To let wild passion write
    One wrong wish there.

Haply, when from those eyes
    Far, far away I roam.
Should calmer thoughts arise
    Towards you and home;
Fancy may trace some line,
    Worthy those eyes to meet,
Thoughts that not burn, but shine,
    Pure,...

An Indian girl was sitting where
Her lover, slain in battle, slept;
Her maiden veil, her own black hair,
Came down o'er eyes that wept;
And wildly, in her woodland tongue,
This sad and simple lay she sung:

"I've pulled away the shrubs that grew
Too close above thy sleeping head,
And broke the forest boughs that threw
Their shadows o'er thy bed,
That, shining from the sweet south-west,
The sunbeams might rejoice thy rest.

"It was a weary, weary road
That led thee to the pleasant coast,
Where thou, in his serene abode,
Hast met thy father's ghost:
Where everlasting autumn lies
On yellow woods and sunny skies.

"Twas I the broidered mocsen made,
That shod thee for that distant land;
'Twas I thy bow and arrows laid
Beside ...

An old sweetheart of mine! - Is this her presence here with me,
Or but a vain creation of a lover's memory?
A fair, illusive vision that would vanish into air
Dared I even touch the silence with the whisper of a prayer?

Nay, let me then believe in all the blended false and true -
The semblance of the OLD love and the substance of the NEW, -
The THEN of changeless sunny days - the NOW of shower and shine -
But Love forever smiling - as that old sweetheart of mine.

This ever-restful sense of HOME, though shouts ring in the hall. -
The easy chair - the old book-shelves and prints along the wall;
The rare HABANAS in their box, or gaunt church-warden-stem
That often wags, above the jar, derisively at them.

As one who cons at evening o'er an album, all alone,
And...

Argument.

To leap from the promontory of LEUCADIA was believed by the Greeks to be a remedy for hopeless love, if the self-devoted victim escaped with life. Artemisia lost her life in the dangerous experiment: and Sappho is said thus to have perished, in attempting to cure her passion for Phaon.


SAPPHO

(Scene the promontory of Leucadia.)

This is the spot:--'tis here Tradition says
That hopeless Love from this high towering rock
Leaps headlong to Oblivion or to Death.
Oh 'tis a giddy height! my dizzy head
Swims at the precipice--'tis death to fall!

Lie still, thou coward heart! this is no time
To shake with thy strong throbs the frame convuls'd.
To die,--to be at rest--oh pleasant thought!
Perchance to leap and live; the soul all still,
And...

1
The Eurydice - it concerned thee, O Lord:
Three hundred souls, O alas! on board,
Some asleep unawakened, all un-
warned, eleven fathoms fallen

2
Where she foundered! One stroke
Felled and furled them, the hearts of oak!
And flockbells off the aerial
Downs' forefalls beat to the burial.

3
For did she pride her, freighted fully, on
Bounden bales or a hoard of bullion? -
Precious passing measure,
Lads and men her lade and treasure.

4
She had come from a cruise, training seamen -
Men, boldboys soon to be men:
Must it, worst weather,
Blast bole and bloom together?

5
No Atlantic squall overwrought her
Or rearing billow of the Biscay water:
Home was hard at hand
And the blow bore from land.

...

1.

There was a time, I need not name,
Since it will ne'er forgotten be,
When all our feelings were the same
As still my soul hath been to thee.


2.

And from that hour when first thy tongue
Confess'd a love which equall'd mine,
Though many a grief my heart hath wrung,
Unknown, and thus unfelt, by thine,


3.

None, none hath sunk so deep as this -
To think how all that love hath flown;
Transient as every faithless kiss,
But transient in thy breast alone.


4.

And yet my heart some solace knew,
When late I heard thy lips declare,
In accents once imagined true,
Remembrance of the days that were.


5.

Yes! my adored, yet most unkind!
Though thou wilt never love agai...

    Now spring comes round again
    With blossom on the tree,
    Dark blossom of the peach,
    Light blossom of the pear
    And amorous birds complain
    And nesting birds prepare
    And love's keen fingers reach
    After the heart of me.

    But now the blackthorn blows
    About the dusty lane
    And new buds peep and peer,
    I have no joy at all,
    For love draws near its close
    And love's white blossoms fall
    And in the springing year
    Love's fingers bring me pain.

This morning is the morning of the day,
When I and Eustace from the city went
To see the Gardener’s Daughter; I and he,
Brothers in Art; a friendship so complete
Portion’d in halves between us, that we grew
The fable of the city where we dwelt.
My Eustace might have sat for Hercules;
So muscular he spread, so broad of breast.
He, by some law that holds in love, and draws
The greater to the lesser, long desired
A certain miracle of symmetry,
A miniature of loveliness, all grace
Summ’d up and closed in little;—Juliet, she
So light of foot, so light of spirit—oh, she
To me myself, for some three careless moons,
The summer pilot of an empty heart
Unto the shores of nothing! Know you not
Such touches are but embassies of love,
To tamper with the feelings,...

When to that house I came which, long ago,
My heart had builded of its joy and woe,
Upon its threshold, lo! I paused again,
Dreading to enter; fearing to behold
The place wherein my Love had lived of old,
And where my other self lay dead and slain.

I feared to see some shape, some Hope once dear,
Behind the arras dead; some face of Fear,
With eyes accusing, that would sear my soul,
Taking away my manhood and my strength
With heartbreak memories.... And yet, at length,
Again I stood within that house of dole.

Sombre and beautiful with stately things
The long hall lay; and by the stairs the wings
Of Life and Love rose marble and unmarred:
And all the walls, hung grave with tapestry,
Gesticulated sorrow; gazed at me,
Strange speculation in their ...

All through the night time, and all through the day time,
    Dreading the morning and dreading the night,
Nearer and nearer we drift to the May time
    Season of beauty and season of blight,
Leaves on the linden, and sun on the meadow,
    Green in the garden, and bloom everywhere,
Gloom in my heart, and a terrible shadow,
    Walks by me, sits by me, stands by my chair.

Oh, but the birds by the brooklet are cheery,
    Oh, but the woods show such delicate greens,
Strange how you droop and how soon you are weary -
    Too well I know what that weariness means.
But how could I know in the crisp winter weather
    (Though sometimes I noticed a catch in your breath),
Riding and singing and dancing together,
    How could I know you were racing with death?

I.

Sunflowers wither and lilies die,
Poppies are pods of seeds;
The first red leaves on the pathway lie,
Like blood of a heart that bleeds.

Weary alway will it be to-day,
Weary and wan and wet;
Dawn and noon will the clouds hang gray,
And the autumn wind will sigh and say,
"He comes not yet, not yet.
Weary alway, alway!"

II.

Hollyhocks bend all tattered and torn,
Marigolds all are gone;
The last pale rose lies all forlorn,
Like love that is trampled on.

Weary, ah me! to-night will be,
Weary and wild and hoar;
Rain and mist will blow from the sea,
And the wind will sob in the autumn tree,
"He comes no more, no more.
Weary, ah me! ah me!"