To the Old Gods
O YE, who rode the gales of Sicily,
Sandalled with flame,
Spread on the pirate winds; o ye who broke
No wind-flower as ye came--
Though Pelion shivered when the thunder spoke
The gods' decree!--
Into the twilight of the ancient days
Have not ye flown!--
Ye, whom the happy Greeks inspired hand
Struck from the frenzied stone:
That, ye withdrawn, your images should stand
To take their praise.
Smeared into clay, and frozen into stone!
Ye, that do now
Face eyes unworshipful in plunder's halls,
Mutilate, with marred brow:
Broken and maimed: couched along alien walls
In lands unknown.
O gracious ones! No more, no more, shall ye
Spread wing above
Perilous Ossa! No more wring delight
From pool and golden grove:
No more beneath your fire-shod feet in flight
Shall hiss the sea.
The thuunder shall not groan between your breasts,
Nor lightning writhe
Barbed in your clutch; no worshippers shall trace
Your steps in grove and hithe.
No more 'thwart skies your golden stallions race
On mighty quests.
And yet what fane, what column, rises now
To save or shine:
What temple travails at such quickening feet,
What wing-tip seeds a shrine:
What god hath bid us build in wold or street,
Such breast and brow?
What have our wisdom and our worship done
To raise such gods?
To quench the ruined eyes of Parthenon
What newer beauty nods,
And shames the wreckless brow that stares upon
The amazèd sun?
Held up in arms of columns white as flowers,
You faced the sea,
With your great breasts for glory passioning,--
For mortal's victory;
Not 'neath occaisonal thin spires that spring
From streets of ours,
Hooding the dying god, whom men revile,--
Who bears their sin.
No great winds thunder over sun-splashed thrones,
Our dusty shrines within,
Where troubled feet make groan the weary stones,
In hollow isle.
I, only I, kneel at forsaken shrine:
The lamp I bring
Scarce throws a shade beneath your eyelids there:
Forlorn the song I sing
To ears august, and these wrung berries bear
A bitter wine.
Yet still I kneel, poor praise to offer up
To each great name!
And I shall feel upon my brow descend
A sudden edge of flame.
Your wings shall smear these words, even as ye bend
To this poor cup.
poem by Muriel Stuart
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Resurrection
Once more I hear the everlasting sea
Breathing beneath the mountain's fragrant
breast,
Come unto Me, come unto Me,
And I will give you rest.
We have destroyed the Temple and in three days
He hath rebuilt it -- all things are made new:
And hark what wild throats pour His praise
Beneath the boundless blue.
We plucked down all His altars, cried aloud
And gashed ourselves for little gods of clay!
Yon floating cloud was but a cloud,
The May no more than May.
We plucked down all His altars, left not one
Save where, perchance (and ah, the joy was fleet),
We laid our garlands in the sun
At the white Sea-born's feet.
We plucked down all His altars, not to make
The small praise greater, but the great praise less,
We sealed all fountains where the soul could slake
Its thirst and weariness.
"Love" was too small, too human to be found
In that transcendent source whence love was
born:
We talked of "forces": heaven was crowned
With philosophic thorn.
"Your God is in your image," we cried, but O,
'Twas only man's own deepest heart ye gave,
Knowing that He transcended all ye know,
While -- we dug His grave.
Denied Him even the crown on our own brow,
E'en these poor symbols of His loftier reign,
Levelled His Temple with the dust, and now
He is risen, He is risen again,
Risen, like this resurrection of the year,
This grand ascension of the choral spring,
Which those harp-crowded heavens bend to hear
And meet upon the wing.
"He is dead," we cried, and even amid that gloom
The wintry veil was rent! The new-born day
Showed us the Angel seated in the tomb
And the stone rolled away.
It is the hour! We challenge heaven above
Now, to deny our slight ephemeral breath
Joy, anguish, and that everlasting love
Which triumphs over death.
poem by Alfred Noyes
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Hannibal's Oath
AND the night was dark and calm,
There was not a breath of air,
The leaves of the grove were still,
As the presence of death were there;
Only a moaning sound
Came from the distant sea,
It was as if, like life,
It had no tranquillity.
A warrior and a child
Pass'd through the sacred wood,
Which, like a mystery,
Around the temple stood.
The warrior's brow was worn
With the weight of casque and plume,
And sun-burnt was his cheek,
And his eye and brow were gloom.
The child was young and fair,
But the forehead large and high,
And the dark eyes' flashing light
Seem'd to feel their destiny.
They enter'd in the temple,
And stood before the shrine,
It stream'd with the victim's blood,
With incense and with wine.
The ground rock'd beneath their feet,
The thunder shook the dome,
But the boy stood firm, and swore
Eternal hate to Rome.
There's a page in history
O'er which tears of blood were wept,
And that page is the record
How that oath of hate was kept.
poem by Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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Madona Mia
UNDER green apple-boughs
That never a storm will rouse,
My lady hath her house
Between two bowers;
In either of the twain
Red roses full of rain;
She hath for bondwomen
All kind of flowers.
She hath no handmaid fair
To draw her curled gold hair
Through rings of gold that bear
Her whole hair’s weight;
She hath no maids to stand
Gold-clothed on either hand;
In all the great green land
None is so great.
She hath no more to wear
But one white hood of vair
Drawn over eyes and hair,
Wrought with strange gold,
Made for some great queen’s head,
Some fair great queen since dead;
And one strait gown of red
Against the cold.
Beneath her eyelids deep
Love lying seems asleep,
Love, swift to wake, to weep,
To laugh, to gaze;
Her breasts are like white birds,
And all her gracious words
As water-grass to herds
In the June-days.
To her all dews that fall
And rains are musical;
Her flowers are fed from all,
Her joy from these;
In the deep-feathered firs
Their gift of joy is hers,
In the least breath that stirs
Across the trees.
She grows with greenest leaves,
Ripens with reddest sheaves,
Forgets, remembers, grieves,
And is not sad;
The quiet lands and skies
Leave light upon her eyes;
None knows her, weak or wise,
Or tired or glad.
None knows, none understands,
What flowers are like her hands;
Though you should search all lands
Wherein time grows,
What snows are like her feet,
Though his eyes burn with heat
Through gazing on my sweet,
Yet no man knows.
Only this thing is said;
That white and gold and red,
God’s three chief words, man’s bread
And oil and wine,
Were given her for dowers,
And kingdom of all hours,
And grace of goodly flowers
And various vine.
This is my lady’s praise:
God after many days
Wrought her in unknown ways,
In sunset lands;
This was my lady’s birth;
God gave her might and mirth
And laid his whole sweet earth
Between her hands.
Under deep apple-boughs
My lady hath her house;
She wears upon her brows
The flower thereof;
All saying but what God saith
To her is as vain breath;
She is more strong than death,
Being strong as love.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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A salutation of his Majesties Ship the Soveraign
Move on thou floating Trophee built to fame!
And bid her trump spread thy Majestick name;
That the blew Tritons, and those petty Gods
Which sport themselves upon the dancing floods,
May bow as to their Neptune, when they feel
The awful pressure of thy potent keel.
Great wonder of the time! whose form unites,
In one aspect two warring opposites,
Delight and horrour; and in them portends
Diff'ring events both to thy foes and friends:
To these thy radiant brow, Peaces bright Shrine,
Doth like that golden Constellation shine,
Which guides the Sea man with auspicious beams,
Safe and unshipwrackt through the troubled streams.
But, as a blazing Meteor, to those
It doth ostents of blood and death disclose.
For thy rich Decks lighten like Heavens fires,
To usher forth the thunder of thy Tires.
O never may cross wind, or swelling wave
Conspire to make the treach'rous sands thy grave:
Nor envious rocks in their white foamy laugh
Rejoyce to wear thy losses Epitaph.
But may the smoothest, most successful gales
Distend thy sheet, and wing thy flying sailes:
That all designes which must on thee embark,
May be securely plac't as in the Ark.
May'st thou, where ere thy streamers shall display,
Enforce the bold disputers to obey:
That they whose pens are sharper then their swords,
May yield in fact what they deny'd in words.
Thus when th' amazed world our Seas shall see
Shut from Usurpers, to their own Lord free,
Thou may'st returning from the conquer'd Main,
With thine own Triumphs be crown'd Soveraign.
poem by Henry King
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A Monument For The Soldiers
A monument for the Soldiers!
And what will ye build it of?
Can ye build it of marble, or brass, or bronze,
Outlasting the Soldiers' love?
Can ye glorify it with legends
As grand as their blood hath writ
From the inmost shrine of this land of thine
To the outermost verge of it?
And the answer came: We would build it
Out of our hopes made sure,
And out of our purest prayers and tears,
And out of our faith secure:
We would build it out of the great white truths
Their death hath sanctified,
And the sculptured forms of the men in arms,
And their faces ere they died.
And what heroic figures
Can the sculptor carve in stone?
Can the marble breast be made to bleed,
And the marble lips to moan?
Can the marble brow be fevered?
And the marble eyes be graved
To look their last, as the flag floats past,
On the country they have saved?
And the answer came: The figures
Shall all be fair and brave,
And, as befitting, as pure and white
As the stars above their grave!
The marble lips, and breast and brow
Whereon the laurel lies,
Bequeath us right to guard the flight
Of the old flag in the skies!
A monument for the Soldiers!
Built of a people's love,
And blazoned and decked and panoplied
With the hearts ye build it oft
And see that ye build it stately,
In pillar and niche and gate,
And high in pose as the souls of those
It would commemorate!
poem by James Whitcomb Riley
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Phoenix Reborn
From the Great Fire’s ash, a new Phoenix shall rise
It’s glory is born from another’s demise
It’s mighty wings spread, as the Fire Bird sings
It’s voice heals the world, as it spreads it’s great wings
It rises above, a new King of the Skies
To the ends of the Earth the great Phoenix flies
Reborn from ashes, the Great Flame of the Sky
But in a burst of flame, this Phoenix shall die
Reduced to but ash, 'til the fire is stoked anew
This is the fate of the Phoenix, King of Skies Blue
From the ashes of death, shall a great flame be born
From the Great Fire’s ash, mighty Phoenix reborn
poem by Tim Vallie
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Psalm 135
Praise due to God, not to idols.
Awake, ye saints; to praise your King,
Your sweetest passions raise,
Your pious pleasure, while you sing,
Increasing with the praise.
Great is the Lord, and works unknown
Are his divine employ;
But still his saints are near his throne,
His treasure and his joy.
Heav'n, earth, and sea confess his hand;
He bids the vapors rise;
Lightning and storm at his command
Sweep through the sounding skies.
All power that gods or kings have claimed
Is found with him alone
But heathen gods should ne'er be named
Where our Jehovah's known.
Which of the stocks or stones they trust
Can give them showers of rain?
In vain they worship glitt'ring dust,
And pray to gold in vain.
[Their gods have tongues that cannot talk,
Such as their makers gave;
Their feet were ne'er designed to walk,
Nor hands have power to save.
Blind are their eyes, their ears are deaf,
Nor hear when mortals pray;
Mortals that wait for their relief
Are blind and deaf as they.]
O Britain, know thy living God,
Serve him with faith and fear;
He makes thy churches his abode,
And claims thine honors there.
poem by Isaac Watts
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On a Spanish Cathedral
DEEP under the spires of a hill, by the feet of the thunder-cloud trod,
I pause in a luminous, still, magnificent temple of God!
At the steps of the altar august—a vision of angels in stone—
I kneel, with my head to the dust, on the floors by the seraphim known.
No father in Jesus is near, with the high, the compassionate face;
But the glory of Godhead is here—its presence transfigures the place!
Behold in this beautiful fane, with the lights of blue heaven impearled,
I think of the Elders of Spain, in the deserts—the wilds of the world!
I think of the wanderers poor who knelt on the flints and the sands,
When the mighty and merciless Moor was lord of the Lady of Lands.
Where the African scimitar flamed, with a swift, bitter death in its kiss,
The fathers, unknown and unnamed, found God in cathedrals like this!
The glow of His Spirit—the beam of His blessing—made lords of the men
Whose food was the herb of the stream, whose roof was the dome of the den.
And, far in the hills by the sea, these awful hierophants prayed
For Rome and its temples to be—in a temple by Deity made.
Who knows of their faith—of its power? Perhaps, with the light in their eyes,
They saw, in some wonderful hour, the marvel of centuries rise!
Perhaps in some moment supreme, when the mountains were holy and still,
They dreamed the magnificent dream that came to the monks of Seville!
Surrounded by pillars and spires whose summits shone out in the glare
Of the high, the omnipotent fires, who knows what was seen by them there?
Be sure, if they saw, in the noon of their faith, some ineffable fane,
They looked on the church like a moon dropped down by the Lord into Spain.
And the Elders who shone in the time when Christ over Christendom beamed
May have dreamed at their altars sublime the dream that their fathers had dreamed,
By the glory of Italy moved—the majesty shining in Rome—
They turned to the land that they loved, and prayed for a church in their home;
And a soul of unspeakable fire descended on them, and they fought
And laboured a life for the spire and tower and dome of their thought!
These grew under blessing and praise, as morning in summertime grows—
As Troy in the dawn of the days to the music of Delphicus rose.
In a land of bewildering light, where the feet of the season are Spring’s,
They worked in the day and the night, surrounded by beautiful things.
The wonderful blossoms in stone—the flower and leaf of the Moor,
On column and cupola shone, and gleamed on the glimmering floor.
In a splendour of colour and form, from the marvellous African’s hands
Yet vivid and shining and warm, they planted the Flower of the Lands.
Inspired by the patience supreme of the mute, the magnificent past,
They toiled till the dome of their dream in the firmament blossomed at last!
Just think of these men—of their time—of the days of their deed, and the scene!
How touching their zeal—how sublime their suppression of self must have been!
In a city yet hacked by the sword and scarred by the flame of the Moor,
They started the work of their Lord, sad, silent, and solemnly poor.
These fathers, how little they thought of themselves, and how much of the days
When the children of men would be brought to pray in their temple, and praise!
Ah! full of the radiant, still, heroic old life that has flown,
The merciful monks of Seville toiled on, and died bare and unknown.
The music, the colour, the gleam of their mighty cathedral will be
Hereafter a luminous dream of the heaven I never may see;
To a spirit that suffers and seeks for the calm of a competent creed,
This temple, whose majesty speaks, becomes a religion indeed;
The passionate lights—the intense, the ineffable beauty of sound—
Go straight to the heart through the sense, as a song would of seraphim crowned.
And lo! by these altars august, the life that is highest we live,
And are filled with the infinite trust and the peace that the world cannot give.
They have passed, have the elders of time—they have gone; but the work of their hands,
Pre-eminent, peerless, sublime, like a type of eternity stands!
They are mute, are the fathers who made this church in the century dim;
But the dome with their beauty arrayed remains, a perpetual hymn.
Their names are unknown; but so long as the humble in spirit and pure
Are worshipped in speech and in song, our love for these monks will endure;
And the lesson by sacrifice taught will live in the light of the years
With a reverence not to be bought, and a tenderness deeper than tears.
poem by Henry Kendall
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The Bard
Where dwells the spirit of the Bard--what sky
Persuades his daring wing,--
Folded in soft carnation, or in snow
Still sleeping, far o'er summits of the cloud,
And, with a seeming, sweet unconsciousness,
Wooing his plume, through baffling storms to fly,
Assured of all that ever yet might bless
The spirit, by love and loftiest hope made proud,
Would he but struggle for the dear caress!--
Or would his giant spring,
Impelled by holiest ire,
Assail the sullen summits of the storm,
Bent with broad breast and still impatient form,
Where clouds unfold themselves in leaping fire!
What vision wins his soul,--
What passion wings his flight,--
What dream of conquest woos his eager eye!--
How glows he with the strife,--
How spurns he at control,--
With what unmeasured rage would he defy
The foes that rise around and threaten life!--
His upward flight is fair,
He goes through parting air,
He breaks the barrier cloud, he sees the eye that's there,
The centre of the realm of storm that mocked him but to dare!
And now he grasps the prize,
That on the summit lies,
And binds the burning jewel to his brow;
Transfigured by its bright,
He wears a mightier face,
Nor grovels more in likeness of the earth;--
His wing a bolder flight,
His step a wilder grace,
He glows, the creature of a holier birth;--
Suns sing, and stars glow glad around his light;
And thus he speeds afar,
'Mid gathering sun and star,
The sov'reign, he, of worlds, where these but subjects are;
And men that marked his wing with mocking sight,
Do watch and wonder now;--
Will watch and worship with delight, anon,
When far from hiss and hate, his upward form hath gone!
0h! ere that van was won,
Whose flight hath braved the sun--
Whose daring strength and aim
Have scaled the heights of cloud and bared their breasts of flame;
What lowly toil was done,--
How slow the moments sped,--
How bitter were the pangs that vexed the heart and head!
The burden which he bore,
The thorns his feet that tore,
The cruel wounds he suffered with no moan,--
Alone,--and still alone!--
Denial, which could smile,
Beholding, all the while,
How salter than the sea were the salt tears he shed;
And over all, the curse,
Than all of these more worse.
Prostrate, before the common way, to bear
The feet of hissing things,
Whose toil it is to tear,
And cramp the glorious creature born to wings!
Ah! should he once despair!--
Not lonely, with the sad nymph Solitude,
Deep in the cover of the ancient wood,
Where the sun leaves him, and the happy dawn,
Stealing with blushes over the gray lawn,
Stills finds him, all forgetful of the flight
Of hours, that passing still from dark to bright,
Know not to loiter,--all their progress naught:--
His eye, unconscious of the day, is bright
With inward vision; till, as sudden freed,
By the superior quest of a proud thought,
He darts away with an unmeasured speed;
His pinion purpling as he gains the height,
Where still, though all obscured from mortal sight,
He bathes him in the late smiles of the sun;--
And oh! the glory, as he guides his steed,
Flakes from his pinions falling, as they soar
To mounts where Eos binds her buskins on
And proud Artemis, watching by her well,
For one,---sole fortunate of all his race,--
With hand upon his mouth her beagle stays,
Lest he should baffle sounds too sweet to lose,
That even now are gliding with the dews.
How nobly he arrays
His robes for flight--his robes, the woven of songs,
Borrowed from starry spheres,--with each a muse
That, with her harmonies, maintains its dance
Celestial, and its circles bright prolongs.
Fair ever, but with warrior form and face,
He stands before the eye of each young grace
Beguiling the sweet passion from her cell,
And still subjecting beauty by the glance,
Which speaks his own subjection to a spell.
The eldest born of rapture, that makes Love,
At once submissive and the Conqueror.
He conquers but to bring deliverance,
And with deliverance light;--
To conquer, he has only to explore,--
And makes a permanent empire, but to spread,
Though speeding on with unobserving haste,--
A wing above the waste.
A single feather from his pinion shed,
A single beam of beauty from his eye,
Takes captive of the dim sleeping realm below,
Through eyes of truest worshippers, that straight
Bring shouts to welcome and bright flowers to wreathe
His altars; and, as those, to life from death,
Plucked sudden, in their gratitude and faith
Deem him a god who wrought the miracle,--
So do they take him to their shrines, and vow
Their annual incense of sweet song and smell,
For him to whom their happiness they owe.
Thus goes he still from desert shore to shore,
Where life in darkness droops, where beauty errs,
Having no worshippers,
And lacking sympathy for the light!--The eye
That is the spirit of his wing, no more,
This progress once begun, can cease to soar,
Suffers eclipse, or sleeps!--
No more be furled
The wing,--that, from the first decreed to fly,
Must speed to daily conquests, deep and high,
Till no domain of dark unlighted keeps,
And all the realm of strife beneath the sky
Grows one, in beauty and peace for evermore,--
Soothed to eternal office of delight,
By these that wing the soul on its first flight,
For these are the great spirits that shape the world!
poem by William Gilmore Simms
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Leda
Do you remember, Leda?
There are those who love, to whom Love brings
Great gladness: such things have not I.
Love looks and has no mercy, brings
Long doom to others. Such was I.
Heart breaking hand upon the lute
Long last made musical by you?
Sharp bird-beak in the swelling fruit,
Or raise the eyelids of these flowers?
I dare not watch that hidden pool,
Nor see the wild bird's sudden wing
Lifting the wide, brown shaken pool,
But round me falls that secret wing,
And in that sharp, perverse, sweet pain
That is half-terror and half-bliss
My withered hands are curled on pain
That were so wide once, after bliss.
And gold is springing in my hair
As my thought spring and flower with it,
Though I sit hid in my grey hair,
Without love or the pain of it.
Yet, oh my Swan, if love have wings,
As the gods tell us, you were love
Who took and broke me with those wings.
I, weak, and being far gone in love
Let blushless things be breathed and done-
Things flowered out now in bitter fruit
That once done are no more undone
Than last year's frost and last year's fruit.
For what has come of love and me
Who knew the first joy that loving is?
Where has love led and beckoned me
But to the end where nothing is?
I have seen my blood beat out again
Red in the hands of all my line,
My sin has swelled and flowered again
Corrupt and fierce through Sparta's line.
Bred through me-bred through delicate hands
And wandering eyes and wanton lips,
Sighing after strange flesh as sighed these lips,
Straying after new sin as strayed these hands.
Mother of Helen! She whose breasts
To new desires unshaped the world;
Above Troy's summit towered these breasts
Helen who wantoned with the world!
Helen is dead (she had love enough
To mock at doom and laugh at shrine)
And Clytemnestra, quiet enough
To-night beneath Apollo's shrine.
And I am left, the source, the spring
Of all their madness. They are dead
While I still sit here, the old spring
That fouled them flows above the dead.
But I have paid. I have borne enough.
I am very old in love and woe.
For all souls these things are enough-
Who have known love are the friends of woe.
There those who love, and who escape,
There are those who love and do not die.
I loved, and there was no escape,
Long since I died and daily die.
And death alone makes hate and love
Friends with each other and with sleep . . .
All's quiet here that once was love,
This that is left belongs to sleep.
poem by Muriel Stuart
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Black-Haired Girls
The black-haired girls are graceful, like gazelles,
Their haughty stares would strike a ‘lao wai' blind,
As they cruise on through streets, where rubbish spills,
Ignoring all, the poverty, the slime.
In knee high boots and skirts that lift the thigh,
In leathers, black, and frills and pretty lace,
They swing their hips so slowly, to invite
The dreams of men, who marvel at each face.
The teeth so white and straight, the lips that curl
In condescending fashion at each gaze,
The one brow arched, as if to look on down
From some great height they fashion from each frown.
If Gods and Godesses have ever walked
This petty planet's poor and pitted earth,
Those Gods have gone, the Godesses remain,
To haunt old men, who worship at their shrine.
poem by David Lewis Paget
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Laus Deo
It is done!
Clang of bell and roar of gun
Send the tidings up and down.
How the belfries rock and reel!
How the great guns, peal on peal,
Fling the joy from town to town!
Ring, O bells!
Every stroke exulting tells
Of the burial hour of crime.
Loud and long, that all may hear,
Ring for every listening ear
Of Eternity and Time!
Let us kneel:
God's own voice is in that peal,
And this spot is holy ground.
Lord, forgive us! What are we
That our eyes this glory see,
That our ears have heard this sound!
For the Lord
On the whirlwind is abroad;
In the earthquake He has spoken;
He has smitten with His thunder
The iron walls asunder,
And the gates of brass are broken!
Loud and long
Lift the old exulting song;
Sing with Miriam by the sea,
He has cast the mighty down;
Horse and rider sink and drown;
'He hath triumphed gloriously!'
Did we dare,
In our agony of prayer,
Ask for more than He has done?
When was ever His right hand
Over any time or land
Stretched as now beneath the sun?
How they pale,
Ancient myth and song and tale,
In this wonder of our days
When the cruel rod of war
Blossoms white with righteous law,
And the wrath of man is praise!
Blotted out!
All within and all about
Shall a fresher life begin;
Freer breathe the universe
As it rolls its heavy curse
On the dead and buried sin!
It is done!
In the circuit of the sun
Shall the sound thereof go forth.
It shall bid the sad rejoice,
It shall give the dumb a voice,
It shall belt with joy the earth!
Ring and swing,
Bells of joy! On morning's wing
Sound the song of praise abroad!
With a sound of broken chains
Tell the nations that He reigns,
Who alone is Lord and God!
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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To Victor Hugo
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
And fierce Republic with her feet of fire,
And stayed with iron words and hands
Her flight, and freedom in a thousand lands:
Thou sawest the tides of things
Close over heads of kings,
And thine hand felt the thunder, and to thee
Laurels and lightnings were
As sunbeams and soft air
Mixed each in other, or as mist with sea
Mixed, or as memory with desire,
Or the lute’s pulses with the louder lyre.
For thee man’s spirit stood
Disrobed of flesh and blood,
And bare the heart of the most secret hours;
And to thine hand more tame
Than birds in winter came
High hopes and unknown flying forms of powers,
And from thy table fed, and sang
Till with the tune men’s ears took fire and rang.
Even all men’s eyes and ears
With fiery sound and tears
Waxed hot, and cheeks caught flame and eyelids light,
At those high songs of thine
That stung the sense like wine,
Or fell more soft than dew or snow by night,
Or wailed as in some flooded cave
Sobs the strong broken spirit of a wave.
But we, our master, we
Whose hearts, uplift to thee,
Ache with the pulse of thy remembered song,
We ask not nor await
From the clenched hands of fate,
As thou, remission of the world’s old wrong;
Respite we ask not, nor release;
Freedom a man may have, he shall not peace.
Though thy most fiery hope
Storm heaven, to set wide ope
The all-sought-for gate whence God or Chance debars
All feet of men, all eyes—
The old night resumes her skies,
Her hollow hiding-place of clouds and stars,
Where nought save these is sure in sight;
And, paven with death, our days are roofed with night.
One thing we can; to be
Awhile, as men may, free;
But not by hope or pleasure the most stern
Goddess, most awful-eyed,
Sits, but on either side
Sit sorrow and the wrath of hearts that burn,
Sad faith that cannot hope or fear,
And memory grey with many a flowerless year.
Not that in stranger’s wise
I lift not loving eyes
To the fair foster-mother France, that gave
Beyond the pale fleet foam
Help to my sires and home,
Whose great sweet breast could shelter those and save
Whom from her nursing breasts and hands
Their land cast forth of old on gentler lands.
Not without thoughts that ache
For theirs and for thy sake,
I, born of exiles, hail thy banished head;
I whose young song took flight
Toward the great heat and light
On me a child from thy far splendour shed,
From thine high place of soul and song,
Which, fallen on eyes yet feeble, made them strong.
Ah, not with lessening love
For memories born hereof,
I look to that sweet mother-land, and see
The old fields and fair full streams,
And skies, but fled like dreams
The feet of freedom and the thought of thee;
And all between the skies and graves
The mirth of mockers and the shame of slaves.
She, killed with noisome air,
Even she! and still so fair,
Who said “Let there be freedom,” and there was
Freedom; and as a lance
The fiery eyes of France
Touched the world’s sleep and as a sleep made pass
Forth of men’s heavier ears and eyes
Smitten with fire and thunder from new skies.
Are they men’s friends indeed
Who watch them weep and bleed?
Because thou hast loved us, shall the gods love thee?
Thou, first of men and friend,
Seest thou, even thou, the end?
Thou knowest what hath been, knowest thou what shall be?
Evils may pass and hopes endure;
But fate is dim, and all the gods obscure.
O nursed in airs apart,
O poet highest of heart,
Hast thou seen time, who hast seen so many things?
Are not the years more wise,
More sad than keenest eyes,
The years with soundless feet and sounding wings?
Passing we hear them not, but past
The clamour of them thrills us, and their blast.
Thou art chief of us, and lord;
Thy song is as a sword
Keen-edged and scented in the blade from flowers;
Thou art lord and king; but we
Lift younger eyes, and see
Less of high hope, less light on wandering hours;
Hours that have borne men down so long,
Seen the right fail, and watched uplift the wrong.
But thine imperial soul,
As years and ruins roll
To the same end, and all things and all dreams
With the same wreck and roar
Drift on the dim same shore,
Still in the bitter foam and brackish streams
Tracks the fresh water-spring to be
And sudden sweeter fountains in the sea.
As once the high God bound
With many a rivet round
Man’s saviour, and with iron nailed him through,
At the wild end of things,
Where even his own bird’s wings
Flagged, whence the sea shone like a drop of dew,
From Caucasus beheld below
Past fathoms of unfathomable snow;
So the strong God, the chance
Central of circumstance,
Still shows him exile who will not be slave;
All thy great fame and thee
Girt by the dim strait sea
With multitudinous walls of wandering wave;
Shows us our greatest from his throne
Fate-stricken, and rejected of his own.
Yea, he is strong, thou say’st,
A mystery many-faced,
The wild beasts know him and the wild birds flee;
The blind night sees him, death
Shrinks beaten at his breath,
And his right hand is heavy on the sea:
We know he hath made us, and is king;
We know not if he care for anything.
Thus much, no more, we know;
He bade what is be so,
Bade light be and bade night be, one by one;
Bade hope and fear, bade ill
And good redeem and kill,
Till all men be aweary of the sun
And his world burn in its own flame
And bear no witness longer of his name.
Yet though all this be thus,
Be those men praised of us
Who have loved and wrought and sorrowed and not sinned
For fame or fear or gold,
Nor waxed for winter cold,
Nor changed for changes of the worldly wind;
Praised above men of men be these,
Till this one world and work we know shall cease.
Yea, one thing more than this,
We know that one thing is,
The splendour of a spirit without blame,
That not the labouring years
Blind-born, nor any fears,
Nor men nor any gods can tire or tame;
But purer power with fiery breath
Fills, and exalts above the gulfs of death.
Praised above men be thou,
Whose laurel-laden brow,
Made for the morning, droops not in the night;
Praised and beloved, that none
Of all thy great things done
Flies higher than thy most equal spirit’s flight;
Praised, that nor doubt nor hope could bend
Earth’s loftiest head, found upright to the end
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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To a Poet, Charles Bridges
THOU singest, thou, me seems,
Coming from high Parnassus; where thy head
Beside the silent streams,
Among fast-fading blooms, hath fashioned
A pillow of pale dreams;
While from thee, sleeping, gods, of heart and soul,
Have taken fullest toll.
Thou knowest at what cost
Thy sleep was taken on those awful hills--
What thou hast gained, and lost;
Thou knowest, too, if what thou art fulfils
The pledge of what thou wast;
And if all compensates the poet's wreath
That wounds the brow beneath.
Rememberest thou that night
Incomparable? Thou in dreams wast laid,
Where petals, rose and white,
Above thy head a pale pavilion made;
Where at unscalèd height
The moon lay anchored in the heaving sky,
And clouds went surging by.
Then came the gods unknown!--
The plundering gods--to take thee unawares,
While thou wast sleeping, thrown
Upon the sacred mountain that is theirs.
In vain sad flowers had blown
A gale of petals o'er thee, on they came
In a still sheet of flame!
They knew that those who dare
To sleep one night beside Parnassus' streams
The poet's crown must wear--
Must lip the chalice of immortal dreams,
And breathe the eternal air;
Who, even unto trembling Ossa's hill,
May walk the mount at will!
They killed thy happiness,
And strangled all thy youth, with hands profane,
They brake Love's rosaries,
Tossing thy ravaged soul amid the slain,
While thou wast weaponless;
And left thee gibbeted 'twixt pain and peace,
Forbidding thy release.
Then they augustly laid
Their crippled gifts beside thee, and withdrew
Into high Pelion's shade;
Their tireless feet made fall no bead of dew,
Their passing bent no blade,
Though thunder muttered round each mighty plume,
And crumbled into gloom.
They laid a fatal spell
Of beauty on thine eyes, that made most fair
The rose unpluckable;
They bade thee thirst, yet find no Cup to bear
Water from any well;
They mocked thee with a vision passionate,
And a soul celibate!
O friend, what thou hast known
Thou givest me; what thou hast suffered, thou
Wouldst calmly bear alone;
Forbidding thorns to gather on my brow,--
Accustomed on thine own;
Thou lingerest at my side, to show and spare
The pitfall and the snare.
For thou wouldst give to me
The poet's pillow, who has suffered not
The poet's penalty;
A goodly heritage, a happy lot
Wouldst have my portion be.
With honey from the rod art fain to feed,
Not from the galled reed.
Thou hast some rare reward!
The reed that gods have guided, in thine hand
Becomes a dreadful sword;
Their fingers on thy heartstrings still demand
A loud, triumphant chord:
They pass the ditch-delivered poets by,
With wide contemptuous eye.
Poet: I take thy cup:
But, from my coloured wreath of morning flowers
Where bees wild honey sup,
Upon thy sepulchre of buried hours
Am fain to offer up
Some bud, that spills upon thy brow anew
Its fragile shell of dew.
And if at last I choose
To make my pillow on some slope forlorn,
And, in that slumber, lose
My morning wreath, that must be tossed and torn
To feed the jealous Muse,
Remember the poor gifts that I resign . . .
I shall remember thine!
poem by Muriel Stuart
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Psalm 9 part 2
v.12
C. M.
The wisdom and equity of Providence.
When the great Judge, supreme and just,
Shall once inquire for blood,
The humble souls that mourn in dust
Shall find a faithful God.
He from the dreadful gates of death
Does his own children raise;
In Zion's gates, with cheerful breath,
They sing their Father's praise.
His foes shall fall, with heedless feet,
Into the pit they made;
And sinners perish in the net
That their own hands had spread.
Thus, by thy judgments, mighty God,
Are thy deep counsels known;
When men of mischief are destroyed,
The snare must be their own.
PAUSE.
The wicked shall sink down to hell;
Thy wrath devour the lands
That dare forget thee, or rebel
Against thy known commands.
Though saints to sore distress are brought,
And wait and long complain,
Their cries shall not be still forgot,
Nor shall their hopes be vain.
[Rise, great Redeemer, from thy seat,
To judge and save the poor;
Let nations tremble at thy feet,
And man prevail no more.
Thy thunder shall affright the proud,
And put their hearts to pain;
Make them confess that thou art God,
And they but feeble men.]
poem by Isaac Watts
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After Many Years
The song that once I dreamed about,
The tender, touching thing,
As radiant as the rose without,
The love of wind and wing:
The perfect verses, to the tune
Of woodland music set,
As beautiful as afternoon,
Remain unwritten yet.
It is too late to write them now --
The ancient fire is cold;
No ardent lights illume the brow,
As in the days of old.
I cannot dream the dream again;
But, when the happy birds
Are singing in the sunny rain,
I think I hear its words.
I think I hear the echo still
Of long-forgotten tones,
When evening winds are on the hill
And sunset fires the cones;
But only in the hours supreme,
With songs of land and sea,
The lyrics of the leaf and stream,
This echo comes to me.
No longer doth the earth reveal
Her gracious green and gold;
I sit where youth was once, and feel
That I am growing old.
The lustre from the face of things
Is wearing all away;
Like one who halts with tired wings,
I rest and muse to-day.
There is a river in the range
I love to think about;
Perhaps the searching feet of change
Have never found it out.
Ah! oftentimes I used to look
Upon its banks, and long
To steal the beauty of that brook
And put it in a song.
I wonder if the slopes of moss,
In dreams so dear to me --
The falls of flower, and flower-like floss --
Are as they used to be!
I wonder if the waterfalls,
The singers far and fair,
That gleamed between the wet, green walls,
Are still the marvels there!
Ah! let me hope that in that place
Those old familiar things
To which I turn a wistful face
Have never taken wings.
Let me retain the fancy still
That, past the lordly range,
There always shines, in folds of hill,
One spot secure from change!
I trust that yet the tender screen
That shades a certain nook
Remains, with all its gold and green,
The glory of the brook.
It hides a secret to the birds
And waters only known:
The letters of two lovely words --
A poem on a stone.
Perhaps the lady of the past
Upon these lines may light,
The purest verses, and the last,
That I may ever write:
She need not fear a word of blame:
Her tale the flowers keep --
The wind that heard me breathe her name
Has been for years asleep.
But in the night, and when the rain
The troubled torrent fills,
I often think I see again
The river in the hills;
And when the day is very near,
And birds are on the wing,
My spirit fancies it can hear
The song I cannot sing.
poem by Henry Kendall
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The Child Of Earth
I.
FAINTER her slow step falls from day to day,
Death's hand is heavy on her darkening brow;
Yet doth she fondly cling to earth, and say,
'I am content to die, but, oh! not now!
Not while the blossoms of the joyous spring
Make the warm air such luxury to breathe;
Not while the birds such lays of gladness sing;
Not while bright flowers around my footsteps wreathe.
Spare me, great God, lift up my drooping brow!
I am content to die--but, oh! not now!'
II.
The spring hath ripen'd into summer-time,
The season's viewless boundary is past;
The glorious sun hath reach'd his burning prime;
Oh! must this glimpse of beauty be the last?
'Let me not perish while o'er land and lea
With silent steps the lord of light moves on;
Nor while the murmur of the mountain bee
Greets my dull ear with music in its tone!
Pale sickness dims my eye, and clouds my brow;
I am content to die--but, oh! not now!'
III.
Summer is gone, and autumn's soberer hues
Tint the ripe fruits, and gild the waving corn;
The huntsman swift the flying game pursues,
Shouts the halloo, and winds his eager horn.
'Spare me awhile to wander forth and gaze
On the broad meadows and the quiet stream,
To watch in silence while the evening rays
Slant thro' the fading trees with ruddy gleam!
Cooler the breezes play around my brow;
I am content to die--but, oh! not now!'
IV.
The bleak wind whistles, snow-showers, far and near,
Drift without echo to the whitening ground;
Autumn hath pass'd away, and, cold and drear,
Winter stalks on, with frozen mantle bound.
Yet still that prayer ascends:--'Oh! laughingly
My little brothers round the warm hearth crowd,
Our home-fire blazes broad, and bright, and high,
And the roof rings with voices glad and loud;
Spare me awhile! raise up my drooping brow!
I am content to die--but, oh! not now!'
V.
The spring is come again--the joyful spring!
Again the banks with clustering flowers are spread;
The wild bird dips upon its wanton wing:--
The child of earth is number'd with the dead!
'Thee never more the sunshine shall awake,
Beaming all redly thro' the lattice-pane;
The steps of friends thy slumbers may not break,
Nor fond familiar voice arouse again!
Death's silent shadow veils thy darken'd brow;
Why didst thou linger?--thou art happier now!'
poem by Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
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Words
Is it not brave to be a king, Techelles,--
Usumcasane and Theridamas,
Is it not passing brave to be a king,
And ride in triumph through Persepolis? --MARLOWE
Bring the great words that scourge the thundering line
With lust and slaughter-words that reek of doom
And the lost battle and the ruined shrine;--
Words dire and black as midnight on a tomb;
Hushed speech of waters on the lip of gloom;
Huge sounds of death and plunder in the night;--
Words whose vast plumes above the ages meet,
Girdling the lost, dark centuries in their flight,
The slave of their unfetterable feet.
Bring words as pure as rills of earliest Spring
In some far cranny of the hillside born
To stitch against the earth's green habiting;--
Words lonely as the long, blue fields of morn;--
Words on the wistful lyre of winds forlorn
To the sad ear of grief from distance blown;
Thin bleat of fawn and airy babble of birds;
Sounds of bright water slipping on the stone
Where the thrilled fountain pipes to woodland words.
Bring passionate words from noontide's slumber roused,
To slake the amorous lips of love with fruit,
Dripping with honey, and with syrups drowsed
To draw bee-murmurs from the dreaming lute-
Words gold and mad and headlong in pursuit
Of laughter; words that are too sweet to say
And fade, unsaid, upon some rose's mouth;--
Words soft as winds that ever blow one way,
The summer way, the long way from the south.
For such words have high lineage, and were known
Of Milton once, whose heart on theirs still beats;
Marlowe hurled forth huge stars to make them crown;
They are stained still with the dying lips of Keats;
As queen they trod the cloak in Shakespeare's streets;
Pale hands of Shelley gently guard their flame;
Chatterton's heart was burst upon their spears:
Their dynasty unbroken, and their name
Music in men's mouths for all men's ears.
But now they are lost, their lordliest 'scutcheon stained;
Upon their ruined walls no trumpet rings;
Their shrines defiled, their sacraments profaned:
Men crown the crow, they have given the jackal wings.
Slaves wear the peplum, beggars ride as kings.
They couple foolish words and look for birth
Of mighty emperor, Christ or Avatar,
They mate with slaves from whom no king comes forth;
No child is theirs who follow not the Star.
poem by Muriel Stuart
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Fallen
O, hadst thou died when thou wert great,
When at thy feet a nation knelt
To sob the gratitude it felt
And thank the Saviour of the State,
Gods might have envied thee thy fate!
Then was the laurel round thy brow,
And friend and foe spoke praise of thee,
While all our hearts sang victory.
Alas! thou art too base to bow
To hide the shame that brands it now.
poem by Ambrose Bierce
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To Horror
Dark HORROR, hear my call!
Stern Genius hear from thy retreat
On some old sepulchre's moss-cankered seat,
Beneath the Abbey's ivied wall
That trembles o'er its shade;
Where wrapt in midnight gloom, alone,
Thou lovest to lie and hear
The roar of waters near,
And listen to the deep dull groan
Of some perturbed sprite
Borne fitful on the heavy gales of night.
Or whether o'er some wide waste hill
Thou mark'st the traveller stray,
Bewilder'd on his lonely way,
When, loud and keen and chill,
The evening winds of winter blow
Drifting deep the dismal snow.
Or if thou followest now on Greenland's shore,
With all thy terrors, on the lonely way
Of some wrecked mariner, when to the roar
Of herded bears the floating ice-hills round
Pour their deep echoing sound,
And by the dim drear Boreal light
Givest half his dangers to the wretches sight.
Or if thy fury form,
When o'er the midnight deep
The dark-wing'd tempests sweep
Watches from some high cliff the encreasing storm,
Listening with strange delight
As the black billows to the thunder rave
When by the lightnings light
Thou seest the tall ship sink beneath the wave.
Dark HORROR! bear me where the field of fight
Scatters contagion on the tainted gale,
When to the Moon's faint beam,
On many a carcase shine the dews of night
And a dead silence stills the vale
Save when at times is heard the glutted Raven's scream.
Where some wreck'd army from the Conquerors might
Speed their disastrous flight,
With thee fierce Genius! let me trace their way,
And hear at times the deep heart-groan
Of some poor sufferer left to die alone,
His sore wounds smarting with the winds of night;
And we will pause, where, on the wild,
The Mother to her frozen breast,
On the heap'd snows reclining clasps her child
And with him sleeps, chill'd to eternal rest!
Black HORROR! speed we to the bed of Death,
Where he whose murderous power afar
Blasts with the myriad plagues of war,
Struggles with his last breath,
Then to his wildly-starting eyes
The phantoms of the murder'd rise,
Then on his frenzied ear
Their groans for vengeance and the Demon's yell
In one heart-maddening chorus swell.
Cold on his brow convulsing stands the dew,
And night eternal darkens on his view.
HORROR! I call thee yet once more!
Bear me to that accursed shore
Where round the stake the impaled Negro writhes.
Assume thy sacred terrors then! dispense
The blasting gales of Pestilence!
Arouse the race of Afric! holy Power,
Lead them to vengeance! and in that dread hour
When Ruin rages wide
I will behold and smile by MERCY'S side.
poem by Robert Southey
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