Oh, the sight entrancing,
When morning's beam is glancing,
        O'er files arrayed
        With helm and blade,
And plumes, in the gay wind dancing!
When hearts are all high beating,
And the trumpet's voice repeating
        That song, whose breath
        May lead to death,
But never to retreating.
Oh the sight entrancing,
When morning's beam is glancing
    O'er files arrayed
    With helm and blade,
And plumes, in the gay wind dancing.

Yet, 'tis not helm or feather--
For ask yon despot, whether
    His plumed bands
    Could bring such hands
And hearts as ours together.
Leave pomps to those who need 'em--
Give man but heart and freedom,
    And proud he braves
    The gaudiest slaves
That crawl where monarchs...

Sogna il guerriér le schiere,
    Le sel ve il cacciatór;
    E sogna il pescatór;
    Le reti, e l' amo.        Metastatio.


Love knoweth every form of air,
    And every shape of earth,
And comes, unbidden, everywhere,
    Like thought's mysterious birth.
The moonlight sea and the sunset sky
    Are written with Love's words,
And you hear his voice unceasingly,
    Like song in the time of birds.

He peeps into the warrior's heart
    From the tip of a stooping plume,
And the serried spears, and the many men
    May not deny him room.
He'll come to his tent in the weary night,
    And be busy in his dream;
And he'll float to his eye in morning light
    Like a fay on a silver beam.

He hears the sound of the hu...

    I wandered to a crude coast
    Like a ghost;
    Upon the hills I saw fires -
    Funeral pyres
    Seemingly and heard breaking
Waves like distant cannonades that set the land shaking.

    And so I never once guessed
    A Love-nest,
    Bowered and candle-lit, lay
    In my way,
    Till I found a hid hollow,
Where I burst on her my heart could not but follow.

I know an aged Man constrained to dwell
In a large house of public charity,
Where he abides, as in a Prisoner's cell,
With numbers near, alas! no company.

When he could creep about, at will, though poor
And forced to live on alms, this old Man fed
A Redbreast, one that to his cottage door
Came not, but in a lane partook his bread.

There, at the root of one particular tree,
An easy seat this worn-out Labourer found
While Robin pecked the crumbs upon his knee
Laid one by one, or scattered on the ground.

Dear intercourse was theirs, day after day;
What signs of mutual gladness when they met!
Think of their common peace, their simple play,
The parting moment and its fond regret.

Months passed in love that failed not to fulfill,
In spit...

"By the North Pole, I do challenge thee!"
    Love's Labour's Lost.



I.

Parry, my man! has thy brave leg
Yet struck its foot against the peg
On which the world is spun?
Or hast thou found No Thoroughfare
Writ by the hand of Nature there
Where man has never run!


II.

Hast thou yet traced the Great Unknown
Of channels in the Frozen Zone,
Or held at Icy Bay,
Hast thou still miss'd the proper track
For homeward Indian men that lack
A bracing by the way?


III.

Still hast thou wasted toil and trouble
On nothing but the North-Sea Bubble
Of geographic scholar?
Or found new ways for ships to shape,
Instead of winding round the Cape,
A short cut thro' the collar?

I know how well Love shoots, how swift his flight,
How now by force and now by stealth he steals,
How he will threaten now, anon will smite,
And how unstable are his chariot wheels.
How doubtful are his hopes, how sure his pain,
And how his faithful promise he repeals.
How in one's marrow, in one's vital vein,
His smouldering fire quickens a hidden wound,
Where death is manifest, destruction plain.
In sum, how erring, fickle and unsound,
How timid and how bold are lovers' days,
Where with scant sweetness bitter draughts abound.
I know their songs, their sighs, their usual ways,
Their broken speech, their sudden silences.
Their passing laughter and their grief that stays,
I know how mixed with gall their honey is.

‘Yes, write it in the rock!’ Saint Bernard said,
‘Grave it on brass with adamantine pen!
‘’Tis God himself becomes apparent, when
‘God’s wisdom and God’s goodness are display’d,

‘For God of these his attributes is made.’
Well spake the impetuous Saint, and bore of men
The suffrage captive; now, not one in ten
Recalls the obscure opposer he outweigh’d.

God’s wisdom and God’s goodness! Ay, but fools
Mis-define these till God knows them no more.
Wisdom and goodness, they are God! what schools

Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore?
This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules;
’Tis in the desert, now and heretofore.

By whom was David taught
To aim the deadly blow,
When he Goliath fought,
And laid the Gittite low?
Nor sword nor spear the stripling took,
But chose a pebble from the brook.


‘Twas Israel’s God and King
Who sent him to the fight;
Who gave him strength to sling,
And skill to aim aright.
Ye feeble saints, your strength endures,
Because young David’s God is yours.


Who order’d Gideon forth,
To storm the invader’s camp,
With arms of little worth,
A pitcher and a lamp?[1]
The trumpets made his coming known,
And all the host was overthrown.


Oh! I have seen the day,
When, with a single word,
God helping me to say,
My trust is in the Lord,
My soul hath quell’d a thousand foes,
Fearless of ...

Lord B. was a nobleman bold,
Who came of illustrious stocks,
He was thirty or forty years old,
And several feet in his socks.

To Turniptopville-by-the-Sea
This elegant nobleman went,
For that was a borough that he
Was anxious to rep-per-re-sent.

At local assemblies he danced
Until he felt thoroughly ill
He waltzed, and he galloped, and lanced,
And threaded the mazy quadrille.

The maidens of Turniptopville
Were simple ingenuous pure
And they all worked away with a will
The nobleman's heart to secure.

Two maidens all others beyond
Imagined their chances looked well
The one was the lively Ann Pond,
The other sad Mary Morell.

Ann Pond had determined to try
And carry the Earl with a rush.
Her principal fea...

(Aetat Six)


Now every night we light the grate
And I sit up till really late;
My Father sits upon the right,
My Mother on the left, and I
Between them on an ancient chair,
That once belonged to my Great-Gran,
Before my Father was a man.
We sit without another light;
I really, truly never tire
Watching that space, as black as night,
That hangs behind the fire;
For there sometimes, you know,
The dearest, queerest little sparks,
Without a sound creep to and fro;
Sometimes they form in rings
Or lines that look like many things,
Like skipping ropes, or hoops, or swings:
Before you know what you're about,
They all go out!

My Father says that they are gnomes,
Beyond the grate they have their homes,
In a tall, bla...

Quel vago impallidir che 'l dolce riso.

LEAVE-TAKING.


    That witching paleness, which with cloud of love
Veil'd her sweet smile, majestically bright,
So thrill'd my heart, that from the bosom's night
Midway to meet it on her face it strove.
Then learnt I how, 'mid realms of joy above,
The blest behold the blest: in such pure light
I scann'd her tender thought, to others' sight
Viewless!--but my fond glances would not rove.
Each angel grace, each lowly courtesy,
E'er traced in dame by Love's soft power inspired,
Would seem but foils to those which prompt my lay:
Upon the ground was cast her gentle eye,
And still methought, though silent, she inquired,
"What bears my faithful friend so soon, so far away?"

WRANGHAM.

We know him well: no need of praise
Or bonfire from the windy hill
To light to softer paths and ways
The world-worn man we honor still.

No need to quote the truths he spoke
That burned through years of war and shame,
While History carves with surer stroke
Across our map his noonday fame.

No need to bid him show the scars
Of blows dealt by the Scaean gate,
Who lived to pass its shattered bars,
And see the foe capitulate:

Who lived to turn his slower feet
Toward the western setting sun,
To see his harvest all complete,
His dream fulfilled, his duty done,

The one flag streaming from the pole,
The one faith borne from sea to sea:
For such a triumph, and such goal,
Poor must our human greeting be.

Ah! rather that th...

When, foot to wheel and back to wind,
The helmsman dare not look behind,
But hears beyond his compass-light,
The blind bow thunder through the night,
And, like a harpstring ere it snaps,
The rigging sing beneath the caps;
Above the shriek of storm in sail
Or rattle of the blocks blown free,
Set for the peace beyond the gale,
This song the Needle sings the Sea;


Oh, drunken Wave! Oh, driving Cloud!
Rage of the Deep and sterile Rain,
By Love upheld, by God allowed,
We go, but we return again!


When leagued about the 'wildered boat
The rainbow Jellies fill and float,
And, lilting where the laver lingers,
The Starfish trips on all her fingers;
Where, 'neath his myriad spines ashock,
The Sea-egg ripples down the rock,
An or...

What may words say, or what may words not say,
Where Truth itself must speake like Flatterie?
Within what bounds can one his liking stay,
Where Nature doth with infinite agree?
What Nestors counsell can my flames alay,
Since Reasons self doth blow the coale in me?
And, ah, what hope that Hope should once see day,
Where Cupid is sworn page to Chastity?
Honour is honour'd that thou dost possesse
Him as thy slaue, and now long-needy Fame
Doth euen grow rich, meaning my Stellaes name.
Wit learnes in thee perfection to expresse:
Not thou by praise, but praise in thee is raisde:
It is a praise to praise, when thou art praisde.

There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night---
    Ten to make and the match to win---
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
    An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
    Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote---
    "Play up! play up! and play the game!"

The sand of the desert is sodden red,---
    Red with the wreck of a square that broke;---
The Gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
    And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
    And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of schoolboy rallies the ranks,
    "Play up! play up! and play the game!"

This is the word that year by year,
    While i...

Let us go in: the air is dank and chill
With dewy midnight, and the moon rides high
O'er ghostly fields, pale stream, and spectral hill.


This hour the dawn seems farthest from the sky
So weary long the space that lies between
That sacred joy and this dark mystery


Of earth and heaven: no glimmering is seen,
In the star-sprinkled east, of coming day,
Nor, westward, of the splendor that hath been.


Strange fears beset us, nameless terrors sway
The brooding soul, that hungers for her rest,
Out worn with changing moods, vain hopes' delay,


With conscious thought o'erburdened and oppressed.
The mystery and the shadow wax too deep;
She longs to merge both sense and thought in sleep.

Good old days--dear old days
When my heart beat high and bold--
When the things of earth seemed full of life,
And the future a haze of gold!
Oh, merry was I that winter night,
And gleeful our little one's din,
And tender the grace of my darling's face
As we watched the new year in.
But a voice--a spectre's, that mocked at love--
Came out of the yonder hall;
"Tick-tock, tick-tock!" 't was the solemn clock
That ruefully croaked to all.
Yet what knew we of the griefs to be
In the year we longed to greet?
Love--love was the theme of the sweet, sweet dream
I fancied might never fleet!

But the spectre stood in that yonder gloom,
And these were the words it spake,
"Tick-tock, tick-tock"--and they seemed to mock
A heart about to break.

...

"Do you remember me? or are you proud?"
Lightly advancing thro' her star-trimm'd crowd,
Ianthe said, and lookt into my eyes,
"A yes, a yes, to both: for Memory
Where you but once have been must ever be,
And at your voice Pride from his throne must rise."