Sing, mountain-wind, thy strong, superior song
Thy haughty alpine anthem, over tracts
Whose passes and whose swift, rock-straitened streams
Catch mighty life and voice from thee, and make
A lordly harmony on sea-chafed heights.
Sing, mountain-wind, and take thine ancient tone,
The grand, austere, imperial utterance.
Which drives my soul before it back to days
In one dark hour of which, when Storm rode high
Past broken hills, and when the polar gale
Roared round the Otway with the bitter breath
That speaks for ever of the White South Land
Alone with God and Silence in the cold,
I heard the touching tale of Basil Moss,

A story shining with a woman’s love!
And who that knows that love can ever doubt
How dear, divine, sublime a thing it is;
For while th...

Love entered in my heart one day,
A sad, unwelcome guest;
But when he begged that he might stay,
I let him wait and rest.
He broke my sleep with sorrowing,
And shook my dreams with tears,
And when my heart was fain to sing,
He stilled its joy with fears.

But now that he has gone his way,
I miss the old sweet pain,
And sometimes in the night I pray
That he may come again.

Long, long ago He said,
He who could wake the dead,
    And walk upon the sea--
    "Come, follow Me.

"Leave your brown nets and bring
Only your hearts to sing,
    Only your souls to pray,
    Rise, come away.

"Shake out your spirit-sails,
And brave those wilder gales,
    And I will make you then
    Fishers of men."

Was this, then, what He meant?
Was this His high intent,
    After two thousand years
    Of blood and tears?

God help us, if we fight
For right, and not for might.
    God help us if we seek
    To shield the weak.

Then, though His heaven be far
From this blind welter of war,
    He'll bless us, on the sea
    From Calvary.

Long in the lap of childhood didst thou sleep,
Think how thy youth like chaff did disappear;
Shall life's sweet Spring forever last? Look up,
Old age approaches ominously near.
Oh shake thou off the world, even as the bird
Shakes off the midnight dew that clogged his wings.
Soar upward, seek redemption from thy guilt
And from the earthly dross that round thee clings.
Draw near to God, His holy angels know,
For whom His bounteous streams of mercy flow.

Abul Hassan Judah Ben Ha-Levi. (Born Between 1080-90.)

What loveliness the years contrive
To rob us of! what exquisite
Beliefs, in which thought chanced to hit
On truths that with the world survive!
Dream-truths, that still attend their flocks
On the high hills of heart and mind,
Peopling the streams, the woods and rocks
With Beauty running like the wind.
They are not dead; but year by year
Still hold us through the inner eye
Of thought, and so can never die
As long as there's one heart to hear
Nature addressing words of love,
(As once she spoke to Rome and Greece,)
Unto the soul, whose faith shall prove
The dream will last though all else cease.

Lift thy head, thou undaunted youth!
Though some hope may now break, forsooth,
Brighter a new one and higher
Shall throe eye fill with its fire.

Lift thy head to the vision clear!
Something near thee is calling: "Here!" -
Something with myriad voicing,
Ever in courage rejoicing.

Lift thy head, for an azure height
Rears within thee a vault of light;
Music of harps there is ringing,
Jubilant, rapturous singing.

Lift thy head and thy longing sing!
None shall conquer the growing spring;
Where there is life-making power,
Time shall set free the flower.

Lift thy head and thyself baptize
In the hopes that radiant rise,
Heaven to earth foreshowing,
And in each life-spark glowing!

The birds put off their every hue
To dress a room for Montagu.
The peacock sends his heavenly dyes,
His rainbows and his starry eyes;
The pheasant plumes, which round enfold
His mantling neck with downy gold;
The cock his arch’d tail’s azure show;
And, river-blanch’d, the swan his snow.
All tribes beside of Indian name,
That glossy shine, or vivid flame,
Where rises, and where sets the day,
Whate’er they boast of rich and gay,
Contribute to the gorgeous plan,
Proud to advance it all they can.
This plumage neither dashing shower,
Nor blasts, that shake the dripping bower,
Shall drench again or discompose,
But, screen’d from every storm that blows,
It boasts a splendour ever new,
Safe with protecting Montagu.
To the same patroness resort,

I waited for the train at Coventry;
I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,
To match the three tall spires; and there I shaped
The city’s ancient legend into this:—
Not only we, the latest seed of Time,
New men, that in the flying of a wheel
Cry down the past, not only we, that prate
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well,
And loathed to see them overtax’d; but she
Did more, and underwent, and overcame,
The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled
In Coventry: for when he laid a tax
Upon his town, and all the mothers brought
Their children, clamouring, ‘If we pay, we starve!’
She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode
About the hall, among his dogs, alone,
His beard a foot before him, and his hai...

    SCENE: A moonlit glade on a summer midnight


    THE POET

    What consummation of the toiling moon
    O'ercomes the midnight blue with violet,
    Wherein the stars turn grey! The summer's green,
    Edgèd and strong by day, is dull and faint
    Beneath the moon's all-dominating mood,
    That in this absence of the impassioned sun,
    Sways to a sleep of sound and calm of color
    The live and vivid aspect of the world -
    Subdued as with the great expectancy
    Which blurs beginning features of a dream,
    Things and events lost 'neath an omening
    Of central and oppressive bulk to come.
    Here were the theatre of a miracle,
    If such, within a world long alienate
    From its first dreams, and shut with skeptic yea...

    "I'm taking pen in hand this night, and hard it is for me;
    My poor old fingers tremble so, my hand is stiff and slow,
    And even with my glasses on I'm troubled sore to see. . . .
    You'd little know your mother, boy; you'd little, little know.
    You mind how brisk and bright I was, how straight and trim and smart;
    'Tis weariful I am the now, and bent and frail and grey.
    I'm waiting at the road's end, lad; and all that's in my heart,
    Is just to see my boy again before I'm called away."

    "Oh well I mind the sorry day you crossed the gurly sea;
    'Twas like the heart was torn from me, a waeful wife was I.
    You said that you'd be home again in two years, maybe three;
    But nigh a score of years have gone, and still the years go by.
    I kno...

He sleeps not here; in hope and prayer
His wandering flock had gone before,
But he, the shepherd, might not share
Their sorrows on the wintry shore.

Before the Speedwell's anchor swung,
Ere yet the Mayflower's sail was spread,
While round his feet the Pilgrims clung,
The pastor spake, and thus he said: -

"Men, brethren, sisters, children dear!
God calls you hence from over sea;
Ye may not build by Haerlem Meer,
Nor yet along the Zuyder-Zee.

"Ye go to bear the saving word
To tribes unnamed and shores untrod;
Heed well the lessons ye have heard
From those old teachers taught of God.

"Yet think not unto them was lent
All light for all the coming days,
And Heaven's eternal wisdom spent
In making straight the ancient ways;

Fragment of a Dream.--The great Painters supposed to be Magicians.--The Beginnings of the Art.--Gildings on the Glories and Draperies.-- Improvements under Giotto, etc.--The first Dawn of the true Style in Masaccio.--Studied by all the great Artists who followed him.--Leonardo da Vinci, with whom commenced the Golden Age of Painting.--His Knowledge of Mathematics and of Music.--His female heads all like each other.-- Triangular Faces.--Portraits of Mona Lisa, etc.--Picture of Vanity and Modesty.--His chef-d'oeuvre, the Last Supper.--Faded and almost effaced.


Filled with the wonders I had seen
    In Rome's stupendous shrines and halls,
I felt the veil of sleep serene
Come o'er the memory of each scene,
    As twilight o'er the landscape falls.
Nor was it slumber, sound and deep,

Through Thy clear spaces, Lord, of old,
Formless and void the dead earth rolled;
Deaf to Thy heaven's sweet music, blind
To the great lights which o'er it shined;
No sound, no ray, no warmth, no breath,
A dumb despair, a wandering death.

To that dark, weltering horror came
Thy spirit, like a subtle flame,
A breath of life electrical,
Awakening and transforming all,
Till beat and thrilled in every part
The pulses of a living heart.

Then knew their bounds the land and sea;
Then smiled the bloom of mead and tree;
From flower to moth, from beast to man,
The quick creative impulse ran;
And earth, with life from thee renewed,
Was in thy holy eyesight good.

As lost and void, as dark and cold
And formless as that earth of old;
A w...

With wisdom far beyond her years,
And graver than her wondering peers,
So strong, so mild, combining still
The tender heart and queenly will,
To conscience and to duty true,
So, up from childhood, Mary Grew!

Then in her gracious womanhood
She gave her days to doing good.
She dared the scornful laugh of men,
The hounding mob, the slanderer's pen.
She did the work she found to do,
A Christian heroine, Mary Grew!

The freed slave thanks her; blessing comes
To her from women's weary homes;
The wronged and erring find in her
Their censor mild and comforter.
The world were safe if but a few
Could grow in grace as Mary Grew!

So, New Year's Eve, I sit and say,
By this low wood-fire, ashen gray;
Just wishing, as the night shuts down...

Where are they now, those wanton Boys?
For whose free range the daedal earth
Was filled with animated toys,
And implements of frolic mirth;
With tools for ready wit to guide;
And ornaments of seemlier pride,
More fresh, more bright, than princes wear;
For what one moment flung aside,
Another could repair;
What good or evil have they seen
Since I their pastime witnessed here,
Their daring wiles, their sportive cheer?
I ask, but all is dark between!
They met me in a genial hour,
When universal nature breathed
As with the breath of one sweet flower,
A time to overrule the power
Of discontent, and check the birth
Of thoughts with better thoughts at strife,
The most familiar bane of life
Since parting Innocence bequeathed
Mortality to Earth...

    Art going to do a kindly deed?
    'Tis never too soon to begin;
    Make haste, make haste, for the moments speed,
    The world, my dear one, has pressing need
    Of your tender thought and kindly deed.
    'Tis never too soon to begin.

    But if the deed be a selfish one,
    'Tis ever too soon to begin;
    If some heart will be sorer when all is done,
    Put it off! put it off from sun to sun,
    Remembering always, my own dear one,
    'Tis ever too soon to begin.

The man of life upright,
Whose guiltless heart is free
From all dishonest deeds,
Or thought of vanity;

The man whose silent days
In harmless joys are spent,
Whom hopes cannot delude,
Nor sorrow discontent;

That man needs neither towers
Nor armour for defence,
Nor secret vaults to fly
From thunder’s violence:

He only can behold
With unaffrighted eyes
The horrors of the deep
And terrors of the skies.

Thus, scorning all the cares
That fate or fortune brings,
He makes the heaven his book,
His wisdom heavenly things;

Good thoughts his only friends,
His wealth a well-spent age,
The earth his sober inn
And quiet pilgrimage.

Himself I read beneath the words he writes ...
I may come back and sing again. - RYAN.


I.

This Bard's to me a whole-souled man
In honesty and might,
For when he sees Wrong in the van
He leaps like any Knight
To horse, and charging on the wrong
Smites it with the great sword of Song.


II.

Beneath the cassock of the Priest
There throbs another heart -
Another - but 'tis not the least -
Which in his Lays takes part,
So that 'mid clash of Swords and Spears
There is no lack of Pity's tears.


III.

This other heart is brave and soft,
As such hearts always are,
And plumes itself, a bird aloft,
When Morning's gates unbar -
Till high it soars above the sod
Bathed in the very light of God.<...