Two Voices are there; one is of the sea,
One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice:
In both from age to age thou didst rejoice,
They were thy chosen music, Liberty!
There came a Tyrant, and with holy glee
Thou fought'st against him; but hast vainly striven:
Thou from thy Alpine holds at length art driven,
Where not a torrent murmurs heard by thee.
Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft:
Then cleave, O cleave to that which still is left;
For, high-souled Maid, what sorrow would it be
That Mountain floods should thunder as before,
And Ocean bellow from his rocky shore,
And neither awful Voice be heard by thee!

Tune - "Coming through the rye."


I.

    Coming through the rye, poor body,
        Coming through the rye,
    She draiglet a' her petticoatie,
        Coming through the rye.
    Jenny's a' wat, poor body,
        Jenny's seldom dry;
    She draiglet a' her petticoatie,
        Coming through the rye.

II.

    Gin a body meet a body
        Coming through the rye,
    Gin a body kiss a body
        Need a body cry?

III.

    Gin a body meet a body
        Coming through the glen,
    Gin a body kiss a body
        Need the world ken?
    Jenny's a' wat, poor body;
        Jenny's seldom dry;
    She draiglet a' her petticoatie,
        Coming through the rye.

    Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
    Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
    Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
    And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
    Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
    But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
    Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
    Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

    Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling
    Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
    But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
    And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.--
    Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
    As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

    In all my dreams before my helpless sight
    He p...

The earth was flooded in the amber haze
That renders so lovely our autumn days,
The dying leaves softly fluttered down,
Bright crimson and orange and golden brown,
And the hush of autumn, solemn and still,
Brooded o'er valley, plain and hill.

Yet still from that scene with rare beauty rife
And the touching sweetness of fading life,
From glowing foliage and sun bright ray,
My gaze soon mournfully turned away
To rest, instead, on a new made grave,
Enshrouding a heart true, loyal and brave.

At rest for aye! Cold and pulseless now
That high throbbing breast and calm, earnest brow;
Laid down forever the quick, gifted pen
That toiled but for God and his fellow men;
Silent that voice, free from hatred or ruth,
Yet e'er boldly raised in the cause of t...

Excerpt from "Gertrude Of Wyoming"


Apart there was a deep untrodden grot,
Where oft the reading hours sweet Gertrude wore;
Tradition had not named its lonely spot;
But here (methinks) might India's sons explore
Their father's dust, or lift, perchance of yore,
Their voice to the great Spirit: rocks sublime
To human art a sportive semblance bore,
And yellow lichens coloured all the clime,
Like moonlight battlements, and towers decayed by time.

But high in amphitheatre above,
Gay tinted woods their massy foliage threw:
Breathed but an air of heaven, and all the grove
As if instinct with living spirit grew,
Rolling its verdant gulfs of every hue;
And now suspended was the pleasing din,
Now from a murmur faint it swelled anew,
Like the...

Mist clogs the sunshine.
Smoky dwarf houses
Hem me round everywhere;
A vague dejection
Weighs down my soul.
Yet, while I languish,
Everywhere countless
Prospects unroll themselves,
And countless beings
Pass countless moods.
Far hence, in Asia,
On the smooth convent-roofs,
On the gilt terraces,
Of holy Lassa,
Bright shines the sun.
Grey time-worn marbles
Hold the pure Muses;
In their cool gallery,
By yellow Tiber,
They still look fair.
Strange unloved uproar
Shrills round their portal;
Yet not on Helicon
Kept they more cloudless
Their noble calm.
Through sun-proof alleys
In a lone, sand-hemm'd
City of Africa,
A blind, led beggar,
Age-bow'd, asks alms.
No bolder robber
Erst abode ambush'd...

TO MY BEST FRIEND

THEODORE WATTS

I DEDICATE IN THIS BOOK

THE BEST I HAVE TO GIVE HIM

Spring speaks again, and all our woods are stirred,
And all our wide glad wastes aflower around,
That twice have heard keen April’s clarion sound
Since here we first together saw and heard
Spring’s light reverberate and reiterate word
Shine forth and speak in season. Life stands crowned
Here with the best one thing it ever found,
As of my soul’s best birthdays dawns the third.

There is a friend that as the wise man saith
Cleaves closer than a brother: nor to me
Hath time not shown, through days like waves at strife,
This truth more sure than all things else but death,
This pearl most perfect found in all the sea
That washes toward your feet t...

Still on the tower stood the vane,
A black yew gloomed the stagnant air,
I peered athwart the chancel pane
And saw the altar cold and bare.
A clog of lead was round my feet,
A band of pain across my brow;
“Cold altar, Heaven and earth shall meet
Before you hear my marriage vow.”

II.
I turned and hummed a bitter song
That mocked the wholesome human heart,
And then we met in wrath and wrong,
We met, but only met to part.
Full cold my greeting was and dry;
She faintly smiled, she hardly moved;
I saw with half-unconscious eye
She wore the colours I approved.

III.
She took the little ivory chest,
With half a sigh she turned the key,
Then raised her head with lips comprest,
And gave my letters back to me.
And gave the trinke...

I would the gift I offer here
Might graces from thy favor take,
And, seen through Friendship's atmosphere,
On softened lines and coloring, wear
The unaccustomed light of beauty, for thy sake.
Few leaves of Fancy's spring remain:
But what I have I give to thee,
The o'er-sunned bloom of summer's plain,
And paler flowers, the latter rain
Calls from the westering slope of life's autumnal lea.
Above the fallen groves of green,
Where youth's enchanted forest stood,
Dry root and mossëd trunk between,
A sober after-growth is seen,
As springs the pine where falls the gay-leafed maple wood!
Yet birds will sing, and breezes play
Their leaf-harps in the sombre tree;
And through the bleak and wintry day
It keeps its steady green alway,
So, even my after-thou...

    Your speeches seemed to answer for the nonce,
    They do not justify your head in bronze!
    Your essays! talent's failures were to you
    Your philosophic gamut, but things true,
    Or beautiful, oh never! What's the pons
    For you to cross to fame? Your head in bronze?

    What has the artist caught? The sensual chin
    That melts away in weakness from the skin,
    Sagging from your indifference of mind;
    The sullen mouth that sneers at human kind
    For lack of genius to create or rule;
    The superficial scorn that says "you fool!"
    The deep-set eyes that have the mud-cat look
    Which might belong to Tolstoi or a crook.
    The nose half-thickly fleshed and half in point,
    And lightly turned awry as out of joint;
    The eyeb...

    As the wind at play with a spark
    Of fire that glows through the night;
    As the speed of the soaring lark
    That wings to the sky his flight -
    So swiftly thy soul has sped
    In its upward wonderful way,
    Like the lark when the dawn is red,
    In search of the shining day.

    Thou art not with the frozen dead
    Whom earth in the earth we lay,
    While the bearers softly tread,
    And the mourners kneel and pray;
    From thy semblance, dumb and stark,
    The soul has taken its flight -
    Out of the finite dark,
    Into the infinite Light.

From his brimstone bed at break of day
    A walking the Devil is gone,
To look at his snug little farm of the World,
    And see how his stock went on.

Over the hill and over the dale,
    And he went over the plain;
And backward and forward he swish'd his tail
    As a gentleman swishes a cane.

    How then was the Devil drest?
    Oh, he was in his Sunday's best
His coat was red and his breeches were blue,
And there was a hole where his tail came through.
A lady drove by in her pride,
In whose face an expression he spied
    For which he could have kiss'd her;
Such a flourishing, fine, clever woman was she,
With an eye as wicked as wicked can be,
I should take her for my Aunt, thought he,
    If my dam had had a sister.

    ...

Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Just a word i' thi ear, -
Aw hooap we shall net disagree;
But aw'm foorced to admit as aw watch thi each year,
At tha seems a big humbug to me.

We know at tha brings us glad tidins ov Spring,
An for that art entitled to thanks;
But tha maks a poor fist when tha offers to sing,
An tha plays some detestable pranks.

Too lazy to build a snug hooam for thisel,
Tha lives but a poor vagrant life;
An thi mate is noa better aw'm sooary to tell,
Shoo's unfit to be onny burd's wife.

Shoo drops her egg into another burd's nest,
An shirks what's her duty to do;
Noa love for her offspring e'er trubbles the breast,
Ov this selfish, hard-hearted Cuckoo.

Some other poor burd mun attend to her young,
An work hard to find 'em wi' grub...

("L'Orient! qu'y voyez-vous, poëtes?")

[PRELUDE, b.]


Now, vot'ries of the Muses, turn your eyes,
Unto the East, and say what there appears!
"Alas!" the voice of Poesy replies,
"Mystic's that light between the hemispheres!"

"Yes, dread's the mystic light in yonder heaven -
Dull is the gleam behind the distant hill;
Like feeble flashes in the welkin driven,
When the far thunder seems as it were still!

"But who can tell if that uncertain glare
Be Phoebus' self, adorned with glowing vest;
Or, if illusions, pregnant in the air,
Have drawn our glances to the radiant west?

"Haply the sunset has deceived the sight -
Perchance 'tis evening, while we look for morning;
Bewildered in the mazes of twilight,
That lucid sunset ...

See, I have climbed the mountain side
Up to this holy house of God,
Where once that Angel-Painter trod
Who saw the heavens opened wide,

And throned upon the crescent moon
The Virginal white Queen of Grace,
Mary! could I but see thy face
Death could not come at all too soon.

O crowned by God with thorns and pain!
Mother of Christ! O mystic wife!
My heart is weary of this life
And over-sad to sing again.

O crowned by God with love and flame!
O crowned by Christ the Holy One!
O listen ere the searching sun
Show to the world my sin and shame.

Thus I lift the sash, so long
Shut against the flight of song;
All too late for vain excuse, -
Lo, my captive rhymes are loose.

Rhymes that, flitting through my brain,
Beat against my window-pane,
Some with gayly colored wings,
Some, alas! with venomed stings.

Shall they bask in sunny rays?
Shall they feed on sugared praise?
Shall they stick with tangled feet
On the critic's poisoned sheet?

Are the outside winds too rough?
Is the world not wide enough?
Go, my winged verse, and try, -
Go, like Uncle Toby's fly!

Low was our pretty Cot: our tallest Rose
Peep'd at the chamber-window. We could hear
At silent noon, and eve, and early morn,
The Sea's faint murmur. In the open air
Our Myrtles blossom'd; and across the porch
Thick Jasmins twined: the little landscape round
Was green and woody, and refresh'd the eye.
It was a spot which you might aptly call
The Valley of Seclusion! Once I saw
(Hallowing his Sabbath-day by quiteness)
A wealthy son of Commerce saunter by,
Bristowa's citizen: methought, it calm'd
His thirst of idle gold, and made him muse
With wiser feelings: for he paus'd, and look'd
With a pleas'd sadness, and gaz'd all around,
Then eyed our Cottage, and gaz'd round again,
And sigh'd, and said, it was a Blesséd Place.
And we were bless'd. Oft with patient...

        Poets they do pursue each theme,
        Under a gentle head of steam,
        Save one who needed fierce fire on,
        The brilliant, pasionate Byron.
        His child Harold's pilgrimage,
        Forever will the world engage;
        He fought with glory to release
        From Turkish yoke the isles of Greece,
        Its glories oft by him were sung,
        This wondrous bard, alas, died young.