Poems You Ought to Know

by Elia Wilkinson Peattie

ENVOY.

My princess, doff thy frozen pride,
Nor scorn to pay Love’s golden debt,
Through his dim woodland take for guide
The fair white feet of Nicolete.

NIGHT.
BY JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE.

Joseph Blanco White was born of Irish parents in Seville, Spain, July 11, 1775, and was put in training for a mercantile career, but he left his father’s counting house and was ordained a priest in 1796, and continued in the priesthood until 1810, when, because of the political crisis in Spain, he went to England, residing in London as a man of letters, where he contributed largely to the leading reviews and periodicals, and produced several books, treating mostly of Spain and its affairs. He died in May, 1841. His “Sonnet to Night” was pronounced by Coleridge the finest in the English language.

Mysterious Night when our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue;
Yet ’neath a curtain of translucent hue,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,
And, lo! creation widened in man’s view.
Who would have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,
Whilst flower and leaf and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad’st us blind?
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife—
If light can thus deceive us, wherefore not life?

THE SHEPHERD’S RESOLUTION.
BY GEORGE WITHER.

George Wither was born at Brentworth, 1588. He went to Magdalene College, Oxford. He led a troop of Royalist horse against the Covenanters, but three years later he became a Puritan and held command in Cromwell’s army. He was imprisoned during the Restoration for a time. He died in 1667. Wither wrote, besides his poems, a volume of church hymns, several satires, and a translation of the Psalms.

Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman’s fair?
Or make pale my cheek with care
’Cause another’s rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flow’ry meads in May,
If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?

Shall a woman’s virtues move
Me to perish for her love?
Or her well-deservings known
Make me quite forget my own?
Be she with that goodness blest
Which may merit name of best,
If she be not such to me,
What care I how good she be?

Great, or good, or kind, or fair,
I will ne’er the more despair;
If she love me, this believe.
I will die ere she shall grieve;
If she slight me when I woo
I can scorn and let her go,
For if she be not for me,
What care I for whom she be?

THE SONG OF THE MYSTIC.
BY FATHER RYAN.

Father Abram Ryan was born about 1834 some say, in Limerick, Ireland, and others, Norfolk, Va., while still others say, Hagerstown, Md. He lived nearly all his life in the South. He was educated at a seminary at Niagara, N. Y., was ordained to the priesthood and labored in many Southern cities. He established a Catholic newspaper at Augusta, Ga. He died in 1883. He was devoted to the cause of the South, and, aside from his devotional poems, none of his writings have more passion or sincerity than those commemorating the deeds of the Confederate army and the cause for which it fought.

I walk down the Valley of Silence—
Down the dim, voiceless valley—alone!
And I hear not the fall of a footstep
Around me, save God’s and my own;
And the hush of my heart is as holy
As hovers where angels have flown!

Long ago I was weary of voices
Whose music my heart could not win;
Long ago I was weary of noises
That fretted my soul with their din;
Long ago I was weary of places
Where I met but the human—and sin.

In the hush of the Valley of Silence
I dream all the songs that I sing;
And the music floats down the dim Valley,
Till each finds a word for a wing,
That to hearts, like the Dove of the Deluge
A message of Peace they may bring.

Do you ask me the place of the Valley,
Ye hearts that are harrowed by Care?
It lieth afar between mountains,
And God and His angels are there;
And one is the dark mount of Sorrow
And one the bright mountain of Prayer.

GO, LOVELY ROSE.
BY EDMUND WALLER.

Edmund Waller was born in Hertfordshire, England, in 1605. He went to King’s College, Cambridge. Later he entered parliament and took an active part in the long parliament. In 1664 he was exiled on account of participating in royalist plots. He returned to England under Cromwell’s administration. He died at Beaconsfield in 1687. Waller’s poems were first published in 1645.

Go, lovely rose!
Tell her, that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her that’s young
And shuns to have her graces spied
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.

Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired;
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.

Then die, that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!

THE LAST LEAF.
BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o’er the ground
With his cane.

They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.

But now he walks the streets
And he looks at all he meets
So forlorn;
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
“They are gone.”

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.

THE SONG OF THE SHIRT.
BY THOMAS HOOD.

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread—
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch
She sang the “Song of the Shirt!”

Work! work! work
While the cock is crowing aloof!
And work—work—work,
Till the stars shine through the roof!
It’s oh! to be a slave
Along with the barbarous Turk,
Where a woman has never a soul to save,
If this is Christian work!

Work—work—work
Till the brain begins to swim;
Work—work—work
Till the eyes are heavy and dim!
Seam and gusset, and band,
Band and gusset and seam,
Till over the buttons I fall asleep,
And sew them on in a dream!

Oh, men, with sisters dear!
Oh, men, with mothers and wives!
It is not linen you’re wearing out
But human creature’s lives!
Stitch—stitch—stitch,
In poverty, hunger and dirt,
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A shroud as well as a shirt.

THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET.
BY SAMUEL WOODWORTH.

Samuel Woodworth was born at Scituate, Mass., in 1785, and was the son of a farmer and revolutionary soldier. He had no educational advantages until taken up by a clergyman, who had read some of his poetical writings and who gave him instruction in the classics. Woodworth was apprenticed to a printer, and later published a paper of his own, of which he was editor, printer, and carrier. Later he removed to New York, where he edited magazines and wrote a number of volumes. His patriotic songs of the war of 1812 were widely popular. His “Old Oaken Bucket” will always hold its place among the choicest songs of America. Woodworth died in New York in 1842.

How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,
When fond recollection presents them to view!
The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wildwood,
And every loved spot which my infancy knew;
The wide-spreading pond, and the mill which stood by it
The bridge, and the rock where the cataract fell;
The cot of my father, the dairy-house nigh it,
And e’en the rude bucket which hung in the well—
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-covered bucket which hung in the well.

That moss-covered vessel I hail as a treasure;
For often, at noon, when returned from the field,
I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure,
The purest and sweetest that nature can yield.
How ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing!
And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell;
Then soon, with the emblem of truth overflowing,
And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well—
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-covered bucket arose from the well.

How sweet from the green, mossy brim to receive it,
As, poised on the curb, it inclined to my lips!
Not a full blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it,
Though filled with the nectar that Jupiter sips.
And, now far removed from the loved situation,
The tear of regret will intrusively swell,
As fancy reverts to my father’s plantation,
And sighs for the bucket which hangs in the well—
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-covered bucket which hangs in the well.

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.
BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,—
The venturesome bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim, dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed—
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:—

Build thee more stately mansions, O, my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!

“ONE TOUCH OF NATURE.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
(“From Troilus and Cressida.”)

For time is like a fashionable host
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly,
Grasps—in the corner; welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin—
That all, with one consent, praise new-born gauds,
Though they are made and molded of things past,
And give to dust that is a little gilt
More laud than gilt o’er dusted.

A REQUIEM.
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Robert Louis Stevenson, the son of a lighthouse engineer, was born at Edinburgh in 1850. He studied in the university of that city and became a lawyer, though he never practiced. On account of his ill-health he went to Samoa, where he lived with his family and wrote his books. He died in 1894. A few of his stories are: “Treasure island,” “Kidnapped,” “New Arabian Nights,” “St. Ives”; his essays are, “Virginibus Puerisque,” “Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes,” and “Familiar Studies on Men and Books.”

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie,
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me;
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea
And the hunter home from the hill.

REQUIESCAT.
BY MATTHEW ARNOLD.

Matthew Arnold, son of the famous head master of Rugby, was born at Laleham, Middlesex, 1822. He studied at Winchester, Rugby, and Balliol College, Oxford, and was a fellow of Oriel. In 1851 he was made lay inspector of schools, and in ’57 received the appointment of professor of poetry at Oxford. He died at Liverpool in 1888. He wrote “Empedocles on Etna,” “Essays in Criticism,” “Study of Celtic Literature,” “Culture and Anarchy,” and other books of essays.

Strew on her roses, roses,
And never a spray of yew!
In quiet she reposes;
Ah! would that I did, too,

Her mirth the world required;
She bathed it in smiles of glee,
But her heart was tired, tired,
And now they let her be.

Her life was turning, turning,
In mazes of heat and sound;
But for peace her soul was yearning,
And now peace laps her round.

Her cabin’d ample spirit,
It flutter’d and fail’d for breath;
To-night it doth inherit
The vasty hall of death.

AT THE CHURCH GATE.
BY W. M. THACKERAY.

William Makepeace Thackeray was horn at Calcutta in 1811. He was brought up in England, where he went to Charterhouse School and later to Trinity College, Cambridge. He left college after one year’s study and went to Paris, where he studied with the hope of becoming an artist. His first contributions in the way of writing were to Frazer’s Magazine, and among them were his famous “Yellowplush Papers.” He wrote other satires and humorous ballads for Punch. Thackeray was the first editor of the Cornhill Magazine, which is still in publication. He died in London in 1863.

Although I enter not,
Yet round about the spot
Ofttimes I hover;
And near the sacred gate,
With longing eyes I wait,
Expectant of her.

My lady comes at last,
Timid and stepping fast,
And hastening hither
With modest eyes downcast;
She comes—she’s here, she’s past!
May heaven go with her!

Kneel undisturbed, fair saint!
Pour out your praise or plaint
Meekly and duly;
I will not enter there,
To sully your pure prayer
With thoughts unruly.

But suffer me to pace
Round the forbidden place,
Lingering a minute,
Like outcast spirits who wait,
And see, through heaven’s gate,
Angels within it.

HE’D HAD NO SHOW.
BY SAM WALTER FOSS.

Joe Beall ’ud set upon a keg
Down to the groc’ry store, an’ throw
One leg right over t’other leg
An’ swear he’d never had no show,
“O, no,” said Joe,
“Hain’t hed no show,”
Then shif his quid to t’other jaw,
An’ chaw, an’ chaw, an’ chaw, an’ chaw.

He said he got no start in life,
Didn’t get no money from his dad,
The washin’ took in by his wife
Earned all the funds he ever had.
“O, no,” said Joe,
“Hain’t hed no show,”
An’ then he’d look up at the clock
An’ talk, an’ talk, an’ talk, an’ talk.

“I’ve waited twenty year—let’s see—
Yes, twenty-four, an’ never struck,
Altho’ I’ve sot roun’ patiently,
The fust tarnation streak er luck,
O, no,” said Joe,
“Hain’t hed no show,”
Then stuck like mucilage to the spot,
An’ sot, an’ sot, an’ sot, an’ sot.

“I’ve come down regerler every day
For twenty years to Piper’s store.
I’ve sot here in a patient way,
Say, hain’t I, Piper?” Piper swore.
“I tell ye, Joe,
Yer hain’t no show;
Yer too dern patient”—ther hull raft
Jest laffed, an’ laffed, an’ laffed, an’ laffed.

TO THE CUCKOO.
BY JOHN LOGAN.

John Logan was born in Scotland in 1748. He wrote lyric poems and published his poems in collaboration with Michael Bruce in 1770. This double volume of poems led probably to the confusion of the authorship of the “Ode to the Cuckoo.” The question is still debated, but the poem is generally attributed to Logan. He died in 1788 at London.

Hail beauteous stranger of the grove!
Thou messenger of Spring!
Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat,
And woods thy welcome ring.

What time the daisy decks the green,
Thy certain voice we hear;
Hast thou a star to guide thy path,
Or mark the rolling year?

Delightful visitant! with thee
I hail the time of flowers,
And hear the sound of music sweet
From birds among the bowers.

* * *

Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year!

O, could I fly, I’d fly with thee!
We’d make, with joyful wing,
Our annual visit oe’r the globe,
Companions of the Spring.

HER MORAL.
BY THOMAS HOOD.

Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold,
Molten, graven, hammered, and rolled;
Heavy to get, and light to hold;
Hoarded, bartered, bought, and sold,
Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled;
Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old
To the very verge of the churchyard mould;
Price of many a crime untold.

Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Good or bad a thousandfold!
How widely its agencies vary—
To save—to ruin—to curse—to bless—
As even its minted coins express,
Now stamp’d with the image of Good Queen Bess
And now of a bloody Mary.

SERENADE.
BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

Stars of the summer night!
Far in yon azure deeps,
Hide, hide your golden light!
She sleeps!
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!

Moon of the summer night!
Far down yon western steeps,
Sink, sink in silver light!
She sleeps!
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!

Wind of the summer night!
Where yonder woodbine creeps,
Fold, fold thy pinions light!
She sleeps!
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!

Dreams of the summer night!
Tell her, her lover keeps
Watch, while in slumbers light
She sleeps!
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN.
BY JOHN KEATS.

John Keats was born at London in 1795. He studied medicine, but after passing his examinations he never practiced. About this time he became acquainted with Shelley, Leigh Hunt, and Haydon. In 1820 he went to Naples on account of his health, and from there to Rome, where he died in 1821. His longer poems are; “Endymion” (which poem was most severely criticised at the time of its publication), “Lamia,” “Isabella,” and “The Eve of Saint Agnes.”

Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme;
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady:
What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?
What mad pursuit? What struggles to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone;
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet do not grieve,
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

O, Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—that is all
Ye know on earth, truth, and all ye need to know.

TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON.
BY RICHARD LOVELACE.

This lyric of Richard Lovelace’s is, with the “Lucasta,” the best known and most often quoted of his poems.

When Love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at my grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair
And fettered with her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups pass swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses crowned,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free—
Fishes that tipple in the deep
Know no such liberty.

When linnet-like confined,
With shriller throat shall sing
Thy mercy, sweetness, majesty
And glories of my king;
When I shall voice aloud how good
He is, how great should be,
The enlarged winds that curl the flood
Know no such liberty.

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.

SONG.
BY JOHN BUNYAN.

John Bunyan was born at Elstow in 1628. He was a tinker, as his father was before him, but he finally became a soldier in the parliamentary army. In 1653 he became a nonconformist and went about the country preaching until he was arrested under the statutes against that doctrine. While in prison Bunyan began his well-known allegory—“Pilgrim’s Progress.” Under Charles II. he was released and made pastor at Bedford. He died at London in 1688.

He that is down need fear no fall;
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.

I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much;
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because thou savest such.

Fullness to such a burden is
That go on pilgrimage;
Here little, and hereafter bliss,
Is best from age to age.

BELIEVE ME, IF ALL THOSE ENDEARING YOUNG CHARMS.
BY THOMAS MOORE.

In the early part of the last century, when the star of Moore was at its zenith, no song was more popular than this, perhaps as much for the charming air to which it is set as for the beauty and rhythm of its words.

Believe me, if all those endearing charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly today,
Were to change by tomorrow, and fleet in my arms,
Like fairy-gifts fading away,
Thou wouldst still be ador’d, as this moment thou art,
Let thy loveliness fade as it will
And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself verdantly still.

It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,
And thy cheeks unprofan’d by a tear,
That the fervor and faith of a soul can be known,
To which time will but make thee more dear;
No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as surely loves on to the close,
As the sunflower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look that she turned when he rose.

THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US.
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not—Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn!

ODE ON SOLITUDE.
BY ALEXANDER POPE.

Pope was born at London in 1688. He had no school education, as he was always sickly, but he learned Latin and Greek from several friends. By the time he was 17 he was an acknowledged wit and critic. His first published poem was “The Pastorals,” 1709; then followed “The Rape of the Lock,” his best satirical poem, and the next year (1713) he began his translation of the “Iliad.” He died at Twickenham in 1744.

Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire;
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

Blest, who can unconcern’dly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away;
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night, study and ease,
Together mixt, sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most doth please,
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus, unlamented, let me die,
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.

PATRIOTISM.
BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Sir Walter Scott was born at Edinburgh in 1771. He first began his writing by translating Burger and Goethe, but he left this work to take up the Border Minstrelsy of his own country. In 1814 he published the first of the well-known “Waverley” novels. He sold his copyrights to the firm of Constable, and as the house failed a few years later Scott was heavily involved. As he had also recently bought and repaired the estate of Abbotsford, he was in debt for that also. In spite of ill health he wrote incessantly in order to meet his bills, and gave to the world the novels and poems with which all are so familiar. He died in 1832.

Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
“This is my own, my native land!”
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well!
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim—
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentered all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

ROCKED IN THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP.
BY EMMA WILLARD.

Emma Willard, the American educator and author, was one of a family of seventeen children. Her maiden name was Hart. She was born at Berlin, Conn., in 1787. She began teaching in the village school and later became principal of a girls’ college at Westfield, Conn., and after her marriage to Dr. John Willard in 1814, opened a boarding school at Middlebury, Conn, into which she introduced new methods and new studies. The school was removed to Troy, N. Y., and became the Troy Female Academy. Retiring from the school in 1858, Mrs. Willard spent the remaining years of her life in revising her text books and writing a volume of poems. She died in 1876.

Rocked in the cradle of the deep.
I lay me down in peace to sleep;
Secure I rest upon the wave,
For Thou, O Lord, hast power to save.

I know Thou wilt not slight my call,
For Thou dost mark the sparrow’s fall;
And calm and peaceful is my sleep,
Rocked in the cradle of the deep.

And such the trust that still were mine,
Though stormy winds swept o’er the brine,
Or though the tempest’s fiery breath
Roused me from sleep to wreck and death.

In ocean’s caves still safe with Thee,
The germ of immortality;
And calm and peaceful is my sleep,
Rocked in the cradle of the deep.

THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN.
BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

The influence of poetry is greater than is generally realized, and many find inspiration to action in reading it. Mrs. Browning in this pathetic poem did much to rouse England to the evil of child labor and to perceive the wrongs done the little ones toiling in its factories and coal mines far beyond their strength.

Do ye hear the children weeping, O, my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,
And that cannot stop their tears.

But the young, young children, O, my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.

Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward,
Grinding life down from its mark;
And the children’s souls which God is calling sunward,
Spin on blindly in the dark.

ABOU BEN ADHEM AND THE ANGEL.
BY LEIGH HUNT.

James Henry Leigh Hunt was born at Southgate in 1784. He was an essayist, an author, and a poet, chief among his poems being “The Story of Rimini.” He died at Putney in 1859.

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight of his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold—
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
“What writest thou?” The vision raised its head,
And with a look made all of sweet accord,
Answer’d, “The names of those who love the Lord.”
“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still, and said, “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one who loves his fellowmen.”
The angel wrote and vanish’d. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And show’d the names whom love of God had bless’d,
And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.

BUGLE SONG.
BY ALFRED TENNYSON.

This poem is one of the lyrics from the “Princess,” yet there is so little connection between the story and these five or six charming songs embedded within the mock heroic poem that one does not think of them as part of the medley.

The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying;
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

OPPORTUNITY.
BY JOHN J. INGALLS.

John James Ingalls was born in Massachusetts in 1833 and was graduated from Williams College in 1853. He was admitted to the bar in 1857, and removed to Atchison, Kas., in 1859. He took an active interest in the exciting Kansas politics, and, besides serving as a delegate to the Wyandotte convention that framed the State constitution, he served as secretary to the Territorial Council. In 1862 he was a State Senator. He edited the Atchison Champion for three years and served in the State militia. In 1873 he was elected to the United States Senate, and then began his remarkably brilliant political career. After serving twenty years he was retired by the political revolution in his State. As an orator he held high rank. He frequently contributed to the leading magazines and reviews. He died about two years ago.

Master of human destinies am I.
Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait,
Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate
Deserts and seas remote, and, passing by
Hovel, and mart, and palace, soon or late
I knock unbidden once at every gate!
If sleeping, wake—if feasting, rise before
I turn away. It is the hour of fate,
And they who follow me reach every state
Mortals desire, and conquer every foe
Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate,
Condemned to failure, penury and woe,
Seek me in vain and uselessly implore—
I answer not, and I return no more.

MIGNON’S SONG FROM “WILHELM MEISTER.”

“After having sung the song a second time, she paused for a moment, and, attentively surveying Wilhelm, she asked him, ‘Know’st thou the land?’ ‘It must be Italy!’ he replied.”—Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship.

Know’st thou the land where the lemon tree blows—
Where deep in the bower the gold orange grows?
Where zephyrs from heaven die softly away,
And the laurel and myrtle tree never decay?
Know’st thou it? Thither, O! thither with thee,
My dearest, my fondest! with thee would I flee.

Know’st thou the hall with its pillared arcades,
Its chambers so vast and its long colonnades?
Where the statues of marble with features so mild
Ask “Why have they used thee so harshly, my child?”
Know’st thou it? Thither, O! thither with thee,
My guide, my protector! with thee would I flee.

Know’st thou the Alp which the vapor enshrouds,
Where the bold muleteer seeks his way thro’ the clouds?
In the cleft of the mountain the dragon abides,
And the rush of the stream tears the rock from its sides;
Know’st thou it? Thither, O! thither with thee,
Leads our way, father—then come, let us flee.

PSALM LXXXIV.

How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!

My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.

Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.

Blessed are they that dwell in thy house; they will be still praising thee. Selah.

Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them.

Who, passing through the valley of Baca, make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools.

They go from strength to strength; every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.

O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob. Selah.

Behold, O God our shield, and look upon the face of thine anointed.

For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.

For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory; no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.

O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee.

THANATOPSIS.
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

This imperishable poem was written by William Cullen Bryant when he was 18 years old. It was sent to the North American Review either by the poet or his father. Richard Henry Dana of the Review supposed the writer to be some one of international repute. The poet’s father was then a member of the Massachusetts senate. Dana went to the statehouse to call on him, but the appearance of Dr. Bryant seemed to satisfy Dana that he must look elsewhere for the author, and so he returned to Cambridge without an interview with the senator. Later he learned that the author was the doctor’s son.

To him who, in the love of nature, holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart,
Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature’s teachings, while from all around—
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air—
Comes a still voice: Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding Sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements;
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.
Yet not to thine eternal resting place
Shalt thou retire alone—nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,
The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulcher. The hills,
Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun; the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks,
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old ocean’s gray and melancholy waste—
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man! The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Save his own dashings—yet the dead are there!
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone!
So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men—
The youth in life’s green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
And the sweet babe, and the gray headed man—
Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side
By those who in their turn shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan that moves
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

THE NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES.
BY FRANCIS WILLIAM BOURDILLON.

Francis William Bourdillon was born in Woolbeding in 1852. Re received his education at Worcester College, Oxford, and was afterwards a private tutor to the sons of the Prince and Princess Christian. A few of his published works are, “Among the Flowers and Other Poems,” 1874; “Ailes d’Alouette,” 1891; “A Lost God,” 1892; and “Sursum Corda,” 1893.

The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.

THE HERITAGE.
BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

The rich man’s son inherits lands,
And piles of brick, and stone, and gold,
And he inherits soft, white hands,
And tender flesh that fears the cold,
Nor dares to wear a garment old;
A heritage, it seems to me,
One scarce would wish to hold in fee.

The rich man’s son inherits cares;
The bank may break, the factory burn,
A breath may burst his bubble shares;
And soft, white hands could scarcely earn
A living that would serve his turn;
A heritage, it seems to me,
One scarce would wish to hold in fee.

The rich man’s son inherits wants,
His stomach craves for dainty fare;
With sated heart he hears the pants
Of toiling hinds with brown arms bare,
And wearies in his easy chair;
A heritage, it seems to me,
One scarce would wish to hold in fee.

What doth the poor man’s son inherit?
Stout muscles and a sinewy heart,
A hardy frame, a hardier spirit;
King of two hands, he does his part
In every useful toil and art;
A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.

What doth the poor man’s son inherit?
Wishes o’erjoyed with humble things,
A rank adjudged by toil-worn merit,
Content that from employment springs.
A heart that in his labor sings;
A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.

What doth the poor man’s son inherit?
A patience learned of being poor;
Courage, if sorrow come, to bear it.
A fellow-feeling that is sure
To make the outcast bless his door;
A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.

O, rich man’s son! there is a toil
That with all others level stands;
Large charity doth never soil,
But only whiten, soft white hands—
This is the best crop from thy lands;
A heritage, it seems to me,
Worth being rich to hold in fee.

O, poor man’s son! scorn not thy state;
There is worse weariness than thine,
In merely being rich and great;
Toil only gives the soul to shine,
And makes rest fragrant and benign—
A heritage, it seems to me,
Worth being poor to hold in fee.

Both, heirs to some six feet of sod,
Are equal in the earth at last;
Both, children of the same dear God,
Prove title to your heirship vast
By record of a well filled past—
A heritage, it seems to me,
Well worth a life to hold in fee.

A DITTY.
BY SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

My true love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange one to the other given;
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven;
My true love hath my heart and I have his.

His heart in me keeps him and me in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides;
He loves my heart, for once it was his own,
I cherish his because in me it bides:
My true love hath my heart and I have his.

PSALM CXXI.

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

He will not suffer thy foot to be moved; he that keepeth thee will not slumber.

Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is thy keeper; the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.

The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil; he shall preserve thy soul.

The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth and even for evermore.

THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER.
BY FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.

Francis Scott Key was born in Frederick County, Maryland, in 1780. He was the author of a volume of poems published in 1857, but the poem that will keep him alive in the memory of the nation is his “Star Spangled Banner.” This poem was written on shipboard during the war of 1812, while the English were bombarding Fort McHenry. Mr. Key died at Baltimore in 1843.

O! say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thro’ the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming!
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there;
O! say, does that star spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On that shore, dimly seen thro’ the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream;
’Tis the star spangled banner, O, long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution;
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.
And the star spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

O! thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation;
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto, “In God is our trust.”
And the star spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

FROM “IN MEMORIAM.”
BY ALFRED TENNYSON.

O, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain,
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shriveled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another’s gain.

* * *

So runs my dream: But what am I?
An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light;
And with no language but a cry.

The wish that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear

I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope thro’ darkness up to God

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.

I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER.
BY THOMAS HOOD.

I remember, I remember
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon
Nor brought too long a day;
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away.

I remember, I remember
Where I was used to swing,
And thought the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then
That is so heavy now,
And summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow.

I remember, I remember
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky;
It was a childish ignorance,
But now ’tis little joy
To know I’m farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy.

MARY’S DREAM.
BY JOHN LOWE.

John Lowe, the author of this poem, was born at Kenmure, parish of Kells, Kircudbrightshire, Scotland, in 1750. His father was a gardener, and at the age of 14 John was apprenticed to a weaver, but in 1771 he was enabled to go to the University of Edinburgh. Later he entered the family of Mr. McGhie of Airds, whose house was located on an elevated piece of ground washed by the Dee and Ken, a spot reverenced by Lowe for its beauty. Within the grounds he erected a rural seat environed with honeysuckle, woodbine, and other shrubs, which is known to this day as “Lowe’s Seat,” and there he composed many of his most beautiful verses.

The moon had climbed the highest hill
That rises o’er the source of Dee,
And from the eastern summit shed
Her silver light on tower and tree;
When Mary laid her down to sleep,
Her thoughts on Sandy far at sea;
When, soft and low, a voice was heard,
Saying, “Mary, weep no more for me.”

She from her pillow gently raised
Her head to ask who there might be,
And saw young Sandy shivering stand,
With visage pale and hollow e’e.
“O, Mary dear, cold is my clay,
It lies beneath a stormy sea;
Far, far from thee I sleep in death,
So, Mary, weep no more for me.

“Three stormy nights and stormy days
We tossed upon the raging main;
And long we strove our barque to save,
But all our striving was in vain.
Even then, when horror chilled my blood,
My heart was filled with love for thee.
The storm is past and I at rest,
So, Mary, weep no more for me.

“O, maiden dear, thyself prepare!
We soon shall meet upon that shore
Where love is free from doubt and care,
And thou and I shall part no more!”
Loud crowed the cock, the shadow fled;
No more of Sandy could she see,
But soft the passing spirit said,
“Sweet Mary, weep no more for me!”

ON A BUST OF DANTE.
BY T. W. PARSONS.

Thomas William Parsons was born at Boston in 1818. He spent the greater part of his life in Europe. In 1867 he translated Dante’s “Inferno.” In 1854 he published, under the title “Ghetto di Roma,” a collection of his poems. He died at Scituate, Mass., in 1892.

See, from his counterfeit of him
Whom Arno shall remember long,
How stern of lineament, how grim,
The father was of Tuscan song!
There but the burning sense of wrong,
Perpetual care and scorn abide;
Small friendship for the lordly throng;
Distrust of all the world beside.

Faithful if this wan image be,
No dream his life was, but a fight;
Could any Beatrice see
A lover in that anchorite?
To that cold Ghibeline’s gloomy sight
Who could have guessed the visions came
Of beauty, veiled with heavenly light,
In circles of eternal flame?

The lips as Cumæ’s cavern close,
The cheeks with fast and sorrow thin,
The rigid front, almost morose,
But for the patient hope within,
Declare a life whose course hath been
Unsullied still, though still severe;
Which, through the wavering days of sin,
Kept itself icy-chaste and clear.

Peace dwells not here—this rugged face
Betrays no spirit of repose;
The sullen warrior sole we trace,
The marble man of many woes.
Such was his mien when first arose
The thought of that strange tale divine,
When hell he peopled with his foes,
The scourge of many a guilty line.

BALLAD OF OLD TIME LADIES.
BY FRANÇOIS VILLON.

This ballad, of which we give Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s translation, was written by Villon in 1450. There are many translations of the poems of that beggar, poet, thief—that first lucid poet of France. Andrew Lang has interpreted him in one way, John Payne in another. The following translation is, perhaps, the happiest of this particular poem, though the ballad cannot but lose some of its spirit in an English rendering.

Tell me, now, in what hidden way is
Lady Flora the lovely Roman?
Where’s Hipparchia, and where is Thais—
Neither of them the fairer woman?
Where is Echo, beheld of no man,
Only heard on river and mere—
She whose beauty was more than human?
But where are the snows of yesteryear?

Where’s Heloise, the learned nun,
For whose sake Abeillard, I ween,
Lost manhood and put priesthood on?
(From love he won such dule and teen!)
And where, I pray you, is the Queen
Who willed that Buridan should steer,
Sewed in a sack’s mouth, down the Seine?
But where are the snows of yesteryear?

White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies
With a voice like any mermaiden—
Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
And Ermengarde, the lady of the Maine—
And that good Joan, whom Englishmen
At Rouen doomed, and burned her there—
Mother of God, where are they, then?
But where are the snows of yesteryear?

Nay, never ask this week, fair lord,
Where they are gone, nor yet this year,
Except with this for an overword—
But where are the snows of yesteryear?

SONG OF THE WESTERN MEN.
BY ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER.

Mr. Hawker was a clergyman, born at Plymouth, England, in 1804, and died there in 1875. He was educated at Oxford and became a noted figure in the church. He was a stalwart and heroic character. In 1834 he became vicar of a lonely parish on the Cornwall coast. His “Echoes From Old Cornwall” appeared in 1845; “Cornish Ballads” in 1869. Shortly before his death he joined the Roman Catholic Church.

A good sword and a trusty hand!
And merry heart and true!
King James’ men shall understand
What Cornish lads can do.

And have they fixed the where and when?
And shall Trelawney die?
Here’s twenty thousand Cornish men
Will know the reason why!

Out spake their Captain brave and bold,
A merry wight was he;
“If London Tower were Michael’s hold,
We’ll set Trelawney free!

“We’ll cross the Tamar, land to land,
The Severn is no stay;
With ‘one and all’ and hand in hand,
And who shall bid us nay?

“And when we come to London Wall,
A pleasant sight to view,
Come forth! Come forth, ye cowards all,
Here’s men as good as you!

“Trelawney he’s in keep and hold,
Trelawney he may die;
But here’s twenty thousand Cornish bold,
Will know the reason why!”

THE SHEPHERDESS.
BY ALICE MEYNELL.

Mrs. Meynell is considered by many critics as the most elegant poet in England at this present time. She has written, besides several volumes of verse, two or three books of essays: “The Color of Life,” “The Rhythm of Life,” and “The Children.”

She walks—the lady of my delight—
A shepherdess of sheep.
Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;
She guards them from the steep.
She feeds them on the fragrant height,
And folds them in for sleep.

She roams maternal hills and bright,
Dark valleys safe and deep.
Into her tender breast at night
The chastest stars may peep.
She walks—the lady of my delight—
A shepherdess of sheep.

She holds her little thoughts in sight,
Though gay they run and leap.
She is so circumspect and right;
She has her soul to keep.
She walks—the lady of my delight—
A shepherdess of sheep.

INVICTUS.
BY W. E. HENLEY.

William Ernest Henley was born in England about 1850. In 1888 he became editor of the Scots Observer, and in the same year published his first volume of poems—“A Book of Verses.” He is a writer and a critic as well as a poet.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud;
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbow’d.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

’TIS THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER.
BY THOMAS MOORE.

’Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rosebud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
Or give sigh for sigh,

I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one!
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go, sleep thou with them.
Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o’er the bed,
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.

So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from love’s shining circle
The gems drop away!
When true hearts lie withered,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh, who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?

MUSIC, WHEN SOFT VOICES DIE.
BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odors, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heapt for the belovèd bed;
And so thy thoughts when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

A SEA SONG.
BY ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

“And who shall sing the glory of the deep” better than Allan Cunningham has done in this song of a sailor’s love, a poet’s love, for the sea?

A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
And a wind that follows fast,
And fills the white and rustling sail,
And bends the gallant mast;
And bends the gallant mast, my boys,
While, like the eagle free,
Away the good ship flies, and leaves
Old England on the lee.

Oh, for a soft and gentle wind!
I heard a fair one cry;
But give to me the snoring breeze
And white waves heaving high;
And white waves heaving high, my boys,
The good ship tight and free;
The world of waters is our home,
And merry men are we.

There’s tempest in yon horned moon,
And lightning in yon cloud;
And hark the music, mariners!
The wind is piping loud;
The wind is piping loud, my boys,
The lightning flashing free—
While the hollow oak our palace is,
Our heritage the sea.

SONG FROM “PIPPA PASSES.”
BY ROBERT BROWNING.

Robert Browning was born at Camberwell in 1812. He was educated at the London University. While his wife lived Browning spent most of his time in Florence—later he divided his time between London and Venice. He died at Venice in 1889. His poems have been collected into several volumes under the titles of “Men and Women,” “Dramatis Personae,” “The Ring and the Book,” “Dramatic Idylls,” and “Sordello.”

The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled.
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in his heaven—
All’s right with the world!

THE WAITING.
BY JOHN G. WHITTIER.

John Greenleaf Whittier was born in Massachusetts in 1807. He was successively the editor of the “American Manufacturer,” the “Haverhill Gazette,” and the “New England Weekly Review.” In 1836 he went to Philadelphia to edit the “Pennsylvania Freeman,” for he was an abolitionist of strong principle. He died in 1892.

I wait and watch; before my eyes
Methinks the night grows thin and gray;
I wait and watch the eastern skies
To see the golden spears uprise
Beneath the oriflamme of day!

Like one whose limbs are bound in trance
I hear the day-sounds swell and grow,
And see across the twilight glance,
Troop after troop, in swift advance,
The shining ones with plumes of snow!

I know the errand of their feet,
I know what mighty work is theirs;
I can but lift up hands unmeet
The thrashing floors of God to beat,
And speed them with unworthy prayers.

I will not dream in vain despair,
The steps of progress wait for me;
The puny leverage of a hair
The planet’s impulse well may spare,
A drop of dew the tided sea.

The loss, if loss there be, is mine;
And yet not mine if understood;
For one shall grasp and one resign,
One drink life’s rue, and one its wine,
And God shall make the balance good.

O, power to do! O, baffled will!
O, prayer and action! ye are one.
Who may not strive may yet fulfill
The harder task of standing still,
And good but wished with God is done!

A MATCH.
BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

This poem is an excellent example of Swinburne’s wonderful inventiveness in the meter of his verses.

If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pleasure or gray grief;
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf.

If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy,
We’d play for lives and seasons
With loving looks and treasons
And tears of night and morrow
And laughs of maid and boy;
If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy.

If you were April’s lady,
And I were lord in May,
We’d throw with leaves for hours
And draw for days with flowers,
Till day, like night, were shady,
And night were bright like day;
If you were April’s lady,
And I were lord in May.

If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain,
We’d hunt down love together,
Pluck out his flying feather,
And teach his feet a measure,
And find his mouth a rein;
If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain.

COUNSEL TO VIRGINS.
BY ROBERT HERRICK.

The advice contained in this poem is not given so subtly nor so gracefully as it is in the other two poems of the trio—Ronsard’s and Waller’s—but the writer is neither a sweet singer like Ronsard nor a poet of nicer instincts like Waller. He was a man who did not scruple to “sully the purity of his style with impurity of sentiment.”

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of Heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

The age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And, while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.

WHY SO PALE AND WAN?
BY SIR JOHN SUCKLING.

Sir John Suckling was born in Whitton in 1609. He went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and afterwards entered the service of the King, Charles I. He fought in the army of Gustavus Adolphus in 1631–32; while in 1639 he levied a troop of horse against the Covenanters. He was a member of the long parliament in 1640. The next year he was charged with high treason and fled to Paris, where he was supposed to have committed suicide in 1642. Though he wrote several plays, he is chiefly noted for his poems.

Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
Prithee, why so pale?
Will, when looking well can’t move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee, why so pale?

Why so dull and mute, young sinner?
Prithee, why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can’t win her,
Saying nothing do’t?
Prithee, why so mute?

Quit, quit, for shame; this will not move;
This cannot take her.
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her;
The devil take her!

THALASSA! THALASSA!
BY BROWNLEE BROWN.

Of this poem Thomas Wentworth Higginson says (in the Outlook, February, 1890): “It is so magnificent that it cheapens most of its contemporary literature, and is alone worth a life otherwise obscure. When all else of American literature has vanished, who knows but that some single masterpiece like this may remain to show the high water mark not merely of a poet but of a nation and a civilization?”

I stand upon the summit of my life,
Behind, the camp, the court, the field, the grove,
The battle, and the burden: vast, afar
Beyond these weary ways, behold, the Sea!
The sea, o’erswept by clouds, and winds, and wings;
By thoughts and wishes manifold; whose breath
Is freshness, and whose mighty pulse is peace.

Palter no question of the horizon dim—
Cut loose the bark! Such voyage itself is rest;
Majestic motion, unimpeded scope,
A widening heaven, a current without care,
Eternity! Deliverance, promise, course,
Time tired souls salute thee from the shore.

AN INDIAN SERENADE.
BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in Sussex, England, in 1792. He was educated at Eton and later at University College, Oxford. When he was 19 Shelley married Harriet Westbrook, but after meeting Mary Wollstonecraft he left Harriet and went to Switzerland with Mary. Harriet drowned herself in 1816, and Shelley married Mary. In 1818 they went to Italy, where they lived, for the rest of Shelley’s life, with Byron, Trelawney, Edward Williams, and Hunt. Shelley and Williams were drowned in the bay of Spezzia in 1822, and their bodies were burned on a funeral pyre.

I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low
And the stars are shining bright.
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me—who knows how?
To thy chamber window, Sweet!

The wandering airs they faint
In the dark, the silent stream—
And the champak odors pine
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine,
Oh, belovèd as thou art!

Oh, lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;
Oh, press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last!

THE FOUNT OF CASTALY.
BY JOSEPH O’CONNOR.

Joseph O’Connor was born at Tribes Hill, N. Y., in 1841. He is a graduate of Rochester University, and was admitted to the bar, but never practiced. He taught for a while at the Rochester Free Academy, but soon left this work for journalism and became editor of the Rochester Post and Express. His poems were published in 1895.

I would the fount of Castaly,
Had never wet my lips;
For woe to him that hastily
Its sacred water sips.

Apollo’s laurel flourishes
Above that stream divine;
Its secret virtue nourishes
The leaves of love and wine.

* * *

Its joyous tide leaps crystally
Up ’neath the crystal moon,
And falling ever mistily
The sparkling drops keep tune.

The wavelets circle gleamingly,
With lilies keeping trysts;
The emeralds glisten dreamily
Below, and amethysts.

Once taste that fountain’s witchery
On old Parnassus’ crown,
And to this world of treachery
O, never more come down!

Your joy will be to think of it,
’Twill ever haunt your dreams;
You’ll thirst again to drink of it,
Among a thousand streams.

THE ROSE.
BY PIERRE RONSARD.

This poem of Pierre Ronsard (1542) is given a place here, as it is an example of that theme which is as old as love or life—the decay of youth and beauty—a subject which has been a favorite with poets in all times. The motive of this little lyric is that of Waller’s “Go, Lovely Rose,” and of Herrick’s “Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May.”

Come, my Mignonne, let us go—
Let us see if yonder rose,
That this morning did disclose
Robes of crimson to the sun,
Now that evening has begun,
Still with tints like yours does glow.

Ah, my Mignonne, look and see—
Look there, underneath the bough;
Short the space from then till now,
But its beauties all are past!
Scarce from morn till eve they last—
Such is nature’s harsh decree.

Ah, my Mignonne, trust to me;
While your youth as yet is seen
In its freshest, fairest green,
Seize the moments to enjoy;
Old age hastens to destroy
Roses, beauty, youth, and thee.

FAITH.
BY THOMAS CHATTERTON.

Thomas Chatterton was born in Bristol, England, Nov. 20, 1752. He ended his life by taking arsenic in a lodging room in London, Aug. 24, 1770. He received a meager education at a charity school in his native city, began to write verses when he was 12 years old, and at 15 was apprenticed to a Bristol attorney. He went to London in April, 1770. He tried to make a living by writing for the newspapers, but failed, and, reduced to extreme destitution, committed suicide. His Rowley poems, which he said were translations from the writings of a monk of the fifteenth century, have been the subject of much discussion. Besides those he wrote “The Tragedy of Aella,” “The Battle of Hastings,” “The Tournament,” and several shorter poems. His correspondence with Horace Walpole proved a bitter experience for the precocious poet, who wrote some savage lines on that nobleman author.

O God, whose thunder shakes the sky,
Whose eye this atom globe surveys,
To thee, my only rock, I fly,
Thy mercy in thy justice praise.

The mystic mazes of thy will,
The shadows of celestial light,
Are past the power of human skill;
But what the Eternal acts is right.

Oh, teach me in the trying hour,
When anguish swells the dewy tear,
To still my sorrows, own thy power,
Thy goodness love, thy justice fear.

If in this bosom aught but thee
Encroaching sought a boundless sway,
Omniscience could the danger see,
And Mercy look the cause away.

Then why, my soul, dost thou complain,
Why drooping seek the dark recess?
Shake off the melancholy chain,
For God created all to bless.

But ah! my breast is human still;
The rising sigh, the falling tear,
My languid vitals’ feeble rill,
The sickness of my soul declare.

But yet, with fortitude resigned,
I’ll thank the inflicter of the blow;
Forbid the sigh, compose my mind,
Nor let the gush of misery flow.

The gloomy mantle of the night,
Which on my sinking spirit steals,
Will vanish at the morning light,
Which God, my east, my sun, reveals.

THE SONG OF THE CAMP.
BY BAYARD TAYLOR.

Bayard Taylor was born in Pennsylvania in 1825. He was connected with the New York Tribune 1849–’50. Most of his life was spent in travel. In 1853 he joined Perry’s expedition to Japan. He corresponded with the American papers, and on his return to this country he lectured. From 1862–’63 he lived at St. Petersburg as Secretary of the Legation there. He died in Berlin, where he was United States Minister, in 1878. He has written of his travels, has translated Goethe’s “Faust,” and was besides a poet and novelist.

“Give us a song!” the soldiers cried,
The outer trenches guarding,
When the heated guns of the camps allied
Grew weary of bombarding.

The dark Redan, in silent scoff,
Lay grim and threatening under;
And the tawny mound of the Malakoff
No longer belch’d its thunder.

There was a pause. A guardsman said:
“We storm the forts tomorrow;
Sing while we may, another day
Will bring enough of sorrow.”

They lay along the battery’s side,
Below the smoking cannon;
Brave hearts from Severn and from Clyde
And from the banks of Shannon.

They sang of love and not of fame;
Forgot was Britain’s glory;
Each heart recalled a different name,
But all sang “Annie Laurie.”

Voice after voice caught up the song,
Until its tender passion
Rose like an anthem, rich and strong—
Their battle-eve confession.

Dear girl, her name he dared not speak,
But as the song grew louder,
Something upon the soldier’s cheek
Washed off the stains of powder.

Beyond the darkening ocean burned
The bloody sunset’s embers,
While the Crimean valleys learn’d
How English love remembers.

And once again a fire of hell
Rain’d on the Russian quarters,
With scream of shot and burst of shell,
And bellowing of the mortars!

An Irish Nora’s eyes are dim
For a singer dumb and gory;
An English Mary mourns for him
Who sang of “Annie Laurie.”

Sleep, soldiers! still in honor’d rest
Your truth and valor wearing;
The bravest are the tenderest—
The loving are the daring.

UPHILL.
BY CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI.

Christina Rossetti was born at London in 1828. She came of that versatile family, in which the father and sons as well as the daughter were writers, artists, critics and poets. While still in her teens, Miss Rossetti published a little volume called “Maud, Prose and Verse,” and crude and morbid as the work was it gave promise of better things. She wrote later, “Goblin Market” (which Dante Gabriel Rossetti illustrated), “A Pageant and Other Poems,” and several religious studies. She died in 1894.

Does the road wind uphill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow, dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.

DOUGLAS, DOUGLAS, TENDER AND TRUE.
BY MISS MULOCK.

Mrs. Craik, better known as Dinah Maria Mulock, was born at Stoke-Upon-Trent, England, 1828, and died at Shortlands, Kent, October 12, 1887. She was the author of many popular novels. She published a volume of poems in 1859, and “Thirty Years’ Poems” in 1881, besides many children’s books, fairy tales, etc. She married George Lillie Craik, Jr., in 1865.

Could ye come back to me, Douglas, Douglas,
In the old likeness that I knew,
I would be so faithful, so loving, Douglas,
Douglas, Douglas, tender and true.

Never a scornful word should grieve ye,
I’d smile on ye sweet as the angels do—
Sweet as your smile on me shone ever,
Douglas, Douglas, tender and true.

O, to call back the days that are not!
My eyes were blinded, your words were few;
Do you know the truth now, up in heaven?
Douglas, Douglas, tender and true?

I never was worthy of you, Douglas,
Not half worthy the like of you;
Now, all men beside seem to me like shadows—
I love you, Douglas, tender and true.

Stretch out your hand to me, Douglas, Douglas.
Drop forgiveness from heaven like dew,
As I lay my heart on your dead heart, Douglas,
Douglas, Douglas, tender and true.

TEARS, IDLE TEARS.
BY ALFRED TENNYSON.

This song is found in the “Princess.” It was sung on the memorable occasion when the three disguised youths are discovered.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken’d birds
To dying ears when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O, death in life, the days that are no more.

HIGHLAND MARY.
BY ROBERT BURNS.

Ye banks, and braes, and streams around
The castle o’ Montgomery,
Green be your woods, and fair your flowers,
Your waters never drumlie!
There simmer first unfauld her robes,
And there the langest tarry!
For there I took the last fareweel
O’ my sweet Highland Mary.

How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk,
How rich the hawthorn’s blossom,
As underneath their fragrant shade
I clasped her to my bosom!
The golden hours on angel wings
Flew o’er me and my dearie;
For dear to me as light and life
Was my sweet Highland Mary.

Wi’ monie a vow and locked embrace
Our parting was fu’ tender;
And, pledging aft to meet again,
We tore ourselves asunder;
But O! fell death’s untimely frost,
That nipped my flower sae early!
Now green’s the sod, and cauld’s the clay,
That wraps my Highland Mary.

O pale, pale now those rosy lips
I aft hae kissed sae fondly!
And closed for aye the sparkling glance
That dwelt on me sae kindly!
And mould’ring now in silent dust
That heart that lo’ed me dearly!
But still within my bosom’s core
Shall live my Highland Mary.

THE LAMB.
BY WILLIAM BLAKE.

In speaking of William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence,” Swinburne says: “These poems are really unequaled of their kind. Such verse was never written for children since verse writing began.”

Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life and bade thee feed
By the stream and o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

Little lamb, I’ll tell thee;
Little lamb, I’ll tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a lamb.
He is meek and he is mild,
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little lamb, God bless thee!
Little lamb, God bless thee!

PSALM XXIV.

The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof;
The world and they that dwell therein.
For he hath founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the floods.
Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?
Or who shall stand in his holy place?
He that hath clean hands,
And a pure heart;
Who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity,
Nor sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive the blessing from the Lord,
And righteousness from the God of his salvation.
This is the generation of them that seek him,
That seek thy face, O Jacob.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates;
And be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates;
Even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.

SELF-DEPENDENCE.
BY MATTHEW ARNOLD.

Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At the vessel’s prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o’er the starlit sea.

And a look of passionate desire
O’er the sea and to the stars I send;
“Ye, who from my childhood up have claimed me,
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end!

“Ah, once more,” I cried, “ye stars, ye waters,
On my heart your mighty charm renew;
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,
Feel my soul becoming vast like you!”

From the intense, clear, star sown vault of heaven,
O’er the lit sea’s unquiet way,
In the rustling night air came the answer—
“Wouldst thou be as these are? Live as they.

“Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,
These demand not that the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.

“And with joy the stars perform their shining,
And the sea its long moon silver’d roll;
For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.

“Bounded by themselves, and unregardful
In what state God’s other works may be,
In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see.”

O, air born voice! long since, severely clear,
A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear—
“Resolve to be thyself; and know that he
Who finds himself loses his misery!”

THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD.
BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

Mr. Longfellow and his second wife, during their honeymoon, visited the United States arsenal at Springfield, Mass., about half a century ago. The figure of speech in which the poet speaks of the burnished arms rising like a huge organ was suggested by Mrs. Longfellow. The poem was inspired by Charles Sumner’s oration, “The True Grandeur of Nations,” which was an argument for peace and against war.

This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing
Startles the villages with strange alarms.

Ah, what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,
When the death angel touches those swift keys!
What loud lament and dismal Miserere
Will mingle with their awful symphonies!

I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,
The cries of agony, the endless groan,
Which, through the ages that have gone before us,
In long reverberations reach our own.

On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer,
Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman’s song,
And loud, amid the universal clamor,
O’er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong.

I hear the Florentine, who from his palace
Wheels out his battle bell with dreadful din,
And Aztec priests upon their teocallis
Beat the wild war drums made of serpent’s skin.

The tumult of each sacked and burning village;
The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns;
The soldiers’ revels in the midst of pillage;
The wail of famine in beleaguered towns;

The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder,
The rattling musketry, the clashing blade;
And ever and anon, in tones of thunder,
The diapason of the cannonade.

Is it, O man, with such discordant noises,
With such accursed instruments as these,
Thou drownest nature’s sweet and kindly voices,
And jarrest the celestial harmonies?

Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals or forts.

The warrior’s name would be a name abhorred
And every nation, that should lift again
Its hand against a brother, on its forehead
Would wear for evermore the curse of Cain!

Down the dark future, through long generations,
The echoing sounds grow fainter, and then cease;
And, like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations,
I hear once more the voice of Christ say “Peace!”

Peace! And no longer from its brazen portals
The blast of war’s great organ shakes the skies!
But beautiful as songs of the immortals
The holy melodies of love arise.

ALL.
BY FRANCIS A. DURIVAGE.

Francis A. Durivage was born at Boston in 1814 and engaged early in journalistic work, writing for the magazines as well. He won considerable reputation with a series of humorous articles signed “Old Un.” He wrote a great many poems of serious as well as of light character, and several plays. He published “Cyclopedia of Biography,” “The Fatal Casket,” “Life Scenes from the World Around Us,” was part translator of Lamartine’s “History of the Revolution of 1848,” and co-author of “Stray Subjects.” He died in New York city in 1881.

[“I know of no finer poem of its length.”—Bayard Taylor.]

There hangs a saber, and there a rein,
With a rusty buckle and green curb chain;
A pair of spurs on the old gray wall,
And a mouldy saddle—well, that is all.

Come out to the stable—it is not far;
The moss grown door is hanging ajar.
Look within! There’s an empty stall,
Where once stood a charger, and that is all.

The good black horse came riderless home,
Flecked with blood drops as well as foam;
See yonder hillock where dead leaves fall;
The good black horse pined to death—that’s all.

All? O, God! it is all I can speak.
Question me not—I am old and weak;
His saber and his saddle hang on the wall,
And his horse pined to death—I have told you all.

LIFE.
BY MRS. A. L. BARBAULD.

Anna Letitia Barbauld, the daughter of the Rev. John Aiken, was born at Kilworth-Harcourt, in Leicestershire, 1743. She married the Rev. Rochemond Barbauld. A poet as well as an essayist, she wrote “Poems,” “Hymns in Prose for Children,” “The Female Spectator,” and “Eighteen Hundred and Eleven.” She died at Stoke Newington in 1825.

Life! I know not what thou art,
But know that thou and I must part;
And when, or how, or where we met
I own to me ’s a secret yet.

Life! we’ve been long together
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
’Tis hard to part when friends are dear—
Perhaps ’t will cost a sigh, a tear;
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not “Good night,” but in some brighter clime
Bid me “Good morning.”

THE DAFFODILS.
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

I wandered, lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretch’d in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not but be gay
In such jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth to me the show had brought;

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

SONG ON MAY MORNING.
BY JOHN MILTON.

John Milton was born at London in 1608. At 16 he went to Christ’s College, Cambridge, and there wrote his “Ode on the Nativity” (1629). During the Long Parliament Milton wrote many political pamphlets attacking the Episcopacy, and later, when Charles I. had been executed, he answered the “Eikon Basilike” of Gauden with his famous “Eikonoclastes.” At home Milton suffered through the neglect and impatience of his daughters, who, on account of his blindness, were the unwilling amanuenses, of “Paradise Lost,” and “Paradise Regained.” Besides these epic poems are “L’Allegro,” “Il Penseroso,” “Comus,” and “Lycidas,” all of which were written between 1634–’37. He died in 1674.

Now the bright morning star, day’s harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May, that doth inspire
Mirth and youth and warm desire;
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing;
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

GROUNDS OF THE TERRIBLE.
BY HAROLD BEGBIE.

The death is announced of First Class Petty Officer Grounds of H. M. S. Terrible, the best shot with a heavy gun in the British navy. Grounds’ wages were 3 shillings per day, and for the unparalleled achievement of making eight shots in one minute in 1901 with the six-inch gun, and seven hits out of eight rounds in one minute under most unfavorable weather conditions in 1902, he received in all the magnificent remuneration of 1 shilling 9 pence, and 6 shillings 3 pence in the two years, “his proper share of prize money.”

The statesman at the council, and the gunner at the breech:
The hand upon the parchment and the eye along the sight:
O, the cry is on the waters: Have ye weighed the worth of each?
Have ye shown a mandate stronger than ability to smite?

He was the best with a heavy gun in the whole o’ the British fleet,
And the run of his pay? Three shillin’s a day, with biscuit and salted meat.
He was the man who could pitch his shell on a mark that was never still
Eight times true while a minute flew, and parliament whittled the bill;
He was a man who could soothe a gun in the race of a swirling tide,
Who could chime his shots with the charging knots of a ship with a dripping side,
Who could get to his mark from a dancing deck that never a moment stood,
Content to hear, for a Bisley cheer, a midshipman’s muttered “Good!”

Never his eye will steady now thro’ the spray and the whistling rain,
To loose the scream from the foaming lips and splinter the mark in twain;
Never again will he win his share in the prize that my lords assign—
Six-and-three in a single year, and once—it was one-and-nine!
Never again! He has fired the last of the shells that the state allowed,
He has turned from the roar of the six-inch bore to the hush of the hammock shroud,
And never a bell in England tolled, and who was it caught his breath
When the Shot o’ the Fleet first dipped his feet in the flooding ford of Death?

Gladder, I think, would the gunner’s soul have passed thro’ the closing dark
Had he known that ye cared with patriot joy when the navy hit the mark;
Gladder, I think, would the gunner’s soul have passed to the farther shore
Had the Mother Land once gripped his hand, and uttered the pride she bore.
Gold is the prize that all men seek, tho’ the mark be honor and fame;
Declare: Have ye spurned by a gift or a word the Terrible gunners’ aim?
Will ye care to know what the men can do when the hosts of hate embark?
What of your sons at the old sea guns?—have ye cared if they hit the mark?

IN THE GRAVEYARD.
BY MACDONALD CLARKE.

Macdonald Clarke was born at New London, Conn., in 1798. On account of his many eccentricities he gained the name of the “Mad Poet.” His poems have been collected under the titles of “A Review of the Eve of Eternity and Other Poems,” “The Elixir of Moonshine, by the Mad Poet,” “The Gossip,” “Poetic Sketches,” and “The Belles of Broadway.” He died in 1842.

’Mid the half-lit air, and the lonely place,
Rose the buried Pleasures of perish’d years.
I saw the Past, with her pallid face,
Whose smiles had turned to tears.
On many a burial stone,
I read the names of beings once known,
Who oft in childish glee,
Had jumped across the graves with me—
Sported, many a truant day,
Where—now their ashes lay.

There the dead Poet had been placed,
Who died in the dawn of thought—
And there, the girl whose virtues graced
The lines his love had wrought—
Beauty’s power, and Talent’s pride,
And Passion’s fever, early chill’d
The heart that felt, the eye that thrill’d,
All, the dazzling dreams of each,
Faded, out of Rapture’s reach.

O, when they trifled, on this spot,
Not long ago,
Little they thought, ’twould be their lot,
So soon to lie here lone and low,
’Neath a chilly coverlid of clay,
And few or none to go
’Mid the glimmering dusk of a summer day,
To the dim place where they lay,
And pause and pray,
And think how little worth,
Is all that frets our hearts on earth.

The sun had sunk, and the summer skies
Were dotted with specks of light,
That melted soon, in the deep moon-rise,
That flowed over Croton Height.
For the Evening, in her robe of white,
Smiled o’er sea and land, with pensive eyes,
Saddening the heart, like the first fair night,
After a loved one dies.

BONNY DUNDEE.
BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.

To the lords of convention ’twas Claver’se who spoke,
“Ere the king’s crown shall fall there are crowns to be broke;
So let each cavalier who loves honor and me
Come follow the bonnet of Bonny Dundee.

“Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can,
Come saddle your horses, and call up your men;
Come open the West Port and let me gang free,
And it’s room for the bonnets of Bonny Dundee.”

Dundee he is mounted, he rides up the street,
The bells are rung backward, the drums they are beat;
But the provost, douce man, said, “Just e’en let him be,
The gude town is weel quit of the deil of Dundee.”

With sour featured whigs the Grassmarket was crammed,
As if half the west had set tryst to be hanged;
There was spite in each look, there was fear in each ee,
As they watched for the bonnets of Bonny Dundee.

These cowls of Kilmarnock had spits and had spears,
And lang hafted gullies to kill cavaliers;
And they shrunk to close heads, and the causeway was free,
At the toss of the bonnet of Bonny Dundee.

“Away to the hills, to the caves, to the rocks—
Ere I own an usurper, I’ll couch with the fox;
And tremble, false whigs, in the midst of your glee;
You have not seen the last of my bonnets and me.”

BORDER BALLAD.
BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.

March, march, Ettrick and Teviotdale,
Why the deil dinna ye march forward in order?
March, march, Eskdale and Liddesdale
All the Blue Bonnets are bound for the border.
Many a banner spread
Flutters above your head,
Many a crest that is famous in story.
Mount and make ready then,
Sons of the mountain glen,
Fight for the queen and our old Scottish glory.

Come from the hills where your hirsels are grazing,
Come from the glen of the buck and the roe;
Come to the crag where the beacon is blazing,
Come with the buckler, the lance, and the bow.
Trumpets are sounding,
War steeds are bounding;
Stand to your arms, then, and march in good order,
England shall many a day
Tell of the bloody fray,
When the Blue Bonnets came over the Border.

TO THE DANDELION.
BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

This poem, like Bryant’s “Waterfowl,” like many of Longfellow’s, speaks of the objects of nature in a reflective, almost religious tone, portraying the love of our American poets for “these living pages of God’s book.”

Dear common flower, that grow’st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,
High hearted buccaneers, o’erjoyed that they
An El Dorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth’s ample round
May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer blooms may be.

Gold such as thine ne’er drew the Spanish prow
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas,
Nor wrinkled the lean brow
Of age to rob the lover’s heart of ease;
’Tis the spring’s largess, which she scatters now
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,
Though most hearts never understand
To take it at God’s value, but pass by
The offered wealth with unrewarded eye,

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;
The eyes thou givest
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time.
Not in mid-June the gold cuirassed bee
Feels a more summerlike warm ravishment
In the white lily’s breezy tent,
His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.

How like a prodigal doth nature seem,
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art!
Thou teachest me to deem
More sacredly of every human heart,
Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show,
Did we but pay the love we owe.
And with a child’s undoubting wisdom look,
On all these pages of God’s book.

THE BALLAD OF THE BOAT.
BY RICHARD GARNETT.

This poem has passed in American books of selections as having been written by an unknown “R. Garrett,” this being mainly the consequence of an error in editing the little book called “Sea and Shore,” some twenty years ago. It now, however, appears as the work of a man dear to many Americans, Dr. Richard Garnett, late of the British Museum.

The stream was smooth as glass. We said: “Arise, and let’s away.”
The Siren sang beside the boat that in the rushes lay,
And spread the sail and strong the oar, we gayly took our way.
When shall the sandy bar be crost? When shall we find the bay?

The broadening flood swells slowly out o’er cattle dotted plains;
The stream is strong and turbulent, and dark with heavy rains;
The laborer looks up to see our shallop speed away.
When shall the sandy bar be crost? When shall we find the bay?

Now are the clouds like fiery shrouds; the sun, superbly large,
Slow as an oak to woodman’s stroke, sinks flaming at their marge;
The waves are bright with mirror’d light as jacinths on our way.
When shall the sandy bar be crost? When shall we find the bay?

The moon is high up in the sky, and now no more we see
The spreading river’s either bank, and surging distantly
There booms a sudden thunder as of breakers far away;
Now shall the sandy bar be crost, now shall we find the bay!

The seagull shrieks high overhead, and dimly to our sight
The moonlit crests of foaming waves gleam towering through the night.
We’ll steal upon the mermaid soon, and start her from her lay,
When once the sandy bar is crost and we are in the bay.

What rises white and awful as a shroud enfolded ghost?
What roar of rampant tumult bursts in clangor on the coast?
Pull back! pull back! The raging flood sweeps every oar away.
O stream, is this thy bar of sand? O boat, is this the bay?

NEARER HOME.
BY PHOEBE CARY.

Phoebe Cary, sister of Alice Cary, was born in Hamilton County, near Cincinnati, Sept. 24, 1824; died in Newport, R. I., July 31, 1871. Her educational advantages were superior to those of Alice, whose constant companion she was through life. “Nearer Home” was written when she was 18 years old. Intense sorrow for her sister, whom she survived, doubtless hastened her death.

One sweetly solemn thought
Comes to me o’er and o’er;
I’m nearer my home today
Than I ever have been before;

Nearer my Father’s house,
Where the many mansions be;
Nearer the great white throne,
Nearer the crystal sea;

Nearer the bound of life,
Where we lay our burdens down;
Nearer leaving the cross,
Nearer gaining the crown!

But lying darkly between,
Winding down through the night,
Is the silent, unknown stream,
That leads us at length to the light.

Closer and closer my steps
Come to the dread abysm;
Closer Death to my lips
Presses the awful chrism.

O, if my mortal feet
Have almost gained the brink;
If it be I am nearer home
Even today than I think;

Father, perfect my trust;
Let my spirit feel in death
That her feet are firmly set
On the rock of a living faith!

THE TIGER.
BY WILLIAM BLAKE.

William Blake was born at London in 1757; he died there in 1827. He is well known among children for his “Songs of Innocence.” Other of his works are: “Book of Thel,” the “Marriage of Heaven and Earth,” “Gates of Paradise,” “Songs of Experience.” He was also a painter and an engraver, and among his best work in that line are his illustrations to Blair’s “Grave,” and to the book of Job.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thine heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

ANNABEL LEE.
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE.

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love,
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high born kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me;
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we,
Of many far wiser than we;
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulcher there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

TODAY.
BY THOMAS CARLYLE.

So here hath been dawning another blue day;
Think, wilt thou let it slip useless away?

Out of eternity this new day is born;
Into eternity at night will return.

Behold it aforetime no eye ever did;
So soon it forever from all eyes is hid.

Here hath been dawning another blue day;
Think, wilt thou let it slip useless away?

MY BOAT IS ON THE SHORE
BY LORD BYRON.

My boat is on the shore,
And my bark is on the sea;
But before I go, Tom Moore,
Here’s a double health to thee!

Here’s a sigh to those who love me,
And a smile to those who hate;
And, whatever sky’s above me,
Here’s a heart for every fate!

Though the ocean roar around me,
Yet it still shall bear me on;
Though a desert should surround me,
It hath springs that may be won.

Were’t the last drop in the well,
As I gasp’d upon the brink,
Ere my fainting spirit fell,
’T is to thee that I would drink.

With that water, as this wine,
The libation I would pour
Should be—Peace with thine and mine,
And a health to thee, Tom Moore!

INDIAN SUMMER.
BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

From gold to gray
Our mild, sweet day
Of Indian summer fades too soon;
But tenderly
Above the sea
Hangs, white and calm, the hunter’s moon.

In its pale fire
The village spire
Shows like the zodiac’s spectral lance;
The painted walls
Whereon it falls
Transfigured stand in marble trance!

SCOTS WHA HAE.
BY ROBERT BURNS.

A friend of Burns states this stirring poem was written during a frightful storm in the wilds of Glenken, in Galloway. It was written in September, 1793.

Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has often led;
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victorie!

Now’s the day, and now’s the hour;
See the front o’ battle lour;
See approach proud Edward’s pow’r—
Chains and slaverie!

Wha will be a traitor-knave?
Wha can fill a coward’s grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!

Wha for Scotland’s king and law
Freedom’s sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand, or freeman fa’,
Let him follow me!

By oppression’s woes and pains!
By our sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!

Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty’s in every blow!
Let us do or die!

JERUSALEM, THE GOLDEN.
TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN, BY JOHN M. NEALE.

Jerusalem, the golden,
With milk and honey blest!
Beneath thy contemplation
Sink heart and voice oppressed;
I know not, Oh, I know not,
What joys await me there,
What radiancy of glory,
What bliss beyond compare.

They stand, those halls of Zion,
All jubilant with song,
And bright with many an angel,
And all the martyr throng;
The Prince is ever in them,
The daylight is serene;
The pastures of the blessed
Are decked in glorious sheen.

There is the throne of David;
And there, from care released,
The shout of them that triumph,
The song of them that feast:
And they who, with their Leader,
Have conquered in the fight
Forever and forever
Are clad in robes of white.

MISCONCEPTIONS.
BY ROBERT BROWNING.

This is a spray the Bird clung to,
Making it blossom with pleasure,
Ere the high tree-top she sprung to,
Fit for her nest and her treasure.
Oh, what a hope beyond measure
Was the poor spray’s which the flying feet hung to,—
So to be singled out, built in and sung to!

This is a heart the Queen leant on
Thrilled in a minute erratic,
Ere the true bosom she bent on,
Meet for love’s regal dalmatic.
Oh what a fancy ecstatic
Was the poor heart’s, ere the wanderer went on—
Love to be saved for it, proffered to, spent on!

JOHN ANDERSON, MY JO.
BY ROBERT BURNS.

John Anderson, my jo, John,
When we were first acquent,
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bonny brow was brent;
But now your brow is beld, John,
Your locks are like the snaw;
But blessings on your frosty pow,
John Anderson, my jo.

John Anderson, my jo, John,
We clamb the hill thegither;
And monie a canty day, John,
We’ve had wi’ ane anither.
Now we maun totter down, John,
But hand in hand we’ll go,
And sleep thegither at the foot,
John Anderson, my jo.

MAID OF ATHENS, ERE WE PART.
BY LORD BYRON.

Zoè mou sas agapo.
(My life, I love thee.)

Maid of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh, give me back my heart!
Or, since that has left my breast,
Keep it now and take the rest!
Hear my vow before I go,
Zoè mou sas agapo.

By those tresses unconfined,
Woo’d by each Ægean wind;
By those lids whose jetty fringe
Kiss thy soft cheeks’ blooming tinge;
By those wild eyes like the roe,
Zoè mou sas agapo.

By that lip I long to taste;
By that zone-encircled waist;
By all the token-flowers that tell
What words can never speak so well;
By love’s alternate joy and woe,
Zoè mou sas agapo.

Maid of Athens! I am gone:
Think of me, sweet! when alone.
Though I fly to Istambol,
Athens holds my heart and soul:
Can I cease to love thee? No!
Zoè mou sas agapo.

TO CELIA.
BEN JONSON.

Ben Jonson was born about the year 1573, at Westminster. Little is known about his early life, but in 1597 he is found playing and writing for “The Admiral’s Men,” and later for the “Lord Chamberlain’s Servants.” Afterwards he stood in great favor at court, and wrote many of his best plays during that time—the “Alchemist,” “Catiline,” “Bartholomew Fair,” and “Epicoene.” He died in 1637, after several years of illness, which affected his wit and brilliancy in such a manner that many of his later plays were not heard to the end. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. He also wrote some prose and some of the most beautiful lyrics of the English language.

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup
And I’ll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honoring thee
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be;
But thou thereon didst only breathe
And sent’st it back to me;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself but thee.

A LOVER’S QUARREL.
BY AUSTIN DOBSON.