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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Poems Every Child Should Know
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Poems Every Child Should Know
+
+Editor: Mary E. Burt
+
+Release Date: August 4, 2005 [eBook #16436]
+Last Updated: August 25, 2023
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Juliet Sutherland, Laura Wisewell and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW ***
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: When the shadows are long]
+
+
+
+
+ POEMS
+
+ Every Child Should Know
+
+
+ EDITED BY
+ Mary E. Burt
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+ THE WHAT-EVERY-CHILD-
+ SHOULD-KNOW-LIBRARY
+
+ Published by
+ DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & CO., INC., for
+ THE PARENTS’ INSTITUTE, INC.
+ Publishers of “The Parents’ Magazine”
+ 9 EAST 40th STREET, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+ COPYRIGHT. 1904, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
+ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY,
+ N.Y.
+
+
+
+
+ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO PUBLISHERS AND AUTHORS
+
+
+ It sometimes happens that there are people who do not know that authors
+ are protected by copyright laws. A publisher once cited to me an
+ instance of a teacher who innocently put forth a little volume of poems
+ that she loved and admired, without asking permission of any one. Her
+ annoyance was boundless when she found that she had no right to the
+ poems.
+
+ Special permission has been obtained for each copyrighted poem in this
+ volume, and the right to publish has been purchased of the author or
+ publisher, except in those cases where the author or the publisher has,
+ for reasons of courtesy and friendship, given the permission.
+
+ In addition to the business arrangements which have been made, we wish
+ to extend our thanks and acknowledgments to those firms which have so
+ kindly allowed us to use their material.
+
+ To HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY, of Boston, we are indebted for
+ the use of the following poems: From the copyrighted works of
+ Longfellow--“The Arrow and the Song,” “A Fragment of Hiawatha’s
+ Childhood,” “The Skeleton in Armour,” “The Wreck of the
+ _Hesperus_,” “The Ship of State,” “The Psalm of Life,” “The
+ Village Blacksmith.” From Whittier--“Barbara Frietchie” and “The
+ _Three Bells_ of Glasgow.” From Emerson--“The Problem.” From
+ Burroughs--“My Own Shall Come to Me.” From Lowell--“The Finding of
+ the Lyre,” “The Shepherd of King Admetus,” and a fragment of “The
+ Vision of Sir Launfal,” From Holmes--“The Chambered Nautilus” and
+ “Old Ironsides.” From James T. Fields--“The Captain’s Daughter.”
+ From Bayard Taylor--“The Song in Camp,” From Celia Thaxter--“The
+ Sandpiper.” From J.T. Trowbridge--“Farm-Yard Song.” From Edith M.
+ Thomas--“The God of Music” and Hermes’ “Moly.”
+
+ To CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS we are indebted for the use of the
+ following poems: From the copyrighted works of Eugene
+ Field--“Wynken Blynken, and Nod,” “Krinken,” and “The Duel.” From
+ Robert Louis Stevenson--“My Shadow.” From James Whitcomb Riley’s
+ poems--“Little Orphant Annie.” From the poems of Sidney
+ Lanier--“Barnacles” and “The Tournament.” From “The Poems of
+ Patriotism”--“Sheridan’s Ride.”
+
+ We are further indebted to CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, as well as
+ to MR. GEORGE W. CABLE, for “The New Arrival,” taken from
+ “The Cable Story Book,” and to MRS. KATHERINE MILLER and
+ _Scribner’s Magazine_ for “Stevenson’s Birthday.”
+
+ To J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY we are indebted for the use of
+ “Sheridan’s Ride,” from the complete works of T. Buchanan Read.
+
+ To HARPER & BROTHERS for the use of “Driving Home the Cows,”
+ by Kate Putnam Osgood.
+
+ To LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY, of Boston, “How the Leaves Came
+ Down,” by Susan Coolidge.
+
+ To the WHITAKER & RAY COMPANY, of San Francisco, “Columbus,”
+ by Joaquin Miller, from his complete works published and
+ copyrighted by that company.
+
+ To D. APPLETON & COMPANY for “The Planting of the Apple-Tree”
+ and “Robert of Lincoln,” from the complete works of William Cullen
+ Bryant; also for “Marco Bozzaris,” from the works of Fitz-Greene
+ Halleck.
+
+ To the MACMILLAN COMPANY for “The Forsaken Merman,” by Matthew
+ Arnold, from the complete volume of his poems published by that
+ company.
+
+ To the HOWARD UNIVERSITY PRINT, Washington, D.C., for Jeremiah
+ Rankin’s little poem, “The Babie,” from “Ingleside Rhaims.”
+
+ To the heirs of MARY EMILY BRADLEY for “A Chrysalis.”
+
+ To HENRY HOLCOMB BENNETT for “The Flag Goes By.”
+
+
+
+
+ PREFACE
+
+
+ Is this another collection of stupid poems that children cannot use?
+ Will they look hopelessly through this volume for poems that suit them?
+ Will they say despairingly, “This is too long,” and “That is too hard,”
+ and “I don’t like that because it is not interesting”?
+
+ Are there three or four pleasing poems and are all the rest put in to
+ fill up the book? Nay, verily! The poems in this collection are those
+ that children love. With the exception of seven, they are short enough
+ for children to commit to memory without wearying themselves or losing
+ interest in the poem. If one boy learns “The Overland Mail,” or “The
+ Recruit,” or “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,” or “The Song in Camp,” or “Old
+ Ironsides,” or “I Have a Little Shadow,” or “The Tournament,” or “The
+ Duel,” nine boys out of ten will be eager to follow him. I know because
+ I have tried it a dozen times. Every boy loves “Paul Revere’s Ride”
+ (alas! I have not been able to include it), and is ambitious to learn
+ it, but only boys having a quick memory will persevere to the end. Shall
+ the slower boy be deprived of the pleasure of reading the whole poem and
+ getting its inspiring sentiment and learning as many stanzas as his mind
+ will take? No, indeed. Half of such a poem is better than none. Let the
+ slow boy learn and recite as many stanzas as he can and the boy of quick
+ memory follow him up with the rest. It does not help the slow boy’s
+ memory to keep it down entirely or deprive it of its smaller activity
+ because he cannot learn the whole. Some people will invariably give the
+ slow child a very short poem. It is often better to divide a long poem
+ among the children, letting each child learn a part. The sustained
+ interest of a long poem is worth while. “The Merman,” “The Battle of
+ Ivry,” “Horatius at the Bridge,” “Krinken,” “The Skeleton in Armour,”
+“The Raven” and “Hervé Riel” may all profitably be learned that way.
+ Nevertheless, the child enjoys most the poem that is just long enough,
+ and there is much to be said in favour of the selection that is adapted,
+ in length, to the average mind; for the child hesitates in the presence
+ of quantity rather than in the presence of subtle thought. I make claim
+ for this collection that it is made up of poems that the majority of
+ children will learn of their own free will. There are people who believe
+ that in the matter of learning poetry there is no “_ought_,” but this is
+ a false belief. There is a _duty_, even there; for every American
+ citizen _ought_ to know the great national songs that keep alive the
+ spirit of patriotism. Children should build for their future--and get,
+ while they are children, what only the fresh imagination of the child
+ can assimilate.
+
+ They should store up an untold wealth of heroic sentiment; they should
+ acquire the habit of carrying a literary quality in their conversation;
+ they should carry a heart full of the fresh and delightful associations
+ and memories, connected with poetry hours to brighten mature years. They
+ should develop their memories while they have memories to develop.
+
+ Will the boy who took every poetry hour for a whole school year to learn
+“Henry of Navarre” ever regret it, or will the children who listened to
+ it? No. It was fresh every week and they brought fresh interest in
+ listening. The boy will always love it because he used to love it. There
+ were boys who scrambled for the right to recite “The Tournament,” “The
+ Charge of the Light Brigade,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and so on. The
+ boy who was first to reach the front had the privilege. The triumph of
+ getting the chance to recite added to the zest of it. Will they ever
+ forget it?
+
+ I know Lowell’s “The Finding of the Lyre.” Attention, Sir Knights! See
+ who can learn it first as I say it to you. But I find that I have
+ forgotten a line of it, so you may open your books and teach it to me.
+ Now, I can recite every word of it. How much of it can you repeat from
+ memory? One boy can say it all. Nearly every child has learned the most
+ of it. Now, it will be easy for you to learn it alone. And Memory, the
+ Goddess Beautiful, will henceforth go with you to recall this happy
+ hour.
+
+ MARY E. BURT.
+
+ The John A. Browning School, 1904.
+
+
+
+
+ POEMS
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+
+ PART I
+
+ 1. The Arrow and the Song 3
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 2. The Babie 4
+ JEREMIAH EAMES RANKIN
+
+ 3. Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite 4
+ ISAAC WATTS
+
+ 4. Little Things 5
+ EBENEZER COBHAM BREWER
+
+ 5. He Prayeth Best 5
+ SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE
+
+ 6. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star 6
+ ANONYMOUS
+
+ 7. Pippa 6
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 8. The Days of the Month 7
+ AN OLD SONG
+
+ 9. True Royalty 7
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 10. Playing Robinson Crusoe 8
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 11. My Shadow 9
+ ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+ 12. Little White Lily 10
+ GEORGE MACDONALD
+
+ 13. How the Leaves Came Down 12
+ SUSAN COOLIDGE
+
+ 14. Willie Winkie 13
+ WILLIAM MILLER
+
+ 15. The Owl and the Pussy-Cat 15
+ EDWARD LEAR
+
+ 16. Wynken, Blynken, and Nod 16
+ EUGENE FIELD
+
+ 17. The Duel 18
+ EUGENE FIELD
+
+ 18. The Boy Who Never Told a Lie 19
+ ANONYMOUS
+
+ 19. Love Between Brothers and Sisters 20
+ ISAAC WATTS
+
+ 20. The Bluebell of Scotland 20
+ ANONYMOUS
+
+ 21. If I Had But Two Little Wings 21
+ SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE
+
+ 22. A Farewell 21
+ CHARLES KINGSLEY
+
+ 23. Casabianca 22
+ FELICIA HEMANS
+
+ 24. The Captain’s Daughter 23
+ JAMES T. FIELDS
+
+ 25. The Village Blacksmith 25
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 26. Sweet and Low 27
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 27. The Violet 27
+ JANE TAYLOR
+
+ 28. The Rainbow (a fragment) 28
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 29. A Visit From St. Nicholas 29
+ CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE
+
+ 30. The Star-Spangled Banner 31
+ FRANCIS SCOTT KEY
+
+ 31. Father William 33
+ LEWIS CARROLL
+
+ 32. The Nightingale and the Glow-worm 34
+ WILLIAM COWPER
+
+
+ PART II
+
+ 33. The Frost 39
+ HANNAH FLAGG GOULD
+
+ 34. The Owl 40
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 35. Little Billee 41
+ WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
+
+ 36. The Butterfly and the Bee 42
+ WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES
+
+ 37. An Incident of the French Camp 43
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 38. Robert of Lincoln 44
+ WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
+
+ 39. Old Grimes 47
+ ALBERT GORTON GREENE
+
+ 40. Song of Life 48
+ CHARLES MACKAY
+
+ 41. Fairy Song 50
+ JOHN KEATS
+
+ 42. A Boy’s Song 50
+ JAMES HOGG
+
+ 43. Buttercups and Daisies 51
+ MARY HOWITT
+
+ 44. The Rainbow 53
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL
+
+ 45. Old Ironsides 53
+ OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
+
+ 46. Little Orphant Annie 54
+ JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
+
+ 47. O Captain! My Captain! 57
+ WALT WHITMAN
+
+ 48. Ingratitude 58
+ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
+
+ 49. The Ivy Green 59
+ CHARLES DICKENS
+
+ 50. The Noble Nature 60
+ BEN JONSON
+
+ 51. The Flying Squirrel 60
+ MARY E. BURT
+
+ 52. Warren’s Address 63
+ JOHN PIERPONT
+
+ 53. The Song in Camp 64
+ BAYARD TAYLOR
+
+ 54. The Bugle Song 66
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 55. The _Three Bells_ of Glasgow 67
+ JOHN G. WHITTIER
+
+ 56. Sheridan’s Ride 68
+ THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
+
+ 57. The Sandpiper 71
+ CELIA THAXTER
+
+ 58. Lady Clare 72
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 59. The Lord of Burleigh 75
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 60. Hiawatha’s Childhood 79
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 61. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud 82
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 62. John Barleycorn 83
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 63. A Life on the Ocean Wave 85
+ EPES SARGENT
+
+ 64. The Death of the Old Year 86
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 65. Abou Ben Adhem 89
+ LEIGH HUNT
+
+ 66. Farm-Yard Song 90
+ J.T. TROWBRIDGE
+
+ 67. To a Mouse 92
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 68. To a Mountain Daisy 94
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 69. Barbara Frietchie 96
+ JOHN G. WHITTIER
+
+
+ PART III
+
+ 70. Lochinvar 103
+ SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+ 71. Lord Ullin’s Daughter 105
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL
+
+ 72. The Charge of the Light Brigade 107
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 73. The Tournament 110
+ SIDNEY LANIER
+
+ 74. The Wind and the Moon 111
+ GEORGE MACDONALD
+
+ 75. Jesus the Carpenter 114
+ CATHERINE C. LIDDELL
+
+ 76. Letty’s Globe 115
+ CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER
+
+ 77. A Dream 116
+ WILLIAM BLAKE
+
+ 78. Heaven Is Not Reached at a Single Bound 117
+ J.G. HOLLAND
+
+ 79. The Battle of Blenheim 117
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+ 80. Fidelity 120
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 81. The Chambered Nautilus 122
+ OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
+
+ 82. Crossing the Bar 124
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 83. The Overland-Mail 125
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 84. Gathering Song of Donald Dhu 126
+ SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+ 85. Marco Bozzaris 128
+ FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
+
+ 86. The Death of Napoleon 131
+ ISAAC MCCLELLAN
+
+ 87. How Sleep the Brave 133
+ WILLIAM COLLINS
+
+ 88. The Flag Goes By 133
+ HENRY HOLCOMB BENNETT
+
+ 89. Hohenlinden 134
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL
+
+ 90. My Old Kentucky Home 136
+ STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER
+
+ 91. Old Folks at Home 137
+ STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER
+
+ 92. The Wreck of the _Hesperus_ 138
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 93. Bannockburn 142
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+
+ PART IV
+
+ 94. The Inchcape Rock 145
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+ 95. The Finding of the Lyre 148
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
+
+ 96. A Chrysalis 149
+ MARY EMILY BRADLEY
+
+ 97. For a’ That 151
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 98. The New Arrival 152
+ GEORGE W. CABLE
+
+ 99. The Brook 153
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 100. The Ballad of the _Clampherdown_ 154
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 101. The Destruction of Sennacherib 158
+ LORD BYRON
+
+ 102. I Remember, I Remember 159
+ THOMAS HOOD
+
+ 103. Driving Home the Cows 160
+ KATE PUTNAM OSGOOD
+
+ 104. Krinken 162
+ EUGENE FIELD
+
+ 105. Stevenson’s Birthday 164
+ KATHERINE MILLER
+
+ 106. A Modest Wit 165
+ SELLECK OSBORNE
+
+ 107. The Legend of Bishop Hatto 166
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+ 108. Columbus 160
+ JOAQUIN MILLER
+
+ 109. The Shepherd of King Admetus 171
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
+
+ 110. How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to 173
+ Aix
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 111. The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna 176
+ C. WOLFE
+
+ 112. The Eve of Waterloo 177
+ LORD BYRON
+
+ 113. Ivry 179
+ THOMAS B. MACAULAY
+
+ 114. The Glove and the Lions 184
+ LEIGH HUNT
+
+ 115. The Well of St. Keyne 186
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+ 116. The Nautilus and the Ammonite 188
+ ANONYMOUS
+
+ 117. The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk 190
+ WILLIAM COWPER
+
+ 118. The Homes of England 192
+ FELICIA HEMANS
+
+ 119. Horatius at the Bridge 193
+ THOMAS B. MACAULAY
+
+ 120. The Planting of the Apple-Tree 211
+ WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
+
+
+ PART V
+
+ 121. June 217
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
+
+ 122. A Psalm of Life 218
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 123. Barnacles 219
+ SIDNEY LANIER
+
+ 124. A Happy Life 220
+ SIR HENRY WOTTON
+
+ 125. Home, Sweet Home 220
+ JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
+
+ 126. From Casa Guidi Windows 222
+ ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
+
+ 127. Woodman, Spare That Tree! 222
+ GEORGE POPE MORRIS
+
+ 128. Abide With Me 223
+ HENRY FRANCIS LYTE
+
+ 129. Lead, Kindly Light 224
+ JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
+
+ 130. The Last Rose of Summer 225
+ THOMAS MOORE
+
+ 131. Annie Laurie 226
+ WILLIAM DOUGLAS
+
+ 132. The Ship of State 227
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 133. America 228
+ SAMUEL FRANCIS SMITH
+
+ 134. The Landing of the Pilgrims 229
+ FELICIA HEMANS
+
+ 135. The Lotos-Eaters 231
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 136. Moly 233
+ EDITH M. THOMAS
+
+ 137. Cupid Drowned 234
+ LEIGH HUNT
+
+ 138. Cupid Stung 234
+ THOMAS MOORE
+
+ 139. Cupid and My Campasbe 235
+ JOHN LYLY
+
+ 140. A Ballad for a Boy 236
+ ANONYMOUS
+
+ 141. The Skeleton in Armour 240
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 142. The _Revenge_ 246
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 143. Sir Galahad 253
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 144. A Name in the Sand 256
+ HANNAH FLAGG GOULD
+
+
+ PART VI
+
+ 145. The Voice of Spring 259
+ FELICIA HEMANS
+
+ 146. The Forsaken Merman 260
+ MATTHEW ARNOLD
+
+ 147. The Banks o’ Doon 265
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 148. The Light of Other Days 266
+ THOMAS MOORE
+
+ 149. My Own Shall Come to Me 267
+ JOHN BURROUGHS
+
+ 150. Ode to a Skylark 268
+ PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
+
+ 151. The Sands of Dee 271
+ CHARLES KINGSLEY
+
+ 152. A Wish 272
+ SAMUEL ROGERS
+
+ 153. Lucy 272
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 154. Solitude 273
+ ALEXANDER POPE
+
+ 155. John Anderson 274
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 156. The God of Music 275
+ EDITH M. THOMAS
+
+ 157. A Musical Instrument 275
+ ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
+
+ 158. The Brides of Enderby 277
+ JEAN INGELOW
+
+ 159. The Lye 283
+ SIR WALTER RALEIGH
+
+ 160. L’Envoi 285
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 161. Contentment 286
+ EDWARD DYER
+
+ 162. The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls 287
+ THOMAS MOORE
+
+ 163. The Old Oaken Bucket 288
+ SAMUEL WOODWORTH
+
+ 164. The Raven 289
+ EDGAR ALLAN POE
+
+ 165. Arnold von Winkleried 296
+ JAMES MONTGOMERY
+
+ 166. Life, I Know Not What Thou Art 299
+ A.L. BARBAULD
+
+ 167. Mercy 300
+ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
+
+ 168. Polonius’ Advice 301
+ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
+
+ 169. A Fragment from “Julius Cæsar” 301
+ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
+
+ 170. The Skylark 302
+ THOMAS HOGG
+
+ 171. The Choir Invisible 303
+ GEORGE ELIOT
+
+ 172. The World Is Too Much With Us 304
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 173. On His Blindness 304
+ JOHN MILTON
+
+ 174. She Was a Phantom of Delight 305
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 175. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 306
+ THOMAS GRAY
+
+ 176. Rabbi Ben Ezra 312
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 177. Prospice 320
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 178. Recessional 321
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 179. Ozymandias of Egypt 322
+ PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
+
+ 180. Mortality 323
+ WILLIAM KNOX
+
+ 181. On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer 326
+ JOHN KEATS
+
+ 182. Hervé Riel 326
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 183. The Problem 333
+ RALPH WALDO EMERSON
+
+ 184. To America 335
+ ALFRED AUSTIN
+
+ 185. The English Flag 337
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 186. The Man With the Hoe 342
+ EDWIN MARKHAM
+
+ 187. Song of Myself 344
+ WALT WHITMAN
+
+ Index 350
+
+
+
+
+ INDEX OF AUTHORS
+
+
+ ANONYMOUS
+ Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, 6
+ The Days of the Month, 7
+ The Boy who Never Told a Lie, 19
+ The Bluebell of Scotland, 20
+ The Nautilus and the Ammonite, 188
+ A Ballad for a Boy, 236
+ ARNOLD, MATTHEW
+ The Forsaken Merman, 260
+ AUSTIN, ALFRED
+ To America, 335
+
+ BARBAULD, A.L.
+ Life, I Know Not What Thou Art, 299
+ BENNETT, HENRY HOLCOMB
+ The Flag Goes By, 133
+ BLAKE, WILLIAM
+ A Dream, 116
+ BOWLES, WILLIAM LISLE
+ The Butterfly and the Bee, 42
+ BRADLEY, MARY EMILY
+ A Chrysalis, 149
+ BREWER, EBENEZER COBHAM
+ Little Things, 5
+ BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT
+ From Casa Guidi Windows, 222
+ A Musical Instrument, 275
+ BROWNING, ROBERT
+ Pippa, 6
+ An Incident of the French Camp, 43
+ How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, 173
+ Rabbi Ben Ezra, 312
+ Prospice, 320
+ Hervé Riel, 326
+ BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN
+ Robert of Lincoln, 44
+ The Planting of the Apple Tree, 211
+ BURNS, ROBERT
+ John Barleycorn, 83
+ To a Mouse, 92
+ To a Mountain Daisy, 94
+ Bannockburn, 142
+ For a’ That, 151
+ The Banks o’ Doon, 265
+ John Anderson, 274
+ BURROUGHS, JOHN
+ My Own Shall Come to Me, 267
+ BURT, MARY E.
+ The Flying Squirrel, 60
+ BYRON, LORD
+ The Destruction of Sennacherib, 158
+ The Eve of Waterloo, 177
+
+ CABLE, GEORGE W.
+ The New Arrival, 152
+ CAMPBELL, THOMAS
+ The Rainbow, 53
+ Lord Ullin’s Daughter, 105
+ Hohenlinden, 134
+ CARROLL, LEWIS
+ Father William, 33
+ COLERIDGE, SAMUEL T.
+ He Prayeth Best, 5
+ If I Had But Two Little Wings, 21
+ COLLINS, WILLIAM
+ How Sleep the Brave, 133
+ COOLIDGE, SUSAN
+ How the Leaves Came Down, 12
+ COWPER, WILLIAM
+ The Nightingale and the Glow-worm, 34
+ The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk, 190
+
+ DICKENS, CHARLES
+ The Ivy Green, 59
+ DOUGLAS, WILLIAM
+ Annie Laurie, 226
+ DYER, EDWARD
+ Contentment, 286
+
+ ELIOT, GEORGE
+ The Choir Invisible, 303
+ EMERSON, RALPH WALDO
+ The Problem, 333
+
+ FIELD, EUGENE
+ Wynken, Blynken and Nod, 16
+ The Duel, 18
+ Krinken, 162
+ FIELDS, JAMES T.
+ The Captain’s Daughter, 23
+ FOSTER, STEPHEN COLLINS
+ My Old Kentucky Home, 136
+ Old Folks at Home, 137
+
+ GOULD, HANNAH FLAGG
+ The Frost, 39
+ A Name in the Sand, 256
+ GRAY, THOMAS
+ Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, 306
+ GREENE, ALBERT GORTON
+ Old Grimes, 47
+
+ HALLECK, FITZ-GREENE
+ Marco Bozzaris, 128
+ HEMANS, FELICIA
+ Casabianca, 22
+ The Homes of England, 192
+ The Landing of the Pilgrims, 229
+ The Voice of Spring, 259
+ HOOD, THOMAS
+ I Remember, I Remember, 159
+ HOGG, JAMES
+ A Boy’s Song, 50
+ The Skylark, 302
+ HOLLAND, J.G.
+ Heaven is Not Reached at a Single Bound, 117
+ HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL
+ Old Ironsides, 53
+ The Chambered Nautilus, 122
+ HOWITT, MARY
+ Buttercups and Daisies, 51
+ HUNT, LEIGH
+ Abou Ben Adhem, 89
+ The Glove and the Lions, 184
+ Cupid Drowned, 234
+
+ INGELOW, JEAN
+ The Brides of Enderby, 277
+
+ JONSON. BEN
+ The Noble Nature, 60
+
+ KEATS, JOHN
+ Fairy Song, 50
+ On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer, 326
+ KEY, FRANCIS SCOTT
+ The Star-Spangled Banner, 31
+ KINGSLEY, CHARLES
+ A Farewell, 21
+ The Sands of Dee, 271
+ KIPLING, RUDYARD
+ True Royalty, 7
+ Playing Robinson Crusoe, 8
+ The Overland Mail, 125
+ The Ballad of the Clampherdown, 154
+ L’Envoi, 285
+ Recessional, 321
+ The English Flag, 337
+ KNOX, WILLIAM
+ Mortality, 323
+
+ LANIER, SIDNEY
+ The Tournament, 110
+ Barnacles, 219
+ LEAR, EDWARD
+ The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, 15
+ LIDDELL, CATHERINE C.
+ Jesus the Carpenter, 114
+ LONGFELLOW, HENRY W.
+ The Arrow and the Song, 3
+ The Village Blacksmith, 25
+ Hiawatha’s Childhood, 79
+ The Wreck of the Hesperus, 138
+ A Psalm of Life, 218
+ The Ship of State, 227
+ The Skeleton in Armour, 240
+ LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL
+ The Finding of the Lyre, 148
+ The Shepherd of King Admetus, 171
+ June, 217
+ LYLY, JOHN
+ Cupid and My Campasbe, 235
+ LYTE, HENRY FRANCIS
+ Abide With Me, 223
+
+ MACAULAY, THOMAS B.
+ Ivry, 179
+ Horatius at the Bridge, 193
+ MACDONALD, GEORGE
+ Little White Lily, 10
+ The Wind and the Moon, 111
+ MACKAY, CHARLES
+ Song of Life, 48
+ MARKHAM, EDWIN
+ The Man With the Hoe, 342
+ MCCLELLAN, ISAAC
+ The Death of Napoleon, 131
+ MILLER, JOAQUIN
+ Columbus, 169
+ MILLER, KATHERINE
+ Stevenson’s Birthday, 164
+ MILLER, WILLIAM
+ Willie Winkie, 13
+ MILTON, JOHN
+ On His Blindness, 304
+ MONTGOMERY, JAMES
+ Arnold von Winkleried, 296
+ MOORE, CLEMENT CLARKE
+ A Visit from St. Nicholas, 29
+ MOORE, THOMAS
+ The Last Rose of Summer, 234
+ Cupid Stung, 234
+ The Light of Other Days, 266
+ The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls, 287
+ MORRIS, GEORGE POPE
+ Woodman, Spare That Tree, 222
+
+ NEWMAN, JOHN HENRY
+ Lead, Kindly Light, 224
+
+ OSBORNE, SELLECK
+ A Modest Wit, 165
+ OSGOOD, KATE PUTNAM
+ Driving Home the Cows, 160
+
+ PAYNE, JOHN HOWARD
+ Home, Sweet Home, 220
+ PIERPONT, JOHN
+ Warren’s Address, 63
+ POE, EDGAR ALLAN
+ The Raven, 289
+ POPE, ALEXANDER
+ Solitude, 273
+
+ RALEIGH, SIR WALTER
+ The Lye, 283
+ RANKIN. JEREMIAH EAMES
+ The Babie, 4
+ READ, THOMAS BUCHANAN
+ Sheridan’s Ride, 68
+ RILEY, JAMES WHITCOMB
+ Little Orphant Annie, 54
+ ROGERS, SAMUEL
+ A Wish, 272
+
+ SARGENT, EPES
+ A Life on the Ocean Wave, 85
+ SCOTT, SIR WALTER
+ Lochinvar, 103
+ The Gathering Song of Donald Dhu, 126
+ SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
+ Ingratitude, 58
+ Mercy, 300
+ Polonius’ Advice, 301
+ A Fragment from Julius Cæsar, 301
+ SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE
+ Ode to a Skylark, 268
+ Ozymandias in the Desert, 322
+ SMITH, SAMUEL FRANCIS
+ America, 228
+ SOUTHEY, ROBERT
+ The Battle of Blenheim, 117
+ The Inchcape Rock, 145
+ The Legend of Bishop Hatto, 166
+ The Well of St. Keyne, 186
+ STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS
+ My Shadow, 9
+
+ TAYLOR, BAYARD
+ The Song in Camp, 64
+ TAYLOR, JANE
+ The Violet, 27
+ TENNYSON, ALFRED
+ Sweet and Low, 27
+ The Owl, 40
+ The Bugle Song, 66
+ Lady Clare, 72
+ The Lord of Burleigh, 75
+ The Death of the Old Year, 86
+ The Charge of the Light Brigade, 107
+ Crossing the Bar, 124
+ The Brook, 153
+ The Lotos Eaters, 231
+ The REVENGE, 246
+ Sir Galahad, 253
+ THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE
+ Little Billee, 41
+ THAXTER, CELIA
+ The Sandpiper, 71
+ THOMAS, EDITH
+ Moly, 233
+ The God of Music, 275
+ TROWBRIDGE, J.T.
+ Farmyard Song, 90
+ TURNER, CHARLES TENNYSON
+ Letty’s Globe, 115
+
+ WATTS, ISAAC
+ Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite, 4
+ Love Between Brothers and Sisters, 20
+ WHITMAN, WALT
+ O Captain! My Captain! 57
+ Song of Myself, 344
+ WHITTIER, JOHN G.
+ The Three Bells of Glasgow, 67
+ Barbara Frietchie, 96
+ WOLFE, C.
+ The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna, 176
+ WOODWORTH, SAMUEL
+ The Old Oaken Bucket, 288
+ WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM
+ The Rainbow (a fragment), 28
+ I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, 82
+ Fidelity, 120
+ Lucy, 272
+ The World is Too Much With Us, 304
+ She Was a Phantom of Delight, 305
+ WOTTON, SIR HENRY
+ A Happy Life, 220
+
+
+
+
+ PART I.
+
+ The Budding Moment
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ Poems That Every Child Should Know
+
+
+ THE ARROW AND THE SONG.
+
+“The Arrow and the Song,” by Longfellow (1807-82), is placed first in
+ this volume out of respect to a little girl of six years who used to
+ love to recite it to me. She knew many poems, but this was her
+ favourite.
+
+ I shot an arrow into the air,
+ It fell to earth, I knew not where;
+ For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
+ Could not follow it in its flight.
+
+ I breathed a song into the air,
+ It fell to earth, I knew not where;
+ For who has sight so keen and strong
+ That it can follow the flight of song?
+
+ Long, long afterward, in an oak
+ I found the arrow, still unbroke;
+ And the song, from beginning to end,
+ I found again in the heart of a friend.
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ THE BABIE.
+
+ I found “The Babie” in Stedman’s “Anthology.” It is placed in this
+ volume by permission of the poet, Jeremiah Eames Rankin, of Cleveland
+ (1828-), because it captured the heart of a ten-year-old boy whose
+ fancy was greatly moved by the two beautiful lines:
+
+ “Her face is like an angel’s face,
+ I’m glad she has no wings.”
+
+
+ Nae shoon to hide her tiny taes,
+ Nae stockin’ on her feet;
+ Her supple ankles white as snaw,
+ Or early blossoms sweet.
+
+ Her simple dress o’ sprinkled pink,
+ Her double, dimplit chin,
+ Her puckered lips, and baumy mou’,
+ With na ane tooth within.
+
+ Her een sae like her mither’s een,
+ Twa gentle, liquid things;
+ Her face is like an angel’s face:
+ We’re glad she has nae wings.
+
+ JEREMIAH EAMES RANKIN.
+
+
+ LET DOGS DELIGHT TO BARK AND BITE.
+
+“Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite,” by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), and
+“Little Drops of Water,” by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer (1810-97), are poems
+ that the world cannot outgrow. Once in the mind, they fasten. They were
+ not born to die.
+
+ Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
+ For God hath made them so;
+ Let bears and lions growl and fight,
+ For ’tis their nature too.
+
+ But, children, you should never let
+ Such angry passions rise;
+ Your little hands were never made
+ To tear each other’s eyes.
+
+ ISAAC WATTS.
+
+
+ LITTLE THINGS.
+
+ Little drops of water,
+ Little grains of sand,
+ Make the mighty ocean
+ And the pleasant land.
+
+ Thus the little minutes,
+ Humble though they be,
+ Make the mighty ages
+ Of eternity.
+
+ EBENEZER COBHAM BREWER.
+
+
+ HE PRAYETH BEST.
+
+ These two stanzas, the very heart of that great poem, “The Ancient
+ Mariner,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), sum up the lesson of
+ this masterpiece--“Insensibility is a crime.”
+
+ Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
+ To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
+ He prayeth well who loveth well
+ Both man and bird and beast.
+
+ He prayeth best who loveth best
+ All things, both great and small:
+ For the dear God who loveth us,
+ He made and loveth all.
+
+ SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE.
+
+
+ TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE STAR.
+
+ Twinkle, twinkle, little star!
+ How I wonder what you are,
+ Up above the world so high,
+ Like a diamond in the sky.
+
+ When the glorious sun is set,
+ When the grass with dew is wet,
+ Then you show your little light,
+ Twinkle, twinkle all the night.
+
+ In the dark-blue sky you keep,
+ And often through my curtains peep,
+ For you never shut your eye,
+ Till the sun is in the sky.
+
+ As your bright and tiny spark
+ Guides the traveller in the dark,
+ Though I know not what you are,
+ Twinkle, twinkle, little star!
+
+
+ PIPPA.
+
+“Spring’s at the Morn,” from “Pippa Passes,” by Robert Browning
+ (1812-89), has become a very popular stanza with little folks. “All’s
+ right with the world” is a cheerful motto for the nursery and
+ schoolroom.
+
+ The year’s at the spring,
+ The 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!
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ THE DAYS OF THE MONTH.
+
+“The Days of the Month” is a useful bit of doggerel that we need all
+ through life. It is anonymous.
+
+ Thirty days hath September,
+ April, June, and November;
+ February has twenty-eight alone.
+ All the rest have thirty-one,
+ Excepting leap-year--that’s the time
+ When February’s days are twenty-nine.
+
+ OLD SONG.
+
+
+ TRUE ROYALTY.
+
+“True Royalty” and “Playing Robinson Crusoe” are pleasing stanzas from
+“The Just So Stories” of Rudyard Kipling (1865-).
+
+ There was never a Queen like Balkis,
+ From here to the wide world’s end;
+ But Balkis talked to a butterfly
+ As you would talk to a friend.
+
+ There was never a King like Solomon,
+ Not since the world began;
+ But Solomon talked to a butterfly
+ As a man would talk to a man.
+
+ _She_ was Queen of Sabaea--
+ And _he_ was Asia’s Lord--
+ But they both of ’em talked to butterflies
+ When they took their walks abroad.
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+ (In “The Just So Stories.”)
+
+
+ PLAYING ROBINSON CRUSOE.
+
+ Pussy can sit by the fire and sing,
+ Pussy can climb a tree,
+ Or play with a silly old cork and string
+ To ’muse herself, not me.
+ But I like Binkie, my dog, because
+ He knows how to behave;
+ So, Binkie’s the same as the First Friend was,
+ And I am the Man in the Cave.
+
+ Pussy will play Man-Friday till
+ It’s time to wet her paw
+ And make her walk on the window-sill
+ (For the footprint Crusoe saw);
+ Then she fluffles her tail and mews,
+ And scratches and won’t attend.
+ But Binkie will play whatever I choose,
+ And he is my true First Friend.
+
+ Pussy will rub my knees with her head,
+ Pretending she loves me hard;
+ But the very minute I go to my bed
+ Pussy runs out in the yard.
+
+ And there she stays till the morning light;
+ So I know it is only pretend;
+ But Binkie, he snores at my feet all night,
+ And he is my Firstest Friend!
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+ (In “The Just So Stories.”)
+
+
+ MY SHADOW.
+
+“My Shadow,” by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94), is one of the most
+ popular short poems extant. I have taught it to a great many very young
+ boys, and not one has ever tried to evade learning it. Older pupils
+ like it equally well.
+
+ I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
+ And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
+ He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
+ And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
+
+ The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow--
+ Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
+ For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
+ And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.
+
+ He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
+ And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
+ He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward, you can see;
+ I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
+
+ One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
+ I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
+ But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
+ Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
+
+ ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+ LITTLE WHITE LILY.
+
+ This poem (George Macdonald, 1828-) finds a place in this volume
+ because, as a child, I loved it. It completely filled my heart, and has
+ made every member of the lily family dear to me. George Macdonald’s
+ charming book, “At the Back of the North Wind,” also was my wonder and
+ delight.
+
+ Little White Lily
+ Sat by a stone,
+ Drooping and waiting
+ Till the sun shone.
+ Little White Lily
+ Sunshine has fed;
+ Little White Lily
+ Is lifting her head.
+
+ Little White Lily
+ Said: “It is good
+ Little White Lily’s
+ Clothing and food.”
+ Little White Lily
+ Dressed like a bride!
+ Shining with whiteness,
+ And crownèd beside!
+
+ Little White Lily
+ Drooping with pain,
+ Waiting and waiting
+ For the wet rain.
+ Little White Lily
+ Holdeth her cup;
+ Rain is fast falling
+ And filling it up.
+
+ Little White Lily
+ Said: “Good again,
+ When I am thirsty
+ To have the nice rain.
+ Now I am stronger,
+ Now I am cool;
+ Heat cannot burn me,
+ My veins are so full.”
+
+ Little White Lily
+ Smells very sweet;
+ On her head sunshine,
+ Rain at her feet.
+ Thanks to the sunshine,
+ Thanks to the rain,
+ Little White Lily
+ Is happy again.
+
+ GEORGE MACDONALD.
+
+
+ HOW THE LEAVES CAME DOWN.
+
+“How the Leaves Came Down,” by Susan Coolidge (1845-), appeals to
+ children because it helps to reconcile them to going to bed. “I go to
+ bed by day” is one of the crosses of childhood.
+
+ “I’ll tell you how the leaves came down,”
+ The great Tree to his children said:
+ “You’re getting sleepy, Yellow and Brown,
+ Yes, very sleepy, little Red.
+ It is quite time to go to bed.”
+
+ “Ah!” begged each silly, pouting leaf,
+ “Let us a little longer stay;
+ Dear Father Tree, behold our grief!
+ ’Tis such a very pleasant day,
+ We do not want to go away.”
+
+ So, for just one more merry day
+ To the great Tree the leaflets clung,
+ Frolicked and danced, and had their way,
+ Upon the autumn breezes swung,
+ Whispering all their sports among--
+
+ “Perhaps the great Tree will forget,
+ And let us stay until the spring,
+ If we all beg, and coax, and fret.”
+ But the great Tree did no such thing;
+ He smiled to hear their whispering.
+
+ “Come, children, all to bed,” he cried;
+ And ere the leaves could urge their prayer,
+ He shook his head, and far and wide,
+ Fluttering and rustling everywhere,
+ Down sped the leaflets through the air.
+
+ I saw them; on the ground they lay,
+ Golden and red, a huddled swarm,
+ Waiting till one from far away,
+ White bedclothes heaped upon her arm,
+ Should come to wrap them safe and warm.
+
+ The great bare Tree looked down and smiled.
+ “Good-night, dear little leaves,” he said.
+ And from below each sleepy child
+ Replied, “Good-night,” and murmured,
+ “It is _so_ nice to go to bed!”
+
+ SUSAN COOLIDGE.
+
+
+ WILLIE WINKIE.
+
+“Wee Willie Winkie,” by William Miller (1810-72), is included in this
+ volume out of respect to an eight-year-old child who chose it from
+ among hundreds. We had one poetry hour every week, and he studied and
+ recited it with unabated interest to the end of the year.
+
+ Wee Willie Winkie rins through the town,
+ Up-stairs and doon-stairs, in his nicht-gown,
+ Tirlin’ at the window, cryin’ at the lock,
+ “Are the weans in their bed?--for it’s now ten o’clock.”
+
+ Hey, Willie Winkie! are ye comin’ ben?
+ The cat’s singin’ gay thrums to the sleepin’ hen,
+ The doug’s speldered on the floor, and disna gie a cheep;
+ But here’s a waukrife laddie that winna fa’ asleep.
+
+ Onything but sleep, ye rogue! glow’rin’ like the moon,
+ Rattlin’ in an airn jug wi’ an airn spoon,
+ Rumblin’ tumblin’ roun’ about, crowin’ like a cock,
+ Skirlin’ like a kenna-what--wauknin’ sleepin’ folk.
+
+ Hey, Willie Winkie! the wean’s in a creel!
+ Waumblin’ aff a body’s knee like a vera eel,
+ Ruggin’ at the cat’s lug, and ravellin’ a’ her thrums,--
+ Hey, Willie Winkie!--See, there he comes!
+
+ Wearie is the mither that has a storie wean,
+ A wee stumpie stoussie that canna rin his lane,
+ That has a battle aye wi’ sleep before he’ll close an ee;
+ But a kiss frae aff his rosy lips gies strength anew to me.
+
+ WILLIAM MILLER.
+
+
+ THE OWL AND THE PUSSY-CAT.
+
+“The Owl and the Pussy-Cat,” by Edward Lear (1812-88), is placed here
+ because I once found that a timid child was much strengthened and
+ developed by learning it. It is a song that appeals to the imagination
+ of children, and they like to sing it.
+
+ The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
+ In a beautiful pea-green boat;
+ They took some honey, and plenty of money
+ Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
+ The Owl looked up to the moon above,
+ And sang to a small guitar,
+ “O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love!
+ What a beautiful Pussy you are,--
+ You are,
+ What a beautiful Pussy you are!”
+
+ Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl!
+ How wonderful sweet you sing!
+ Oh, let us be married,--too long we have tarried,--
+ But what shall we do for a ring?”
+ They sailed away for a year and a day
+ To the land where the Bong-tree grows,
+ And there in a wood a piggy-wig stood
+ With a ring in the end of his nose,--
+ His nose,
+ With a ring in the end of his nose.
+
+ “Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
+ Your ring?” Said the piggy, “I will,”
+ So they took it away, and were married next day
+ By the turkey who lives on the hill.
+ They dined upon mince and slices of quince,
+ Which they ate with a runcible spoon,
+ And hand in hand on the edge of the sand
+ They danced by the light of the moon,--
+ The moon,
+ They danced by the light of the moon.
+
+ EDWARD LEAR.
+
+
+ WYNKEN, BLYNKEN, AND NOD.
+
+“Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,” by Eugene Field (1850-95), pleases
+ children, who are all by nature sailors and adventurers.
+
+ Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
+ Sailed off in a wooden shoe,--
+ Sailed on a river of crystal light
+ Into a sea of dew.
+ “Where are you going, and what do you wish?”
+ The old moon asked the three.
+ “We have come to fish for the herring-fish
+ That live in this beautiful sea;
+ Nets of silver and gold have we,”
+ Said Wynken,
+ Blynken,
+ And Nod.
+
+ The old moon laughed and sang a song,
+ As they rocked in the wooden shoe;
+ And the wind that sped them all night long
+ Ruffled the waves of dew;
+ The little stars were the herring-fish
+ That lived in the beautiful sea.
+ “Now cast your nets wherever you wish,--
+ Never afeard are we!”
+ So cried the stars to the fishermen three,
+ Wynken,
+ Blynken,
+ And Nod.
+
+ All night long their nets they threw
+ To the stars in the twinkling foam,--
+ Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,
+ Bringing the fishermen home:
+ ’Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed
+ As if it could not be;
+ And some folk thought ’twas a dream they’d dreamed
+ Of sailing that beautiful sea;
+ But I shall name you the fishermen three:
+ Wynken,
+ Blynken,
+ And Nod.
+
+ Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
+ And Nod is a little head,
+ And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
+ Is a wee one’s trundle-bed;
+ So shut your eyes while Mother sings
+ Of wonderful sights that be,
+ And you shall see the beautiful things
+ As you rock on the misty sea
+ Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three,
+ Wynken,
+ Blynken,
+ And Nod.
+
+ EUGENE FIELD.
+
+
+ THE DUEL.
+
+“The Duel,” by Eugene Field (1850-95), is almost the most popular
+ humorous poem that has come under my notice. In making such a
+ collection as this it is not easy to find poems at once delicate,
+ witty, and graphic. I have taught “The Duel” hundreds of times, and
+ children invariably love it.
+
+ The gingham dog and the calico cat
+ Side by side on the table sat;
+ ’Twas half-past twelve, and (what do you think!)
+ Nor one nor t’other had slept a wink!
+ The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate
+ Appeared to know as sure as fate
+ There was going to be a terrible spat.
+ (_I wasn’t there; I simply state
+ What was told to me by the Chinese plate_!)
+
+ The gingham dog went “bow-wow-wow!”
+ And the calico cat replied “mee-ow!”
+ The air was littered, an hour or so,
+ With bits of gingham and calico,
+ While the old Dutch clock in the chimney-place
+ Up with its hands before its face,
+ For it always dreaded a family row!
+ (_Now mind: I’m only telling you
+ What the old Dutch clock declares is true_!)
+
+ The Chinese plate looked very blue,
+ And wailed, “Oh, dear! what shall we do!”
+ But the gingham dog and the calico cat
+ Wallowed this way and tumbled that,
+ Employing every tooth and claw
+ In the awfullest way you ever saw--
+ And, oh! how the gingham and calico flew!
+ (_Don’t fancy I exaggerate!
+ I got my views from the Chinese plate_!)
+
+ Next morning where the two had sat
+ They found no trace of the dog or cat;
+ And some folks think unto this day
+ That burglars stole the pair away!
+ But the truth about the cat and the pup
+ Is this: They ate each other up!
+ Now what do you really think of that!
+ (_The old Dutch clock it told me so,
+ And that is how I came to know_.)
+
+ EUGENE FIELD.
+
+
+ THE BOY WHO NEVER TOLD A LIE.
+
+“The Boy Who Never Told a Lie” (anonymous), as well as “Whatever Brawls
+ Disturb the Street,” by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), are real gems. A few
+ years ago they were more in favour than the poorer verse that has been
+ put forward. But they are sure to be revived.
+
+ Once there was a little boy,
+ With curly hair and pleasant eye--
+ A boy who always told the truth,
+ And never, never told a lie.
+
+ And when he trotted off to school,
+ The children all about would cry,
+ “There goes the curly-headed boy--
+ The boy that never tells a lie.”
+
+ And everybody loved him so,
+ Because he always told the truth,
+ That every day, as he grew up,
+ ’Twas said, “There goes the honest youth.”
+
+ And when the people that stood near
+ Would turn to ask the reason why,
+ The answer would be always this:
+ “Because he never tells a lie.”
+
+
+ LOVE BETWEEN BROTHERS AND SISTERS.
+
+ Whatever brawls disturb the street,
+ There should be peace at home;
+ Where sisters dwell and brothers meet,
+ Quarrels should never come.
+
+ Birds in their little nests agree;
+ And ’tis a shameful sight,
+ When children of one family
+ Fall out and chide and fight.
+
+ ISAAC WATTS.
+
+
+ THE BLUEBELL OF SCOTLAND.
+
+ Oh where! and oh where! is your Highland laddie gone?
+ He’s gone to fight the French for King George upon the throne;
+ And it’s oh! in my heart how I wish him safe at home.
+
+ Oh where! and oh where! does your Highland laddie dwell?
+ He dwells in merry Scotland at the sign of the Bluebell;
+ And it’s oh! in my heart that I love my laddie well.
+
+
+ IF I HAD BUT TWO LITTLE WINGS.
+
+“If I Had But Two Little Wings,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
+ (1772-1834), is recommended by a number of teachers and school-girls.
+
+ If I had but two little wings
+ And were a little feathery bird,
+ To you I’d fly, my dear!
+ But thoughts like these are idle things
+ And I stay here.
+
+ But in my sleep to you I fly:
+ I’m always with you in my sleep!
+ The world is all one’s own.
+ And then one wakes, and where am I?
+ All, all alone.
+
+ SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE.
+
+
+ A FAREWELL.
+
+“A Farewell,” by Charles Kingsley (1819-75), makes it seem worth while
+ to be good.
+
+ My fairest child, I have no song to give you;
+ No lark could pipe to skies so dull and gray;
+ Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you
+ For every day.
+
+ Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
+ Do noble things, not dream them all day long:
+ And so make life, death, and that vast forever
+ One grand, sweet song.
+
+ CHARLES KINGSLEY.
+
+
+ CASABIANCA.
+
+“Casabianca,” by Felicia Hemans (1793-1835), is the portrait of a
+ faithful heart, an example of unreasoning obedience. It is right that a
+ child should obey even to the death the commands of a loving parent.
+
+ The boy stood on the burning deck,
+ Whence all but him had fled;
+ The flame that lit the battle’s wreck
+ Shone round him o’er the dead.
+
+ Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
+ As born to rule the storm;
+ A creature of heroic blood,
+ A proud though childlike form.
+
+ The flames rolled on--he would not go
+ Without his father’s word;
+ That father, faint in death below,
+ His voice no longer heard.
+
+ He called aloud, “Say, father, say
+ If yet my task is done?”
+ He knew not that the chieftain lay
+ Unconscious of his son.
+
+ “Speak, father!” once again he cried,
+ “If I may yet be gone!”
+ And but the booming shots replied,
+ And fast the flames rolled on.
+
+ Upon his brow he felt their breath,
+ And in his waving hair;
+ And looked from that lone post of death
+ In still, yet brave despair.
+
+ And shouted but once more aloud
+ “My father! must I stay?”
+ While o’er him fast, through sail and shroud,
+ The wreathing fires made way.
+
+ They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
+ They caught the flag on high,
+ And streamed above the gallant child
+ Like banners in the sky.
+
+ Then came a burst of thunder sound--
+ The boy--oh! where was he?
+ --Ask of the winds that far around
+ With fragments strew the sea;
+
+ With mast, and helm, and pennon fair.
+ That well had borne their part--
+ But the noblest thing that perished there
+ Was that young, faithful heart.
+
+ FELICIA HEMANS.
+
+
+ THE CAPTAIN’S DAUGHTER.
+
+“The Captain’s Daughter,” by James T. Fields (1816-81), carries weight
+ with every young audience. It is pointed to an end that children
+ love--viz., trust in a higher power.
+
+ We were crowded in the cabin,
+ Not a soul would dare to sleep,--
+ It was midnight on the waters,
+ And a storm was on the deep.
+
+ ’Tis a fearful thing in winter
+ To be shattered by the blast,
+ And to hear the rattling trumpet
+ Thunder, “Cut away the mast!”
+
+ So we shuddered there in silence,--
+ For the stoutest held his breath,
+ While the hungry sea was roaring
+ And the breakers talked with Death.
+
+ As thus we sat in darkness,
+ Each one busy with his prayers,
+ “We are lost!” the captain shouted
+ As he staggered down the stairs.
+
+ But his little daughter whispered,
+ As she took his icy hand,
+ “Isn’t God upon the ocean,
+ Just the same as on the land?”
+
+ Then we kissed the little maiden.
+ And we spoke in better cheer,
+ And we anchored safe in harbour
+ When the morn was shining clear.
+
+ JAMES T. FIELDS.
+
+ [“The ‘village smithy’ stood in Brattle Street, Cambridge. There came a
+ time when the chestnut-tree that shaded it was cut down, and then the
+ children of the place put their pence together and had a chair made for
+ the poet from its wood.”]
+
+
+ THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH.
+
+ Longfellow (1807-82) is truly the children’s poet. His poems are as
+ simple, pathetic, artistic, and philosophical as if they were intended
+ to tell the plain everyday story of life to older people. “The Village
+ Blacksmith” has been learned by thousands of children, and there is no
+ criticism to be put upon it. The age of the child has nothing whatever
+ to do with his learning it. Age does not grade children nor is poetry
+ wholly to be so graded. “Time is the false reply.”
+
+ Under a spreading chestnut-tree
+ The village smithy stands;
+ The smith, a mighty man is he,
+ With large and sinewy hands,
+ And the muscles of his brawny arms
+ Are strong as iron bands.
+
+ His hair is crisp, and black, and long;
+ His face is like the tan;
+ His brow is wet with honest sweat,
+ He earns whate’er he can,
+ And looks the whole world in the face,
+ For he owes not any man.
+
+ Week in, week out, from morn till night,
+ You can hear his bellows blow;
+ You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
+ With measured beat and slow,
+ Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
+ When the evening sun is low.
+
+ And children coming home from school
+ Look in at the open door;
+ They love to see the flaming forge,
+ And hear the bellows roar,
+ And catch the burning sparks that fly
+ Like chaff from a threshing-floor.
+
+ He goes on Sunday to the church,
+ And sits among his boys;
+ He hears the parson pray and preach,
+ He hears his daughter’s voice
+ Singing in the village choir,
+ And it makes his heart rejoice.
+
+ It sounds to him like her mother’s voice,
+ Singing in Paradise!
+ He needs must think of her once more,
+ How in the grave she lies;
+ And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
+ A tear out of his eyes.
+
+ Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing,
+ Onward through life he goes;
+ Each morning sees some task begin,
+ Each evening sees it close;
+ Something attempted, something done,
+ Has earned a night’s repose.
+
+ Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
+ For the lesson thou hast taught!
+ Thus at the flaming forge of life
+ Our fortunes must be wrought;
+ Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
+ Each burning deed and thought.
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ SWEET AND LOW.
+
+ Sweet and low, sweet and low,
+ Wind of the western sea,
+ Low, low, breathe and blow,
+ Wind of the western sea!
+ Over the rolling waters go,
+ Come from the dropping moon and blow,
+ Blow him again to me;
+ While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps.
+
+ Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,
+ Father will come to thee soon;
+ Rest, rest, on mother’s breast,
+ Father will come to thee soon;
+ Father will come to his babe in the nest,
+ Silver sails all out of the west
+ Under the silver moon:
+ Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE VIOLET.
+
+“The Violet,” by Jane Taylor (1783-1824), is another of those dear
+ old-fashioned poems, pure poetry and pure violet. It is included in
+ this volume out of respect to my own love for it when I was a child.
+
+ Down in a green and shady bed
+ A modest violet grew;
+ Its stalk was bent, it hung its head,
+ As if to hide from view.
+
+ And yet it was a lovely flower,
+ No colours bright and fair;
+ It might have graced a rosy bower,
+ Instead of hiding there.
+
+ Yet there it was content to bloom,
+ In modest tints arrayed;
+ And there diffused its sweet perfume,
+ Within the silent shade.
+
+ Then let me to the valley go,
+ This pretty flower to see;
+ That I may also learn to grow
+ In sweet humility.
+
+ JANE TAYLOR.
+
+
+ THE RAINBOW.
+
+ (A FRAGMENT.)
+
+“The Rainbow,” by William Wordsworth (1770-1850), accords with every
+ child’s feelings. It voices the spirit of all ages that would love to
+ imagine it “a bridge to heaven.”
+
+ My heart leaps up when I behold
+ A rainbow in the sky;
+ So was it when my life began,
+ So is it now I am a man,
+ So be it when I shall grow old,
+ Or let me die!
+ The child is father of the man;
+ And I could wish my days to be
+ Bound each to each by natural piety.
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ A VISIT FROM ST. NICHOLAS.
+
+“A Visit From St. Nicholas,” by Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863) is the
+ most popular Christmas poem ever written. It carries Santa Claus on
+ from year to year and the spirit of Santa Claus.
+
+ ’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
+ Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
+ The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
+ In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
+ The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
+ While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
+ And mamma in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,
+ Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,
+ When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
+ I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
+ Away to the window I flew like a flash,
+ Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
+ The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
+ Gave the luster of mid-day to objects below,
+ When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
+ But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer.
+ With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
+ I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
+ More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
+ And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:
+ “Now, _Dasher_! now, _Dancer_! now, _Prancer_ and _Vixen_!
+ On, _Comet_! on, _Cupid_! on, _Donder_ and _Blitzen_!
+ To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
+ Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”
+ As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
+ When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
+ So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
+ With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas, too.
+ And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
+ The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
+ As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
+ Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
+ He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
+ And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
+ A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
+ And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
+ His eyes--how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
+ His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
+ His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
+ And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
+ The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
+ And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
+ He had a broad face and a little round belly,
+ That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.
+ He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
+ And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
+ A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
+ Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
+ He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
+ And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
+ And laying his finger aside of his nose,
+ And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
+ He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
+ And away they all flew like the down on a thistle.
+ But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
+ “_Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night_.”
+
+ CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE.
+
+
+ THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.
+
+ 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, through 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 through 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 through 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 victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
+ Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
+ Then conquer we must, for 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.
+
+ FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.
+
+
+ FATHER WILLIAM.
+
+“Father William” a parody by Lewis Carroll (1833-), is even more clever
+ than the original. Harmless fun brightens the world. It takes a real
+ genius to create wit that carries no sting.
+
+ “You are old, Father William,” the young man said,
+ “And your hair has become very white;
+ And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
+ Do you think, at your age, it is right?”
+
+ “In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,
+ “I feared it might injure the brain;
+ But now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,
+ Why, I do it again and again.”
+
+ “You are old,” said the youth, “as I mentioned before,
+ And have grown most uncommonly fat;
+ Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door--
+ Pray, what is the reason of that?”
+
+ “In my youth,” said the sage, as he shook his gray locks,
+ “I kept all my limbs very supple
+ By the use of this ointment--one shilling the box--
+ Allow me to sell you a couple.”
+
+ “You are old,” said the youth, “and your jaws are too weak
+ For anything tougher than suet;
+ Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak:
+ Pray, how did you manage to do it?”
+
+ “In my youth,” said his father, “I took to the law,
+ And argued each case with my wife;
+ And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw
+ Has lasted the rest of my life.”
+
+ “You are old,” said the youth; “one would hardly suppose
+ That your eye was as steady as ever;
+ Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose--
+ What made you so awfully clever?”
+
+ “I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”
+ Said his father, “don’t give yourself airs!
+ Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
+ Be off, or I’ll kick you down-stairs!”
+
+ LEWIS CARROLL.
+
+ (“Alice in Wonderland.”)
+
+
+ THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE GLOW-WORM.
+
+“The Nightingale,” by William Cowper (1731-1800), is a favourite with a
+ teacher of good taste, and I include it at her request.
+
+ A nightingale, that all day long
+ Had cheered the village with his song,
+ Nor yet at eve his note suspended,
+ Nor yet when eventide was ended,
+ Began to feel, as well he might,
+ The keen demands of appetite;
+ When, looking eagerly around,
+ He spied far off, upon the ground,
+ A something shining in the dark,
+ And knew the glow-worm by his spark;
+ So, stooping down from hawthorn top,
+ He thought to put him in his crop.
+ The worm, aware of his intent,
+ Harangued him thus, right eloquent:
+ “Did you admire my lamp,” quoth he,
+ “As much as I your minstrelsy,
+ You would abhor to do me wrong,
+ As much as I to spoil your song;
+ For ’twas the self-same power divine,
+ Taught you to sing and me to shine;
+ That you with music, I with light,
+ Might beautify and cheer the night.”
+ The songster heard his short oration,
+ And warbling out his approbation,
+ Released him, as my story tells,
+ And found a supper somewhere else.
+
+ WILLIAM COWPER.
+
+
+
+
+ PART II.
+
+ The Little Child
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+
+ THE FROST.
+
+“Jack Frost,” by Hannah Flagg Gould (1789-1865), is perhaps a hundred
+ years old, but he is the same rollicking fellow to-day as of yore. The
+ poem puts his merry pranks to the front and prepares the way for
+ science to give him a true analysis.
+
+ The Frost looked forth, one still, clear night,
+ And whispered, “Now I shall be out of sight;
+ So through the valley and over the height,
+ In silence I’ll take my way:
+ I will not go on with that blustering train,
+ The wind and the snow, the hail and the rain,
+ Who make so much bustle and noise in vain,
+ But I’ll be as busy as they.”
+
+ Then he flew to the mountain and powdered its crest;
+ He lit on the trees, and their boughs he dressed
+ In diamond beads--and over the breast
+ Of the quivering lake he spread
+ A coat of mail, that it need not fear
+ The downward point of many a spear
+ That hung on its margin far and near,
+ Where a rock could rear its head.
+
+ He went to the windows of those who slept,
+ And over each pane, like a fairy, crept;
+ Wherever he breathed, wherever he slept,
+ By the light of the moon were seen
+ Most beautiful things--there were flowers and trees;
+ There were bevies of birds and swarms of bees;
+ There were cities with temples and towers, and these
+ All pictured in silver sheen!
+
+ But he did one thing that was hardly fair;
+ He peeped in the cupboard, and finding there
+ That all had forgotten for him to prepare--
+ “Now just to set them a-thinking,
+ I’ll bite this basket of fruit,” said he,
+ “This costly pitcher I’ll burst in three,
+ And the glass of water they’ve left for me
+ Shall ‘_tchich!_’ to tell them I’m drinking.”
+
+ HANNAH FLAGG GOULD.
+
+
+ THE OWL.
+
+ When cats run home and light is come,
+ And dew is cold upon the ground,
+ And the far-off stream is dumb,
+ And the whirring sail goes round,
+ And the whirring sail goes round;
+ Alone and warming his five wits,
+ The white owl in the belfry sits.
+
+ When merry milkmaids click the latch,
+ And rarely smells the new-mown hay,
+ And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch
+ Twice or thrice his roundelay,
+ Twice or thrice his roundelay;
+ Alone and warming his five wits,
+ The white owl in the belfry sits.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ LITTLE BILLEE.
+
+“Little Billee,” by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), finds a
+ place here because it carries a good lesson good-naturedly rendered. An
+ accomplished teacher recommends it, and I recollect two young children
+ in Chicago who sang it frequently for years without getting tired of
+ it.
+
+ There were three sailors of Bristol city
+ Who took a boat and went to sea.
+ But first with beef and captain’s biscuits
+ And pickled pork they loaded she.
+
+ There was gorging Jack and guzzling Jimmy,
+ And the youngest he was little Billee.
+ Now when they got so far as the Equator
+ They’d nothing left but one split pea.
+
+ Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy,
+ “I am extremely hungaree.”
+ To gorging Jack says guzzling Jimmy,
+ “We’ve nothing left, us must eat we.”
+
+ Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy,
+ “With one another, we shouldn’t agree!
+ There’s little Bill, he’s young and tender,
+ We’re old and tough, so let’s eat he.”
+
+ “Oh! Billy, we’re going to kill and eat you,
+ So undo the button of your chemie.”
+ When Bill received this information
+ He used his pocket-handkerchie.
+
+ “First let me say my catechism,
+ Which my poor mammy taught to me.”
+ “Make haste, make haste,” says guzzling Jimmy
+ While Jack pulled out his snickersnee.
+
+ So Billy went up to the main-topgallant mast,
+ And down he fell on his bended knee.
+ He scarce had come to the Twelfth Commandment
+ When up he jumps, “There’s land I see.
+
+ “Jerusalem and Madagascar,
+ And North and South Amerikee:
+ There’s the British flag a-riding at anchor,
+ With Admiral Napier, K.C.B.”
+
+ So when they got aboard of the Admiral’s
+ He hanged fat Jack and flogged Jimmee;
+ But as for little Bill, he made him
+ The Captain of a Seventy-three.
+
+ WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.
+
+
+ THE BUTTERFLY AND THE BEE.
+
+“The Butterfly and the Bee,” by William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), is
+ recommended by some school-girls. It carries a lesson in favour of the
+ worker.
+
+ Methought I heard a butterfly
+ Say to a labouring bee:
+ “Thou hast no colours of the sky
+ On painted wings like me.”
+
+ “Poor child of vanity! those dyes,
+ And colours bright and rare,”
+ With mild reproof, the bee replies,
+ “Are all beneath my care.
+
+ “Content I toil from morn to eve,
+ And scorning idleness,
+ To tribes of gaudy sloth I leave
+ The vanity of dress.”
+
+ WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES.
+
+
+ AN INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP.
+
+“An Incident of the French Camp,” by Robert Browning (1812-89), is
+ included in this volume out of regard to a boy of eight years who did
+ not care for many poems, but this one stirred his heart to its depths.
+
+ You know, we French storm’d Ratisbon:
+ A mile or so away
+ On a little mound, Napoleon
+ Stood on our storming-day;
+ With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
+ Legs wide, arms lock’d behind,
+ As if to balance the prone brow
+ Oppressive with its mind.
+
+ Just as perhaps he mus’d “My plans
+ That soar, to earth may fall,
+ Let once my army leader Lannes
+ Waver at yonder wall,”--
+ Out ’twixt the battery smokes there flew
+ A rider, bound on bound
+ Full-galloping; nor bridle drew
+ Until he reach’d the mound.
+
+ Then off there flung in smiling joy,
+ And held himself erect
+ By just his horse’s mane, a boy:
+ You hardly could suspect--
+ (So tight he kept his lips compress’d,
+ Scarce any blood came through)
+ You look’d twice ere you saw his breast
+ Was all but shot in two.
+
+ “Well,” cried he, “Emperor, by God’s grace
+ We’ve got you Ratisbon!
+ The Marshal’s in the market-place,
+ And you’ll be there anon
+ To see your flag-bird flap his vans
+ Where I, to heart’s desire,
+ Perched him!” The chief’s eye flashed; his plans
+ Soared up again like fire.
+
+ The chief’s eye flashed; but presently
+ Softened itself, as sheathes
+ A film the mother-eagle’s eye
+ When her bruised eaglet breathes;
+ “You’re wounded!” “Nay,” the soldier’s pride
+ Touched to the quick, he said:
+ “I’m killed, Sire!” And his chief beside,
+ Smiling the boy fell dead.
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ ROBERT OF LINCOLN.
+
+“Robert of Lincoln,” by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), is one of
+ the finest bird poems ever written. It finds a place here because I
+ have seen it used effectively as a memory gem in the Cook County Normal
+ School (Colonel Parker’s school), year after year, and because my own
+ pupils invariably like to commit it to memory. With the child of six to
+ the student of twenty years it stands a source of delight.
+
+ Merrily swinging on brier and weed,
+ Near to the nest of his little dame,
+ Over the mountain-side or mead,
+ Robert of Lincoln is telling his name.
+ Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Snug and safe is this nest of ours,
+ Hidden among the summer flowers.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Robert of Lincoln is gayly dressed,
+ Wearing a bright, black wedding-coat;
+ White are his shoulders, and white his crest,
+ Hear him call in his merry note,
+ Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Look what a nice, new coat is mine;
+ Sure there was never a bird so fine.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Robert of Lincoln’s Quaker wife,
+ Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings,
+ Passing at home a patient life,
+ Broods in the grass while her husband sings,
+ Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Brood, kind creature, you need not fear
+ Thieves and robbers while I am here.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Modest and shy as a nun is she;
+ One weak chirp is her only note;
+ Braggart, and prince of braggarts is he,
+ Pouring boasts from his little throat,
+ Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Never was I afraid of man,
+ Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Six white eggs on a bed of hay,
+ Flecked with purple, a pretty sight:
+ There as the mother sits all day,
+ Robert is singing with all his might,
+ Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Nice good wife that never goes out,
+ Keeping house while I frolic about.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Soon as the little ones chip the shell,
+ Six wide mouths are open for food;
+ Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well,
+ Gathering seeds for the hungry brood:
+ Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ This new life is likely to be
+ Hard for a gay young fellow like me.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Robert of Lincoln at length is made
+ Sober with work, and silent with care,
+ Off is his holiday garment laid,
+ Half forgotten that merry air,
+ Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Nobody knows but my mate and I,
+ Where our nest and our nestlings lie.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Summer wanes; the children are grown;
+ Fun and frolic no more he knows;
+ Robert of Lincoln’s a hum-drum drone;
+ Off he flies, and we sing as he goes,
+ Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ When you can pipe that merry old strain,
+ Robert of Lincoln, come back again.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
+
+
+ OLD GRIMES.
+
+“Old Grimes” is an heirloom, an antique gem. We learn it as a matter of
+ course for its sparkle and glow.
+
+ Old Grimes is dead; that good old man,
+ We ne’er shall see him more;
+ He used to wear a long, black coat,
+ All buttoned down before.
+
+ His heart was open as the day,
+ His feelings all were true;
+ His hair was some inclined to gray,
+ He wore it in a queue.
+
+ He lived at peace with all mankind,
+ In friendship he was true;
+ His coat had pocket-holes behind,
+ His pantaloons were blue.
+
+ He modest merit sought to find,
+ And pay it its desert;
+ He had no malice in his mind,
+ No ruffles on his shirt.
+
+ His neighbours he did not abuse,
+ Was sociable and gay;
+ He wore large buckles on his shoes,
+ And changed them every day.
+
+ His knowledge, hid from public gaze,
+ He did not bring to view,
+ Nor make a noise town-meeting days,
+ As many people do.
+
+ His worldly goods he never threw
+ In trust to fortune’s chances,
+ But lived (as all his brothers do)
+ In easy circumstances.
+
+ Thus undisturbed by anxious cares
+ His peaceful moments ran;
+ And everybody said he was
+ A fine old gentleman.
+
+ ALBERT GORTON GREENE.
+
+
+ SONG OF LIFE.
+
+ A traveller on a dusty road
+ Strewed acorns on the lea;
+ And one took root and sprouted up,
+ And grew into a tree.
+ Love sought its shade at evening-time,
+ To breathe its early vows;
+ And Age was pleased, in heights of noon,
+ To bask beneath its boughs.
+ The dormouse loved its dangling twigs,
+ The birds sweet music bore--
+ It stood a glory in its place,
+ A blessing evermore.
+
+ A little spring had lost its way
+ Amid the grass and fern;
+ A passing stranger scooped a well
+ Where weary men might turn.
+ He walled it in, and hung with care
+ A ladle on the brink;
+ He thought not of the deed he did,
+ But judged that Toil might drink.
+ He passed again; and lo! the well,
+ By summer never dried,
+ Had cooled ten thousand parchéd tongues,
+ And saved a life beside.
+
+ A nameless man, amid the crowd
+ That thronged the daily mart,
+ Let fall a word of hope and love,
+ Unstudied from the heart,
+ A whisper on the tumult thrown,
+ A transitory breath,
+ It raised a brother from the dust,
+ It saved a soul from death.
+ O germ! O fount! O word of love!
+ O thought at random cast!
+ Ye were but little at the first,
+ But mighty at the last.
+
+ CHARLES MACKAY.
+
+
+ FAIRY SONG.
+
+ Shed no tear! O shed no tear!
+ The flower will bloom another year.
+ Weep no more! O, weep no more!
+ Young buds sleep in the root’s white core.
+ Dry your eyes! Oh! dry your eyes!
+ For I was taught in Paradise
+ To ease my breast of melodies--
+ Shed no tear.
+
+ Overhead! look overhead!
+ ’Mong the blossoms white and red--
+ Look up, look up. I flutter now
+ On this flush pomegranate bough.
+ See me! ’tis this silvery bell
+ Ever cures the good man’s ill.
+ Shed no tear! O, shed no tear!
+ The flowers will bloom another year.
+ Adieu, adieu--I fly, adieu,
+ I vanish in the heaven’s blue--
+ Adieu, adieu!
+
+ JOHN KEATS.
+
+
+ A BOY’S SONG
+
+“A Boy’s Song,” by James Hogg (1770-1835), is a sparkling poem, very
+ attractive to children.
+
+ Where the pools are bright and deep,
+ Where the gray trout lies asleep,
+ Up the river and o’er the lea,
+ That’s the way for Billy and me.
+
+ Where the blackbird sings the latest,
+ Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest,
+ Where the nestlings chirp and flee,
+ That’s the way for Billy and me.
+
+ Where the mowers mow the cleanest,
+ Where the hay lies thick and greenest,
+ There to trace the homeward bee,
+ That’s the way for Billy and me.
+
+ Where the hazel bank is steepest,
+ Where the shadow falls the deepest,
+ Where the clustering nuts fall free.
+ That’s the way for Billy and me.
+
+ Why the boys should drive away,
+ Little sweet maidens from the play,
+ Or love to banter and fight so well,
+ That’s the thing I never could tell.
+
+ But this I know, I love to play,
+ Through the meadow, among the hay;
+ Up the water and o’er the lea,
+ That’s the way for Billy and me.
+
+ JAMES HOGG.
+
+
+ BUTTERCUPS AND DAISIES.
+
+ Buttercups and daisies,
+ Oh, the pretty flowers,
+ Coming ere the spring time,
+ To tell of sunny hours.
+ While the tree are leafless,
+ While the fields are bare,
+ Buttercups and daisies
+ Spring up here and there.
+
+ Ere the snowdrop peepeth,
+ Ere the crocus bold,
+ Ere the early primrose
+ Opes its paly gold,
+ Somewhere on the sunny bank
+ Buttercups are bright;
+ Somewhere ’mong the frozen grass
+ Peeps the daisy white.
+
+ Little hardy flowers,
+ Like to children poor,
+ Playing in their sturdy health
+ By their mother’s door,
+ Purple with the north wind,
+ Yet alert and bold;
+ Fearing not, and caring not,
+ Though they be a-cold!
+
+ What to them is winter!
+ What are stormy showers!
+ Buttercups and daisies
+ Are these human flowers!
+ He who gave them hardships
+ And a life of care,
+ Gave them likewise hardy strength
+ And patient hearts to bear.
+
+ MARY HOWITT.
+
+
+ THE RAINBOW.
+
+ Triumphal arch, that fills the sky
+ When storms prepare to part,
+ I ask not proud Philosophy
+ To teach me what thou art.
+
+ Still seem, as to my childhood’s sight,
+ A midway station given,
+ For happy spirits to alight,
+ Betwixt the earth and heaven.
+
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL.
+
+
+ OLD IRONSIDES.
+
+“Old Ironsides,” by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94), is learned
+ readily. Children are untouched by the commercial spirit which is the
+ reproach of this age. “Ingratitude is the vice of republics,” and this
+ poem puts to shame the love of money and the spirit of ingratitude that
+ could let a national servant become a wreck.
+
+ Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
+ Long has it waved on high,
+ And many an eye has danced to see
+ That banner in the sky;
+ Beneath it rung the battle shout,
+ And burst the cannon’s roar;--
+ The meteor of the ocean air
+ Shall sweep the clouds no more.
+
+ Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood,
+ Where knelt the vanquished foe,
+ When winds were hurrying o’er the flood
+ And waves were white below.
+ No more shall feel the victor’s tread,
+ Or know the conquered knee;
+ The harpies of the shore shall pluck
+ The eagle of the sea!
+
+ O, better that her shattered hulk
+ Should sink beneath the wave;
+ Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
+ And there should be her grave;
+ Nail to the mast her holy flag,
+ Set every threadbare sail,
+ And give her to the god of storms,
+ The lightning and the gale!
+
+ OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
+
+
+ LITTLE ORPHANT ANNIE.
+
+“Little Orphant Annie” certainly earns her “board and keep” when she
+ has “washed the dishes,” “swept up the crumbs,” “driven the chickens
+ from the porch,” and done all the other odds and ends of work on a
+ farm. The poet, James Whitcomb Riley (1853-), has shown how truly a
+ little child may be overtaxed and yet preserve a brave spirit and keen
+ imagination. Children invariably love to learn this poem.
+
+ Little Orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay,
+ An’ wash the cups and saucers up, an’ brush the crumbs away,
+ An’ shoo the chickens off the porch, an’ dust the hearth, an’ sweep,
+ An’ make the fire, an’ bake the bread, an’ earn her board-an’-keep;
+ An’ all us other children, when the supper things is done,
+ We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun
+ A-list’nin’ to the witch-tales ’at Annie tells about,
+ An’ the Gobble-uns ’at gits you
+ Ef you
+ Don’t
+ Watch
+ Out!
+
+ Onc’t they was a little boy wouldn’t say his pray’rs--
+ An’ when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs,
+ His mammy heerd him holler, an’ his daddy heerd him bawl,
+ An’ when they turn’t the kivvers down, he wasn’t there at all!
+ An’ they seeked him in the rafter-room, an’ cubby hole, an’ press,
+ An’ seeked him up the chimbly flue, an’ ever’-wheres, I guess;
+ But all they ever found was thist his pants an’ roundabout!
+ An’ the Gobble-uns’ll git you
+ Ef you
+ Don’t
+ Watch
+ Out!
+
+ An’ one time a little girl ’ud allus laugh an’ grin,
+ An’ make fun of ever’ one, an’ all her blood-an’-kin;
+ An’ onc’t when they was “company,” an’ ole folks was there,
+ She mocked ’em an’ shocked ’em, an’ said she didn’t care!
+ An’ thist as she kicked her heels, an’ turn’t to run an’ hide,
+ They was two great big Black Things a-standin’ by her side,
+ An’ they snatched her through the ceilin’ ’fore she
+ knowed what she’s about!
+ An’ the Gobble-uns’ll git you
+ Ef you
+ Don’t
+ Watch
+ Out!
+
+ An’ little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,
+ An’ the lampwick sputters, an’ the wind goes woo-oo!
+ An’ you hear the crickets quit, an’ the moon is gray,
+ An’ the lightnin’-bugs in dew is all squenched away,--
+ You better mind yer parents, an’ yer teachers fond an’ dear,
+ An’ churish them ’at loves you, an’ dry the orphant’s tear,
+ An’ he’p the pore an’ needy ones ’at clusters all about,
+ Er the Gobble-uns’ll git you
+ Ef you
+ Don’t
+ Watch
+ Out!
+
+ JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.
+
+
+ O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
+
+“O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman (1819-92), is placed here out
+ of compliment to a little boy aged ten who wanted to recite it once a
+ week for a year. This song and Edwin Markham’s poem on Lincoln are two
+ of the greatest tributes ever paid to that hero.
+
+ O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
+ The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
+ The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
+ While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
+ But O heart! heart! heart!
+ O the bleeding drops of red,
+ Where on the deck my Captain lies,
+ Fallen cold and dead.
+
+ O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
+ Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills,
+ For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding,
+ For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
+ Here Captain! dear father!
+ This arm beneath your head!
+ It is some dream that on the deck
+ You’ve fallen cold and dead.
+
+ My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
+ My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will.
+ The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
+ From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
+ Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
+ But I, with mournful tread,
+ Walk the deck my Captain lies,
+ Fallen cold and dead.
+
+ WALT WHITMAN.
+
+
+ INGRATITUDE.
+
+“Ingratitude,” by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), is an incisive
+ thrust at a refined vice. It is a part of education to learn to be
+ grateful.
+
+ Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
+ Thou are not so unkind
+ As man’s ingratitude;
+ Thy tooth is not so keen
+ Because thou are not seen,
+ Although thy breath be rude.
+
+ Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
+ Thou dost not bite so nigh
+ As benefits forgot;
+ Though thou the waters warp,
+ Thy sting is not so sharp
+ As friend remembered not.
+
+ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+ THE IVY GREEN.
+
+“The Ivy Green,” by Charles Dickens (1812-70), is a hardy poem in
+ honour of a hardy plant. There is a wonderful ivy growing at Rhudlan,
+ in northern Wales. Its roots are so large and strong that they form a
+ comfortable seat for many persons, and no one can remember when they
+ were smaller. This ivy envelops a great castle in ruins. Every child in
+ that locality loves the old ivy. It is typical of the ivy as seen all
+ through Wales and England.
+
+ O, a dainty plant is the ivy green,
+ That creepeth o’er ruins old!
+ Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,
+ In his cell so lone and cold.
+ The walls must be crumbled, the stones decayed.
+ To pleasure his dainty whim;
+ And the mouldering dust that years have made
+ Is a merry meal for him.
+ Creeping where no life is seen,
+ A rare old plant is the ivy green.
+
+ Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,
+ And a staunch old heart has he!
+ How closely he twineth, how tight he clings
+ To his friend, the huge oak tree!
+ And slyly he traileth along the ground,
+ And his leaves he gently waves,
+ And he joyously twines and hugs around
+ The rich mould of dead men’s graves.
+ Creeping where no life is seen,
+ A rare old plant is the ivy green.
+
+ Whole ages have fled, and their works decayed,
+ And nations have scattered been;
+ But the stout old ivy shall never fade
+ From its hale and hearty green.
+ The brave old plant in its lonely days
+ Shall fatten upon the past;
+ For the stateliest building man can raise
+ Is the ivy’s food at last.
+ Creeping where no life is seen,
+ A rare old plant is the ivy green.
+
+ CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+
+ THE NOBLE NATURE.
+
+“The Noble Nature,” by Ben Jonson (1574-1637), needs no plea. A small
+ virtue well polished is better than none.
+
+ It is not growing like a tree
+ In bulk doth make man better be;
+ Or standing long an oak, three hundred year
+ To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear
+ A lily of a day
+ Is fairer far in May,
+ Although it fall and die that night,--
+ It was the plant and flower of light.
+ In small proportions we just beauties see;
+ And in short measures life may perfect be.
+
+ BEN JONSON.
+
+
+ THE FLYING SQUIRREL.
+
+“The Flying Squirrel” is an honest account of a live creature that won
+ his way into scores of hearts by his mad pranks and affectionate ways.
+ It is enough that John Burroughs has commended the poem.
+
+ Of all the woodland creatures,
+ The quaintest little sprite
+ Is the dainty flying squirrel
+ In vest of shining white,
+ In coat of silver gray,
+ And vest of shining white.
+
+ His furry Quaker jacket
+ Is trimmed with stripe of black;
+ A furry plume to match it
+ Is curling o’er his back;
+ New curved with every motion,
+ His plume curls o’er his back.
+
+ No little new-born baby
+ Has pinker feet than he;
+ Each tiny toe is cushioned
+ With velvet cushions three;
+ Three wee, pink, velvet cushions
+ Almost too small to see.
+
+ Who said, “The foot of baby
+ Might tempt an angel’s kiss”?
+ I know a score of school-boys
+ Who put their lips to this,--
+ This wee foot of the squirrel,
+ And left a loving kiss.
+
+ The tiny thief has hidden
+ My candy and my plum;
+ Ah, there he comes unbidden
+ To gently nip my thumb,--
+ Down in his home (my pocket)
+ He gently nips my thumb.
+
+ How strange the food he covets,
+ The restless, restless wight;--
+ Fred’s old stuffed armadillo
+ He found a tempting bite,
+ Fred’s old stuffed armadillo,
+ With ears a perfect fright.
+
+ The Lady Ruth’s great bureau,
+ Each foot a dragon’s paw!
+ The midget ate the nails from
+ His famous antique claw.
+ Oh, what a cruel beastie
+ To hurt a dragon’s claw!
+
+ To autographic copies
+ Upon my choicest shelf,--
+ To every dainty volume
+ The rogue has helped himself.
+ My books! Oh dear! No matter!
+ The rogue has helped himself.
+
+ And yet, my little squirrel,
+ Your taste is not so bad;
+ You’ve swallowed Caird completely
+ And psychologic Ladd.
+ Rosmini you’ve digested,
+ And Kant in rags you’ve clad.
+
+ Gnaw on, my elfish rodent!
+ Lay all the sages low!
+ My pretty lace and ribbons,
+ They’re yours for weal or woe!
+ My pocket-book’s in tatters
+ Because you like it so.
+
+ MARY E. BURT.
+
+
+ WARREN’S ADDRESS TO THE AMERICAN SOLDIERS.
+
+ There is never a boy who objects to learning “Warren’s Address,” by
+ John Pierpont (1785-1866). To stand by one’s own rights is inherent in
+ every true American. This poem is doubtless developed from Robert
+ Burns’s “Bannockburn.” (1785-1866.)
+
+ Stand! the ground’s your own, my braves!
+ Will ye give it up to slaves?
+ Will ye look for greener graves?
+ Hope ye mercy still?
+ What’s the mercy despots feel?
+ Hear it in that battle-peal!
+ Read it on yon bristling steel!
+ Ask it,--ye who will.
+
+ Fear ye foes who kill for hire?
+ Will ye to your homes retire?
+ Look behind you! they’re afire!
+ And, before you, see
+ Who have done it!--From the vale
+ On they come!--And will ye quail?--
+ Leaden rain and iron hail
+ Let their welcome be!
+
+ In the God of battles trust!
+ Die we may,--and die we must;
+ But, O, where can dust to dust
+ Be consigned so well,
+ As where Heaven its dews shall shed
+ On the martyred patriot’s bed,
+ And the rocks shall raise their head,
+ Of his deeds to tell!
+
+ JOHN PIERPONT.
+
+
+ THE SONG IN CAMP.
+
+“The Song in Camp” is Bayard Taylor’s best effort as far as young boys
+ and girls are concerned. It is a most valuable poem. I once heard a
+ clergyman in Chicago use it as a text for his sermon. Since then “Annie
+ Laurie” has become the song of the Labour party. “The Song in Camp”
+ voices a universal feeling. (1825-78.)
+
+ “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 belched its thunder.
+
+ There was a pause. A guardsman said,
+ “We storm the forts to-morrow;
+ 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 learned
+ How English love remembers.
+
+ And once again a fire of hell
+ Rained on the Russian quarters,
+ With scream of shot, and burst of shell,
+ And bellowing of the mortars!
+
+ And Irish Nora’s eyes are dim
+ For a singer, dumb and gory;
+ And English Mary mourns for him
+ Who sang of “Annie Laurie.”
+
+ Sleep, soldiers! still in honoured rest
+ Your truth and valour wearing:
+ The bravest are the tenderest,--
+ The loving are the daring.
+
+ BAYARD TAYLOR.
+
+
+ THE BUGLE SONG.
+
+“The Bugle Song” (by Alfred Tennyson, 1809-90), says Heydrick, “has for
+ its central theme the undying power of human love. The music is notable
+ for sweetness and delicacy.”
+
+ The splendour 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.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE “THREE BELLS” OF GLASGOW.
+
+“The Three Bells of Glasgow,” by Whittier (1807-92), cannot be praised
+ too highly for its ethical value. Children always love to learn it
+ after hearing it read correctly and by one who understands and
+ appreciates it. “Stand by” is the motto. My pupils teach it to me once
+ a year and learn it themselves, too.
+
+ Beneath the low-hung night cloud
+ That raked her splintering mast
+ The good ship settled slowly,
+ The cruel leak gained fast.
+
+ Over the awful ocean
+ Her signal guns pealed out.
+ Dear God! was that Thy answer
+ From the horror round about?
+
+ A voice came down the wild wind,
+ “Ho! ship ahoy!” its cry:
+ “Our stout _Three Bells_ of Glasgow
+ Shall stand till daylight by!”
+
+ Hour after hour crept slowly,
+ Yet on the heaving swells
+ Tossed up and down the ship-lights,
+ The lights of the _Three Bells_!
+
+ And ship to ship made signals,
+ Man answered back to man,
+ While oft, to cheer and hearten,
+ The _Three Bells_ nearer ran:
+
+ And the captain from her taffrail
+ Sent down his hopeful cry.
+ “Take heart! Hold on!” he shouted,
+ “The _Three Bells_ shall stand by!”
+
+ All night across the waters
+ The tossing lights shone clear;
+ All night from reeling taffrail
+ The _Three Bells_ sent her cheer.
+
+ And when the dreary watches
+ Of storm and darkness passed,
+ Just as the wreck lurched under,
+ All souls were saved at last.
+
+ Sail on, _Three Bells_, forever,
+ In grateful memory sail!
+ Ring on, _Three Bells_ of rescue,
+ Above the wave and gale!
+
+ Type of the Love eternal,
+ Repeat the Master’s cry,
+ As tossing through our darkness
+ The lights of God draw nigh!
+
+ JOHN G. WHITTIER.
+
+
+ SHERIDAN’S RIDE.
+
+ There never was a boy who did not like “Sheridan’s Ride,” by T.
+ Buchanan Read (1822-72). The swing and gallop in it take every boy off
+ from his feet. The children never teach this poem to me, because they
+ love to learn it at first sight. It is easily memorised.
+
+ Up from the South at break of day,
+ Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
+ The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
+ Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain’s door,
+ The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar,
+ Telling the battle was on once more,
+ And Sheridan twenty miles away.
+
+ And wider still those billows of war
+ Thundered along the horizon’s bar;
+ And louder yet into Winchester rolled
+ The roar of that red sea uncontrolled,
+ Making the blood of the listener cold
+ As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,
+ And Sheridan twenty miles away.
+
+ But there is a road from Winchester town,
+ A good, broad highway leading down;
+ And there, through the flush of the morning light,
+ A steed as black as the steeds of night
+ Was seen to pass as with eagle flight;
+ As if he knew the terrible need,
+ He stretched away with his utmost speed;
+ Hills rose and fell; but his heart was gay,
+ With Sheridan fifteen miles away.
+
+ Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering South,
+ The dust, like smoke from the cannon’s mouth;
+ Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster,
+ Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster.
+ The heart of the steed and the heart of the master
+ Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
+ Impatient to be where the battle-field calls;
+ Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,
+ With Sheridan only ten miles away.
+
+ Under his spurning feet the road
+ Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,
+ And the landscape sped away behind
+ Like an ocean flying before the wind.
+ And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace fire,
+ Swept on, with his wild eye full of ire.
+ But lo! he is nearing his heart’s desire;
+ He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray,
+ With Sheridan only five miles away.
+
+ The first that the General saw were the groups
+ Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops.
+ What was done--what to do? A glance told him both,
+ Then striking his spurs, with a terrible oath,
+ He dashed down the line, mid a storm of huzzas,
+ And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because
+ The sight of the master compelled it to pause.
+ With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;
+ By the flash of his eye, and the red nostrils’ play,
+ He seemed to the whole great army to say:
+ “I have brought you Sheridan all the way
+ From Winchester down to save the day!”
+
+ Hurrah! hurrah for Sheridan!
+ Hurrah! hurrah for horse and man!
+ And when their statues are placed on high,
+ Under the dome of the Union sky,
+ The American soldiers’ Temple of Fame,
+ There with the glorious General’s name
+ Be it said, in letters both bold and bright:
+ “Here is the steed that saved the day,
+ By carrying Sheridan into the fight
+ From Winchester, twenty miles away!”
+
+ THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.
+
+
+ THE SANDPIPER.
+
+“The Sandpiper,” by Celia Thaxter (1836-94), is placed here because a
+ goodly percentage of the children who read it want to learn it.
+
+ Across the lonely beach we flit,
+ One little sandpiper and I,
+ And fast I gather, bit by bit,
+ The scattered driftwood, bleached and dry.
+ The wild waves reach their hands for it,
+ The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,
+ As up and down the beach we flit,
+ One little sandpiper and I.
+
+ Above our heads the sullen clouds
+ Scud, black and swift, across the sky;
+ Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds
+ Stand out the white lighthouses high.
+ Almost as far as eye can reach
+ I see the close-reefed vessels fly,
+ As fast we flit along the beach,
+ One little sandpiper and I.
+
+ I watch him as he skims along,
+ Uttering his sweet and mournful cry;
+ He starts not at my fitful song,
+ Nor flash of fluttering drapery.
+ He has no thought of any wrong,
+ He scans me with a fearless eye;
+ Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong,
+ The little sandpiper and I.
+
+ Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night,
+ When the loosed storm breaks furiously?
+ My driftwood fire will burn so bright!
+ To what warm shelter canst thou fly?
+ I do not fear for thee, though wroth
+ The tempest rushes through the sky;
+ For are we not God’s children both,
+ Thou, little sandpiper, and I?
+
+ CELIA THAXTER.
+
+
+ LADY CLARE.
+
+ Girls always love “Lady Clare” and “The Lord of Burleigh.” They like to
+ think that it is enough to be a splendid woman without title or wealth.
+ They want to be loved, if they are loved at all, for their good hearts
+ and graces of mind. Tennyson (1809-92) makes this point repeatedly
+ through his poems.
+
+ It was the time when lilies blow
+ And clouds are highest up in air;
+ Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe
+ To give his cousin, Lady Clare.
+
+ I trow they did not part in scorn:
+ Lovers long-betroth’d were they:
+ They too will wed the morrow morn:
+ God’s blessing on the day!
+
+ “He does not love me for my birth,
+ Nor for my lands so broad and fair;
+ He loves me for my own true worth,
+ And that is well,” said Lady Clare.
+
+ In there came old Alice the nurse;
+ Said: “Who was this that went from thee?”
+ “It was my cousin,” said Lady Clare;
+ “To-morrow he weds with me.”
+
+ “O God be thank’d!” said Alice the nurse,
+ “That all comes round so just and fair:
+ Lord Ronald is heir of all your lands,
+ And you are not the Lady Clare.”
+
+ “Are ye out of your mind, my nurse, my nurse,”
+ Said Lady Clare, “that ye speak so wild?”
+ “As God’s above,” said Alice the nurse,
+ “I speak the truth: you are my child.
+
+ “The old Earl’s daughter died at my breast;
+ I speak the truth, as I live by bread!
+ I buried her like my own sweet child,
+ And put my child in her stead.”
+
+ “Falsely, falsely have ye done,
+ O mother,” she said, “if this be true,
+ To keep the best man under the sun
+ So many years from his due.”
+
+ “Nay now, my child,” said Alice the nurse,
+ “But keep the secret for your life,
+ And all you have will be Lord Ronald’s
+ When you are man and wife.”
+
+ “If I’m a beggar born,” she said,
+ “I will speak out, for I dare not lie.
+ Pull off, pull off the brooch of gold,
+ And fling the diamond necklace by.”
+
+ “Nay now, my child,” said Alice the nurse,
+ “But keep the secret all ye can.”
+ She said: “Not so: but I will know
+ If there be any faith in man.”
+
+ “Nay now, what faith?” said Alice the nurse,
+ “The man will cleave unto his right,”
+ “And he shall have it,” the lady replied,
+ “Tho’ I should die to-night.”
+
+ “Yet give one kiss to your mother dear!
+ Alas! my child, I sinn’d for thee.”
+ “O mother, mother, mother,” she said,
+ “So strange it seems to me.
+
+ “Yet here’s a kiss for my mother dear,
+ My mother dear, if this be so,
+ And lay your hand upon my head,
+ And bless me, mother, ere I go.”
+
+ She clad herself in a russet gown,
+ She was no longer Lady Clare:
+ She went by dale, and she went by down,
+ With a single rose in her hair.
+
+ The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought
+ Leapt up from where she lay,
+ Dropt her head in the maiden’s hand,
+ And follow’d her all the way.
+
+ Down stept Lord Ronald from his tower:
+ “O Lady Clare, you shame your worth!
+ Why come you drest like a village maid,
+ That are the flower of the earth?”
+
+ “If I come drest like a village maid,
+ I am but as my fortunes are:
+ I am a beggar born,” she said,
+ “And not the Lady Clare.”
+
+ “Play me no tricks,” said Lord Ronald,
+ “For I am yours in word and in deed.
+ Play me no tricks,” said Lord Ronald,
+ “Your riddle is hard to read.”
+
+ O and proudly stood she up!
+ Her heart within her did not fail:
+ She look’d into Lord Ronald’s eyes,
+ And told him all her nurse’s tale.
+
+ He laugh’d a laugh of merry scorn:
+ He turn’d and kiss’d her where she stood:
+ “If you are not the heiress born?
+ And I,” said he, “the next in blood--
+
+ “If you are not the heiress born,
+ And I,” said he, “the lawful heir,
+ We two will wed to-morrow morn,
+ And you shall still be Lady Clare.”
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE LORD OF BURLEIGH.
+
+ In her ear he whispers gaily,
+ “If my heart by signs can tell,
+ Maiden, I have watched thee daily,
+ And I think thou lov’st me well.”
+ She replies, in accents fainter,
+ “There is none I love like thee.”
+ He is but a landscape-painter,
+ And a village maiden she.
+
+ He to lips, that fondly falter,
+ Presses his without reproof;
+ Leads her to the village altar,
+ And they leave her father’s roof.
+
+ “I can make no marriage present;
+ Little can I give my wife.
+ Love will make our cottage pleasant,
+ And I love thee more than life.”
+
+ They by parks and lodges going
+ See the lordly castles stand;
+ Summer woods, about them blowing,
+ Made a murmur in the land.
+
+ From deep thought himself he rouses,
+ Says to her that loves him well,
+ “Let us see these handsome houses
+ Where the wealthy nobles dwell.”
+
+ So she goes by him attended,
+ Hears him lovingly converse,
+ Sees whatever fair and splendid
+ Lay betwixt his home and hers.
+
+ Parks with oak and chestnut shady,
+ Parks and order’d gardens great,
+ Ancient homes of lord and lady,
+ Built for pleasure and for state.
+
+ All he shows her makes him dearer;
+ Evermore she seems to gaze
+ On that cottage growing nearer,
+ Where they twain will spend their days.
+
+ O but she will love him truly!
+ He shall have a cheerful home;
+ She will order all things duly
+ When beneath his roof they come.
+
+ Thus her heart rejoices greatly
+ Till a gateway she discerns
+ With armorial bearings stately,
+ And beneath the gate she turns;
+ Sees a mansion more majestic
+ Than all those she saw before;
+ Many a gallant gay domestic
+ Bows before him at the door.
+
+ And they speak in gentle murmur
+ When they answer to his call,
+ While he treads with footstep firmer,
+ Leading on from hall to hall.
+
+ And while now she wanders blindly,
+ Nor the meaning can divine,
+ Proudly turns he round and kindly,
+ “All of this is mine and thine.”
+
+ Here he lives in state and bounty,
+ Lord of Burleigh, fair and free.
+ Not a lord in all the county
+ Is so great a lord as he.
+ All at once the colour flushes
+ Her sweet face from brow to chin;
+ As it were with same she blushes,
+ And her spirit changed within.
+
+ Then her countenance all over
+ Pale again as death did prove:
+ But he clasp’d her like a lover,
+ And he cheer’d her soul with love.
+
+ So she strove against her weakness,
+ Tho’ at times her spirits sank;
+ Shaped her heart with woman’s meekness
+ To all duties of her rank;
+ And a gentle consort made he,
+ And her gentle mind was such
+ That she grew a noble lady,
+ And the people loved her much.
+ But a trouble weigh’d upon her
+ And perplex’d her, night and morn,
+ With the burden of an honour
+ Unto which she was not born.
+
+ Faint she grew and ever fainter.
+ As she murmur’d, “Oh, that he
+ Were once more that landscape-painter
+ Which did win my heart from me!”
+
+ So she droop’d and droop’d before him,
+ Fading slowly from his side;
+ Three fair children first she bore him,
+ Then before her time she died.
+
+ Weeping, weeping late and early,
+ Walking up and pacing down,
+ Deeply mourn’d the Lord of Burleigh,
+ Burleigh-house by Stamford-town.
+
+ And he came to look upon her,
+ And he look’d at her and said,
+ “Bring the dress and put it on her
+ That she wore when she was wed.”
+
+ Then her people, softly treading,
+ Bore to earth her body, drest
+ In the dress that she was wed in,
+ That her spirit might have rest.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ HIAWATHA’S CHILDHOOD.
+
+“Hiawatha” needs no commendation. Hundreds of thousands of children in
+ our land know snatches of it It is a child’s poem, every line of it.
+ One summer in Boston more than 50,000 people went to take a peep at the
+ poet’s house. (1807-82.)
+
+ By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
+ By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
+ Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
+ Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
+ Dark behind it rose the forest,
+ Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
+ Rose the firs with cones upon them;
+ Bright before it beat the water,
+ Beat the clear and sunny water,
+ Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
+
+ There the wrinkled old Nokomis
+ Nursed the little Hiawatha,
+ Rocked him in his linden cradle,
+ Bedded soft in moss and rushes,
+ Safely bound with reindeer sinews;
+ Stilled his fretful wail by saying,
+ “Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!”
+ Lulled him into slumber, singing,
+ “Ewa-yea! my little owlet!
+ Who is this that lights the wigwam?
+ With his great eyes lights the wigwam?
+ Ewa-yea! my little owlet!”
+
+ Many things Nokomis taught him
+ Of the stars that shine in heaven;
+ Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet,
+ Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses;
+ Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits,
+ Warriors with their plumes and war-clubs,
+ Flaring far away to northward
+ In the frosty nights of winter;
+ Showed the broad, white road in heaven,
+ Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows,
+ Running straight across the heavens,
+ Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows.
+
+ At the door, on summer evenings,
+ Sat the little Hiawatha;
+ Heard the whispering of the pine-trees,
+ Heard the lapping of the water,
+ Sounds of music, words of wonder;
+ “Minnie-wawa!” said the pine-trees,
+ “Mudway-aushka!” said the water;
+ Saw the fire-fly, Wah-wah-taysee,
+ Flitting through the dusk of evening,
+ With the twinkle of its candle
+ Lighting up the brakes and bushes,
+ And he sang the song of children.
+ Sang the song Nokomis taught him:
+ “Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly,
+ Little, flitting, white-fire insect,
+ Little, dancing, white-fire creature,
+ Light me with your little candle,
+ Ere upon my bed I lay me,
+ Ere in sleep I close my eyelids!”
+
+ Saw the moon rise from the water
+ Rippling, rounding from the water,
+ Saw the flecks and shadows on it,
+ Whispered, “What is that, Nokomis?”
+ And the good Nokomis answered:
+ “Once a warrior, very angry,
+ Seized his grandmother, and threw her
+ Up into the sky at midnight;
+ Right against the moon he threw her;
+ ’Tis her body that you see there.”
+
+ Saw the rainbow in the heaven,
+ In the eastern sky, the rainbow,
+ Whispered, “What is that, Nokomis?”
+ And the good Nokomis answered:
+ “Tis the heaven of flowers you see there;
+ All the wild-flowers of the forest,
+ All the lilies of the prairie,
+ When on earth they fade and perish,
+ Blossom in that heaven above us.”
+
+ When he heard the owls at midnight,
+ Hooting, laughing in the forest,
+ “What is that?” he cried, in terror;
+ “What is that,” he said, “Nokomis?”
+ And the good Nokomis answered:
+ “That is but the owl and owlet,
+ Talking in their native language,
+ Talking, scolding at each other.”
+
+ Then the little Hiawatha
+ Learned of every bird its language,
+ Learned their names and all their secrets,
+ How they built their nests in summer,
+ Where they hid themselves in winter,
+ Talked with them whene’er he met them,
+ Called them “Hiawatha’s Chickens.”
+
+ Of all beasts he learned the language,
+ Learned their names and all their secrets,
+ How the beavers built their lodges,
+ Where the squirrels hid their acorns,
+ How the reindeer ran so swiftly,
+ Why the rabbit was so timid,
+ Talked with them whene’er he met them,
+ Called them “Hiawatha’s Brothers.”
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD.
+
+“The Daffodil” is here out of compliment to a splendid school and a
+ splendid teacher at Poughkeepsie. I found the pupils learning the poem,
+ the teacher having placed a bunch of daffodils in a vase before them.
+ It was a charming lesson. (1770-96.)
+
+ 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 stretched 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 a jocund company;
+ I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
+ What wealth the show to me 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.
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ JOHN BARLEYCORN.
+
+“John Barleycorn” is a favourite with boys because it pictures a
+ successful struggle. One editor has made a temperance poem of it,
+ mistaking its true intent. The poem is a strong expression of a
+ plow-man’s love for a hardy, food-giving grain which has sprung to life
+ through his efforts. (1759-96.)
+
+ There were three kings into the East,
+ Three kings both great and high;
+ And they ha’e sworn a solemn oath
+ John Barleycorn should die.
+
+ They took a plow and plowed him down,
+ Put clods upon his head;
+ And they ha’e sworn a solemn oath
+ John Barleycorn was dead.
+
+ But the cheerful spring came kindly on,
+ And showers began to fall;
+ John Barleycorn got up again,
+ And sore surprised them all.
+
+ The sultry suns of summer came,
+ And he grew thick and strong;
+ His head well arm’d wi’ pointed spears,
+ That no one should him wrong.
+
+ The sober autumn entered mild,
+ And he grew wan and pale;
+ His bending joints and drooping head
+ Showed he began to fail.
+
+ His colour sickened more and more,
+ He faded into age;
+ And then his enemies began
+ To show their deadly rage.
+
+ They took a weapon long and sharp,
+ And cut him by the knee,
+ Then tied him fast upon a cart,
+ Like a rogue for forgery.
+
+ They laid him down upon his back,
+ And cudgelled him full sore;
+ They hung him up before the storm,
+ And turn’d him o’er and o’er.
+
+ They filled up then a darksome pit
+ With water to the brim,
+ And heaved in poor John Barleycorn,
+ To let him sink or swim.
+
+ They laid him out upon the floor,
+ To work him further woe;
+ And still as signs of life appeared,
+ They tossed him to and fro.
+
+ They wasted o’er a scorching flame
+ The marrow of his bones;
+ But a miller used him worst of all--
+ He crushed him ’tween two stones.
+
+ And they have taken his very heart’s blood,
+ And drunk it round and round;
+ And still the more and more they drank,
+ Their joy did more abound.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE.
+
+“A Life on the Ocean Wave,” by Epes Sargent (1813-80), gives the swing
+ and motion of the water of the great ocean. Children remember it almost
+ unconsciously after hearing it read several times.
+
+ A life on the ocean wave,
+ A home on the rolling deep,
+ Where the scattered waters rave,
+ And the winds their revels keep!
+ Like an eagle caged, I pine
+ On this dull, unchanging shore:
+ Oh! give me the flashing brine,
+ The spray and the tempest’s roar!
+
+ Once more on the deck I stand
+ Of my own swift-gliding craft:
+ Set sail! farewell to the land!
+ The gale follows fair abaft.
+ We shoot through the sparkling foam
+ Like an ocean-bird set free;--
+ Like the ocean-bird, our home
+ We’ll find far out on the sea.
+
+ The land is no longer in view,
+ The clouds have begun to frown;
+ But with a stout vessel and crew,
+ We’ll say, Let the storm come down!
+ And the song of our hearts shall be,
+ While the winds and the waters rave,
+ A home on the rolling sea!
+ A life on the ocean wave!
+
+ EPES SARGENT.
+
+
+ THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR.
+
+ It is customary, every New Year’s eve in America, to ring bells, fire
+ guns, send up rockets, and, in many other ways, to show joy and
+ gratitude that the old year has been so kind, and that the new year is
+ so auspicious. The emphasis in Tennyson’s poem is laid on gratitude for
+ past benefits so easily forgotten rather than upon the possible
+ advantages of the unknown and untried future.
+
+ Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
+ And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
+ Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,
+ And tread softly and speak low,
+ For the old year lies a-dying.
+ Old year, you must not die;
+ You came to us so readily,
+ You lived with us so steadily,
+ Old year, you shall not die.
+
+ He lieth still: he doth not move:
+ He will not see the dawn of day.
+ He hath no other life above.
+ He gave me a friend, and a true true-love,
+ And the New-year will take ’em away.
+ Old year, you must not go;
+ So long as you have been with us,
+ Such joy as you have seen with us,
+ Old year, you shall not go.
+
+ He froth’d his bumpers to the brim;
+ A jollier year we shall not see.
+ But tho’ his eyes are waxing dim,
+ And tho’ his foes speak ill of him,
+ He was a friend to me.
+ Old year, you shall not die;
+ We did so laugh and cry with you,
+ I’ve half a mind to die with you,
+ Old year, if you must die.
+
+ He was full of joke and jest,
+ But all his merry quips are o’er.
+ To see him die, across the waste
+ His son and heir doth ride post-haste,
+ But he’ll be dead before.
+ Every one for his own.
+ The night is starry and cold, my friend,
+ And the New-year blithe and bold, my friend,
+ Comes up to take his own.
+
+ How hard he breathes! over the snow
+ I heard just now the crowing cock.
+ The shadows flicker to and fro:
+ The cricket chirps: the light burns low:
+ ’Tis nearly twelve o’clock.
+ Shake hands, before you die.
+ Old year, we’ll dearly rue for you:
+ What is it we can do for you?
+ Speak out before you die.
+
+ His face is growing sharp and thin.
+ Alack! our friend is gone.
+ Close up his eyes: tie up his chin:
+ Step from the corpse, and let him in
+ That standeth there alone,
+ And waiteth at the door.
+ There’s a new foot on the floor, my friend,
+ And a new face at the door, my friend,
+ A new face at the door.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ ABOU BEN ADHEM.
+
+“Abou Ben Adhem” has won its way to the popular heart because the
+“Brotherhood of Man” is the motto of this age. (1784-1859.)
+
+ Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
+ Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
+ And saw within the moonlight in 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 of all sweet accord,
+ Answered, “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 cheerly still; and said, “I pray thee, then,
+ Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.”
+
+ The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
+ It came again, with a great wakening light,
+ And showed the names whom love of God had blessed;
+ And, lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.
+
+ LEIGH HUNT.
+
+
+ FARM-YARD SONG.
+
+“A Farm-Yard Song” was popular years ago with Burbank, the great
+ reader. How the boys and girls loved it! The author, J.T. Trowbridge
+ (1827-still living), “is a boy-hearted man,” says John Burroughs. The
+ poem is just as popular as it ever was.
+
+ Over the hill the farm-boy goes,
+ His shadow lengthens along the land,
+ A giant staff in a giant hand;
+ In the poplar-tree, above the spring,
+ The katydid begins to sing;
+ The early dews are falling;--
+ Into the stone-heap darts the mink;
+ The swallows skim the river’s brink;
+ And home to the woodland fly the crows,
+ When over the hill the farm-boy goes,
+ Cheerily calling,--
+ “Co’, boss! co’, boss! co’! co’! co’!”
+ Farther, farther over the hill,
+ Faintly calling, calling still,--
+ “Co’, boss! co’, boss! co’! co’!”
+
+ Into the yard the farmer goes,
+ With grateful heart, at the close of day;
+ Harness and chain are hung away;
+ In the wagon-shed stand yoke and plow;
+ The straw’s in the stack, the hay in the mow;
+ The cooling dews are falling;--
+ The friendly sheep his welcome bleat,
+ The pigs come grunting to his feet,
+ The whinnying mare her master knows,
+ When into the yard the farmer goes,
+ His cattle calling,--
+ “Co’, boss! co’, boss! co’! co’! co’!”
+ While still the cow-boy, far away,
+ Goes seeking those that have gone astray,--
+ “Co’, boss! co’, boss! co’! co’!”
+
+ Now to her task the milkmaid goes.
+ The cattle come crowding through the gate,
+ Lowing, pushing, little and great;
+ About the trough, by the farm-yard pump,
+ The frolicsome yearlings frisk and jump,
+ While the pleasant dews are falling;--
+ The new-milch heifer is quick and shy,
+ But the old cow waits with tranquil eye;
+ And the white stream into the bright pail flows,
+ When to her task the milkmaid goes,
+ Soothingly calling,--
+ “So, boss! so, boss! so! so! so!”
+ The cheerful milkmaid takes her stool,
+ And sits and milks in the twilight cool,
+ Saying, “So! so, boss! so! so!”
+
+ To supper at last the farmer goes.
+ The apples are pared, the paper read,
+ The stories are told, then all to bed.
+ Without, the crickets’ ceaseless song
+ Makes shrill the silence all night long;
+ The heavy dews are falling.
+ The housewife’s hand has turned the lock;
+ Drowsily ticks the kitchen clock;
+ The household sinks to deep repose;
+ But still in sleep the farm-boy goes.
+ Singing, calling,--
+ “Co’, boss! co’, boss! co’! co’! co’!”
+ And oft the milkmaid, in her dreams,
+ Drums in the pail with the flashing streams,
+ Murmuring, “So, boss! so!”
+
+ J.T. TROWBRIDGE.
+
+
+ TO A MOUSE,
+
+ ON TURNING UP HER NEST WITH THE PLOW, NOVEMBER, 1785
+
+“To a Mouse” and “To a Mountain Daisy,” by Robert Burns (1759-96), are
+ the ineffable touches of tenderness that illumine the sturdy plowman.
+ The contrast between the strong man and the delicate flower or creature
+ at his mercy makes tenderness in man a vital point in character.
+
+ The lines “To a Mouse” seem by report to have been composed while Burns
+ was actually plowing. One of the poet’s first editors wrote: “John
+ Blane, who had acted as gaudsman to Burns, and who lived sixty years
+ afterward, had a distinct recollection of the turning up of the mouse.
+ Like a thoughtless youth as he was, he ran after the creature to kill
+ it, but was checked and recalled by his master, who he observed became
+ thereafter thoughtful and abstracted. Burns, who treated his servants
+ with the familiarity of fellow-labourers, soon afterward read the poem
+ to Blane.”
+
+ Wee, sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie,
+ Oh, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
+ Thou needna start awa’ sae hasty,
+ Wi’ bickering brattle!
+ I wad be laith to rin and chase thee,
+ Wi’ murd’ring pattle!
+
+ I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
+ Has broken Nature’s social union,
+ And justifies that ill opinion,
+ Which makes thee startle
+ At me, thy poor earth-born companion
+ And fellow-mortal!
+
+ I doubtna, whiles, but thou may thieve;
+ What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
+ A daimen icker in a thrave
+ ’S a sma’ request:
+ I’ll get a blessin’ wi’ the lave,
+ And never miss ’t!
+
+ Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
+ Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin’!
+ And naething now to big a new ane
+ O’ foggage green,
+ And bleak December’s winds ensuin’,
+ Baith snell and keen!
+
+ Thou saw the fields laid bare and waste,
+ And weary winter comin’ fast,
+ And cozie here, beneath the blast,
+ Thou thought to dwell,
+ Till, crash! the cruel coulter passed
+ Out through thy cell.
+
+ That wee bit heap o’ leaves and stibble
+ Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
+ Now thou’s turned out for a’ thy trouble,
+ But house or hald,
+ To thole the winter’s sleety dribble,
+ And cranreuch cauld!
+
+ But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
+ In proving foresight may be vain:
+ The best-laid schemes o’ mice and men
+ Gang aft a-gley,
+ And lea’e us naught but grief and pain,
+ For promised joy.
+
+ Still thou art blest, compared wi’ me!
+ The present only toucheth thee:
+ But, och! I backward cast my e’e
+ On prospects drear!
+ And forward, though I canna see,
+ I guess and fear.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY,
+
+ ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOW IN APRIL, 1786
+
+ Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower,
+ Thou’s met me in an evil hour;
+ For I maun crush amang the stoure
+ Thy slender stem:
+ To spare thee now is past my power,
+ Thou bonny gem.
+
+ Alas! it’s no thy neebor sweet,
+ The bonny lark, companion meet,
+ Bending thee ’mang the dewy weet,
+ Wi’ speckled breast,
+ When upward-springing, blithe, to greet
+ The purpling east!
+
+ Cauld blew the bitter biting north
+ Upon thy early, humble birth;
+ Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
+ Amid the storm,
+ Scarce reared above the parent earth
+ Thy tender form.
+
+ The flaunting flowers our gardens yield,
+ High sheltering woods and wa’s maun shield,
+ But thou, beneath the random bield
+ O’ clod or stane,
+ Adorns the histie stibble-field,
+ Unseen, alane.
+
+ There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
+ Thy snawie bosom sunward spread,
+ Thou lifts thy unassuming head
+ In humble guise;
+ But now the share uptears thy bed,
+ And low thou lies!
+
+ Such is the fate of artless maid,
+ Sweet floweret of the rural shade!
+ By love’s simplicity betrayed,
+ And guileless trust,
+ Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid
+ Low i’ the dust.
+
+ Such is the fate of simple bard,
+ On life’s rough ocean luckless starr’d!
+ Unskilful he to note the card
+ Of prudent lore,
+ Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,
+ And whelm him o’er!
+
+ Such fate to suffering worth is given,
+ Who long with wants and woes has striven,
+ By human pride or cunning driven
+ To misery’s brink,
+ Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven,
+ He, ruined, sink!
+
+ Even thou who mourn’st the Daisy’s fate,
+ That fate is thine--no distant date;
+ Stern Ruin’s plowshare drives, elate,
+ Full on thy bloom,
+ Till crushed beneath the furrow’s weight
+ Shall be thy doom.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ BARBARA FRIETCHIE.
+
+“Barbara Frietchie” will be beloved of all times because she was an old
+ woman (not necessarily an old lady) _worthy of her years_. Old age is
+ honourable if it carries a head that has a halo. (1807-92.)
+
+ Up from the meadows rich with corn,
+ Clear in the cool September morn,
+
+ The clustered spires of Frederick stand
+ Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
+
+ Roundabout them orchards sweep,
+ Apple and peach tree fruited deep,
+
+ Fair as the garden of the Lord
+ To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,
+
+ On that pleasant morn of the early fall
+ When Lee marched over the mountain-wall,
+
+ Over the mountains winding down,
+ Horse and foot, into Frederick town.
+
+ Forty flags with their silver stars,
+ Forty flags with their crimson bars,
+
+ Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
+ Of noon looked down, and saw not one.
+
+ Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
+ Bowed with her fourscore years and ten,
+
+ Bravest of all in Frederick town,
+ She took up the flag the men hauled down.
+
+ In her attic window the staff she set,
+ To show that one heart was loyal yet.
+
+ Up the street came the rebel tread,
+ Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
+
+ Under his slouched hat left and right
+ He glanced: the old flag met his sight.
+
+ “Halt!”--the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
+ “Fire!”--out blazed the rifle-blast.
+
+ It shivered the window, pane and sash;
+ It rent the banner with seam and gash.
+
+ Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
+ Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.
+
+ She leaned far out on the window-sill,
+ And shook it forth with a royal will.
+
+ “Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
+ But spare your country’s flag,” she said.
+
+ A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
+ Over the face of the leader came;
+
+ The nobler nature within him stirred
+ To life at that woman’s deed and word:
+
+ “Who touches a hair of yon gray head
+ Dies like a dog! March on!” he said.
+
+ All day long through Frederick street
+ Sounded the tread of marching feet:
+
+ All day long that free flag tost
+ Over the heads of the rebel host.
+
+ Even its torn folds rose and fell
+ On the loyal winds that loved it well;
+
+ And through the hill-gaps sunset light
+ Shone over it with a warm good-night.
+
+ Barbara Frietchie’s work is o’er,
+ And the rebel rides on his raids no more.
+
+ Honour to her! and let a tear
+ Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall’s bier.
+
+ Over Barbara Frietchie’s grave,
+ Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!
+
+ Peace and order and beauty draw
+ Round thy symbol of light and law;
+
+ And ever the stars above look down
+ On thy stars below in Frederick town!
+
+ JOHN G. WHITTIER.
+
+
+
+
+ PART III.
+
+ The Day’s at the Morn
+
+
+ LOCHINVAR.
+
+“Lochinvar” and “Lord Ullin’s Daughter,” the first by Scott (1771-1832)
+ and the second by Campbell (1777-1844), are companions in sentiment and
+ equally popular with boys who love to win anything desirable by heroic
+ effort.
+
+ Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west.
+ Through all the wide Border his steed was the best,
+ And save his good broadsword he weapons had none;
+ He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone.
+ So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
+ There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.
+
+ He stayed not for brake, and he stopped not for stone,
+ He swam the Eske River where ford there was none;
+ But ere he alighted at Netherby gate
+ The bride had consented, the gallant came late:
+ For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war
+ Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.
+
+ So boldly he entered the Netherby Hall,
+ Among bridesmen and kinsmen and brothers and all:
+ Then spoke the bride’s father, his hand on his sword
+ (For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word),
+ “Oh, come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,
+ Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?”
+
+ “I long woo’d your daughter, my suit you denied;--
+ Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide--
+ And now am I come, with this lost love of mine,
+ To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.
+ There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,
+ That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar.”
+
+ The bride kissed the goblet; the knight took it up;
+ He quaffed of the wine, and he threw down the cup.
+ She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh,
+ With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.
+ He took her soft hand ere her mother could bar,--
+ “Now tread we a measure!” said young Lochinvar.
+
+ So stately his form, and so lovely her face,
+ That never a hall such a galliard did grace;
+ While her mother did fret, and her father did fume,
+ And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume,
+ And the bridemaidens whispered, “’Twere better by far
+ To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar.”
+
+ One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
+ When they reached the hall door, and the charger stood near;
+ So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,
+ So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
+ “She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;
+ They’ll have fleet steeds that follow,” quoth young Lochinvar.
+
+ There was mounting ’mong Græmes of the Netherby clan;
+ Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran:
+ There was racing and chasing, on Cannobie Lee,
+ But the lost bride of Netherby ne’er did they see.
+ So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
+ Have ye e’er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?
+
+ SIR WALTER SCOTT.
+
+
+ LORD ULLIN’S DAUGHTER.
+
+ A chieftain, to the Highlands bound,
+ Cries, “Boatman, do not tarry!
+ And I’ll give thee a silver pound,
+ To row us o’er the ferry.”
+
+ “Now who be ye, would cross Lochgyle,
+ This dark and stormy water?”
+ “O, I’m the chief of Ulva’s isle,
+ And this Lord Ullin’s daughter.
+
+ “And fast before her father’s men
+ Three days we’ve fled together,
+ For should he find us in the glen,
+ My blood would stain the heather.
+
+ “His horsemen hard behind us ride;
+ Should they our steps discover,
+ Then who will cheer my bonny bride
+ When they have slain her lover?”
+
+ Outspoke the hardy Highland wight,
+ “I’ll go, my chief--I’m ready;
+ It is not for your silver bright,
+ But for your winsome lady:
+
+ “And by my word! the bonny bird
+ In danger shall not tarry;
+ So though the waves are raging white,
+ I’ll row you o’er the ferry.”
+
+ By this the storm grew loud apace,
+ The water-wraith was shrieking;
+ And in the scowl of heaven each face
+ Grew dark as they were speaking.
+
+ But still as wilder blew the wind,
+ And as the night grew drearer,
+ Adown the glen rode armèd men,
+ Their trampling sounded nearer.
+
+ “O haste thee, haste!” the lady cries,
+ “Though tempests round us gather;
+ I’ll meet the raging of the skies,
+ But not an angry father.”
+
+ The boat has left a stormy land,
+ A stormy sea before her,--
+ When, oh! too strong for human hand,
+ The tempest gathered o’er her.
+
+ And still they row’d amid the roar
+ Of waters fast prevailing:
+ Lord Ullin reach’d that fatal shore,
+ His wrath was changed to wailing.
+
+ For sore dismay’d through storm and shade,
+ His child he did discover:--
+ One lovely hand she stretch’d for aid,
+ And one was round her lover.
+
+ “Come back! come back!” he cried in grief,
+ “Across this stormy water:
+ And I’ll forgive your Highland chief,
+ My daughter!--oh my daughter!”
+
+ ’Twas vain the loud waves lashed the shore,
+ Return or aid preventing;--
+ The waters wild went o’er his child,--
+ And he was left lamenting.
+
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL.
+
+
+ THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE.
+
+“The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1809-92) unlike “Casabianca” shows
+ obedience under stern necessity. Obedience is the salvation of any
+ army. John Burroughs says: “I never hear that poem but what it thrills
+ me through and through.”
+
+ Half a league, half a league,
+ Half a league onward,
+ All in the valley of Death
+ Rode the six hundred.
+ “Forward, the Light Brigade!
+ Charge for the guns!” he said:
+ Into the valley of Death
+ Rode the six hundred.
+
+ “Forward, the Light Brigade!”
+ Was there a man dismay’d?
+ Not tho’ the soldier knew
+ Some one had blunder’d:
+ Theirs not to make reply,
+ Theirs not to reason why.
+ Theirs but to do and die:
+ Into the valley of Death
+ Rode the six hundred.
+
+ Cannon to right of them,
+ Cannon to left of them,
+ Cannon in front of them
+ Volley’d and thunder’d;
+ Storm’d at with shot and shell
+ Boldly they rode and well,
+ Into the jaws of Death,
+ Into the mouth of Hell
+ Rode the six hundred.
+
+ Flash’d all their sabers bare,
+ Flash’d as they turn’d in air
+ Sab’ring the gunners there,
+ Charging an army, while
+ All the world wonder’d:
+ Plunged in the battery-smoke
+ Right thro’ the line they broke;
+ Cossack and Russian
+ Reel’d from the saber-stroke
+ Shatter’d and sunder’d.
+ Then they rode back, but not
+ Not the six hundred.
+
+ Cannon to right of them,
+ Cannon to left of them,
+ Cannon behind them
+ Volleyed and thundered:
+ Stormed at with shot and shell,
+ While horse and hero fell,
+ They that had fought so well
+ Came through the jaws of death
+ Back from the mouth of hell,
+ All that was left of them--
+ Left of six hundred.
+
+ When can their glory fade?
+ Oh, the wild charge they made!
+ All the world wondered.
+ Honour the charge they made!
+ Honour the Light Brigade--
+ Noble six hundred!
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE TOURNAMENT.
+
+ There are several of Sidney Lanier’s (1842-81) poems that children love
+ to learn. “Tampa Robins,” “The Tournament” (Joust 1.), “Barnacles,”
+“The Song of the Chattahoochee,” and “The First Steamboat Up the
+ Alabama” are among them. At our “poetry contests” the children have
+ plainly demonstrated that this great poet has reached his hand down to
+ the youngest. The time will doubtless come when it will be a part of
+ education to be acquainted with Lanier, as it is now to be acquainted
+ with Longfellow or Tennyson.
+
+
+ I.
+
+ Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies,
+ And the knights still hurried amain
+ To the tournament under the ladies’ eyes,
+ Where the jousters were Heart and Brain.
+
+
+ II.
+
+ Flourished the trumpets, entered Heart,
+ A youth in crimson and gold;
+ Flourished again; Brain stood apart,
+ Steel-armoured, dark and cold.
+
+
+ III.
+
+ Heart’s palfrey caracoled gaily round,
+ Heart tra-li-ra’d merrily;
+ But Brain sat still, with never a sound,
+ So cynical-calm was he.
+
+
+ IV.
+
+ Heart’s helmet-crest bore favours three
+ From his lady’s white hand caught;
+ While Brain wore a plumeless casque; not he
+ Or favour gave or sought.
+
+
+ V.
+
+ The trumpet blew; Heart shot a glance
+ To catch his lady’s eye.
+ But Brain gazed straight ahead, his lance
+ To aim more faithfully.
+
+
+ VI.
+
+ They charged, they struck; both fell, both bled;
+ Brain rose again, ungloved;
+ Heart, dying, smiled and faintly said,
+ “My love to my beloved.”
+
+ SIDNEY LANIER.
+
+
+ THE WIND AND THE MOON.
+
+ Little Laddie, do you remember learning “The Wind and the Moon”? You
+ were eight or nine years old, and you shut your eyes and puffed out
+ your cheeks when you came to the line “He blew and He blew.” The saucy
+ wind made a great racket and the calm moon never noticed it. That gave
+ you a great deal of pleasure, didn’t it? We did not care much for the
+ noisy, conceited wind. (1824-.)
+
+ Said the Wind to the Moon, “I will blow you out,
+ You stare
+ In the air
+ Like a ghost in a chair,
+ Always looking what I am about--
+ I hate to be watched; I’ll blow you out.”
+
+ The Wind blew hard, and out went the Moon.
+ So, deep
+ On a heap
+ Of clouds to sleep,
+ Down lay the Wind, and slumbered soon,
+ Muttering low, “I’ve done for that Moon.”
+
+ He turned in his bed; she was there again!
+ On high
+ In the sky,
+ With her one ghost eye,
+ The Moon shone white and alive and plain.
+ Said the Wind, “I will blow you out again.”
+
+ The Wind blew hard, and the Moon grew dim.
+ “With my sledge,
+ And my wedge,
+ I have knocked off her edge!
+ If only I blow right fierce and grim,
+ The creature will soon be dimmer than dim.”
+
+ He blew and he blew, and she thinned to a thread.
+ “One puff
+ More’s enough
+ To blow her to snuff!
+ One good puff more where the last was bred,
+ And glimmer, glimmer, glum will go the thread.”
+
+ He blew a great blast, and the thread was gone
+ In the air
+ Nowhere
+ Was a moonbeam bare;
+ Far off and harmless the shy stars shone--
+ Sure and certain the Moon was gone!
+
+ The Wind he took to his revels once more;
+ On down,
+ In town,
+ Like a merry-mad clown,
+ He leaped and hallooed with whistle and roar--
+ “What’s that?” The glimmering thread once more!
+
+ He flew in a rage--he danced and blew;
+ But in vain
+ Was the pain
+ Of his bursting brain;
+ For still the broader the Moon-scrap grew,
+ The broader he swelled his big cheeks and blew.
+
+ Slowly she grew--till she filled the night,
+ And shone
+ On her throne
+ In the sky alone,
+ A matchless, wonderful silvery light,
+ Radiant and lovely, the queen of the night.
+
+ Said the Wind: “What a marvel of power am I
+ With my breath,
+ Good faith!
+ I blew her to death--
+ First blew her away right out of the sky--
+ Then blew her in; what strength have I!”
+
+ But the Moon she knew nothing about the affair;
+ For high
+ In the sky,
+ With her one white eye,
+ Motionless, miles above the air,
+ She had never heard the great Wind blare.
+
+ GEORGE MACDONALD.
+
+
+ JESUS THE CARPENTER.
+
+“Jesus the Carpenter”--“same trade as me”--strikes a high note in
+ favour of honest toil. (1848-.)
+
+ “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”--ay, it is He;
+ Joseph the carpenter--same trade as me--
+ I thought as I’d find it--I knew it was here--
+ But my sight’s getting queer.
+
+ I don’t know right where as His shed must ha’ stood--
+ But often, as I’ve been a-planing my wood,
+ I’ve took off my hat, just with thinking of He
+ At the same work as me.
+
+ He warn’t that set up that He couldn’t stoop down
+ And work in the country for folks in the town;
+ And I’ll warrant He felt a bit pride, like I’ve done,
+ At a good job begun.
+
+ The parson he knows that I’ll not make too free,
+ But on Sunday I feels as pleased as can be,
+ When I wears my clean smock, and sits in a pew,
+ And has taught a few.
+
+ I think of as how not the parson hissen,
+ As is teacher and father and shepherd o’ men,
+ Not he knows as much of the Lord in that shed,
+ Where He earned His own bread.
+
+ And when I goes home to my missus, says she,
+ “Are ye wanting your key?”
+ For she knows my queer ways, and my love for the shed
+ (We’ve been forty years wed).
+
+ So I comes right away by mysen, with the book,
+ And I turns the old pages and has a good look
+ For the text as I’ve found, as tells me as He
+ Were the same trade as me.
+
+ Why don’t I mark it? Ah, many say so,
+ But I think I’d as lief, with your leaves, let it go:
+ It do seem that nice when I fall on it sudden--
+ Unexpected, you know!
+
+ CATHERINE C. LIDDELL.
+
+
+ LETTY’S GLOBE.
+
+“Letty’s Globe” gives us the picture of a little golden-haired girl who
+ covers all Europe with her dainty hands and tresses while giving a kiss
+ to England, her own dear native land. (1808-79.)
+
+ When Letty had scarce pass’d her third glad year,
+ And her young, artless words began to flow,
+ One day we gave the child a colour’d sphere
+ Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,
+ By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
+ She patted all the world; old empires peep’d
+ Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
+ Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap’d,
+ And laugh’d and prattled in her world-wide bliss!
+ But when we turn’d her sweet unlearned eye
+ On our own isle, she rais’d a joyous cry,
+ “Oh! yes, I see it! Letty’s home is there!”
+ And, while she hid all England with a kiss,
+ Bright over Europe fell her golden hair!
+
+ CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER.
+
+
+ A DREAM.
+
+ Once a dream did wave a shade
+ O’er my angel-guarded bed,
+ That an emmet lost its way
+ When on grass methought I lay.
+
+ Troubled, ’wildered, and forlorn,
+ Dark, benighted, travel-worn,
+ Over many a tangled spray,
+ All heart-broke, I heard her say:
+
+ “Oh, my children! do they cry?
+ Do they hear their father sigh?
+ Now they look abroad to see.
+ Now return and weep for me.”
+
+ Pitying, I dropped a tear;
+ But I saw a glow-worm near,
+ Who replied, “What wailing wight
+ Calls the watchman of the night?
+
+ “I am set to light the ground
+ While the beetle goes his round.
+ Follow now the beetle’s hum--
+ Little wanderer, hie thee home!”
+
+ WILLIAM BLAKE.
+
+
+ HEAVEN IS NOT REACHED AT A SINGLE BOUND.
+
+ (A FRAGMENT.)
+
+“We build the ladder by which we climb” is a line worthy of any poet.
+ J.G. Holland (1819-81) has immortalised himself in this line, at least.
+
+ Heaven is not reached at a single bound,
+ But we build the ladder by which we rise
+ From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
+ And we mount to its summit round by round.
+
+ I count this thing to be grandly true:
+ That a noble deed is a step toward God,--
+ Lifting the soul from the common clod
+ To a purer air and a broader view.
+
+ J.G. HOLLAND.
+
+
+ THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM.
+
+ Have you been to Woodstock, near Oxford, England? If so, you have seen
+ the palace of the Duke of Marlborough, who won the battle of Blenheim.
+ The main point of the poem is the doubtful honour in killing in our
+ great wars. Southey, the poet, lived from 1774 to 1843.
+
+ It was a summer’s evening,
+ Old Kaspar’s work was done,
+ And he before his cottage door
+ Was sitting in the sun;
+ And by him sported on the green
+ His little grandchild Wilhelmine.
+
+ She saw her brother Peterkin
+ Roll something large and round,
+ Which he, beside the rivulet,
+ In playing there, had found.
+ He came to ask what he had found,
+ That was so large, and smooth, and round.
+
+ Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
+ Who stood expectant by;
+ And then the old man shook his head,
+ And, with a natural sigh,
+ “’Tis some poor fellow’s skull,” said he,
+ “Who fell in the great victory!
+
+ “I find them in the garden,
+ For there’s many hereabout;
+ And often when I go to plow,
+ The plowshare turns them out;
+ For many thousand men,” said he,
+ “Were slain in that great victory!”
+
+ “Now tell us what ’twas all about,”
+ Young Peterkin he cries;
+ And little Wilhelmine looks up
+ With wonder-waiting eyes;
+ “Now tell us all about the war,
+ And what they killed each other for.”
+
+ “It was the English,” Kaspar cried,
+ “Who put the French to rout;
+ But what they killed each other for
+ I could not well make out.
+ But everybody said,” quoth he,
+ “That ’twas a famous victory!
+
+ “My father lived at Blenheim then,
+ Yon little stream hard by:
+ They burned his dwelling to the ground
+ And he was forced to fly;
+ So with his wife and child he fled,
+ Nor had he where to rest his head.
+
+ “With fire and sword the country round
+ Was wasted far and wide;
+ And many a childing mother then
+ And new-born baby died.
+ But things like that, you know, must be
+ At every famous victory.
+
+ “They say it was a shocking sight
+ After the field was won;
+ For many thousand bodies here
+ Lay rotting in the sun.
+ But things like that, you know, must be
+ After a famous victory.
+
+ “Great praise the Duke of Marlborough won,
+ And our good Prince Eugene.”
+ “Why, ’twas a very wicked thing!”
+ Said little Wilhelmine.
+ “Nay, nay, my little girl,” quoth he,
+ “It was a famous victory!
+
+ “And everybody praised the Duke
+ Who this great fight did win.”
+ “But what good came of it at last?”
+ Quoth little Peterkin.
+ “Why, that I cannot tell,” said he,
+ “But ’twas a famous victory.”
+
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY.
+
+
+ FIDELITY.
+
+“Fidelity,” by William Wordsworth (1770-1850), is placed here out of
+ respect to a boy of eleven years who liked the poem well enough to
+ recite it frequently. The scene is laid on Helvellyn, to me the most
+ impressive mountain of the Lake District of England. Wordsworth is a
+ part of this country. I once heard John Burroughs say: “I went to the
+ Lake District to see what kind of a country it could be that would
+ produce a Wordsworth.”
+
+ A barking sound the Shepherd hears,
+ A cry as of a dog or fox;
+ He halts--and searches with his eyes
+ Among the scattered rocks;
+ And now at distance can discern
+ A stirring in a brake of fern;
+ And instantly a Dog is seen,
+ Glancing through that covert green.
+
+ The Dog is not of mountain breed;
+ Its motions, too, are wild and shy;
+ With something, as the Shepherd thinks,
+ Unusual in its cry:
+ Nor is there any one in sight
+ All round, in hollow or on height;
+ Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear;
+ What is the Creature doing here?
+
+ It was a cove, a huge recess,
+ That keeps, till June, December’s snow.
+ A lofty precipice in front,
+ A silent tarn below!
+ Far in the bosom of Helvellyn,
+ Remote from public road or dwelling,
+ Pathway, or cultivated land;
+ From trace of human foot or hand.
+
+ There sometimes doth a leaping fish
+ Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
+ The crags repeat the raven’s croak,
+ In symphony austere;
+ Thither the rainbow comes--the cloud--
+ And mists that spread the flying shroud;
+ And sunbeams; and the sounding blast,
+ That, if it could, would hurry past,
+ But that enormous barrier binds it fast.
+
+ Not free from boding thoughts, a while
+ The Shepherd stood: then makes his way
+ Toward the Dog, o’er rocks and stones,
+ As quickly as he may;
+ Nor far had gone, before he found
+ A human skeleton on the ground;
+ The appalled discoverer with a sigh
+ Looks round, to learn the history.
+
+ From those abrupt and perilous rocks
+ The Man had fallen, that place of fear!
+ At length upon the Shepherd’s mind
+ It breaks, and all is clear:
+ He instantly recalled the name,
+ And who he was, and whence he came;
+ Remembered, too, the very day
+ On which the traveller passed this way.
+
+ But hear a wonder, for whose sake
+ This lamentable tale I tell!
+ A lasting monument of words
+ This wonder merits well.
+ The Dog, which still was hovering nigh,
+ Repeating the same timid cry,
+ This Dog had been through three months space
+ A dweller in that savage place.
+
+ Yes, proof was plain that, since the day
+ When this ill-fated traveller died,
+ The Dog had watched about the spot,
+ Or by his master’s side:
+ How nourished here through such long time
+ He knows, who gave that love sublime;
+ And gave that strength of feeling, great
+ Above all human estimate.
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.
+
+ People are more and more coming to recognise the fact that each
+ individual soul has a right to its own stages of development. “The
+ Chambered Nautilus” is for that reason beloved of the masses. It is one
+ of the grandest poems ever written. “Build thee more stately mansions,
+ O my soul!” This line alone would make the poem immortal. (1809-94.)
+
+ This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
+ Sailed the unshadowed main,--
+ The venturous 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!
+
+ OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
+
+
+ CROSSING THE BAR
+
+ Tennyson’s (1809-92) “Crossing the Bar” is one of the noblest
+ death-songs ever written. I include it in this volume out of respect to
+ a young Philadelphia publisher who recited it one stormy night before
+ the passengers of a ship when I was crossing the Atlantic, and also
+ because so many young people have the good taste to love it. It has
+ been said that next to Browning’s “Prospice” it is the greatest
+ death-song ever written.
+
+ Sunset and evening star,
+ And one clear call for me!
+ And may there be no moaning of the bar,
+ When I put out to sea,
+
+ But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
+ Too full for sound and foam,
+ When that which drew from out the boundless deep
+ Turns again home.
+
+ Twilight and evening bell,
+ And after that the dark!
+ And may there be no sadness of farewell,
+ When I embark;
+
+ For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
+ The flood may bear me far,
+ I hope to see my Pilot face to face
+ When I have cross’d the bar.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE OVERLAND-MAIL.
+
+“The Overland-Mail” is a most desirable poem for children to learn.
+ When one boy learns it the others want to follow. It takes as a hero
+ the man who gives common service--the one who does not lead or command,
+ but follows the line of duty. (1865-.)
+
+ In the name of the Empress of India, make way,
+ O Lords of the Jungle wherever you roam,
+ The woods are astir at the close of the day--
+ We exiles are waiting for letters from Home--
+ Let the robber retreat; let the tiger turn tail,
+ In the name of the Empress the Overland-Mail!
+
+ With a jingle of bells as the dusk gathers in,
+ He turns to the foot-path that leads up the hill--
+ The bags on his back, and a cloth round his chin,
+ And, tucked in his belt, the Post-Office bill;--
+ “Despatched on this date, as received by the rail,
+ _Per_ runner, two bags of the Overland-Mail.”
+
+ Is the torrent in spate? He must ford it or swim.
+ Has the rain wrecked the road? He must climb by the cliff.
+ Does the tempest cry “Halt”? What are tempests to him?
+ The service admits not a “but” or an “if”;
+ While the breath’s in his mouth, he must bear without fail,
+ In the name of the Empress the Overland-Mail.
+
+ From aloe to rose-oak, from rose-oak to fir,
+ From level to upland, from upland to crest,
+ From rice-field to rock-ridge, from rock-ridge to spur,
+ Fly the soft-sandalled feet, strains the brawny brown chest.
+ From rail to ravine--to the peak from the vale--
+ Up, up through the night goes the Overland-Mail.
+
+ There’s a speck on the hillside, a dot on the road--
+ A jingle of bells on the foot-path below--
+ There’s a scuffle above in the monkeys’ abode--
+ The world is awake, and the clouds are aglow--
+ For the great Sun himself must attend to the hail;--
+ In the name of the Empress the Overland-Mail.
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+
+ GATHERING SONG OF DONALD DHU.
+
+ Jon, do you remember when you used to spout “Pibroch of Donald Dhu”? I
+ think you were ten years old. Sir Walter Scott’s men all have a genius
+ for standing up to their guns, and boys gather up the man’s genius when
+ reciting his verse. (1771-1832.)
+
+ Pibroch of Donuil Dhu,
+ Pibroch of Donuil,
+ Wake thy wild voice anew,
+ Summon Clan Conuil.
+ Come away, come away,
+ Hark to the summons!
+ Come in your war-array,
+ Gentles and commons.
+
+ Come from deep glen, and
+ From mountain so rocky,
+ The war-pipe and pennon
+ Are at Inverlochy.
+ Come every hill-plaid, and
+ True heart that wears one,
+ Come every steel blade, and
+ Strong hand that bears one.
+
+ Leave untended the herd,
+ The flock without shelter;
+ Leave the corpse uninterr’d,
+ The bride at the altar;
+ Leave the deer, leave the steer,
+ Leave nets and barges:
+ Come with your fighting gear,
+ Broadswords and targes.
+
+ Come as the winds come, when
+ Forests are rended;
+ Come as the waves come, when
+ Navies are stranded:
+ Faster come, faster come,
+ Faster and faster,
+ Chief, vassal, page, and groom,
+ Tenant and master.
+
+ Fast they come, fast they come;
+ See how they gather!
+ Wide waves the eagle plume
+ Blended with heather,
+ Cast your plaids, draw your blades,
+ Forward each man set!
+ Pibroch of Donuil Dhu
+ Knell for the onset!
+
+ SIR WALTER SCOTT.
+
+
+ MARCO BOZZARIS.
+
+“Marco Bozzaris,” by Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867), was in my old
+ school-reader. Boys and girls liked it then and they like it now. This
+ is another of the poems that was not born to die.
+
+ At midnight, in his guarded tent,
+ The Turk was dreaming of the hour
+ When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,
+ Should tremble at his power:
+ In dreams, through camp and court, he bore
+ The trophies of a conqueror;
+ In dreams his song of triumph heard;
+ Then wore his monarch’s signet ring:
+ Then pressed that monarch’s throne--a king;
+ As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,
+ As Eden’s garden bird.
+
+ At midnight, in the forest shades,
+ Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band,
+ True as the steel of their tried blades,
+ Heroes in heart and hand.
+ There had the Persian’s thousands stood,
+ There had the glad earth drunk their blood
+ On old Platæa’s day;
+ And now there breathed that haunted air
+ The sons of sires who conquered there,
+ With arm to strike and soul to dare,
+ As quick, as far as they.
+
+ An hour passed on--the Turk awoke;
+ That bright dream was his last;
+ He woke--to hear his sentries shriek,
+ “To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!”
+ He woke--to die midst flame, and smoke,
+ And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke,
+ And death-shots falling thick and fast
+ As lightnings from the mountain-cloud;
+ And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,
+ Bozzaris cheer his band:
+ “Strike--till the last armed foe expires;
+ Strike--for your altars and your fires;
+ Strike--for the green graves of your sires;
+ God--and your native land!”
+
+ They fought--like brave men, long and well;
+ They piled that ground with Moslem slain,
+ They conquered--but Bozzaris fell,
+ Bleeding at every vein.
+ His few surviving comrades saw
+ His smile when rang their proud hurrah,
+ And the red field was won;
+ Then saw in death his eyelids close
+ Calmly, as to a night’s repose,
+ Like flowers at set of sun.
+
+ Come to the bridal-chamber, Death!
+ Come to the mother’s, when she feels,
+ For the first time, her first-born’s breath;
+ Come when the blessed seals
+ That close the pestilence are broke,
+ And crowded cities wail its stroke;
+ Come in consumption’s ghastly form,
+ The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;
+ Come when the heart beats high and warm
+ With banquet-song, and dance, and wine;
+ And thou art terrible--the tear,
+ The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
+ And all we know, or dream, or fear
+ Of agony, are thine.
+
+ But to the hero, when his sword
+ Has won the battle for the free,
+ Thy voice sounds like a prophet’s word;
+ And in its hollow tones are heard
+ The thanks of millions yet to be.
+ Come, when his task of fame is wrought--
+ Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought--
+ Come in her crowning hour--and then
+ Thy sunken eye’s unearthly light
+ To him is welcome as the sight
+ Of sky and stars to prisoned men;
+ Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
+ Of brother in a foreign land;
+ Thy summons welcome as the cry
+ That told the Indian isles were nigh
+ To the world-seeking Genoese,
+ When the land wind, from woods of palm,
+ And orange-groves, and fields of balm,
+ Blew o’er the Haytian seas.
+
+ Bozzaris! with the storied brave
+ Greece nurtured in her glory’s time,
+ Rest thee--there is no prouder grave,
+ Even in her own proud clime.
+ She wore no funeral-weeds for thee,
+ Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume
+ Like torn branch from death’s leafless tree
+ In sorrow’s pomp and pageantry,
+ The heartless luxury of the tomb;
+ But she remembers thee as one
+ Long loved and for a season gone;
+ For thee her poet’s lyre is wreathed,
+ Her marble wrought, her music breathed;
+ For thee she rings the birthday bells;
+ Of thee her babe’s first lisping tells;
+ For thine her evening prayer is said
+ At palace-couch and cottage-bed;
+ Her soldier, closing with the foe,
+ Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow,
+ His plighted maiden, when she fears
+ For him the joy of her young years,
+ Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears;
+ And she, the mother of thy boys,
+ Though in her eye and faded cheek
+ Is read the grief she will not speak,
+ The memory of her buried joys,
+ And even she who gave thee birth,
+ Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth,
+ Talk of thy doom without a sigh;
+ For thou art Freedom’s now, and Fame’s:
+ One of the few, the immortal names,
+ That were not born to die.
+
+ FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.
+
+
+ THE DEATH OF NAPOLEON.
+
+“The Death of Napoleon,” by Isaac McClellan (1806-99), was yet another
+ of the good old reader songs taught us by a teacher of good taste. We
+ love those teachers more the older we grow.
+
+ Wild was the night, yet a wilder night
+ Hung round the soldier’s pillow;
+ In his bosom there waged a fiercer fight
+ Than the fight on the wrathful billow.
+
+ A few fond mourners were kneeling by,
+ The few that his stern heart cherished;
+ They knew, by his glazed and unearthly eye,
+ That life had nearly perished.
+
+ They knew by his awful and kingly look,
+ By the order hastily spoken,
+ That he dreamed of days when the nations shook,
+ And the nations’ hosts were broken.
+
+ He dreamed that the Frenchman’s sword still slew,
+ And triumphed the Frenchman’s eagle,
+ And the struggling Austrian fled anew,
+ Like the hare before the beagle.
+
+ The bearded Russian he scourged again,
+ The Prussian’s camp was routed,
+ And again on the hills of haughty Spain
+ His mighty armies shouted.
+
+ Over Egypt’s sands, over Alpine snows,
+ At the pyramids, at the mountain,
+ Where the wave of the lordly Danube flows,
+ And by the Italian fountain,
+
+ On the snowy cliffs where mountain streams
+ Dash by the Switzer’s dwelling,
+ He led again, in his dying dreams,
+ His hosts, the proud earth quelling.
+
+ Again Marengo’s field was won,
+ And Jena’s bloody battle;
+ Again the world was overrun,
+ Made pale at his cannon’s rattle.
+
+ He died at the close of that darksome day,
+ A day that shall live in story;
+ In the rocky land they placed his clay,
+ “And left him alone with his glory.”
+
+ ISAAC MCCLELLAN.
+
+
+ HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE.
+
+ How sleep the brave, who sink to rest
+ By all their country’s wishes blest!
+ When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
+ Returns to deck their hallow’d mould,
+ She there shall dress a sweeter sod
+ Than Fancy’s feet have ever trod.
+
+ By fairy hands their knell is rung,
+ By forms unseen their dirge is sung:
+ There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,
+ To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
+ And Freedom shall a while repair
+ To dwell a weeping hermit there!
+
+ WILLIAM COLLINS.
+
+
+ THE FLAG GOES BY.
+
+“The Flag Goes By” is included out of regard to a boy of eleven years
+ who pleased me by his great appreciation of it. It teaches the lesson
+ of reverence to our great national symbol. It is published by
+ permission of the author, Henry Holcomb Bennett, of Ohio. (1863-.)
+
+ Hats off!
+ Along the street there comes
+ A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums,
+ A flash of colour beneath the sky:
+ Hats off!
+ The flag is passing by!
+
+ Blue and crimson and white it shines
+ Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines.
+ Hats off!
+ The colours before us fly;
+ But more than the flag is passing by.
+
+ Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great,
+ Fought to make and to save the State:
+ Weary marches and sinking ships;
+ Cheers of victory on dying lips;
+
+ Days of plenty and years of peace;
+ March of a strong land’s swift increase;
+ Equal justice, right, and law,
+ Stately honour and reverend awe;
+
+ Sign of a nation, great and strong
+ Toward her people from foreign wrong:
+ Pride and glory and honour,--all
+ Live in the colours to stand or fall.
+
+ Hats off!
+ Along the street there comes
+ A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums;
+ And loyal hearts are beating high:
+ Hats off!
+ The flag is passing by!
+
+ HENRY HOLCOMB BENNETT.
+
+
+ HOHENLINDEN.
+
+ On Linden, when the sun was low,
+ All bloodless lay th’ untrodden snow;
+ And dark as winter was the flow
+ Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
+
+ But Linden saw another sight,
+ When the drum beat, at dead of night,
+ Commanding fires of death to light
+ The darkness of her scenery.
+
+ By torch and trumpet fast array’d
+ Each horseman drew his battle-blade,
+ And furious every charger neigh’d
+ To join the dreadful revelry.
+
+ Then shook the hills with thunder riven,
+ Then rush’d the steed to battle driven,
+ And louder than the bolts of Heaven,
+ Far flashed the red artillery.
+
+ But redder yet that light shall glow
+ On Linden’s hills or stainèd snow;
+ And bloodier yet the torrent flow
+ Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
+
+ ’Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun
+ Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun,
+ Where furious Frank, and fiery Hun,
+ Shout in their sulphurous canopy.
+
+ The combat deepens. On, ye brave
+ Who rush to glory or the grave!
+ Wave, Munich! all thy banners wave,
+ And charge with all thy chivalry!
+
+ Few, few shall part, where many meet!
+ The snow shall be their winding-sheet,
+ And every turf beneath their feet
+ Shall be a soldier’s sepulcher.
+
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL.
+
+
+ MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME.
+
+ The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home;
+ ’Tis summer, the darkeys are gay;
+ The corn-top’s ripe, and the meadow’s in the bloom,
+ While the birds make music all the day.
+ The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,
+ All merry, all happy and bright;
+ By-’n’-by hard times comes a-knocking at the door:--
+ Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!
+
+ Weep no more, my lady,
+ O, weep no more to-day!
+ We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home,
+ For the old Kentucky home, far away.
+
+ They hunt no more for the ’possum and the coon,
+ On the meadow, the hill, and the shore;
+ They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon,
+ On the bench by the old cabin door.
+ The day goes by like a shadow o’er the heart,
+ With sorrow, where all was delight;
+ The time has come when the darkeys have to part:--
+ Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!
+
+ The head must bow, and the back will have to bend,
+ Wherever the darkey may go;
+ A few more days, and the trouble all will end,
+ In the field where the sugar-canes grow.
+ A few more days for to tote the weary load,--
+ No matter, ’twill never be light;
+ A few more days till we totter on the road:--
+ Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!
+
+ Weep no more, my lady,
+ O, weep no more to-day!
+ We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home,
+ For the old Kentucky home, far away.
+
+ STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER.
+
+
+ OLD FOLKS AT HOME.
+
+ Way down upon de Swanee Ribber,
+ Far, far away,
+ Dere’s wha my heart is turning ebber,
+ Dere’s wha de old folks stay.
+ All up and down de whole creation
+ Sadly I roam,
+ Still longing for de old plantation,
+ And for de old folks at home.
+
+ All de world am sad and dreary,
+ Eberywhere I roam;
+ Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary,
+ Far from de old folks at home!
+
+ All round de little farm I wandered
+ When I was young,
+ Den many happy days I squandered,
+ Many de songs I sung.
+ When I was playing wid my brudder
+ Happy was I;
+ Oh, take me to my kind old mudder!
+ Dere let me live and die.
+
+ One little hut among de bushes,
+ One dat I love,
+ Still sadly to my memory rushes,
+ No matter where I rove.
+ When will I see de bees a-humming
+ All round de comb?
+ When will I hear de banjo tumming,
+ Down in my good old home?
+
+ All de world am sad and dreary,
+ Eberywhere I roam;
+ Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary,
+ Far from de old folks at home!
+
+ STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER.
+
+
+ THE WRECK OF THE “HESPERUS.”
+
+“The Wreck of the _Hesperus_,” by Longfellow (1807-82), on “Norman’s
+ Woe,” off the coast near Cape Ann, is a historic poem as well as an
+ imaginative composition.
+
+ It was the schooner _Hesperus_,
+ That sailed the wintry sea;
+ And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
+ To bear him company.
+
+ Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
+ Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
+ And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds
+ That ope in the month of May.
+
+ The skipper he stood beside the helm,
+ His pipe was in his mouth,
+ And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
+ The smoke now west, now south.
+
+ Then up and spake an old sailor,
+ Had sailed the Spanish Main,
+ “I pray thee put into yonder port,
+ For I fear a hurricane.
+
+ “Last night the moon had a golden ring,
+ And to-night no moon we see!”
+ The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe,
+ And a scornful laugh laughed he.
+
+ Colder and louder blew the wind,
+ A gale from the northeast,
+ The snow fell hissing in the brine,
+ And the billows frothed like yeast.
+
+ Down came the storm, and smote amain
+ The vessel in its strength;
+ She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
+ Then leaped her cable’s length.
+
+ “Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
+ And do not tremble so;
+ For I can weather the roughest gale
+ That ever wind did blow.”
+
+ He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat
+ Against the stinging blast;
+ He cut a rope from a broken spar,
+ And bound her to the mast.
+
+ “O father! I hear the church-bells ring,
+ O say, what may it be?”
+ “Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!”--
+ And he steered for the open sea.
+
+ “O father! I hear the sound of guns,
+ O say, what may it be?”
+ “Some ship in distress, that cannot live
+ In such an angry sea!”
+
+ “O father! I see a gleaming light,
+ O say, what may it be?”
+ But the father answered never a word,
+ A frozen corpse was he.
+
+ Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
+ With his face turned to the skies,
+ The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
+ On his fixed and glassy eyes.
+
+ Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
+ That savèd she might be;
+ And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave
+ On the Lake of Galilee.
+
+ And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
+ Through the whistling sleet and snow,
+ Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept
+ Toward the reef of Norman’s Woe.
+
+ And ever the fitful gusts between
+ A sound came from the land;
+ It was the sound of the trampling surf
+ On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.
+
+ The breakers were right beneath her bows,
+ She drifted a dreary wreck,
+ And a whooping billow swept the crew
+ Like icicles from her deck.
+
+ She struck where the white and fleecy waves
+ Looked soft as carded wool,
+ But the cruel rocks they gored her side
+ Like the horns of an angry bull.
+
+ Her rattling shrouds all sheathed in ice,
+ With the masts went by the board;
+ Like a vessel of glass she stove and sank,--
+ Ho! ho! the breakers roared!
+
+ At daybreak on the bleak sea-beach
+ A fisherman stood aghast,
+ To see the form of a maiden fair
+ Lashed close to a drifting mast.
+
+ The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
+ The salt tears in her eyes;
+ And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
+ On the billows fall and rise.
+
+ Such was the wreck of the _Hesperus_,
+ In the midnight and the snow!
+ Christ save us all from a death like this,
+ On the reef of Norman’s Woe!
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ BANNOCKBURN.
+
+ ROBERT BRUCE’S ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY.
+
+ You can look down on the battle-field of Bannockburn from Stirling
+ Castle, Scotland, near which stands a magnificent statue of Robert, the
+ Bruce. How often have I trodden over the old battle-field. The monument
+ of William Wallace, too, looms up on the Ochil Hills, not far away.
+ (1759-96.)
+
+ Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,
+ Scots, wham Bruce has aften led;
+ Welcome to your gory bed,
+ Or to victorie.
+
+ Now’s the day, and now’s the hour;
+ See the front o’ battle lower;
+ See approach proud Edward’s power--
+ 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 your 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!
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+
+
+ PART IV.
+
+ Lad and Lassie
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+
+ THE INCHCAPE ROCK.
+
+ The man is wrecked and his ship is sunken before he ever steps on board
+ or sees the water if his heart is hard and his estimate of human beings
+ low. “The Inchcape Rock” is a thrust at hard-heartedness. “What is the
+ use of life?” To bear one another’s burdens, to develop a genius for
+ pulling people through hard places--that’s the use of life. It is the
+ last resort of a mean mind to crack jokes that wreck innocent voyagers
+ on life’s sea. (1774-1843.)
+
+ No stir in the air, no stir in the sea,
+ The ship was still as she could be;
+ Her sails from heaven received no motion;
+ Her keel was steady in the ocean.
+
+ Without either sign or sound of their shock,
+ The waves flowed over the Inchcape Rock;
+ So little they rose, so little they fell,
+ They did not move the Inchcape Bell.
+
+ The Abbot of Aberbrothok
+ Had placed that Bell on the Inchcape Rock;
+ On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung,
+ And over the waves its warning rung.
+
+ When the Rock was hid by the surge’s swell,
+ The mariners heard the warning Bell;
+ And then they knew the perilous Rock,
+ And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok.
+
+ The sun in heaven was shining gay;
+ All things were joyful on that day;
+ The sea-birds screamed as they wheeled round,
+ And there was joyance in their sound.
+
+ The buoy of the Inchcape Bell was seen,
+ A dark spot on the ocean green;
+ Sir Ralph the Rover walked his deck,
+ And he fixed his eye on the darker speck.
+
+ He felt the cheering power of spring;
+ It made him whistle, it made him sing:
+ His heart was mirthful to excess,
+ But the Rover’s mirth was wickedness.
+
+ His eye was on the Inchcape float.
+ Quoth he, “My men, put out the boat
+ And row me to the Inchcape Rock,
+ And I’ll plague the Abbot of Aberbrothok.”
+
+ The boat is lowered, the boatmen row,
+ And to the Inchcape Rock they go;
+ Sir Ralph bent over from the boat,
+ And he cut the Bell from the Inchcape float.
+
+ Down sank the Bell with a gurgling sound;
+ The bubbles rose and burst around.
+ Quoth Sir Ralph, “The next who comes to the Rock
+ Won’t bless the Abbot of Aberbrothok.”
+
+ Sir Ralph the Rover sailed away;
+ He scoured the sea for many a day;
+ And now grown rich with plundered store,
+ He steers his course for Scotland’s shore.
+
+ So thick a haze o’erspread the sky,
+ They cannot see the sun on high:
+ The wind hath blown a gale all day,
+ At evening it hath died away.
+
+ On the deck the Rover takes his stand;
+ So dark it is they see no land.
+ Quoth Sir Ralph, “It will be brighter soon,
+ For there is the dawn of the rising moon.”
+
+ “Canst hear,” said one, “the broken roar?
+ For methinks we should be near the shore.”
+ “Now where we are I cannot tell,
+ But I wish I could hear the Inchcape Bell.”
+
+ They hear no sound; the swell is strong;
+ Though the wind hath fallen, they drift along
+ Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock:
+ “O Christ! it is the Inchcape Rock!”
+
+ Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair,
+ He curst himself in his despair:
+ The waves rush in on every side,
+ The ship is sinking beneath the tide.
+
+ But, even in his dying fear,
+ One dreadful sound could the Rover hear,--
+ A sound as if with the Inchcape Bell
+ The Devil below was ringing his knell.
+
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY.
+
+
+ THE FINDING OF THE LYRE.
+
+ Once a year my pupils teach me “The Finding of the Lyre.” By the time I
+ have learned it they know the meaning of every line and have caught the
+ spirit of the verse. There is an ancient “lyre,” or violin, made in
+ northern Africa, in the possession of a Boston lady, and I have found
+ the mud-turtle rattle among the Indians on the Indian reservation at
+ Syracuse, New York. They use it as a musical instrument in their
+ Thanksgiving dances. The poem helps to build an interest in history and
+ mythology while it develops a child’s reverence and insight. (1819-91.)
+
+ There lay upon the ocean’s shore
+ What once a tortoise served to cover;
+ A year and more, with rush and roar,
+ The surf had rolled it over,
+ Had played with it, and flung it by,
+ As wind and weather might decide it,
+ Then tossed it high where sand-drifts dry
+ Cheap burial might provide it.
+
+ It rested there to bleach or tan,
+ The rains had soaked, the sun had burned it;
+ With many a ban the fisherman
+ Had stumbled o’er and spurned it;
+ And there the fisher-girl would stay,
+ Conjecturing with her brother
+ How in their play the poor estray
+ Might serve some use or other.
+
+ So there it lay, through wet and dry,
+ As empty as the last new sonnet,
+ Till by and by came Mercury,
+ And, having mused upon it,
+ “Why, here,” cried he, “the thing of things
+ In shape, material, and dimension!
+ Give it but strings, and, lo, it sings,
+ A wonderful invention!”
+
+ So said, so done; the chords he strained,
+ And, as his fingers o’er them hovered,
+ The shell disdained a soul had gained,
+ The lyre had been discovered.
+ O empty world that round us lies,
+ Dead shell, of soul and thought forsaken,
+ Brought we but eyes like Mercury’s,
+ In thee what songs should waken!
+
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
+
+
+ A CHRYSALIS.
+
+“A Chrysalis” is a favourite poem with John Burroughs, and is found,
+ too, in Stedman’s collection. We all come to a point in life where we
+ need to burst the shell and fly away into the new realm. (1835-98.)
+
+ My little Mädchen found one day
+ A curious something in her play,
+ That was not fruit, nor flower, nor seed;
+ It was not anything that grew,
+ Or crept, or climbed, or swam, or flew;
+ Had neither legs nor wings, indeed;
+ And yet she was not sure, she said,
+ Whether it was alive or dead.
+
+ She brought it in her tiny hand
+ To see if I would understand,
+ And wondered when I made reply,
+ “You’ve found a baby butterfly.”
+ “A butterfly is not like this,”
+ With doubtful look she answered me.
+ So then I told her what would be
+ Some day within the chrysalis:
+ How, slowly, in the dull brown thing
+ Now still as death, a spotted wing,
+ And then another, would unfold,
+ Till from the empty shell would fly
+ A pretty creature, by and by,
+ All radiant in blue and gold.
+
+ “And will it, truly?” questioned she--
+ Her laughing lips and eager eyes
+ All in a sparkle of surprise--
+ “And shall your little Mädchen see?”
+ “She shall!” I said. How could I tell
+ That ere the worm within its shell
+ Its gauzy, splendid wings had spread,
+ My little Mädchen would be dead?
+
+ To-day the butterfly has flown,--
+ She was not here to see it fly,--
+ And sorrowing I wonder why
+ The empty shell is mine alone.
+ Perhaps the secret lies in this:
+ I too had found a chrysalis,
+ And Death that robbed me of delight
+ Was but the radiant creature’s flight!
+
+ MARY EMILY BRADLEY.
+
+
+ FOR A’ THAT.
+
+ Robert Burns, the plowman and poet, “dinnered wi’ a lord.” The story
+ goes that he was put at the second table. That lord is dead, but Robert
+ Burns still lives. He is immortal. It is “the survival of the fittest”
+“For a’ That and a’ That” is a poem that wipes out the superficial
+ value put on money and other externalities. This poem is more valuable
+ in education than good penmanship or good spelling. (1759-96.)
+
+ Is there, for honest poverty,
+ That hangs his head, and a’ that?
+ The coward slave, we pass him by,
+ We dare be poor for a’ that;
+ For a’ that, and a’ that,
+ Our toils obscure, and a’ that;
+ The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
+ The man’s the gowd for a’ that!
+
+ What though on hamely fare we dine,
+ Wear hoddin-gray,[1] and a’ that;
+ Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
+ A man’s a man for a’ that!
+ For a’ that, and a’ that,
+ Their tinsel show, and a’ that;
+ The honest man, though e’er sae poor,
+ Is king o’ men for a’ that!
+
+ Ye see yon birkie[2] ca’d a lord,
+ Wha struts, and stares, and a’ that;
+ Though hundreds worship at his word,
+ He’s but a coof[3] for a’ that;
+ For a’ that, and a’ that,
+ His riband, star, and a’ that,
+ The man of independent mind,
+ He looks and laughs at a’ that.
+
+ A prince can make a belted knight,
+ A marquis, duke, and a’ that;
+ But an honest man’s aboon his might.
+ Guid faith he maunna fa’ that!
+ For a’ that, and a’ that,
+ Their dignities, and a’ that,
+ The pith o’ sense, and pride o’ worth,
+ Are higher rank than a’ that.
+
+ Then let us pray that come it may--
+ As come it will for a’ that--
+ That sense and worth, o’er a’ the earth,
+ May bear the gree, and a’ that;
+ For a’ that, and a’ that,
+ It’s coming yet for a’ that,
+ That man to man, the warld o’er,
+ Shall brothers be for a’ that!
+
+ FOOTNOTES:
+
+ [1] Coarse woolen clothes.
+
+ [2] Impudent fellow.
+
+ [3] Fool: blockhead.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ A NEW ARRIVAL.
+
+“The New Arrival” is a valuable poem because it expresses the joy of a
+ young father over his new baby. If girls should be educated to be good
+ mothers, so should boys be taught that fatherhood is the highest and
+ holiest joy and right of man. The child is educator to the man. He
+ teaches him how to take responsibility, how to give unbiased judgments,
+ and how to be fatherly like “Our Father who is in Heaven.” (1844-.)
+
+ There came to port last Sunday night
+ The queerest little craft,
+ Without an inch of rigging on;
+ I looked and looked and laughed.
+ It seemed so curious that she
+ Should cross the Unknown water,
+ And moor herself right in my room,
+ My daughter, O my daughter!
+
+ Yet by these presents witness all
+ She’s welcome fifty times,
+ And comes consigned to Hope and Love
+ And common-meter rhymes.
+ She has no manifest but this,
+ No flag floats o’er the water,
+ She’s too new for the British Lloyds--
+ My daughter, O my daughter!
+
+ Ring out, wild bells, and tame ones too!
+ Ring out the lover’s moon!
+ Ring in the little worsted socks!
+ Ring in the bib and spoon!
+ Ring out the muse! ring in the nurse!
+ Ring in the milk and water!
+ Away with paper, pen, and ink--
+ My daughter, O my daughter!
+
+ GEORGE W. CABLE.
+
+
+ THE BROOK.
+
+ Tennyson’s “The Brook” is included out of love to a dear old schoolmate
+ in Colorado. The real brook, near Cambridge, England, is tame compared
+ to your Colorado streams, O beloved comrade. This poem is well liked by
+ the majority of pupils. (1809-92.)
+
+ I chatter, chatter, as I flow
+ To join the brimming river;
+ For men may come and men may go,
+ But I go on forever.
+
+ I wind about, and in and out,
+ With here a blossom sailing,
+ And here and there a lusty trout,
+ And here and there a grayling.
+
+ I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
+ I slide by hazel covers;
+ I move the sweet forget-me-nots
+ That grow for happy lovers.
+
+ I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
+ Among my skimming swallows;
+ I make the netted sunbeams dance
+ Against my sandy shallows.
+
+ I murmur under moon and stars
+ In brambly wildernesses;
+ I linger by my shingly bars;
+ I loiter round my cresses.
+
+ And out again I curve and flow
+ To join the brimming river;
+ For men may come and men may go,
+ But I go on forever.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE BALLAD OF THE “CLAMPHERDOWN.”
+
+“The Ballad of the _Clampherdown_,” by Rudyard Kipling, is included
+ because my boys always like it. It needs a great deal of explanation,
+ and few boys will hold out to the end in learning it. But “it pays.”
+ (1865-.)
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_
+ Would sweep the Channel clean,
+ Wherefore she kept her hatches close
+ When the merry Channel chops arose,
+ To save the bleached marine.
+
+ She had one bow-gun of a hundred ton,
+ And a great stern-gun beside;
+ They dipped their noses deep in the sea,
+ They racked their stays and stanchions free
+ In the wash of the wind-whipped tide.
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_,
+ Fell in with a cruiser light
+ That carried the dainty Hotchkiss gun
+ And a pair o’ heels wherewith to run,
+ From the grip of a close-fought fight.
+
+ She opened fire at seven miles--
+ As ye shoot at a bobbing cork--
+ And once she fired and twice she fired,
+ Till the bow-gun drooped like a lily tired
+ That lolls upon the stalk.
+
+ “Captain, the bow-gun melts apace,
+ The deck-beams break below,
+ ’Twere well to rest for an hour or twain,
+ And botch the shattered plates again.”
+ And he answered, “Make it so.”
+
+ She opened fire within the mile--
+ As ye shoot at the flying duck--
+ And the great stern-gun shot fair and true,
+ With the heave of the ship, to the stainless blue,
+ And the great stern-turret stuck.
+
+ “Captain, the turret fills with steam,
+ The feed-pipes burst below--
+ You can hear the hiss of helpless ram,
+ You can hear the twisted runners jam.”
+ And he answered, “Turn and go!”
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_,
+ And grimly did she roll;
+ Swung round to take the cruiser’s fire
+ As the White Whale faces the Thresher’s ire,
+ When they war by the frozen Pole.
+
+ “Captain, the shells are falling fast,
+ And faster still fall we;
+ And it is not meet for English stock,
+ To bide in the heart of an eight-day clock,
+ The death they cannot see.”
+
+ “Lie down, lie down, my bold A.B.,
+ We drift upon her beam;
+ We dare not ram, for she can run;
+ And dare ye fire another gun,
+ And die in the peeling steam?”
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_
+ That carried an armour-belt;
+ But fifty feet at stern and bow,
+ Lay bare as the paunch of the purser’s sow,
+ To the hail of the Nordenfeldt.
+
+ “Captain, they lack us through and through;
+ The chilled steel bolts are swift!
+ We have emptied the bunkers in open sea,
+ Their shrapnel bursts where our coal should be.”
+ And he answered, “Let her drift.”
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_,
+ Swung round upon the tide.
+ Her two dumb guns glared south and north,
+ And the blood and the bubbling steam ran forth,
+ And she ground the cruiser’s side.
+
+ “Captain, they cry the fight is done,
+ They bid you send your sword.”
+ And he answered, “Grapple her stern and bow.
+ They have asked for the steel. They shall have it now;
+ Out cutlasses and board!”
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_,
+ Spewed up four hundred men;
+ And the scalded stokers yelped delight,
+ As they rolled in the waist and heard the fight,
+ Stamp o’er their steel-walled pen.
+
+ They cleared the cruiser end to end,
+ From conning-tower to hold.
+ They fought as they fought in Nelson’s fleet;
+ They were stripped to the waist, they were bare to the feet,
+ As it was in the days of old.
+
+ It was the sinking _Clampherdown_
+ Heaved up her battered side--
+ And carried a million pounds in steel,
+ To the cod and the corpse-fed conger-eel,
+ And the scour of the Channel tide.
+
+ It was the crew of the _Clampherdown_
+ Stood out to sweep the sea,
+ On a cruiser won from an ancient foe,
+ As it was in the days of long-ago,
+ And as it still shall be.
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+
+ THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB.
+
+“The Destruction of Sennacherib,” by Lord Byron, finds a place in this
+ collection because Johnnie, a ten-year-old, and many of his friends
+ say, “It’s great.” (1788-1824.)
+
+ The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,
+ And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
+ And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
+ When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
+
+ Like the leaves of the forest when the Summer is green,
+ That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
+ Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
+ That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
+
+ For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
+ And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
+ And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
+ And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still!
+
+ And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
+ But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
+ And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
+ And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
+
+ And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
+ With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail,
+ And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
+ The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
+
+ And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
+ And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
+ And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
+ Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
+
+ LORD BYRON.
+
+
+ I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER.
+
+ 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
+ The roses, red and white,
+ The violets, and the lily-cups--
+ Those flowers made of light!
+ The lilacs where the robin built,
+ And where my brother set
+ The laburnum on his birthday,--
+ The tree is living yet!
+
+ 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.
+
+ THOMAS HOOD.
+
+
+ DRIVING HOME THE COWS.
+
+ Out of the clover and blue-eyed grass
+ He turned them into the river lane;
+ One after another he let them pass,
+ Then fastened the meadow bars again.
+
+ Under the willows and over the hill,
+ He patiently followed their sober pace;
+ The merry whistle for once was still,
+ And something shadowed the sunny face.
+
+ Only a boy! and his father had said
+ He never could let his youngest go:
+ Two already were lying dead,
+ Under the feet of the trampling foe.
+
+ But after the evening work was done,
+ And the frogs were loud in the meadow-swamp,
+ Over his shoulder he slung his gun,
+ And stealthily followed the footpath damp.
+
+ Across the clover, and through the wheat,
+ With resolute heart and purpose grim:
+ Though the dew was on his hurrying feet,
+ And the blind bat’s flitting startled him.
+
+ Thrice since then had the lanes been white,
+ And the orchards sweet with apple-bloom;
+ And now, when the cows came back at night,
+ The feeble father drove them home.
+
+ For news had come to the lonely farm
+ That three were lying where two had lain;
+ And the old man’s tremulous, palsied arm
+ Could never lean on a son’s again.
+
+ The summer day grew cool and late:
+ He went for the cows when the work was done;
+ But down the lane, as he opened the gate,
+ He saw them coming one by one:
+
+ Brindle, Ebony, Speckle, and Bess,
+ Shaking their horns in the evening wind;
+ Cropping the buttercups out of the grass,
+ But who was it following close behind?
+
+ Loosely swung in the idle air
+ The empty sleeve of army blue;
+ And worn and pale, from the crisping hair,
+ Looked out a face that the father knew.
+
+ For close-barred prisons will sometimes yawn,
+ And yield their dead unto life again;
+ And the day that comes with a cloudy dawn,
+ In golden glory at last may wane.
+
+ The great tears sprang to their meeting eyes;
+ For the heart must speak when the lips are dumb,
+ And under the silent evening skies
+ Together they followed the cattle home.
+
+ KATE PUTNAM OSGOOD.
+
+
+ KRINKEN.
+
+“Krinken” is the dearest of poems.
+
+ “Krinken was a little child.
+ It was summer when he smiled!”
+
+ Eugene Field, above all other poets, paid the finest tribute to
+ children. This poet only, could make the whole ocean warm because a
+ child’s heart was there to warm it.
+
+ Krinken was a little child,--
+ It was summer when he smiled.
+ Oft the hoary sea and grim
+ Stretched its white arms out to him,
+ Calling, “Sun-child, come to me;
+ Let me warm my heart with thee!”
+ But the child heard not the sea
+ Calling, yearning evermore
+ For the summer on the shore.
+
+ Krinken on the beach one day
+ Saw a maiden Nis at play;
+ On the pebbly beach she played
+ In the summer Krinken made.
+ Fair, and very fair, was she,
+ Just a little child was he.
+ “Krinken,” said the maiden Nis,
+ “Let me have a little kiss,--
+ Just a kiss, and go with me
+ To the summer-lands that be
+ Down within the silver sea.”
+
+ Krinken was a little child--
+ By the maiden Nis beguiled,
+ Hand in hand with her went he
+ And ’twas summer in the sea.
+ And the hoary sea and grim
+ To its bosom folded him--
+ Clasped and kissed the little form,
+ And the ocean’s heart was warm.
+
+ Now the sea calls out no more;
+ It is winter on the shore,--
+ Winter where that little child
+ Made sweet summer when he smiled;
+ Though ’tis summer on the sea
+ Where with maiden Nis went he,--
+ It is winter on the shore,
+ Winter, winter evermore.
+
+ Of the summer on the deep
+ Come sweet visions in my sleep;
+ _His_ fair face lifts from the sea,
+ _His_ dear voice calls out to me,--
+ These my dreams of summer be.
+
+ Krinken was a little child,
+ By the maiden Nis beguiled;
+ Oft the hoary sea and grim
+ Reached its longing arms to him,
+ Crying, “Sim-child, come to me;
+ Let me warm my heart with thee!”
+ But the sea calls out no more;
+ It is winter on the shore,--
+ Winter, cold and dark and wild.
+
+ Krinken was a little child,--
+ It was summer when he smiled;
+ Down he went into the sea,
+ And the winter bides with me,
+ Just a little child was he.
+
+ EUGENE FIELD.
+
+
+ STEVENSON’S BIRTHDAY.
+
+ “How I should like a birthday!” said the child,
+ “I have so few, and they so far apart.”
+ She spoke to Stevenson--the Master smiled--
+ “Mine is to-day; I would with all my heart
+ That it were yours; too many years have I!
+ Too swift they come, and all too swiftly fly”
+
+ So by a formal deed he there conveyed
+ All right and title in his natal day,
+ To have and hold, to sell or give away,--
+ Then signed, and gave it to the little maid.
+
+ Joyful, yet fearing to believe too much,
+ She took the deed, but scarcely dared unfold.
+ Ah, liberal Genius! at whose potent touch
+ All common things shine with transmuted gold!
+ A day of Stevenson’s will prove to be
+ Not part of Time, but Immortality.
+
+ KATHERINE MILLER.
+
+
+ A MODEST WIT.
+
+ I learned “A Modest Wit” as a reading-lesson when I was a child. It has
+ clung to me and so I cling to it. It is just as good as it ever was. It
+ is a sharp thrust at power that depends on externalities. Selleck
+ Osborne. (----.)
+
+ A supercilious nabob of the East--
+ Haughty, being great--purse-proud, being rich--
+ A governor, or general, at the least,
+ I have forgotten which--
+ Had in his family a humble youth,
+ Who went from England in his patron’s suit,
+ An unassuming boy, in truth
+ A lad of decent parts, and good repute.
+
+ This youth had sense and spirit;
+ But yet with all his sense,
+ Excessive diffidence
+ Obscured his merit.
+
+ One day, at table, flushed with pride and wine,
+ His honour, proudly free, severely merry,
+ Conceived it would be vastly fine
+ To crack a joke upon his secretary.
+
+ “Young man,” he said, “by what art, craft, or trade,
+ Did your good father gain a livelihood?”--
+ “He was a saddler, sir,” Modestus said,
+ “And in his time was reckon’d good.”
+
+ “A saddler, eh! and taught you Greek,
+ Instead of teaching you to sew!
+ Pray, why did not your father make
+ A saddler, sir, of you?”
+
+ Each parasite, then, as in duty bound,
+ The joke applauded, and the laugh went round.
+ At length Modestus, bowing low,
+ Said (craving pardon, if too free he made),
+ “Sir, by your leave, I fain would know
+ Your father’s trade!”
+
+ “My father’s trade! by heaven, that’s too bad!
+ My father’s trade? Why, blockhead, are you mad?
+ My father, sir, did never stoop so low--
+ He was a gentleman, I’d have you know.”
+
+ “Excuse the liberty I take,”
+ Modestus said, with archness on his brow,
+ “Pray, why did not your father make
+ A gentleman of you?”
+
+ SELLECK OSBORNE.
+
+
+ THE LEGEND OF BISHOP HATTO.
+
+“The Legend of Bishop Hatto” is doubtless a myth (Robert Southey,
+ 1774-1843). But “The Mouse-Tower on the Rhine” is an object of interest
+ to travellers, and the story has a point
+
+ The summer and autumn had been so wet,
+ That in winter the corn was growing yet:
+ ’Twas a piteous sight to see, all around,
+ The grain lie rotting on the ground.
+
+ Every day the starving poor
+ Crowded around Bishop Hatto’s door;
+ For he had a plentiful last-year’s store,
+ And all the neighbourhood could tell
+ His granaries were furnished well.
+
+ At last Bishop Hatto appointed a day
+ To quiet the poor without delay:
+ He bade them to his great barn repair,
+ And they should have food for winter there.
+
+ Rejoiced such tidings good to hear,
+ The poor folk flocked from far and near;
+ The great barn was full as it could hold
+ Of women and children, and young and old.
+
+ Then, when he saw it could hold no more,
+ Bishop Hatto, he made fast the door;
+ And while for mercy on Christ they call,
+ He set fire to the barn and burned them all.
+
+ “I’ faith, ’tis an excellent bonfire!” quoth he;
+ “And the country is greatly obliged to me
+ For ridding it in these times forlorn
+ Of Rats that only consume the corn.”
+
+ So then to his palace returnèd he,
+ And he sat down to supper merrily,
+ And he slept that night like an innocent man;
+ But Bishop Hatto never slept again.
+
+ In the morning as he entered the hall,
+ Where his picture hung against the wall,
+ A sweat-like death all over him came;
+ For the Rats had eaten it out of the frame.
+
+ As he looked, there came a man from his farm;
+ He had a countenance white with alarm:
+ “My Lord, I opened your granaries this morn,
+ And the Rats had eaten all your corn.”
+
+ Another came running presently,
+ And he was pale as pale could be:
+ “Fly, my Lord Bishop, fly!” quoth he,
+ “Ten thousand Rats are coming this way;
+ The Lord forgive you yesterday!”
+
+ “I’ll go to my town on the Rhine,” replied he;
+ “’Tis the safest place in Germany;
+ The walls are high, and the shores are steep,
+ And the stream is strong, and the water deep.”
+
+ Bishop Hatto fearfully hastened away,
+ And he crossed the Rhine without delay,
+ And reached his tower, and barred with care
+ All windows, doors, and loop-holes there.
+
+ He laid him down, and closed his eyes;
+ But soon a scream made him arise:
+ He started and saw two eyes of flame
+ On his pillow, from whence the screaming came.
+
+ He listened and looked; it was only the cat:
+ But the Bishop he grew more fearful for that;
+ For she sat screaming, mad with fear
+ At the army of Rats that was drawing near.
+
+ For they have swum over the river so deep,
+ And they have climbed the shore so steep;
+ And up the tower their way is bent,
+ To do the work for which they were sent.
+
+ They are not to be told by the dozen or score;
+ By thousands they come, and by myriads and more;
+ Such numbers had never been heard of before,
+ Such a judgment had never been witnessed of yore.
+
+ Down on his knees the Bishop fell,
+ And faster and faster his beads did tell,
+ As, louder and louder drawing near,
+ The gnawing of their teeth he could hear.
+
+ And in at the windows and in at the door,
+ And through the walls, helter-skelter they pour,
+ And down from the ceiling and up through the floor,
+ From the right and the left, from behind and before,
+ And all at once to the Bishop they go.
+
+ They have whetted their teeth against the stones;
+ And now they pick the Bishop’s bones:
+ They gnawed the flesh from every limb;
+ For they were sent to do judgment on him!
+
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY.
+
+
+ COLUMBUS.
+
+ We are greatly indebted to Joaquin Miller for his “Sail On! Sail On!”
+ Endurance is the watchword of the poem and the watchword of our
+ republic. Every man to his gun! Columbus discovered America in his own
+ mind before he realised it or proved its existence. I have often drawn
+ a chart of Columbus’s life and voyages to show what need he had of the
+ motto “Sail On!” to accomplish his end. This is one of our greatest
+ American poems. The writer still lives in California.
+
+ Behind him lay the gray Azores,
+ Behind the gates of Hercules;
+ Before him not the ghost of shores,
+ Before him only shoreless seas.
+ The good mate said: “Now must we pray,
+ For lo! the very stars are gone;
+ Speak, Admiral, what shall I say?”
+ “Why say, sail on! and on!”
+
+ “My men grow mut’nous day by day;
+ My men grow ghastly wan and weak.”
+ The stout mate thought of home; a spray
+ Of salt wave wash’d his swarthy cheek.
+ “What shall I say, brave Admiral,
+ If we sight naught but seas at dawn?”
+ “Why, you shall say, at break of day:
+ ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’”
+
+ They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,
+ Until at last the blanch’d mate said;
+ “Why, now, not even God would know
+ Should I and all my men fall dead.
+ These very winds forget their way,
+ For God from these dread seas is gone.
+ Now speak, brave Admiral, and say----”
+ He said: “Sail on! and on!”
+
+ They sailed, they sailed, then spoke his mate:
+ “This mad sea shows his teeth to-night,
+ He curls his lip, he lies in wait,
+ With lifted teeth as if to bite!
+ Brave Admiral, say but one word;
+ What shall we do when hope is gone?”
+ The words leaped as a leaping sword:
+ “Sail on! sail on! and on!”
+
+ Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,
+ And thro’ the darkness peered that night.
+ Ah, darkest night! and then a speck,--
+ A light! a light! a light! a light!
+ It grew--a star-lit flag unfurled!
+ It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn;
+ He gained a world! he gave that world
+ Its watch-word: “On! and on!”
+
+ JOAQUIN MILLER.
+
+
+ THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS.
+
+ Once a year the children learn “The Shepherd of King Admetus,” which is
+ one of the finest poems ever written as showing the possible growth of
+ real history into mythology, the tendency of mankind to deify what is
+ fine or sublime in human action. Not every child will learn this entire
+ poem, because it is too long. But every child will learn the best lines
+ in it while the children are teaching it to me and when I take my turn
+ in teaching it to them. No child fails to catch the spirit and intent
+ of the poem and to become entirely familiar with it. (1819-91.)
+
+ There came a youth upon the earth,
+ Some thousand years ago,
+ Whose slender hands were nothing worth,
+ Whether to plow, or reap, or sow.
+
+ Upon an empty tortoise-shell
+ He stretched some chords, and drew
+ Music that made men’s bosoms swell
+ Fearless, or brimmed their eyes with dew.
+
+ Then King Admetus, one who had
+ Pure taste by right divine,
+ Decreed his singing not too bad
+ To hear between the cups of wine:
+
+ And so, well pleased with being soothed
+ Into a sweet half-sleep,
+ Three times his kingly beard he smoothed,
+ And made him viceroy o’er his sheep.
+
+ His words were simple words enough,
+ And yet he used them so,
+ That what in other mouths was rough
+ In his seemed musical and low.
+
+ Men called him but a shiftless youth,
+ In whom no good they saw;
+ And yet, unwittingly, in truth,
+ They made his careless words their law.
+
+ They knew not how he learned at all,
+ For idly, hour by hour,
+ He sat and watched the dead leaves fall,
+ Or mused upon a common flower.
+
+ It seemed the loveliness of things
+ Did teach him all their use,
+ For, in mere weeds, and stones, and springs,
+ He found a healing power profuse.
+
+ Men granted that his speech was wise,
+ But, when a glance they caught
+ Of his slim grace and woman’s eyes,
+ They laughed, and called him good-for-naught.
+
+ Yet after he was dead and gone,
+ And e’en his memory dim,
+ Earth seemed more sweet to live upon,
+ More full of love, because of him.
+
+ And day by day more holy grew
+ Each spot where he had trod,
+ Till after-poets only knew
+ Their first-born brother as a god.
+
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
+
+
+ HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX.
+
+ I have an old essay written by a lad of fourteen years on “How They
+ Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.” I should judge from this
+ essay that any boy at that age would like the poem, even if he had not
+ himself been over the ground as this boy had. (1812-89.)
+
+ I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
+ I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
+ “Good speed!” cried the watch as the gate-bolts undrew;
+ “Speed!” echoed the wall to us galloping through;
+ Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
+ And into the midnight we galloped abreast.
+
+ Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
+ Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
+ I turned in my saddle and made its girth tight,
+ Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
+ Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,
+ Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.
+
+ ’Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near
+ Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;
+ At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;
+ At Düffeld, ’twas morning as plain as could be;
+ And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,
+ So Joris broke silence with, “Yet there is time!”
+
+ At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,
+ And against him the cattle stood black every one,
+ To stare through the mist at us galloping past,
+ And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,
+ With resolute shoulders, each butting away
+ The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:
+
+ And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
+ For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;
+ And one eye’s black intelligence,--ever that glance
+ O’er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!
+ And the thick, heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon
+ His fierce lips shook upward in galloping on.
+
+ By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, “Stay spur!
+ Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault’s not in her,
+ We’ll remember at Aix”--for one heard the quick wheeze
+ Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,
+ And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
+ As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.
+
+ So, we were left galloping, Joris and I,
+ Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;
+ The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,
+ ’Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff;
+ Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,
+ And “Gallop,” gasped Joris, “for Aix is in sight!”
+
+ “How they’ll greet us!”--and all in a moment his roan
+ Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;
+ And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
+ Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
+ With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
+ And with circles of red for his eye-sockets’ rim.
+
+ Then I cast loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall,
+ Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
+ Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,
+ Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;
+ Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,
+ Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.
+
+ And all I remember is--friends flocking round
+ As I sat with his head ’twixt my knees on the ground;
+ And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
+ As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
+ Which (the burgesses voting by common consent)
+ Was no more than his due who brought the good news from Ghent.
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA.
+
+“The Burial of Sir John Moore” was one of my reading-lessons when I was
+ a child. A distinguished teacher says: “It has become a part of popular
+ education,” as has also “The Eve of Waterloo” and “The Death of
+ Napoleon.” They are all poems of great rhythmical swing, intense and
+ graphic. (1791-1823.)
+
+ Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
+ As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
+ Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
+ O’er the grave where our hero we buried.
+
+ We buried him darkly at dead of night,
+ The sods with our bayonets turning;
+ By the struggling moonbeam’s misty light,
+ And the lantern dimly burning.
+
+ No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
+ Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;
+ But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
+ With his martial cloak around him.
+
+ Few and short were the prayers we said,
+ And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
+ But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
+ And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
+
+ We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed,
+ And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
+ That the foe and the stranger would tread o’er his head,
+ And we far away on the billow!
+
+ Lightly they’ll talk of the spirit that’s gone,
+ And o’er his cold ashes upbraid him,--
+ But little he’ll reck, if they let him sleep on
+ In the grave where a Briton has laid him.
+
+ But half of our heavy task was done
+ When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
+ And we heard the distant and random gun
+ That the foe was sullenly firing.
+
+ Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
+ From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
+ We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone--
+ But we left him alone with his glory!
+
+ C. WOLFE.
+
+
+ THE EVE OF WATERLOO.
+
+“The Eve of Waterloo,” by Lord Byron (1788-1824). Here is another old
+ reading-book gem that will always be dear to every boy’s heart if he
+ only reads it a few times.
+
+ There was a sound of revelry by night,
+ And Belgium’s capital had gathered then
+ Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
+ The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men.
+ A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
+ Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
+ Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
+ And all went merry as a marriage-bell:
+ But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!
+
+ Did ye not hear it? No; ’twas but the wind,
+ Or the car rattling o’er the stony street.
+ On with the dance! let joy be unconfined!
+ No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
+ To chase the glowing hours with flying feet!
+ But hark!--that heavy sound breaks in once more,
+ As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
+ And nearer, clearer, deadlier, than before!
+ Arm! arm! it is--it is the cannon’s opening roar!
+
+ Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro,
+ And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress
+ And cheeks all pale, which, but an hour ago,
+ Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness;
+ And there were sudden partings, such as press
+ The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs
+ Which ne’er might be repeated: who could guess
+ If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,
+ Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise?
+
+ And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed,
+ The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
+ Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
+ And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;
+ And the deep thunder peal on peal afar;
+ And near, the beat of the alarming drum
+ Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;
+ While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,
+ Or whispering with white lips, “The foe! They come! They come!”
+
+ And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,
+ Dewy with Nature’s tear-drops, as they pass,
+ Grieving, if aught inanimate e’er grieves,
+ Over the unreturning brave--alas!
+ Ere evening to be trodden like the grass
+ Which, now beneath them, but above shall grow
+ In its next verdure, when this fiery mass
+ Of living valour, rolling on the foe,
+ And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low.
+
+ Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,
+ Last eve in Beauty’s circle proudly gay;
+ The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife,
+ The morn the marshalling in arms,--the day,
+ Battle’s magnificently stern array!
+ The thunder-clouds close o’er it, which, when rent,
+ The earth is covered thick with other clay,
+ Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
+ Rider, and horse--friend, foe--in one red burial blent!
+
+ LORD BYRON.
+
+
+ IVRY.
+
+ A SONG OF THE HUGUENOTS.
+
+ Laddie, aged eleven, do you remember how you studied and recited “King
+ Henry of Navarre” every poetry hour for a year? It was a long poem, but
+ you stuck to it to the end. We did not know the meaning of a certain
+ word, but I found it up in Switzerland. It is the name of a little
+ town. (1800-59.)
+
+ Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are!
+ And glory to our Sovereign Liege, King Henry of Navarre!
+
+ Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance,
+ Through thy corn-fields green, and sunny vines, O pleasant
+ land of France!
+ And thou, Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters,
+ Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters.
+ As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy,
+ For cold, and stiff, and still are they who wrought thy walls annoy.
+ Hurrah! Hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of war,
+ Hurrah! Hurrah! for Ivry, and Henry of Navarre.
+
+ Oh! how our hearts were beating, when, at the dawn of day,
+ We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array;
+ With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers,
+ And Appenzel’s stout infantry, and Egmont’s Flemish spears.
+ There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land;
+ And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand;
+ And, as we looked on them, we thought of Seine’s empurpled flood,
+ And good Coligni’s hoary hair all dabbled with his blood;
+ And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war,
+ To fight for His own holy name, and Henry of Navarre.
+
+ The King is come to marshal us, in all his armour drest,
+ And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest.
+ He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye;
+ He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high.
+ Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing,
+ Down all our line, a deafening shout, “God save our Lord the King!”
+ “And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may,
+ For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray,
+ Press where ye see my white plume shine, amid the ranks of war,
+ And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre.”
+
+ Hurrah! the foes are moving. Hark to the mingled din
+ Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin.
+ The fiery Duke is pricking fast across St. André’s plain,
+ With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne.
+ Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France,
+ Charge for the golden lilies,--upon them with the lance.
+ A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest,
+ A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest;
+ And in they burst, and on they rushed, while like a guiding star,
+ Amid the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre.
+
+ Now, God be praised, the day is ours. Mayenne hath turned his rein.
+ D’Aumale hath cried for quarter. The Flemish count is slain.
+ Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale;
+ The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven mail.
+ And then we thought on vengeance, and, all along our van,
+ “Remember St. Bartholomew!” was passed from man to man.
+ But out spake gentle Henry, “No Frenchman is my foe:
+ Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go.”
+ Oh! was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in war,
+ As our Sovereign Lord, King Henry, the soldier of Navarre?
+
+ Right well fought all the Frenchmen who fought for France to-day;
+ And many a lordly banner God gave them for a prey.
+ But we of the Religion have borne us best in fight;
+ And the good lord of Rosny has ta’en the cornet white.
+ Our own true Maximilian the cornet white hath ta’en,
+ The cornet white with crosses black, the flag of false Lorraine.
+ Up with it high; unfurl it wide; that all the host may know
+ How God hath humbled the proud house which wrought His church such woe.
+ Then on the ground, while trumpets sound their loudest points of war,
+ Fling the red shreds, a footcloth meet for Henry of Navarre.
+
+ Ho! maidens of Vienna; Ho! matrons of Lucerne;
+ Weep, weep, and rend your hair for those who never shall return.
+ Ho! Philip, send, for charity, thy Mexican pistoles,
+ That Antwerp monks may sing a mass for thy poor spearman’s souls.
+ Ho! gallant nobles of the League, look that your arms be bright;
+ Ho! burghers of Saint Genevieve, keep watch and ward to-night.
+ For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the slave,
+ And mocked the counsel of the wise, the valour of the brave.
+ Then glory to His holy name, from whom all glories are;
+ And glory to our Sovereign Lord, King Henry of Navarre.
+
+ THOMAS B. MACAULAY.
+
+
+ THE GLOVE AND THE LIONS.
+
+“The Glove and the Lions” was one of my early reading-lessons. It is an
+ incisive thrust at the vanity of “fair” women. A woman be a “true
+ knight” as well as a man. Leigh Hunt (1784-1859.)
+
+ King Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport,
+ And one day as his lions fought, sat looking on the court;
+ The nobles filled the benches, with the ladies in their pride,
+ And ’mong them sat the Count de Lorge with one for whom he sighed:
+ And truly ’twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show,
+ Valour, and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below.
+
+ Ramp’d and roar’d the lions, with horrid laughing jaws;
+ They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind
+ went with their paws;
+ With wallowing might and stifled roar they rolled on one another,
+ Till all the pit with sand and mane was in a thunderous smother;
+ The bloody foam above the bars came whisking through the air;
+ Said Francis then, “Faith, gentlemen, we’re better here than there.”
+
+ De Lorge’s love o’erheard the King,--a beauteous lively dame
+ With smiling lips and sharp, bright eyes, which always seem’d the same:
+ She thought, “The Count, my lover, is brave as brave can be;
+ He surely would do wondrous things to show his love of me;
+ King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is divine;
+ I’ll drop my glove, to prove his love; great glory will be mine.”
+
+ She dropped her glove, to prove his love, then look’d
+ at him and smiled;
+ He bowed, and in a moment leapt among the lions wild:
+ His leap was quick, return was quick, he has regain’d his place,
+ Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady’s face.
+ “Well done!” cried Francis, “bravely done!” and he rose
+ from where he sat:
+ “No love,” quoth he, “but vanity, sets love a task like that.”
+
+ LEIGH HUNT.
+
+
+ THE WELL OF ST. KEYNE.
+
+ I found the Well of St. Keyne in Cornwall, England--not the poem, but
+ the real well. The poem is of the great body of world-lore. Southey
+ (1774-1843).
+
+ A well there is in the west country,
+ And a clearer one never was seen;
+ There is not a wife in the west-country
+ But has heard of the Well of St. Keyne.
+
+ An oak and an elm tree stand beside,
+ And behind does an ash tree grow,
+ And a willow from the bank above
+ Droops to the water below.
+
+ A traveller came to the Well of St. Keyne:
+ Pleasant it was to his eye,
+ For from cock-crow he had been travelling
+ And there was not a cloud in the sky.
+
+ He drank of the water so cool and clear,
+ For thirsty and hot was he,
+ And he sat down upon the bank,
+ Under the willow tree.
+
+ There came a man from the neighbouring town
+ At the well to fill his pail;
+ On the well-side he rested it,
+ And bade the stranger hail.
+
+ “Now, art thou a bachelor, stranger?” quoth he,
+ “For an if thou hast a wife,
+ The happiest draught thou hast drunk this day
+ That ever thou didst in thy life.
+
+ “Or has your good woman, if one you have,
+ In Cornwall ever been?
+ For an if she have, I’ll venture my life
+ She has drunk of the Well of St. Keyne.”
+
+ “I have left a good woman who never was here,”
+ The stranger he made reply;
+ “But that my draught should be better for that,
+ I pray you answer me why.”
+
+ “St. Keyne,” quoth the countryman, “many a time
+ Drank of this crystal well,
+ And before the angel summoned her
+ She laid on the water a spell.
+
+ “If the husband of this gifted well
+ Shall drink before his wife,
+ A happy man thenceforth is he,
+ For he shall be master for life.
+
+ “But if the wife should drink of it first,
+ God help the husband then!”
+ The stranger stoop’d to the Well of St. Keyne,
+ And drank of the waters again.
+
+ “You drank of the well, I warrant, betimes?”
+ He to the countryman said;
+ But the countryman smiled as the stranger spake,
+ And sheepishly shook his head.
+
+ “I hastened as soon as the wedding was done,
+ And left my wife in the porch,
+ But i’ faith she had been wiser than me,
+ For she took a bottle to church,”
+
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY.
+
+
+ THE NAUTILUS AND THE AMMONITE.
+
+“The Nautilus and the Ammonite” finds a place here out of respect to a
+ twelve-year-old girl who recited it at one of our poetry hours years
+ ago. It made a profound impression on the fifty pupils assembled, I
+ never read it without feeling that it stands test. Anonymous.
+
+ The nautilus and the ammonite
+ Were launched in friendly strife,
+ Each sent to float in its tiny boat
+ On the wide, wide sea of life.
+
+ For each could swim on the ocean’s brim,
+ And, when wearied, its sail could furl,
+ And sink to sleep in the great sea-deep,
+ In its palace all of pearl.
+
+ And theirs was a bliss more fair than this
+ Which we taste in our colder clime;
+ For they were rife in a tropic life--
+ A brighter and better clime.
+
+ They swam ’mid isles whose summer smiles
+ Were dimmed by no alloy;
+ Whose groves were palm, whose air was balm,
+ And life one only joy.
+
+ They sailed all day through creek and bay,
+ And traversed the ocean deep;
+ And at night they sank on a coral bank,
+ In its fairy bowers to sleep.
+
+ And the monsters vast of ages past
+ They beheld in their ocean caves;
+ They saw them ride in their power and pride,
+ And sink in their deep-sea graves.
+
+ And hand in hand, from strand to strand,
+ They sailed in mirth and glee;
+ These fairy shells, with their crystal cells,
+ Twin sisters of the sea.
+
+ And they came at last to a sea long past,
+ But as they reached its shore,
+ The Almighty’s breath spoke out in death,
+ And the ammonite was no more.
+
+ So the nautilus now in its shelly prow,
+ As over the deep it strays,
+ Still seems to seek, in bay and creek,
+ Its companion of other days.
+
+ And alike do we, on life’s stormy sea,
+ As we roam from shore to shore,
+ Thus tempest-tossed, seek the loved, the lost,
+ And find them on earth no more.
+
+ Yet the hope how sweet, again to meet,
+ As we look to a distant strand,
+ Where heart meets heart, and no more they part
+ Who meet in that better land.
+
+ ANONYMOUS.
+
+
+ THE SOLITUDE OF ALEXANDER SELKIRK.
+
+ I am monarch of all I survey,
+ My right there is none to dispute,
+ From the center all round to the sea,
+ I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
+ O Solitude! where are the charms
+ That sages have seen in thy face?
+ Better dwell in the midst of alarms
+ Than reign in this horrible place.
+
+ I am out of humanity’s reach,
+ I must finish my journey alone,
+ Never hear the sweet music of speech,--
+ I start at the sound of my own.
+ The beasts that roam over the plain
+ My form with indifference see;
+ They are so unacquainted with man,
+ Their tameness is shocking to me.
+
+ Society, Friendship, and Love,
+ Divinely bestow’d upon man,
+ Oh, had I the wings of a dove,
+ How soon would I taste you again!
+ My sorrows I then might assuage
+ In the ways of religion and truth,
+ Might learn from the wisdom of age,
+ And be cheer’d by the sallies of youth.
+
+ Ye winds that have made me your sport,
+ Convey to this desolate shore
+ Some cordial endearing report
+ Of a land I shall visit no more!
+
+ My friends--do they now and then send
+ A wish or a thought after me?
+ Oh, tell me I yet have a friend,
+ Though a friend I am never to see.
+
+ How fleet is a glance of the mind!
+ Compared with the speed of its flight,
+ The tempest itself lags behind,
+ And the swift-wingèd arrows of light.
+ When I think of my own native land,
+ In a moment I seem to be there;
+ But alas! recollection at hand
+ Soon hurries me back to despair.
+
+ But the seafowl is gone to her nest,
+ The beast is laid down in his lair,
+ Even here is a season of rest,
+ And I to my cabin repair.
+ There’s mercy in every place,
+ And mercy, encouraging thought!
+ Gives even affliction a grace,
+ And reconciles man to his lot.
+
+ WILLIAM COWPER.
+
+
+ THE HOMES OF ENGLAND.
+
+ I wonder if the English people appreciate “The Homes of England.” It is
+ a stately poem worthy of a Goethe or a Shakespeare. England is
+ distinctively a country of homes, pretty, little, humble homes as well
+ as stately palaces and castles, homes well made of stone or brick for
+ the most part, and clad with ivy and roses. Who would not be proud to
+ have had such a home as Ann Hathaway’s humble cottage or one of the
+ little huts in the Lake District? The homes of America are often more
+ palatial, especially in small cities, but the use of wood in America
+ makes them less substantial than the slate-and-brick houses of England.
+ (1749-1835.)
+
+ The stately homes of England!
+ How beautiful they stand,
+ Amidst their tall ancestral trees,
+ O’er all the pleasant land!
+ The deer across their greensward bound
+ Through shade and sunny gleam,
+ And the swan glides past them with the sound
+ Of some rejoicing stream.
+
+ The merry homes of England!
+ Around their hearths by night
+ What gladsome looks of household love
+ Meet in the ruddy light!
+ There woman’s voice flows forth in song,
+ Or childish tale is told,
+ Or lips move tunefully along
+ Some glorious page of old.
+
+ The blessèd homes of England!
+ How softly on their bowers
+ Is laid the holy quietness
+ That breathes from Sabbath hours!
+ Solemn, yet sweet, the church-bell’s chime
+ Floats through their woods at morn;
+ All other sounds, in that still time,
+ Of breeze and leaf are born.
+
+ The cottage homes of England!
+ By thousands on her plains,
+ They are smiling o’er the silvery brooks,
+ And round the hamlets’ fanes.
+ Through glowing orchards forth they peep,
+ Each from its nook of leaves;
+ And fearless there the lowly sleep,
+ As the bird beneath their eaves.
+
+ The free, fair homes of England!
+ Long, long, in hut and hall
+ May hearts of native proof be reared
+ To guard each hallowed wall!
+ And green forever be the groves,
+ And bright the flowery sod,
+ Where first the child’s glad spirit loves
+ Its country and its God!
+
+ FELICIA HEMANS.
+
+
+ HORATIUS AT THE BRIDGE.
+
+“Horatius at the Bridge” is too long a poem for children to memorise.
+ But I never saw a boy who did not want some stanzas of it. “Hold the
+ bridge with me!” Boys like that motto instinctively. T.B. Macaulay
+ (1800-59).
+
+ Lars Porsena of Clusium,
+ By the Nine Gods he swore
+ That the great house of Tarquin
+ Should suffer wrong no more.
+ By the Nine Gods he swore it,
+ And named a trysting-day,
+ And bade his messengers ride forth,
+ East and west and south and north,
+ To summon his array.
+
+ East and west and south and north
+ The messengers ride fast,
+ And tower and town and cottage
+ Have heard the trumpet’s blast.
+ Shame on the false Etruscan
+ Who lingers in his home
+ When Porsena of Clusium
+ Is on the march for Rome!
+
+ The horsemen and the footmen
+ Are pouring in amain,
+ From many a stately market-place,
+ From many a fruitful plain;
+ From many a lonely hamlet,
+ Which, hid by beech and pine,
+ Like an eagle’s nest, hangs on the crest
+ Of purple Apennine.
+
+ The harvests of Arretium,
+ This year, old men shall reap;
+ This year, young boys in Umbro
+ Shall plunge the struggling sheep;
+ And in the vats of Luna,
+ This year, the must shall foam
+ Round the white feet of laughing girls
+ Whose sires have marched to Rome.
+
+ There be thirty chosen prophets,
+ The wisest of the land,
+ Who alway by Lars Porsena
+ Both morn and evening stand:
+ Evening and morn the Thirty
+ Have turned the verses o’er,
+ Traced from the right on linen white
+ By mighty seers of yore.
+
+ And with one voice the Thirty
+ Have their glad answer given:
+ “Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena;
+ Go forth, beloved of Heaven;
+ Go, and return in glory
+ To Clusium’s royal dome;
+ And hang round Nurscia’s altars
+ The golden shields of Rome.”
+
+ And now hath every city
+ Sent up her tale of men;
+ The foot are fourscore thousand,
+ The horse are thousands ten.
+ Before the gates of Sutrium
+ Is met the great array.
+ A proud man was Lars Porsena
+ Upon the trysting-day.
+
+ For all the Etruscan armies
+ Were ranged beneath his eye,
+ And many a banished Roman,
+ And many a stout ally;
+ And with a mighty following
+ To join the muster came
+ The Tusculan Mamilius,
+ Prince of the Latian name.
+
+ But by the yellow Tiber
+ Was tumult and affright:
+ From all the spacious champaign
+ To Rome men took their flight.
+ A mile around the city,
+ The throng stopped up the ways;
+ A fearful sight it was to see
+ Through two long nights and days.
+
+ Now, from the rock Tarpeian,
+ Could the wan burghers spy
+ The line of blazing villages
+ Red in the midnight sky.
+ The Fathers of the City,
+ They sat all night and day,
+ For every hour some horseman came
+ With tidings of dismay.
+
+ To eastward and to westward
+ Have spread the Tuscan bands;
+ Nor house, nor fence, nor dovecot,
+ In Crustumerium stands.
+ Verbenna down to Ostia
+ Hath wasted all the plain;
+ Astur hath stormed Janiculum,
+ And the stout guards are slain.
+
+ I wis, in all the Senate,
+ There was no heart so bold,
+ But sore it ached, and fast it beat,
+ When that ill news was told.
+ Forthwith up rose the Consul,
+ Up rose the Fathers all;
+ In haste they girded up their gowns,
+ And hied them to the wall.
+
+ They held a council standing
+ Before the River Gate;
+ Short time was there, ye well may guess,
+ For musing or debate.
+ Out spoke the Consul roundly:
+ “The bridge must straight go down;
+ For, since Janiculum is lost,
+ Naught else can save the town.”
+
+ Just then a scout came flying,
+ All wild with haste and fear:
+ “To arms! to arms! Sir Consul;
+ Lars Porsena is here.”
+ On the low hills to westward
+ The Consul fixed his eye,
+ And saw the swarthy storm of dust
+ Rise fast along the sky.
+
+ And nearer, fast, and nearer
+ Doth the red whirlwind come;
+ And louder still, and still more loud,
+ From underneath that rolling cloud,
+ Is heard the trumpet’s war-note proud,
+ The trampling and the hum.
+ And plainly and more plainly
+ Now through the gloom appears,
+ Far to left and far to right,
+ In broken gleams of dark-blue light,
+ The long array of helmets bright,
+ The long array of spears.
+
+ And plainly and more plainly,
+ Above the glimmering line,
+ Now might ye see the banners
+ Of twelve fair cities shine;
+ But the banner of proud Clusium
+ Was the highest of them all,
+ The terror of the Umbrian,
+ The terror of the Gaul.
+
+ Fast by the royal standard,
+ O’erlooking all the war,
+ Lars Porsena of Clusium
+ Sat in his ivory car.
+ By the right wheel rode Mamilius,
+ Prince of the Latian name,
+ And by the left false Sextus,
+ That wrought the deed of shame.
+
+ But when the face of Sextus
+ Was seen among the foes,
+ A yell that rent the firmament
+ From all the town arose.
+ On the house-tops was no woman
+ But spat toward him and hissed,
+ No child but screamed out curses,
+ And shook its little fist.
+
+ But the Consul’s brow was sad,
+ And the Consul’s speech was low,
+ And darkly looked he at the wall,
+ And darkly at the foe.
+ “Their van will be upon us
+ Before the bridge goes down;
+ And if they once may win the bridge,
+ What hope to save the town?”
+
+ Then out spake brave Horatius,
+ The Captain of the Gate:
+ “To every man upon this earth
+ Death cometh soon or late;
+ And how can man die better
+ Than facing fearful odds,
+ For the ashes of his fathers,
+ And the temples of his gods.
+
+ “And for the tender mother
+ Who dandled him to rest,
+ And for the wife who nurses
+ His baby at her breast,
+ And for the holy maidens
+ Who feed the eternal flame,
+ To save them from false Sextus
+ That wrought the deed of shame?
+
+ “Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul,
+ With all the speed ye may;
+ I, with two more to help me,
+ Will hold the foe in play.
+ In yon straight path a thousand
+ May well be stopped by three.
+ Now who will stand on either hand,
+ And keep the bridge with me?”
+
+ Then out spake Spurius Lartius--
+ A Ramnian proud was he--
+ I will stand at thy right hand,
+ And keep the bridge with thee.”
+ And out spake strong Herminius--
+ Of Titian blood was he--
+ “I will abide on thy left side,
+ And keep the bridge with thee.”
+
+ “Horatius,” quoth the Consul,
+ “As thou say’st, so let it be,”
+ And straight against that great array
+ Forth went the dauntless Three.
+ For Romans in Rome’s quarrel
+ Spared neither land nor gold,
+ Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
+ In the brave days of old.
+
+ Now while the Three were tightening
+ Their harness on their backs,
+ The Consul was the foremost man
+ To take in hand an ax;
+ And Fathers mixed with Commons
+ Seized hatchet, bar, and crow,
+ And smote upon the planks above,
+ And loosed the props below.
+ Meanwhile the Tuscan army,
+ Right glorious to behold,
+ Came flashing back the noonday light,
+ Rank behind rank, like surges bright
+ Of a broad sea of gold.
+
+ Four hundred trumpets sounded
+ A peal of warlike glee,
+ As that great host, with measured tread,
+ And spears advanced, and ensigns spread,
+ Rolled slowly toward the bridge’s head,
+ Where stood the dauntless Three.
+
+ The Three stood calm and silent,
+ And looked upon the foes,
+ And a great shout of laughter
+ From all the vanguard rose:
+ And forth three chiefs came spurring
+ Before that deep array;
+ To earth they sprang, their swords they drew,
+ And lifted high their shields, and flew
+ To win the narrow way;
+
+ Aunus from green Tifernum,
+ Lord of the Hill of Vines;
+ And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves
+ Sicken in Ilva’s mines;
+ And Picus, long to Clusium
+ Vassal in peace and war,
+ Who led to fight his Umbrian powers
+ From that gray crag where, girt with towers,
+ The fortress of Nequinum lowers
+ O’er the pale waves of Nar.
+
+ Stout Lartius hurled down Aunus
+ Into the stream beneath;
+ Herminius struck at Seius,
+ And clove him to the teeth;
+ At Picus brave Horatius
+ Darted one fiery thrust;
+ And the proud Umbrian’s gilded arms
+ Clashed in the bloody dust.
+
+ Then Ocnus of Falerii
+ Rushed on the Roman Three;
+ And Lausulus of Urgo,
+ The rover of the sea;
+ And Aruns of Volsinium,
+ Who slew the great wild boar,
+ The great wild boar that had his den
+ Amid the reeds of Cosa’s fen.
+ And wasted fields and slaughtered men
+ Along Albinia’s shore.
+
+ Herminius smote down Aruns;
+ Lartius laid Ocnus low;
+ Right to the heart of Lausulus
+ Horatius sent a blow.
+ “Lie there,” he cried, “fell pirate!
+ No more, aghast and pale,
+ From Ostia’s walls the crowd shall mark
+ The tracks of thy destroying bark,
+ No more Campania’s hinds shall fly
+ To woods and caverns when they spy
+ Thy thrice accurséd sail.”
+
+ But now no sound of laughter
+ Was heard among the foes.
+ A wild and wrathful clamour
+ From all the vanguard rose.
+ Six spears’ length from the entrance
+ Halted that deep array,
+ And for a space no man came forth
+ To win the narrow way.
+
+ But hark! the cry is Astur:
+ And lo! the ranks divide;
+ And the great Lord of Luna
+ Comes with his stately stride.
+ Upon his ample shoulders
+ Clangs loud the fourfold shield,
+ And in his hand he shakes the brand
+ Which none but he can wield.
+
+ He smiled on those bold Romans,
+ A smile serene and high;
+ He eyed the flinching Tuscans,
+ And scorn was in his eye.
+ Quoth he: “The she-wolf’s litter
+ Stand savagely at bay;
+ But will ye dare to follow,
+ If Astur clears the way?”
+
+ Then, whirling up his broadsword
+ With both hands to the height,
+ He rushed against Horatius,
+ And smote with all his might.
+ With shield and blade Horatius
+ Right deftly turned the blow.
+ The blow, though turned, came yet too nigh;
+ It missed his helm, but gashed his thigh:
+ The Tuscans raised a joyful cry
+ To see the red blood flow.
+
+ He reeled, and on Herminius
+ He leaned one breathing space;
+ Then, like a wildcat mad with wounds,
+ Sprang right at Astur’s face.
+ Through teeth, and skull, and helmet,
+ So fierce a thrust he sped,
+ The good sword stood a handbreadth out
+ Behind the Tuscan’s head.
+
+ And the great Lord of Luna
+ Fell at the deadly stroke,
+ As falls on Mount Alvernus
+ A thunder-smitten oak.
+ Far o’er the crashing forest
+ The giant arms lie spread;
+ And the pale augurs, muttering low,
+ Gaze on the blasted head.
+
+ On Astur’s throat Horatius
+ Right firmly pressed his heel,
+ And thrice and four times tugged amain
+ Ere he wrenched out the steel.
+ “And see,” he cried, “the welcome,
+ Fair guests, that waits you here!
+ What noble Lucumo comes next
+ To taste our Roman cheer?”
+
+ But at his haughty challenge
+ A sullen murmur ran,
+ Mingled of wrath, and shame, and dread,
+ Along that glittering van.
+ There lacked not men of prowess,
+ Nor men of lordly race;
+ For all Etruria’s noblest
+ Were round the fatal place.
+
+ But all Etruria’s noblest
+ Felt their hearts sink to see
+ On the earth the bloody corpses,
+ In the path the dauntless Three:
+ And, from the ghastly entrance
+ Where those bold Romans stood,
+ All shrank, like boys who unaware,
+ Ranging the woods to start a hare,
+ Come to the mouth of the dark lair
+ Where, growling low, a fierce old bear
+ Lies amid bones and blood.
+
+ Was none who would be foremost
+ To lead such dire attack?
+ But those behind cried “Forward!”
+ And those before cried “Back!”
+ And backward now and forward
+ Wavers the deep array;
+ And on the tossing sea of steel
+ To and fro the standards reel;
+ And the victorious trumpet peal
+ Dies fitfully away.
+
+ Yet one man for one moment
+ Strode out before the crowd;
+ Well known was he to all the Three,
+ And they gave him greeting loud:
+ “Now welcome, welcome, Sextus!
+ Now welcome to thy home!
+ Why dost thou stay, and turn away?
+ Here lies the road to Rome.”
+
+ Thrice looked he at the city;
+ Thrice looked he at the dead;
+ And thrice came on in fury,
+ And thrice turned back in dread:
+ And, white with fear and hatred,
+ Scowled at the narrow way
+ Where, wallowing in a pool of blood,
+ The bravest Tuscans lay.
+
+ But meanwhile ax and lever
+ Have manfully been plied,
+ And now the bridge hangs tottering
+ Above the boiling tide.
+ “Come back, come back, Horatius!”
+ Loud cried the Fathers all.
+ “Back, Lartius! Back, Herminius!
+ Back, ere the ruin fall!”
+
+ Back darted Spurius Lartius;
+ Herminius darted back:
+ And, as they passed, beneath their feet
+ They felt the timbers crack.
+ But when they turned their faces,
+ And on the farther shore
+ Saw brave Horatius stand alone,
+ They would have crossed once more.
+
+ But with a crash like thunder
+ Fell every loosened beam,
+ And, like a dam, the mighty wreck
+ Lay right athwart the stream;
+ And a long shout of triumph
+ Rose from the walls of Rome,
+ As to the highest turret tops
+ Was splashed the yellow foam.
+
+ And, like a horse unbroken
+ When first he feels the rein,
+ The furious river struggled hard,
+ And tossed his tawny mane;
+ And burst the curb, and bounded,
+ Rejoicing to be free,
+ And whirling down, in fierce career,
+ Battlement, and plank, and pier,
+ Rushed headlong to the sea.
+
+ Alone stood brave Horatius,
+ But constant still in mind;
+ Thrice thirty thousand foes before,
+ And the broad flood behind.
+ “Down with him!” cried false Sextus,
+ With a smile on his pale face.
+ “Now yield thee,” cried Lars Porsena,
+ “Now yield thee to our grace.”
+
+ Round turned he, as not deigning
+ Those craven ranks to see;
+ Naught spake he to Lars Porsena,
+ To Sextus naught spake he;
+ But he saw on Palatinus
+ The white porch of his home;
+ And he spake to the noble river
+ That rolls by the towers of Rome:
+
+ “O Tiber! Father Tiber!
+ To whom the Romans pray,
+ A Roman’s life, a Roman’s arms,
+ Take thou in charge this day!”
+ So he spake, and speaking sheathed
+ The good sword by his side,
+ And, with his harness on his back,
+ Plunged headlong in the tide.
+
+ No sound of joy or sorrow
+ Was heard from either bank;
+ But friends and foes in dumb surprise,
+ With parted lips and straining eyes,
+ Stood gazing where he sank;
+ And when above the surges
+ They saw his crest appear,
+ All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry,
+ And even the ranks of Tuscany
+ Could scarce forbear to cheer.
+
+ And fiercely ran the current,
+ Swollen high by months of rain;
+ And fast his blood was flowing,
+ And he was sore in pain,
+ And heavy with his armour,
+ And spent with changing blows:
+ And oft they thought him sinking,
+ But still again he rose.
+
+ Never, I ween, did swimmer,
+ In such an evil case,
+ Struggle through such a raging flood
+ Safe to the landing place;
+ But his limbs were borne up bravely
+ By the brave heart within,
+ And our good Father Tiber
+ Bore bravely up his chin.
+
+ “Curse on him!” quoth false Sextus;
+ “Will not the villain drown?
+ But for this stay, ere close of day
+ We should have sacked the town!”
+ “Heaven help him!” quoth Lars Porsena,
+ “And bring him safe to shore;
+ For such a gallant feat of arms
+ Was never seen before.”
+
+ And now he feels the bottom;
+ Now on dry earth he stands;
+ Now round him throng the Fathers
+ To press his gory hands;
+ And now with shouts and clapping,
+ And noise of weeping loud,
+ He enters through the River Gate,
+ Borne by the joyous crowd.
+
+ They gave him of the corn land,
+ That was of public right.
+ As much as two strong oxen
+ Could plow from morn till night:
+ And they made a molten image,
+ And set it up on high,
+ And there it stands unto this day
+ To witness if I lie.
+
+ It stands in the Comitium,
+ Plain for all folk to see,--
+ Horatius in his harness,
+ Halting upon one knee:
+ And underneath is written,
+ In letters all of gold,
+ How valiantly he kept the bridge
+ In the brave days of old.
+
+ And still his name sounds stirring
+ Unto the men of Rome,
+ As the trumpet blast that cries to them
+ To charge the Volscian home;
+ And wives still pray to Juno
+ For boys with hearts as bold
+ As his who kept the bridge so well
+ In the brave days of old.
+
+ And in the nights of winter,
+ When the cold north winds blow,
+ And the long howling of the wolves
+ Is heard amid the snow;
+ When round the lonely cottage
+ Roars loud the tempest’s din,
+ And the good logs of Algidus
+ Roar louder yet within;
+
+ When the oldest cask is opened,
+ And the largest lamp is lit;
+ When the chestnuts glow in the embers,
+ And the kid turns on the spit;
+ When young and old in circle
+ Around the firebrands close;
+ When the girls are weaving baskets,
+ And the lads are shaping bows;
+
+ When the goodman mends his armour,
+ And trims his helmet’s plume;
+ When the goodwife’s shuttle merrily
+ Goes flashing through the loom,--
+ With weeping and with laughter
+ Still is the story told,
+ How well Horatius kept the bridge
+ In the brave days of old.
+
+ THOMAS B. MACAULAY.
+
+
+ THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE-TREE.
+
+“The Planting of the Apple-Tree” has become a favourite for “Arbour
+ Day” exercises. The planting of trees as against their destruction is a
+ vital point in our political and national welfare. William Cullen
+ Bryant (1794-1878).
+
+ Come, let us plant the apple-tree.
+ Cleave the tough greensward with the spade;
+ Wide let its hollow bed be made;
+ There gently lay the roots, and there
+ Sift the dark mould with kindly care,
+ And press it o’er them tenderly,
+ As round the sleeping infant’s feet
+ We softly fold the cradle sheet;
+ So plant we the apple-tree.
+
+ What plant we in this apple-tree?
+ Buds, which the breath of summer days
+ Shall lengthen into leafy sprays;
+ Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast,
+ Shall haunt, and sing, and hide her nest;
+ We plant, upon the sunny lea,
+ A shadow for the noontide hour,
+ A shelter from the summer shower,
+ When we plant the apple-tree.
+
+ What plant we in this apple-tree?
+ Sweets for a hundred flowery springs,
+ To load the May wind’s restless wings,
+ When, from the orchard row, he pours
+ Its fragrance through our open doors;
+ A world of blossoms for the bee,
+ Flowers for the sick girl’s silent room,
+ For the glad infant sprigs of bloom,
+ We plant with the apple-tree.
+
+ What plant we in this apple-tree?
+ Fruits that shall swell in sunny June,
+ And redden in the August noon,
+ And drop, when gentle airs come by,
+ That fan the blue September sky,
+ While children come, with cries of glee,
+ And seek them where the fragrant grass
+ Betrays their bed to those who pass,
+ At the foot of the apple-tree.
+
+ And when, above this apple-tree,
+ The winter stars are quivering bright,
+ The winds go howling through the night,
+ Girls, whose eyes o’erflow with mirth,
+ Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth,
+ And guests in prouder homes shall see,
+ Heaped with the grape of Cintra’s vine,
+ And golden orange of the line,
+ The fruit of the apple-tree.
+
+ The fruitage of this apple-tree,
+ Winds and our flag of stripe and star
+ Shall bear to coasts that lie afar,
+ Where men shall wonder at the view,
+ And ask in what fair groves they grew;
+ And sojourners beyond the sea
+ Shall think of childhood’s careless day,
+ And long, long hours of summer play,
+ In the shade of the apple-tree.
+
+ Each year shall give this apple-tree
+ A broader flush of roseate bloom,
+ A deeper maze of verdurous gloom,
+ And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower,
+ The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower.
+ The years shall come and pass, but we
+ Shall hear no longer, where we lie,
+ The summer’s songs, the autumn’s sigh,
+ In the boughs of the apple-tree.
+
+ And time shall waste this apple-tree.
+ Oh, when its aged branches throw
+ Thin shadows on the ground below,
+ Shall fraud and force and iron will
+ Oppress the weak and helpless still!
+ What shall the tasks of mercy be,
+ Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears
+ Of those who live when length of years
+ Is wasting this apple-tree?
+
+ “Who planted this old apple-tree?”
+ The children of that distant day
+ Thus to some aged man shall say;
+ And, gazing on its mossy stem,
+ The gray-haired man shall answer them:
+ “A poet of the land was he,
+ Born in the rude but good old times;
+ ’Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes
+ On planting the apple-tree.”
+
+ WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ PART V.
+
+ On and On
+
+
+ JUNE.
+
+“June” (by James Russell Lowell, 1819-91), is a fragment from “The
+ Vision of Sir Launfal.” It finds a place in this volume because it is
+ the most perfect description of a charming day ever written.
+
+ What is so rare as a day in June?
+ Then, if ever, come perfect days;
+ Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
+ And over it softly her warm ear lays:
+ Whether we look, or whether we listen,
+ We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
+ Every clod feels a stir of might,
+ An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
+ And, groping blindly above it for light,
+ Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
+ The flush of life may well be seen
+ Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
+ The cowslip startles in meadows green.
+ The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
+ And there’s never a leaf nor a blade too mean
+ To be some happy creature’s palace;
+ The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
+ Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
+ And lets his illumined being o’errun
+ With the deluge of summer it receives;
+ His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
+ And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
+ He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,--
+ In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?
+
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
+
+
+ A PSALM OF LIFE.
+
+ WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST.
+
+“A Psalm of Life,” by Henry W. Longfellow (1807-82), is like a treasure
+ laid up in heaven. It should be learned for its future value to the
+ child, not necessarily because the child likes it. Its value will dawn
+ on him.
+
+ Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
+ Life is but an empty dream!--
+ For the soul is dead that slumbers,
+ And things are not what they seem.
+
+ Life is real! Life is earnest!
+ And the grave is not its goal;
+ Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
+ Was not spoken of the soul.
+
+ Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
+ Is our destined end or way;
+ But to act, that each to-morrow
+ Find us farther than to-day.
+
+ Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
+ And our hearts, though stout and brave,
+ Still, like muffled drums, are beating
+ Funeral marches to the grave.
+
+ In the world’s broad field of battle,
+ In the bivouac of Life,
+ Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
+ Be a hero in the strife!
+
+ Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
+ Let the dead Past bury its dead!
+ Act,--act in the living Present!
+ Heart within, and God o’erhead!
+
+ Lives of great men all remind us
+ We can make our lives sublime,
+ And, departing, leave behind us
+ Footprints on the sands of time;
+
+ Footprints, that perhaps another,
+ Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
+ A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
+ Seeing, shall take heart again.
+
+ Let us, then, be up and doing,
+ With a heart for any fate;
+ Still achieving, still pursuing,
+ Learn to labour and to wait.
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ BARNACLES.
+
+“Barnacles” (by Sidney Lanier, 1842-81), is a poem that I teach in
+ connection with my lessons on natural history. We have a good specimen
+ of a barnacle, and the children see them on the shells on the coast.
+ The ethical point is invaluable.
+
+ My soul is sailing through the sea,
+ But the Past is heavy and hindereth me.
+ The Past hath crusted cumbrous shells
+ That hold the flesh of cold sea-mells
+ About my soul.
+ The huge waves wash, the high waves roll,
+ Each barnacle clingeth and worketh dole
+ And hindereth me from sailing!
+
+ Old Past, let go, and drop i’ the sea
+ Till fathomless waters cover thee!
+ For I am living, but thou art dead;
+ Thou drawest back, I strive ahead
+ The Day to find.
+ Thy shells unbind! Night comes behind;
+ I needs must hurry with the wind
+ And trim me best for sailing.
+
+ SIDNEY LANIER.
+
+
+ A HAPPY LIFE.
+
+ How happy is he born and taught
+ That serveth not another’s will;
+ Whose armour is his honest thought,
+ And simple truth his utmost skill!
+
+ Whose passions not his master’s are,
+ Whose soul is still prepared for death,
+ Not tied unto the world with care
+ Of public fame, or private breath.
+
+ SIR HENRY WOTTON.
+
+
+ HOME, SWEET HOME!
+
+“Home, Sweet Home” (John Howard Payne, 1791-1852) is a poem that
+ reaches into the heart. What is home? A place where we experience
+ independence, safety, privacy, and where we can dispense hospitality.
+“The family is the true unit.”
+
+ ’Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
+ Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home;
+ A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,
+ Which, seek through the world, is ne’er met with elsewhere.
+ Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!
+ There’s no place like Home! there’s no place like Home!
+
+ An exile from Home, splendour dazzles in vain;
+ O, give me my lowly thatched cottage again!
+ The birds singing gaily, that came at my call,--
+ Give me them,--and the peace of mind, dearer than all!
+ Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!
+ There’s no place like Home! there’s no place like Home!
+
+ How sweet ’tis to sit ’neath a fond father’s smile,
+ And the cares of a mother to soothe and beguile!
+ Let others delight ’mid new pleasures to roam,
+ But give me, oh, give me, the pleasures of Home!
+ Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!
+ There’s no place like Home! there’s no place like Home!
+
+ To thee I’ll return, overburdened with care;
+ The heart’s dearest solace will smile on me there;
+ No more from that cottage again will I roam;
+ Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like Home.
+ Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!
+ There’s no place like Home! there’s no place like Home!
+
+ JOHN HOWARD PAYNE.
+
+
+ FROM CASA GUIDI WINDOWS.
+
+ JULIET OF NATIONS.
+
+ I heard last night a little child go singing
+ ’Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church,
+ _O bella libertà, O bella!_--stringing
+ The same words still on notes he went in search
+ So high for, you concluded the upspringing
+ Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch
+ Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green,
+ And that the heart of Italy must beat,
+ While such a voice had leave to rise serene
+ ’Twixt church and palace of a Florence street;
+ A little child, too, who not long had been
+ By mother’s finger steadied on his feet,
+ And still _O bella libertà_ he sang.
+
+ ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
+
+
+ WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE!
+
+“Woodman, Spare That Tree” (by George Pope Morris, 1802-64) is included
+ in this collection because I have loved it all my life, and I never
+ knew any one who could or would offer a criticism upon it. Its value
+ lies in its recognition of childhood’s pleasures.
+
+ Woodman, spare that tree!
+ Touch not a single bough!
+ In youth it sheltered me,
+ And I’ll protect it now.
+ ’Twas my forefather’s hand
+ That placed it near his cot;
+ There, woodman, let it stand,
+ Thy ax shall harm it not.
+
+ That old familiar tree,
+ Whose glory and renown
+ Are spread o’er land and sea--
+ And wouldst thou hew it down?
+ Woodman, forbear thy stroke!
+ Cut not its earth-bound ties;
+ Oh, spare that agèd oak
+ Now towering to the skies!
+
+ When but an idle boy,
+ I sought its grateful shade;
+ In all their gushing joy
+ Here, too, my sisters played.
+ My mother kissed me here;
+ My father pressed my hand--
+ Forgive this foolish tear,
+ But let that old oak stand.
+
+ My heart-strings round thee cling,
+ Close as thy bark, old friend!
+ Here shall the wild-bird sing,
+ And still thy branches bend.
+ Old tree! the storm still brave!
+ And, woodman, leave the spot;
+ While I’ve a hand to save,
+ Thy ax shall harm it not.
+
+ GEORGE POPE MORRIS.
+
+
+ ABIDE WITH ME.
+
+“Abide With Me” (Henry Francis Lyte, 1793-1847) appeals to our natural
+ longing for the unchanging and to our love of security.
+
+ Abide with me! fast falls the eventide;
+ The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide!
+ When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
+ Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
+
+ Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
+ Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
+ Change and decay in all around I see:
+ O Thou who changest not, abide with me!
+
+ HENRY FRANCIS LYTE.
+
+
+ LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT
+
+“Lead, Kindly Light,” by John Henry Newman (1801-90), was written when
+ Cardinal Newman was in the stress and strain of perplexity and mental
+ distress and bodily pain. The poem has been a star in the darkness to
+ thousands. It was the favourite poem of President McKinley.
+
+ Lead, kindly Light, amid th’ encircling gloom,
+ Lead Thou me on,
+ The night is dark, and I am far from home,
+ Lead Thou me on.
+ Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
+ The distant scene; one step enough for me.
+
+ I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
+ Shouldst lead me on;
+ I loved to choose and see my path; but now
+ Lead Thou me on.
+ I loved the garish day; and, spite of fears,
+ Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.
+
+ So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
+ Will lead me on
+ O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
+ The night is gone,
+ And with the morn those angel faces smile,
+ Which I have loved long since, and lost a while.
+
+ JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.
+
+
+ THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER.
+
+ ’Tis the last rose of summer
+ Left blooming alone;
+ All her lovely companions
+ Are faded and gone;
+ No flower of her kindred,
+ No rose-bud 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,
+ O! who would inhabit
+ This bleak world alone?
+
+ THOMAS MOORE.
+
+
+ ANNIE LAURIE.
+
+“Annie Laurie” finds a place in this collection because it is the most
+ popular song on earth. Written by William Douglas, (----).
+
+ Maxwelton braes are bonnie
+ Where early fa’s the dew,
+ And it’s there that Annie Laurie
+ Gie’d me her promise true--
+ Gie’d me her promise true,
+ Which ne’er forgot will be;
+ And for bonnie Annie Laurie
+ I’d lay me doune and dee.
+
+ Her brow is like the snawdrift,
+ Her throat is like the swan,
+ Her face it is the fairest
+ That e’er the sun shone on--
+ That e’er the sun shone on;
+ And dark blue is her e’e;
+ And for bonnie Annie Laurie
+ I’d lay me doune and dee.
+
+ Like dew on the gowan lying
+ Is the fa’ o’ her fairy feet;
+ Like the winds in summer sighing,
+ Her voice is low and sweet--
+ Her voice is low and sweet;
+ And she’s a’ the world to me;
+ And for bonnie Annie Laurie
+ I’d lay me doune and dee.
+
+ WILLIAM DOUGLAS.
+
+
+ THE SHIP OF STATE.
+
+ A president of a well-known college writes me that “The Ship of State”
+ was his favourite poem when he was a boy, and did more than any other
+ to shape his course in life. Longfellow (1807-82).
+
+ Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State!
+ Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
+ Humanity, with all its fears,
+ With all the hopes of future years,
+ Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
+ We know what Master laid thy keel,
+ What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
+ Who made each mast, and sail, and rope;
+ What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
+ In what a forge and what a heat
+ Were forged the anchors of thy hope!
+ Fear not each sudden sound and shock--
+ ’Tis of the wave, and not the rock;
+ ’Tis but the flapping of the sail,
+ And not a rent made by the gale!
+ In spite of rock, and tempest roar,
+ In spite of false lights on the shore,
+ Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
+ Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
+ Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
+ Our faith, triumphant o’er our fears,
+ Are all with thee, are all with thee!
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+ The Constitution and Laws are here personified, and addressed as “The
+ Ship of State.”
+
+
+ AMERICA.
+
+“America” (Samuel Francis Smith, 1808-95) is a good poem to learn as a
+ poem, regardless of the fact that every American who can sing it ought
+ to know it, that he may join in the chorus when patriotic celebrations
+ call for it. My boys love to repeat the entire poem, but I often find
+ masses of people trying to sing it, knowing only one stanza. It is our
+ national anthem, and a part of our education to know every word of it.
+
+ My country, ’tis of thee,
+ Sweet land of liberty,
+ Of thee I sing;
+ Land where my fathers died,
+ Land of the Pilgrims’ pride;
+ From every mountain side,
+ Let freedom ring.
+
+ My native country, thee--
+ Land of the noble free--
+ Thy name I love;
+ I love thy rocks and rills,
+ Thy woods and templed hills;
+ My heart with rapture thrills,
+ Like that above.
+
+ Let music swell the breeze,
+ And ring from all the trees
+ Sweet freedom’s song;
+ Let mortal tongues awake;
+ Let all that breathe partake;
+ Let rocks their silence break--
+ The sound prolong.
+
+ Our fathers’ God, to Thee,
+ Author of liberty,
+ To Thee we sing:
+ Long may our land be bright
+ With freedom’s holy light:
+ Protect us by Thy might,
+ Great God, our King.
+
+ S.F. SMITH.
+
+
+ THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS.
+
+“The Landing of the Pilgrims,” by Felicia Hemans (1749-1835), is a poem
+ that children want when they study the early history of America.
+
+ The breaking waves dashed high
+ On a stern and rock-bound coast,
+ And the woods against a stormy sky
+ Their giant branches tossed.
+
+ And the heavy night hung dark
+ The hills and waters o’er,
+ When a band of exiles moored their bark
+ On the wild New England shore.
+
+ Not as the conqueror comes,
+ They, the true-hearted, came;
+ Not with the roll of the stirring drums,
+ And the trumpet that sings of fame.
+
+ Not as the flying come,
+ In silence and in fear;
+ They shook the depths of the desert gloom
+ With their hymns of lofty cheer.
+
+ Amid the storm they sang,
+ And the stars heard, and the sea,
+ And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
+ To the anthem of the free!
+
+ The ocean eagle soared
+ From his nest by the white wave’s foam;
+ And the rocking pines of the forest roared,--
+ This was their welcome home!
+
+ There were men with hoary hair,
+ Amid that pilgrim band;
+ Why had _they_ come to wither there,
+ Away from their childhood’s land?
+
+ There was woman’s fearless eye,
+ Lit by her deep love’s truth;
+ There was manhood’s brow serenely high,
+ And the fiery heart of youth.
+
+ What sought they thus afar?
+ Bright jewels of the mine?
+ The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?--
+ They sought a faith’s pure shrine!
+
+ Ay! call it holy ground,
+ The soil where first they trod:
+ They have left unstained what there they found,
+ Freedom to worship God.
+
+ FELICIA HEMANS.
+
+
+ THE LOTOS-EATERS.
+
+ The main idea in “The Lotos-Eaters” is, are we justified in running
+ away from unpleasant duties? Or, is insensibility justifiable?
+
+ Laddie, do you recollect learning this poem after we had read the story
+ of “Odysseus”? “The struggle of the soul urged to action, but held back
+ by the spirit of self-indulgence.” These were the points we discussed.
+ Alfred Tennyson (1809-92).
+
+ “Courage!” he said, and pointed toward the land,
+ “This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.”
+ In the afternoon they came unto a land
+ In which it seemed always afternoon.
+ All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
+ Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
+ Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
+ And like a downward smoke, the slender stream
+ Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.
+
+ A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
+ Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
+ And some thro’ wavering lights and shadows broke,
+ Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
+ They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
+ From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,
+ Three silent pinnacles of agèd snow,
+ Stood sunset-flush’d: and, dew’d with showery drops,
+ Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.
+
+ The charmèd sunset linger’d low adown
+ In the red West: thro’ mountain clefts the dale
+ Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
+ Border’d with palm, and many a winding vale
+ And meadow, set with slender galingale;
+ A land where all things always seem’d the same!
+ And round about the keel with faces pale,
+ Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
+ The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.
+
+ Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
+ Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
+ To each, but whoso did receive of them,
+ And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
+ Far, far away did seem to mourn and rave
+ On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
+ His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
+ And deep-asleep he seem’d, yet all awake,
+ And music in his ears his beating heart did make.
+
+ They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
+ Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
+ And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
+ Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
+ Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar,
+ Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
+ Then some one said, “We will return no more;”
+ And all at once they sang, “Our island home
+ Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.”
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ MOLY.
+
+“Moly” (mo’ly), by Edith M. Thomas (1850-), in the best possible
+ presentation of the value of integrity. This poem ranks with “Sir
+ Galahad,” if not above it. It is a stroke of genius, and every American
+ ought to be proud of it. Every time my boys read “Odysseus” or the
+ story of Ulysses with me we read or learn “Moly.” The plant moly grows
+ in the United States as well as in Europe.
+
+ Traveller, pluck a stem of moly,
+ If thou touch at Circe’s isle,--
+ Hermes’ moly, growing solely
+ To undo enchanter’s wile!
+ When she proffers thee her chalice,--
+ Wine and spices mixed with malice,--
+ When she smites thee with her staff
+ To transform thee, do thou laugh!
+ Safe thou art if thou but bear
+ The least leaf of moly rare.
+ Close it grows beside her portal,
+ Springing from a stock immortal,
+ Yes! and often has the Witch
+ Sought to tear it from its niche;
+ But to thwart her cruel will
+ The wise God renews it still.
+ Though it grows in soil perverse,
+ Heaven hath been its jealous nurse,
+ And a flower of snowy mark
+ Springs from root and sheathing dark;
+ Kingly safeguard, only herb
+ That can brutish passion curb!
+ Some do think its name should be
+ Shield-Heart, White Integrity.
+ Traveller, pluck a stem of moly,
+ If thou touch at Circe’s isle,--
+ Hermes’ moly, growing solely
+ To undo enchanter’s wile!
+
+ EDITH M. THOMAS.
+
+
+ CUPID DROWNED.
+
+“Cupid Drowned” (1784-1859), “Cupid Stung” (1779-1852), and “Cupid and
+ My Campasbe” (1558-1606) are three dainty poems recommended by Mrs.
+ Margaret Mooney, of the Albany Teachers’ College, in her “Foundation
+ Studies in Literature.” Children are always delighted with them.
+
+ T’other day as I was twining
+ Roses, for a crown to dine in,
+ What, of all things, ’mid the heap,
+ Should I light on, fast asleep,
+ But the little desperate elf,
+ The tiny traitor, Love, himself!
+ By the wings I picked him up
+ Like a bee, and in a cup
+ Of my wine I plunged and sank him,
+ Then what d’ye think I did?--I drank him.
+ Faith, I thought him dead. Not he!
+ There he lives with tenfold glee;
+ And now this moment with his wings
+ I feel him tickling my heart-strings.
+
+ LEIGH HUNT.
+
+
+ CUPID STUNG.
+
+ Cupid once upon a bed
+ Of roses laid his weary head;
+ Luckless urchin, not to see
+ Within the leaves a slumbering bee.
+ The bee awak’d--with anger wild
+ The bee awak’d, and stung the child.
+ Loud and piteous are his cries;
+ To Venus quick he runs, he flies;
+ “Oh, Mother! I am wounded through--
+ I die with pain--in sooth I do!
+ Stung by some little angry thing,
+ Some serpent on a tiny wing--
+ A bee it was--for once, I know,
+ I heard a rustic call it so.”
+ Thus he spoke, and she the while
+ Heard him with a soothing smile;
+ Then said, “My infant, if so much
+ Thou feel the little wild bee’s touch,
+ How must the heart, ah, Cupid! be,
+ The hapless heart that’s stung by thee!”
+
+ THOMAS MOORE.
+
+
+ CUPID AND MY CAMPASBE.
+
+ Cupid and my Campasbe played
+ At cards for kisses. Cupid paid.
+ He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows,
+ His mother’s doves and team of sparrows.
+ Loses them, too; then down he throws
+ The coral of his lips, the rose
+ Growing on his cheek, but none knows how;
+ With them the crystal of his brow,
+ And then the dimple of his chin.
+ All these did my Campasbe win.
+ At last he set her both his eyes;
+ She won and Cupid blind did rise.
+ Oh, Love, hath she done this to thee!
+ What shall, alas, become of me!
+
+ JOHN LYLY.
+
+
+ A BALLAD FOR A BOY.
+
+ Violo Roseboro, one of our good authors, brought to me “A Ballad for a
+ Boy,” saying: “I believe it is one of the poems that every child ought
+ to know.” It is included in this compilation out of respect to her
+ opinion and also because the boys to whom I have read it said it was
+“great,” The lesson in it is certainly fine. Men who are true men want
+ to settle their own disputes by a hand-to-hand fight, but they will
+ always help each other when a third party or the elements interfere.
+ Humanity is greater than human interests.
+
+ When George the Third was reigning, a hundred years ago,
+ He ordered Captain Farmer to chase the foreign foe,
+ “You’re not afraid of shot,” said he, “you’re not afraid of wreck,
+ So cruise about the west of France in the frigate called _Quebec_.
+
+ “Quebec was once a Frenchman’s town, but twenty years ago
+ King George the Second sent a man called General Wolfe, you know,
+ To clamber up a precipice and look into Quebec,
+ As you’d look down a hatchway when standing on the deck.
+
+ “If Wolfe could beat the Frenchmen then, so you can beat them now.
+ Before he got inside the town he died, I must allow.
+ But since the town was won for us it is a lucky name,
+ And you’ll remember Wolfe’s good work, and you shall do the same.”
+
+ Then Farmer said, “I’ll try, sir,” and Farmer bowed so low
+ That George could see his pigtail tied in a velvet bow.
+ George gave him his commission, and that it might be safer,
+ Signed “King of Britain, King of France,” and sealed it with a wafer.
+
+ Then proud was Captain Farmer in a frigate of his own,
+ And grander on his quarter-deck than George upon his throne.
+ He’d two guns in his cabin, and on the spar-deck ten,
+ And twenty on the gun-deck, and more than ten-score men.
+
+ And as a huntsman scours the brakes with sixteen brace of dogs,
+ With two-and-thirty cannon the ship explored the fogs.
+ From Cape la Hogue to Ushant, from Rochefort to Belleisle,
+ She hunted game till reef and mud were rubbing on her keel.
+
+ The fogs are dried, the frigate’s side is bright with melting tar,
+ The lad up in the foretop sees square white sails afar;
+ The east wind drives three square-sailed masts from out the Breton bay,
+ And “Clear for action!” Farmer shouts, and reefers yell “Hooray!”
+
+ The Frenchmen’s captain had a name I wish I could pronounce;
+ A Breton gentleman was he, and wholly free from bounce,
+ One like those famous fellows who died by guillotine
+ For honour and the fleur-de-lys, and Antoinette the Queen.
+
+ The Catholic for Louis, the Protestant for George,
+ Each captain drew as bright a sword as saintly smiths could forge;
+ And both were simple seamen, but both could understand
+ How each was bound to win or die for flag and native land.
+
+ The French ship was _La Surveillante_, which means the watchful maid;
+ She folded up her head-dress and began to cannonade.
+ Her hull was clean, and ours was foul; we had to spread more sail.
+ On canvas, stays, and topsail yards her bullets came like hail.
+
+ Sore smitten were both captains, and many lads beside,
+ And still to cut our rigging the foreign gunners tried.
+ A sail-clad spar came flapping down athwart a blazing gun;
+ We could not quench the rushing flames, and so the Frenchman won.
+
+ Our quarter-deck was crowded, the waist was all aglow;
+ Men hung upon the taffrail half scorched, but loth to go;
+ Our captain sat where once he stood, and would not quit his chair.
+ He bade his comrades leap for life, and leave him bleeding there.
+
+ The guns were hushed on either side, the Frenchmen lowered boats,
+ They flung us planks and hen-coops, and everything that floats.
+ They risked their lives, good fellows! to bring their rivals aid.
+ Twas by the conflagration the peace was strangely made.
+
+ _La Surveillante_ was like a sieve; the victors had no rest;
+ They had to dodge the east wind to reach the port of Brest.
+ And where the waves leapt lower and the riddled ship went slower,
+ In triumph, yet in funeral guise, came fisher-boats to tow her.
+
+ They dealt with us as brethren, they mourned for Farmer dead;
+ And as the wounded captives passed each Breton bowed the head.
+ Then spoke the French Lieutenant, “Twas fire that won, not we.
+ You never struck your flag to us; you’ll go to England free.”
+
+ Twas the sixth day of October, seventeen hundred seventy-nine,
+ A year when nations ventured against us to combine,
+ _Quebec_ was burned and Farmer slain, by us remembered not;
+ But thanks be to the French book wherein they’re not forgot.
+
+ Now you, if you’ve to fight the French, my youngster, bear in mind
+ Those seamen of King Louis so chivalrous and kind;
+ Think of the Breton gentlemen who took our lads to Brest,
+ And treat some rescued Breton as a comrade and a guest.
+
+
+ THE SKELETON IN ARMOUR.
+
+“The Skeleton in Armour” (Longfellow, 1807-82) is a “boy’s poem.” It
+ it pure literature and good history.
+
+ “Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!
+ Who, with thy hollow breast
+ Still in rude armour drest,
+ Comest to daunt me!
+ Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
+ But with thy fleshless palms
+ Stretched, as if asking alms,
+ Why dost thou haunt me?”
+
+ Then from those cavernous eyes
+ Pale flashes seemed to rise,
+ As when the Northern skies
+ Gleam in December;
+ And, like the water’s flow
+ Under December’s snow,
+ Came a dull voice of woe
+ From the heart’s chamber.
+
+ “I was a Viking old!
+ My deeds, though manifold,
+ No Skald in song has told,
+ No Saga taught thee!
+ Take heed that in thy verse
+ Thou dost the tale rehearse,
+ Else dread a dead man’s curse;
+ For this I sought thee.
+
+ “Far in the Northern Land,
+ By the wild Baltic’s strand,
+ I, with my childish hand,
+ Tamed the gerfalcon;
+ And, with my skates fast-bound,
+ Skimmed the half-frozen Sound,
+ That the poor whimpering hound
+ Trembled to walk on.
+
+ “Oft to his frozen lair
+ Tracked I the grizzly bear,
+ While from my path the hare
+ Fled like a shadow;
+ Oft through the forest dark
+ Followed the were-wolf’s bark,
+ Until the soaring lark
+ Sang from the meadow.
+
+ “But when I older grew,
+ Joining a corsair’s crew,
+ O’er the dark sea I flew
+ With the marauders.
+ Wild was the life we led;
+ Many the souls that sped,
+ Many the hearts that bled,
+ By our stern orders.
+
+ “Many a wassail-bout
+ Wore the long Winter out;
+ Often our midnight shout
+ Set the cocks crowing,
+ As we the Berserk’s tale
+ Measured in cups of ale,
+ Draining the oaken pail
+ Filled to overflowing.
+
+ “Once as I told in glee
+ Tales of the stormy sea,
+ Soft eyes did gaze on me,
+ Burning yet tender;
+ And as the white stars shine
+ On the dark Norway pine,
+ On that dark heart of mine
+ Fell their soft splendour.
+
+ “I wooed the blue-eyed maid,
+ Yielding, yet half afraid,
+ And in the forest’s shade
+ Our vows were plighted.
+ Under its loosened vest
+ Fluttered her little breast,
+ Like birds within their nest
+ By the hawk frighted.
+
+ “Bright in her father’s hall
+ Shields gleamed upon the wall,
+ Loud sang the minstrels all,
+ Chanting his glory;
+ When of old Hildebrand
+ I asked his daughter’s hand,
+ Mute did the minstrels stand
+ To hear my story.
+
+ “While the brown ale he quaffed,
+ Loud then the champion laughed,
+ And as the wind-gusts waft
+ The sea-foam brightly,
+ So the loud laugh of scorn,
+ Out of those lips unshorn,
+ From the deep drinking-horn
+ Blew the foam lightly.
+
+ “She was a Prince’s child,
+ I but a Viking wild,
+ And though she blushed and smiled,
+ I was discarded!
+ Should not the dove so white
+ Follow the sea-mew’s flight?
+ Why did they leave that night
+ Her nest unguarded?
+
+ “Scarce had I put to sea,
+ Bearing the maid with me,--
+ Fairest of all was she
+ Among the Norsemen!--
+ When on the white sea-strand,
+ Waving his armed hand,
+ Saw we old Hildebrand,
+ With twenty horsemen.
+
+ “Then launched they to the blast,
+ Bent like a reed each mast,
+ Yet we were gaining fast,
+ When the wind failed us;
+ And with a sudden flaw
+ Came round the gusty Skaw,
+ So that our foe we saw
+ Laugh as he hailed us.
+
+ “And as to catch the gale
+ Round veered the flapping sail,
+ ‘Death!’ was the helmsman’s hail,
+ ‘Death without quarter!’
+ Midships with iron keel
+ Struck we her ribs of steel;
+ Down her black hulk did reel
+ Through the black water!
+
+ “As with his wings aslant,
+ Sails the fierce cormorant,
+ Seeking some rocky haunt,
+ With his prey laden,
+ So toward the open main,
+ Beating to sea again,
+ Through the wild hurricane,
+ Bore I the maiden.
+
+ “Three weeks we westward bore,
+ And when the storm was o’er,
+ Cloud-like we saw the shore
+ Stretching to leeward;
+ There for my lady’s bower
+ Built I the lofty tower
+ Which to this very hour
+ Stands looking seaward.
+
+ “There lived we many years;
+ Time dried the maiden’s tears;
+ She had forgot her fears,
+ She was a mother;
+ Death closed her mild blue eyes;
+ Under that tower she lies;
+ Ne’er shall the sun arise
+ On such another.
+
+ “Still grew my bosom then,
+ Still as a stagnant fen!
+ Hateful to me were men,
+ The sunlight hateful!
+ In the vast forest here,
+ Clad in my warlike gear,
+ Fell I upon my spear,
+ Oh, death was grateful!
+
+ “Thus, seamed with many scars,
+ Bursting these prison bars,
+ Up to its native stars
+ My soul ascended!
+ There from the flowing bowl
+ Deep drinks the warrior’s soul,
+ _Skoal_! to the Northland! _skoal_!”
+ Thus the tale ended.
+
+ HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ THE REVENGE.
+
+ A BALLAD OF THE FLEET
+
+ Tennyson’s (1807-92) “The _Revenge_” finds a welcome here because it is
+ a favourite with teachers of elocution and their audiences. It teaches
+ us to hold life cheap when the nation’s safety is at stake.
+
+ At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,
+ And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from away:
+ “Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!”
+ Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: “’Fore God, I am no coward;
+ But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear,
+ And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick.
+ We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?”
+
+ Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: “I know you are no coward;
+ You fly them for a moment, to fight with them again.
+ But I’ve ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore.
+ I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard,
+ To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain.”
+
+ So Lord Howard passed away with five ships of war that day,
+ Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven;
+ But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land
+ Very carefully and slow,
+ Men of Bideford in Devon,
+ And we laid them on the ballast down below;
+ For we brought them all aboard,
+ And they blest him in their pain that they were not left to Spain,
+ To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.
+
+ He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,
+ And he sail’d away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,
+ With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow.
+ “Shall we fight or shall we fly?
+ Good Sir Richard, tell us now,
+ For to fight is but to die!
+
+ “There’ll be little of us left by the time this sun be set”
+ And Sir Richard said again: “We be all good Englishmen.
+ Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,
+ For I never turn’d my back upon Don or devil yet.”
+
+ Sir Richard spoke and he laugh’d, and we roar’d a hurrah, and so
+ The little _Revenge_ ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,
+ With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;
+ For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen,
+ And the little _Revenge_ ran on thro’ the long sea-lane between.
+
+ Thousands of their soldiers looked down from their decks and laugh’d,
+ Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft
+ Running on and on, till delay’d
+ By their mountain-like _San Philip_ that, of fifteen hundred tons,
+ And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,
+ Took the breath from our sails, and we stay’d.
+
+ And while now the great _San Philip_ hung above us like a cloud
+ Whence the thunderbolt will fall
+ Long and loud.
+ Four galleons drew away
+ From the Spanish fleet that day,
+ And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,
+ And the battle-thunder broke from them all.
+
+ But anon the great _San Philip_, she bethought herself and went,
+ Having that within her womb that had left her ill content;
+ And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,
+ For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,
+ And a dozen times we shook ’em off as a dog that shakes his ears
+ When he leaps from the water to the land.
+
+ And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea,
+ But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three;
+ Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,
+ Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder
+ and flame;
+ Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead
+ and her shame.
+ For some were sunk and many were shatter’d, and so could
+ fight us no more--
+ God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?
+
+ For he said, “Fight on! fight on!”
+ Tho’ his vessel was all but a wreck;
+ And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone,
+ With a grisly wound to be drest he had left the deck,
+ But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,
+ And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head,
+ And he said, “Fight on! Fight on!”
+
+ And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far
+ over the summer sea,
+ And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring;
+ But they dared not touch us again, for they fear’d that
+ we still could sting,
+ So they watched what the end would be.
+ And we had not fought them in vain,
+ But in perilous plight were we,
+ Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,
+ And half of the rest of us maim’d for life
+ In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife;
+ And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold,
+ And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was
+ all of it spent;
+ And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side;
+ But Sir Richard cried in his English pride:
+ “We have fought such a fight for a day and a night
+ As may never be fought again!
+ We have won great glory, my men!
+ And a day less or more
+ At sea or ashore,
+ We die--does it matter when?
+ Sink me the ship, Master Gunner--sink her, split her in twain!
+ Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!”
+
+ And the gunner said. “Ay, ay,” but the seamen made reply:
+ “We have children, we have wives,
+ And the Lord hath spared our lives.
+ We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go;
+ We shall live to fight again, and to strike another blow.”
+ And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe.
+ And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then,
+ Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last,
+ And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace;
+ But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:
+ “I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true;
+ I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do.
+ With a joyful spirit I, Sir Richard Grenville, die!”
+ And he fell upon their decks, and he died.
+
+ And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true,
+ And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap
+ That he dared her with one little ship and his English few.
+ Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew,
+ But they sank his body with honour down into the deep,
+ And they mann’d the _Revenge_ with a swarthier alien crew,
+ And away she sail’d with her loss and long’d for her own;
+ When a wind from the lands they had ruin’d awoke from sleep,
+ And the water began to heave and the weather to moan,
+ And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,
+ And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew,
+ Till it smote on their hulls, and their sails, and their masts,
+ and their flags,
+ And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shatter’d navy of Spain,
+ And the little _Revenge_ herself went down by the island crags,
+ To be lost evermore in the main.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ SIR GALAHAD.
+
+ Sir Galahad is the most moral and upright of all the Knights of the
+ Round Table. The strong lines of the poem (Tennyson, 1809-92) are the
+ strong lines of human destiny--
+
+ “My strength is as the strength of ten
+ Because my heart is pure.”
+
+
+ My good blade carves the casques of men,
+ My tough lance thrusteth sure,
+ My strength is as the strength of ten,
+ Because my heart is pure.
+ The shattering trumpet shrilleth high,
+ The hard brands shiver on the steel,
+ The splintered spear-shafts crack and fly,
+ The horse and rider reel:
+ They reel, they roll in clanging lists,
+ And when the tide of combat stands,
+ Perfume and flowers fall in showers,
+ That lightly rain from ladies’ hands.
+
+ How sweet are looks that ladies bend
+ On whom their favours fall!
+ For them I battle till the end,
+ To save from shame and thrall:
+ But all my heart is drawn above,
+ My knees are bow’d in crypt and shrine:
+ I never felt the kiss of love,
+ Nor maiden’s hand in mine.
+ More bounteous aspects on me beam,
+ Me mightier transports move and thrill;
+ So keep I fair thro’ faith and prayer
+ A virgin heart in work and will.
+
+ When down the stormy crescent goes,
+ A light before me swims,
+ Between dark stems the forest glows,
+ I hear a noise of hymns:
+ Then by some secret shrine I ride;
+ I hear a voice, but none are there;
+ The stalls are void, the doors are wide,
+ The tapers burning fair.
+ Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth,
+ The silver vessels sparkle clean,
+ The shrill bell rings, the censer swings,
+ And solemn chaunts resound between.
+
+ Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres
+ I find a magic bark;
+ I leap on board: no helmsman steers,
+ I float till all is dark.
+ A gentle sound, an awful light!
+ Three angels bear the holy Grail:
+ With folded feet, in stoles of white,
+ On sleeping wings they sail.
+ Ah, blessèd vision! blood of God!
+ My spirit beats her mortal bars,
+ As down dark tides the glory slides,
+ And star-like mingles with the stars.
+
+ When on my goodly charger borne
+ Thro’ dreaming towns I go,
+ The cock crows ere the Christmas morn,
+ The streets are dumb with snow.
+ The tempest crackles on the leads,
+ And, ringing, springs from brand and mail;
+ But o’er the dark a glory spreads,
+ And gilds the driving hail.
+ I leave the plain, I climb the height;
+ No branchy thicket shelter yields;
+ But blessèd forms in whistling storms
+ Fly o’er waste fens and windy fields.
+
+ A maiden knight--to me is given
+ Such hope, I know not fear;
+ I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven
+ That often meet me here.
+ I muse on joy that will not cease,
+ Pure spaces cloth’d in living beams,
+ Pure lilies of eternal peace,
+ Whose odours haunt my dreams;
+ And, stricken by an angel’s hand,
+ This mortal armour that I wear,
+ This weight and size, this heart and eyes,
+ Are touch’d, are turn’d to finest air.
+
+ The clouds are broken in the sky,
+ And thro’ the mountain-walls
+ A rolling organ-harmony
+ Swells up, and shakes and falls.
+ Then move the trees, the copses nod,
+ Wings flutter, voices hover clear:
+ “O just and faithful knight of God!
+ Ride on! the prize is near.”
+ So pass I hostel, hall, and grange;
+ By bridge and ford, by park and pale,
+ All-arm’d I ride, whate’er betide,
+ Until I find the holy Grail.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ A NAME IN THE SAND.
+
+“A Name in the Sand,” by Hannah Flagg Gould (1789-1865), is a poem to
+ correct our ready overestimate of our own importance.
+
+ Alone I walked the ocean strand;
+ A pearly shell was in my hand:
+ I stooped and wrote upon the sand
+ My name--the year--the day.
+ As onward from the spot I passed,
+ One lingering look behind I cast;
+ A wave came rolling high and fast,
+ And washed my lines away.
+
+ And so, methought, ’twill shortly be
+ With every mark on earth from me:
+ A wave of dark oblivion’s sea
+ Will sweep across the place
+ Where I have trod the sandy shore
+ Of time, and been, to be no more,
+ Of me--my day--the name I bore,
+ To leave nor track nor trace.
+
+ And yet, with Him who counts the sands
+ And holds the waters in His hands,
+ I know a lasting record stands
+ Inscribed against my name,
+ Of all this mortal part has wrought,
+ Of all this thinking soul has thought,
+ And from these fleeting moments caught
+ For glory or for shame.
+
+ HANNAH FLAGG GOULD.
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+ PART VI.
+
+ “Grow old along with me!
+ The best is yet to be,--
+ The last of life, for which the first was made.”
+
+
+ THE VOICE OF SPRING.
+
+“The Voice of Spring,” by Felicia Hemans (1749-1835), becomes
+ attractive as years go on. The line in this poem that captivated my
+ youthful fancy was:
+
+ “The larch has hung all his tassels forth,”
+
+ The delight with which trees hang out their new little tassels every
+ year is one of the charms of “the pine family.” John Burroughs sent us
+ down a tiny hemlock, that grew in our window-box at school for five
+ years, and every spring it was a new joy on account of the fine, tender
+ tassels. Mrs. Hemans had a vivid imagination backed up by an abundant
+ information.
+
+ I come, I come! ye have called me long;
+ I come o’er the mountains, with light and song.
+ Ye may trace my step o’er the waking earth
+ By the winds which tell of the violet’s birth,
+ By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,
+ By the green leaves opening as I pass.
+
+ I have breathed on the South, and the chestnut-flowers
+ By thousands have burst from the forest bowers,
+ And the ancient graves and the fallen fanes
+ Are veiled with wreaths on Italian plains;
+ But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom,
+ To speak of the ruin or the tomb!
+
+ I have looked o’er the hills of the stormy North,
+ And the larch has hung all his tassels forth;
+ The fisher is out on the sunny sea,
+ And the reindeer bounds o’er the pastures free,
+ And the pine has a fringe of softer green,
+ And the moss looks bright, where my step has been.
+
+ I have sent through the wood-paths a glowing sigh,
+ And called out each voice of the deep blue sky,
+ From the night-bird’s lay through the starry time,
+ In the groves of the soft Hesperian clime,
+ To the swan’s wild note by the Iceland lakes,
+ When the dark fir-branch into verdure breaks.
+
+ From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain;
+ They are sweeping on to the silvery main,
+ They are flashing down from the mountain brows,
+ They are flinging spray o’er the forest boughs,
+ They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves,
+ And the earth resounds with the joy of waves.
+
+ FELICIA HEMANS.
+
+
+ THE FORSAKEN MERMAN.
+
+“The Forsaken Merman,” by Matthew Arnold (1822-88), is a poem that I do
+ not expect children to appreciate fully, even when they care enough for
+ it to learn it. It is too long for most children to commit to memory,
+ and I generally assign one stanza to one pupil and another to another
+ pupil until it is divided up among them. The poem is a masterpiece.
+ Doubtless the poet meant to show that the forsaken merman had a greater
+ soul to save than the woman who sought to save her soul by deserting
+ natural duty. Salvation does not come through the faith that builds
+ itself at the expense of love.
+
+ Come, dear children, let us away;
+ Down and away below!
+ Now my brothers call from the bay,
+ Now the great winds shoreward blow,
+ Now the salt tides seaward flow;
+ Now the wild white horses play,
+ Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
+ Children dear, let us away!
+ This way, this way!
+
+ Call her once before you go--
+ Call once yet!
+ In a voice that she will know:
+ “Margaret! Margaret!”
+ Children’s voices should be dear
+ (Call once more) to a mother’s ear;
+ Children’s voices, wild with pain--
+ Surely she will come again!
+ Call her once and come away;
+ This way, this way!
+ “Mother dear, we cannot stay!
+ The wild white horses foam and fret.”
+ Margaret! Margaret!
+
+ Come, dear children, come away down;
+ Call no more!
+ One last look at the white-wall’d town,
+ And the little gray church on the windy shore;
+ Then come down!
+ She will not come though you call all day;
+ Come away, come away!
+
+ Children dear, was it yesterday
+ We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
+ In the caverns where we lay,
+ Through the surf and through the swell,
+ The far-off sound of a silver bell?
+ Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
+ Where the winds are all asleep;
+ Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
+ Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
+ Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
+ Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;
+ Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
+ Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
+ Where great whales come sailing by,
+ Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
+ Round the world forever and aye?
+ When did music come this way?
+ Children dear, was it yesterday?
+
+ Children dear, was it yesterday
+ (Call yet once) that she went away?
+ Once she sate with you and me,
+ On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,
+ And the youngest sate on her knee.
+ She comb’d its bright hair, and she tended it well,
+ When down swung the sound of a far-off bell.
+ She sigh’d, she look’d up through the clear green sea;
+ She said: “I must go, for my kinsfolk pray
+ In the little gray church on the shore to-day.
+ ’Twill be Easter-time in the world--ah me!
+ And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee.”
+ I said: “Go up, dear heart, through the waves;
+ Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves!”
+ She smil’d, she went up through the surf in the bay.
+ Children dear, was it yesterday?
+
+ Children dear, were we long alone?
+ “The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan;
+ Long prayers,” I said, “in the world they say;
+ Come!” I said; and we rose through the surf in the bay.
+ We went up the beach, by the sandy down
+ Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall’d town;
+ Through the narrow pav’d streets, where all was still,
+ To the little gray church on the windy hill.
+ From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,
+ But we stood without in the cold blowing airs.
+ We climb’d on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,
+ And we gaz’d up the aisle through the small leaded panes.
+ She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:
+ “Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here!
+ Dear heart,” I said, “we are long alone;
+ The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.”
+ But, ah, she gave me never a look,
+ For her eyes were seal’d to the holy book!
+ Loud prays the priest: shut stands the door.
+ Come away, children, call no more!
+ Come away, come down, call no more!
+
+ Down, down, down!
+ Down to the depths of the sea!
+ She sits at her wheel in the humming town,
+ Singing most joyfully.
+ Hark what she sings: “O joy, O joy,
+ For the humming street, and the child with its toy!
+ For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well;
+ For the wheel where I spun,
+ And the blessèd light of the sun!”
+ And so she sings her fill,
+ Singing most joyfully,
+ Till the spindle drops from her hand,
+ And the whizzing wheel stands still.
+ She steals to the window, and looks at the sand,
+ And over the sand at the sea;
+ And her eyes are set in a stare;
+ And anon there breaks a sigh,
+ And anon there drops a tear,
+ From a sorrow-clouded eye,
+ And a heart sorrow-laden,
+ A long, long sigh;
+ For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden,
+ And the gleam of her golden hair.
+
+ Come away, away, children;
+ Come, children, come down!
+ The hoarse wind blows colder;
+ Lights shine in the town.
+ She will start from her slumber
+ When gusts shake the door;
+ She will hear the winds howling,
+ Will hear the waves roar.
+ We shall see, while above us
+ The waves roar and whirl,
+ A ceiling of amber,
+ A pavement of pearl.
+ Singing: “Here came a mortal,
+ But faithless was she!
+ And alone dwell forever
+ The kings of the sea.”
+
+ But, children, at midnight,
+ When soft the winds blow,
+ When clear falls the moonlight,
+ When spring-tides are low;
+ When sweet airs come seaward
+ From heaths starr’d with broom,
+ And high rocks throw mildly
+ On the blanch’d sands a gloom;
+ Up the still, glistening beaches,
+ Up the creeks we will hie,
+ Over banks of bright seaweed
+ The ebb-tide leaves dry.
+ We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
+ At the white, sleeping town;
+ At the church on the hill-side--
+ And then come back down.
+ Singing: “There dwells a lov’d one,
+ But cruel is she!
+ She left lonely forever
+ The kings of the sea.”
+
+ MATTHEW ARNOLD.
+
+
+ THE BANKS O’ DOON.
+
+“The Banks o’ Doon,” by Robert Burns (1759-96). Bonnie Doon is in the
+ southwestern part of Scotland. Robert Burns’s old home it close to it.
+ The house has low walls, a thatched roof, and only two rooms. Alloway
+ Kirk and the two bridges so famous in Robert Burns’s verse are near by.
+ This is an enchanted land, and the Scotch people for miles around Ayr
+ speak of the poet with sincere affection. Burns, more than any other
+ poet, has thrown the enchantment of poetry over his own locality.
+
+ Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon,
+ How can ye blume sae fair!
+ How can ye chant, ye little birds,
+ And I sae fu’ o’ care.
+
+ Thou’lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird
+ That sings upon the bough;
+ Thou minds me o’ the happy days
+ When my fause luve was true.
+
+ Thou’lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird
+ That sings beside thy mate;
+ For sae I sat, and sae I sang,
+ And wist na o’ my fate.
+
+ Aft hae I rov’d by bonnie Doon,
+ To see the woodbine twine,
+ And ilka bird sang o’ its love,
+ And sae did I o’ mine.
+
+ Wi’ lightsome heart I pu’d a rose
+ Frae off its thorny tree;
+ And my fause luver staw the rose,
+ But left the thorn wi’ me.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS.
+
+ Oft in the stilly night
+ Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
+ Fond Memory brings the light
+ Of other days around me:
+ The smiles, the tears
+ Of boyhood’s years,
+ The words of love then spoken;
+ The eyes that shone,
+ Now dimmed and gone,
+ The cheerful hearts now broken!
+ Thus in the stilly night
+ Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
+ Sad Memory brings the light
+ Of other days around me.
+
+ When I remember all
+ The friends so link’d together
+ I’ve seen around me fall
+ Like leaves in wintry weather,
+ I feel like one
+ Who treads alone
+ Some banquet-hall deserted,
+ Whose lights are fled,
+ Whose garlands dead,
+ And all but he departed!
+ Thus in the stilly night
+ Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
+ Sad Memory brings the light
+ Of other days around me.
+
+ THOMAS MOORE.
+
+
+ MY OWN SHALL COME TO ME.
+
+ If John Burroughs (1837-) had never written any other poem than “My Own
+ Shall Come to Me,” he would have stood to all ages as one of the
+ greatest of American poets. The poem is most characteristic of the
+ tall, majestic, slow-going poet and naturalist. There is no greater
+ line in Greek or English literature than
+
+ “I stand amid the eternal ways.”
+
+
+ Serene I fold my hands and wait,
+ Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea.
+ I rave no more ’gainst time or fate,
+ For lo! my own shall come to me.
+
+ I stay my haste, I make delays,
+ For what avails this eager pace?
+ I stand amid the eternal ways,
+ And what is mine shall know my face.
+
+ Asleep, awake, by night or day
+ The friends I seek are seeking me;
+ No wind can drive my bark astray,
+ Nor change the tide of destiny.
+
+ What matter if I stand alone?
+ I wait with joy the coming years;
+ My heart shall reap when it has sown,
+ And gather up its fruit of tears.
+
+ The stars come nightly to the sky;
+ The tidal wave comes to the sea;
+ Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
+ Can keep my own away from me.
+
+ The waters know their own and draw
+ The brook that springs in yonder heights;
+ So flows the good with equal law
+ Unto the soul of pure delights.
+
+ JOHN BURROUGHS.
+
+
+ ODE TO A SKYLARK.
+
+“Ode to a Skylark,” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), is usually
+ assigned to “grammar grades” of schools. It is included here out of
+ respect to a boy of eleven years who was more impressed with these
+ lines than with any other lines in any poem:
+
+ “Like a poet hidden,
+ In the light of thought
+ Singing songs unbidden
+ Till the world is wrought
+ To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.”
+
+
+ Hail to thee, blithe spirit--
+ Bird thou never wert--
+ That from heaven or near it
+ Pourest thy full heart
+ In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
+
+ Higher still and higher
+ From the earth thou springest,
+ Like a cloud of fire;
+ The blue deep thou wingest,
+ And singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest.
+
+ In the golden lightning
+ Of the sunken sun,
+ O’er which clouds are brightening,
+ Thou dost float and run,
+ Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
+
+ The pale purple even
+ Melts around thy flight;
+ Like a star of heaven,
+ In the broad daylight
+ Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.
+
+ All the earth and air
+ With thy voice is loud,
+ As, when night is bare,
+ From one lonely cloud
+ The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.
+
+ What thou art we know not;
+ What is most like thee?
+ From rainbow-clouds there flow not
+ Drops so bright to see
+ As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:--
+
+ Like a poet hidden
+ In the light of thought;
+ Singing hymns unbidden,
+ Till the world is wrought
+ To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.
+
+ Teach us, sprite or bird,
+ What sweet thoughts are thine:
+ I have never heard
+ Praise of love or wine
+ That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
+
+ Chorus hymeneal
+ Or triumphal chaunt,
+ Matched with thine, would be all
+ But an empty vaunt--
+ A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
+
+ What objects are the fountains
+ Of thy happy strain?
+ What fields, or waves, or mountains?
+ What shapes of sky or plain?
+ What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
+
+ Teach me half the gladness
+ That thy brain must know,
+ Such harmonious madness
+ From my lips would flow,
+ The world should listen then, as I am listening now!
+
+ PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
+
+
+ THE SANDS OF DEE.
+
+ I have often had the pleasure of riding across the coast from Chester,
+ England, to Rhyl, on the north coast of Wales, where stretch “The Sands
+ of Dee” (Charles Kingsley, 1819-75). These purple sands at low tide
+ stretch off into the sea miles away, and are said to be full of
+ quicksands.
+
+ “O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
+ And call the cattle home,
+ And call the cattle home,
+ Across the sands of Dee.”
+ The western wind was wild and dark with foam
+ And all alone went she.
+
+ The western tide crept up along the sand,
+ And o’er and o’er the sand,
+ And round and round the sand,
+ As far as eye could see.
+ The rolling mist came down and hid the land;
+ And never home came she.
+ Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair,--
+ A tress of golden hair,
+ A drownèd maiden’s hair,
+ Above the nets at sea?
+ Was never salmon yet that shone so fair
+ Among the stakes on Dee.
+
+ They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
+ The cruel crawling foam,
+ The cruel hungry foam,
+ To her grave beside the sea.
+ But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home
+ Across the sands of Dee.
+
+ CHARLES KINGSLEY.
+
+
+ A WISH.
+
+“A Wish” (by Samuel Rogers, 1763-1855) and “Lucy” (by Wordsworth,
+ 1770-1850) are two gems that can be valued only for the spirit of quiet
+ and modesty diffused by them.
+
+ Mine be a cot beside the hill;
+ A bee-hive’s hum shall soothe my ear;
+ A willowy brook that turns a mill
+ With many a fall shall linger near.
+
+ The swallow, oft, beneath my thatch
+ Shall twitter from her clay-built nest;
+ Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch,
+ And share my meal, a welcome guest.
+
+ Around my ivied porch shall spring
+ Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew;
+ And Lucy, at her wheel, shall sing
+ In russet gown and apron blue.
+
+ The village church among the trees,
+ Where first our marriage-vows were given,
+ With merry peals shall swell the breeze
+ And point with taper spire to Heaven.
+
+ S. ROGERS.
+
+
+ LUCY.
+
+ She dwelt among the untrodden ways
+ Beside the springs of Dove;
+ A maid whom there were none to praise,
+ And very few to love.
+
+ A violet by a mossy stone
+ Half-hidden from the eye!
+ Fair as a star, when only one
+ Is shining in the sky.
+
+ She lived unknown, and few could know
+ When Lucy ceased to be;
+ But she is in her grave, and, oh,
+ The difference to me!
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ SOLITUDE.
+
+ 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 does 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.
+
+ ALEXANDER POPE.
+
+
+ JOHN ANDERSON
+
+“John Anderson,” by Robert Burns (1759-96). This poem is included to
+ please several teachers.
+
+ John Anderson, my jo, John,
+ When we were first acquent
+ Your locks were like the raven,
+ Your bonnie brow was brent;
+ But now your brow is bald, John,
+ Your locks are like the snow;
+ But blessings on your frosty pow,
+ John Anderson, my jo.
+
+ John Anderson, my jo, John,
+ We clamb the hill thegither,
+ And mony 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.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ THE GOD OF MUSIC.
+
+“The God of Music,” by Edith M. Thomas, an Ohio poetess now living. In
+ this sonnet the poetess has touched the power of Wordsworth or Keats
+ and placed herself among the immortals.
+
+ The God of Music dwelleth out of doors.
+ All seasons through his minstrelsy we meet,
+ Breathing by field and covert haunting-sweet
+ From organ-lofts in forests old he pours:
+ A solemn harmony: on leafy floors
+ To smooth autumnal pipes he moves his feet,
+ Or with the tingling plectrum of the sleet
+ In winter keen beats out his thrilling scores.
+ Leave me the reed unplucked beside the stream.
+ And he will stoop and fill it with the breeze;
+ Leave me the viol’s frame in secret trees,
+ Unwrought, and it shall wake a druid theme;
+ Leave me the whispering shell on Nereid shores.
+ The God of Music dwelleth out of doors.
+
+ EDITH M. THOMAS.
+
+
+ A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT.
+
+“A Musical Instrument” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61). This
+ poem is the supreme masterpiece of Mrs. Browning. The prime thought in
+ it is the sacrifice and pain that must go to make a poet of any genius.
+
+ “The great god sighed for the cost and the pain.”
+
+
+ What was he doing, the great god Pan,
+ Down in the reeds by the river?
+ Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
+ Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
+ And breaking the golden lilies afloat
+ With the dragon-fly on the river.
+
+ He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
+ From the deep cool bed of the river:
+ The limpid water turbidly ran,
+ And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
+ And the dragon-fly had fled away,
+ Ere he brought it out of the river.
+
+ High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
+ While turbidly flow’d the river;
+ And hack’d and hew’d as a great god can,
+ With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
+ Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed
+ To prove it fresh from the river.
+
+ He cut it short, did the great god Pan
+ (How tall it stood in the river!),
+ Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
+ Steadily from the outside ring,
+ And notched the poor dry empty thing
+ In holes, as he sat by the river.
+
+ “This is the way,” laugh’d the great god Pan
+ (Laugh’d while he sat by the river),
+ “The only way, since gods began
+ To make sweet music, they could succeed.”
+ Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed
+ He blew in power by the river.
+
+ Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
+ Piercing sweet by the river!
+ Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
+ The sun on the hill forgot to die,
+ And the lilies reviv’d, and the dragon-fly
+ Came back to dream on the river.
+
+ Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
+ To laugh as he sits by the river,
+ Making a poet out of a man:
+ The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,--
+ For the reed which grows nevermore again
+ As a reed with the reeds in the river.
+
+ ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
+
+
+ THE BRIDES OF ENDERBY.
+
+“The Brides of Enderby,” by Jean Ingelow (1830-97). This poem is very
+ dramatic, and the music of the refrain has done much to make it
+ popular. But the pathos is that which endears it.
+
+ The old mayor climb’d the belfry tower,
+ The ringers ran by two, by three;
+ “Pull, if ye never pull’d before;
+ Good ringers, pull your best,” quoth he.
+ “Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston bells!
+ Ply all your changes, all your swells,
+ Play uppe, ‘The Brides of Enderby.’”
+
+ Men say it was a stolen tyde--
+ The Lord that sent it, He knows all;
+ But in myne ears doth still abide
+ The message that the bells let fall:
+ And there was naught of strange, beside
+ The flight of mews and peewits pied
+ By millions crouch’d on the old sea wall.
+
+ I sat and spun within the doore,
+ My thread brake off, I raised myne eyes;
+ The level sun, like ruddy ore,
+ Lay sinking in the barren skies;
+ And dark against day’s golden death
+ She moved where Lindis wandereth,
+ My sonne’s faire wife, Elizabeth.
+
+ “Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!” calling,
+ Ere the early dews were falling,
+ Farre away I heard her song,
+ “Cusha! Cusha!” all along;
+ Where the reedy Lindis floweth,
+ Floweth, floweth,
+ From the meads where melick groweth
+ Faintly came her milking song--
+
+ “Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!” calling,
+ “For the dews will soone be falling;
+ Leave your meadow grasses mellow,
+ Mellow, mellow;
+ Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow;
+ Come uppe, Whitefoot, come uppe, Lightfoot;
+ Quit the stalks of parsley hollow,
+ Hollow, hollow;
+ Come uppe, Jetty, rise and follow,
+ From the clovers lift your head;
+ Come uppe, Whitefoot, come uppe, Lightfoot,
+ Come uppe, Jetty, rise and follow,
+ Jetty, to the milking shed.”
+
+ If it be long ay, long ago,
+ When I beginne to think howe long,
+ Againe I hear the Lindis flow,
+ Swift as an arrowe, sharpe and strong;
+ And all the aire, it seemeth mee,
+ Bin full of floating bells (sayth shee),
+ That ring the tune of Enderby.
+
+ Alle fresh the level pasture lay,
+ And not a shadowe mote be seene,
+ Save where full fyve good miles away
+ The steeple tower’d from out the greene;
+ And lo! the great bell farre and wide
+ Was heard in all the country side
+ That Saturday at eventide.
+
+ The swanherds where their sedges are
+ Mov’d on in sunset’s golden breath,
+ The shepherde lads I heard afarre,
+ And my sonne’s wife, Elizabeth;
+ Till floating o’er the grassy sea
+ Came downe that kyndly message free,
+ The “Brides of Mavis Enderby.”
+
+ Then some look’d uppe into the sky,
+ And all along where Lindis flows
+ To where the goodly vessels lie,
+ And where the lordly steeple shows.
+ They sayde, “And why should this thing be?
+ What danger lowers by land or sea?
+ They ring the tune of Enderby!
+
+ “For evil news from Mablethorpe,
+ Of pyrate galleys warping down;
+ For shippes ashore beyond the scorpe,
+ They have not spar’d to wake the towne:
+ But while the west bin red to see,
+ And storms be none, and pyrates flee,
+ Why ring ‘The Brides of Enderby’?”
+
+ I look’d without, and lo! my sonne
+ Came riding downe with might and main;
+ He rais’d a shout as he drew on,
+ Till all the welkin rang again,
+ “Elizabeth! Elizabeth!”
+ (A sweeter woman ne’er drew breath
+ Than my sonne’s wife, Elizabeth.)
+
+ “The olde sea wall,” he cried, “is downe,
+ The rising tide comes on apace,
+ And boats adrift in yonder towne
+ Go sailing uppe the market-place.”
+ He shook as one that looks on death:
+ “God save you, mother!” straight he saith
+ “Where is my wife, Elizabeth?”
+
+ “Good sonne, where Lindis winds her way
+ With her two bairns I marked her long;
+ And ere yon bells beganne to play
+ Afar I heard her milking song.”
+ He looked across the grassy lea,
+ To right, to left, “Ho, Enderby!”
+ They rang “The Brides of Enderby!”
+
+ With that he cried and beat his breast;
+ For, lo! along the river’s bed
+ A mighty eygre rear’d his crest,
+ And uppe the Lindis raging sped.
+ It swept with thunderous noises loud;
+ Shap’d like a curling snow-white cloud,
+ Or like a demon in a shroud.
+
+ And rearing Lindis backward press’d
+ Shook all her trembling bankes amaine;
+ Then madly at the eygre’s breast
+ Flung uppe her weltering walls again.
+ Then bankes came downe with ruin and rout--
+ Then beaten foam flew round about--
+ Then all the mighty floods were out.
+
+ So farre, so fast the eygre drave,
+ The heart had hardly time to beat
+ Before a shallow seething wave
+ Sobb’d in the grasses at oure feet:
+ The feet had hardly time to flee
+ Before it brake against the knee,
+ And all the world was in the sea.
+
+ Upon the roofe we sate that night,
+ The noise of bells went sweeping by;
+ I mark’d the lofty beacon light
+ Stream from the church tower, red and high--
+ A lurid mark and dread to see;
+ And awsome bells they were to mee,
+ That in the dark rang “Enderby.”
+
+ They rang the sailor lads to guide
+ From roofe to roofe who fearless row’d;
+ And I--my sonne was at my side,
+ And yet the ruddy beacon glow’d:
+ And yet he moan’d beneath his breath,
+ “O come in life, or come in death!
+ O lost! my love, Elizabeth.”
+
+ And didst thou visit him no more?
+ Thou didst, thou didst, my daughter deare
+ The waters laid thee at his doore,
+ Ere yet the early dawn was clear.
+ Thy pretty bairns in fast embrace,
+ The lifted sun shone on thy face,
+ Downe drifted to thy dwelling-place.
+
+ That flow strew’d wrecks about the grass,
+ That ebbe swept out the flocks to sea;
+ A fatal ebbe and flow, alas!
+ To manye more than myne and mee;
+ But each will mourn his own (she saith);
+ And sweeter woman ne’er drew breath
+ Than my sonne’s wife, Elizabeth.
+
+ I shall never hear her more
+ By the reedy Lindis shore,
+ “Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!” calling,
+ Ere the early dews be falling;
+ I shall never hear her song,
+ “Cusha! Cusha!” all along
+ Where the sunny Lindis floweth,
+ Goeth, floweth;
+ From the meads where melick groweth,
+ When the water winding down,
+ Onward floweth to the town.
+
+ I shall never see her more
+ Where the reeds and rushes quiver,
+ Shiver, quiver;
+ Stand beside the sobbing river,
+ Sobbing, throbbing, in its falling
+ To the sandy lonesome shore;
+ I shall never hear her calling,
+ “Leave your meadow grasses mellow,
+ Mellow, mellow;
+ Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow;
+
+ “Come uppe, Whitefoot, come uppe, Lightfoot;
+ Quit your pipes of parsley hollow,
+ Hollow, hollow;
+ Come uppe, Lightfoot, rise and follow;
+ Lightfoot, Whitefoot,
+ From your clovers lift the head;
+ Come uppe, Jetty, follow, follow,
+ Jetty, to the milking shed.”
+
+ JEAN INGELOW.
+
+
+ THE LYE.
+
+“The Lye,” by Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), is one of the strongest
+ and most appealing poems a teacher can read to her pupils when teaching
+ early American history. The poem is full of magnificent lines, such as
+“Go, soul, the body’s guest.” The poem never lacks an attentive
+ audience of young people when correlated with the study of North
+ Carolina and Sir Walter Raleigh. The solitary, majestic character of
+ Sir Walter Raleigh, his intrepidity while undergoing tortures inflicted
+ by a cowardly king, the ring of indignation--- all these make a weapon
+ for him stronger than the ax that beheaded him. In this poem he “has
+ the last word.”
+
+ Goe, soule, the bodie’s guest,
+ Upon a thanklesse arrant;
+ Feare not to touche the best--
+ The truth shall be thy warrant!
+ Goe, since I needs must dye,
+ And give the world the lye.
+
+ Goe tell the court it glowes
+ And shines like rotten wood;
+ Goe tell the church it showes
+ What’s good, and doth no good;
+ If church and court reply,
+ Then give them both the lye.
+
+ Tell potentates they live
+ Acting by others’ actions--
+ Not loved unlesse they give,
+ Not strong but by their factions;
+ If potentates reply,
+ Give potentates the lye.
+
+ Tell men of high condition,
+ That rule affairs of state,
+ Their purpose is ambition,
+ Their practice only hate;
+ And if they once reply,
+ Then give them all the lye.
+
+ Tell zeale it lacks devotion;
+ Tell love it is but lust;
+ Tell time it is but motion;
+ Tell flesh it is but dust;
+ And wish them not reply,
+ For thou must give the lye.
+
+ Tell wit how much it wrangles
+ In tickle points of nicenesse;
+ Tell wisdome she entangles
+ Herselfe in over-wisenesse;
+ And if they do reply,
+ Straight give them both the lye.
+
+ Tell physicke of her boldnesse;
+ Tell skill it is pretension;
+ Tell charity of coldnesse;
+ Tell law it is contention;
+ And as they yield reply,
+ So give them still the lye.
+
+ Tell fortune of her blindnesse;
+ Tell nature of decay;
+ Tell friendship of unkindnesse;
+ Tell justice of delay;
+ And if they dare reply,
+ Then give them all the lye.
+
+ Tell arts they have no soundnesse,
+ But vary by esteeming;
+ Tell schooles they want profoundnesse,
+ And stand too much on seeming;
+ If arts and schooles reply,
+ Give arts and schooles the lye.
+
+ So, when thou hast, as I
+ Commanded thee, done blabbing--
+ Although to give the lye
+ Deserves no less than stabbing--
+ Yet stab at thee who will,
+ No stab the soule can kill.
+
+ SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
+
+
+ L’ENVOI.
+
+“L’Envoi,” by Rudyard Kipling, is a favourite on account of its
+ sweeping assertion of the individual’s right to self-development.
+
+ When Earth’s last picture is painted, and the tubes are
+ twisted and dried,
+ When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
+ We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it--lie down
+ for an æon or two,
+ Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall set us to work anew!
+
+ And those who were good shall be happy: they shall sit
+ in a golden chair;
+ They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet’s hair;
+ They shall find real saints to draw from--Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
+ They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!
+
+ And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
+ And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame;
+ But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
+ Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are!
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+
+ CONTENTMENT
+
+“Contentment,” by Edward Dyer (1545-1607). This poem holds much to
+ comfort and control people who are shut up to the joys of
+ meditation--people to whom the world of activity is closed. To be
+ independent of things material--this is the soul’s pleasure.
+
+ My mind to me a kingdom is;
+ Such perfect joy therein I find
+ As far excels all earthly bliss
+ That God or Nature hath assigned;
+ Though much I want that most would have,
+ Yet still my mind forbids to crave.
+
+ Content I live; this is my stay,--
+ I seek no more than may suffice.
+ I press to bear no haughty sway;
+ Look, what I lack my mind supplies.
+ Lo, thus I triumph like a king,
+ Content with that my mind doth bring.
+
+ I laugh not at another’s loss,
+ I grudge not at another’s gain;
+ No worldly wave my mind can toss;
+ I brook that is another’s bane.
+ I fear no foe, nor fawn on friend;
+ I loathe not life, nor dread mine end.
+
+ My wealth is health and perfect ease;
+ My conscience clear my chief defense;
+ I never seek by bribes to please
+ Nor by desert to give offense.
+ Thus do I live, thus will I die;
+ Would all did so as well as I!
+
+ EDWARD DYER.
+
+
+ THE HARP THAT ONCE THROUGH TARA’S HALLS.
+
+ The harp that once through Tara’s halls
+ The soul of music shed,
+ Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls
+ As if that soul were fled.
+ So sleeps the pride of former days,
+ So glory’s thrill is o’er,
+ And hearts, that once beat high for praise,
+ Now feel that pulse no more.
+
+ No more to chiefs and ladies bright
+ The harp of Tara swells;
+ The chord alone, that breaks at night,
+ Its tale of ruin tells.
+ Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes,
+ The only throb she gives
+ Is when some heart indignant breaks,
+ To show that still she lives.
+
+ THOMAS MOORE.
+
+
+ THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET
+
+“The Old Oaken Bucket,” by Samuel Woodworth (1785-1848), is a poem we
+ love because it is an elegant expression of something very dear and
+ homely.
+
+ 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 wild-wood,
+ And every loved spot which my infancy knew!
+ The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that 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 that 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 hailed 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,
+ The brightest that beauty or revelry sips.
+ And now, far removed from the loved habitation,
+ The tear of regret will intrusively swell.
+ As fancy reverts to my father’s plantation,
+ And sighs for the bucket that hangs in the well--
+ The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
+ The moss-covered bucket that hangs in the well!
+
+ SAMUEL WOODWORTH.
+
+
+ THE RAVEN.
+
+“The Raven,” by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), is placed here because so
+ many college men speak of it at once as the great poem of their
+ boyhood. The poem caught me when a child by its refrain and weird
+ picturesqueness. It has never outgrown its mechanical charm.
+
+ Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
+ Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--
+ While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
+ As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door
+ “’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door--
+ Only this, and nothing more.”
+
+ Ah! distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
+ And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor;
+ Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
+ From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore--
+ For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore--
+ Nameless here for evermore.
+
+ And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
+ Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
+ So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
+ “’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door--
+ Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door:
+ This it is, and nothing more.”
+
+ Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
+ “Sir,” said I, “or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
+ But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
+ And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
+ That I scarce was sure I heard you.” Here I opened wide the door:
+ Darkness there, and nothing more.
+
+ Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering,
+ fearing,
+ Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
+ But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
+ And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore!”
+ This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”
+ Merely this, and nothing more.
+
+ Back into my chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
+ Soon again I heard a rapping, something louder than before:
+ “Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
+ Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore--
+ Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore.
+ ’Tis the wind, and nothing more.”
+
+ Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
+ In there stepped a stately Raven, of the saintly days of yore;
+ Not the least obeisance made he, not a minute stopped or stayed he;
+ But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door--
+ Perched above a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door--
+ Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
+
+ Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
+ By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore;
+ “Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art
+ sure, no craven;
+ Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven, wandering from the nightly shore,
+ Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night’s Plutonian shore?”
+ Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
+
+ Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
+ Though its answer, little meaning, little relevancy bore;
+ For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
+ Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door--
+ Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door
+ With such a name as “Nevermore.”
+
+ But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only
+ That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour;
+ Nothing further then he uttered, not a feather then he fluttered,
+ Till I scarcely more than muttered--“Other friends have flown before,
+ On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
+ Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”
+
+ Startled by the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
+ “Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,
+ Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster
+ Followed fast and followed faster, till his songs one burden bore--
+ Till the dirges of his hope this melancholy burden bore--
+ Of ‘Never, nevermore,’”
+
+ But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
+ Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and
+ bust, and door;
+ Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
+ Fancy into fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore--
+ What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
+ Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”
+
+ Thus I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
+ To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
+ This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
+ On the cushion’s velvet lining, that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
+ But whose velvet violet lining, with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
+ She shall press, ah, nevermore!
+
+ Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
+ Swung by seraphim, whose footfalls twinkled on the tufted floor.
+ “Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee--by these angels He
+ hath sent thee
+ Respite--respite and nepenthe from my memories of Lenore!
+ Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!”
+ Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
+
+ “Prophet,” said I, “thing of evil--prophet still, if bird or devil!
+ Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore
+ Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted,
+ On this home by horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore,
+ Is there--_is_ there balm in Gilead?--tell me, tell me, I implore!”
+ Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
+
+ “Prophet,” said I, “thing of evil!--prophet still if bird or devil!
+ By that heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore--
+ Tell this soul, with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aiden
+ It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore!
+ Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore?”
+ Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
+
+ “Be that our sign of parting, bird or fiend,” I shrieked, upstarting--
+ “Get thee back into the tempest and the night’s Plutonian shore;
+ Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken,
+ Leave my loneliness unbroken--quit the bust above my door,
+ Take thy beak from out my heart and take thy form from off my door!”
+ Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
+
+ And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting,
+ On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door;
+ And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
+ And the lamp-light o’er him streaming, throws his shadow on the floor;
+ And my soul from out that shadow, that lies floating on the floor,
+ Shall be lifted--nevermore!
+
+ EDGAR ALLAN POE.
+
+
+ ARNOLD VON WINKLERIED.
+
+ “Make way for liberty!” he cried,
+ Make way for liberty, and died.
+ In arms the Austrian phalanx stood,
+ A living wall, a human wood,--
+ A wall, where every conscious stone
+ Seemed to its kindred thousands grown.
+ A rampart all assaults to bear,
+ Till time to dust their frames should wear;
+ So still, so dense the Austrians stood,
+ A living wall, a human wood.
+
+ Impregnable their front appears,
+ All horrent with projected spears.
+ Whose polished points before them shine,
+ From flank to flank, one brilliant line,
+ Bright as the breakers’ splendours run
+ Along the billows to the sun.
+
+ Opposed to these a hovering band
+ Contended for their fatherland;
+ Peasants, whose new-found strength had broke
+ From manly necks the ignoble yoke,
+ And beat their fetters into swords,
+ On equal terms to fight their lords;
+ And what insurgent rage had gained,
+ In many a mortal fray maintained;
+ Marshalled, once more, at Freedom’s call,
+ They came to conquer or to fall,
+ Where he who conquered, he who fell,
+ Was deemed a dead or living Tell,
+ Such virtue had that patriot breathed,
+ So to the soil his soul bequeathed,
+ That wheresoe’er his arrows flew,
+ Heroes in his own likeness grew,
+ And warriors sprang from every sod,
+ Which his awakening footstep trod.
+
+ And now the work of life and death
+ Hung on the passing of a breath;
+ The fire of conflict burned within,
+ The battle trembled to begin;
+ Yet, while the Austrians held their ground,
+ Point for attack was nowhere found;
+ Where’er the impatient Switzers gazed,
+ The unbroken line of lances blazed;
+ That line ’twere suicide to meet,
+ And perish at their tyrant’s feet;
+ How could they rest within their graves,
+ And leave their homes, the homes of slaves!
+ Would not they feel their children tread,
+ With clanging chains, above their head?
+
+ It must not be; this day, this hour,
+ Annihilates the invader’s power;
+ All Switzerland is in the field;
+ She will not fly,--she cannot yield,--
+ She must not fall; her better fate
+ Here gives her an immortal date.
+ Few were the numbers she could boast,
+ But every freeman was a host,
+ And felt as ’twere a secret known
+ That one should turn the scale alone,
+ While each unto himself was he
+ On whose sole arm hung victory.
+
+ It did depend on one indeed;
+ Behold him,--Arnold Winkelried;
+ There sounds not to the trump of fame
+ The echo of a nobler name.
+ Unmarked he stood amid the throng,
+ In rumination deep and long,
+ Till you might see, with sudden grace,
+ The very thought come o’er his face;
+ And, by the motion of his form,
+ Anticipate the bursting storm,
+ And, by the uplifting of his brow,
+ Tell where the bolt would strike, and how.
+
+ But ’twas no sooner thought than done!
+ The field was in a moment won;
+ “Make way for liberty!” he cried,
+ Then ran, with arms extended wide,
+ As if his dearest friend to clasp;
+ Ten spears he swept within his grasp.
+ “Make way for liberty!” he cried.
+ Their keen points crossed from side to side;
+ He bowed amidst them like a tree,
+ And thus made way for liberty.
+
+ Swift to the breach his comrades fly,
+ “Make way for liberty!” they cry,
+ And through the Austrian phalanx dart,
+ As rushed the spears through Arnold’s heart.
+ While instantaneous as his fall,
+ Rout, ruin, panic, seized them all;
+ An earthquake could not overthrow
+ A city with a surer blow.
+
+ Thus Switzerland again was free;
+ Thus Death made way for Liberty!
+
+ JAMES MONTGOMERY.
+
+
+ LIFE, I KNOW NOT WHAT THOU ART.
+
+ 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 ’twill 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.
+
+ A.L. BARBAULD.
+
+
+ MERCY.
+
+“Mercy,” an excerpt from “The Merchant of Venice,” “Polonius’ Advice,”
+ from “Hamlet,” and “Antony’s Speech,” from “Julius Cæsar” (all
+ fragments from Shakespeare, 1564-1616), find a place in this book
+ because a well-known New York teacher--one who is unremitting in his
+ efforts to raise the good taste and character of his pupils--says: “A
+ book of poetry could not be complete without these extracts.”
+
+ The quality of mercy is not strain’d;
+ It droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven
+ Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d;
+ It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
+ ’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
+ The throned monarch better than his crown:
+ His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
+ The attribute to awe and majesty,
+ Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
+ But mercy is above his sceptered sway;
+ It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
+ It is an attribute to God himself;
+ And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
+ When mercy seasons justice.
+
+ SHAKESPEARE (“Merchant of Venice”).
+
+
+ POLONIUS’ ADVICE.
+
+ See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
+ Nor any unproportion’d thought his act.
+ Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:
+ The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
+ Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
+ But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
+ Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade. Beware
+ Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,
+ Bear ’t that th’ opposed may beware of thee.
+ Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
+ Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
+ Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy
+ But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
+ For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
+ Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
+ For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
+ And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
+ This above all: to thine own self be true;
+ And it must follow, as the night the day,
+ Thou canst not then be false to any man.
+
+ SHAKESPEARE (“Hamlet”).
+
+
+ A FRAGMENT FROM MARK ANTONY’S SPEECH.
+
+ This was the noblest Roman of them all:
+ All the conspirators, save only he,
+ Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar;
+ He only, in a general honest thought
+ And common good to all, made one of them.
+ His life was gentle; and the elements
+ So mix’d in him, that Nature might stand up,
+ And say to all the world, “This was a man!”
+
+ SHAKESPEARE (“Julius Cæsar”).
+
+
+ THE SKYLARK.
+
+ Bird of the wilderness,
+ Blithesome and cumberless,
+ Sweet be thy matin o’er moorland and lea!
+ Emblem of happiness,
+ Blest is thy dwelling-place--
+ Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!
+
+ Wild is thy lay and loud,
+ Far in the downy cloud,
+ Love gives it energy, love gave it birth.
+ Where, on thy dewy wing,
+ Where art thou journeying?
+ Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.
+
+ O’er fell and fountain sheen,
+ O’er moor and mountain green,
+ O’er the red streamer that heralds the day,
+ Over the cloudlet dim,
+ Over the rainbow’s rim,
+ Musical cherub, soar, singing, away!
+
+ Then, when the gloaming comes,
+ Low in the heather blooms
+ Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be!
+ Emblem of happiness,
+ Blest is thy dwelling-place--
+ Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!
+
+ THOMAS HOGG.
+
+
+ THE CHOIR INVISIBLE.
+
+“The Choir Invisible” (by George Eliot, 1819-80) is a fitting
+ exposition in poetry of this “Shakespeare of prose.”
+
+ O, may I join the choir invisible
+ Of those immortal dead who live again
+ In minds made better by their presence; live
+ In pulses stirred to generosity,
+ In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
+ Of miserable aims that end with self,
+ In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
+ And with their mild persistence urge men’s minds
+ To vaster issues.
+ May I reach
+ That purest heaven,--be to other souls
+ The cup of strength in some great agony,
+ Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love,
+ Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
+ Be the sweet presence of good diffused,
+ And in diffusion ever more intense!
+ So shall I join the choir invisible,
+ Whose music is the gladness of the world.
+
+ GEORGE ELIOT.
+
+
+ THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US.
+
+“The World Is Too Much With Us,” by Wordsworth (1770-1850), is perhaps
+ the greatest sonnet ever written. It is true that “the eyes of the
+ soul” are blinded by a surfeit of worldly “goods.” “I went to the Lake
+ District” (England), said John Burroughs, “to see what kind of a
+ country could produce a Wordsworth.” Of course he found simple houses,
+ simple people, barren moors, heather-clad mountains, wild flowers, calm
+ lakes, plain, rugged simplicity.
+
+ 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.
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ ON HIS BLINDNESS.
+
+“Sonnet on His Blindness” (by John Milton, 1608-74). This is the most
+ stately and pathetic sonnet in existence. The soul enduring enforced
+ idleness and loss of power without repining. Inactivity made to serve a
+ higher end.
+
+ “All service ranks the same with God!
+ There is no first or last.”
+
+
+ When I consider how my light is spent
+ Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
+ And that one talent which is death to hide,
+ Lodg’d with me useless, though my soul more bent
+ To serve therewith my Maker, and present
+ My true account, lest He, returning, chide;
+ Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?
+ I fondly ask: but Patience, to prevent
+ That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
+ Either man’s work, or His own gifts; who best
+ Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best; His state
+ Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed,
+ And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
+ They also serve who only stand and wait.
+
+ JOHN MILTON.
+
+
+ SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT.
+
+“She Was a Phantom of Delight” (by William Wordsworth, 1770-1850) is
+ included here because it is a picture of woman as she should be, not
+ made dainty by finery, but by fine ideals--
+
+ “And not too good
+ For human nature’s daily food.”
+
+
+ She was a Phantom of delight
+ When first she gleamed upon my sight;
+ A lovely Apparition, sent
+ To be a moment’s ornament;
+ Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
+ Like Twilight’s, too, her dusky hair:
+ But all things else about her drawn
+ From May-time and the cheerful Dawn.
+ A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
+ To haunt, to startle, and waylay.
+
+ I saw her upon nearer view,
+ A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
+ Her household motions light and free,
+ And steps of virgin liberty;
+ A countenance in which did meet
+ Sweet records, promises as sweet;
+ A Creature not too bright or good
+ For human nature’s daily food;
+ For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
+ Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
+
+ And now I see with eye serene
+ The very pulse of the machine;
+ A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
+ A Traveller between life and death:
+ The reason firm, the temperate will,
+ Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
+ A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
+ To warn, to comfort, and command;
+ And yet a Spirit still, and bright,
+ With something of angelic light.
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD.
+
+“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (Gray, 1716-71). I once drove
+ from Windsor Castle through Eton, down the long hedge-bound road which
+ passes the estate of William Penn’s descendants to Stoke Pogis, the
+ little churchyard where this poem was written. They were trimming a
+ great yew-tree under which Gray was said to have written this poem. The
+ scene is one of peace and quiet. The “elegy” was a favourite form of
+ poem with the ancients, but Gray is said to have reached the climax
+ among poets in this style of verse. The great line of the poem is:
+
+ “The path of glory leads but to the grave.”
+
+ It would almost seem that poetry has for its greatest mission the
+ lesson of a proper humility.
+
+ The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
+ The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
+ The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
+ And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
+
+ Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
+ And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
+ Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
+ And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.
+
+ Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow’r
+ The moping owl does to the moon complain
+ Of such as, wandering near her secret bow’r,
+ Molest her ancient solitary reign.
+
+ Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,
+ Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap,
+ Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
+ The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
+
+ The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
+ The swallow twitt’ring from the straw-built shed,
+ The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
+ No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
+
+ For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
+ Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
+ No children run to lisp their sire’s return,
+ Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
+
+ Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
+ Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
+ How jocund did they drive their team afield!
+ How bow’d the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
+
+ Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
+ Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
+ Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,
+ The short and simple annals of the Poor.
+
+ The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,
+ And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
+ Await alike th’ inevitable hour.
+ The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
+
+ Forgive, ye Proud, th’ involuntary fault
+ If Memory to these no trophies raise,
+ Where thro’ the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
+ The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
+
+ Can storied urn or animated bust
+ Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
+ Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,
+ Or Flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
+
+ Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
+ Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire,
+ Hands that the rod of empire might have sway’d,
+ Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.
+
+ But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
+ Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll;
+ Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage,
+ And froze the genial current of the soul.
+
+ Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
+ The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
+ Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
+ And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
+
+ Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
+ The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
+ Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
+ Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.
+
+ Th’ applause of listening senates to command,
+ The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
+ To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,
+ And read their history in a nation’s eyes,
+
+ Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone
+ Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined
+ Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,
+ And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,
+
+ The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
+ To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
+ Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
+ With incense, kindled at the Muse’s flame.
+
+ Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
+ Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
+ Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
+ They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.
+
+ Yet e’en those bones from insult to protect
+ Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
+ With uncouth rhimes and shapeless sculpture deck’d,
+ Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
+
+ Their name, their years, spelt by th’ unlettered Muse,
+ The place of fame and elegy supply.
+ And many a holy text around she strews
+ That teach the rustic moralist to die.
+
+ For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
+ This pleasing anxious being e’er resigned,
+ Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
+ Nor cast one longing, ling’ring look behind?
+
+ On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
+ Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
+ E’en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
+ E’en in our ashes live their wonted fires.
+
+ For thee, who, mindful of th’ unhonour’d dead,
+ Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
+ If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
+ Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,
+
+ Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
+ “Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
+ Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
+ To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
+
+ “There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
+ That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
+ His listless length at noon-tide would he stretch,
+ And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
+
+ “Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
+ Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove;
+ Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
+ Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.
+
+ “One morn I miss’d him on the custom’d hill,
+ Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;
+ Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
+ Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he.
+
+ “The next with dirges due in sad array
+ Slow thro’ the church-way path we saw him borne.
+ Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,
+ Graved on the stone beneath yon agèd thorn.”
+
+
+ THE EPITAPH.
+
+ Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
+ A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown;
+ Fair Science frown’d not on his humble birth,
+ And Melancholy mark’d him for her own.
+
+ Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
+ Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
+ He gave to Mis’ry all he had, a tear:
+ He gain’d from Heav’n (’twas all he wish’d) a friend.
+
+ No farther seek his merits to disclose,
+ Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
+ (There they alike in trembling hope repose,)
+ The bosom of his Father and his God.
+
+ THOMAS GRAY.
+
+
+ RABBI BEN EZRA
+
+“Rabbi Ben Ezra” (by Robert Browning, 1812-89). Youth is for dispute
+ and age for counsel; each year, each period of a man’s life is but the
+ necessary step to the next. Youth is an uncertain thing to bank on.
+
+ “Grow old along with me!
+ The best is yet to be,
+ The last of life for which the first was made.”
+
+“Rabbi Ben Ezra” is a plea for each period in life. Aspiration is the
+ keynote.
+
+ “ ... Trust God; see all, nor be afraid!”
+
+
+ Grow old along with me!
+ The best is yet to be,
+ The last of life, for which the first was made:
+ Our times are in His hand
+ Who saith, “A whole I plann’d,
+ Youth shows but half; trust God: see all nor be afraid!”
+
+ Not that, amassing flowers,
+ Youth sigh’d, “Which rose make ours,
+ Which lily leave and then as best recall?”
+ Not that, admiring stars,
+ It yearn’d, “Nor Jove, nor Mars;
+ Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!”
+
+ Not for such hopes and fears
+ Annulling youth’s brief years,
+ Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
+ Rather I prize the doubt
+ Low kinds exist without,
+ Finish’d and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
+
+ Poor vaunt of life indeed,
+ Were man but formed to feed
+ On joy, to solely seek and find and feast:
+ Such feasting ended, then
+ As sure an end to men;
+ Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-cramm’d beast?
+
+ Rejoice we are allied
+ To That which doth provide
+ And not partake, effect and not receive!
+ A spark disturbs our clod;
+ Nearer we hold of God
+ Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.
+
+ Then, welcome each rebuff
+ That turns earth’s smoothness rough,
+ Each sting, that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!
+ Be our joys three parts pain!
+ Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
+ Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
+
+ For thence,--a paradox
+ Which comforts while it mocks,--
+ Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
+ What I aspired to be,
+ And was not, comforts me:
+ A brute I might have been, but would not sink i’ the scale.
+
+ What is he but a brute
+ Whose flesh has soul to suit,
+ Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?
+ To man, propose this test--
+ Thy body at its best,
+ How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?
+
+ Yet gifts should prove their use:
+ I own the Past profuse
+ Of power each side, perfection every turn:
+ Eyes, ears took in their dole,
+ Brain treasured up the whole:
+ Should not the heart beat once “How good to live and learn?”
+
+ Not once beat “Praise be Thine!
+ I see the whole design,
+ I, who saw power, see now love perfect too:
+ Perfect I call Thy plan:
+ Thanks that I was a man!
+ Maker, remake, complete,--I trust what Thou shalt do!”
+
+ For pleasant is this flesh,
+ Our soul, in its rose-mesh
+ Pull’d ever to the earth, still yearns for rest;
+ Would we some prize might hold
+ To match those manifold
+ Possessions of the brute,--gain most, as we did best!
+
+ Let us not always say,
+ “Spite of this flesh to-day
+ I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!”
+ As the bird wings and sings,
+ Let us cry, “All good things
+ Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!”
+
+ Therefore I summon age
+ To grant youth’s heritage,
+ Life’s struggle having so far reached its term:
+ Thence shall I pass, approved
+ A man, for aye removed
+ From the developed brute; a god though in the germ.
+
+ And I shall thereupon
+ Take rest, ere I be gone
+ Once more on my adventure brave and new:
+ Fearless and unperplex’d,
+ When I wage battle next,
+ What weapons to select, what armour to indue.
+
+ Youth ended, I shall try
+ My gain or loss thereby;
+ Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:
+ And I shall weigh the same,
+ Give life its praise or blame:
+ Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.
+
+ For note, when evening shuts,
+ A certain moment cuts
+ The deed off, calls the glory from the gray:
+ A whisper from the west
+ Shoots--“Add this to the rest,
+ Take it and try its worth: here dies another day.”
+
+ So, still within this life,
+ Though lifted o’er its strife,
+ Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
+ “This rage was right i’ the main,
+ That acquiescence vain:
+ The Future I may face now I have proved the Past”
+
+ For more is not reserved
+ To man, with soul just nerved
+ To act to-morrow what he learns to-day:
+ Here, work enough to watch
+ The Master work, and catch
+ Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool’s true play.
+
+ As it was better, youth
+ Should strive, through acts uncouth,
+ Toward making, than repose on aught found made:
+ So, better, age, exempt
+ From strife, should know, than tempt
+ Further. Thou waitedest age: wait death nor be afraid!
+
+ Enough now, if the Right
+ And Good and Infinite
+ Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own,
+ With knowledge absolute,
+ Subject to no dispute
+ From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.
+
+ Be there, for once and all,
+ Sever’d great minds from small,
+ Announced to each his station in the Past!
+ Was I, the world arraigned,
+ Were they, my soul disdain’d,
+ Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
+
+ Now, who shall arbitrate?
+ Ten men love what I hate,
+ Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
+ Ten, who in ears and eyes
+ Match me: we all surmise,
+ They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?
+
+ Not on the vulgar mass
+ Call’d “work,” must sentence pass,
+ Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
+ O’er which, from level stand,
+ The low world laid its hand,
+ Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:
+
+ But all, the world’s coarse thumb
+ And finger fail’d to plumb,
+ So pass’d in making up the main account;
+ All instincts immature,
+ All purposes unsure,
+ That weigh’d not as his work, yet swell’d the man’s amount:
+
+ Thoughts hardly to be pack’d
+ Into a narrow act,
+ Fancies that broke through language and escaped,
+ All I could never be,
+ All, men ignored in me,
+ This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
+
+ Ay, note that Potter’s wheel,
+ That metaphor! and feel
+ Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,--
+ Thou, to whom fools propound,
+ When the wine makes its round,
+ “Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!”
+
+ Fool! All that is, at all,
+ Lasts ever, past recall;
+ Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure;
+ What enter’d into thee,
+ _That_ was, is, and shall be:
+ Time’s wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.
+
+ He fix’d thee ’mid this dance
+ Of plastic circumstance,
+ This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest
+ Machinery just meant
+ To give thy soul its bent,
+ Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impress’d.
+
+ What though the earlier grooves
+ Which ran the laughing loves
+ Around thy base, no longer pause and press?
+ What though, about thy rim,
+ Scull-things in order grim
+ Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?
+
+ Look not thou down but up!
+ To uses of a cup,
+ The festal board, lamp’s flash and trumpet’s peal,
+ The new wine’s foaming flow,
+ The master’s lips aglow!
+ Thou, heaven’s consummate cup, what need’st thou with earth’s wheel?
+
+ But I need, now as then,
+ Thee, God, who mouldest men;
+ And since, not even while the whirl was worst
+ Did I,--to the wheel of life
+ With shapes and colours rife,
+ Bound dizzily,--mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:
+
+ So, take and use Thy work:
+ Amend what flaws may lurk,
+ What strain o’ the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
+ My times be in Thy hand!
+ Perfect the cup as plann’d!
+ Lest age approve of youth, and death complete the same!
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ PROSPICE.
+
+“Prospice,” by Robert Browning (1812-89), is the greatest death song
+ ever written. It is a battle-song and a pæan of victory.
+
+ “The journey is done, the summit attained,
+ And the strong man must go.”
+ “I would hate that Death bandaged my eyes and forebore,
+ And bade me creep past.”
+ “No! let me taste the whole of it”
+ “The reward of all.”
+
+ This poem is included in this book because these lines are enough to
+ reconcile any one to any fate.
+
+ Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,
+ The mist in _my_ face,
+ When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
+ I am nearing the place,
+ The power of the night, the press of the storm,
+ The post of the foe;
+ Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
+ Yet the strong man must go:
+ For the journey is done and the summit attained,
+ And the barriers fall,
+ Though a battle’s to fight ere a guerdon be gained,
+ The reward of it all.
+ I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more.
+ The best and the last!
+ I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore,
+ And bade me creep past.
+ No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
+ The heroes of old,
+ Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrears
+ Of pain, darkness, and cold.
+ For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
+ The black minute’s at end.
+ And the elements’ rage, the fiend-voices that rave
+ Shall dwindle, shall blend,
+ Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
+ Then a light, then thy breast,
+ O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
+ And with God be the rest!
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ RECESSIONAL.
+
+ The “Recessional” (by Rudyard Kipling, 1865-) is one of the most
+ popular poems of this century. It is a warning to an age and a nation
+ drunk with power, a rebuke to materialistic tendencies and
+ boastfulness, a protest against pride.
+
+ “Reverence is the master-key of knowledge.”
+
+
+ God of our fathers, known of old--
+ Lord of our far-flung battle-line--
+ Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
+ Dominion over palm and pine--
+ Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
+ Lest we forget--lest we forget!
+
+ The tumult and the shouting dies--
+ The captains and the kings depart--
+ Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice,
+ An humble and a contrite heart.
+ Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
+ Lest we forget--lest we forget!
+
+ Far-called our navies melt away--
+ On dune and headland sinks the fire--
+ Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
+ Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
+ Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
+ Lest we forget--lest we forget!
+
+ If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
+ Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe--
+ Such boasting as the Gentiles use
+ Or lesser breeds without the Law--
+ Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
+ Lest we forget--lest we forget!
+
+ For heathen heart that puts her trust
+ In reeking tube and iron shard--
+ All valiant dust that builds on dust,
+ And guarding calls not Thee to guard--
+ For frantic boast and foolish word,
+ Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord! Amen.
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+
+ OZYMANDIAS OF EGYPT.
+
+“Ozymandias of Egypt,” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). This sonnet
+ is a rebuke to the insolent pride of kings and empires. It is extremely
+ picturesque. It finds a place here because more elderly scholars of
+ good judgment are pleased with it. I remember an old gray-haired
+ scholar in Chicago who often recited it to his friends merely because
+ it touched his fancy.
+
+ I met a traveller from an antique land
+ Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
+ Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
+ Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
+ And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
+ Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
+ Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
+ The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed;
+ And on the pedestal these words appear:
+ ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
+ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
+ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
+ Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
+ The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
+
+ PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
+
+
+ MORTALITY.
+
+“Mortality” (by William Knox, 1789-1825) is always quoted as Lincoln’s
+ favourite poem.
+
+ O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
+ Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
+ A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
+ He passes from life to his rest in the grave.
+
+ The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
+ Be scattered around and together be laid;
+ And the young and the old, and the low and the high,
+ Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie.
+
+ The child that a mother attended and loved,
+ The mother that infant’s affection that proved,
+ The husband that mother and infant that blessed,
+ Each, all, are away to their dwelling of rest.
+
+ The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,
+ Shone beauty and pleasure,--her triumphs are by;
+ And the memory of those that beloved her and praised
+ Are alike from the minds of the living erased.
+
+ The hand of the king that the scepter hath borne,
+ The brow of the priest that the miter hath worn,
+ The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave,
+ Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.
+
+ The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap,
+ The herdsman who climbed with his goats to the steep,
+ The beggar that wandered in search of his bread,
+ Have faded away like the grass that we tread.
+
+ The saint that enjoyed the communion of heaven,
+ The sinner that dared to remain unforgiven,
+ The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
+ Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.
+
+ So the multitude goes, like the flower and the weed
+ That wither away to let others succeed;
+ So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
+ To repeat every tale that hath often been told.
+
+ For we are the same that our fathers have been;
+ We see the same sights that our fathers have seen,--
+ We drink the same stream, and we feel the same sun,
+ And we run the same course that our fathers have run.
+
+ The thoughts we are thinking, our fathers would think;
+ From the death we are shrinking from, they too would shrink;
+ To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling;
+ But it speeds from the earth like a bird on the wing.
+
+ They loved, but their story we cannot unfold;
+ They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;
+ They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers may come;
+ They enjoyed, but the voice of their gladness is dumb.
+
+ They died, ay! they died! and we things that are now,
+ Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
+ Who make in their dwellings a transient abode,
+ Meet the changes they met on their pilgrimage road.
+
+ Yea! hope and despondence, and pleasure and pain,
+ Are mingled together like sunshine and rain;
+ And the smile and the tear, and the song and the dirge,
+ Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.
+
+ ’Tis the wink of an eye, ’tis the draught of a breath,
+ From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
+ From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,--
+ O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
+
+ WILLIAM KNOX.
+
+
+ ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN’S “HOMER.”
+
+“On First Looking Into Chapman’s ‘Homer,’” by John Keats (1795-1821).
+ The last four lines of this sonnet form the most tremendous climax in
+ literature. The picture is as vivid as if done with a brush. Every
+ great book, every great poem is a new world, an undiscovered country.
+ Every learned person is a whole territory, a universe of new thought.
+ Every one who does anything with a heart for it, every specialist every
+ one, however simple, who is strenuous and genuine, is a “new
+ discovery.” Let us give credit to the smallest planet that is true to
+ its own orbit.
+
+ Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
+ And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
+ Round many western islands have I been
+ Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
+
+ Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
+ That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne:
+ Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
+ Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
+
+ Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
+ When a new planet swims into his ken;
+ Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
+
+ He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
+ Look’d at each other with a wild surmise--
+ Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
+
+ JOHN KEATS.
+
+
+ HERVÉ RIEL.
+
+“Hervé Riel” (by Robert Browning, 1812-89) is a poem for older boys.
+ Here is a hero who does a great deed simply as a part of his day’s
+ work. He puts no value on what he has done, because he could have done
+ no other way.
+
+ On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two,
+ Did the English fight the French--woe to France!
+ And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue,
+ Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue,
+ Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance,
+ With the English fleet in view.
+
+ ’Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase,
+ First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville;
+ Close on him fled, great and small,
+ Twenty-two good ships in all;
+ And they signalled to the place,
+ “Help the winners of a race!
+ Get us guidance, give us harbour, take us quick--or, quicker still,
+ Here’s the English can and will!”
+
+ Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leaped on board:
+ “Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to pass?”
+ laughed they;
+ “Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred
+ and scored,
+ Shall the _Formidable_ here, with her twelve and eighty guns,
+ Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way,
+ Trust to enter where ’tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons.
+ And with flow at full beside?
+ Now ’tis slackest ebb of tide.
+ Reach the mooring! Rather say,
+ While rock stands or water runs,
+ Not a ship will leave the bay!”
+
+ Then was called a council straight;
+ Brief and bitter the debate:
+ “Here’s the English at our heels; would you have them take in tow
+ All that’s left us of the fleet, linked together stern and bow,
+ For a prize to Plymouth Sound?--
+ Better run the ships aground!”
+ (Ended Damfreville his speech.)
+ “Not a minute more to wait!
+ Let the captains all and each
+ Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the beach!
+ France must undergo her fate.
+
+ “Give the word!”--But no such word
+ Was ever spoke or heard;
+ For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all these--
+ A captain? A lieutenant? A mate--first, second, third?
+ No such man of mark, and meet
+ With his betters to compete!
+ But a simple Breton sailor pressed by Tourville for the fleet--
+ A poor coasting pilot he, Hervé Riel, the Croisiekese.
+
+ And “What mockery or malice have we here?” cries Hervé Riel:
+ “Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, fools, or rogues?
+ Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell
+ On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell,
+ ’Twixt the offing here and Grève where the river disembogues?
+ Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying’s for?
+ Morn and eve, night and day.
+ Have I piloted your bay,
+ Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor.
+ Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were worse than fifty Hogues!
+ Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me there’s a way!
+ Only let me lead the line,
+ Have the biggest ship to steer,
+ Get this _Formidable_ clear,
+ Make the others follow mine,
+ And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know well,
+ Right to Solidor past Grève,
+ And there lay them safe and sound;
+ And if one ship misbehave,
+ --Keel so much as grate the ground,
+ Why, I’ve nothing but my life,--here’s my head!” cries Hervé Riel.
+
+ Not a minute more to wait
+ “Steer us in, then, small and great!
+ Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!” cried its chief.
+ Captains, give the sailor place!
+ He is Admiral, in brief.
+ Still the north wind, by God’s grace!
+ See the noble fellow’s face
+ As the big ship, with a bound,
+ Clears the entry like a hound,
+ Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide sea’s profound!
+ See, safe through shoal and rock,
+ How they follow in a flock,
+ Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground,
+ Not a spar that comes to grief!
+ The peril, see, is past,
+ All are harboured to the last,
+ And just as Hervé Riel hollas “Anchor!”--sure as fate,
+ Up the English come--too late!
+
+ So, the storm subsides to calm:
+ They see the green trees wave
+ On the heights o’erlooking Grève.
+ Hearts that bled are stanched with balm,
+ “Just our rapture to enhance,
+ Let the English rake the bay,
+ Gnash their teeth and glare askance
+ As they cannonade away!
+ ’Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Rance!”
+ How hope succeeds despair on each Captain’s countenance!
+ Out burst all with one accord,
+ “This is Paradise for Hell!
+ Let France, let France’s King
+ Thank the man that did the thing!”
+ What a shout, and all one word,
+ “Hervé Riel!”
+ As he stepped in front once more,
+ Not a symptom of surprise
+ In the frank blue Breton eyes,
+ Just the same man as before.
+
+ Then said Damfreville, “My friend,
+ I must speak out at the end,
+ Though I find the speaking hard.
+ Praise is deeper than the lips:
+ You have saved the King his ships,
+ You must name your own reward.
+ ’Faith, our sun was near eclipse!
+ Demand whate’er you will,
+ France remains your debtor still.
+ Ask to heart’s content and have! or my name’s not Damfreville.”
+
+ Then a beam of fun outbroke
+ On the bearded mouth that spoke,
+ As the honest heart laughed through
+ Those frank eyes of Breton blue:
+ “Since I needs must say my say,
+ Since on board the duty’s done,
+ And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it but a run?--
+ Since ’tis ask and have, I may--
+ Since the others go ashore--
+ Come! A good whole holiday!
+ Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!”
+ That he asked and that he got,--nothing more.
+
+ Name and deed alike are lost:
+ Not a pillar nor a post
+ In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell;
+ Not a head in white and black
+ On a single fishing smack,
+ In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack
+ All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell.
+ Go to Paris: rank on rank
+ Search the heroes flung pell-mell
+ On the Louvre, face and flank!
+ You shall look long enough ere you come to Hervé Riel.
+ So, for better and for worse,
+ Hervé Riel, accept my verse!
+ In my verse, Hervé Riel, do thou once more
+ Save the squadron, honour France, love thy wife the Belle Aurore!
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ THE PROBLEM.
+
+“The Problem” (by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-80) is quoted from one end
+ of the world to the other. Emerson teaches one lesson above all others,
+ that each soul must work out for itself its latent force, its own
+ individual expression, and that with a “sad sincerity.” “The bishop of
+ the soul” can do no more.
+
+ I like a church; I like a cowl;
+ I love a prophet of the soul;
+ And on my heart monastic aisles
+ Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles:
+ Yet not for all his faith can see
+ Would I that cowlèd churchman be.
+ Why should the vest on him allure,
+ Which I could not on me endure?
+
+ Not from a vain or shallow thought
+ His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
+ Never from lips of cunning fell
+ The thrilling Delphic oracle;
+ Out from the heart of nature rolled
+ The burdens of the Bible old;
+ The litanies of nations came,
+ Like the volcano’s tongue of flame,
+ Up from the burning core below,--
+ The canticles of love and woe:
+ The hand that rounded Peter’s dome
+ And groined the aisles of Christian Rome
+ Wrought in a sad sincerity;
+ Himself from God he could not free;
+ He builded better than he knew;
+ The conscious stone to beauty grew.
+
+ Knowst thou what wove yon woodbird’s nest
+ Of leaves and feathers from her breast?
+ Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
+ Painting with morn each annual cell?
+ Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
+ To her old leaves new myriads?
+ Such and so grew these holy piles,
+ While love and terror laid the tiles.
+ Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,
+ As the best gem upon her zone,
+ And Morning opes with haste her lids
+ To gaze upon the Pyramids;
+ O’er England’s abbeys bends the sky,
+ As on its friends, with kindred eye;
+ For out of Thought’s interior sphere
+ These wonders rose to upper air;
+ And Nature gladly gave them place,
+ Adopted them into her race,
+ And granted them an equal date
+ With Andes and with Ararat.
+
+ These temples grew as grows the grass;
+ Art might obey, but not surpass.
+ The passive Master lent his hand
+ To the vast soul that o’er him planned;
+ And the same power that reared the shrine
+ Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.
+ Ever the fiery Pentecost
+ Girds with one flame the countless host,
+ Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
+ And through the priest the mind inspires.
+ The word unto the prophet spoken
+ Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
+ The word by seers or sibyls told,
+ In groves of oak, or fanes of gold.
+ Still floats upon the morning wind,
+ Still whispers to the willing mind.
+ One accent of the Holy Ghost
+ The heedless world hath never lost.
+ I know what say the fathers wise,--
+ The Book itself before me lies,
+ Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
+ And he who blent both in his line,
+ The younger Golden Lips or mines,
+ Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines.
+ His words are music in my ear,
+ I see his cowlèd portrait dear;
+ And yet, for all his faith could see,
+ I would not the good bishop be.
+
+ RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
+
+
+ TO AMERICA.
+
+“To America,” included by permission of the Poet Laureate, is a good
+ poem and a great poem. It is a keen thrust at the common practice of
+ teaching American children to hate the English of these days on account
+ of the actions of a silly old king dead a hundred years. Alfred Austin
+ deserves great credit for this poem.
+
+ What is the voice I hear
+ On the winds of the western sea?
+ Sentinel, listen from out Cape Clear
+ And say what the voice may be.
+ ’Tis a proud free people calling loud to a people proud and free.
+
+ And it says to them: “Kinsmen, hail!
+ We severed have been too long.
+ Now let us have done with a worn-out tale--
+ The tale of an ancient wrong--
+ And our friendship last long as our love doth and be stronger
+ than death is strong.”
+
+ Answer them, sons of the self-same race,
+ And blood of the self-same clan;
+ Let us speak with each other face to face
+ And answer as man to man,
+ And loyally love and trust each other as none but free men can.
+
+ Now fling them out to the breeze,
+ Shamrock, Thistle, and Rose,
+ And the Star-spangled Banner unfurl with these--
+ A message to friends and foes
+ Wherever the sails of peace are seen and wherever the war-wind blows--
+
+ A message to bond and thrall to wake,
+ For wherever we come, we twain,
+ The throne of the tyrant shall rock and quake,
+ And his menace be void and vain;
+ For you are lords of a strong land and we are lords of the main.
+
+ Yes, this is the voice of the bluff March gale;
+ We severed have been too long,
+ But now we have done with a worn-out tale--
+ The tale of an ancient wrong--
+ And our friendship last long as love doth last and stronger
+ than death is strong.
+
+ ALFRED AUSTIN.
+
+
+ THE ENGLISH FLAG.
+
+ It is quite true that the English flag stands for freedom the world
+ over. Wherever it floats almost any one is safe, whether English or
+ not.
+
+ [Above the portico the Union Jack remained fluttering in the flames for
+ some time, but ultimately when it fell the crowds rent the air with
+ shouts, and seemed to see significance in the incident.--_Daily
+ Papers_.]
+
+ Winds of the World, give answer? They are whimpering to and fro--
+ And what should they know of England who only England know?--
+ The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag,
+ They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at
+ the English Flag!
+
+ Must we borrow a clout from the Boer--to plaster anew with dirt?
+ An Irish liar’s bandage, or an English coward’s shirt?
+ We may not speak of England; her Flag’s to sell or share.
+ What is the Flag of England? Winds of the World, declare!
+
+ The North Wind blew:--“From Bergen my steel-shod van-guards go;
+ I chase your lazy whalers home from the Disko floe;
+ By the great North Lights above me I work the will of God,
+ That the liner splits on the ice-field or the Dogger fills with cod.
+
+ “I barred my gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame,
+ Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came;
+ I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast,
+ And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ere the spirit passed.
+
+ “The lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long Arctic night,
+ The musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the Northern Light:
+ What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my bergs to dare,
+ Ye have but my drifts to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!”
+
+ The South Wind sighed:--“From The Virgins my mid-sea course was ta’en
+ Over a thousand islands lost in an idle main,
+ Where the sea-egg flames on the coral and the long-backed
+ breakers croon
+ Their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon.
+
+ “Strayed amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys,
+ I waked the palms to laughter--I tossed the scud in the breeze--
+ Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone,
+ But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag was flown.
+
+ “I have wrenched it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp
+ on the Horn;
+ I have chased it north to the Lizard--ribboned and rolled and torn;
+ I have spread its fold o’er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea;
+ I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free.
+
+ “My basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross,
+ Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross.
+ What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare,
+ Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it is there!”
+
+ The East Wind roared:--“From the Kuriles, the Bitter Seas, I come,
+ And me men call the Home-Wind, for I bring the English home.
+ Look--look well to your shipping! By the breath of my mad typhoon
+ I swept your close-packed Praya and beached your best at Kowloon!
+
+ “The reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before,
+ I raped your richest roadstead--I plundered Singapore!
+ I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose,
+ And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows.
+
+ “Never the lotos closes, never the wild-fowl wake,
+ But a soul goes out on the East Wind that died for England’s sake--
+ Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid--
+ Because on the bones of the English the English Flag is stayed.
+
+ “The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-ass knows.
+ The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows.
+ What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my sun to dare,
+ Ye have but my sands to travel. Go forth, for it is there!”
+
+ The West Wind called:--“In squadrons the thoughtless galleons fly
+ That bear the wheat and cattle lest street-bred people die.
+ They make my might their porter, they make my house their path,
+ Till I loose my neck from their rudder and whelm them all in my wrath.
+
+ “I draw the gliding fog-bank as a snake is drawn from the hole;
+ They bellow one to the other, the frightened ship-bells toll,
+ For day is a drifting terror till I raise the shroud with my breath,
+ And they see strange bows above them and the two go locked to death.
+
+ “But whether in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day,
+ I heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away,
+ First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky,
+ Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag goes by.
+
+ “The dead dumb fog hath wrapped it--the frozen dews have kissed--
+ The naked stars have seen it, a fellow-star in the mist.
+ What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my breath to dare,
+ Ye have but my waves to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!”
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+
+ THE MAN WITH THE HOE.
+
+“The Man With the Hoe” is purely an American product, and every
+ American ought to be proud of it, for we want no such type allowed to
+ be developed in this country as the low-browed peasant of France. This
+ poem is a stroke of genius. The story goes that it so offended a modern
+ plutocrat that he offered a reward of $10,000 to any one who could
+ write an equally good poem in rebuttal. “The Man With the Hoe” has won
+ for Edwin Markham the title of “Poet Laureate of the Labouring
+ Classes.”
+
+ WRITTEN AFTER SEEING THE PAINTING BY MILLET.
+
+ God made man in His own image, in the image of God made He
+ him.--GENESIS.
+
+ Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
+ Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
+ The emptiness of ages in his face,
+ And on his back the burden of the world.
+ Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
+ A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
+ Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
+ Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
+ Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
+ Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
+
+ Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
+ To have dominion over sea and land;
+ To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
+ To feel the passion of Eternity?
+ Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
+ And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
+ Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
+ There is no shape more terrible than this--
+ More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed--
+ More filled with signs and portents for the soul--
+ More fraught with menace to the universe.
+
+ What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
+ Slave of the wheel of labour, what to him
+ Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
+ What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
+ The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
+ Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
+ Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop;
+ Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
+ Plundered, profaned, and disinherited,
+ Cries protest to the Judges of the World,
+ A protest that is also prophecy.
+
+ O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands,
+ Is this the handiwork you give to God,
+ This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
+ How will you ever straighten up this shape;
+ Touch it again with immortality;
+ Give back the upward looking and the light;
+ Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
+ Make right the immemorial infamies,
+ Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
+
+ O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands,
+ How will the future reckon with this Man?
+ How answer his brute question in that hour
+ When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?
+ How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
+ With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
+ When this dumb Terror shall reply to God,
+ After the silence of the centuries?
+
+ EDWIN MARKHAM.
+
+
+ SONG OF MYSELF.
+
+“The Song of Myself” is one of Walt Whitman’s (1819-92) most
+ characteristic poems. I love the swing and the stride of his great long
+ lines. I love his rough-shod way of trampling down and kicking out of
+ the way the conventionalities that spring up like poisonous mushrooms
+ to make the world a vast labyrinth of petty “proprieties” until
+ everything is nasty. I love the oxygen he pours on the world. I love
+ his genius for brotherliness, his picture of the Negro with rolling
+ eyes and the firelock in the corner. These excerpts are some of his
+ best lines.
+
+ I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
+ And what I assume you shall assume,
+ For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
+ I loafe and invite my soul,
+ I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
+ My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
+ Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
+ parents the same,
+ I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
+ Hoping to cease not till death.
+
+ I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
+ Nature without check with original energy.
+
+ Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the
+ earth much?
+ Have you practised so long to learn to read?
+ Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
+
+ Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin
+ of all poems,
+ You shall possess the good of the earth and sun (there are
+ millions of suns left),
+ You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
+ through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books,
+ You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
+ You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.
+
+ A child said, “_What is the grass?_” fetching it to me with full hands;
+ How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more
+ than he.
+ I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green
+ stuff woven.
+ Or, I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
+ A scented gift and remembrance designedly dropt,
+ Bearing the owner’s name some way in the corners,
+ that we may see and remark, and say,
+ “_Whose?_”
+
+ Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
+ Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,
+ In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
+ Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill’d game,
+ Falling asleep on the gathered leaves with my dog and gun by my side.
+ The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle
+ and scud,
+ My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from
+ the deck.
+ The boatman and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,
+ I tucked my trouser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time;
+ You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.
+
+ The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,
+ I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
+ Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak,
+ And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him,
+ And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and
+ bruis’d feet,
+ And gave him a room that entered from my own, and gave him some
+ coarse clean clothes,
+ And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
+ And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
+ He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and passed north,
+ I had him sit next me at table, my firelock lean’d in the corner.
+
+ I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
+ And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
+ And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
+
+ I understand the large hearts of heroes,
+ The courage of present times and all times,
+ How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship,
+ and Death chasing it up and down the storm,
+ How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch and was faithful of
+ days and faithful of nights,
+ And chalked in large letters on a board, “_Be of good cheer, we will
+ not desert you_”;
+ How he followed with them and tack’d with them three days and would
+ not give it up,
+ How he saved the drifting company at last,
+ How the lank loose-gown’d women looked when boated from the side
+ of their prepared graves,
+ How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the
+ sharp-lipp’d unshaved men;
+ All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,
+ I am the man, I suffered, I was there.
+ The disdain and calmness of martyrs,
+ The mother of old, condemned for a witch, burned with dry wood, her
+ children gazing on,
+ The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence blowing,
+ covered with sweat.
+ I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,
+ Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,
+ I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn’d with the
+ ooze of my skin,
+ I fall on the weeds and stones,
+ The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,
+ Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with
+ whip-stocks.
+
+ Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days!
+
+ See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
+ Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.
+ My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain,
+ The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms.
+ The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there.
+
+ And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own
+ funeral drest in his shroud.
+
+ And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds
+ the learning of all times,
+ And there is no trade or employment but the young man following
+ it may become a hero,
+ And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d
+ universe.
+ And I say to any man or woman, “Let your soul stand cool and composed
+ before a million universes.”
+
+ I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each
+ moment then,
+ In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in
+ the glass,
+ I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is
+ sign’d by God’s name,
+ And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,
+ Others will punctually come forever and ever.
+
+ Listener up there! What have you to confide in me?
+ Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening.
+ (Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute
+ longer.)
+ Who has done his day’s work? Who will soonest be through with
+ his supper?
+ Who wishes to walk with me?
+
+ I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
+ I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
+
+
+
+
+ INDEX
+
+
+ A barking sound the shepherd hears, 120
+
+ Abide with me! fast falls the eventide, 223
+
+ Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase), 89
+
+ A chieftain to the Highlands bound, 105
+
+ Across the lonely beach, 71
+
+ A life on the ocean wave, 85
+
+ Alone I walked the ocean strand, 256
+
+ A nightingale that all day long, 34
+
+ A supercilious nabob of the East, 165
+
+ At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, 246
+
+ At midnight in his guarded tent, 128
+
+ A traveller on the dusty road, 48
+
+ A well there is in the west country, 180
+
+ Ay, tear her tattered ensign down, 53
+
+
+ Behind him lay the gray Azores, 169
+
+ Beneath the low-hung night cloud, 67
+
+ Bird of the wilderness, 302
+
+ Blow, blow, thou winter wind, 58
+
+ Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans, 342
+
+ Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies, 110
+
+ Buttercups and daisies, 51
+
+ By the shores of Gitche Gumee, 79
+
+
+ Come, let us plant the apple-tree, 211
+
+ Come, dear children, let us away, 260
+
+“Courage!” he said, and pointed toward the land, 231
+
+ Cupid and my Campasbe played, 235
+
+ Cupid once upon a bed, 234
+
+
+ Down in a green and shady bed, 27
+
+
+ Farewell! Farewell! But this I tell, 5
+
+ Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat, 320
+
+
+“Give us a song!” the soldiers cried, 64
+
+ God of our fathers, known of old, 321
+
+ Goe, soule, the bodie’s guest, 283
+
+ Grow old along with me, 312
+
+
+ Hail to thee, blithe spirit, 268
+
+ Half a league, half a league, 107
+
+ Happy the man whose wish and care, 273
+
+ Hats off! 133
+
+ Heaven is not reached at a single bound, 117
+
+ How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, 288
+
+“How I should like a birthday!” said the child, 164
+
+ How happy is he born and taught, 220
+
+ How sleep the brave, who sing to rest, 133
+
+
+ I am monarch of all I survey, 190
+
+ I celebrate myself, and sing myself, 344
+
+ I chatter, chatter, as I flow, 153
+
+ I come, I come! ye have called me long, 259
+
+ If I had but two little wings, 21
+
+ I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, 9
+
+ I heard last night a little child go singing, 222
+
+ I like a church: I like a cowl, 333
+
+“I’ll tell you how the leaves came down,” 12
+
+ I met a traveller from an antique land, 322
+
+ In her ear he whispers gaily, 75
+
+ In the name of the Empress of India, make way, 125
+
+ I remember, I remember, 159
+
+ I shot an arrow into the air, 3
+
+“Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”--ay, it is He, 114
+
+ I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he, 173
+
+ Is there, for honest poverty, 151
+
+ It is not growing like a tree, 60
+
+ It was a summer’s evening, 117
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_, 154
+
+ It was the schooner _Hesperus_, 138
+
+ It was the time when lilies blow, 72
+
+ I wandered lonely as a cloud, 82
+
+
+ John Anderson, my jo, John, 274
+
+
+ King Francis was a hearty king and loved a royal sport, 184
+
+ Krinken was a little child, 162
+
+
+ Lars Porsena of Clusium, 193
+
+ Lead kindly light, amid th’ encircling gloom, 224
+
+ Let dogs delight to bark and bite, 4
+
+ Life! I know not what thou art, 299
+
+ Little drops of water, 5
+
+ Little orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay, 54
+
+ Little white lily, 10
+
+
+“Make way for liberty!” he cried, 296
+
+ Maxwelton braes are bonnie, 226
+
+ Merrily swinging on brier and weed, 44
+
+ Methought I heard a butterfly, 42
+
+ ’Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, 220
+
+ Mine be a cot beside the hill, 272
+
+ My country ’tis of thee, 228
+
+ My fairest child, I have no song to give you, 21
+
+ My good blade carves the casques of men, 253
+
+ My heart leaps up when I behold, 28
+
+ My little Mädchen found one day, 149
+
+ My mind to me a kingdom is, 286
+
+ My soul is sailing through the sea, 219
+
+ Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, 326
+
+
+ Nae shoon to hide her tiny taes, 4
+
+ No stir in the air, no stir in the sea, 145
+
+ Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, 176
+
+ Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are, 179
+
+
+ O, a dainty plant is the ivy green, 59
+
+ O Captain! my Captain, our fearful trip is done, 57
+
+ Of all the woodland creatures, 60
+
+ Oft in the stilly night, 266
+
+ Oh where! and oh where! is your Highland laddie gone, 20
+
+ Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the West, 103
+
+ Old Grimes is dead; that good old man, 47
+
+“O Mary, go and call the cattle home”, 271
+
+ O, may I join the choir invisible, 303
+
+ Once a dream did wave a shade, 116
+
+ Once there was a little boy, 19
+
+ Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, 289
+
+ On Linden, when the sun was low, 134
+
+ On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, 326
+
+ Out of the clover and blue-eyed grass, 160
+
+ Over the hill the farm-boy goes, 90
+
+ O! say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, 31
+
+ O why should the spirit of mortal be proud, 323
+
+
+ Pussy can sit by the fire and sing, 8
+
+ Pibroch of Donuil Dhu, 126
+
+
+ Said the wind to the moon, “I will blow you out,” 111
+
+ Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State, 227
+
+ Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled, 142
+
+ See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, 301
+
+ Serene I fold my hands and wait, 267
+
+ Shed no tear! O shed no tear, 50
+
+ She dwelt among the untrodden ways, 272
+
+ She was a phantom of delight, 305
+
+ Speak! speak! thou fearful guest, 240
+
+ Stand! the ground’s your own, my braves!, 63
+
+ Sunset and evening star, 124
+
+ Sweet and low, sweet and low, 27
+
+
+ Tell me not in mournful numbers, 218
+
+ The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, 158
+
+ The boy stood on the burning deck, 22
+
+ The breaking waves dashed high, 229
+
+ The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 306
+
+ The Frost looked forth, one still, clear night, 39
+
+ The gingham dog and the calico cat, 18
+
+ The God of Music dwelleth out of doors, 275
+
+ The harp that once through Tara’s halls, 287
+
+ The nautilus and the ammonite, 188
+
+ The old mayor climb’d the belfry tower, 277
+
+ The Owl and the Pussy Cat went to sea, 15
+
+ The quality of mercy is not strained, 300
+
+ There came a youth upon the earth, 171
+
+ There came to port last Sunday night, 152
+
+ There lay upon the ocean’s shore, 148
+
+ There was a sound of revelry by night, 177
+
+ There was never a Queen like Balkis, 7
+
+ There were three kings into the East, 83
+
+ There were three sailors of Bristol City, 41
+
+ The splendour falls on castle walls, 66
+
+ The stately homes of England, 192
+
+ The summer and autumn had been so wet, 166
+
+ The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home, 136
+
+ The world is too much with us; late and soon, 304
+
+ The year’s at the spring, 6
+
+ Thirty days hath September, 7
+
+ This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 122
+
+ This was the noblest Roman of them all, 301
+
+ ’Tis the last rose of summer, 225
+
+ T’other day as I was twining, 234
+
+ Traveller, pluck a stem of moly, 233
+
+ Triumphal arch that fills the sky, 53
+
+ ’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, 29
+
+ Twinkle, twinkle little star, 6
+
+
+ Under a spreading chestnut tree, 25
+
+ Up from the meadows rich with corn, 96
+
+ Up from the South at break of day, 68
+
+
+ Way down upon de Swanee ribber, 137
+
+ Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, 94
+
+ Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie, 92
+
+ Wee Willie Winkie rins through the town, 13
+
+ We were crowded in the cabin, 23
+
+ Whatever brawls disturb the street, 20
+
+ What is so rare as a day in June, 217
+
+ What is the voice I hear, 335
+
+ What was he doing, the great god Pan, 275
+
+ When cats run home and light is come, 40
+
+ When earth’s last picture is painted, 285
+
+ When George the Third was reigning, a hundred years ago, 236
+
+ When I consider how my light is spent, 304
+
+ When Letty had scarce pass’d her third glad year, 115
+
+ Where the pools are bright and deep, 50
+
+ Wild was the night, yet a wilder night, 131
+
+ Winds of the world, give answer, 337
+
+ Woodman, spare that tree, 222
+
+ Wynken, Blynken and Nod one night, 16
+
+
+ Ye banks and braes of bonnie Doon, 265
+
+“You are old, Father William,” the young man said, 33
+
+ You know, we French storm’d Ratisbon, 43
+
+
+
+
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+
+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Poems Every Child Should Know, by Various</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Poems Every Child Should Know
+<br>The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Various<br>
+Editor: Mary E. Burt</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: August 4, 2005 [EBook #16436]<br>
+[Most recently updated: August 25, 2023]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Juliet Sutherland, Laura Wisewell and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW ***</div>
+
+
+<h2><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: This table of contents is not in the original but is provided as an aid to the reader.">CONTENTS</ins></h2>
+<ul class="off">
+<li><a href="#frontis">Frontispiece</a></li>
+<li><a href="#title">Title page</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ACKNOWLEDGMENTS_TO_PUBLISHERS_AND_AUTHORS">Acknowledgments to Publishers and Authors</a></li>
+<li><a href="#PREFACE">Preface</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CONTENTS">Contents</a></li>
+<li><a href="#INDEX_OF_AUTHORS">Index of Authors</a></li>
+<li><a href="#PART_I">Part I.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#PART_II">Part II.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#PART_III">Part III.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#PART_IV">Part IV.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#PART_V">Part V.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#PART_VI">Part VI.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#INDEX">Index of First Lines</a></li>
+</ul>
+<hr>
+
+<div class="center"><a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a>
+ <img src='images/frontis.jpg' alt='Frontispiece: Landscape with trees and a river' height='700' width='521'>
+ <p class='caption'>When the shadows are long</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr>
+
+<div class="center"><a name="title" id="title"></a>
+<table style="background-image: url(images/title.jpg); width: 600px; height: 914px; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;">
+<tr><td style="width:100px;">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="center">
+ <h1 style="background-color:#ffffff;">POEMS<br><br>
+ Every Child Should Know</h1>
+ <strong style="background-color:#ffffff;">EDITED BY<br>Mary E. Burt</strong>
+</td>
+<td style="width:100px;">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td style="width:100px;">&nbsp;</td>
+<td>
+ <p class="center" style="background-color:#ffffff;">THE WHAT-EVERY-CHILD-SHOULD-KNOW-LIBRARY</p>
+ <p class="center" style="background-color:#ffffff;"><i>Published by</i><br><br>DOUBLEDAY, DORAN &amp; CO., INC., <i>for</i> THE PARENTS’ INSTITUTE, INC. <i>Publishers of “The Parents’ Magazine”</i><br>9 EAST 40th STREET, NEW YORK</p></td>
+<td style="width:100px;">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr></table>
+<p class="caption"><a href="images/title.jpg">[View image]</a></p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p class="center">COPYRIGHT. 1904, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.</p>
+
+<p class="center">PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY,
+N.Y.</p>
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="ACKNOWLEDGMENTS_TO_PUBLISHERS_AND_AUTHORS" id="ACKNOWLEDGMENTS_TO_PUBLISHERS_AND_AUTHORS"></a><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original reads 'ACKNOWLEDGMETS'.">ACKNOWLEDGMENTS</ins> TO PUBLISHERS AND AUTHORS</h2>
+
+
+<p>It sometimes happens that there are people who do not know that authors
+are protected by copyright laws. A publisher once cited to me an
+instance of a teacher who innocently put forth a little volume of poems
+that she loved and admired, without asking permission of any one. Her
+annoyance was boundless when she found that she had no right to the
+poems.</p>
+
+<p>Special permission has been obtained for each copyrighted poem in this
+volume, and the right to publish has been purchased of the author or
+publisher, except in those cases where the author or the publisher has,
+for reasons of courtesy and friendship, given the permission.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to the business arrangements which have been made, we wish
+to extend our thanks and acknowledgments to those firms which have so
+kindly allowed us to use their material.</p>
+
+<p class="ack">To <span class="smcap">Houghton, Mifflin &amp; Company</span>, of Boston, we are indebted for
+the use of the following poems: From the copyrighted works of
+Longfellow&mdash;“<a href="#The_Arrow_and_the_Song">The Arrow and the Song</a>,” “<a href="#Hiawathas_Childhood">A Fragment of Hiawatha’s
+Childhood</a>,” “<a href="#The_Skeleton_in_Armour">The Skeleton in Armour</a>,” “<a href="#The_Wreck_of_the_Hesperus">The Wreck of the
+<i>Hesperus</i></a>,” “<a href="#The_Ship_of_State">The Ship of State</a>,” “<a href="#A_Psalm_of_Life">The Psalm of Life</a>,” “<a href="#The_Village_Blacksmith">The
+Village Blacksmith</a>.” From Whittier&mdash;“<a href="#Barbara_Frietchie">Barbara Frietchie</a>” and “<a href="#The_Three_Bells_of_Glasgow">The
+<i>Three Bells</i> of Glasgow</a>.” From Emerson&mdash;“<a href="#The_Problem">The Problem</a>.” From
+Burroughs&mdash;“<a href="#My_Own_Shall_Come_to_Me">My Own Shall Come to Me</a>.” From Lowell&mdash;“<a href="#The_Finding_of_the_Lyre">The Finding of
+the Lyre</a>,” “<a href="#The_Shepherd_of_King_Admetus">The Shepherd of King Admetus</a>,” and a fragment of “<a href="#June">The
+Vision of Sir Launfal</a>,” From Holmes&mdash;“<a href="#The_Chambered_Nautilus">The Chambered Nautilus</a>” and
+“<a href="#Old_Ironsides">Old Ironsides</a>.” From James T. Fields&mdash;“<a href="#The_Captains_Daughter">The Captain’s Daughter.</a>”
+From Bayard Taylor&mdash;“<a href="#The_Song_in_Camp">The Song in Camp</a>,” From Celia Thaxter&mdash;“<a href="#The_Sandpiper">The
+Sandpiper</a>.” From J.&nbsp;T. Trowbridge&mdash;“<a href="#Farm-Yard_Song">Farm-Yard Song</a>.” From Edith M.
+Thomas&mdash;“<a href="#The_God_of_Music">The God of Music</a>” and Hermes’ “<a href="#Moly">Moly.</a>”</p>
+
+<p class="ack">To <span class="smcap">Charles Scribner’s Sons</span> we are indebted for the use of the
+following poems: From the copyrighted works of Eugene
+Field&mdash;“<a href="#Wynken_Blynken_and_Nod">Wynken Blynken, and Nod</a>,” “<a href="#Krinken">Krinken</a>,” and “<a href="#The_Duel">The Duel</a>.” From
+Robert Louis Stevenson&mdash;“<a href="#My_Shadow">My Shadow</a>.” From James Whitcomb Riley’s
+poems&mdash;“<a href="#Little_Orphant_Annie">Little Orphant Annie</a>.” From the poems of Sidney
+Lanier&mdash;“<a href="#Barnacles">Barnacles</a>” and “<a href="#The_Tournament">The Tournament</a>.” From “The Poems of
+Patriotism”&mdash;“<a href="#Sheridans_Ride">Sheridan’s Ride.</a>”</p>
+
+<p class="ack">We are further indebted to <span class="smcap">Charles Scribner’s Sons</span>, as well as
+to <span class="smcap">Mr. George W. Cable</span>, for “<a href="#A_New_Arrival">The New Arrival</a>,” taken from
+“The Cable Story Book,” and to <span class="smcap">Mrs. Katherine Miller</span> and
+<i>Scribner’s Magazine</i> for “<a href="#Stevensons_Birthday">Stevenson’s Birthday</a>.”</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="ack">To <span class="smcap">J.&nbsp;B. Lippincott Company</span> we are indebted for the use of
+“<a href="#Sheridans_Ride">Sheridan’s Ride</a>,” from the complete works of T. Buchanan Read.</p>
+
+<p class="ack">To <span class="smcap">Harper &amp; Brothers</span> for the use of “<a href="#Driving_Home_the_Cows">Driving Home the Cows</a>,”
+by Kate Putnam Osgood.</p>
+
+<p class="ack">To <span class="smcap">Little, Brown &amp; Company</span>, of Boston, “<a href="#How_the_Leaves_Came_Down">How the Leaves Came
+Down</a>,” by Susan Coolidge.</p>
+
+<p class="ack">To the <span class="smcap">Whitaker &amp; Ray Company</span>, of San Francisco, “<a href="#Columbus">Columbus</a>,”
+by Joaquin Miller, from his complete works published and
+copyrighted by that company.</p>
+
+<p class="ack">To <span class="smcap">D. Appleton &amp; Company</span> for “<a href="#The_Planting_of_the_Apple-Tree">The Planting of the Apple-Tree</a>”
+and “<a href="#Robert_of_Lincoln">Robert of Lincoln</a>,” from the complete works of William Cullen
+Bryant; also for “<a href="#Marco_Bozzaris">Marco Bozzaris</a>,” from the works of Fitz-Greene
+Halleck.</p>
+
+<p class="ack">To the <span class="smcap">Macmillan Company</span> for “<a href="#The_Forsaken_Merman">The Forsaken Merman</a>,” by Matthew
+Arnold, from the complete volume of his poems published by that
+company.</p>
+
+<p class="ack">To the <span class="smcap">Howard University Print</span>, Washington, D.C., for Jeremiah
+Rankin’s little poem, “<a href="#The_Babie">The Babie</a>,” from “Ingleside Rhaims.”</p>
+
+<p class="ack">To the heirs of <span class="smcap">Mary Emily Bradley</span> for “<a href="#A_Chrysalis">A Chrysalis</a>.”</p>
+
+<p class="ack">To <span class="smcap">Henry Holcomb Bennett</span> for “<a href="#The_Flag_Goes_By">The Flag Goes By</a>.”</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<p>Is this another collection of stupid poems that children cannot use?
+Will they look hopelessly through this volume for poems that suit them?
+Will they say despairingly, “This is too long,” and “That is too hard,”
+and “I don’t like that because it is not interesting”?</p>
+
+<p>Are there three or four pleasing poems and are all the rest put in to
+fill up the book? Nay, verily! The poems in this collection are those
+that children love. With the exception of seven, they are short enough
+for children to commit to memory without wearying themselves or losing
+interest in the poem. If one boy learns “The <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem hyphenates these words."><a href="#The_Overland-Mail">Overland Mail</a></ins>,” or “<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: This probably refers to the poem by Housman, which is not included in the book.">The
+Recruit</ins>,” or “<a href="#Wynken_Blynken_and_Nod">Wynken, Blynken, and Nod</a>,” or “<a href="#The_Song_in_Camp">The Song in Camp</a>,” or “<a href="#Old_Ironsides">Old
+Ironsides</a>,” or “<a href="#My_Shadow">I Have a Little Shadow</a>,” or “<a href="#The_Tournament">The Tournament</a>,” or “<a href="#The_Duel">The
+Duel</a>,” nine boys out of ten will be eager to follow him. I know because
+I have tried it a dozen times. Every boy loves “Paul Revere’s Ride”
+(alas! I have not been able to include it), and is ambitious to learn
+it, but only boys having a quick memory will persevere to the end. Shall
+the slower boy be deprived of the pleasure of reading the whole poem and
+getting its inspiring sentiment and learning as many stanzas as his mind
+will take? No, indeed. Half of such a poem is better than none. Let the
+slow boy learn and recite as many stanzas as he can and the boy of quick
+memory follow him up with the rest. It does not help the slow boy’s
+memory to keep it down entirely or deprive it of its smaller activity
+because he cannot learn the whole. Some people will invariably give the
+slow child a very short poem. It is often better to divide a long poem
+among the children, letting each child learn a part. The sustained
+interest of a long poem is worth while. “<a href="#The_Forsaken_Merman">The Merman</a>,” “<a href="#Ivry">The Battle of
+Ivry</a>,” “<a href="#Horatius_at_the_Bridge">Horatius at the Bridge</a>,” “<a href="#Krinken">Krinken</a>,” “<a href="#The_Skeleton_in_Armour">The Skeleton in Armour</a>,”
+“<a href="#The_Raven">The Raven</a>” and “<a href="#Herveacute_Riel">Herv&eacute; Riel</a>” may all profitably be learned that way.
+Nevertheless, the child enjoys most the poem that is just long enough,
+and there is much to be said in favour of the selection that is adapted,
+in length, to the average mind; for the child hesitates in the presence
+of quantity rather than in the presence of subtle thought. I make claim
+for this collection that it is made up of poems that the majority of
+children will learn of their own free will. There are people who believe
+that in the matter of learning poetry there is no “<i>ought</i>,” but this is
+a false belief. There is a <i>duty</i>, even there; for every American
+citizen <i>ought</i> to know the great national songs that keep alive the
+spirit of patriotism. Children should build for their future&mdash;and get,
+while they are children, what only the fresh imagination of the child
+can assimilate.</p>
+
+<p>They should store up an untold wealth of heroic sentiment; they should
+acquire the habit of carrying a literary quality in their conversation;
+they should carry a heart full of the fresh and delightful associations
+and memories, connected with poetry hours to brighten mature years. They
+should develop their memories while they have memories to develop.</p>
+
+<p>Will the boy who took every poetry hour for a whole school year to learn
+“<a href="#Ivry">Henry of Navarre</a>” ever regret it, or will the children who listened to
+it? No. It was fresh every week and they brought fresh interest in
+listening. The boy will always love it because he used to love it. There
+were boys who scrambled for the right to recite “<a href="#The_Tournament">The Tournament</a>,” “<a href="#The_Charge_of_the_Light_Brigade">The
+Charge of the Light Brigade</a>,” “<a href="#The_Star-Spangled_Banner">The Star-Spangled Banner</a>,” and so on. The
+boy who was first to reach the front had the privilege. The triumph of
+getting the chance to recite added to the zest of it. Will they ever
+forget it?</p>
+
+<p>I know Lowell’s “<a href="#The_Finding_of_the_Lyre">The Finding of the Lyre.</a>” Attention, Sir Knights! See
+who can learn it first as I say it to you. But I find that I have
+forgotten a line of it, so you may open your books and teach it to me.
+Now, I can recite every word of it. How much of it can you repeat from
+memory? One boy can say it all. Nearly every child has learned the most
+of it. Now, it will be easy for you to learn it alone. And Memory, the
+Goddess Beautiful, will henceforth go with you to recall this happy
+hour.</p>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Mary E. Burt.</span><br>
+<i>The John A. Browning School, 1904.</i></p>
+
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<h3 class="TOC">PART I</h3>
+
+<ol class="TOC">
+<li>The Arrow and the Song <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Arrow_and_the_Song">3</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Henry W. Longfellow</span></li>
+
+<li>The Babie <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Babie">4</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Jeremiah Eames Rankin</span></li>
+
+<li>Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite <span class="ralign"><a href="#Let_Dogs_Delight_to_Bark_and_Bite">4</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Isaac Watts</span></li>
+
+<li>Little Things <span class="ralign"><a href="#Little_Things">5</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Ebenezer Cobham Brewer</span></li>
+
+<li>He Prayeth Best <span class="ralign"><a href="#He_Prayeth_Best">5</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Samuel T. Coleridge</span></li>
+
+<li>Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star <span class="ralign"><a href="#Twinkle_Twinkle_Little_Star">6</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Anonymous</span></li>
+
+<li>Pippa <span class="ralign"><a href="#Pippa">6</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span></li>
+
+<li>The Days of the Month <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Days_of_the_Month">7</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">An Old Song</span></li>
+
+<li>True Royalty <span class="ralign"><a href="#True_Royalty">7</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling</span></li>
+
+<li>Playing Robinson Crusoe <span class="ralign"><a href="#Playing_Robinson_Crusoe">8</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling</span></li>
+
+<li>My Shadow <span class="ralign"><a href="#My_Shadow">9</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Louis Stevenson</span></li>
+
+<li>Little White Lily <span class="ralign"><a href="#Little_White_Lily">10</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">George Macdonald</span></li>
+
+<li>How the Leaves Came Down <span class="ralign"><a href="#How_the_Leaves_Came_Down">12</a></span><br> <span class="smcap">Susan Coolidge</span></li>
+
+<li>Willie Winkie <span class="ralign"><a href="#Willie_Winkie">13</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Miller</span></li>
+
+<li>The Owl and the Pussy-Cat <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Owl_and_the_Pussy-Cat">15</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Edward Lear</span></li>
+
+<li>Wynken, Blynken, and Nod <span class="ralign"><a href="#Wynken_Blynken_and_Nod">16</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Eugene Field</span></li>
+
+<li>The Duel <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Duel">18</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Eugene Field</span></li>
+
+<li>The Boy Who Never Told a Lie <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Boy_Who_Never_Told_a_Lie">19</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Anonymous</span></li>
+
+<li>Love Between Brothers and Sisters <span class="ralign"><a href="#Love_Between_Brothers_and_Sisters">20</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Isaac Watts</span></li>
+
+<li>The Bluebell of Scotland <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Bluebell_of_Scotland">20</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Anonymous</span></li>
+
+<li>If I Had But Two Little Wings <span class="ralign"><a href="#If_I_Had_But_Two_Little_Wings">21</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Samuel T. Coleridge</span></li>
+
+<li>A Farewell <span class="ralign"><a href="#A_Farewell">21</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Charles Kingsley</span></li>
+
+<li>Casabianca <span class="ralign"><a href="#Casabianca">22</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Felicia Hemans</span></li>
+
+<li>The Captain’s Daughter <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Captains_Daughter">23</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">James T. Fields</span></li>
+
+<li>The Village Blacksmith <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Village_Blacksmith">25</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Henry W. Longfellow</span></li>
+
+<li>Sweet and Low <span class="ralign"><a href="#Sweet_and_Low">27</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson</span></li>
+
+<li>The Violet <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Violet">27</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Jane Taylor</span></li>
+
+<li>The Rainbow (a fragment) <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_RainbowW">28</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Wordsworth</span></li>
+
+<li>A Visit From St. Nicholas <span class="ralign"><a href="#A_Visit_From_St_Nicholas">29</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Clement Clarke Moore</span></li>
+
+<li>The Star-Spangled Banner <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Star-Spangled_Banner">31</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Francis Scott Key</span></li>
+
+<li>Father William <span class="ralign"><a href="#Father_William">33</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Lewis Carroll</span></li>
+
+<li>The Nightingale and the Glow-worm <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Nightingale_and_the_Glow-worm">34</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Cowper</span></li>
+</ol>
+<h3 class="TOC">PART II</h3>
+<ol class="TOC" start="33">
+<li>The Frost <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Frost">39</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Hannah Flagg Gould</span></li>
+
+<li>The Owl <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Owl">40</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson</span></li>
+
+<li>Little Billee <span class="ralign"><a href="#Little_Billee">41</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Makepeace Thackeray</span></li>
+
+<li>The Butterfly and the Bee <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Butterfly_and_the_Bee">42</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Lisle Bowles</span></li>
+
+<li>An Incident of the French Camp <span class="ralign"><a href="#An_Incident_of_the_French_Camp">43</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span></li>
+
+<li>Robert of Lincoln <span class="ralign"><a href="#Robert_of_Lincoln">44</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Cullen Bryant</span></li>
+
+<li>Old Grimes <span class="ralign"><a href="#Old_Grimes">47</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Albert Gorton Greene</span></li>
+
+<li>Song of Life <span class="ralign"><a href="#Song_of_Life">48</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Charles Mackay</span></li>
+
+<li>Fairy Song <span class="ralign"><a href="#Fairy_Song">50</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">John Keats</span></li>
+
+<li>A Boy’s Song <span class="ralign"><a href="#A_Boys_Song">50</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">James Hogg</span></li>
+
+<li>Buttercups and Daisies <span class="ralign"><a href="#Buttercups_and_Daisies">51</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Mary Howitt</span></li>
+
+<li>The Rainbow <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Rainbow">53</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Thomas Campbell</span></li>
+
+<li>Old Ironsides <span class="ralign"><a href="#Old_Ironsides">53</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Oliver Wendell Holmes</span></li>
+
+<li>Little Orphant Annie <span class="ralign"><a href="#Little_Orphant_Annie">54</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">James Whitcomb Riley</span></li>
+
+<li>O Captain! My Captain! <span class="ralign"><a href="#O_Captain_My_Captain">57</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Walt Whitman</span></li>
+
+<li>Ingratitude <span class="ralign"><a href="#Ingratitude">58</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Shakespeare</span></li>
+
+<li>The Ivy Green <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Ivy_Green">59</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Charles Dickens</span></li>
+
+<li>The Noble Nature <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Noble_Nature">60</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Ben Jonson</span></li>
+
+<li>The Flying Squirrel <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Flying_Squirrel">60</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Mary E. Burt</span></li>
+
+<li>Warren’s Address <span class="ralign"><a href="#Warrens_Address_to_the_American_Soldiers">63</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">John Pierpont</span></li>
+
+<li>The Song in Camp <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Song_in_Camp">64</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Bayard Taylor</span></li>
+
+<li>The Bugle Song <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Bugle_Song">66</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson</span></li>
+
+<li>The <i>Three Bells</i> of Glasgow <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Three_Bells_of_Glasgow">67</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">John G. Whittier</span></li>
+
+<li>Sheridan’s Ride <span class="ralign"><a href="#Sheridans_Ride">68</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Thomas Buchanan Read</span></li>
+
+<li>The Sandpiper <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Sandpiper">71</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Celia Thaxter</span></li>
+
+<li>Lady Clare <span class="ralign"><a href="#Lady_Clare">72</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson</span></li>
+
+<li>The Lord of Burleigh <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Lord_of_Burleigh">75</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson</span></li>
+
+<li>Hiawatha’s Childhood <span class="ralign"><a href="#Hiawathas_Childhood">79</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Henry W. Longfellow</span></li>
+
+<li>I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud <span class="ralign"><a href="#I_Wandered_Lonely_as_a_Cloud">82</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Wordsworth</span></li>
+
+<li>John Barleycorn <span class="ralign"><a href="#John_Barleycorn">83</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Burns</span></li>
+
+<li>A Life on the Ocean Wave <span class="ralign"><a href="#A_Life_on_the_Ocean_Wave">85</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Epes Sargent</span></li>
+
+<li>The Death of the Old Year <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Death_of_the_Old_Year">86</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson</span></li>
+
+<li>Abou Ben Adhem <span class="ralign"><a href="#Abou_Ben_Adhem">89</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Leigh Hunt</span></li>
+
+<li>Farm-Yard Song <span class="ralign"><a href="#Farm-Yard_Song">90</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">J.T. Trowbridge</span></li>
+
+<li>To a Mouse <span class="ralign"><a href="#To_a_Mouse">92</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Burns</span></li>
+
+<li>To a Mountain Daisy <span class="ralign"><a href="#To_a_Mountain_Daisy">94</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Burns</span></li>
+
+<li>Barbara Frietchie <span class="ralign"><a href="#Barbara_Frietchie">96</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">John G. Whittier</span></li>
+</ol>
+<h3 class="TOC">PART III</h3>
+<ol class="TOC" start="70">
+<li>Lochinvar <span class="ralign"><a href="#Lochinvar">103</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Sir Walter Scott</span></li>
+
+<li>Lord Ullin’s Daughter <span class="ralign"><a href="#Lord_Ullins_Daughter">105</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Thomas Campbell</span></li>
+
+<li>The Charge of the Light Brigade <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Charge_of_the_Light_Brigade">107</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson</span></li>
+
+<li>The Tournament <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Tournament">110</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Sidney Lanier</span></li>
+
+<li>The Wind and the Moon <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Wind_and_the_Moon">111</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">George Macdonald</span></li>
+
+<li>Jesus the Carpenter <span class="ralign"><a href="#Jesus_the_Carpenter">114</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Catherine C. Liddell</span></li>
+
+<li>Letty’s Globe <span class="ralign"><a href="#Lettys_Globe">115</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Charles Tennyson Turner</span></li>
+
+<li>A Dream <span class="ralign"><a href="#A_Dream">116</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Blake</span></li>
+
+<li>Heaven Is Not Reached at a Single Bound <span class="ralign"><a href="#Heaven_Is_Not_Reached_at_a_Single_Bound">117</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">J.&nbsp;G. Holland</span></li>
+
+<li>The Battle of Blenheim <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Battle_of_Blenheim">117</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Southey</span></li>
+
+<li>Fidelity <span class="ralign"><a href="#Fidelity">120</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Wordsworth</span></li>
+
+<li>The Chambered Nautilus <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Chambered_Nautilus">122</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Oliver Wendell Holmes</span></li>
+
+<li>Crossing the Bar <span class="ralign"><a href="#Crossing_the_Bar">124</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson</span></li>
+
+<li>The Overland-Mail <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Overland-Mail">125</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling</span></li>
+
+<li>Gathering Song of Donald Dhu <span class="ralign"><a href="#Gathering_Song_of_Donald_Dhu">126</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Sir Walter Scott</span></li>
+
+<li>Marco Bozzaris <span class="ralign"><a href="#Marco_Bozzaris">128</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Fitz-greene Halleck</span></li>
+
+<li>The Death of Napoleon <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Death_of_Napoleon">131</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Isaac McClellan</span></li>
+
+<li>How Sleep the Brave <span class="ralign"><a href="#How_Sleep_the_Brave">133</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Collins</span></li>
+
+<li>The Flag Goes By <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Flag_Goes_By">133</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Henry Holcomb Bennett</span></li>
+
+<li>Hohenlinden <span class="ralign"><a href="#Hohenlinden">134</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Thomas Campbell</span></li>
+
+<li>My Old Kentucky Home <span class="ralign"><a href="#My_Old_Kentucky_Home">136</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Stephen Collins Foster</span></li>
+
+<li>Old Folks at Home <span class="ralign"><a href="#Old_Folks_at_Home">137</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Stephen Collins Foster</span></li>
+
+<li>The Wreck of the <i>Hesperus</i> <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Wreck_of_the_Hesperus">138</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Henry W. Longfellow</span></li>
+
+<li>Bannockburn <span class="ralign"><a href="#Bannockburn">142</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Burns</span></li>
+</ol>
+<h3 class="TOC">PART IV</h3>
+<ol class="TOC" start="94">
+<li>The Inchcape Rock <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Inchcape_Rock">145</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Southey</span></li>
+
+<li>The Finding of the Lyre <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Finding_of_the_Lyre">148</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">James Russell Lowell</span></li>
+
+<li>A Chrysalis <span class="ralign"><a href="#A_Chrysalis">149</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Mary Emily Bradley</span></li>
+
+<li>For a’ That <span class="ralign"><a href="#For_a_That">151</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Burns</span></li>
+
+<li><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem reads 'A'.">The</ins> New Arrival <span class="ralign"><a href="#A_New_Arrival">152</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">George W. Cable</span></li>
+
+<li>The Brook <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Brook">153</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson</span></li>
+
+<li>The Ballad of the <i>Clampherdown</i> <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Ballad_of_the_Clampherdown">154</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling</span></li>
+
+<li>The Destruction of Sennacherib <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Destruction_of_Sennacherib">158</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Lord Byron</span></li>
+
+<li>I Remember, I Remember <span class="ralign"><a href="#I_Remember_I_Remember">159</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Thomas Hood</span></li>
+
+<li>Driving Home the Cows <span class="ralign"><a href="#Driving_Home_the_Cows">160</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Kate Putnam Osgood</span></li>
+
+<li>Krinken <span class="ralign"><a href="#Krinken">162</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Eugene Field</span></li>
+
+<li>Stevenson’s Birthday <span class="ralign"><a href="#Stevensons_Birthday">164</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Katherine Miller</span></li>
+
+<li>A Modest Wit <span class="ralign"><a href="#A_Modest_Wit">165</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Selleck Osborne</span></li>
+
+<li>The Legend of Bishop Hatto <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Legend_of_Bishop_Hatto">166</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Southey</span></li>
+
+<li>Columbus <span class="ralign"><a href="#Columbus">160</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Joaquin Miller</span></li>
+
+<li>The Shepherd of King Admetus <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Shepherd_of_King_Admetus">171</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">James Russell Lowell</span></li>
+
+<li>How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix <span class="ralign"><a href="#How_They_Brought_the_Good_News_from_Ghent_to_Aix">173</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span></li>
+
+<li>The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Burial_of_Sir_John_Moore_at_Corunna">176</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">C. Wolfe</span></li>
+
+<li>The Eve of Waterloo <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Eve_of_Waterloo">177</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Lord Byron</span></li>
+
+<li>Ivry <span class="ralign"><a href="#Ivry">179</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Thomas B. Macaulay</span></li>
+
+<li>The Glove and the Lions <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Glove_and_the_Lions">184</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Leigh Hunt</span></li>
+
+<li>The Well of St. Keyne <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Well_of_St_Keyne">186</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Southey</span></li>
+
+<li>The Nautilus and the Ammonite <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Nautilus_and_the_Ammonite">188</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Anonymous</span></li>
+
+<li>The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Solitude_of_Alexander_Selkirk">190</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Cowper</span></li>
+
+<li>The Homes of England <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Homes_of_England">192</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Felicia Hemans</span></li>
+
+<li>Horatius at the Bridge <span class="ralign"><a href="#Horatius_at_the_Bridge">193</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Thomas B. Macaulay</span></li>
+
+<li>The Planting of the Apple-Tree <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Planting_of_the_Apple-Tree">211</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Cullen Bryant</span></li>
+</ol>
+<h3 class="TOC">PART V</h3>
+<ol class="TOC" start="121">
+<li>June <span class="ralign"><a href="#June">217</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">James Russell Lowell</span></li>
+
+<li>A Psalm of Life <span class="ralign"><a href="#A_Psalm_of_Life">218</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Henry W. Longfellow</span></li>
+
+<li>Barnacles <span class="ralign"><a href="#Barnacles">219</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Sidney Lanier</span></li>
+
+<li>A Happy Life <span class="ralign"><a href="#A_Happy_Life">220</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Sir Henry Wotton</span></li>
+
+<li>Home, Sweet Home <span class="ralign"><a href="#Home_Sweet_Home">220</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">John Howard Payne</span></li>
+
+<li>From Casa Guidi Windows <span class="ralign"><a href="#From_Casa_Guidi_Windows">222</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Elizabeth Barrett Browning</span></li>
+
+<li>Woodman, Spare That Tree! <span class="ralign"><a href="#Woodman_Spare_That_Tree">222</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">George Pope Morris</span></li>
+
+<li>Abide With Me <span class="ralign"><a href="#Abide_With_Me">223</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Henry Francis Lyte</span></li>
+
+<li>Lead, Kindly Light <span class="ralign"><a href="#Lead_Kindly_Light">224</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">John Henry Newman</span></li>
+
+<li>The Last Rose of Summer <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Last_Rose_of_Summer">225</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Thomas Moore</span></li>
+
+<li>Annie Laurie <span class="ralign"><a href="#Annie_Laurie">226</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Douglas</span></li>
+
+<li>The Ship of State <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Ship_of_State">227</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Henry W. Longfellow</span></li>
+
+<li>America <span class="ralign"><a href="#America">228</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Samuel Francis Smith</span></li>
+
+<li>The Landing of the Pilgrims <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Landing_of_the_Pilgrims">229</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Felicia Hemans</span></li>
+
+<li>The Lotos-Eaters <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Lotos-Eaters">231</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson</span></li>
+
+<li>Moly <span class="ralign"><a href="#Moly">233</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Edith M. Thomas</span></li>
+
+<li>Cupid Drowned <span class="ralign"><a href="#Cupid_Drowned">234</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Leigh Hunt</span></li>
+
+<li>Cupid Stung <span class="ralign"><a href="#Cupid_Stung">234</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Thomas Moore</span></li>
+
+<li>Cupid and My Campasbe <span class="ralign"><a href="#Cupid_and_My_Campasbe">235</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">John Lyly</span></li>
+
+<li>A Ballad for a Boy <span class="ralign"><a href="#A_Ballad_for_a_Boy">236</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Anonymous</span></li>
+
+<li>The Skeleton in Armour <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Skeleton_in_Armour">240</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Henry W. Longfellow</span></li>
+
+<li>The <i>Revenge</i> <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Revenge">246</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson</span></li>
+
+<li>Sir Galahad <span class="ralign"><a href="#Sir_Galahad">253</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson</span></li>
+
+<li>A Name in the Sand <span class="ralign"><a href="#A_Name_in_the_Sand">256</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Hannah Flagg Gould</span></li>
+</ol>
+<h3 class="TOC">PART VI</h3>
+<ol class="TOC" start="145">
+<li>The Voice of Spring <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Voice_of_Spring">259</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Felicia Hemans</span></li>
+
+<li>The Forsaken Merman <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Forsaken_Merman">260</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Matthew Arnold</span></li>
+
+<li>The Banks o’ Doon <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Banks_o_Doon">265</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Burns</span></li>
+
+<li>The Light of Other Days <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Light_of_Other_Days">266</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Thomas Moore</span></li>
+
+<li>My Own Shall Come to Me <span class="ralign"><a href="#My_Own_Shall_Come_to_Me">267</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">John Burroughs</span></li>
+
+<li>Ode to a Skylark <span class="ralign"><a href="#Ode_to_a_Skylark">268</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Percy Bysshe Shelley</span></li>
+
+<li>The Sands of Dee <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Sands_of_Dee">271</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Charles Kingsley</span></li>
+
+<li>A Wish <span class="ralign"><a href="#A_Wish">272</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Samuel Rogers</span></li>
+
+<li>Lucy <span class="ralign"><a href="#Lucy">272</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Wordsworth</span></li>
+
+<li>Solitude <span class="ralign"><a href="#Solitude">273</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Alexander Pope</span></li>
+
+<li>John Anderson <span class="ralign"><a href="#John_Anderson">274</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Burns</span></li>
+
+<li>The God of Music <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_God_of_Music">275</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Edith M. Thomas</span></li>
+
+<li>A Musical Instrument <span class="ralign"><a href="#A_Musical_Instrument">275</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Elizabeth Barrett Browning</span></li>
+
+<li>The Brides of Enderby <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Brides_of_Enderby">277</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Jean Ingelow</span></li>
+
+<li>The Lye <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Lye">283</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Sir Walter Raleigh</span></li>
+
+<li>L’Envoi <span class="ralign"><a href="#LEnvoi">285</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling</span></li>
+
+<li>Contentment <span class="ralign"><a href="#Contentment">286</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Edward Dyer</span></li>
+
+<li>The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Harp_That_Once_Through_Taras_Halls">287</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Thomas Moore</span></li>
+
+<li>The Old Oaken Bucket <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Old_Oaken_Bucket">288</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Samuel Woodworth</span></li>
+
+<li>The Raven <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Raven">289</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Edgar Allan Poe</span></li>
+
+<li>Arnold von Winkleried <span class="ralign"><a href="#Arnold_von_Winkleried">296</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">James Montgomery</span></li>
+
+<li>Life, I Know Not What Thou Art <span class="ralign"><a href="#Life_I_Know_Not_What_Thou_Art">299</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">A.&nbsp;L. Barbauld</span></li>
+
+<li>Mercy <span class="ralign"><a href="#Mercy">300</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Shakespeare</span></li>
+
+<li>Polonius’ Advice <span class="ralign"><a href="#Polonius_Advice">301</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Shakespeare</span></li>
+
+<li><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem is titled 'A Fragment from Mark Antony's Speech'.">A Fragment from “Julius C&aelig;sar”</ins> <span class="ralign"><a href="#A_Fragment_from_Julius_Caesar">301</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Shakespeare</span></li>
+
+<li>The Skylark <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Skylark">302</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Thomas Hogg</span></li>
+
+<li>The Choir Invisible <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Choir_Invisible">303</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span></li>
+
+<li>The World Is Too Much With Us <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_World_Is_Too_Much_With_Us">304</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Wordsworth</span></li>
+
+<li>On His Blindness <span class="ralign"><a href="#On_His_Blindness">304</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">John Milton</span></li>
+
+<li>She Was a Phantom of Delight <span class="ralign"><a href="#She_Was_a_Phantom_of_Delight">305</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Wordsworth</span></li>
+
+<li>Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard <span class="ralign"><a href="#Elegy_Written_in_a_Country_Churchyard">306</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Thomas Gray</span></li>
+
+<li>Rabbi Ben Ezra <span class="ralign"><a href="#Rabbi_Ben_Ezra">312</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span></li>
+
+<li>Prospice <span class="ralign"><a href="#Prospice">320</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span></li>
+
+<li>Recessional <span class="ralign"><a href="#Recessional">321</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling</span></li>
+
+<li>Ozymandias of Egypt <span class="ralign"><a href="#Ozymandias_of_Egypt">322</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Percy Bysshe Shelley</span></li>
+
+<li>Mortality <span class="ralign"><a href="#Mortality">323</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">William Knox</span></li>
+
+<li>On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer <span class="ralign"><a href="#On_First_Looking_Into_Chapmans_Homer">326</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">John Keats</span></li>
+
+<li>Herv&eacute; Riel <span class="ralign"><a href="#Herveacute_Riel">326</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span></li>
+
+<li>The Problem <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Problem">333</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Ralph Waldo Emerson</span></li>
+
+<li>To America <span class="ralign"><a href="#To_America">335</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Alfred Austin</span></li>
+
+<li>The English Flag <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_English_Flag">337</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling</span></li>
+
+<li>The Man With the Hoe <span class="ralign"><a href="#The_Man_With_the_Hoe">342</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Edwin Markham</span></li>
+
+<li>Song of Myself <span class="ralign"><a href="#Song_of_Myself">344</a></span>
+<br><span class="smcap">Walt Whitman</span></li>
+
+<li class="off"> Index <span class="ralign"><a href="#INDEX">350</a></span></li>
+</ol>
+
+
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="INDEX_OF_AUTHORS" id="INDEX_OF_AUTHORS"></a>INDEX OF AUTHORS</h2>
+<table class="az">
+ <tr>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_A">A</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_B">B</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_C">C</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_D">D</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_E">E</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_F">F</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_G">G</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_H">H</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_I">I</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_J">J</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_K">K</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_L">L</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_M">M</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_N">N</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_O">O</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_P">P</a></td>
+ <td>Q</td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_R">R</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_S">S</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_T">T</a></td>
+ <td>U</td>
+ <td>V</td>
+ <td><a href="#LOA_W">W</a></td>
+ <td>X</td>
+ <td>Y</td>
+ <td>Z</td>
+ </tr>
+</table>
+
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_A" id="LOA_A"></a>Anonymous</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, <a href="#Twinkle_Twinkle_Little_Star">6</a></li>
+<li>The Days of the Month, <a href="#The_Days_of_the_Month">7</a></li>
+<li>The Boy <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem starts this word with a capital letter.">who</ins> Never Told a Lie, <a href="#The_Boy_Who_Never_Told_a_Lie">19</a></li>
+<li>The Bluebell of Scotland, <a href="#The_Bluebell_of_Scotland">20</a></li>
+<li>The Nautilus and the Ammonite, <a href="#The_Nautilus_and_the_Ammonite">188</a></li>
+<li>A Ballad for a Boy, <a href="#A_Ballad_for_a_Boy">236</a></li></ul></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Arnold, Matthew</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Forsaken Merman, <a href="#The_Forsaken_Merman">260</a></li></ul></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Austin, Alfred</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>To America, <a href="#To_America">335</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_B" id="LOA_B"></a>Barbauld, A.&nbsp;L.</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Life, I Know Not What Thou Art, <a href="#Life_I_Know_Not_What_Thou_Art">299</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Bennett, Henry Holcomb</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Flag Goes By, <a href="#The_Flag_Goes_By">133</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Blake, William</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>A Dream, <a href="#A_Dream">116</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Bowles, William Lisle</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Butterfly and the Bee, <a href="#The_Butterfly_and_the_Bee">42</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Bradley, Mary Emily</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>A Chrysalis, <a href="#A_Chrysalis">149</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Little Things, <a href="#Little_Things">5</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Browning, Elizabeth Barrett</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>From Casa <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original reads 'Guida'.">Guidi</ins> Windows, <a href="#From_Casa_Guidi_Windows">222</a></li>
+<li>A Musical Instrument, <a href="#A_Musical_Instrument">275</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Browning, Robert</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Pippa, <a href="#Pippa">6</a></li>
+<li>An Incident of the French Camp, <a href="#An_Incident_of_the_French_Camp">43</a></li>
+<li>How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, <a href="#How_They_Brought_the_Good_News_from_Ghent_to_Aix">173</a></li>
+<li>Rabbi Ben Ezra, <a href="#Rabbi_Ben_Ezra">312</a></li>
+<li>Prospice, <a href="#Prospice">320</a></li>
+<li>Herv&eacute; Riel, <a href="#Herveacute_Riel">326</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Bryant, William Cullen</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Robert of Lincoln, <a href="#Robert_of_Lincoln">44</a></li>
+<li>The Planting of the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem hyphenates these words.">Apple Tree</ins>, <a href="#The_Planting_of_the_Apple-Tree">211</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Burns, Robert</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>John Barleycorn, <a href="#John_Barleycorn">83</a></li>
+<li>To a Mouse, <a href="#To_a_Mouse">92</a></li>
+<li>To a Mountain Daisy, <a href="#To_a_Mountain_Daisy">94</a></li>
+<li>Bannockburn, <a href="#Bannockburn">142</a></li>
+<li>For a’ That, <a href="#For_a_That">151</a></li>
+<li>The Banks o’ Doon, <a href="#The_Banks_o_Doon">265</a></li>
+<li>John Anderson, <a href="#John_Anderson">274</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Burroughs, John</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>My Own Shall Come to Me, <a href="#My_Own_Shall_Come_to_Me">267</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Burt, Mary E.</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Flying Squirrel, <a href="#The_Flying_Squirrel">60</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Byron, Lord</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Destruction of Sennacherib, <a href="#The_Destruction_of_Sennacherib">158</a></li>
+<li>The Eve of Waterloo, <a href="#The_Eve_of_Waterloo">177</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_C" id="LOA_C"></a>Cable, George W.</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem reads 'A'.">The</ins> New Arrival, <a href="#A_New_Arrival">152</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Campbell, Thomas</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Rainbow, <a href="#The_Rainbow">53</a></li>
+<li>Lord Ullin’s Daughter, <a href="#Lord_Ullins_Daughter">105</a></li>
+<li>Hohenlinden, <a href="#Hohenlinden">134</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Carroll, Lewis</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Father William, <a href="#Father_William">33</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Coleridge, Samuel T.</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>He Prayeth Best, <a href="#He_Prayeth_Best">5</a></li>
+<li>If I Had But Two Little Wings, <a href="#If_I_Had_But_Two_Little_Wings">21</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Collins, William</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>How Sleep the Brave, <a href="#How_Sleep_the_Brave">133</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Coolidge, Susan</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>How the Leaves Came Down, <a href="#How_the_Leaves_Came_Down">12</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Cowper, William</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Nightingale and the Glow-worm, <a href="#The_Nightingale_and_the_Glow-worm">34</a></li>
+<li>The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk, <a href="#The_Solitude_of_Alexander_Selkirk">190</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_D" id="LOA_D"></a>Dickens, Charles</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Ivy Green, <a href="#The_Ivy_Green">59</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Douglas, William</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Annie Laurie, <a href="#Annie_Laurie">226</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Dyer, Edward</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Contentment, <a href="#Contentment">286</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_E" id="LOA_E"></a>Eliot, George</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Choir Invisible, <a href="#The_Choir_Invisible">303</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Emerson, Ralph Waldo</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Problem, <a href="#The_Problem">333</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_F" id="LOA_F"></a>Field, Eugene</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Wynken, Blynken and Nod, <a href="#Wynken_Blynken_and_Nod">16</a></li>
+<li>The Duel, <a href="#The_Duel">18</a></li>
+<li>Krinken, <a href="#Krinken">162</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Fields, James T.</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Captain’s Daughter, <a href="#The_Captains_Daughter">23</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Foster, Stephen Collins</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>My Old Kentucky Home, <a href="#My_Old_Kentucky_Home">136</a></li>
+<li>Old Folks at Home, <a href="#Old_Folks_at_Home">137</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_G" id="LOA_G"></a>Gould, Hannah Flagg</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Frost, <a href="#The_Frost">39</a></li>
+<li>A Name in the Sand, <a href="#A_Name_in_the_Sand">256</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Gray, Thomas</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, <a href="#Elegy_Written_in_a_Country_Churchyard">306</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Greene, Albert Gorton</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Old Grimes, <a href="#Old_Grimes">47</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_H" id="LOA_H"></a>Halleck, Fitz-greene</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Marco <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original reads 'Bozarris'.">Bozzaris</ins>, <a href="#Marco_Bozzaris">128</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Hemans, Felicia</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Casabianca, <a href="#Casabianca">22</a></li>
+<li>The Homes of England, <a href="#The_Homes_of_England">192</a></li>
+<li>The Landing of the Pilgrims, <a href="#The_Landing_of_the_Pilgrims">229</a></li>
+<li>The Voice of Spring, <a href="#The_Voice_of_Spring">259</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Hood, Thomas</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>I Remember, I Remember, <a href="#I_Remember_I_Remember">159</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Hogg, James</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>A Boy’s Song, <a href="#A_Boys_Song">50</a></li>
+<li>The Skylark, <a href="#The_Skylark">302</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Holland, J.&nbsp;G.</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Heaven <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem starts this word with a capital letter.">is</ins> Not Reached at a Single Bound, <a href="#Heaven_Is_Not_Reached_at_a_Single_Bound">117</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Holmes, Oliver Wendell</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Old Ironsides, <a href="#Old_Ironsides">53</a></li>
+<li>The Chambered Nautilus, <a href="#The_Chambered_Nautilus">122</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Howitt, Mary</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Buttercups and Daisies, <a href="#Buttercups_and_Daisies">51</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Hunt, Leigh</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Abou Ben Adhem, <a href="#Abou_Ben_Adhem">89</a></li>
+<li>The Glove and the Lions, <a href="#The_Glove_and_the_Lions">184</a></li>
+<li>Cupid Drowned, <a href="#Cupid_Drowned">234</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_I" id="LOA_I"></a>Ingelow, Jean</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Brides of Enderby, <a href="#The_Brides_of_Enderby">277</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_J" id="LOA_J"></a>Jonson. Ben</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Noble Nature, <a href="#The_Noble_Nature">60</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_K" id="LOA_K"></a>Keats, John</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Fairy Song, <a href="#Fairy_Song">50</a></li>
+<li>On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer, <a href="#On_First_Looking_Into_Chapmans_Homer">326</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Key, Francis Scott</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Star-Spangled Banner, <a href="#The_Star-Spangled_Banner">31</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Kingsley, Charles</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>A Farewell, <a href="#A_Farewell">21</a></li>
+<li>The Sands of Dee, <a href="#The_Sands_of_Dee">271</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Kipling, Rudyard</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>True Royalty, <a href="#True_Royalty">7</a></li>
+<li>Playing Robinson Crusoe, <a href="#Playing_Robinson_Crusoe">8</a></li>
+<li>The <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem hyphenates these words.">Overland Mail</ins>, <a href="#The_Overland-Mail">125</a></li>
+<li>The Ballad of the Clampherdown, <a href="#The_Ballad_of_the_Clampherdown">154</a></li>
+<li>L’Envoi, <a href="#LEnvoi">285</a></li>
+<li>Recessional, <a href="#Recessional">321</a></li>
+<li>The English Flag, <a href="#The_English_Flag">337</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Knox, William</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Mortality, <a href="#Mortality">323</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_L" id="LOA_L"></a>Lanier, Sidney</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Tournament, <a href="#The_Tournament">110</a></li>
+<li>Barnacles, <a href="#Barnacles">219</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Lear, Edward</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, <a href="#The_Owl_and_the_Pussy-Cat">15</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Liddell, Catherine C.</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Jesus the Carpenter, <a href="#Jesus_the_Carpenter">114</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Longfellow, Henry W.</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Arrow and the Song, <a href="#The_Arrow_and_the_Song">3</a></li>
+<li>The Village Blacksmith, <a href="#The_Village_Blacksmith">25</a></li>
+<li>Hiawatha’s Childhood, <a href="#Hiawathas_Childhood">79</a></li>
+<li>The Wreck of the Hesperus, <a href="#The_Wreck_of_the_Hesperus">138</a></li>
+<li>A Psalm of Life, <a href="#A_Psalm_of_Life">218</a></li>
+<li>The Ship of State, <a href="#The_Ship_of_State">227</a></li>
+<li>The Skeleton in Armour, <a href="#The_Skeleton_in_Armour">240</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Lowell, James Russell</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Finding of the Lyre, <a href="#The_Finding_of_the_Lyre">148</a></li>
+<li>The Shepherd of King Admetus, <a href="#The_Shepherd_of_King_Admetus">171</a></li>
+<li>June, <a href="#June">217</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Lyly, John</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Cupid and My Campasbe, <a href="#Cupid_and_My_Campasbe">235</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Lyte, Henry Francis</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Abide With Me, <a href="#Abide_With_Me">223</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_M" id="LOA_M"></a>Macaulay, Thomas B.</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original reads 'Ivy'.">Ivry</ins>, <a href="#Ivry">179</a></li>
+<li>Horatius at the Bridge, <a href="#Horatius_at_the_Bridge">193</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Macdonald, George</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Little White Lily, <a href="#Little_White_Lily">10</a></li>
+<li>The Wind and the Moon, <a href="#The_Wind_and_the_Moon">111</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Mackay, Charles</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Song of Life, <a href="#Song_of_Life">48</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Markham, Edwin</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Man With the Hoe, <a href="#The_Man_With_the_Hoe">342</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">McClellan, Isaac</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Death of Napoleon, <a href="#The_Death_of_Napoleon">131</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Miller, Joaquin</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Columbus, <a href="#Columbus">169</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Miller, Katherine</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Stevenson’s Birthday, <a href="#Stevensons_Birthday">164</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Miller, William</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Willie Winkie, <a href="#Willie_Winkie">13</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Milton, John</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>On His Blindness, <a href="#On_His_Blindness">304</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Montgomery, James</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Arnold von Winkleried, <a href="#Arnold_von_Winkleried">296</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Moore, Clement Clarke</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>A Visit <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem starts this word with a capital letter.">from</ins> St. Nicholas, <a href="#A_Visit_From_St_Nicholas">29</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Moore, Thomas</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Last Rose of Summer, <a href="#The_Last_Rose_of_Summer">234</a></li>
+<li>Cupid Stung, <a href="#Cupid_Stung">234</a></li>
+<li>The Light of Other Days, <a href="#The_Light_of_Other_Days">266</a></li>
+<li>The Harp That Once Through Tara’s <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original reads 'Hall'.">Halls</ins>, <a href="#The_Harp_That_Once_Through_Taras_Halls">287</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Morris, George Pope</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Woodman, Spare That Tree, <a href="#Woodman_Spare_That_Tree">222</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_N" id="LOA_N"></a>Newman, John Henry</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Lead, Kindly Light, <a href="#Lead_Kindly_Light">224</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_O" id="LOA_O"></a>Osborne, Selleck</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>A Modest Wit, <a href="#A_Modest_Wit">165</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Osgood, Kate Putnam</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Driving Home the Cows, <a href="#Driving_Home_the_Cows">160</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_P" id="LOA_P"></a>Payne, John Howard</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Home, Sweet Home, <a href="#Home_Sweet_Home">220</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Pierpont, John</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Warren’s Address, <a href="#Warrens_Address_to_the_American_Soldiers">63</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Poe, Edgar Allan</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Raven, <a href="#The_Raven">289</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Pope, Alexander</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Solitude, <a href="#Solitude">273</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_R" id="LOA_R"></a>Raleigh, Sir Walter</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Lye, <a href="#The_Lye">283</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Rankin. Jeremiah Eames</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Babie, <a href="#The_Babie">4</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Read, Thomas Buchanan</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Sheridan’s Ride, <a href="#Sheridans_Ride">68</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Riley, James Whitcomb</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Little Orphant Annie, <a href="#Little_Orphant_Annie">54</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Rogers, Samuel</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>A Wish, <a href="#A_Wish">272</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_S" id="LOA_S"></a>Sargent, Epes</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>A Life on the Ocean Wave, <a href="#A_Life_on_the_Ocean_Wave">85</a></li>
+</ul></li><li><span class="smcap">Scott, Sir Walter</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Lochinvar, <a href="#Lochinvar">103</a></li>
+<li><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem omits 'The'.">The</ins> Gathering Song of Donald Dhu, <a href="#Gathering_Song_of_Donald_Dhu">126</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Shakespeare, William</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Ingratitude, <a href="#Ingratitude">58</a></li>
+<li>Mercy, <a href="#Mercy">300</a></li>
+<li>Polonius’ Advice, <a href="#Polonius_Advice">301</a></li>
+<li><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem is titled 'A Fragment from Mark Antony's Speech'.">A Fragment from Julius C&aelig;sar</ins>, <a href="#A_Fragment_from_Julius_Caesar">301</a></li>
+</ul></li><li><span class="smcap">Shelley, Percy Bysshe</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Ode to a Skylark, <a href="#Ode_to_a_Skylark">268</a></li>
+<li>Ozymandias <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem is titled 'Ozymandias of Egypt'.">in the Desert</ins>, <a href="#Ozymandias_of_Egypt">322</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Smith, Samuel Francis</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>America, <a href="#America">228</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Southey, Robert</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Battle of Blenheim, <a href="#The_Battle_of_Blenheim">117</a></li>
+<li>The Inchcape Rock, <a href="#The_Inchcape_Rock">145</a></li>
+<li>The Legend of Bishop Hatto, <a href="#The_Legend_of_Bishop_Hatto">166</a></li>
+<li>The Well of St. Keyne, <a href="#The_Well_of_St_Keyne">186</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Stevenson, Robert Louis</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>My Shadow, <a href="#My_Shadow">9</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_T" id="LOA_T"></a>Taylor, Bayard</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Song in Camp, <a href="#The_Song_in_Camp">64</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Taylor, Jane</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Violet, <a href="#The_Violet">27</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Tennyson, Alfred</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Sweet and Low, <a href="#Sweet_and_Low">27</a></li>
+<li>The Owl, <a href="#The_Owl">40</a></li>
+<li>The Bugle Song, <a href="#The_Bugle_Song">66</a></li>
+<li>Lady Clare, <a href="#Lady_Clare">72</a></li>
+<li>The Lord of Burleigh, <a href="#The_Lord_of_Burleigh">75</a></li>
+<li>The Death of the Old Year, <a href="#The_Death_of_the_Old_Year">86</a></li>
+<li>The Charge of the Light Brigade, <a href="#The_Charge_of_the_Light_Brigade">107</a></li>
+<li>Crossing the Bar, <a href="#Crossing_the_Bar">124</a></li>
+<li>The Brook, <a href="#The_Brook">153</a></li>
+<li>The <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem hyphenates these words.">Lotos Eaters</ins>, <a href="#The_Lotos-Eaters">231</a></li>
+<li>The <span class="smcap">Revenge</span>, <a href="#The_Revenge">246</a></li>
+<li>Sir Galahad, <a href="#Sir_Galahad">253</a></li>
+</ul></li><li><span class="smcap">Thackeray, William Makepeace</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Little Billee, <a href="#Little_Billee">41</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Thaxter, Celia</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Sandpiper, <a href="#The_Sandpiper">71</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Thomas, Edith</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Moly, <a href="#Moly">233</a></li>
+<li>The God of Music, <a href="#The_God_of_Music">275</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Trowbridge, J.&nbsp;T.</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem reads 'Farm-Yard'.">Farmyard</ins> Song, <a href="#Farm-Yard_Song">90</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Turner, Charles Tennyson</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Letty’s Globe, <a href="#Lettys_Globe">115</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+<ul class="LOA">
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="LOA_W" id="LOA_W"></a>Watts, Isaac</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite, <a href="#Let_Dogs_Delight_to_Bark_and_Bite">4</a></li>
+<li>Love Between Brothers and Sisters, <a href="#Love_Between_Brothers_and_Sisters">20</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Whitman, Walt</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>O Captain! My Captain! <a href="#O_Captain_My_Captain">57</a></li>
+<li>Song of Myself, <a href="#Song_of_Myself">344</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Whittier, John G.</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Three Bells of Glasgow, <a href="#The_Three_Bells_of_Glasgow">67</a></li>
+<li>Barbara Frietchie, <a href="#Barbara_Frietchie">96</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Wolfe, C.</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna, <a href="#The_Burial_of_Sir_John_Moore_at_Corunna">176</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Woodworth, Samuel</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Old Oaken Bucket, <a href="#The_Old_Oaken_Bucket">288</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Wordsworth, William</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>The Rainbow (a fragment), <a href="#The_RainbowW">28</a></li>
+<li>I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, <a href="#I_Wandered_Lonely_as_a_Cloud">82</a></li>
+<li>Fidelity, <a href="#Fidelity">120</a></li>
+<li>Lucy, <a href="#Lucy">272</a></li>
+<li>The World <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem starts this word with a capital letter.">is</ins> Too Much With Us, <a href="#The_World_Is_Too_Much_With_Us">304</a></li>
+<li>She Was a Phantom of Delight, <a href="#She_Was_a_Phantom_of_Delight">305</a></li></ul>
+</li><li><span class="smcap">Wotton, Sir Henry</span>
+<ul class="off">
+<li>A Happy Life, <a href="#A_Happy_Life">220</a></li>
+</ul></li></ul>
+
+<div class="chapter"><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>
+<h2>PART I.<br><br>
+<small>The Budding Moment</small>
+</h2>
+ <img class="plain" src="images/part1.png" alt="A dog and a cat" title="A dog and a cat" height="150" width="270">
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Arrow_and_the_Song" id="The_Arrow_and_the_Song"></a>The Arrow and the Song.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Arrow and the Song,” by Longfellow (1807-82), is placed first in
+this volume out of respect to a little girl of six years who used to
+love to recite it to me. She knew many poems, but this was her
+favourite.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I shot an arrow into the air,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It fell to earth, I knew not where;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For, so swiftly it flew, the sight<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Could not follow it in its flight.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I breathed a song into the air,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It fell to earth, I knew not where;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For who has sight so keen and strong<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That it can follow the flight of song?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Long, long afterward, in an oak<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I found the arrow, still unbroke;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the song, from beginning to end,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I found again in the heart of a friend.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Henry W. Longfellow.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Babie" id="The_Babie"></a>The Babie.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>I found “The Babie” in Stedman’s “Anthology.” It is placed in this
+volume by permission of the poet, Jeremiah Eames Rankin, of Cleveland
+(1828-), because it captured the heart of a ten-year-old boy whose
+fancy was greatly moved by the two beautiful lines:</p>
+<blockquote><p>
+“Her face is like an angel’s face,<br>
+I’m glad she has no wings.”<br>
+</p></blockquote>
+</div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nae shoon to hide her tiny taes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Nae stockin’ on her feet;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her supple ankles white as snaw,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Or early blossoms sweet.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Her simple dress o’ sprinkled pink,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Her double, dimplit chin,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her puckered lips, and baumy mou’,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With na ane tooth within.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Her een sae like her mither’s een,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Twa gentle, liquid things;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her face is like an angel’s face:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">We’re glad she has nae wings.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Jeremiah Eames Rankin.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Let_Dogs_Delight_to_Bark_and_Bite" id="Let_Dogs_Delight_to_Bark_and_Bite"></a>Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite,” by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), and
+“Little Drops of Water,” by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer (1810-97), are poems
+that the world cannot outgrow. Once in the mind, they fasten. They were
+not born to die.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let dogs delight to bark and bite,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For God hath made them so;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Let bears and lions growl and fight,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For ’tis their nature too.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But, children, you should never let<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Such angry passions rise;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Your little hands were never made<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To tear each other’s eyes.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Isaac Watts.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Little_Things" id="Little_Things"></a>Little Things.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Little drops of water,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Little grains of sand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Make the mighty ocean<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the pleasant land.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thus the little minutes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Humble though they be,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Make the mighty ages<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of eternity.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Ebenezer Cobham Brewer.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="He_Prayeth_Best" id="He_Prayeth_Best"></a>He Prayeth Best.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>These two stanzas, the very heart of that great poem, “The Ancient
+Mariner,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), sum up the lesson of
+this masterpiece&mdash;“Insensibility is a crime.”</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Farewell, farewell! but this I tell<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He prayeth well who loveth well<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Both man and bird and beast.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He prayeth best who loveth best<br></span>
+<span class="i2">All things, both great and small:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the dear God who loveth us,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He made and loveth all.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Samuel T. Coleridge.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Twinkle_Twinkle_Little_Star" id="Twinkle_Twinkle_Little_Star"></a>Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Twinkle, twinkle, little star!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How I wonder what you are,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Up above the world so high,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a diamond in the sky.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When the glorious sun is set,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When the grass with dew is wet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then you show your little light,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Twinkle, twinkle all the night.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the dark-blue sky you keep,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And often through my curtains peep,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For you never shut your eye,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the sun is in the sky.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As your bright and tiny spark<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Guides the traveller in the dark,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Though I know not what you are,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Twinkle, twinkle, little star!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Pippa" id="Pippa"></a>Pippa.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Spring’s at the Morn,” from “Pippa Passes,” by Robert Browning
+(1812-89), has become a very popular stanza with little folks. “All’s
+right with the world” is a cheerful motto for the nursery and
+schoolroom.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The year’s at the spring,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The day’s at the morn;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Morning’s at seven;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The hillside’s dew pearled;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The lark’s on the wing;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The snail’s on the thorn;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">God’s in His heaven&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All’s right with the world!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Browning.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Days_of_the_Month" id="The_Days_of_the_Month"></a>The Days of the Month.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Days of the Month” is a useful bit of doggerel that we need all
+through life. It is anonymous.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thirty days hath September,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">April, June, and November;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">February has twenty-eight alone.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All the rest have thirty-one,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Excepting leap-year&mdash;that’s the time<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When February’s days are twenty-nine.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Old Song.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="True_Royalty" id="True_Royalty"></a>True Royalty.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“True Royalty” and “Playing Robinson Crusoe” are pleasing stanzas from
+“The Just So Stories” of Rudyard Kipling (1865-).</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There was never a Queen like Balkis,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From here to the wide world’s end;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But Balkis talked to a butterfly<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As you would talk to a friend.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There was never a King like Solomon,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Not since the world began;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But Solomon talked to a butterfly<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As a man would talk to a man.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>She</i> was Queen of Sabaea&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And <i>he</i> was Asia’s Lord&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But they both of ’em talked to butterflies<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When they took their walks abroad.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling.</span></p>
+
+<p class="below">(In “The Just So Stories.”)</p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Playing_Robinson_Crusoe" id="Playing_Robinson_Crusoe"></a>Playing Robinson Crusoe.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pussy can sit by the fire and sing,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Pussy can climb a tree,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Or play with a silly old cork and string<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To ’muse herself, not me.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But I like Binkie, my dog, because<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He knows how to behave;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So, Binkie’s the same as the First Friend was,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And I am the Man in the Cave.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pussy will play Man-Friday till<br></span>
+<span class="i2">It’s time to wet her paw<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And make her walk on the window-sill<br></span>
+<span class="i2">(For the footprint Crusoe saw);<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then she fluffles her tail and mews,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And scratches and won’t attend.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But Binkie will play whatever I choose,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And he is my true First Friend.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pussy will rub my knees with her head,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Pretending she loves me hard;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the very minute I go to my bed<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Pussy runs out in the yard.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And there she stays till the morning light;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">So I know it is only pretend;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But Binkie, he snores at my feet all night,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And he is my Firstest Friend!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling.</span></p>
+
+<p class="below">(In “The Just So Stories.”)</p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="My_Shadow" id="My_Shadow"></a>My Shadow.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“My Shadow,” by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94), is one of the most
+popular short poems extant. I have taught it to a great many very young
+boys, and not one has ever tried to evade learning it. Older pupils
+like it equally well.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward, you can see;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">One morning, very early, before the sun was up,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Louis Stevenson.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Little_White_Lily" id="Little_White_Lily"></a>Little White Lily.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>This poem (George Macdonald, 1828-) finds a place in this volume
+because, as a child, I loved it. It completely filled my heart, and has
+made every member of the lily family dear to me. George Macdonald’s
+charming book, “At the Back of the North Wind,” also was my wonder and
+delight.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Little White Lily<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sat by a stone,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Drooping and waiting<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the sun shone.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Little White Lily<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sunshine has fed;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Little White Lily<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Is lifting her head.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Little White Lily<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Said: “It is good<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Little White Lily’s<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Clothing and food.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Little White Lily<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dressed like a bride!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shining with whiteness,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And crown&egrave;d beside!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Little White Lily<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Drooping with pain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Waiting and waiting<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the wet rain.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Little White Lily<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Holdeth her cup;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rain is fast falling<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And filling it up.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Little White Lily<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Said: “Good again,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When I am thirsty<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To have the nice rain.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now I am stronger,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now I am cool;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Heat cannot burn me,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My veins are so full.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Little White Lily<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Smells very sweet;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On her head sunshine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rain at her feet.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thanks to the sunshine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thanks to the rain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Little White Lily<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Is happy again.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">George Macdonald.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="How_the_Leaves_Came_Down" id="How_the_Leaves_Came_Down"></a>How the Leaves Came Down.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“How the Leaves Came Down,” by Susan Coolidge (1845-), appeals to
+children because it helps to reconcile them to going to bed. “I go to
+bed by day” is one of the crosses of childhood.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I’ll tell you how the leaves came down,”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The great Tree to his children said:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“You’re getting sleepy, Yellow and Brown,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Yes, very sleepy, little Red.<br></span>
+<span class="i2">It is quite time to go to bed.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Ah!” begged each silly, pouting leaf,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Let us a little longer stay;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dear Father Tree, behold our grief!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">’Tis such a very pleasant day,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">We do not want to go away.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So, for just one more merry day<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To the great Tree the leaflets clung,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Frolicked and danced, and had their way,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Upon the autumn breezes swung,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Whispering all their sports among&mdash;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Perhaps the great Tree will forget,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And let us stay until the spring,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">If we all beg, and coax, and fret.”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But the great Tree did no such thing;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He smiled to hear their whispering.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Come, children, all to bed,” he cried;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And ere the leaves could urge their prayer,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He shook his head, and far and wide,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Fluttering and rustling everywhere,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Down sped the leaflets through the air.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I saw them; on the ground they lay,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Golden and red, a huddled swarm,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Waiting till one from far away,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">White bedclothes heaped upon her arm,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Should come to wrap them safe and warm.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The great bare Tree looked down and smiled.<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Good-night, dear little leaves,” he said.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And from below each sleepy child<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Replied, “Good-night,” and murmured,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“It is <i>so</i> nice to go to bed!”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Susan Coolidge.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Willie_Winkie" id="Willie_Winkie"></a>Willie Winkie.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Wee Willie Winkie,” by William Miller (1810-72), is included in this
+volume out of respect to an eight-year-old child who chose it from
+among hundreds. We had one poetry hour every week, and he studied and
+recited it with unabated interest to the end of the year.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wee Willie Winkie rins through the town,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Up-stairs and doon-stairs, in his nicht-gown,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tirlin’ at the window, cryin’ at the lock,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Are the weans in their bed?&mdash;for it’s now ten o’clock.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hey, Willie Winkie! are ye comin’ ben?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The cat’s singin’ gay thrums to the sleepin’ hen,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The doug’s speldered on the floor, and disna gie a cheep;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But here’s a waukrife laddie that winna fa’ asleep.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Onything but sleep, ye rogue! glow’rin’ like the moon,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rattlin’ in an airn jug wi’ an airn spoon,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rumblin’ tumblin’ roun’ about, crowin’ like a cock,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Skirlin’ like a kenna-what&mdash;wauknin’ sleepin’ folk.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hey, Willie Winkie! the wean’s in a creel!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Waumblin’ aff a body’s knee like a vera eel,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ruggin’ at the cat’s lug, and ravellin’ a’ her thrums,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hey, Willie Winkie!&mdash;See, there he comes!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wearie is the mither that has a storie wean,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A wee stumpie stoussie that canna rin his lane,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That has a battle aye wi’ sleep before he’ll close an ee;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But a kiss frae aff his rosy lips gies strength anew to me.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Miller.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Owl_and_the_Pussy-Cat" id="The_Owl_and_the_Pussy-Cat"></a>The Owl and the Pussy-Cat.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Owl and the Pussy-Cat,” by Edward Lear (1812-88), is placed here
+because I once found that a timid child was much strengthened and
+developed by learning it. It is a song that appeals to the imagination
+of children, and they like to sing it.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea<br></span>
+<span class="i4">In a beautiful pea-green boat;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They took some honey, and plenty of money<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Wrapped up in a five-pound note.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Owl looked up to the moon above,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">And sang to a small guitar,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love!<br></span>
+<span class="i4">What a beautiful Pussy you are,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i16">You are,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">What a beautiful Pussy you are!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl!<br></span>
+<span class="i4">How wonderful sweet you sing!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, let us be married,&mdash;too long we have tarried,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">But what shall we do for a ring?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They sailed away for a year and a day<br></span>
+<span class="i4">To the land where the Bong-tree grows,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And there in a wood a piggy-wig stood<br></span>
+<span class="i4">With a ring in the end of his nose,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i16">His nose,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">With a ring in the end of his nose.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Your ring?” Said the piggy, “I will,”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So they took it away, and were married next day<br></span>
+<span class="i4">By the turkey who lives on the hill.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They dined upon mince and slices of quince,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Which they ate with a runcible spoon,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And hand in hand on the edge of the sand<br></span>
+<span class="i4">They danced by the light of the moon,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i16">The moon,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">They danced by the light of the moon.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Edward Lear.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Wynken_Blynken_and_Nod" id="Wynken_Blynken_and_Nod"></a>Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,” by Eugene Field (1850-95), pleases
+children, who are all by nature sailors and adventurers.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Sailed off in a wooden shoe,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sailed on a river of crystal light<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Into a sea of dew.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Where are you going, and what do you wish?”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The old moon asked the three.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“We have come to fish for the herring-fish<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That live in this beautiful sea;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Nets of silver and gold have we,”<br></span>
+<span class="i16">Said Wynken,<br></span>
+<span class="i16">Blynken,<br></span>
+<span class="i16">And Nod.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The old moon laughed and sang a song,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As they rocked in the wooden shoe;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the wind that sped them all night long<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Ruffled the waves of dew;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The little stars were the herring-fish<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That lived in the beautiful sea.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Now cast your nets wherever you wish,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Never afeard are we!”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">So cried the stars to the fishermen three,<br></span>
+<span class="i16">Wynken,<br></span>
+<span class="i16">Blynken,<br></span>
+<span class="i16">And Nod.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All night long their nets they threw<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To the stars in the twinkling foam,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Bringing the fishermen home:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As if it could not be;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And some folk thought ’twas a dream they’d dreamed<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of sailing that beautiful sea;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But I shall name you the fishermen three:<br></span>
+<span class="i16">Wynken,<br></span>
+<span class="i16">Blynken,<br></span>
+<span class="i16">And Nod.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And Nod is a little head,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Is a wee one’s trundle-bed;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So shut your eyes while Mother sings<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of wonderful sights that be,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And you shall see the beautiful things<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As you rock on the misty sea<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three,<br></span>
+<span class="i16">Wynken,<br></span>
+<span class="i16">Blynken,<br></span>
+<span class="i16">And Nod.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Eugene Field.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Duel" id="The_Duel"></a>The Duel.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Duel,” by Eugene Field (1850-95), is almost the most popular
+humorous poem that has come under my notice. In making such a
+collection as this it is not easy to find poems at once delicate,
+witty, and graphic. I have taught “The Duel” hundreds of times, and
+children invariably love it.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The gingham dog and the calico cat<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Side by side on the table sat;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twas half-past twelve, and (what do you think!)<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor one nor t’other had slept a wink!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Appeared to know as sure as fate<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There was going to be a terrible spat.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">(<i>I wasn’t there; I simply state</i><br></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>What was told to me by the Chinese plate!</i>)<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The gingham dog went “bow-wow-wow!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the calico cat replied “mee-ow!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The air was littered, an hour or so,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With bits of gingham and calico,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While the old Dutch clock in the chimney-place<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Up with its hands before its face,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For it always dreaded a family row!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">(<i>Now mind: I’m only telling you</i><br></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>What the old Dutch clock declares is true!</i>)<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Chinese plate looked very blue,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And wailed, “Oh, dear! what shall we do!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the gingham dog and the calico cat<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wallowed this way and tumbled that,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Employing every tooth and claw<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the awfullest way you ever saw&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, oh! how the gingham and calico flew!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">(<i>Don’t fancy I exaggerate!</i><br></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>I got my views from the Chinese plate!</i>)<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Next morning where the two had sat<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They found no trace of the dog or cat;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And some folks think unto this day<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That burglars stole the pair away!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the truth about the cat and the pup<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Is this: They ate each other up!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now what do you really think of that!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">(<i>The old Dutch clock it told me so,</i><br></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And that is how I came to know</i>.)<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Eugene Field.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Boy_Who_Never_Told_a_Lie" id="The_Boy_Who_Never_Told_a_Lie"></a>The Boy Who Never Told a Lie.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Boy Who Never Told a Lie” (anonymous), as well as “Whatever Brawls
+Disturb the Street,” by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), are real gems. A few
+years ago they were more in favour than the poorer verse that has been
+put forward. But they are sure to be revived.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Once there was a little boy,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With curly hair and pleasant eye&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A boy who always told the truth,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And never, never told a lie.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And when he trotted off to school,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The children all about would cry,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“There goes the curly-headed boy&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The boy that never tells a lie.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And everybody loved him so,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Because he always told the truth,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That every day, as he grew up,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">’Twas said, “There goes the honest youth.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And when the people that stood near<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Would turn to ask the reason why,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The answer would be always this:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Because he never tells a lie.”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Love_Between_Brothers_and_Sisters" id="Love_Between_Brothers_and_Sisters"></a>Love Between Brothers and Sisters.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Whatever brawls disturb the street,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">There should be peace at home;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where sisters dwell and brothers meet,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Quarrels should never come.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Birds in their little nests agree;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And ’tis a shameful sight,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When children of one family<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Fall out and chide and fight.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Isaac Watts.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Bluebell_of_Scotland" id="The_Bluebell_of_Scotland"></a>The Bluebell of Scotland.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh where! and oh where! is your Highland laddie gone?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He’s gone to fight the French for King George upon the throne;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And it’s oh! in my heart how I wish him safe at home.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh where! and oh where! does your Highland laddie dwell?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He dwells in merry Scotland at the sign of the Bluebell;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And it’s oh! in my heart that I love my laddie well.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<h3><a name="If_I_Had_But_Two_Little_Wings" id="If_I_Had_But_Two_Little_Wings"></a>If I Had But Two Little Wings.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“If I Had But Two Little Wings,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
+(1772-1834), is recommended by a number of teachers and school-girls.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If I had but two little wings<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And were a little feathery bird,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">To you I’d fly, my dear!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But thoughts like these are idle things<br></span>
+<span class="i4">And I stay here.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But in my sleep to you I fly:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I’m always with you in my sleep!<br></span>
+<span class="i4">The world is all one’s own.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And then one wakes, and where am I?<br></span>
+<span class="i4">All, all alone.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Samuel T. Coleridge.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="A_Farewell" id="A_Farewell"></a>A Farewell.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“A Farewell,” by Charles Kingsley (1819-75), makes it seem worth while
+to be good.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My fairest child, I have no song to give you;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">No lark could pipe to skies so dull and gray;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you<br></span>
+<span class="i16">For every day.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Do noble things, not dream them all day long:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And so make life, death, and that vast forever<br></span>
+<span class="i16">One grand, sweet song.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Charles Kingsley.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Casabianca" id="Casabianca"></a>Casabianca.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Casabianca,” by Felicia Hemans (1793-1835), is the portrait of a
+faithful heart, an example of unreasoning obedience. It is right that a
+child should obey even to the death the commands of a loving parent.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The boy stood on the burning deck,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Whence all but him had fled;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The flame that lit the battle’s wreck<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Shone round him o’er the dead.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet beautiful and bright he stood,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As born to rule the storm;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A creature of heroic blood,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A proud though childlike form.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The flames rolled on&mdash;he would not go<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Without his father’s word;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That father, faint in death below,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">His voice no longer heard.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He called aloud, “Say, father, say<br></span>
+<span class="i2">If yet my task is done?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He knew not that the chieftain lay<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Unconscious of his son.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Speak, father!” once again he cried,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“If I may yet be gone!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And but the booming shots replied,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And fast the flames rolled on.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Upon his brow he felt their breath,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And in his waving hair;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And looked from that lone post of death<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In still, yet brave despair.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And shouted but once more aloud<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“My father! must I stay?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While o’er him fast, through sail and shroud,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The wreathing fires made way.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They caught the flag on high,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And streamed above the gallant child<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Like banners in the sky.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then came a burst of thunder sound&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The boy&mdash;oh! where was he?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Ask of the winds that far around<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With fragments strew the sea;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With mast, and helm, and pennon fair.<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That well had borne their part&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the noblest thing that perished there<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Was that young, faithful heart.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Felicia Hemans.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Captains_Daughter" id="The_Captains_Daughter"></a>The Captain’s Daughter.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Captain’s Daughter,” by James T. Fields (1816-81), carries weight
+with every young audience. It is pointed to an end that children
+love&mdash;viz., trust in a higher power.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We were crowded in the cabin,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Not a soul would dare to sleep,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It was midnight on the waters,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And a storm was on the deep.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">’Tis a fearful thing in winter<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To be shattered by the blast,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And to hear the rattling trumpet<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Thunder, “Cut away the mast!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So we shuddered there in silence,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For the stoutest held his breath,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While the hungry sea was roaring<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the breakers talked with Death.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As thus we sat in darkness,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Each one busy with his prayers,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“We are lost!” the captain shouted<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As he staggered down the stairs.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But his little daughter whispered,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As she took his icy hand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Isn’t God upon the ocean,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Just the same as on the land?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then we kissed the little maiden.<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And we spoke in better cheer,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And we anchored safe in harbour<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When the morn was shining clear.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">James T. Fields.</span></p>
+
+<p class="above">[“The 'village smithy’ stood in Brattle Street, Cambridge. There came a
+time when the chestnut-tree that shaded it was cut down, and then the
+children of the place put their pence together and had a chair made for
+the poet from its wood.”]</p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Village_Blacksmith" id="The_Village_Blacksmith"></a>The Village Blacksmith.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>Longfellow (1807-82) is truly the children’s poet. His poems are as
+simple, pathetic, artistic, and philosophical as if they were intended
+to tell the plain everyday story of life to older people. “The Village
+Blacksmith” has been learned by thousands of children, and there is no
+criticism to be put upon it. The age of the child has nothing whatever
+to do with his learning it. Age does not grade children nor is poetry
+wholly to be so graded. “Time is the false reply.”</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Under a spreading chestnut-tree<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The village smithy stands;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The smith, a mighty man is he,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With large and sinewy hands,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the muscles of his brawny arms<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Are strong as iron bands.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His hair is crisp, and black, and long;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">His face is like the tan;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His brow is wet with honest sweat,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He earns whate’er he can,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And looks the whole world in the face,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For he owes not any man.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Week in, week out, from morn till night,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">You can hear his bellows blow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With measured beat and slow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a sexton ringing the village bell,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When the evening sun is low.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And children coming home from school<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Look in at the open door;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They love to see the flaming forge,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And hear the bellows roar,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And catch the burning sparks that fly<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Like chaff from a threshing-floor.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He goes on Sunday to the church,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And sits among his boys;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He hears the parson pray and preach,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He hears his daughter’s voice<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Singing in the village choir,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And it makes his heart rejoice.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It sounds to him like her mother’s voice,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Singing in Paradise!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He needs must think of her once more,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">How in the grave she lies;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And with his hard, rough hand he wipes<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A tear out of his eyes.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Toiling,&mdash;rejoicing,&mdash;sorrowing,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Onward through life he goes;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Each morning sees some task begin,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Each evening sees it close;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Something attempted, something done,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Has earned a night’s repose.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For the lesson thou hast taught!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus at the flaming forge of life<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Our fortunes must be wrought;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus on its sounding anvil shaped<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Each burning deed and thought.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Henry W. Longfellow.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Sweet_and_Low" id="Sweet_and_Low"></a>Sweet and Low.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sweet and low, sweet and low,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Wind of the western sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Low, low, breathe and blow,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Wind of the western sea!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Over the rolling waters go,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come from the dropping moon and blow,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Blow him again to me;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Father will come to thee soon;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rest, rest, on mother’s breast,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Father will come to thee soon;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Father will come to his babe in the nest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Silver sails all out of the west<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Under the silver moon:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Violet" id="The_Violet"></a>The Violet.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Violet,” by Jane Taylor (1783-1824), is another of those dear
+old-fashioned poems, pure poetry and pure violet. It is included in
+this volume out of respect to my own love for it when I was a child.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Down in a green and shady bed<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A modest violet grew;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Its stalk was bent, it hung its head,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As if to hide from view.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And yet it was a lovely flower,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">No colours bright and fair;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It might have graced a rosy bower,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Instead of hiding there.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet there it was content to bloom,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In modest tints arrayed;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And there diffused its sweet perfume,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Within the silent shade.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then let me to the valley go,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">This pretty flower to see;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That I may also learn to grow<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In sweet humility.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Jane Taylor.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_RainbowW" id="The_RainbowW"></a>The Rainbow.<br><span class="subtitle">(A FRAGMENT.)</span></h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Rainbow,” by William Wordsworth (1770-1850), accords with every
+child’s feelings. It voices the spirit of all ages that would love to
+imagine it “a bridge to heaven.”</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My heart leaps up when I behold<br></span>
+<span class="i4">A rainbow in the sky;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So was it when my life began,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So is it now I am a man,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So be it when I shall grow old,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Or let me die!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The child is father of the man;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I could wish my days to be<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bound each to each by natural piety.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Wordsworth.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="A_Visit_From_St_Nicholas" id="A_Visit_From_St_Nicholas"></a>A Visit From St. Nicholas.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“A Visit From St. Nicholas,” by Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863) is the
+most popular Christmas poem ever written. It carries Santa Claus on
+from year to year and the spirit of Santa Claus.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The children were nestled all snug in their beds,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And mamma in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Away to the window I flew like a flash,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Gave the luster of mid-day to objects below,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With a little old driver, so lively and quick,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Now, <i>Dasher</i>! now, <i>Dancer</i>! now, <i>Prancer</i> and <i>Vixen</i>!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On, <i>Comet</i>! on, <i>Cupid</i>! on, <i>Donder</i> and <i>Blitzen</i>!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas, too.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As I drew in my head, and was turning around,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His eyes&mdash;how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He had a broad face and a little round belly,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And laying his finger aside of his nose,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And away they all flew like the down on a thistle.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“<i>Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night</i>.”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Clement Clarke Moore.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Star-Spangled_Banner" id="The_Star-Spangled_Banner"></a>The Star-Spangled Banner.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O! say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On that shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In full glory reflected now shines on the stream;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis the star-spangled banner; O long may it wave<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And where is that band who so vauntingly swore<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A home and a country should leave us no more?<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps, pollution.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">No refuge could save the hireling and slave<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And this be our motto&mdash;“<i>In God is our trust</i>”:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Francis Scott Key.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Father_William" id="Father_William"></a>Father William.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Father William” a parody by Lewis Carroll (1833-), is even more clever
+than the original. Harmless fun brightens the world. It takes a real
+genius to create wit that carries no sting.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“And your hair has become very white;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet you incessantly stand on your head&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Do you think, at your age, it is right?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“I feared it might injure the brain;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Why, I do it again and again.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“You are old,” said the youth, “as I mentioned before,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And have grown most uncommonly fat;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Pray, what is the reason of that?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“In my youth,” said the sage, as he shook his gray locks,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“I kept all my limbs very supple<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By the use of this ointment&mdash;one shilling the box&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Allow me to sell you a couple.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“You are old,” said the youth, “and your jaws are too weak<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For anything tougher than suet;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Pray, how did you manage to do it?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“In my youth,” said his father, “I took to the law,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And argued each case with my wife;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Has lasted the rest of my life.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“You are old,” said the youth; “one would hardly suppose<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That your eye was as steady as ever;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">What made you so awfully clever?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Said his father, “don’t give yourself airs!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Be off, or I’ll kick you down-stairs!”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Lewis Carroll.</span></p>
+
+<p class="below">(“Alice in Wonderland.”)</p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Nightingale_and_the_Glow-worm" id="The_Nightingale_and_the_Glow-worm"></a>The Nightingale and the Glow-worm.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Nightingale,” by William Cowper (1731-1800), is a favourite with a
+teacher of good taste, and I include it at her request.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A nightingale, that all day long<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Had cheered the village with his song,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor yet at eve his note suspended,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor yet when eventide was ended,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Began to feel, as well he might,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The keen demands of appetite;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When, looking eagerly around,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He spied far off, upon the ground,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A something shining in the dark,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And knew the glow-worm by his spark;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So, stooping down from hawthorn top,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He thought to put him in his crop.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The worm, aware of his intent,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Harangued him thus, right eloquent:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Did you admire my lamp,” quoth he,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“As much as I your minstrelsy,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">You would abhor to do me wrong,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As much as I to spoil your song;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For ’twas the self-same power divine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Taught you to sing and me to shine;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That you with music, I with light,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Might beautify and cheer the night.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The songster heard his short oration,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And warbling out his approbation,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Released him, as my story tells,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And found a supper somewhere else.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Cowper.</span></p>
+
+
+<div class="chapter"><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>
+<h2>PART II.<br><br>
+<small>The Little Child</small></h2>
+ <img class="plain" src="images/part2.png" alt="A dog and a cat" title="A dog and a cat" height="300" width="278"></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Frost" id="The_Frost"></a>The Frost.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Jack Frost,” by Hannah Flagg Gould (1789-1865), is perhaps a hundred
+years old, but he is the same rollicking fellow to-day as of yore. The
+poem puts his merry pranks to the front and prepares the way for
+science to give him a true analysis.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Frost looked forth, one still, clear night,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And whispered, “Now I shall be out of sight;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So through the valley and over the height,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In silence I’ll take my way:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I will not go on with that blustering train,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The wind and the snow, the hail and the rain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who make so much bustle and noise in vain,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But I’ll be as busy as they.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then he flew to the mountain and powdered its crest;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He lit on the trees, and their boughs he dressed<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In diamond beads&mdash;and over the breast<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the quivering lake he spread<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A coat of mail, that it need not fear<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The downward point of many a spear<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That hung on its margin far and near,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Where a rock could rear its head.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He went to the windows of those who slept,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And over each pane, like a fairy, crept;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherever he breathed, wherever he slept,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">By the light of the moon were seen<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Most beautiful things&mdash;there were flowers and trees;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There were bevies of birds and swarms of bees;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There were cities with temples and towers, and these<br></span>
+<span class="i2">All pictured in silver sheen!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But he did one thing that was hardly fair;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He peeped in the cupboard, and finding there<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That all had forgotten for him to prepare&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Now just to set them a-thinking,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I’ll bite this basket of fruit,” said he,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“This costly pitcher I’ll burst in three,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the glass of water they’ve left for me<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall '<i>tchich!</i>’ to tell them I’m drinking.”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Hannah Flagg Gould.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Owl" id="The_Owl"></a>The Owl.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When cats run home and light is come,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And dew is cold upon the ground,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the far-off stream is dumb,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the whirring sail goes round,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the whirring sail goes round;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Alone and warming his five wits,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">The white owl in the belfry sits.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When merry milkmaids click the latch,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And rarely smells the new-mown hay,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Twice or thrice his roundelay,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Twice or thrice his roundelay;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Alone and warming his five wits,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">The white owl in the belfry sits.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Little_Billee" id="Little_Billee"></a>Little Billee.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Little Billee,” by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), finds a
+place here because it carries a good lesson good-naturedly rendered. An
+accomplished teacher recommends it, and I recollect two young children
+in Chicago who sang it frequently for years without getting tired of
+it.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There were three sailors of Bristol city<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Who took a boat and went to sea.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But first with beef and captain’s biscuits<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And pickled pork they loaded she.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There was gorging Jack and guzzling Jimmy,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the youngest he was little Billee.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now when they got so far as the Equator<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They’d nothing left but one split pea.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“I am extremely hungaree.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To gorging Jack says guzzling Jimmy,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“We’ve nothing left, us must eat we.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“With one another, we shouldn’t agree!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s little Bill, he’s young and tender,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">We’re old and tough, so let’s eat he.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Oh! Billy, we’re going to kill and eat you,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">So undo the button of your chemie.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When Bill received this information<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He used his pocket-handkerchie.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“First let me say my catechism,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Which my poor mammy taught to me.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Make haste, make haste,” says guzzling Jimmy<br></span>
+<span class="i2">While Jack pulled out his snickersnee.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So Billy went up to the main-topgallant mast,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And down he fell on his bended knee.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He scarce had come to the Twelfth Commandment<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When up he jumps, “There’s land I see.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Jerusalem and Madagascar,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And North and South Amerikee:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s the British flag a-riding at anchor,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With Admiral Napier, K.C.B.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So when they got aboard of the Admiral’s<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He hanged fat Jack and flogged Jimmee;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But as for little Bill, he made him<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The Captain of a Seventy-three.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Makepeace Thackeray.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Butterfly_and_the_Bee" id="The_Butterfly_and_the_Bee"></a>The Butterfly and the Bee.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Butterfly and the Bee,” by William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), is
+recommended by some school-girls. It carries a lesson in favour of the
+worker.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Methought I heard a butterfly<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Say to a labouring bee:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Thou hast no colours of the sky<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On painted wings like me.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Poor child of vanity! those dyes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And colours bright and rare,”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With mild reproof, the bee replies,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Are all beneath my care.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Content I toil from morn to eve,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And scorning idleness,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To tribes of gaudy sloth I leave<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The vanity of dress.”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Lisle Bowles.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="An_Incident_of_the_French_Camp" id="An_Incident_of_the_French_Camp"></a>An Incident of the French Camp.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“An Incident of the French Camp,” by Robert Browning (1812-89), is
+included in this volume out of regard to a boy of eight years who did
+not care for many poems, but this one stirred his heart to its depths.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You know, we French storm’d Ratisbon:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A mile or so away<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On a little mound, Napoleon<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Stood on our storming-day;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Legs wide, arms lock’d behind,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As if to balance the prone brow<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Oppressive with its mind.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Just as perhaps he mus’d “My plans<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That soar, to earth may fall,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Let once my army leader Lannes<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Waver at yonder wall,”&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Out ’twixt the battery smokes there flew<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A rider, bound on bound<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Full-galloping; nor bridle drew<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Until he reach’d the mound.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then off there flung in smiling joy,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And held himself erect<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By just his horse’s mane, a boy:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">You hardly could suspect&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">(So tight he kept his lips compress’d,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Scarce any blood came through)<br></span>
+<span class="i0">You look’d twice ere you saw his breast<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Was all but shot in two.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Well,” cried he, “Emperor, by God’s grace<br></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ve got you Ratisbon!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Marshal’s in the market-place,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And you’ll be there anon<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To see your flag-bird flap his vans<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Where I, to heart’s desire,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Perched him!” The chief’s eye flashed; his plans<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Soared up again like fire.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The chief’s eye flashed; but presently<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Softened itself, as sheathes<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A film the mother-eagle’s eye<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When her bruised eaglet breathes;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“You’re wounded!” “Nay,” the soldier’s pride<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Touched to the quick, he said:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“I’m killed, Sire!” And his chief beside,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Smiling the boy fell dead.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Browning.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Robert_of_Lincoln" id="Robert_of_Lincoln"></a>Robert of Lincoln.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Robert of Lincoln,” by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), is one of
+the finest bird poems ever written. It finds a place here because I
+have seen it used effectively as a memory gem in the Cook County Normal
+School (Colonel Parker’s school), year after year, and because my own
+pupils invariably like to commit it to memory. With the child of six to
+the student of twenty years it stands a source of delight.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Merrily swinging on brier and weed,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Near to the nest of his little dame,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Over the mountain-side or mead,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Robert of Lincoln is telling his name.<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Spink, spank, spink,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Snug and safe is this nest of ours,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hidden among the summer flowers.<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Chee, chee, chee.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Robert of Lincoln is gayly dressed,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Wearing a bright, black wedding-coat;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">White are his shoulders, and white his crest,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Hear him call in his merry note,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Spink, spank, spink,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Look what a nice, new coat is mine;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sure there was never a bird so fine.<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Chee, chee, chee.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Robert of Lincoln’s Quaker wife,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Passing at home a patient life,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Broods in the grass while her husband sings,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Spink, spank, spink,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Brood, kind creature, you need not fear<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thieves and robbers while I am here.<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Chee, chee, chee.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Modest and shy as a nun is she;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">One weak chirp is her only note;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Braggart, and prince of braggarts is he,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Pouring boasts from his little throat,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Spink, spank, spink,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Never was I afraid of man,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can.<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Chee, chee, chee.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Six white eggs on a bed of hay,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Flecked with purple, a pretty sight:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There as the mother sits all day,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Robert is singing with all his might,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Spink, spank, spink,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nice good wife that never goes out,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Keeping house while I frolic about.<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Chee, chee, chee.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Soon as the little ones chip the shell,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Six wide mouths are open for food;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Gathering seeds for the hungry brood:<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Spink, spank, spink,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">This new life is likely to be<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hard for a gay young fellow like me.<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Chee, chee, chee.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Robert of Lincoln at length is made<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Sober with work, and silent with care,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Off is his holiday garment laid,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Half forgotten that merry air,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Spink, spank, spink,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nobody knows but my mate and I,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where our nest and our nestlings lie.<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Chee, chee, chee.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Summer wanes; the children are grown;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Fun and frolic no more he knows;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Robert of Lincoln’s a hum-drum drone;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Off he flies, and we sing as he goes,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Spink, spank, spink,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When you can pipe that merry old strain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Robert of Lincoln, come back again.<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Chee, chee, chee.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Cullen Bryant.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Old_Grimes" id="Old_Grimes"></a>Old Grimes.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Old Grimes” is an heirloom, an antique gem. We learn it as a matter of
+course for its sparkle and glow.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Old Grimes is dead; that good old man,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">We ne’er shall see him more;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He used to wear a long, black coat,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">All buttoned down before.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His heart was open as the day,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">His feelings all were true;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His hair was some inclined to gray,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He wore it in a queue.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He lived at peace with all mankind,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In friendship he was true;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His coat had pocket-holes behind,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">His pantaloons were blue.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He modest merit sought to find,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And pay it its desert;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He had no malice in his mind,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">No ruffles on his shirt.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His neighbours he did not abuse,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Was sociable and gay;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He wore large buckles on his shoes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And changed them every day.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His knowledge, hid from public gaze,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He did not bring to view,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor make a noise town-meeting days,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As many people do.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His worldly goods he never threw<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In trust to fortune’s chances,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But lived (as all his brothers do)<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In easy circumstances.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thus undisturbed by anxious cares<br></span>
+<span class="i2">His peaceful moments ran;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And everybody said he was<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A fine old gentleman.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Albert Gorton Greene.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Song_of_Life" id="Song_of_Life"></a>Song of Life.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A traveller on a dusty road<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Strewed acorns on the lea;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And one took root and sprouted up,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And grew into a tree.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Love sought its shade at evening-time,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To breathe its early vows;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And Age was pleased, in heights of noon,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To bask beneath its boughs.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The dormouse loved its dangling twigs,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The birds sweet music bore&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It stood a glory in its place,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A blessing evermore.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A little spring had lost its way<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Amid the grass and fern;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A passing stranger scooped a well<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Where weary men might turn.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He walled it in, and hung with care<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A ladle on the brink;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He thought not of the deed he did,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But judged that Toil might drink.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He passed again; and lo! the well,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">By summer never dried,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Had cooled ten thousand parch&eacute;d tongues,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And saved a life beside.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A nameless man, amid the crowd<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That thronged the daily mart,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Let fall a word of hope and love,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Unstudied from the heart,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A whisper on the tumult thrown,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A transitory breath,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It raised a brother from the dust,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">It saved a soul from death.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O germ! O fount! O word of love!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">O thought at random cast!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye were but little at the first,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But mighty at the last.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Charles Mackay.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Fairy_Song" id="Fairy_Song"></a>Fairy Song.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shed no tear! O shed no tear!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The flower will bloom another year.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Weep no more! O, weep no more!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Young buds sleep in the root’s white core.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dry your eyes! Oh! dry your eyes!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For I was taught in Paradise<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To ease my breast of melodies&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Shed no tear.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Overhead! look overhead!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Mong the blossoms white and red&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Look up, look up. I flutter now<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On this flush pomegranate bough.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">See me! ’tis this silvery bell<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ever cures the good man’s ill.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shed no tear! O, shed no tear!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The flowers will bloom another year.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Adieu, adieu&mdash;I fly, adieu,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I vanish in the heaven’s blue&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Adieu, adieu!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">John Keats.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="A_Boys_Song" id="A_Boys_Song"></a>A Boy’s Song</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“A Boy’s Song,” by James Hogg (1770-1835), is a sparkling poem, very
+attractive to children.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where the pools are bright and deep,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the gray trout lies asleep,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Up the river and o’er the lea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That’s the way for Billy and me.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where the blackbird sings the latest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the nestlings chirp and flee,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That’s the way for Billy and me.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where the mowers mow the cleanest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the hay lies thick and greenest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There to trace the homeward bee,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That’s the way for Billy and me.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where the hazel bank is steepest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the shadow falls the deepest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the clustering nuts fall free.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That’s the way for Billy and me.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why the boys should drive away,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Little sweet maidens from the play,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Or love to banter and fight so well,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That’s the thing I never could tell.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But this I know, I love to play,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the meadow, among the hay;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Up the water and o’er the lea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That’s the way for Billy and me.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">James Hogg.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Buttercups_and_Daisies" id="Buttercups_and_Daisies"></a>Buttercups and Daisies.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Buttercups and daisies,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Oh, the pretty flowers,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Coming ere the spring time,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To tell of sunny hours.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While the tree are leafless,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">While the fields are bare,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Buttercups and daisies<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Spring up here and there.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ere the snowdrop peepeth,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Ere the crocus bold,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere the early primrose<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Opes its paly gold,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Somewhere on the sunny bank<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Buttercups are bright;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Somewhere ’mong the frozen grass<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Peeps the daisy white.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Little hardy flowers,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Like to children poor,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Playing in their sturdy health<br></span>
+<span class="i2">By their mother’s door,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Purple with the north wind,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Yet alert and bold;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fearing not, and caring not,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Though they be a-cold!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What to them is winter!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">What are stormy showers!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Buttercups and daisies<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Are these human flowers!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He who gave them hardships<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And a life of care,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Gave them likewise hardy strength<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And patient hearts to bear.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Mary Howitt.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Rainbow" id="The_Rainbow"></a>The Rainbow.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Triumphal arch, that fills the sky<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When storms prepare to part,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I ask not proud Philosophy<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To teach me what thou art.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Still seem, as to my childhood’s sight,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A midway station given,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For happy spirits to alight,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Betwixt the earth and heaven.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Thomas Campbell.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Old_Ironsides" id="Old_Ironsides"></a>Old Ironsides.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Old Ironsides,” by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94), is learned
+readily. Children are untouched by the commercial spirit which is the
+reproach of this age. “Ingratitude is the vice of republics,” and this
+poem puts to shame the love of money and the spirit of ingratitude that
+could let a national servant become a wreck.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Long has it waved on high,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And many an eye has danced to see<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That banner in the sky;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath it rung the battle shout,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And burst the cannon’s roar;&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The meteor of the ocean air<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall sweep the clouds no more.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Where knelt the vanquished foe,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When winds were hurrying o’er the flood<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And waves were white below.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">No more shall feel the victor’s tread,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Or know the conquered knee;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The harpies of the shore shall pluck<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The eagle of the sea!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O, better that her shattered hulk<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Should sink beneath the wave;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her thunders shook the mighty deep,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And there should be her grave;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nail to the mast her holy flag,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Set every threadbare sail,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And give her to the god of storms,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The lightning and the gale!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Oliver Wendell Holmes.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Little_Orphant_Annie" id="Little_Orphant_Annie"></a>Little Orphant Annie.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Little Orphant Annie” certainly earns her “board and keep” when she
+has “washed the dishes,” “swept up the crumbs,” “driven the chickens
+from the porch,” and done all the other odds and ends of work on a
+farm. The poet, James Whitcomb Riley (1853-), has shown how truly a
+little child may be overtaxed and yet preserve a brave spirit and keen
+imagination. Children invariably love to learn this poem.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Little Orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ wash the cups and saucers up, an’ brush the crumbs away,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ shoo the chickens off the porch, an’ dust the hearth, an’ sweep,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ make the fire, an’ bake the bread, an’ earn her board-an’-keep;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ all us other children, when the supper things is done,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A-list’nin’ to the witch-tales ’at Annie tells about,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ the Gobble-uns ’at gits you<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Ef you<br></span>
+<span class="i16">Don’t<br></span>
+<span class="i20">Watch<br></span>
+<span class="i24">Out!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Onc’t they was a little boy wouldn’t say his pray’rs&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His mammy heerd him holler, an’ his daddy heerd him bawl,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ when they turn’t the kivvers down, he wasn’t there at all!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ they seeked him in the rafter-room, an’ cubby hole, an’ press,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ seeked him up the chimbly flue, an’ ever’-wheres, I guess;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But all they ever found was thist his pants an’ roundabout!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ the Gobble-uns’ll git you<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Ef you<br></span>
+<span class="i16">Don’t<br></span>
+<span class="i20">Watch<br></span>
+<span class="i24">Out!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">An’ one time a little girl ’ud allus laugh an’ grin,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ make fun of ever’ one, an’ all her blood-an’-kin;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ onc’t when they was “company,” an’ ole folks was there,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She mocked ’em an’ shocked ’em, an’ said she didn’t care!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ thist as she kicked her heels, an’ turn’t to run an’ hide,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They was two great big Black Things a-standin’ by her side,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ they snatched her through the ceilin’ ’fore she knowed what she’s about!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ the Gobble-uns’ll git you<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Ef you<br></span>
+<span class="i16">Don’t<br></span>
+<span class="i20">Watch<br></span>
+<span class="i24">Out!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">An’ little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ the lampwick sputters, an’ the wind goes woo-oo!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ you hear the crickets quit, an’ the moon is gray,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ the lightnin’-bugs in dew is all squenched away,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">You better mind yer parents, an’ yer teachers fond an’ dear,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ churish them ’at loves you, an’ dry the orphant’s tear,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ he’p the pore an’ needy ones ’at clusters all about,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Er the Gobble-uns’ll git you<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Ef you<br></span>
+<span class="i16">Don’t<br></span>
+<span class="i20">Watch<br></span>
+<span class="i24">Out!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">James Whitcomb Riley.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="O_Captain_My_Captain" id="O_Captain_My_Captain"></a>O Captain! My Captain!</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman (1819-92), is placed here out
+of compliment to a little boy aged ten who wanted to recite it once a
+week for a year. This song and Edwin Markham’s poem on Lincoln are two
+of the greatest tributes ever paid to that hero.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But O heart! heart! heart!<br></span>
+<span class="i4">O the bleeding drops of red,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Where on the deck my Captain lies,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Fallen cold and dead.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rise up&mdash;for you the flag is flung&mdash;for you the bugle trills,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths&mdash;for you the shores a-crowding,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Here Captain! dear father!<br></span>
+<span class="i4">This arm beneath your head!<br></span>
+<span class="i6">It is some dream that on the deck<br></span>
+<span class="i8">You’ve fallen cold and dead.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Exult O shores, and ring O bells!<br></span>
+<span class="i4">But I, with mournful tread,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Walk the deck my Captain lies,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Fallen cold and dead.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Walt Whitman.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Ingratitude" id="Ingratitude"></a>Ingratitude.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Ingratitude,” by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), is an incisive
+thrust at a refined vice. It is a part of education to learn to be
+grateful.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Blow, blow, thou winter wind,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou are not so unkind<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As man’s ingratitude;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy tooth is not so keen<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Because thou are not seen,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Although thy breath be rude.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou dost not bite so nigh<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As benefits forgot;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Though thou the waters warp,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy sting is not so sharp<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As friend remembered not.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Shakespeare.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Ivy_Green" id="The_Ivy_Green"></a>The Ivy Green.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Ivy Green,” by Charles Dickens (1812-70), is a hardy poem in
+honour of a hardy plant. There is a wonderful ivy growing at Rhudlan,
+in northern Wales. Its roots are so large and strong that they form a
+comfortable seat for many persons, and no one can remember when they
+were smaller. This ivy envelops a great castle in ruins. Every child in
+that locality loves the old ivy. It is typical of the ivy as seen all
+through Wales and England.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O, a dainty plant is the ivy green,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That creepeth o’er ruins old!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In his cell so lone and cold.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The walls must be crumbled, the stones decayed.<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To pleasure his dainty whim;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the mouldering dust that years have made<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Is a merry meal for him.<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Creeping where no life is seen,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">A rare old plant is the ivy green.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And a staunch old heart has he!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How closely he twineth, how tight he clings<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To his friend, the huge oak tree!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And slyly he traileth along the ground,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And his leaves he gently waves,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he joyously twines and hugs around<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The rich mould of dead men’s graves.<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Creeping where no life is seen,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">A rare old plant is the ivy green.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Whole ages have fled, and their works decayed,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And nations have scattered been;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the stout old ivy shall never fade<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From its hale and hearty green.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The brave old plant in its lonely days<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall fatten upon the past;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the stateliest building man can raise<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Is the ivy’s food at last.<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Creeping where no life is seen,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">A rare old plant is the ivy green.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Charles Dickens.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Noble_Nature" id="The_Noble_Nature"></a>The Noble Nature.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Noble Nature,” by Ben Jonson (1574-1637), needs no plea. A small
+virtue well polished is better than none.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It is not growing like a tree<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In bulk doth make man better be;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Or standing long an oak, three hundred year<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear<br></span>
+<span class="i12">A lily of a day<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Is fairer far in May,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Although it fall and die that night,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i6">It was the plant and flower of light.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In small proportions we just beauties see;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And in short measures life may perfect be.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Ben Jonson.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Flying_Squirrel" id="The_Flying_Squirrel"></a>The Flying Squirrel.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Flying Squirrel” is an honest account of a live creature that won
+his way into scores of hearts by his mad pranks and affectionate ways.
+It is enough that John Burroughs has commended the poem.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Of all the woodland creatures,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The quaintest little sprite<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Is the dainty flying squirrel<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In vest of shining white,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In coat of silver gray,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And vest of shining white.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His furry Quaker jacket<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Is trimmed with stripe of black;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A furry plume to match it<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Is curling o’er his back;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">New curved with every motion,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">His plume curls o’er his back.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No little new-born baby<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Has pinker feet than he;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Each tiny toe is cushioned<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With velvet cushions three;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Three wee, pink, velvet cushions<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Almost too small to see.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who said, “The foot of baby<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Might tempt an angel’s kiss”?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I know a score of school-boys<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Who put their lips to this,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">This wee foot of the squirrel,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And left a loving kiss.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The tiny thief has hidden<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My candy and my plum;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, there he comes unbidden<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To gently nip my thumb,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Down in his home (my pocket)<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He gently nips my thumb.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How strange the food he covets,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The restless, restless wight;&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fred’s old stuffed armadillo<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He found a tempting bite,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fred’s old stuffed armadillo,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With ears a perfect fright.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Lady Ruth’s great bureau,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Each foot a dragon’s paw!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The midget ate the nails from<br></span>
+<span class="i2">His famous antique claw.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, what a cruel beastie<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To hurt a dragon’s claw!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To autographic copies<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Upon my choicest shelf,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To every dainty volume<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The rogue has helped himself.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My books! Oh dear! No matter!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The rogue has helped himself.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And yet, my little squirrel,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Your taste is not so bad;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">You’ve swallowed Caird completely<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And psychologic Ladd.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rosmini you’ve digested,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And Kant in rags you’ve clad.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gnaw on, my elfish rodent!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Lay all the sages low!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My pretty lace and ribbons,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They’re yours for weal or woe!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My pocket-book’s in tatters<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Because you like it so.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Mary E. Burt.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Warrens_Address_to_the_American_Soldiers" id="Warrens_Address_to_the_American_Soldiers"></a>Warren’s Address to the American Soldiers.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>There is never a boy who objects to learning “Warren’s Address,” by
+John Pierpont (1785-1866). To stand by one’s own rights is inherent in
+every true American. This poem is doubtless developed from Robert
+Burns’s “Bannockburn.” (1785-1866.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Stand! the ground’s your own, my braves!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Will ye give it up to slaves?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Will ye look for greener graves?<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Hope ye mercy still?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What’s the mercy despots feel?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hear it in that battle-peal!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Read it on yon bristling steel!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Ask it,&mdash;ye who will.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fear ye foes who kill for hire?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Will ye to your homes retire?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Look behind you! they’re afire!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And, before you, see<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who have done it!&mdash;From the vale<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On they come!&mdash;And will ye quail?&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Leaden rain and iron hail<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Let their welcome be!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the God of battles trust!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Die we may,&mdash;and die we must;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But, O, where can dust to dust<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Be consigned so well,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As where Heaven its dews shall shed<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On the martyred patriot’s bed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the rocks shall raise their head,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of his deeds to tell!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">John Pierpont.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Song_in_Camp" id="The_Song_in_Camp"></a>The Song in Camp.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Song in Camp” is Bayard Taylor’s best effort as far as young boys
+and girls are concerned. It is a most valuable poem. I once heard a
+clergyman in Chicago use it as a text for his sermon. Since then “Annie
+Laurie” has become the song of the Labour party. “The Song in Camp”
+voices a universal feeling. (1825-78.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Give us a song!” the soldiers cried,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The outer trenches guarding,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When the heated guns of the camps allied<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Grew weary of bombarding.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The dark Redan, in silent scoff,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Lay, grim and threatening, under;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the tawny mound of the Malakoff<br></span>
+<span class="i2">No longer belched its thunder.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There was a pause. A guardsman said,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“We storm the forts to-morrow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sing while we may, another day<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Will bring enough of sorrow.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They lay along the battery’s side,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Below the smoking cannon:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Brave hearts, from Severn and from Clyde,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And from the banks of Shannon.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They sang of love, and not of fame;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Forgot was Britain’s glory:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Each heart recalled a different name,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But all sang “Annie Laurie.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Voice after voice caught up the song,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Until its tender passion<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rose like an anthem, rich and strong,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Their battle-eve confession.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Dear girl, her name he dared not speak,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But, as the song grew louder,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Something upon the soldier’s cheek<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Washed off the stains of powder.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Beyond the darkening ocean burned<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The bloody sunset’s embers,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While the Crimean valleys learned<br></span>
+<span class="i2">How English love remembers.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And once again a fire of hell<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Rained on the Russian quarters,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With scream of shot, and burst of shell,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And bellowing of the mortars!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And Irish Nora’s eyes are dim<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For a singer, dumb and gory;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And English Mary mourns for him<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Who sang of “Annie Laurie.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sleep, soldiers! still in honoured rest<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Your truth and valour wearing:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The bravest are the tenderest,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The loving are the daring.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Bayard Taylor.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Bugle_Song" id="The_Bugle_Song"></a>The Bugle Song.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Bugle Song” (by Alfred Tennyson, 1809-90), says Heydrick, “has for
+its central theme the undying power of human love. The music is notable
+for sweetness and delicacy.”</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The splendour falls on castle walls<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And snowy summits old in story:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The long light shakes across the lakes<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the wild cataract leaps in glory.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And thinner, clearer, farther going!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O sweet and far from cliff and scar<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O love, they die in yon rich sky,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They faint on hill or field or river:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Our echoes roll from soul to soul,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And grow forever and forever.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Three_Bells_of_Glasgow" id="The_Three_Bells_of_Glasgow"></a>The “Three Bells” of Glasgow.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Three Bells of Glasgow,” by Whittier (1807-92), cannot be praised
+too highly for its ethical value. Children always love to learn it
+after hearing it read correctly and by one who understands and
+appreciates it. “Stand by” is the motto. My pupils teach it to me once
+a year and learn it themselves, too.</p></div>
+
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Beneath the low-hung night cloud<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That raked her splintering mast<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The good ship settled slowly,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The cruel leak gained fast.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Over the awful ocean<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Her signal guns pealed out.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dear God! was that Thy answer<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From the horror round about?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A voice came down the wild wind,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Ho! ship ahoy!” its cry:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Our stout <i>Three Bells</i> of Glasgow<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall stand till daylight by!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hour after hour crept slowly,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Yet on the heaving swells<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tossed up and down the ship-lights,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The lights of the <i>Three Bells</i>!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And ship to ship made signals,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Man answered back to man,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While oft, to cheer and hearten,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The <i>Three Bells</i> nearer ran:<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And the captain from her taffrail<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Sent down his hopeful cry.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Take heart! Hold on!” he shouted,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“The <i>Three Bells</i> shall stand by!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All night across the waters<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The tossing lights shone clear;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All night from reeling taffrail<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The <i>Three Bells</i> sent her cheer.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And when the dreary watches<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of storm and darkness passed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Just as the wreck lurched under,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">All souls were saved at last.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sail on, <i>Three Bells</i>, forever,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In grateful memory sail!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ring on, <i>Three Bells</i> of rescue,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Above the wave and gale!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Type of the Love eternal,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Repeat the Master’s cry,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As tossing through our darkness<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The lights of God draw nigh!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">John G. Whittier.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Sheridans_Ride" id="Sheridans_Ride"></a>Sheridan’s Ride.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>There never was a boy who did not like “Sheridan’s Ride,” by T.
+Buchanan Read (1822-72). The swing and gallop in it take every boy off
+from his feet. The children never teach this poem to me, because they
+love to learn it at first sight. It is easily memorised.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Up from the South at break of day,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The affrighted air with a shudder bore,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain’s door,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Telling the battle was on once more,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And Sheridan twenty miles away.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And wider still those billows of war<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thundered along the horizon’s bar;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And louder yet into Winchester rolled<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The roar of that red sea uncontrolled,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Making the blood of the listener cold<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And Sheridan twenty miles away.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But there is a road from Winchester town,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A good, broad highway leading down;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And there, through the flush of the morning light,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A steed as black as the steeds of night<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Was seen to pass as with eagle flight;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As if he knew the terrible need,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He stretched away with his utmost speed;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hills rose and fell; but his heart was gay,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With Sheridan fifteen miles away.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering South,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The dust, like smoke from the cannon’s mouth;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The heart of the steed and the heart of the master<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Impatient to be where the battle-field calls;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With Sheridan only ten miles away.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Under his spurning feet the road<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the landscape sped away behind<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like an ocean flying before the wind.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace fire,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Swept on, with his wild eye full of ire.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But lo! he is nearing his heart’s desire;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With Sheridan only five miles away.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The first that the General saw were the groups<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What was done&mdash;what to do? A glance told him both,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then striking his spurs, with a terrible oath,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He dashed down the line, mid a storm of huzzas,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The sight of the master compelled it to pause.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By the flash of his eye, and the red nostrils’ play,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He seemed to the whole great army to say:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“I have brought you Sheridan all the way<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From Winchester down to save the day!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hurrah! hurrah for Sheridan!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hurrah! hurrah for horse and man!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And when their statues are placed on high,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Under the dome of the Union sky,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The American soldiers’ Temple of Fame,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There with the glorious General’s name<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Be it said, in letters both bold and bright:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Here is the steed that saved the day,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By carrying Sheridan into the fight<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From Winchester, twenty miles away!”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Thomas Buchanan Read.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Sandpiper" id="The_Sandpiper"></a>The Sandpiper.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Sandpiper,” by Celia Thaxter (1836-94), is placed here because a
+goodly percentage of the children who read it want to learn it.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Across the lonely beach we flit,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">One little sandpiper and I,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And fast I gather, bit by bit,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The scattered driftwood, bleached and dry.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The wild waves reach their hands for it,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As up and down the beach we flit,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">One little sandpiper and I.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Above our heads the sullen clouds<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Scud, black and swift, across the sky;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Stand out the white lighthouses high.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Almost as far as eye can reach<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I see the close-reefed vessels fly,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As fast we flit along the beach,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">One little sandpiper and I.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I watch him as he skims along,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Uttering his sweet and mournful cry;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He starts not at my fitful song,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor flash of fluttering drapery.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He has no thought of any wrong,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He scans me with a fearless eye;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The little sandpiper and I.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When the loosed storm breaks furiously?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My driftwood fire will burn so bright!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To what warm shelter canst thou fly?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I do not fear for thee, though wroth<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The tempest rushes through the sky;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For are we not God’s children both,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Thou, little sandpiper, and I?<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Celia Thaxter.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Lady_Clare" id="Lady_Clare"></a>Lady Clare.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>Girls always love “Lady Clare” and “The Lord of Burleigh.” They like to
+think that it is enough to be a splendid woman without title or wealth.
+They want to be loved, if they are loved at all, for their good hearts
+and graces of mind. Tennyson (1809-92) makes this point repeatedly
+through his poems.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It was the time when lilies blow<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And clouds are highest up in air;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To give his cousin, Lady Clare.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I trow they did not part in scorn:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Lovers long-betroth’d were they:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They too will wed the morrow morn:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">God’s blessing on the day!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“He does not love me for my birth,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor for my lands so broad and fair;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He loves me for my own true worth,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And that is well,” said Lady Clare.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In there came old Alice the nurse;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Said: “Who was this that went from thee?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“It was my cousin,” said Lady Clare;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“To-morrow he weds with me.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“O God be thank’d!” said Alice the nurse,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“That all comes round so just and fair:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lord Ronald is heir of all your lands,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And you are not the Lady Clare.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Are ye out of your mind, my nurse, my nurse,”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Said Lady Clare, “that ye speak so wild?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“As God’s above,” said Alice the nurse,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“I speak the truth: you are my child.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“The old Earl’s daughter died at my breast;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I speak the truth, as I live by bread!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I buried her like my own sweet child,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And put my child in her stead.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Falsely, falsely have ye done,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">O mother,” she said, “if this be true,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To keep the best man under the sun<br></span>
+<span class="i2">So many years from his due.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Nay now, my child,” said Alice the nurse,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“But keep the secret for your life,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And all you have will be Lord Ronald’s<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When you are man and wife.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“If I’m a beggar born,” she said,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“I will speak out, for I dare not lie.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Pull off, pull off the brooch of gold,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And fling the diamond necklace by.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Nay now, my child,” said Alice the nurse,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“But keep the secret all ye can.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She said: “Not so: but I will know<br></span>
+<span class="i2">If there be any faith in man.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Nay now, what faith?” said Alice the nurse,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“The man will cleave unto his right,”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“And he shall have it,” the lady replied,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Tho’ I should die to-night.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Yet give one kiss to your mother dear!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Alas! my child, I sinn’d for thee.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“O mother, mother, mother,” she said,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“So strange it seems to me.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Yet here’s a kiss for my mother dear,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My mother dear, if this be so,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And lay your hand upon my head,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And bless me, mother, ere I go.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She clad herself in a russet gown,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">She was no longer Lady Clare:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She went by dale, and she went by down,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With a single rose in her hair.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Leapt up from where she lay,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dropt her head in the maiden’s hand,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And follow’d her all the way.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Down stept Lord Ronald from his tower:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“O Lady Clare, you shame your worth!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Why come you drest like a village maid,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That are the flower of the earth?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“If I come drest like a village maid,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I am but as my fortunes are:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I am a beggar born,” she said,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“And not the Lady Clare.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Play me no tricks,” said Lord Ronald,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“For I am yours in word and in deed.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Play me no tricks,” said Lord Ronald,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Your riddle is hard to read.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O and proudly stood she up!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Her heart within her did not fail:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She look’d into Lord Ronald’s eyes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And told him all her nurse’s tale.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He laugh’d a laugh of merry scorn:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He turn’d and kiss’d her where she stood:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“If you are not the heiress born?<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And I,” said he, “the next in blood&mdash;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“If you are not the heiress born,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And I,” said he, “the lawful heir,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We two will wed to-morrow morn,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And you shall still be Lady Clare.”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Lord_of_Burleigh" id="The_Lord_of_Burleigh"></a>The Lord of Burleigh.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In her ear he whispers gaily,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“If my heart by signs can tell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Maiden, I have watched thee daily,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And I think thou lov’st me well.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She replies, in accents fainter,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“There is none I love like thee.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He is but a landscape-painter,<br></span>
+<span class="i2"><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original had a page break here: a stanza break may not have been intended.">And a village maiden she.</ins><br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He to lips, that fondly falter,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Presses his without reproof;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Leads her to the village altar,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And they leave her father’s roof.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I can make no marriage present;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Little can I give my wife.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Love will make our cottage pleasant,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And I love thee more than life.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They by parks and lodges going<br></span>
+<span class="i2">See the lordly castles stand;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Summer woods, about them blowing,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Made a murmur in the land.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From deep thought himself he rouses,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Says to her that loves him well,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Let us see these handsome houses<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Where the wealthy nobles dwell.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So she goes by him attended,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Hears him lovingly converse,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sees whatever fair and splendid<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Lay betwixt his home and hers.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Parks with oak and chestnut shady,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Parks and order’d gardens great,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ancient homes of lord and lady,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Built for pleasure and for state.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All he shows her makes him dearer;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Evermore she seems to gaze<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On that cottage growing nearer,<br></span>
+<span class="i2"><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original had a page break here: a stanza break may not have been intended.">Where they twain will spend their days.</ins><br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O but she will love him truly!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He shall have a cheerful home;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She will order all things duly<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When beneath his roof they come.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thus her heart rejoices greatly<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Till a gateway she discerns<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With armorial bearings stately,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And beneath the gate she turns;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sees a mansion more majestic<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Than all those she saw before;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Many a gallant gay domestic<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Bows before him at the door.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And they speak in gentle murmur<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When they answer to his call,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While he treads with footstep firmer,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Leading on from hall to hall.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And while now she wanders blindly,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor the meaning can divine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Proudly turns he round and kindly,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“All of this is mine and thine.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Here he lives in state and bounty,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Lord of Burleigh, fair and free.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a lord in all the county<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Is so great a lord as he.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All at once the colour flushes<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Her sweet face from brow to chin;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As it were with same she blushes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2"><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original had a page break here: a stanza break may not have been intended.">And her spirit changed within.</ins><br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then her countenance all over<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Pale again as death did prove:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But he clasp’d her like a lover,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And he cheer’d her soul with love.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So she strove against her weakness,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Tho’ at times her spirits sank;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shaped her heart with woman’s meekness<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To all duties of her rank;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And a gentle consort made he,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And her gentle mind was such<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That she grew a noble lady,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the people loved her much.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But a trouble weigh’d upon her<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And perplex’d her, night and morn,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With the burden of an honour<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Unto which she was not born.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Faint she grew and ever fainter.<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As she murmur’d, “Oh, that he<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Were once more that landscape-painter<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Which did win my heart from me!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So she droop’d and droop’d before him,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Fading slowly from his side;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Three fair children first she bore him,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Then before her time she died.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Weeping, weeping late and early,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Walking up and pacing down,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Deeply mourn’d the Lord of Burleigh,<br></span>
+<span class="i2"><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original had a page break here: a stanza break may not have been intended.">Burleigh-house by Stamford-town.</ins><br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And he came to look upon her,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And he look’d at her and said,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Bring the dress and put it on her<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That she wore when she was wed.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then her people, softly treading,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Bore to earth her body, drest<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the dress that she was wed in,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That her spirit might have rest.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Hiawathas_Childhood" id="Hiawathas_Childhood"></a>Hiawatha’s Childhood.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Hiawatha” needs no commendation. Hundreds of thousands of children in
+our land know snatches of it It is a child’s poem, every line of it.
+One summer in Boston more than 50,000 people went to take a peep at the
+poet’s house. (1807-82.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By the shores of Gitche Gumee,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By the shining Big-Sea-Water,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dark behind it rose the forest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rose the firs with cones upon them;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bright before it beat the water,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Beat the clear and sunny water,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There the wrinkled old Nokomis<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nursed the little Hiawatha,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rocked him in his linden cradle,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bedded soft in moss and rushes,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Safely bound with reindeer sinews;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stilled his fretful wail by saying,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lulled him into slumber, singing,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Ewa-yea! my little owlet!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who is this that lights the wigwam?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With his great eyes lights the wigwam?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ewa-yea! my little owlet!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Many things Nokomis taught him<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the stars that shine in heaven;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Warriors with their plumes and war-clubs,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Flaring far away to northward<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the frosty nights of winter;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Showed the broad, white road in heaven,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Running straight across the heavens,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At the door, on summer evenings,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sat the little Hiawatha;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Heard the whispering of the pine-trees,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Heard the lapping of the water,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sounds of music, words of wonder;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Minnie-wawa!” said the pine-trees,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Mudway-aushka!” said the water;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Saw the fire-fly, Wah-wah-taysee,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Flitting through the dusk of evening,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With the twinkle of its candle<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lighting up the brakes and bushes,<br></span>
+<span class="i0"><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original had a page break here: a stanza break may not have been intended.">And he sang the song of children.</ins><br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sang the song Nokomis taught him:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Little, flitting, white-fire insect,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Little, dancing, white-fire creature,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Light me with your little candle,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere upon my bed I lay me,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere in sleep I close my eyelids!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Saw the moon rise from the water<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rippling, rounding from the water,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Saw the flecks and shadows on it,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Whispered, “What is that, Nokomis?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the good Nokomis answered:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Once a warrior, very angry,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Seized his grandmother, and threw her<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Up into the sky at midnight;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Right against the moon he threw her;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis her body that you see there.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Saw the rainbow in the heaven,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the eastern sky, the rainbow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Whispered, “What is that, Nokomis?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the good Nokomis answered:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Tis the heaven of flowers you see there;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All the wild-flowers of the forest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All the lilies of the prairie,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When on earth they fade and perish,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Blossom in that heaven above us.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When he heard the owls at midnight,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hooting, laughing in the forest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“What is that?” he cried, in terror;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“What is that,” he said, “Nokomis?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the good Nokomis answered:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“That is but the owl and owlet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Talking in their native language,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Talking, scolding at each other.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then the little Hiawatha<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Learned of every bird its language,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Learned their names and all their secrets,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How they built their nests in summer,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where they hid themselves in winter,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Talked with them whene’er he met them,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Called them “Hiawatha’s Chickens.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Of all beasts he learned the language,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Learned their names and all their secrets,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How the beavers built their lodges,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the squirrels hid their acorns,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How the reindeer ran so swiftly,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Why the rabbit was so timid,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Talked with them whene’er he met them,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Called them “Hiawatha’s Brothers.”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Henry W. Longfellow.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="I_Wandered_Lonely_as_a_Cloud" id="I_Wandered_Lonely_as_a_Cloud"></a>I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Daffodil” is here out of compliment to a splendid school and a
+splendid teacher at Poughkeepsie. I found the pupils learning the poem,
+the teacher having placed a bunch of daffodils in a vase before them.
+It was a charming lesson. (1770-96.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I wandered lonely as a cloud<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That floats on high o’er vales and hills,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When all at once I saw a crowd,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A host of golden daffodils:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Beside the lake, beneath the trees,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Continuous as the stars that shine<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And twinkle on the milky way,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They stretched in never-ending line<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Along the margin of a bay;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ten thousand saw I at a glance,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The waves beside them danced, but they<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A poet could not but be gay<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In such a jocund company;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I gazed&mdash;and gazed&mdash;but little thought<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What wealth the show to me had brought.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For oft, when on my couch I lie<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In vacant or in pensive mood,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They flash upon that inward eye<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Which is the bliss of solitude;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And then my heart with pleasure fills,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And dances with the daffodils.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Wordsworth.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="John_Barleycorn" id="John_Barleycorn"></a>John Barleycorn.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“John Barleycorn” is a favourite with boys because it pictures a
+successful struggle. One editor has made a temperance poem of it,
+mistaking its true intent. The poem is a strong expression of a
+plow-man’s love for a hardy, food-giving grain which has sprung to life
+through his efforts. (1759-96.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There were three kings into the East,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Three kings both great and high;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And they ha’e sworn a solemn oath<br></span>
+<span class="i2">John Barleycorn should die.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They took a plow and plowed him down,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Put clods upon his head;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And they ha’e sworn a solemn oath<br></span>
+<span class="i2">John Barleycorn was dead.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But the cheerful spring came kindly on,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And showers began to fall;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">John Barleycorn got up again,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And sore surprised them all.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The sultry suns of summer came,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And he grew thick and strong;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His head well arm’d wi’ pointed spears,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That no one should him wrong.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The sober autumn entered mild,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And he grew wan and pale;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His bending joints and drooping head<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Showed he began to fail.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His colour sickened more and more,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He faded into age;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And then his enemies began<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To show their deadly rage.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They took a weapon long and sharp,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And cut him by the knee,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then tied him fast upon a cart,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Like a rogue for forgery.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They laid him down upon his back,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And cudgelled him full sore;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They hung him up before the storm,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And turn’d him o’er and o’er.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They filled up then a darksome pit<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With water to the brim,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And heaved in poor John Barleycorn,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To let him sink or swim.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They laid him out upon the floor,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To work him further woe;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And still as signs of life appeared,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They tossed him to and fro.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They wasted o’er a scorching flame<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The marrow of his bones;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But a miller used him worst of all&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He crushed him ’tween two stones.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And they have taken his very heart’s blood,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And drunk it round and round;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And still the more and more they drank,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Their joy did more abound.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Burns.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="A_Life_on_the_Ocean_Wave" id="A_Life_on_the_Ocean_Wave"></a>A Life on the Ocean Wave.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“A Life on the Ocean Wave,” by Epes Sargent (1813-80), gives the swing
+and motion of the water of the great ocean. Children remember it almost
+unconsciously after hearing it read several times.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A life on the ocean wave,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A home on the rolling deep,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the scattered waters rave,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the winds their revels keep!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like an eagle caged, I pine<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On this dull, unchanging shore:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh! give me the flashing brine,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The spray and the tempest’s roar!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Once more on the deck I stand<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of my own swift-gliding craft:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Set sail! farewell to the land!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The gale follows fair abaft.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We shoot through the sparkling foam<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Like an ocean-bird set free;&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the ocean-bird, our home<br></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll find far out on the sea.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The land is no longer in view,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The clouds have begun to frown;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But with a stout vessel and crew,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll say, Let the storm come down!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the song of our hearts shall be,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">While the winds and the waters rave,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A home on the rolling sea!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A life on the ocean wave!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Epes Sargent.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Death_of_the_Old_Year" id="The_Death_of_the_Old_Year"></a>The Death of the Old Year.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>It is customary, every New Year’s eve in America, to ring bells, fire
+guns, send up rockets, and, in many other ways, to show joy and
+gratitude that the old year has been so kind, and that the new year is
+so auspicious. The emphasis in Tennyson’s poem is laid on gratitude for
+past benefits so easily forgotten rather than upon the possible
+advantages of the unknown and untried future.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original indented this line.">Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,</ins><br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the winter winds are wearily sighing:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And tread softly and speak low,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the old year lies a-dying.<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Old year, you must not die;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">You came to us so readily,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">You lived with us so steadily,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Old year, you shall not die.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He lieth still: he doth not move:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He will not see the dawn of day.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He hath no other life above.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He gave me a friend, and a true true-love,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the New-year will take ’em away.<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Old year, you must not go;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">So long as you have been with us,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Such joy as you have seen with us,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Old year, you shall not go.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He froth’d his bumpers to the brim;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A jollier year we shall not see.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But tho’ his eyes are waxing dim,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And tho’ his foes speak ill of him,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He was a friend to me.<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Old year, you shall not die;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">We did so laugh and cry with you,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">I’ve half a mind to die with you,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Old year, if you must die.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He was full of joke and jest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But all his merry quips are o’er.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To see him die, across the waste<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His son and heir doth ride post-haste,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But he’ll be dead before.<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Every one for his own.<br></span>
+<span class="i4">The night is starry and cold, my friend,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">And the New-year blithe and bold, my friend,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Comes up to take his own.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How hard he breathes! over the snow<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I heard just now the crowing cock.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The shadows flicker to and fro:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The cricket chirps: the light burns low:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis nearly twelve o’clock.<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Shake hands, before you die.<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Old year, we’ll dearly rue for you:<br></span>
+<span class="i4">What is it we can do for you?<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Speak out before you die.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His face is growing sharp and thin.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Alack! our friend is gone.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Close up his eyes: tie up his chin:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Step from the corpse, and let him in<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That standeth there alone,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">And waiteth at the door.<br></span>
+<span class="i4">There’s a new foot on the floor, my friend,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">And a new face at the door, my friend,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">A new face at the door.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Abou_Ben_Adhem" id="Abou_Ben_Adhem"></a>Abou Ben Adhem.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Abou Ben Adhem” has won its way to the popular heart because the
+“Brotherhood of Man” is the motto of this age. (1784-1859.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And saw within the moonlight in his room,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Making it rich and like a lily in bloom,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An angel writing in a book of gold.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And to the presence in the room he said,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“What writest thou?” The vision raised its head,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, with a look made of all sweet accord,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But cheerly still; and said, “I pray thee, then,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It came again, with a great wakening light,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And showed the names whom love of God had blessed;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Leigh Hunt.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Farm-Yard_Song" id="Farm-Yard_Song"></a>Farm-Yard Song.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“A Farm-Yard Song” was popular years ago with Burbank, the great
+reader. How the boys and girls loved it! The author, J.&nbsp;T. Trowbridge
+(1827-still living), “is a boy-hearted man,” says John Burroughs. The
+poem is just as popular as it ever was.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Over the hill the farm-boy goes,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His shadow lengthens along the land,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A giant staff in a giant hand;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the poplar-tree, above the spring,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The katydid begins to sing;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">The early dews are falling;&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the stone-heap darts the mink;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The swallows skim the river’s brink;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And home to the woodland fly the crows,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When over the hill the farm-boy goes,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Cheerily calling,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Co’, boss! co’, boss! co’! co’! co’!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Farther, farther over the hill,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Faintly calling, calling still,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Co’, boss! co’, boss! co’! co’!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Into the yard the farmer goes,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With grateful heart, at the close of day;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Harness and chain are hung away;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the wagon-shed stand yoke and plow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The straw’s in the stack, the hay in the mow;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">The cooling dews are falling;&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The friendly sheep his welcome bleat,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The pigs come grunting to his feet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The whinnying mare her master knows,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When into the yard the farmer goes,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">His cattle calling,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Co’, boss! co’, boss! co’! co’! co’!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While still the cow-boy, far away,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Goes seeking those that have gone astray,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Co’, boss! co’, boss! co’! co’!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now to her task the milkmaid goes.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The cattle come crowding through the gate,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lowing, pushing, little and great;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">About the trough, by the farm-yard pump,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The frolicsome yearlings frisk and jump,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">While the pleasant dews are falling;&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The new-milch heifer is quick and shy,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the old cow waits with tranquil eye;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the white stream into the bright pail flows,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When to her task the milkmaid goes,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Soothingly calling,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“So, boss! so, boss! so! so! so!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The cheerful milkmaid takes her stool,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And sits and milks in the twilight cool,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Saying, “So! so, boss! so! so!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To supper at last the farmer goes.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The apples are pared, the paper read,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The stories are told, then all to bed.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Without, the crickets’ ceaseless song<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Makes shrill the silence all night long;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">The heavy dews are falling.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The housewife’s hand has turned the lock;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Drowsily ticks the kitchen clock;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The household sinks to deep repose;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But still in sleep the farm-boy goes.<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Singing, calling,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Co’, boss! co’, boss! co’! co’! co’!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And oft the milkmaid, in her dreams,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Drums in the pail with the flashing streams,<br></span>
+<span class="i2"><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original did not indent this line.">Murmuring, “So, boss! so!”</ins><br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">J.T. Trowbridge.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="To_a_Mouse" id="To_a_Mouse"></a>To a Mouse,<br><span class="subtitle">ON TURNING UP HER NEST WITH THE PLOW, NOVEMBER, 1785</span></h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“To a Mouse” and “To a Mountain Daisy,” by Robert Burns (1759-96), are
+the ineffable touches of tenderness that illumine the sturdy plowman.
+The contrast between the strong man and the delicate flower or creature
+at his mercy makes tenderness in man a vital point in character.</p></div>
+
+<p>The lines “To a Mouse” seem by report to have been composed while Burns
+was actually plowing. One of the poet’s first editors wrote: “John
+Blane, who had acted as gaudsman to Burns, and who lived sixty years
+afterward, had a distinct recollection of the turning up of the mouse.
+Like a thoughtless youth as he was, he ran after the creature to kill
+it, but was checked and recalled by his master, who he observed became
+thereafter thoughtful and abstracted. Burns, who treated his servants
+with the familiarity of fellow-labourers, soon afterward read the poem
+to Blane.”</p>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wee, sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, what a panic’s in thy breastie!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou needna start awa’ sae hasty,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Wi’ bickering brattle!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I wad be laith to rin and chase thee,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Wi’ murd’ring pattle!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I’m truly sorry man’s dominion<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Has broken Nature’s social union,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And justifies that ill opinion,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Which makes thee startle<br></span>
+<span class="i0">At me, thy poor earth-born companion<br></span>
+<span class="i6">And fellow-mortal!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I doubtna, whiles, but thou may thieve;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A daimen icker in a thrave<br></span>
+<span class="i6">’S a sma’ request:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I’ll get a blessin’ wi’ the lave,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">And never miss ’t!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin’!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And naething now to big a new ane<br></span>
+<span class="i6">O’ foggage green,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And bleak December’s winds ensuin’,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Baith snell and keen!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou saw the fields laid bare and waste,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And weary winter comin’ fast,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And cozie here, beneath the blast,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Thou thought to dwell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till, crash! the cruel coulter passed<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Out through thy cell.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That wee bit heap o’ leaves and stibble<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now thou’s turned out for a’ thy trouble,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">But house or hald,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To thole the winter’s sleety dribble,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">And cranreuch cauld!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In proving foresight may be vain:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The best-laid schemes o’ mice and men<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Gang aft a-gley,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And lea’e us naught but grief and pain,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">For promised joy.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Still thou art blest, compared wi’ me!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The present only toucheth thee:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But, och! I backward cast my e’e<br></span>
+<span class="i6">On prospects drear!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And forward, though I canna see,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">I guess and fear.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Burns.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="To_a_Mountain_Daisy" id="To_a_Mountain_Daisy"></a>To a Mountain Daisy,<br><span class="subtitle">ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOW IN APRIL, 1786</span></h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou’s met me in an evil hour;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For I maun crush amang the stoure<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Thy slender stem:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To spare thee now is past my power,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Thou bonny gem.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alas! it’s no thy neebor sweet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The bonny lark, companion meet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bending thee ’mang the dewy weet,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Wi’ speckled breast,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When upward-springing, blithe, to greet<br></span>
+<span class="i6">The purpling east!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Cauld blew the bitter biting north<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon thy early, humble birth;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Amid the storm,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Scarce reared above the parent earth<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Thy tender form.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The flaunting flowers our gardens yield,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">High sheltering woods and wa’s maun shield,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But thou, beneath the random bield<br></span>
+<span class="i6">O’ clod or stane,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Adorns the histie stibble-field,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Unseen, alane.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There, in thy scanty mantle clad,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy snawie bosom sunward spread,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou lifts thy unassuming head<br></span>
+<span class="i6">In humble guise;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But now the share uptears thy bed,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">And low thou lies!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Such is the fate of artless maid,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet floweret of the rural shade!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By love’s simplicity betrayed,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">And guileless trust,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Low i’ the dust.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Such is the fate of simple bard,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On life’s rough ocean luckless starr’d!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Unskilful he to note the card<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Of prudent lore,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">And whelm him o’er!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Such fate to suffering worth is given,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who long with wants and woes has striven,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By human pride or cunning driven<br></span>
+<span class="i6">To misery’s brink,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">He, ruined, sink!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Even thou who mourn’st the Daisy’s fate,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That fate is thine&mdash;no distant date;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stern Ruin’s plowshare drives, elate,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Full on thy bloom,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till crushed beneath the furrow’s weight<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Shall be thy doom.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Burns.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Barbara_Frietchie" id="Barbara_Frietchie"></a>Barbara Frietchie.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Barbara Frietchie” will be beloved of all times because she was an old
+woman (not necessarily an old lady) <i>worthy of her years</i>. Old age is
+honourable if it carries a head that has a halo. (1807-92.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Up from the meadows rich with corn,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Clear in the cool September morn,<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The clustered spires of Frederick stand<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Roundabout them orchards sweep,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Apple and peach tree fruited deep,<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fair as the garden of the Lord<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On that pleasant morn of the early fall<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When Lee marched over the mountain-wall,<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Over the mountains winding down,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Horse and foot, into Frederick town.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Forty flags with their silver stars,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Forty flags with their crimson bars,<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Flapped in the morning wind: the sun<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of noon looked down, and saw not one.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bowed with her fourscore years and ten,<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bravest of all in Frederick town,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She took up the flag the men hauled down.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In her attic window the staff she set,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To show that one heart was loyal yet.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Up the street came the rebel tread,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Under his slouched hat left and right<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He glanced: the old flag met his sight.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Halt!”&mdash;the dust-brown ranks stood fast.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Fire!”&mdash;out blazed the rifle-blast.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It shivered the window, pane and sash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It rent the banner with seam and gash.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She leaned far out on the window-sill,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And shook it forth with a royal will.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But spare your country’s flag,” she said.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Over the face of the leader came;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The nobler nature within him stirred<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To life at that woman’s deed and word:<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Who touches a hair of yon gray head<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dies like a dog! March on!” he said.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All day long through Frederick street<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sounded the tread of marching feet:<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All day long that free flag tost<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Over the heads of the rebel host.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Even its torn folds rose and fell<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On the loyal winds that loved it well;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And through the hill-gaps sunset light<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shone over it with a warm good-night.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Barbara Frietchie’s work is o’er,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the rebel rides on his raids no more.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Honour to her! and let a tear<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall’s bier.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Over Barbara Frietchie’s grave,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Peace and order and beauty draw<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Round thy symbol of light and law;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And ever the stars above look down<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On thy stars below in Frederick town!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">John G. Whittier.</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter"><a name="PART_III" id="PART_III"></a>
+<h2>PART III.<br><br>
+<small>The Day’s at the Morn</small></h2>
+ <img class='plain' src='images/part3.png' alt='A boy with a fishing rod' height='257' width='200'>
+</div>
+
+<h3><a name="Lochinvar" id="Lochinvar"></a>Lochinvar.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Lochinvar” and “Lord Ullin’s Daughter,” the first by Scott (1771-1832)
+and the second by Campbell (1777-1844), are companions in sentiment and
+equally popular with boys who love to win anything desirable by heroic
+effort.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Through all the wide Border his steed was the best,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And save his good broadsword he weapons had none;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He stayed not for brake, and he stopped not for stone,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He swam the Eske River where ford there was none;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But ere he alighted at Netherby gate<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The bride had consented, the gallant came late:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So boldly he entered the Netherby Hall,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Among bridesmen and kinsmen and brothers and all:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then spoke the bride’s father, his hand on his sword<br></span>
+<span class="i0">(For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word),<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Oh, come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I long woo’d your daughter, my suit you denied;&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And now am I come, with this lost love of mine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The bride kissed the goblet; the knight took it up;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He quaffed of the wine, and he threw down the cup.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He took her soft hand ere her mother could bar,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Now tread we a measure!” said young Lochinvar.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So stately his form, and so lovely her face,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That never a hall such a galliard did grace;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While her mother did fret, and her father did fume,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the bridemaidens whispered, “’Twere better by far<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When they reached the hall door, and the charger stood near;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So light to the saddle before her he sprung!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They’ll have fleet steeds that follow,” quoth young Lochinvar.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There was mounting ’mong Gr&aelig;mes of the Netherby clan;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There was racing and chasing, on Cannobie Lee,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the lost bride of Netherby ne’er did they see.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Have ye e’er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Sir Walter Scott.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Lord_Ullins_Daughter" id="Lord_Ullins_Daughter"></a>Lord Ullin’s Daughter.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A chieftain, to the Highlands bound,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Cries, “Boatman, do not tarry!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I’ll give thee a silver pound,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To row us o’er the ferry.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Now who be ye, would cross Lochgyle,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">This dark and stormy water?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“O, I’m the chief of Ulva’s isle,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And this Lord Ullin’s daughter.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“And fast before her father’s men<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Three days we’ve fled together,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For should he find us in the glen,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My blood would stain the heather.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“His horsemen hard behind us ride;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Should they our steps discover,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then who will cheer my bonny bride<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When they have slain her lover?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Outspoke the hardy Highland wight,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“I’ll go, my chief&mdash;I’m ready;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It is not for your silver bright,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But for your winsome lady:<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“And by my word! the bonny bird<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In danger shall not tarry;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So though the waves are raging white,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I’ll row you o’er the ferry.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By this the storm grew loud apace,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The water-wraith was shrieking;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And in the scowl of heaven each face<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Grew dark as they were speaking.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But still as wilder blew the wind,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And as the night grew drearer,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Adown the glen rode arm&egrave;d men,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Their trampling sounded nearer.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“O haste thee, haste!” the lady cries,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Though tempests round us gather;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I’ll meet the raging of the skies,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But not an angry father.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The boat has left a stormy land,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A stormy sea before her,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When, oh! too strong for human hand,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The tempest gathered o’er her.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And still they row’d amid the roar<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of waters fast prevailing:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lord Ullin reach’d that fatal shore,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">His wrath was changed to wailing.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For sore dismay’d through storm and shade,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">His child he did discover:&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">One lovely hand she stretch’d for aid,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And one was round her lover.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Come back! come back!” he cried in grief,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Across this stormy water:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I’ll forgive your Highland chief,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My daughter!&mdash;oh my daughter!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">’Twas vain the loud waves lashed the shore,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Return or aid preventing;&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The waters wild went o’er his child,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And he was left lamenting.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Thomas Campbell.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Charge_of_the_Light_Brigade" id="The_Charge_of_the_Light_Brigade"></a>The Charge of the Light Brigade.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1809-92) unlike “Casabianca” shows
+obedience under stern necessity. Obedience is the salvation of any
+army. John Burroughs says: “I never hear that poem but what it thrills
+me through and through.”</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Half a league, half a league,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Half a league onward,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All in the valley of Death<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Rode the six hundred.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Forward, the Light Brigade!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Charge for the guns!” he said:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the valley of Death<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Rode the six hundred.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Forward, the Light Brigade!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Was there a man dismay’d?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Not tho’ the soldier knew<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Some one had blunder’d:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Theirs not to make reply,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Theirs not to reason why.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Theirs but to do and die:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the valley of Death<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Rode the six hundred.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Cannon to right of them,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Cannon to left of them,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Cannon in front of them<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Volley’d and thunder’d;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Storm’d at with shot and shell<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Boldly they rode and well,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the jaws of Death,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the mouth of Hell<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Rode the six hundred.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Flash’d all their sabers bare,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Flash’d as they turn’d in air<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sab’ring the gunners there,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Charging an army, while<br></span>
+<span class="i2">All the world wonder’d:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Plunged in the battery-smoke<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Right thro’ the line they broke;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Cossack and Russian<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Reel’d from the saber-stroke<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Shatter’d and sunder’d.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then they rode back, but not<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Not the six hundred.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Cannon to right of them,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Cannon to left of them,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Cannon behind them<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Volleyed and thundered:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stormed at with shot and shell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While horse and hero fell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They that had fought so well<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Came through the jaws of death<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Back from the mouth of hell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All that was left of them&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Left of six hundred.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When can their glory fade?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, the wild charge they made!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">All the world wondered.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Honour the charge they made!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Honour the Light Brigade&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Noble six hundred!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Tournament" id="The_Tournament"></a>The Tournament.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>There are several of Sidney Lanier’s (1842-81) poems that children love
+to learn. “Tampa Robins,” “The Tournament” (Joust 1.), “Barnacles,”
+“The Song of the Chattahoochee,” and “The First Steamboat Up the
+Alabama” are among them. At our “poetry contests” the children have
+plainly demonstrated that this great poet has reached his hand down to
+the youngest. The time will doubtless come when it will be a part of
+education to be acquainted with Lanier, as it is now to be acquainted
+with Longfellow or Tennyson.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td>
+<h4>I.</h4>
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the knights still hurried amain<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To the tournament under the ladies’ eyes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Where the jousters were Heart and Brain.<br></span>
+</div>
+<h4>II.</h4>
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Flourished the trumpets, entered Heart,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A youth in crimson and gold;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Flourished again; Brain stood apart,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Steel-armoured, dark and cold.<br></span>
+</div>
+<h4>III.</h4>
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Heart’s palfrey caracoled gaily round,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Heart tra-li-ra’d merrily;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But Brain sat still, with never a sound,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">So cynical-calm was he.<br></span>
+</div>
+<h4>IV.</h4>
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Heart’s helmet-crest bore favours three<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From his lady’s white hand caught;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While Brain wore a plumeless casque; not he<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Or favour gave or sought.<br></span>
+</div>
+<h4>V.</h4>
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The trumpet blew; Heart shot a glance<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To catch his lady’s eye.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But Brain gazed straight ahead, his lance<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To aim more faithfully.<br></span>
+</div>
+<h4>VI.</h4>
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They charged, they struck; both fell, both bled;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Brain rose again, ungloved;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Heart, dying, smiled and faintly said,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“My love to my beloved.”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Sidney Lanier.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Wind_and_the_Moon" id="The_Wind_and_the_Moon"></a>The Wind and the Moon.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>Little Laddie, do you remember learning “The Wind and the Moon”? You
+were eight or nine years old, and you shut your eyes and puffed out
+your cheeks when you came to the line “He blew and He blew.” The saucy
+wind made a great racket and the calm moon never noticed it. That gave
+you a great deal of pleasure, didn’t it? We did not care much for the
+noisy, conceited wind. (1824-.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Said the Wind to the Moon, “I will blow you out,<br></span>
+<span class="i12">You stare<br></span>
+<span class="i12">In the air<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Like a ghost in a chair,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Always looking what I am about&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I hate to be watched; I’ll blow you out.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Wind blew hard, and out went the Moon.<br></span>
+<span class="i12">So, deep<br></span>
+<span class="i12">On a heap<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Of clouds to sleep,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Down lay the Wind, and slumbered soon,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Muttering low, “I’ve done for that Moon.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He turned in his bed; she was there again!<br></span>
+<span class="i12">On high<br></span>
+<span class="i12">In the sky,<br></span>
+<span class="i12">With her one ghost eye,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Moon shone white and alive and plain.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Said the Wind, “I will blow you out again.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Wind blew hard, and the Moon grew dim.<br></span>
+<span class="i12">“With my sledge,<br></span>
+<span class="i12">And my wedge,<br></span>
+<span class="i12">I have knocked off her edge!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">If only I blow right fierce and grim,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The creature will soon be dimmer than dim.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He blew and he blew, and she thinned to a thread.<br></span>
+<span class="i12">“One puff<br></span>
+<span class="i12">More’s enough<br></span>
+<span class="i12">To blow her to snuff!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">One good puff more where the last was bred,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And glimmer, glimmer, glum will go the thread.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He blew a great blast, and the thread was gone<br></span>
+<span class="i12">In the air<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Nowhere<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Was a moonbeam bare;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Far off and harmless the shy stars shone&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sure and certain the Moon was gone!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Wind he took to his revels once more;<br></span>
+<span class="i12">On down,<br></span>
+<span class="i12">In town,<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Like a merry-mad clown,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He leaped and hallooed with whistle and roar&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“What’s that?” The glimmering thread once more!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He flew in a rage&mdash;he danced and blew;<br></span>
+<span class="i12">But in vain<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Was the pain<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Of his bursting brain;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For still the broader the Moon-scrap grew,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The broader he swelled his big cheeks and blew.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Slowly she grew&mdash;till she filled the night,<br></span>
+<span class="i12">And shone<br></span>
+<span class="i12">On her throne<br></span>
+<span class="i12">In the sky alone,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A matchless, wonderful silvery light,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Radiant and lovely, the queen of the night.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Said the Wind: “What a marvel of power am I<br></span>
+<span class="i12">With my breath,<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Good faith!<br></span>
+<span class="i12">I blew her to death&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">First blew her away right out of the sky&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then blew her in; what strength have I!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But the Moon she knew nothing about the affair;<br></span>
+<span class="i12">For high<br></span>
+<span class="i12">In the sky,<br></span>
+<span class="i12">With her one white eye,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Motionless, miles above the air,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She had never heard the great Wind blare.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">George Macdonald.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Jesus_the_Carpenter" id="Jesus_the_Carpenter"></a>Jesus the Carpenter.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Jesus the Carpenter”&mdash;“same trade as me”&mdash;strikes a high note in
+favour of honest toil. (1848-.)</p></div>
+
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”&mdash;ay, it is He;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Joseph the carpenter&mdash;same trade as me&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I thought as I’d find it&mdash;I knew it was here&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">But my sight’s getting queer.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I don’t know right where as His shed must ha’ stood&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But often, as I’ve been a-planing my wood,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I’ve took off my hat, just with thinking of He<br></span>
+<span class="i4">At the same work as me.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He warn’t that set up that He couldn’t stoop down<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And work in the country for folks in the town;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I’ll warrant He felt a bit pride, like I’ve done,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">At a good job begun.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The parson he knows that I’ll not make too free,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But on Sunday I feels as pleased as can be,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When I wears my clean smock, and sits in a pew,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">And has taught a few.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I think of as how not the parson hissen,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As is teacher and father and shepherd o’ men,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Not he knows as much of the Lord in that shed,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Where He earned His own bread.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And when I goes home to my missus, says she,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Are ye wanting your key?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For she knows my queer ways, and my love for the shed<br></span>
+<span class="i4">(We’ve been forty years wed).<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So I comes right away by mysen, with the book,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I turns the old pages and has a good look<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the text as I’ve found, as tells me as He<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Were the same trade as me.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why don’t I mark it? Ah, many say so,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But I think I’d as lief, with your leaves, let it go:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It do seem that nice when I fall on it sudden&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Unexpected, you know!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Catherine C. Liddell.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Lettys_Globe" id="Lettys_Globe"></a>Letty’s Globe.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Letty’s Globe” gives us the picture of a little golden-haired girl who
+covers all Europe with her dainty hands and tresses while giving a kiss
+to England, her own dear native land. (1808-79.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When Letty had scarce pass’d her third glad year,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And her young, artless words began to flow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">One day we gave the child a colour’d sphere<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By tint and outline, all its sea and land.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She patted all the world; old empires peep’d<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Between her baby fingers; her soft hand<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap’d,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And laugh’d and prattled in her world-wide bliss!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But when we turn’d her sweet unlearned eye<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On our own isle, she rais’d a joyous cry,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Oh! yes, I see it! Letty’s home is there!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, while she hid all England with a kiss,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bright over Europe fell her golden hair!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Charles Tennyson Turner.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="A_Dream" id="A_Dream"></a>A Dream.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Once a dream did wave a shade<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er my angel-guarded bed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That an emmet lost its way<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When on grass methought I lay.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Troubled, ’wildered, and forlorn,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dark, benighted, travel-worn,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Over many a tangled spray,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All heart-broke, I heard her say:<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Oh, my children! do they cry?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Do they hear their father sigh?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now they look abroad to see.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now return and weep for me.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pitying, I dropped a tear;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But I saw a glow-worm near,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who replied, “What wailing wight<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Calls the watchman of the night?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I am set to light the ground<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While the beetle goes his round.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Follow now the beetle’s hum&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Little wanderer, hie thee home!”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Blake.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Heaven_Is_Not_Reached_at_a_Single_Bound" id="Heaven_Is_Not_Reached_at_a_Single_Bound"></a>Heaven Is Not Reached at a Single Bound.<br><span class="subtitle">(A FRAGMENT.)</span></h3>
+
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“We build the ladder by which we climb” is a line worthy of any poet.
+J.&nbsp;G. Holland (1819-81) has immortalised himself in this line, at least.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Heaven is not reached at a single bound,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But we build the ladder by which we rise<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And we mount to its summit round by round.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I count this thing to be grandly true:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That a noble deed is a step toward God,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Lifting the soul from the common clod<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To a purer air and a broader view.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">J.&nbsp;G. Holland.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Battle_of_Blenheim" id="The_Battle_of_Blenheim"></a>The Battle of Blenheim.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>Have you been to Woodstock, near Oxford, England? If so, you have seen
+the palace of the Duke of Marlborough, who won the battle of Blenheim.
+The main point of the poem is the doubtful honour in killing in our
+great wars. Southey, the poet, lived from 1774 to 1843.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It was a summer’s evening,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Old Kaspar’s work was done,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he before his cottage door<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Was sitting in the sun;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And by him sported on the green<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His little grandchild Wilhelmine.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She saw her brother Peterkin<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Roll something large and round,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Which he, beside the rivulet,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In playing there, had found.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He came to ask what he had found,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That was so large, and smooth, and round.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Old Kaspar took it from the boy,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Who stood expectant by;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And then the old man shook his head,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And, with a natural sigh,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“’Tis some poor fellow’s skull,” said he,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Who fell in the great victory!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I find them in the garden,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For there’s many hereabout;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And often when I go to plow,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The plowshare turns them out;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For many thousand men,” said he,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Were slain in that great victory!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Now tell us what ’twas all about,”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Young Peterkin he cries;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And little Wilhelmine looks up<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With wonder-waiting eyes;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Now tell us all about the war,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And what they killed each other for.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“It was the English,” Kaspar cried,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Who put the French to rout;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But what they killed each other for<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I could not well make out.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But everybody said,” quoth he,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“That ’twas a famous victory!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“My father lived at Blenheim then,<br></span>
+<span class="i2"><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original did not indent this line.">Yon little stream hard by:</ins><br></span>
+<span class="i0">They burned his dwelling to the ground<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And he was forced to fly;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So with his wife and child he fled,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor had he where to rest his head.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“With fire and sword the country round<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Was wasted far and wide;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And many a childing mother then<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And new-born baby died.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But things like that, you know, must be<br></span>
+<span class="i0">At every famous victory.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“They say it was a shocking sight<br></span>
+<span class="i2">After the field was won;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For many thousand bodies here<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Lay rotting in the sun.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But things like that, you know, must be<br></span>
+<span class="i0">After a famous victory.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Great praise the Duke of Marlborough won,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And our good Prince Eugene.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Why, ’twas a very wicked thing!”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Said little Wilhelmine.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Nay, nay, my little girl,” quoth he,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“It was a famous victory!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“And everybody praised the Duke<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Who this great fight did win.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“But what good came of it at last?”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Quoth little Peterkin.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Why, that I cannot tell,” said he,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“But ’twas a famous victory.”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Southey.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Fidelity" id="Fidelity"></a>Fidelity.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Fidelity,” by William Wordsworth (1770-1850), is placed here out of
+respect to a boy of eleven years who liked the poem well enough to
+recite it frequently. The scene is laid on Helvellyn, to me the most
+impressive mountain of the Lake District of England. Wordsworth is a
+part of this country. I once heard John Burroughs say: “I went to the
+Lake District to see what kind of a country it could be that would
+produce a Wordsworth.”</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A barking sound the Shepherd hears,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A cry as of a dog or fox;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He halts&mdash;and searches with his eyes<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Among the scattered rocks;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And now at distance can discern<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A stirring in a brake of fern;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And instantly a Dog is seen,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Glancing through that covert green.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Dog is not of mountain breed;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Its motions, too, are wild and shy;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With something, as the Shepherd thinks,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Unusual in its cry:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor is there any one in sight<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All round, in hollow or on height;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What is the Creature doing here?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It was a cove, a huge recess,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That keeps, till June, December’s snow.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A lofty precipice in front,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A silent tarn below!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Far in the bosom of Helvellyn,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Remote from public road or dwelling,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Pathway, or cultivated land;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From trace of human foot or hand.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There sometimes doth a leaping fish<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The crags repeat the raven’s croak,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In symphony austere;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thither the rainbow comes&mdash;the cloud&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And mists that spread the flying shroud;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And sunbeams; and the sounding blast,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That, if it could, would hurry past,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But that enormous barrier binds it fast.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not free from boding thoughts, a while<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Shepherd stood: then makes his way<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Toward the Dog, o’er rocks and stones,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As quickly as he may;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor far had gone, before he found<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A human skeleton on the ground;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The appalled discoverer with a sigh<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Looks round, to learn the history.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From those abrupt and perilous rocks<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Man had fallen, that place of fear!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">At length upon the Shepherd’s mind<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It breaks, and all is clear:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He instantly recalled the name,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And who he was, and whence he came;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Remembered, too, the very day<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On which the traveller passed this way.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But hear a wonder, for whose sake<br></span>
+<span class="i0">This lamentable tale I tell!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A lasting monument of words<br></span>
+<span class="i0">This wonder merits well.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Dog, which still was hovering nigh,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Repeating the same timid cry,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">This Dog had been through three months space<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A dweller in that savage place.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yes, proof was plain that, since the day<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When this ill-fated traveller died,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Dog had watched about the spot,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Or by his master’s side:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How nourished here through such long time<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He knows, who gave that love sublime;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And gave that strength of feeling, great<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Above all human estimate.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Wordsworth.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Chambered_Nautilus" id="The_Chambered_Nautilus"></a>The Chambered Nautilus.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>People are more and more coming to recognise the fact that each
+individual soul has a right to its own stages of development. “The
+Chambered Nautilus” is for that reason beloved of the masses. It is one
+of the grandest poems ever written. “Build thee more stately mansions,
+O my soul!” This line alone would make the poem immortal. (1809-94.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Sailed the unshadowed main,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i6">The venturous bark that flings<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">And coral reefs lie bare,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Wrecked is the ship of pearl!<br></span>
+<span class="i6">And every chambered cell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Before thee lies revealed,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Year after year beheld the silent toil<br></span>
+<span class="i6">That spread his lustrous coil;<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Still, as the spiral grew,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stole with soft step its shining archway through,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Built up its idle door,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Child of the wandering sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Cast from her lap, forlorn!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From thy dead lips a clearer note is born<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!<br></span>
+<span class="i6">While on mine ear it rings,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:&mdash;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">As the swift seasons roll!<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Leave thy low-vaulted past!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Let each new temple, nobler than the last,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Till thou at length art free,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Oliver Wendell Holmes.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Crossing_the_Bar" id="Crossing_the_Bar"></a>Crossing the Bar</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>Tennyson’s (1809-92) “Crossing the Bar” is one of the noblest
+death-songs ever written. I include it in this volume out of respect to
+a young Philadelphia publisher who recited it one stormy night before
+the passengers of a ship when I was crossing the Atlantic, and also
+because so many young people have the good taste to love it. It has
+been said that next to Browning’s “Prospice” it is the greatest
+death-song ever written.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sunset and evening star,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And one clear call for me!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And may there be no moaning of the bar,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When I put out to sea,<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But such a tide as moving seems asleep,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Too full for sound and foam,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When that which drew from out the boundless deep<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Turns again home.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Twilight and evening bell,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And after that the dark!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And may there be no sadness of farewell,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When I embark;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The flood may bear me far,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I hope to see my Pilot face to face<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When I have cross’d the bar.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Overland-Mail" id="The_Overland-Mail"></a>The Overland-Mail.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Overland-Mail” is a most desirable poem for children to learn.
+When one boy learns it the others want to follow. It takes as a hero
+the man who gives common service&mdash;the one who does not lead or command,
+but follows the line of duty. (1865-.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the name of the Empress of India, make way,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O Lords of the Jungle wherever you roam,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The woods are astir at the close of the day&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We exiles are waiting for letters from Home&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Let the robber retreat; let the tiger turn tail,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the name of the Empress the Overland-Mail!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With a jingle of bells as the dusk gathers in,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He turns to the foot-path that leads up the hill&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The bags on his back, and a cloth round his chin,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, tucked in his belt, the Post-Office bill;&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Despatched on this date, as received by the rail,<br></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Per</i> runner, two bags of the Overland-Mail.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Is the torrent in spate? He must ford it or swim.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Has the rain wrecked the road? He must climb by the cliff.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Does the tempest cry “Halt”? What are tempests to him?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The service admits not a “but” or an “if”;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While the breath’s in his mouth, he must bear without fail,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the name of the Empress the Overland-Mail.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From aloe to rose-oak, from rose-oak to fir,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From level to upland, from upland to crest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From rice-field to rock-ridge, from rock-ridge to spur,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fly the soft-sandalled feet, strains the brawny brown chest.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From rail to ravine&mdash;to the peak from the vale&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Up, up through the night goes the Overland-Mail.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There’s a speck on the hillside, a dot on the road&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A jingle of bells on the foot-path below&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s a scuffle above in the monkeys’ abode&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The world is awake, and the clouds are aglow&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the great Sun himself must attend to the hail;&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the name of the Empress the Overland-Mail.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Gathering_Song_of_Donald_Dhu" id="Gathering_Song_of_Donald_Dhu"></a>Gathering Song of Donald Dhu.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>Jon, do you remember when you used to spout “Pibroch of Donald Dhu”? I
+think you were ten years old. Sir Walter Scott’s men all have a genius
+for standing up to their guns, and boys gather up the man’s genius when
+reciting his verse. (1771-1832.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pibroch of Donuil Dhu,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Pibroch of Donuil,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wake thy wild voice anew,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Summon Clan Conuil.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come away, come away,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Hark to the summons!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come in your war-array,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Gentles and commons.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Come from deep glen, and<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From mountain so rocky,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The war-pipe and pennon<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Are at Inverlochy.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come every hill-plaid, and<br></span>
+<span class="i2">True heart that wears one,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come every steel blade, and<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Strong hand that bears one.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Leave untended the herd,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The flock without shelter;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Leave the corpse uninterr’d,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The bride at the altar;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Leave the deer, leave the steer,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Leave nets and barges:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come with your fighting gear,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Broadswords and targes.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Come as the winds come, when<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Forests are rended;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come as the waves come, when<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Navies are stranded:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Faster come, faster come,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Faster and faster,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Chief, vassal, page, and groom,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Tenant and master.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fast they come, fast they come;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">See how they gather!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wide waves the eagle plume<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Blended with heather,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Cast your plaids, draw your blades,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Forward each man set!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Pibroch of Donuil Dhu<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Knell for the onset!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Sir Walter Scott.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Marco_Bozzaris" id="Marco_Bozzaris"></a>Marco Bozzaris.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Marco Bozzaris,” by Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867), was in my old
+school-reader. Boys and girls liked it then and they like it now. This
+is another of the poems that was not born to die.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At midnight, in his guarded tent,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The Turk was dreaming of the hour<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Should tremble at his power:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In dreams, through camp and court, he bore<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The trophies of a conqueror;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In dreams his song of triumph heard;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then wore his monarch’s signet ring:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then pressed that monarch’s throne&mdash;a king;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As Eden’s garden bird.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At midnight, in the forest shades,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">True as the steel of their tried blades,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Heroes in heart and hand.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There had the Persian’s thousands stood,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There had the glad earth drunk their blood<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On old Plat&aelig;a’s day;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And now there breathed that haunted air<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The sons of sires who conquered there,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With arm to strike and soul to dare,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As quick, as far as they.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">An hour passed on&mdash;the Turk awoke;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That bright dream was his last;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He woke&mdash;to hear his sentries shriek,<br></span>
+<span class="i2"><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original did not indent this line.">“To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!”</ins><br></span>
+<span class="i0">He woke&mdash;to die midst flame, and smoke,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And death-shots falling thick and fast<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As lightnings from the mountain-cloud;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Bozzaris cheer his band:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Strike&mdash;till the last armed foe expires;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Strike&mdash;for your altars and your fires;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Strike&mdash;for the green graves of your sires;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">God&mdash;and your native land!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They fought&mdash;like brave men, long and well;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They piled that ground with Moslem slain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They conquered&mdash;but Bozzaris fell,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Bleeding at every vein.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His few surviving comrades saw<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His smile when rang their proud hurrah,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the red field was won;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then saw in death his eyelids close<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Calmly, as to a night’s repose,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Like flowers at set of sun.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Come to the bridal-chamber, Death!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Come to the mother’s, when she feels,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the first time, her first-born’s breath;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Come when the blessed seals<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That close the pestilence are broke,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And crowded cities wail its stroke;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come in consumption’s ghastly form,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come when the heart beats high and warm<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With banquet-song, and dance, and wine;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And thou art terrible&mdash;the tear,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And all we know, or dream, or fear<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of agony, are thine.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But to the hero, when his sword<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Has won the battle for the free,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy voice sounds like a prophet’s word;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And in its hollow tones are heard<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The thanks of millions yet to be.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come, when his task of fame is wrought&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Come in her crowning hour&mdash;and then<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy sunken eye’s unearthly light<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To him is welcome as the sight<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of sky and stars to prisoned men;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy grasp is welcome as the hand<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of brother in a foreign land;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy summons welcome as the cry<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That told the Indian isles were nigh<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To the world-seeking Genoese,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When the land wind, from woods of palm,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And orange-groves, and fields of balm,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Blew o’er the Haytian seas.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bozzaris! with the storied brave<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Greece nurtured in her glory’s time,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rest thee&mdash;there is no prouder grave,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Even in her own proud clime.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She wore no funeral-weeds for thee,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like torn branch from death’s leafless tree<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In sorrow’s pomp and pageantry,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The heartless luxury of the tomb;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But she remembers thee as one<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Long loved and for a season gone;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For thee her poet’s lyre is wreathed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her marble wrought, her music breathed;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For thee she rings the birthday bells;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of thee her babe’s first lisping tells;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For thine her evening prayer is said<br></span>
+<span class="i0">At palace-couch and cottage-bed;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her soldier, closing with the foe,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His plighted maiden, when she fears<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For him the joy of her young years,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And she, the mother of thy boys,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Though in her eye and faded cheek<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Is read the grief she will not speak,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The memory of her buried joys,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And even she who gave thee birth,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Talk of thy doom without a sigh;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For thou art Freedom’s now, and Fame’s:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">One of the few, the immortal names,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That were not born to die.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Fitz-greene Halleck.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Death_of_Napoleon" id="The_Death_of_Napoleon"></a>The Death of Napoleon.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Death of Napoleon,” by Isaac McClellan (1806-99), was yet another
+of the good old reader songs taught us by a teacher of good taste. We
+love those teachers more the older we grow.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wild was the night, yet a wilder night<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Hung round the soldier’s pillow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In his bosom there waged a fiercer fight<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Than the fight on the wrathful billow.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A few fond mourners were kneeling by,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The few that his stern heart cherished;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They knew, by his glazed and unearthly eye,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That life had nearly perished.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They knew by his awful and kingly look,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">By the order hastily spoken,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That he dreamed of days when the nations shook,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the nations’ hosts were broken.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He dreamed that the Frenchman’s sword still slew,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And triumphed the Frenchman’s eagle,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the struggling Austrian fled anew,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Like the hare before the beagle.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The bearded Russian he scourged again,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The Prussian’s camp was routed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And again on the hills of haughty Spain<br></span>
+<span class="i2">His mighty armies shouted.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Over Egypt’s sands, over Alpine snows,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">At the pyramids, at the mountain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the wave of the lordly Danube flows,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And by the Italian fountain,<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On the snowy cliffs where mountain streams<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Dash by the Switzer’s dwelling,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He led again, in his dying dreams,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">His hosts, the proud earth quelling.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Again Marengo’s field was won,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And Jena’s bloody battle;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Again the world was overrun,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Made pale at his cannon’s rattle.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He died at the close of that darksome day,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A day that shall live in story;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the rocky land they placed his clay,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“And left him alone with his glory.”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Isaac McClellan.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="How_Sleep_the_Brave" id="How_Sleep_the_Brave"></a>How Sleep the Brave.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How sleep the brave, who sink to rest<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By all their country’s wishes blest!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Returns to deck their hallow’d mould,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She there shall dress a sweeter sod<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Than Fancy’s feet have ever trod.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By fairy hands their knell is rung,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By forms unseen their dirge is sung:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To bless the turf that wraps their clay;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And Freedom shall a while repair<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To dwell a weeping hermit there!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Collins.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Flag_Goes_By" id="The_Flag_Goes_By"></a>The Flag Goes By.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Flag Goes By” is included out of regard to a boy of eleven years
+who pleased me by his great appreciation of it. It teaches the lesson
+of reverence to our great national symbol. It is published by
+permission of the author, Henry Holcomb Bennett, of Ohio. (1863-.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">Hats off!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Along the street there comes<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A flash of colour beneath the sky:<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Hats off!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The flag is passing by!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Blue and crimson and white it shines<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines.<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Hats off!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The colours before us fly;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But more than the flag is passing by.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fought to make and to save the State:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Weary marches and sinking ships;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Cheers of victory on dying lips;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Days of plenty and years of peace;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">March of a strong land’s swift increase;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Equal justice, right, and law,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stately honour and reverend awe;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sign of a nation, great and strong<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Toward her people from foreign wrong:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Pride and glory and honour,&mdash;all<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Live in the colours to stand or fall.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">Hats off!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Along the street there comes<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And loyal hearts are beating high:<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Hats off!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The flag is passing by!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Henry Holcomb Bennett.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Hohenlinden" id="Hohenlinden"></a>Hohenlinden.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On Linden, when the sun was low,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All bloodless lay th’ untrodden snow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And dark as winter was the flow<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Of Iser, rolling rapidly.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But Linden saw another sight,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When the drum beat, at dead of night,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Commanding fires of death to light<br></span>
+<span class="i4">The darkness of her scenery.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By torch and trumpet fast array’d<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Each horseman drew his battle-blade,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And furious every charger neigh’d<br></span>
+<span class="i4">To join the dreadful revelry.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then shook the hills with thunder riven,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then rush’d the steed to battle driven,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And louder than the bolts of Heaven,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Far flashed the red artillery.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But redder yet that light shall glow<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On Linden’s hills or stain&egrave;d snow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And bloodier yet the torrent flow<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Of Iser, rolling rapidly.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">’Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where furious Frank, and fiery Hun,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Shout in their sulphurous canopy.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The combat deepens. On, ye brave<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who rush to glory or the grave!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wave, Munich! all thy banners wave,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">And charge with all thy chivalry!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Few, few shall part, where many meet!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The snow shall be their winding-sheet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And every turf beneath their feet<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Shall be a soldier’s sepulcher.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Thomas Campbell.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="My_Old_Kentucky_Home" id="My_Old_Kentucky_Home"></a>My Old Kentucky Home.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">’Tis summer, the darkeys are gay;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The corn-top’s ripe, and the meadow’s in the bloom,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">While the birds make music all the day.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">All merry, all happy and bright;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By-’n’-by hard times comes a-knocking at the door:&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Weep no more, my lady,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">O, weep no more to-day!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For the old Kentucky home, far away.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They hunt no more for the ’possum and the coon,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On the meadow, the hill, and the shore;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On the bench by the old cabin door.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The day goes by like a shadow o’er the heart,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With sorrow, where all was delight;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The time has come when the darkeys have to part:&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The head must bow, and the back will have to bend,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Wherever the darkey may go;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A few more days, and the trouble all will end,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In the field where the sugar-canes grow.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A few more days for to tote the weary load,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">No matter, ’twill never be light;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A few more days till we totter on the road:&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Weep no more, my lady,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">O, weep no more to-day!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">For the old Kentucky home, far away.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Stephen Collins Foster.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Old_Folks_at_Home" id="Old_Folks_at_Home"></a>Old Folks at Home.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Way down upon de Swanee Ribber,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Far, far away,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dere’s wha my heart is turning ebber,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Dere’s wha de old folks stay.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All up and down de whole creation<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Sadly I roam,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Still longing for de old plantation,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And for de old folks at home.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">All de world am sad and dreary,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Eberywhere I roam;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Far from de old folks at home!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All round de little farm I wandered<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When I was young,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Den many happy days I squandered,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Many de songs I sung.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When I was playing wid my brudder<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Happy was I;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, take me to my kind old mudder!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Dere let me live and die.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">One little hut among de bushes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">One dat I love,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Still sadly to my memory rushes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">No matter where I rove.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When will I see de bees a-humming<br></span>
+<span class="i2">All round de comb?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When will I hear de banjo tumming,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Down in my good old home?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">All de world am sad and dreary,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Eberywhere I roam;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Far from de old folks at home!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Stephen Collins Foster.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Wreck_of_the_Hesperus" id="The_Wreck_of_the_Hesperus"></a>The Wreck of the “Hesperus.”</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Wreck of the <i>Hesperus</i>,” by Longfellow (1807-82), on “Norman’s
+Woe,” off the coast near Cape Ann, is a historic poem as well as an
+imaginative composition.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It was the schooner <i>Hesperus</i>,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That sailed the wintry sea;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the skipper had taken his little daughter,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To bear him company.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Her cheeks like the dawn of day,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That ope in the month of May.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The skipper he stood beside the helm,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">His pipe was in his mouth,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he watched how the veering flaw did blow<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The smoke now west, now south.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then up and spake an old sailor,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Had sailed the Spanish Main,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“I pray thee put into yonder port,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For I fear a hurricane.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Last night the moon had a golden ring,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And to-night no moon we see!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And a scornful laugh laughed he.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Colder and louder blew the wind,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A gale from the northeast,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The snow fell hissing in the brine,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the billows frothed like yeast.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Down came the storm, and smote amain<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The vessel in its strength;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Then leaped her cable’s length.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And do not tremble so;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For I can weather the roughest gale<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That ever wind did blow.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Against the stinging blast;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He cut a rope from a broken spar,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And bound her to the mast.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“O father! I hear the church-bells ring,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">O say, what may it be?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!”&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And he steered for the open sea.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“O father! I hear the sound of guns,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">O say, what may it be?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Some ship in distress, that cannot live<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In such an angry sea!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“O father! I see a gleaming light,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">O say, what may it be?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the father answered never a word,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A frozen corpse was he.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With his face turned to the skies,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On his fixed and glassy eyes.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That sav&egrave;d she might be;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On the Lake of Galilee.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And fast through the midnight dark and drear,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Through the whistling sleet and snow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Toward the reef of Norman’s Woe.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And ever the fitful gusts between<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A sound came from the land;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It was the sound of the trampling surf<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The breakers were right beneath her bows,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">She drifted a dreary wreck,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And a whooping billow swept the crew<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Like icicles from her deck.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She struck where the white and fleecy waves<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Looked soft as carded wool,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the cruel rocks they gored her side<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Like the horns of an angry bull.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Her rattling shrouds all sheathed in ice,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With the masts went by the board;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a vessel of glass she stove and sank,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Ho! ho! the breakers roared!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At daybreak on the bleak sea-beach<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A fisherman stood aghast,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To see the form of a maiden fair<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Lashed close to a drifting mast.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The salt sea was frozen on her breast,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The salt tears in her eyes;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On the billows fall and rise.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Such was the wreck of the <i>Hesperus</i>,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In the midnight and the snow!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Christ save us all from a death like this,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On the reef of Norman’s Woe!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Henry W. Longfellow.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Bannockburn" id="Bannockburn"></a>Bannockburn.<br><span class="subtitle">ROBERT BRUCE’S ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY.</span></h3>
+
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>You can look down on the battle-field of Bannockburn from Stirling
+Castle, Scotland, near which stands a magnificent statue of Robert, the
+Bruce. How often have I trodden over the old battle-field. The monument
+of William Wallace, too, looms up on the Ochil Hills, not far away.
+(1759-96.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Scots, wham Bruce has aften led;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Welcome to your gory bed,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Or to victorie.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now’s the day, and now’s the hour;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">See the front o’ battle lower;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">See approach proud Edward’s power&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Chains and slaverie!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wha will be a traitor knave?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wha can fill a coward’s grave?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wha sae base as be a slave?<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Let him turn and flee!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wha for Scotland’s King and law<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Freedom’s sword will strongly draw,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Freeman stand, or freeman fa’?<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Let him follow me!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By oppression’s woes and pains!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By your sons in servile chains!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We will drain our dearest veins,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But they shall be free!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lay the proud usurpers low!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tyrants fall in every foe!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Liberty’s in every blow!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Let us do, or die!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Burns.</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2><a name="PART_IV" id="PART_IV"></a>PART IV.<br>
+ <img class='plain' src='images/part4.png' alt='A tall stalk of bluebells' height='500' width='141' style='vertical-align:middle;'>
+ <small>Lad and Lassie</small></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Inchcape_Rock" id="The_Inchcape_Rock"></a>The Inchcape Rock.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>The man is wrecked and his ship is sunken before he ever steps on board
+or sees the water if his heart is hard and his estimate of human beings
+low. “The Inchcape Rock” is a thrust at hard-heartedness. “What is the
+use of life?” To bear one another’s burdens, to develop a genius for
+pulling people through hard places&mdash;that’s the use of life. It is the
+last resort of a mean mind to crack jokes that wreck innocent voyagers
+on life’s sea. (1774-1843.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No stir in the air, no stir in the sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The ship was still as she could be;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her sails from heaven received no motion;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her keel was steady in the ocean.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Without either sign or sound of their shock,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The waves flowed over the Inchcape Rock;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So little they rose, so little they fell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They did not move the Inchcape Bell.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Abbot of Aberbrothok<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Had placed that Bell on the Inchcape Rock;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And over the waves its warning rung.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When the Rock was hid by the surge’s swell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The mariners heard the warning Bell;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And then they knew the perilous Rock,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The sun in heaven was shining gay;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All things were joyful on that day;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The sea-birds screamed as they wheeled round,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And there was joyance in their sound.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The buoy of the Inchcape Bell was seen,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A dark spot on the ocean green;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sir Ralph the Rover walked his deck,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he fixed his eye on the darker speck.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He felt the cheering power of spring;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It made him whistle, it made him sing:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His heart was mirthful to excess,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the Rover’s mirth was wickedness.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His eye was on the Inchcape float.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Quoth he, “My men, put out the boat<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And row me to the Inchcape Rock,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I’ll plague the Abbot of Aberbrothok.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The boat is lowered, the boatmen row,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And to the Inchcape Rock they go;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sir Ralph bent over from the boat,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he cut the Bell from the Inchcape float.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Down sank the Bell with a gurgling sound;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The bubbles rose and burst around.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Quoth Sir Ralph, “The next who comes to the Rock<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Won’t bless the Abbot of Aberbrothok.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sir Ralph the Rover sailed away;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He scoured the sea for many a day;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And now grown rich with plundered store,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He steers his course for Scotland’s shore.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So thick a haze o’erspread the sky,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They cannot see the sun on high:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The wind hath blown a gale all day,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">At evening it hath died away.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On the deck the Rover takes his stand;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So dark it is they see no land.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Quoth Sir Ralph, “It will be brighter soon,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For there is the dawn of the rising moon.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Canst hear,” said one, “the broken roar?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For methinks we should be near the shore.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Now where we are I cannot tell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But I wish I could hear the Inchcape Bell.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They hear no sound; the swell is strong;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Though the wind hath fallen, they drift along<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“O Christ! it is the Inchcape Rock!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He curst himself in his despair:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The waves rush in on every side,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The ship is sinking beneath the tide.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But, even in his dying fear,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">One dreadful sound could the Rover hear,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A sound as if with the Inchcape Bell<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Devil below was ringing his knell.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Southey.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Finding_of_the_Lyre" id="The_Finding_of_the_Lyre"></a>The Finding of the Lyre.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>Once a year my pupils teach me “The Finding of the Lyre.” By the time I
+have learned it they know the meaning of every line and have caught the
+spirit of the verse. There is an ancient “lyre,” or violin, made in
+northern Africa, in the possession of a Boston lady, and I have found
+the mud-turtle rattle among the Indians on the Indian reservation at
+Syracuse, New York. They use it as a musical instrument in their
+Thanksgiving dances. The poem helps to build an interest in history and
+mythology while it develops a child’s reverence and insight. (1819-91.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There lay upon the ocean’s shore<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What once a tortoise served to cover;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A year and more, with rush and roar,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The surf had rolled it over,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Had played with it, and flung it by,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As wind and weather might decide it,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then tossed it high where sand-drifts dry<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Cheap burial might provide it.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It rested there to bleach or tan,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The rains had soaked, the sun had burned it;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With many a ban the fisherman<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Had stumbled o’er and spurned it;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And there the fisher-girl would stay,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Conjecturing with her brother<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How in their play the poor estray<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Might serve some use or other.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So there it lay, through wet and dry,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As empty as the last new sonnet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till by and by came Mercury,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, having mused upon it,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Why, here,” cried he, “the thing of things<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In shape, material, and dimension!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Give it but strings, and, lo, it sings,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A wonderful invention!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So said, so done; the chords he strained,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, as his fingers o’er them hovered,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The shell disdained a soul had gained,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The lyre had been discovered.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O empty world that round us lies,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dead shell, of soul and thought forsaken,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Brought we but eyes like Mercury’s,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In thee what songs should waken!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">James Russell Lowell.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="A_Chrysalis" id="A_Chrysalis"></a>A Chrysalis.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“A Chrysalis” is a favourite poem with John Burroughs, and is found,
+too, in Stedman’s collection. We all come to a point in life where we
+need to burst the shell and fly away into the new realm. (1835-98.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My little M&auml;dchen found one day<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A curious something in her play,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That was not fruit, nor flower, nor seed;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It was not anything that grew,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Or crept, or climbed, or swam, or flew;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Had neither legs nor wings, indeed;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet she was not sure, she said,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether it was alive or dead.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She brought it in her tiny hand<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To see if I would understand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And wondered when I made reply,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“You’ve found a baby butterfly.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“A butterfly is not like this,”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With doubtful look she answered me.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So then I told her what would be<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Some day within the chrysalis:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How, slowly, in the dull brown thing<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now still as death, a spotted wing,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And then another, would unfold,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till from the empty shell would fly<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A pretty creature, by and by,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All radiant in blue and gold.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“And will it, truly?” questioned she&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her laughing lips and eager eyes<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All in a sparkle of surprise&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“And shall your little M&auml;dchen see?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“She shall!” I said. How could I tell<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That ere the worm within its shell<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Its gauzy, splendid wings had spread,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My little M&auml;dchen would be dead?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To-day the butterfly has flown,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She was not here to see it fly,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And sorrowing I wonder why<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The empty shell is mine alone.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Perhaps the secret lies in this:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I too had found a chrysalis,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And Death that robbed me of delight<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Was but the radiant creature’s flight!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Mary Emily Bradley.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="For_a_That" id="For_a_That"></a>For a’ That.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>Robert Burns, the plowman and poet, “dinnered wi’ a lord.” The story
+goes that he was put at the second table. That lord is dead, but Robert
+Burns still lives. He is immortal. It is “the survival of the fittest”
+“For a’ That and a’ That” is a poem that wipes out the superficial
+value put on money and other externalities. This poem is more valuable
+in education than good penmanship or good spelling. (1759-96.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Is there, for honest poverty,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That hangs his head, and a’ that?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The coward slave, we pass him by,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">We dare be poor for a’ that;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For a’ that, and a’ that,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Our toils obscure, and a’ that;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The man’s the gowd for a’ that!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What though on hamely fare we dine,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Wear hoddin-gray,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> and a’ that;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A man’s a man for a’ that!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For a’ that, and a’ that,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Their tinsel show, and a’ that;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The honest man, though e’er sae poor,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Is king o’ men for a’ that!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ye see yon birkie<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> ca’d a lord,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Wha struts, and stares, and a’ that;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Though hundreds worship at his word,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He’s but a coof<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> for a’ that;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For a’ that, and a’ that,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">His riband, star, and a’ that,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The man of independent mind,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He looks and laughs at a’ that.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A prince can make a belted knight,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A marquis, duke, and a’ that;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But an honest man’s aboon his might.<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Guid faith he maunna fa’ that!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For a’ that, and a’ that,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Their dignities, and a’ that,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The pith o’ sense, and pride o’ worth,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Are higher rank than a’ that.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then let us pray that come it may&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As come it will for a’ that&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That sense and worth, o’er a’ the earth,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">May bear the gree, and a’ that;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For a’ that, and a’ that,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">It’s coming yet for a’ that,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That man to man, the warld o’er,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall brothers be for a’ that!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Burns.</span></p>
+<p>
+<span class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Coarse woolen clothes.</span>
+
+<span class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Impudent fellow.</span>
+
+<span class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Fool: blockhead.</span>
+</p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="A_New_Arrival" id="A_New_Arrival"></a>A New Arrival.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The New Arrival” is a valuable poem because it expresses the joy of a
+young father over his new baby. If girls should be educated to be good
+mothers, so should boys be taught that fatherhood is the highest and
+holiest joy and right of man. The child is educator to the man. He
+teaches him how to take responsibility, how to give unbiased judgments,
+and how to be fatherly like “Our Father who is in Heaven.” (1844-.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There came to port last Sunday night<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The queerest little craft,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Without an inch of rigging on;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I looked and looked and laughed.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It seemed so curious that she<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Should cross the Unknown water,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And moor herself right in my room,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My daughter, O my daughter!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet by these presents witness all<br></span>
+<span class="i2">She’s welcome fifty times,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And comes consigned to Hope and Love<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And common-meter rhymes.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She has no manifest but this,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">No flag floats o’er the water,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She’s too new for the British Lloyds&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My daughter, O my daughter!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ring out, wild bells, and tame ones too!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Ring out the lover’s moon!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ring in the little worsted socks!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Ring in the bib and spoon!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ring out the muse! ring in the nurse!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Ring in the milk and water!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Away with paper, pen, and ink&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My daughter, O my daughter!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">George W. Cable.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Brook" id="The_Brook"></a>The Brook.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>Tennyson’s “The Brook” is included out of love to a dear old schoolmate
+in Colorado. The real brook, near Cambridge, England, is tame compared
+to your Colorado streams, O beloved comrade. This poem is well liked by
+the majority of pupils. (1809-92.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I chatter, chatter, as I flow<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To join the brimming river;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For men may come and men may go,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But I go on forever.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I wind about, and in and out,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With here a blossom sailing,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And here and there a lusty trout,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And here and there a grayling.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I steal by lawns and grassy plots,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I slide by hazel covers;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I move the sweet forget-me-nots<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That grow for happy lovers.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Among my skimming swallows;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I make the netted sunbeams dance<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Against my sandy shallows.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I murmur under moon and stars<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In brambly wildernesses;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I linger by my shingly bars;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I loiter round my cresses.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And out again I curve and flow<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To join the brimming river;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For men may come and men may go,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But I go on forever.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Ballad_of_the_Clampherdown" id="The_Ballad_of_the_Clampherdown"></a>The Ballad of the “Clampherdown.”</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Ballad of the <i>Clampherdown</i>,” by Rudyard Kipling, is included
+because my boys always like it. It needs a great deal of explanation,
+and few boys will hold out to the end in learning it. But “it pays.”
+(1865-.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It was our war-ship <i>Clampherdown</i><br></span>
+<span class="i2">Would sweep the Channel clean,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherefore she kept her hatches close<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When the merry Channel chops arose,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To save the bleached marine.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She had one bow-gun of a hundred ton,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And a great stern-gun beside;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They dipped their noses deep in the sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They racked their stays and stanchions free<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In the wash of the wind-whipped tide.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It was our war-ship <i>Clampherdown</i>,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Fell in with a cruiser light<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That carried the dainty Hotchkiss gun<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And a pair o’ heels wherewith to run,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From the grip of a close-fought fight.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She opened fire at seven miles&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As ye shoot at a bobbing cork&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And once she fired and twice she fired,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the bow-gun drooped like a lily tired<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That lolls upon the stalk.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Captain, the bow-gun melts apace,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The deck-beams break below,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twere well to rest for an hour or twain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And botch the shattered plates again.”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And he answered, “Make it so.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She opened fire within the mile&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As ye shoot at the flying duck&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the great stern-gun shot fair and true,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With the heave of the ship, to the stainless blue,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the great stern-turret stuck.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Captain, the turret fills with steam,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The feed-pipes burst below&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">You can hear the hiss of helpless ram,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">You can hear the twisted runners jam.”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And he answered, “Turn and go!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It was our war-ship <i>Clampherdown</i>,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And grimly did she roll;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Swung round to take the cruiser’s fire<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As the White Whale faces the Thresher’s ire,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When they war by the frozen Pole.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Captain, the shells are falling fast,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And faster still fall we;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And it is not meet for English stock,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To bide in the heart of an eight-day clock,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The death they cannot see.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Lie down, lie down, my bold A.B.,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">We drift upon her beam;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We dare not ram, for she can run;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And dare ye fire another gun,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And die in the peeling steam?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It was our war-ship <i>Clampherdown</i><br></span>
+<span class="i2">That carried an armour-belt;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But fifty feet at stern and bow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lay bare as the paunch of the purser’s sow,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To the hail of the Nordenfeldt.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Captain, they lack us through and through;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The chilled steel bolts are swift!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We have emptied the bunkers in open sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Their shrapnel bursts where our coal should be.”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And he answered, “Let her drift.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It was our war-ship <i>Clampherdown</i>,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Swung round upon the tide.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her two dumb guns glared south and north,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the blood and the bubbling steam ran forth,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And she ground the cruiser’s side.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Captain, they cry the fight is done,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They bid you send your sword.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he answered, “Grapple her stern and bow.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They have asked for the steel. They shall have it now;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Out cutlasses and board!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It was our war-ship <i>Clampherdown</i>,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Spewed up four hundred men;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the scalded stokers yelped delight,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As they rolled in the waist and heard the fight,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Stamp o’er their steel-walled pen.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They cleared the cruiser end to end,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From conning-tower to hold.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They fought as they fought in Nelson’s fleet;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They were stripped to the waist, they were bare to the feet,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As it was in the days of old.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It was the sinking <i>Clampherdown</i><br></span>
+<span class="i2">Heaved up her battered side&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And carried a million pounds in steel,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To the cod and the corpse-fed conger-eel,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the scour of the Channel tide.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It was the crew of the <i>Clampherdown</i><br></span>
+<span class="i2">Stood out to sweep the sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On a cruiser won from an ancient foe,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As it was in the days of long-ago,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And as it still shall be.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Destruction_of_Sennacherib" id="The_Destruction_of_Sennacherib"></a>The Destruction of Sennacherib.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Destruction of Sennacherib,” by Lord Byron, finds a place in this
+collection because Johnnie, a ten-year-old, and many of his friends
+say, “It’s great.” (1788-1824.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Like the leaves of the forest when the Summer is green,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That host with their banners at sunset were seen:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And there lay the rider distorted and pale,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Lord Byron.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="I_Remember_I_Remember" id="I_Remember_I_Remember"></a>I Remember, I Remember.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I remember, I remember<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The house where I was born,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The little window where the sun<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Came peeping in at morn;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He never came a wink too soon<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor brought too long a day;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But now, I often wish the night<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Had borne my breath away.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I remember, I remember<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The roses, red and white,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The violets, and the lily-cups&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Those flowers made of light!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The lilacs where the robin built,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And where my brother set<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The laburnum on his birthday,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The tree is living yet!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I remember, I remember<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where I was used to swing,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And thought the air must rush as fresh<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To swallows on the wing;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My spirit flew in feathers then<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That is so heavy now,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And summer pools could hardly cool<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The fever on my brow.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I remember, I remember<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The fir trees dark and high;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I used to think their slender tops<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Were close against the sky:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It was a childish ignorance,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But now ’tis little joy<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To know I’m farther off from Heaven<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Than when I was a boy.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Thomas Hood.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Driving_Home_the_Cows" id="Driving_Home_the_Cows"></a>Driving Home the Cows.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Out of the clover and blue-eyed grass<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He turned them into the river lane;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">One after another he let them pass,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Then fastened the meadow bars again.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Under the willows and over the hill,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He patiently followed their sober pace;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The merry whistle for once was still,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And something shadowed the sunny face.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Only a boy! and his father had said<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He never could let his youngest go:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Two already were lying dead,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Under the feet of the trampling foe.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But after the evening work was done,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the frogs were loud in the meadow-swamp,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Over his shoulder he slung his gun,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And stealthily followed the footpath damp.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Across the clover, and through the wheat,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With resolute heart and purpose grim:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Though the dew was on his hurrying feet,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the blind bat’s flitting startled him.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thrice since then had the lanes been white,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the orchards sweet with apple-bloom;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And now, when the cows came back at night,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The feeble father drove them home.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For news had come to the lonely farm<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That three were lying where two had lain;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the old man’s tremulous, palsied arm<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Could never lean on a son’s again.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The summer day grew cool and late:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He went for the cows when the work was done;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But down the lane, as he opened the gate,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He saw them coming one by one:<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Brindle, Ebony, Speckle, and Bess,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Shaking their horns in the evening wind;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Cropping the buttercups out of the grass,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But who was it following close behind?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Loosely swung in the idle air<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The empty sleeve of army blue;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And worn and pale, from the crisping hair,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Looked out a face that the father knew.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For close-barred prisons will sometimes yawn,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And yield their dead unto life again;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the day that comes with a cloudy dawn,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In golden glory at last may wane.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The great tears sprang to their meeting eyes;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For the heart must speak when the lips are dumb,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And under the silent evening skies<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Together they followed the cattle home.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Kate Putnam Osgood.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Krinken" id="Krinken"></a>Krinken.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Krinken” is the dearest of poems.</p>
+<blockquote><p>
+“Krinken was a little child.<br>
+It was summer when he smiled!”<br>
+</p></blockquote>
+<p>Eugene Field, above all other poets, paid the finest tribute to
+children. This poet only, could make the whole ocean warm because a
+child’s heart was there to warm it.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Krinken was a little child,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It was summer when he smiled.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oft the hoary sea and grim<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stretched its white arms out to him,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Calling, “Sun-child, come to me;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Let me warm my heart with thee!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the child heard not the sea<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Calling, yearning evermore<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the summer on the shore.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Krinken on the beach one day<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Saw a maiden Nis at play;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On the pebbly beach she played<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the summer Krinken made.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fair, and very fair, was she,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Just a little child was he.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Krinken,” said the maiden Nis,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Let me have a little kiss,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Just a kiss, and go with me<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To the summer-lands that be<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Down within the silver sea.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Krinken was a little child&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By the maiden Nis beguiled,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hand in hand with her went he<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And ’twas summer in the sea.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the hoary sea and grim<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To its bosom folded him&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Clasped and kissed the little form,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the ocean’s heart was warm.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now the sea calls out no more;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It is winter on the shore,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Winter where that little child<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Made sweet summer when he smiled;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Though ’tis summer on the sea<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where with maiden Nis went he,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It is winter on the shore,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Winter, winter evermore.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Of the summer on the deep<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come sweet visions in my sleep;<br></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>His</i> fair face lifts from the sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>His</i> dear voice calls out to me,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">These my dreams of summer be.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Krinken was a little child,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By the maiden Nis beguiled;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oft the hoary sea and grim<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Reached its longing arms to him,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Crying, “Sim-child, come to me;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Let me warm my heart with thee!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the sea calls out no more;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It is winter on the shore,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Winter, cold and dark and wild.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Krinken was a little child,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It was summer when he smiled;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Down he went into the sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the winter bides with me,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Just a little child was he.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Eugene Field.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Stevensons_Birthday" id="Stevensons_Birthday"></a>Stevenson’s Birthday.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“How I should like a birthday!” said the child,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“I have so few, and they so far apart.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She spoke to Stevenson&mdash;the Master smiled&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Mine is to-day; I would with all my heart<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That it were yours; too many years have I!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Too swift they come, and all too swiftly fly”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So by a formal deed he there conveyed<br></span>
+<span class="i2">All right and title in his natal day,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To have and hold, to sell or give away,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then signed, and gave it to the little maid.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Joyful, yet fearing to believe too much,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">She took the deed, but scarcely dared unfold.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, liberal Genius! at whose potent touch<br></span>
+<span class="i2">All common things shine with transmuted gold!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A day of Stevenson’s will prove to be<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Not part of Time, but Immortality.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Katherine Miller.</span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="A_Modest_Wit" id="A_Modest_Wit"></a>A Modest Wit.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>I learned “A Modest Wit” as a reading-lesson when I was a child. It has
+clung to me and so I cling to it. It is just as good as it ever was. It
+is a sharp thrust at power that depends on externalities. Selleck
+Osborne. (&mdash;&mdash;.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A supercilious nabob of the East&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Haughty, being great&mdash;purse-proud, being rich&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A governor, or general, at the least,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I have forgotten which&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Had in his family a humble youth,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Who went from England in his patron’s suit,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An unassuming boy, in truth<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A lad of decent parts, and good repute.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This youth had sense and spirit;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But yet with all his sense,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Excessive diffidence<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Obscured his merit.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">One day, at table, flushed with pride and wine,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">His honour, proudly free, severely merry,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Conceived it would be vastly fine<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To crack a joke upon his secretary.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Young man,” he said, “by what art, craft, or trade,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Did your good father gain a livelihood?”&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“He was a saddler, sir,” Modestus said,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“And in his time was reckon’d good.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“A saddler, eh! and taught you Greek,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Instead of teaching you to sew!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Pray, why did not your father make<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A saddler, sir, of you?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Each parasite, then, as in duty bound,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The joke applauded, and the laugh went round.<br></span>
+<span class="i2">At length Modestus, bowing low,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Said (craving pardon, if too free he made),<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Sir, by your leave, I fain would know<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Your father’s trade!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“My father’s trade! by heaven, that’s too bad!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My father’s trade? Why, blockhead, are you mad?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My father, sir, did never stoop so low&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He was a gentleman, I’d have you know.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Excuse the liberty I take,”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Modestus said, with archness on his brow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Pray, why did not your father make<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A gentleman of you?”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Selleck Osborne.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Legend_of_Bishop_Hatto" id="The_Legend_of_Bishop_Hatto"></a>The Legend of Bishop Hatto.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Legend of Bishop Hatto” is doubtless a myth (Robert Southey,
+1774-1843). But “The Mouse-Tower on the Rhine” is an object of interest
+to travellers, and the story has a point</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The summer and autumn had been so wet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That in winter the corn was growing yet:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twas a piteous sight to see, all around,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The grain lie rotting on the ground.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Every day the starving poor<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Crowded around Bishop Hatto’s door;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For he had a plentiful last-year’s store,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the neighbourhood could tell<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His granaries were furnished well.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At last Bishop Hatto appointed a day<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To quiet the poor without delay:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He bade them to his great barn repair,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And they should have food for winter there.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Rejoiced such tidings good to hear,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The poor folk flocked from far and near;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The great barn was full as it could hold<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of women and children, and young and old.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then, when he saw it could hold no more,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bishop Hatto, he made fast the door;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And while for mercy on Christ they call,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He set fire to the barn and burned them all.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I’ faith, ’tis an excellent bonfire!” quoth he;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“And the country is greatly obliged to me<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For ridding it in these times forlorn<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Rats that only consume the corn.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So then to his palace return&egrave;d he,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he sat down to supper merrily,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he slept that night like an innocent man;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But Bishop Hatto never slept again.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the morning as he entered the hall,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where his picture hung against the wall,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A sweat-like death all over him came;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the Rats had eaten it out of the frame.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As he looked, there came a man from his farm;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He had a countenance white with alarm:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“My Lord, I opened your granaries this morn,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the Rats had eaten all your corn.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Another came running presently,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he was pale as pale could be:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Fly, my Lord Bishop, fly!” quoth he,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Ten thousand Rats are coming this way;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Lord forgive you yesterday!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I’ll go to my town on the Rhine,” replied he;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“’Tis the safest place in Germany;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The walls are high, and the shores are steep,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the stream is strong, and the water deep.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bishop Hatto fearfully hastened away,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he crossed the Rhine without delay,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And reached his tower, and barred with care<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All windows, doors, and loop-holes there.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He laid him down, and closed his eyes;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But soon a scream made him arise:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He started and saw two eyes of flame<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On his pillow, from whence the screaming came.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He listened and looked; it was only the cat:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the Bishop he grew more fearful for that;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For she sat screaming, mad with fear<br></span>
+<span class="i0">At the army of Rats that was drawing near.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For they have swum over the river so deep,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And they have climbed the shore so steep;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And up the tower their way is bent,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To do the work for which they were sent.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They are not to be told by the dozen or score;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By thousands they come, and by myriads and more;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Such numbers had never been heard of before,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Such a judgment had never been witnessed of yore.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Down on his knees the Bishop fell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And faster and faster his beads did tell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As, louder and louder drawing near,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The gnawing of their teeth he could hear.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And in at the windows and in at the door,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And through the walls, helter-skelter they pour,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And down from the ceiling and up through the floor,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the right and the left, from behind and before,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And all at once to the Bishop they go.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They have whetted their teeth against the stones;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And now they pick the Bishop’s bones:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They gnawed the flesh from every limb;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For they were sent to do judgment on him!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Southey.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Columbus" id="Columbus"></a>Columbus.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>We are greatly indebted to Joaquin Miller for his “Sail On! Sail On!”
+Endurance is the watchword of the poem and the watchword of our
+republic. Every man to his gun! Columbus discovered America in his own
+mind before he realised it or proved its existence. I have often drawn
+a chart of Columbus’s life and voyages to show what need he had of the
+motto “Sail On!” to accomplish his end. This is one of our greatest
+American poems. The writer still lives in California.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Behind him lay the gray Azores,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Behind the gates of Hercules;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Before him not the ghost of shores,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Before him only shoreless seas.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The good mate said: “Now must we pray,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For lo! the very stars are gone;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Speak, Admiral, what shall I say?”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Why say, sail on! and on!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“My men grow mut’nous day by day;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My men grow ghastly wan and weak.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The stout mate thought of home; a spray<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of salt wave wash’d his swarthy cheek.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“What shall I say, brave Admiral,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">If we sight naught but seas at dawn?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Why, you shall say, at break of day:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">'Sail on! sail on! and on!’”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Until at last the blanch’d mate said;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Why, now, not even God would know<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Should I and all my men fall dead.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">These very winds forget their way,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For God from these dread seas is gone.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now speak, brave Admiral, and say&mdash;&mdash;”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He said: “Sail on! and on!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They sailed, they sailed, then spoke his mate:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“This mad sea shows his teeth to-night,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He curls his lip, he lies in wait,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With lifted teeth as if to bite!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Brave Admiral, say but one word;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">What shall we do when hope is gone?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The words leaped as a leaping sword:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Sail on! sail on! and on!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And thro’ the darkness peered that night.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, darkest night! and then a speck,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A light! a light! a light! a light!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It grew&mdash;a star-lit flag unfurled!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He gained a world! he gave that world<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Its watch-word: “On! and on!”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Joaquin Miller.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Shepherd_of_King_Admetus" id="The_Shepherd_of_King_Admetus"></a>The Shepherd of King Admetus.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>Once a year the children learn “The Shepherd of King Admetus,” which is
+one of the finest poems ever written as showing the possible growth of
+real history into mythology, the tendency of mankind to deify what is
+fine or sublime in human action. Not every child will learn this entire
+poem, because it is too long. But every child will learn the best lines
+in it while the children are teaching it to me and when I take my turn
+in teaching it to them. No child fails to catch the spirit and intent
+of the poem and to become entirely familiar with it. (1819-91.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There came a youth upon the earth,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Some thousand years ago,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose slender hands were nothing worth,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Whether to plow, or reap, or sow.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Upon an empty tortoise-shell<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He stretched some chords, and drew<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Music that made men’s bosoms swell<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Fearless, or brimmed their eyes with dew.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then King Admetus, one who had<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Pure taste by right divine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Decreed his singing not too bad<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To hear between the cups of wine:<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And so, well pleased with being soothed<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Into a sweet half-sleep,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Three times his kingly beard he smoothed,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And made him viceroy o’er his sheep.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His words were simple words enough,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And yet he used them so,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That what in other mouths was rough<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In his seemed musical and low.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Men called him but a shiftless youth,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In whom no good they saw;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet, unwittingly, in truth,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They made his careless words their law.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They knew not how he learned at all,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For idly, hour by hour,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He sat and watched the dead leaves fall,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Or mused upon a common flower.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It seemed the loveliness of things<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Did teach him all their use,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For, in mere weeds, and stones, and springs,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He found a healing power profuse.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Men granted that his speech was wise,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But, when a glance they caught<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of his slim grace and woman’s eyes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They laughed, and called him good-for-naught.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet after he was dead and gone,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And e’en his memory dim,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth seemed more sweet to live upon,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">More full of love, because of him.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And day by day more holy grew<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Each spot where he had trod,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till after-poets only knew<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Their first-born brother as a god.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">James Russell Lowell.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="How_They_Brought_the_Good_News_from_Ghent_to_Aix" id="How_They_Brought_the_Good_News_from_Ghent_to_Aix"></a>How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>I have an old essay written by a lad of fourteen years on “How They
+Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.” I should judge from this
+essay that any boy at that age would like the poem, even if he had not
+himself been over the ground as this boy had. (1812-89.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Good speed!” cried the watch as the gate-bolts undrew;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Speed!” echoed the wall to us galloping through;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And into the midnight we galloped abreast.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I turned in my saddle and made its girth tight,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">’Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">At D&uuml;ffeld, ’twas morning as plain as could be;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So Joris broke silence with, “Yet there is time!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And against him the cattle stood black every one,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To stare through the mist at us galloping past,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With resolute shoulders, each butting away<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And one eye’s black intelligence,&mdash;ever that glance<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the thick, heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His fierce lips shook upward in galloping on.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, “Stay spur!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault’s not in her,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ll remember at Aix”&mdash;for one heard the quick wheeze<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So, we were left galloping, Joris and I,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And “Gallop,” gasped Joris, “for Aix is in sight!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“How they’ll greet us!”&mdash;and all in a moment his roan<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And with circles of red for his eye-sockets’ rim.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then I cast loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And all I remember is&mdash;friends flocking round<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As I sat with his head ’twixt my knees on the ground;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Which (the burgesses voting by common consent)<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Was no more than his due who brought the good news from Ghent.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Browning.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Burial_of_Sir_John_Moore_at_Corunna" id="The_Burial_of_Sir_John_Moore_at_Corunna"></a>The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Burial of Sir John Moore” was one of my reading-lessons when I was
+a child. A distinguished teacher says: “It has become a part of popular
+education,” as has also “The Eve of Waterloo” and “The Death of
+Napoleon.” They are all poems of great rhythmical swing, intense and
+graphic. (1791-1823.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As his corse to the rampart we hurried;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot<br></span>
+<span class="i2">O’er the grave where our hero we buried.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We buried him darkly at dead of night,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The sods with our bayonets turning;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By the struggling moonbeam’s misty light,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the lantern dimly burning.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No useless coffin enclosed his breast,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With his martial cloak around him.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Few and short were the prayers we said,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And we spoke not a word of sorrow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And we bitterly thought of the morrow.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And smoothed down his lonely pillow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That the foe and the stranger would tread o’er his head,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And we far away on the billow!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lightly they’ll talk of the spirit that’s gone,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And o’er his cold ashes upbraid him,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But little he’ll reck, if they let him sleep on<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In the grave where a Briton has laid him.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But half of our heavy task was done<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When the clock struck the hour for retiring;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And we heard the distant and random gun<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That the foe was sullenly firing.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Slowly and sadly we laid him down,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From the field of his fame fresh and gory;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But we left him alone with his glory!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">C. Wolfe.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Eve_of_Waterloo" id="The_Eve_of_Waterloo"></a>The Eve of Waterloo.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Eve of Waterloo,” by Lord Byron (1788-1824). Here is another old
+reading-book gem that will always be dear to every boy’s heart if he
+only reads it a few times.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There was a sound of revelry by night,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And Belgium’s capital had gathered then<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A thousand hearts beat happily; and when<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Music arose with its voluptuous swell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And all went merry as a marriage-bell:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Did ye not hear it? No; ’twas but the wind,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Or the car rattling o’er the stony street.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On with the dance! let joy be unconfined!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To chase the glowing hours with flying feet!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But hark!&mdash;that heavy sound breaks in once more,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As if the clouds its echo would repeat;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And nearer, clearer, deadlier, than before!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Arm! arm! it is&mdash;it is the cannon’s opening roar!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And cheeks all pale, which, but an hour ago,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And there were sudden partings, such as press<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Which ne’er might be repeated: who could guess<br></span>
+<span class="i2">If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the deep thunder peal on peal afar;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And near, the beat of the alarming drum<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Or whispering with white lips, “The foe! They come! They come!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Dewy with Nature’s tear-drops, as they pass,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Grieving, if aught inanimate e’er grieves,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Over the unreturning brave&mdash;alas!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere evening to be trodden like the grass<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Which, now beneath them, but above shall grow<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In its next verdure, when this fiery mass<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of living valour, rolling on the foe,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Last eve in Beauty’s circle proudly gay;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The morn the marshalling in arms,&mdash;the day,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Battle’s magnificently stern array!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The thunder-clouds close o’er it, which, when rent,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The earth is covered thick with other clay,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Rider, and horse&mdash;friend, foe&mdash;in one red burial blent!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Lord Byron.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Ivry" id="Ivry"></a>Ivry.<br><span class="subtitle">A SONG OF THE HUGUENOTS.</span></h3>
+
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>Laddie, aged eleven, do you remember how you studied and recited “King
+Henry of Navarre” every poetry hour for a year? It was a long poem, but
+you stuck to it to the end. We did not know the meaning of a certain
+word, but I found it up in Switzerland. It is the name of a little
+town. (1800-59.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And glory to our Sovereign Liege, King Henry of Navarre!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Through thy corn-fields green, and sunny vines, O pleasant land of France!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And thou, Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For cold, and stiff, and still are they who wrought thy walls annoy.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hurrah! Hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of war,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hurrah! Hurrah! for Ivry, and Henry of Navarre.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh! how our hearts were beating, when, at the dawn of day,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And Appenzel’s stout infantry, and Egmont’s Flemish spears.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, as we looked on them, we thought of Seine’s empurpled flood,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And good Coligni’s hoary hair all dabbled with his blood;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To fight for His own holy name, and Henry of Navarre.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The King is come to marshal us, in all his armour drest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Down all our line, a deafening shout, “God save our Lord the King!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Press where ye see my white plume shine, amid the ranks of war,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hurrah! the foes are moving. Hark to the mingled din<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The fiery Duke is pricking fast across St. Andr&eacute;’s plain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Charge for the golden lilies,&mdash;upon them with the lance.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And in they burst, and on they rushed, while like a guiding star,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Amid the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now, God be praised, the day is ours. Mayenne hath turned his rein.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">D’Aumale hath cried for quarter. The Flemish count is slain.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven mail.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And then we thought on vengeance, and, all along our van,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Remember St. Bartholomew!” was passed from man to man.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But out spake gentle Henry, “No Frenchman is my foe:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh! was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in war,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As our Sovereign Lord, King Henry, the soldier of Navarre?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Right well fought all the Frenchmen who fought for France to-day;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And many a lordly banner God gave them for a prey.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But we of the Religion have borne us best in fight;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the good lord of Rosny has ta’en the cornet white.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Our own true Maximilian the cornet white hath ta’en,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The cornet white with crosses black, the flag of false Lorraine.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Up with it high; unfurl it wide; that all the host may know<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How God hath humbled the proud house which wrought His church such woe.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then on the ground, while trumpets sound their loudest points of war,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fling the red shreds, a footcloth meet for Henry of Navarre.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ho! maidens of Vienna; Ho! matrons of Lucerne;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Weep, weep, and rend your hair for those who never shall return.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ho! Philip, send, for charity, thy Mexican pistoles,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That Antwerp monks may sing a mass for thy poor spearman’s souls.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ho! gallant nobles of the League, look that your arms be bright;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ho! burghers of Saint Genevieve, keep watch and ward to-night.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the slave,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And mocked the counsel of the wise, the valour of the brave.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then glory to His holy name, from whom all glories are;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And glory to our Sovereign Lord, King Henry of Navarre.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Thomas B. Macaulay.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Glove_and_the_Lions" id="The_Glove_and_the_Lions"></a>The Glove and the Lions.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Glove and the Lions” was one of my early reading-lessons. It is an
+incisive thrust at the vanity of “fair” women. A woman be a “true
+knight” as well as a man. Leigh Hunt (1784-1859.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">King Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And one day as his lions fought, sat looking on the court;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The nobles filled the benches, with the ladies in their pride,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And ’mong them sat the Count de Lorge with one for whom he sighed:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And truly ’twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Valour, and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ramp’d and roar’d the lions, with horrid laughing jaws;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With wallowing might and stifled roar they rolled on one another,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till all the pit with sand and mane was in a thunderous smother;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The bloody foam above the bars came whisking through the air;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Said Francis then, “Faith, gentlemen, we’re better here than there.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">De Lorge’s love o’erheard the King,&mdash;a beauteous lively dame<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With smiling lips and sharp, bright eyes, which always seem’d the same:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She thought, “The Count, my lover, is brave as brave can be;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He surely would do wondrous things to show his love of me;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is divine;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I’ll drop my glove, to prove his love; great glory will be mine.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She dropped her glove, to prove his love, then look’d at him and smiled;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He bowed, and in a moment leapt among the lions wild:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His leap was quick, return was quick, he has regain’d his place,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady’s face.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Well done!” cried Francis, “bravely done!” and he rose from where he sat:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“No love,” quoth he, “but vanity, sets love a task like that.”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Leigh Hunt.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Well_of_St_Keyne" id="The_Well_of_St_Keyne"></a>The Well of St. Keyne.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>I found the Well of St. Keyne in Cornwall, England&mdash;not the poem, but
+the real well. The poem is of the great body of world-lore. Southey
+(1774-1843).</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A well there is in the west country,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And a clearer one never was seen;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There is not a wife in the west-country<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But has heard of the Well of St. Keyne.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">An oak and an elm tree stand beside,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And behind does an ash tree grow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And a willow from the bank above<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Droops to the water below.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A traveller came to the Well of St. Keyne:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Pleasant it was to his eye,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For from cock-crow he had been travelling<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And there was not a cloud in the sky.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He drank of the water so cool and clear,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For thirsty and hot was he,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he sat down upon the bank,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Under the willow tree.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There came a man from the neighbouring town<br></span>
+<span class="i2">At the well to fill his pail;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On the well-side he rested it,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And bade the stranger hail.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Now, art thou a bachelor, stranger?” quoth he,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“For an if thou hast a wife,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The happiest draught thou hast drunk this day<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That ever thou didst in thy life.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Or has your good woman, if one you have,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In Cornwall ever been?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For an if she have, I’ll venture my life<br></span>
+<span class="i2">She has drunk of the Well of St. Keyne.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I have left a good woman who never was here,”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The stranger he made reply;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“But that my draught should be better for that,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I pray you answer me why.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“St. Keyne,” quoth the countryman, “many a time<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Drank of this crystal well,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And before the angel summoned her<br></span>
+<span class="i2">She laid on the water a spell.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“If the husband of this gifted well<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall drink before his wife,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A happy man thenceforth is he,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For he shall be master for life.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“But if the wife should drink of it first,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">God help the husband then!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The stranger stoop’d to the Well of St. Keyne,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And drank of the waters again.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“You drank of the well, I warrant, betimes?”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He to the countryman said;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the countryman smiled as the stranger spake,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And sheepishly shook his head.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I hastened as soon as the wedding was done,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And left my wife in the porch,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But i’ faith she had been wiser than me,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For she took a bottle to church,”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Southey.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Nautilus_and_the_Ammonite" id="The_Nautilus_and_the_Ammonite"></a>The Nautilus and the Ammonite.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Nautilus and the Ammonite” finds a place here out of respect to a
+twelve-year-old girl who recited it at one of our poetry hours years
+ago. It made a profound impression on the fifty pupils assembled, I
+never read it without feeling that it stands test. Anonymous.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The nautilus and the ammonite<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Were launched in friendly strife,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Each sent to float in its tiny boat<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On the wide, wide sea of life.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For each could swim on the ocean’s brim,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And, when wearied, its sail could furl,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And sink to sleep in the great sea-deep,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In its palace all of pearl.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And theirs was a bliss more fair than this<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Which we taste in our colder clime;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For they were rife in a tropic life&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A brighter and better clime.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They swam ’mid isles whose summer smiles<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Were dimmed by no alloy;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose groves were palm, whose air was balm,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And life one only joy.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They sailed all day through creek and bay,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And traversed the ocean deep;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And at night they sank on a coral bank,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In its fairy bowers to sleep.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And the monsters vast of ages past<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They beheld in their ocean caves;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They saw them ride in their power and pride,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And sink in their deep-sea graves.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And hand in hand, from strand to strand,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They sailed in mirth and glee;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">These fairy shells, with their crystal cells,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Twin sisters of the sea.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And they came at last to a sea long past,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But as they reached its shore,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Almighty’s breath spoke out in death,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the ammonite was no more.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So the nautilus now in its shelly prow,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As over the deep it strays,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Still seems to seek, in bay and creek,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Its companion of other days.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And alike do we, on life’s stormy sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As we roam from shore to shore,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus tempest-tossed, seek the loved, the lost,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And find them on earth no more.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet the hope how sweet, again to meet,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As we look to a distant strand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where heart meets heart, and no more they part<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Who meet in that better land.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Anonymous.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Solitude_of_Alexander_Selkirk" id="The_Solitude_of_Alexander_Selkirk"></a>The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am monarch of all I survey,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My right there is none to dispute,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the center all round to the sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I am lord of the fowl and the brute.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O Solitude! where are the charms<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That sages have seen in thy face?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Better dwell in the midst of alarms<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Than reign in this horrible place.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am out of humanity’s reach,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I must finish my journey alone,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Never hear the sweet music of speech,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I start at the sound of my own.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The beasts that roam over the plain<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My form with indifference see;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They are so unacquainted with man,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Their tameness is shocking to me.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Society, Friendship, and Love,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Divinely bestow’d upon man,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, had I the wings of a dove,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">How soon would I taste you again!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My sorrows I then might assuage<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In the ways of religion and truth,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Might learn from the wisdom of age,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And be cheer’d by the sallies of youth.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ye winds that have made me your sport,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Convey to this desolate shore<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Some cordial endearing report<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of a land I shall visit no more!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My friends&mdash;do they now and then send<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A wish or a thought after me?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, tell me I yet have a friend,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Though a friend I am never to see.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How fleet is a glance of the mind!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Compared with the speed of its flight,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The tempest itself lags behind,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the swift-wing&egrave;d arrows of light.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When I think of my own native land,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In a moment I seem to be there;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But alas! recollection at hand<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Soon hurries me back to despair.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But the seafowl is gone to her nest,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The beast is laid down in his lair,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Even here is a season of rest,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And I to my cabin repair.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s mercy in every place,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And mercy, encouraging thought!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Gives even affliction a grace,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And reconciles man to his lot.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Cowper.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Homes_of_England" id="The_Homes_of_England"></a>The Homes of England.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>I wonder if the English people appreciate “The Homes of England.” It is
+a stately poem worthy of a Goethe or a Shakespeare. England is
+distinctively a country of homes, pretty, little, humble homes as well
+as stately palaces and castles, homes well made of stone or brick for
+the most part, and clad with ivy and roses. Who would not be proud to
+have had such a home as Ann Hathaway’s humble cottage or one of the
+little huts in the Lake District? The homes of America are often more
+palatial, especially in small cities, but the use of wood in America
+makes them less substantial than the slate-and-brick houses of England.
+(1749-1835.)</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The stately homes of England!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">How beautiful they stand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Amidst their tall ancestral trees,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">O’er all the pleasant land!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The deer across their greensward bound<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Through shade and sunny gleam,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the swan glides past them with the sound<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of some rejoicing stream.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The merry homes of England!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Around their hearths by night<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What gladsome looks of household love<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Meet in the ruddy light!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There woman’s voice flows forth in song,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Or childish tale is told,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Or lips move tunefully along<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Some glorious page of old.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The bless&egrave;d homes of England!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">How softly on their bowers<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Is laid the holy quietness<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That breathes from Sabbath hours!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Solemn, yet sweet, the church-bell’s chime<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Floats through their woods at morn;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All other sounds, in that still time,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of breeze and leaf are born.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The cottage homes of England!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">By thousands on her plains,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They are smiling o’er the silvery brooks,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And round the hamlets’ fanes.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Through glowing orchards forth they peep,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Each from its nook of leaves;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And fearless there the lowly sleep,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As the bird beneath their eaves.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The free, fair homes of England!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Long, long, in hut and hall<br></span>
+<span class="i0">May hearts of native proof be reared<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To guard each hallowed wall!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And green forever be the groves,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And bright the flowery sod,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where first the child’s glad spirit loves<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Its country and its God!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Felicia Hemans.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Horatius_at_the_Bridge" id="Horatius_at_the_Bridge"></a>Horatius at the Bridge.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Horatius at the Bridge” is too long a poem for children to memorise.
+But I never saw a boy who did not want some stanzas of it. “Hold the
+bridge with me!” Boys like that motto instinctively.<br> T.B. Macaulay
+(1800-59).</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lars Porsena of Clusium,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">By the Nine Gods he swore<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That the great house of Tarquin<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Should suffer wrong no more.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By the Nine Gods he swore it,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And named a trysting-day,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And bade his messengers ride forth,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">East and west and south and north,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To summon his array.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">East and west and south and north<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The messengers ride fast,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And tower and town and cottage<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Have heard the trumpet’s blast.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shame on the false Etruscan<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Who lingers in his home<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When Porsena of Clusium<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Is on the march for Rome!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The horsemen and the footmen<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Are pouring in amain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From many a stately market-place,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From many a fruitful plain;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From many a lonely hamlet,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Which, hid by beech and pine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like an eagle’s nest, hangs on the crest<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of purple Apennine.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The harvests of Arretium,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">This year, old men shall reap;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">This year, young boys in Umbro<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall plunge the struggling sheep;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And in the vats of Luna,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">This year, the must shall foam<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Round the white feet of laughing girls<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose sires have marched to Rome.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There be thirty chosen prophets,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The wisest of the land,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who alway by Lars Porsena<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Both morn and evening stand:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Evening and morn the Thirty<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Have turned the verses o’er,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Traced from the right on linen white<br></span>
+<span class="i2">By mighty seers of yore.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And with one voice the Thirty<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Have their glad answer given:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Go forth, beloved of Heaven;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Go, and return in glory<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To Clusium’s royal dome;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And hang round Nurscia’s altars<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The golden shields of Rome.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And now hath every city<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Sent up her tale of men;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The foot are fourscore thousand,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The horse are thousands ten.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Before the gates of Sutrium<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Is met the great array.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A proud man was Lars Porsena<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Upon the trysting-day.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For all the Etruscan armies<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Were ranged beneath his eye,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And many a banished Roman,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And many a stout ally;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And with a mighty following<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To join the muster came<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Tusculan Mamilius,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Prince of the Latian name.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But by the yellow Tiber<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Was tumult and affright:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From all the spacious champaign<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To Rome men took their flight.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A mile around the city,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The throng stopped up the ways;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A fearful sight it was to see<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Through two long nights and days.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now, from the rock Tarpeian,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Could the wan burghers spy<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The line of blazing villages<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Red in the midnight sky.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Fathers of the City,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They sat all night and day,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For every hour some horseman came<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With tidings of dismay.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To eastward and to westward<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Have spread the Tuscan bands;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor house, nor fence, nor dovecot,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In Crustumerium stands.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Verbenna down to Ostia<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Hath wasted all the plain;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Astur hath stormed Janiculum,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the stout guards are slain.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I wis, in all the Senate,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">There was no heart so bold,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But sore it ached, and fast it beat,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When that ill news was told.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Forthwith up rose the Consul,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Up rose the Fathers all;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In haste they girded up their gowns,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And hied them to the wall.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They held a council standing<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Before the River Gate;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Short time was there, ye well may guess,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For musing or debate.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Out spoke the Consul roundly:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“The bridge must straight go down;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For, since Janiculum is lost,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Naught else can save the town.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Just then a scout came flying,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">All wild with haste and fear:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“To arms! to arms! Sir Consul;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Lars Porsena is here.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On the low hills to westward<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The Consul fixed his eye,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And saw the swarthy storm of dust<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Rise fast along the sky.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And nearer, fast, and nearer<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Doth the red whirlwind come;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And louder still, and still more loud,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From underneath that rolling cloud,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Is heard the trumpet’s war-note proud,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The trampling and the hum.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And plainly and more plainly<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Now through the gloom appears,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Far to left and far to right,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In broken gleams of dark-blue light,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The long array of helmets bright,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The long array of spears.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And plainly and more plainly,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Above the glimmering line,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now might ye see the banners<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of twelve fair cities shine;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the banner of proud Clusium<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Was the highest of them all,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The terror of the Umbrian,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The terror of the Gaul.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fast by the royal standard,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">O’erlooking all the war,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lars Porsena of Clusium<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Sat in his ivory car.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By the right wheel rode Mamilius,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Prince of the Latian name,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And by the left false Sextus,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That wrought the deed of shame.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But when the face of Sextus<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Was seen among the foes,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A yell that rent the firmament<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From all the town arose.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On the house-tops was no woman<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But spat toward him and hissed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">No child but screamed out curses,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And shook its little fist.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But the Consul’s brow was sad,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the Consul’s speech was low,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And darkly looked he at the wall,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And darkly at the foe.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Their van will be upon us<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Before the bridge goes down;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And if they once may win the bridge,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">What hope to save the town?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then out spake brave Horatius,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The Captain of the Gate:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“To every man upon this earth<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Death cometh soon or late;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And how can man die better<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Than facing fearful odds,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the ashes of his fathers,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the temples of his gods.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“And for the tender mother<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Who dandled him to rest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And for the wife who nurses<br></span>
+<span class="i2">His baby at her breast,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And for the holy maidens<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Who feed the eternal flame,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To save them from false Sextus<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That wrought the deed of shame?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With all the speed ye may;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I, with two more to help me,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Will hold the foe in play.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In yon straight path a thousand<br></span>
+<span class="i2">May well be stopped by three.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now who will stand on either hand,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And keep the bridge with me?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then out spake Spurius Lartius&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A Ramnian proud was he&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I will stand at thy right hand,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And keep the bridge with thee.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And out spake strong Herminius&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of Titian blood was he&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“I will abide on thy left side,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And keep the bridge with thee.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Horatius,” quoth the Consul,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“As thou say’st, so let it be,”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And straight against that great array<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Forth went the dauntless Three.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For Romans in Rome’s quarrel<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Spared neither land nor gold,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In the brave days of old.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now while the Three were tightening<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Their harness on their backs,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Consul was the foremost man<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To take in hand an ax;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And Fathers mixed with Commons<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Seized hatchet, bar, and crow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And smote upon the planks above,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And loosed the props below.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Meanwhile the Tuscan army,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Right glorious to behold,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Came flashing back the noonday light,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rank behind rank, like surges bright<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of a broad sea of gold.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Four hundred trumpets sounded<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A peal of warlike glee,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As that great host, with measured tread,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And spears advanced, and ensigns spread,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rolled slowly toward the bridge’s head,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Where stood the dauntless Three.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Three stood calm and silent,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And looked upon the foes,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And a great shout of laughter<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From all the vanguard rose:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And forth three chiefs came spurring<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Before that deep array;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To earth they sprang, their swords they drew,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And lifted high their shields, and flew<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To win the narrow way;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Aunus from green Tifernum,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Lord of the Hill of Vines;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Sicken in Ilva’s mines;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And Picus, long to Clusium<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Vassal in peace and war,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who led to fight his Umbrian powers<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From that gray crag where, girt with towers,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The fortress of Nequinum lowers<br></span>
+<span class="i2">O’er the pale waves of Nar.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Stout Lartius hurled down Aunus<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Into the stream beneath;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Herminius struck at Seius,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And clove him to the teeth;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">At Picus brave Horatius<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Darted one fiery thrust;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the proud Umbrian’s gilded arms<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Clashed in the bloody dust.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then Ocnus of Falerii<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Rushed on the Roman Three;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And Lausulus of Urgo,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The rover of the sea;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And Aruns of Volsinium,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Who slew the great wild boar,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The great wild boar that had his den<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Amid the reeds of Cosa’s fen.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And wasted fields and slaughtered men<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Along Albinia’s shore.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Herminius smote down Aruns;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Lartius laid Ocnus low;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Right to the heart of Lausulus<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Horatius sent a blow.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Lie there,” he cried, “fell pirate!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">No more, aghast and pale,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From Ostia’s walls the crowd shall mark<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The tracks of thy destroying bark,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">No more Campania’s hinds shall fly<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To woods and caverns when they spy<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy thrice accurs&eacute;d sail.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But now no sound of laughter<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Was heard among the foes.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A wild and wrathful clamour<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From all the vanguard rose.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Six spears’ length from the entrance<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Halted that deep array,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And for a space no man came forth<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To win the narrow way.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But hark! the cry is Astur:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And lo! the ranks divide;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the great Lord of Luna<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Comes with his stately stride.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon his ample shoulders<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Clangs loud the fourfold shield,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And in his hand he shakes the brand<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Which none but he can wield.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He smiled on those bold Romans,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A smile serene and high;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He eyed the flinching Tuscans,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And scorn was in his eye.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Quoth he: “The she-wolf’s litter<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Stand savagely at bay;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But will ye dare to follow,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">If Astur clears the way?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then, whirling up his broadsword<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With both hands to the height,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He rushed against Horatius,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And smote with all his might.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With shield and blade Horatius<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Right deftly turned the blow.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The blow, though turned, came yet too nigh;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It missed his helm, but gashed his thigh:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Tuscans raised a joyful cry<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To see the red blood flow.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He reeled, and on Herminius<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He leaned one breathing space;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then, like a wildcat mad with wounds,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Sprang right at Astur’s face.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Through teeth, and skull, and helmet,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">So fierce a thrust he sped,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The good sword stood a handbreadth out<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Behind the Tuscan’s head.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And the great Lord of Luna<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Fell at the deadly stroke,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As falls on Mount Alvernus<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A thunder-smitten oak.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Far o’er the crashing forest<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The giant arms lie spread;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the pale augurs, muttering low,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Gaze on the blasted head.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On Astur’s throat Horatius<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Right firmly pressed his heel,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And thrice and four times tugged amain<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Ere he wrenched out the steel.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“And see,” he cried, “the welcome,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Fair guests, that waits you here!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What noble Lucumo comes next<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To taste our Roman cheer?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But at his haughty challenge<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A sullen murmur ran,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Mingled of wrath, and shame, and dread,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Along that glittering van.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There lacked not men of prowess,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor men of lordly race;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For all Etruria’s noblest<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Were round the fatal place.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But all Etruria’s noblest<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Felt their hearts sink to see<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On the earth the bloody corpses,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In the path the dauntless Three:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, from the ghastly entrance<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Where those bold Romans stood,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All shrank, like boys who unaware,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ranging the woods to start a hare,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come to the mouth of the dark lair<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where, growling low, a fierce old bear<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Lies amid bones and blood.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Was none who would be foremost<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To lead such dire attack?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But those behind cried “Forward!”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And those before cried “Back!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And backward now and forward<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Wavers the deep array;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And on the tossing sea of steel<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To and fro the standards reel;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the victorious trumpet peal<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Dies fitfully away.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet one man for one moment<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Strode out before the crowd;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Well known was he to all the Three,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And they gave him greeting loud:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Now welcome, welcome, Sextus!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Now welcome to thy home!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Why dost thou stay, and turn away?<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Here lies the road to Rome.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thrice looked he at the city;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Thrice looked he at the dead;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And thrice came on in fury,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And thrice turned back in dread:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, white with fear and hatred,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Scowled at the narrow way<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where, wallowing in a pool of blood,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The bravest Tuscans lay.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But meanwhile ax and lever<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Have manfully been plied,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And now the bridge hangs tottering<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Above the boiling tide.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Come back, come back, Horatius!”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Loud cried the Fathers all.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Back, Lartius! Back, Herminius!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Back, ere the ruin fall!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Back darted Spurius Lartius;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Herminius darted back:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, as they passed, beneath their feet<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They felt the timbers crack.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But when they turned their faces,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And on the farther shore<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Saw brave Horatius stand alone,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They would have crossed once more.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But with a crash like thunder<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Fell every loosened beam,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, like a dam, the mighty wreck<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Lay right athwart the stream;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And a long shout of triumph<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Rose from the walls of Rome,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As to the highest turret tops<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Was splashed the yellow foam.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And, like a horse unbroken<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When first he feels the rein,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The furious river struggled hard,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And tossed his tawny mane;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And burst the curb, and bounded,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Rejoicing to be free,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And whirling down, in fierce career,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Battlement, and plank, and pier,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Rushed headlong to the sea.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alone stood brave Horatius,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But constant still in mind;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thrice thirty thousand foes before,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the broad flood behind.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Down with him!” cried false Sextus,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With a smile on his pale face.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Now yield thee,” cried Lars Porsena,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Now yield thee to our grace.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Round turned he, as not deigning<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Those craven ranks to see;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Naught spake he to Lars Porsena,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To Sextus naught spake he;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But he saw on Palatinus<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The white porch of his home;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he spake to the noble river<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That rolls by the towers of Rome:<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“O Tiber! Father Tiber!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To whom the Romans pray,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A Roman’s life, a Roman’s arms,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Take thou in charge this day!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So he spake, and speaking sheathed<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The good sword by his side,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, with his harness on his back,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Plunged headlong in the tide.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No sound of joy or sorrow<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Was heard from either bank;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But friends and foes in dumb surprise,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With parted lips and straining eyes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Stood gazing where he sank;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And when above the surges<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They saw his crest appear,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And even the ranks of Tuscany<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Could scarce forbear to cheer.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And fiercely ran the current,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Swollen high by months of rain;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And fast his blood was flowing,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And he was sore in pain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And heavy with his armour,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And spent with changing blows:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And oft they thought him sinking,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But still again he rose.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Never, I ween, did swimmer,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In such an evil case,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Struggle through such a raging flood<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Safe to the landing place;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But his limbs were borne up bravely<br></span>
+<span class="i2">By the brave heart within,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And our good Father Tiber<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Bore bravely up his chin.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Curse on him!” quoth false Sextus;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Will not the villain drown?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But for this stay, ere close of day<br></span>
+<span class="i2">We should have sacked the town!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Heaven help him!” quoth Lars Porsena,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“And bring him safe to shore;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For such a gallant feat of arms<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Was never seen before.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And now he feels the bottom;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Now on dry earth he stands;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now round him throng the Fathers<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To press his gory hands;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And now with shouts and clapping,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And noise of weeping loud,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He enters through the River Gate,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Borne by the joyous crowd.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They gave him of the corn land,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That was of public right.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As much as two strong oxen<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Could plow from morn till night:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And they made a molten image,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And set it up on high,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And there it stands unto this day<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To witness if I lie.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It stands in the Comitium,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Plain for all folk to see,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Horatius in his harness,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Halting upon one knee:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And underneath is written,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In letters all of gold,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How valiantly he kept the bridge<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In the brave days of old.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And still his name sounds stirring<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Unto the men of Rome,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As the trumpet blast that cries to them<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To charge the Volscian home;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And wives still pray to Juno<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For boys with hearts as bold<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As his who kept the bridge so well<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In the brave days of old.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And in the nights of winter,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When the cold north winds blow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the long howling of the wolves<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Is heard amid the snow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When round the lonely cottage<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Roars loud the tempest’s din,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the good logs of Algidus<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Roar louder yet within;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When the oldest cask is opened,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the largest lamp is lit;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When the chestnuts glow in the embers,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the kid turns on the spit;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When young and old in circle<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Around the firebrands close;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When the girls are weaving baskets,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the lads are shaping bows;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When the goodman mends his armour,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And trims his helmet’s plume;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When the goodwife’s shuttle merrily<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Goes flashing through the loom,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With weeping and with laughter<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Still is the story told,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How well Horatius kept the bridge<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In the brave days of old.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Thomas B. Macaulay.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Planting_of_the_Apple-Tree" id="The_Planting_of_the_Apple-Tree"></a>The Planting of the Apple-Tree.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Planting of the Apple-Tree” has become a favourite for “Arbour
+Day” exercises. The planting of trees as against their destruction is a
+vital point in our political and national welfare. William Cullen
+Bryant (1794-1878).</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Come, let us plant the apple-tree.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Cleave the tough greensward with the spade;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wide let its hollow bed be made;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There gently lay the roots, and there<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sift the dark mould with kindly care,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And press it o’er them tenderly,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As round the sleeping infant’s feet<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We softly fold the cradle sheet;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">So plant we the apple-tree.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">What plant we in this apple-tree?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Buds, which the breath of summer days<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall lengthen into leafy sprays;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall haunt, and sing, and hide her nest;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">We plant, upon the sunny lea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A shadow for the noontide hour,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A shelter from the summer shower,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When we plant the apple-tree.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">What plant we in this apple-tree?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweets for a hundred flowery springs,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To load the May wind’s restless wings,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When, from the orchard row, he pours<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Its fragrance through our open doors;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A world of blossoms for the bee,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Flowers for the sick girl’s silent room,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the glad infant sprigs of bloom,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">We plant with the apple-tree.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What plant we in this apple-tree?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fruits that shall swell in sunny June,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And redden in the August noon,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And drop, when gentle airs come by,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That fan the blue September sky,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">While children come, with cries of glee,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And seek them where the fragrant grass<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Betrays their bed to those who pass,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">At the foot of the apple-tree.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">And when, above this apple-tree,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The winter stars are quivering bright,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The winds go howling through the night,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Girls, whose eyes o’erflow with mirth,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And guests in prouder homes shall see,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Heaped with the grape of Cintra’s vine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And golden orange of the line,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The fruit of the apple-tree.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">The fruitage of this apple-tree,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Winds and our flag of stripe and star<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall bear to coasts that lie afar,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where men shall wonder at the view,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And ask in what fair groves they grew;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And sojourners beyond the sea<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall think of childhood’s careless day,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And long, long hours of summer play,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In the shade of the apple-tree.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Each year shall give this apple-tree<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A broader flush of roseate bloom,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A deeper maze of verdurous gloom,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower.<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The years shall come and pass, but we<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall hear no longer, where we lie,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The summer’s songs, the autumn’s sigh,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In the boughs of the apple-tree.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">And time shall waste this apple-tree.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, when its aged branches throw<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thin shadows on the ground below,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall fraud and force and iron will<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oppress the weak and helpless still!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">What shall the tasks of mercy be,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of those who live when length of years<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Is wasting this apple-tree?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">“Who planted this old apple-tree?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The children of that distant day<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus to some aged man shall say;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, gazing on its mossy stem,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The gray-haired man shall answer them:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“A poet of the land was he,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Born in the rude but good old times;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On planting the apple-tree.”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Cullen Bryant.</span></p>
+
+
+<div class="chapter"><a name="PART_V" id="PART_V"></a>
+<h2>
+ <img class='plain' src='images/part5a.png' alt='A seagull' height='150' width='226' style='margin-bottom:0; margin-right:20%;'><br>
+PART V.<br><br>
+<small>On and On</small></h2>
+ <img class='plain' src='images/part5b.png' alt='The sea' height='87' width='358'>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="June" id="June"></a>June.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“June” (by James Russell Lowell, 1819-91), is a fragment from “The
+Vision of Sir Launfal.” It finds a place in this volume because it is
+the most perfect description of a charming day ever written.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What is so rare as a day in June?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then, if ever, come perfect days;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And over it softly her warm ear lays:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether we look, or whether we listen,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Every clod feels a stir of might,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">An instinct within it that reaches and towers,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, groping blindly above it for light,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The flush of life may well be seen<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Thrilling back over hills and valleys;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The cowslip startles in meadows green.<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And there’s never a leaf nor a blade too mean<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To be some happy creature’s palace;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The little bird sits at his door in the sun,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And lets his illumined being o’errun<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With the deluge of summer it receives;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">James Russell Lowell.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="A_Psalm_of_Life" id="A_Psalm_of_Life"></a>A Psalm of Life.<br><span class="subtitle">WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST.</span></h3>
+
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“A Psalm of Life,” by Henry W. Longfellow (1807-82), is like a treasure
+laid up in heaven. It should be learned for its future value to the
+child, not necessarily because the child likes it. Its value will dawn
+on him.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tell me not, in mournful numbers,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Life is but an empty dream!&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the soul is dead that slumbers,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And things are not what they seem.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Life is real! Life is earnest!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the grave is not its goal;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dust thou art, to dust returnest,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Was not spoken of the soul.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Is our destined end or way;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But to act, that each to-morrow<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Find us farther than to-day.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Art is long, and Time is fleeting,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And our hearts, though stout and brave,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Still, like muffled drums, are beating<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Funeral marches to the grave.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the world’s broad field of battle,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In the bivouac of Life,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Be not like dumb, driven cattle!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Be a hero in the strife!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Let the dead Past bury its dead!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Act,&mdash;act in the living Present!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Heart within, and God o’erhead!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lives of great men all remind us<br></span>
+<span class="i2">We can make our lives sublime,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, departing, leave behind us<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Footprints on the sands of time;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Footprints, that perhaps another,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Seeing, shall take heart again.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let us, then, be up and doing,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With a heart for any fate;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Still achieving, still pursuing,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Learn to labour and to wait.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Henry W. Longfellow.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Barnacles" id="Barnacles"></a>Barnacles.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Barnacles” (by Sidney Lanier, 1842-81), is a poem that I teach in
+connection with my lessons on natural history. We have a good specimen
+of a barnacle, and the children see them on the shells on the coast.
+The ethical point is invaluable.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My soul is sailing through the sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the Past is heavy and hindereth me.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Past hath crusted cumbrous shells<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That hold the flesh of cold sea-mells<br></span>
+<span class="i8">About my soul.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The huge waves wash, the high waves roll,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Each barnacle clingeth and worketh dole<br></span>
+<span class="i4">And hindereth me from sailing!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Old Past, let go, and drop i’ the sea<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till fathomless waters cover thee!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For I am living, but thou art dead;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou drawest back, I strive ahead<br></span>
+<span class="i8">The Day to find.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy shells unbind! Night comes behind;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I needs must hurry with the wind<br></span>
+<span class="i4">And trim me best for sailing.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Sidney Lanier.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="A_Happy_Life" id="A_Happy_Life"></a>A Happy Life.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How happy is he born and taught<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That serveth not another’s will;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose armour is his honest thought,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And simple truth his utmost skill!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Whose passions not his master’s are,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose soul is still prepared for death,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Not tied unto the world with care<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of public fame, or private breath.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Sir Henry Wotton.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Home_Sweet_Home" id="Home_Sweet_Home"></a>Home, Sweet Home!</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Home, Sweet Home” (John Howard Payne, 1791-1852) is a poem that
+reaches into the heart. What is home? A place where we experience
+independence, safety, privacy, and where we can dispense hospitality.
+“The family is the true unit.”</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">’Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, seek through the world, is ne’er met with elsewhere.<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s no place like Home! there’s no place like Home!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">An exile from Home, splendour dazzles in vain;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O, give me my lowly thatched cottage again!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The birds singing gaily, that came at my call,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Give me them,&mdash;and the peace of mind, dearer than all!<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s no place like Home! there’s no place like Home!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How sweet ’tis to sit ’neath a fond father’s smile,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the cares of a mother to soothe and beguile!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Let others delight ’mid new pleasures to roam,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But give me, oh, give me, the pleasures of Home!<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s no place like Home! there’s no place like Home!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To thee I’ll return, overburdened with care;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The heart’s dearest solace will smile on me there;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">No more from that cottage again will I roam;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like Home.<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s no place like Home! there’s no place like Home!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">John Howard Payne.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="From_Casa_Guidi_Windows" id="From_Casa_Guidi_Windows"></a>From Casa Guidi Windows.</h3>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Juliet Of Nations.</span></p>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I heard last night a little child go singing<br></span>
+<span class="i2">’Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church,<br></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>O bella libert&agrave;, O bella!</i>&mdash;stringing<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The same words still on notes he went in search<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So high for, you concluded the upspringing<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And that the heart of Italy must beat,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While such a voice had leave to rise serene<br></span>
+<span class="i2">’Twixt church and palace of a Florence street;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A little child, too, who not long had been<br></span>
+<span class="i2">By mother’s finger steadied on his feet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And still <i>O bella libert&agrave;</i> he sang.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Elizabeth Barrett Browning.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Woodman_Spare_That_Tree" id="Woodman_Spare_That_Tree"></a>Woodman, Spare That Tree!</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Woodman, Spare That Tree” (by George Pope Morris, 1802-64) is included
+in this collection because I have loved it all my life, and I never
+knew any one who could or would offer a criticism upon it. Its value
+lies in its recognition of childhood’s pleasures.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Woodman, spare that tree!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Touch not a single bough!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In youth it sheltered me,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And I’ll protect it now.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twas my forefather’s hand<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That placed it near his cot;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There, woodman, let it stand,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy ax shall harm it not.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That old familiar tree,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose glory and renown<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Are spread o’er land and sea&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And wouldst thou hew it down?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Woodman, forbear thy stroke!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Cut not its earth-bound ties;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, spare that ag&egrave;d oak<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Now towering to the skies!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When but an idle boy,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I sought its grateful shade;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In all their gushing joy<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Here, too, my sisters played.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My mother kissed me here;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My father pressed my hand&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Forgive this foolish tear,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But let that old oak stand.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My heart-strings round thee cling,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Close as thy bark, old friend!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Here shall the wild-bird sing,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And still thy branches bend.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Old tree! the storm still brave!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And, woodman, leave the spot;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While I’ve a hand to save,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy ax shall harm it not.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">George Pope Morris.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Abide_With_Me" id="Abide_With_Me"></a>Abide With Me.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Abide With Me” (Henry Francis Lyte, 1793-1847) appeals to our natural
+longing for the unchanging and to our love of security.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Abide with me! fast falls the eventide;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Help of the helpless, O abide with me.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Change and decay in all around I see:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O Thou who changest not, abide with me!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Henry Francis Lyte.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Lead_Kindly_Light" id="Lead_Kindly_Light"></a>Lead, Kindly Light</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Lead, Kindly Light,” by John Henry Newman (1801-90), was written when
+Cardinal Newman was in the stress and strain of perplexity and mental
+distress and bodily pain. The poem has been a star in the darkness to
+thousands. It was the favourite poem of President McKinley.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lead, kindly Light, amid th’ encircling gloom,<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Lead Thou me on,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The night is dark, and I am far from home,<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Lead Thou me on.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The distant scene; one step enough for me.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Shouldst lead me on;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I loved to choose and see my path; but now<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Lead Thou me on.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I loved the garish day; and, spite of fears,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Will lead me on<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till<br></span>
+<span class="i12">The night is gone,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And with the morn those angel faces smile,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Which I have loved long since, and lost a while.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">John Henry Newman.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Last_Rose_of_Summer" id="The_Last_Rose_of_Summer"></a>The Last Rose of Summer.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">’Tis the last rose of summer<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Left blooming alone;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All her lovely companions<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Are faded and gone;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">No flower of her kindred,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">No rose-bud is nigh,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To reflect back her blushes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Or give sigh for sigh.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To pine on the stem;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Since the lovely are sleeping,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Go, sleep thou with them.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus kindly I scatter<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy leaves o’er the bed<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where thy mates of the garden<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Lie scentless and dead.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So soon may I follow,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When friendships decay,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And from Love’s shining circle<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The gems drop away.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When true hearts lie withered,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And fond ones are flown,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O! who would inhabit<br></span>
+<span class="i2">This bleak world alone?<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Thomas Moore.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Annie_Laurie" id="Annie_Laurie"></a>Annie Laurie.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Annie Laurie” finds a place in this collection because it is the most
+popular song on earth. Written by William Douglas, (&mdash;&mdash;).</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Maxwelton braes are bonnie<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where early fa’s the dew,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And it’s there that Annie Laurie<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Gie’d me her promise true&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Gie’d me her promise true,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Which ne’er forgot will be;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And for bonnie Annie Laurie<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I’d lay me doune and dee.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Her brow is like the snawdrift,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her throat is like the swan,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her face it is the fairest<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That e’er the sun shone on&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That e’er the sun shone on;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And dark blue is her e’e;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And for bonnie Annie Laurie<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I’d lay me doune and dee.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Like dew on the gowan lying<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Is the fa’ o’ her fairy feet;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the winds in summer sighing,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her voice is low and sweet&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her voice is low and sweet;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And she’s a’ the world to me;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And for bonnie Annie Laurie<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I’d lay me doune and dee.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Douglas.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Ship_of_State" id="The_Ship_of_State"></a>The Ship of State.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>A president of a well-known college writes me that “The Ship of State”
+was his favourite poem when he was a boy, and did more than any other
+to shape his course in life. Longfellow (1807-82).</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sail on, O Union, strong and great!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Humanity, with all its fears,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With all the hopes of future years,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Is hanging breathless on thy fate!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We know what Master laid thy keel,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who made each mast, and sail, and rope;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What anvils rang, what hammers beat,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In what a forge and what a heat<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Were forged the anchors of thy hope!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fear not each sudden sound and shock&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis of the wave, and not the rock;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis but the flapping of the sail,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And not a rent made by the gale!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In spite of rock, and tempest roar,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In spite of false lights on the shore,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Our faith, triumphant o’er our fears,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Are all with thee, are all with thee!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Henry W. Longfellow.</span></p>
+
+<p class="below">The Constitution and Laws are here personified, and addressed as “The
+Ship of State.”</p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="America" id="America"></a>America.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“America” (Samuel Francis Smith, 1808-95) is a good poem to learn as a
+poem, regardless of the fact that every American who can sing it ought
+to know it, that he may join in the chorus when patriotic celebrations
+call for it. My boys love to repeat the entire poem, but I often find
+masses of people trying to sing it, knowing only one stanza. It is our
+national anthem, and a part of our education to know every word of it.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My country, ’tis of thee,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet land of liberty,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Of thee I sing;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Land where my fathers died,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Land of the Pilgrims’ pride;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From every mountain side,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Let freedom ring.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My native country, thee&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Land of the noble free&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Thy name I love;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I love thy rocks and rills,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy woods and templed hills;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My heart with rapture thrills,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Like that above.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let music swell the breeze,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And ring from all the trees<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Sweet freedom’s song;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Let mortal tongues awake;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Let all that breathe partake;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Let rocks their silence break&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">The sound prolong.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Our fathers’ God, to Thee,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Author of liberty,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">To Thee we sing:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Long may our land be bright<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With freedom’s holy light:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Protect us by Thy might,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Great God, our King.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">S.F. Smith.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Landing_of_the_Pilgrims" id="The_Landing_of_the_Pilgrims"></a>The Landing of the Pilgrims.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Landing of the Pilgrims,” by Felicia Hemans (1749-1835), is a poem
+that children want when they study the early history of America.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The breaking waves dashed high<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On a stern and rock-bound coast,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the woods against a stormy sky<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Their giant branches tossed.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And the heavy night hung dark<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The hills and waters o’er,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When a band of exiles moored their bark<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On the wild New England shore.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not as the conqueror comes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They, the true-hearted, came;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Not with the roll of the stirring drums,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the trumpet that sings of fame.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not as the flying come,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In silence and in fear;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They shook the depths of the desert gloom<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With their hymns of lofty cheer.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Amid the storm they sang,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the stars heard, and the sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To the anthem of the free!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The ocean eagle soared<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From his nest by the white wave’s foam;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the rocking pines of the forest roared,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">This was their welcome home!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There were men with hoary hair,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Amid that pilgrim band;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Why had <i>they</i> come to wither there,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Away from their childhood’s land?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There was woman’s fearless eye,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Lit by her deep love’s truth;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There was manhood’s brow serenely high,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And the fiery heart of youth.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What sought they thus afar?<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Bright jewels of the mine?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They sought a faith’s pure shrine!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ay! call it holy ground,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The soil where first they trod:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They have left unstained what there they found,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Freedom to worship God.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Felicia Hemans.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Lotos-Eaters" id="The_Lotos-Eaters"></a>The Lotos-Eaters.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>The main idea in “The Lotos-Eaters” is, are we justified in running
+away from unpleasant duties? Or, is insensibility justifiable?</p>
+
+<p>Laddie, do you recollect learning this poem after we had read the story
+of “Odysseus”? “The struggle of the soul urged to action, but held back
+by the spirit of self-indulgence.” These were the points we discussed.
+Alfred Tennyson (1809-92).</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Courage!” he said, and pointed toward the land,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the afternoon they came unto a land<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In which it seemed always afternoon.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All round the coast the languid air did swoon,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And like a downward smoke, the slender stream<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And some thro’ wavering lights and shadows broke,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They saw the gleaming river seaward flow<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Three silent pinnacles of ag&egrave;d snow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stood sunset-flush’d: and, dew’d with showery drops,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The charm&egrave;d sunset linger’d low adown<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the red West: thro’ mountain clefts the dale<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Was seen far inland, and the yellow down<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Border’d with palm, and many a winding vale<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And meadow, set with slender galingale;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A land where all things always seem’d the same!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And round about the keel with faces pale,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To each, but whoso did receive of them,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And taste, to him the gushing of the wave<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Far, far away did seem to mourn and rave<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And deep-asleep he seem’d, yet all awake,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And music in his ears his beating heart did make.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They sat them down upon the yellow sand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Between the sun and moon upon the shore;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then some one said, “We will return no more;”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And all at once they sang, “Our island home<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Moly" id="Moly"></a>Moly.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Moly” (mo’ly), by Edith M. Thomas (1850-), in the best possible
+presentation of the value of integrity. This poem ranks with “Sir
+Galahad,” if not above it. It is a stroke of genius, and every American
+ought to be proud of it. Every time my boys read “Odysseus” or the
+story of Ulysses with me we read or learn “Moly.” The plant moly grows
+in the United States as well as in Europe.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Traveller, pluck a stem of moly,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">If thou touch at Circe’s isle,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hermes’ moly, growing solely<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To undo enchanter’s wile!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When she proffers thee her chalice,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wine and spices mixed with malice,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When she smites thee with her staff<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To transform thee, do thou laugh!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Safe thou art if thou but bear<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The least leaf of moly rare.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Close it grows beside her portal,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Springing from a stock immortal,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Yes! and often has the Witch<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sought to tear it from its niche;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But to thwart her cruel will<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The wise God renews it still.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Though it grows in soil perverse,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Heaven hath been its jealous nurse,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And a flower of snowy mark<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Springs from root and sheathing dark;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Kingly safeguard, only herb<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That can brutish passion curb!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Some do think its name should be<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shield-Heart, White Integrity.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Traveller, pluck a stem of moly,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">If thou touch at Circe’s isle,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hermes’ moly, growing solely<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To undo enchanter’s wile!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Edith M. Thomas.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Cupid_Drowned" id="Cupid_Drowned"></a>Cupid Drowned.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Cupid Drowned” (1784-1859), “Cupid Stung” (1779-1852), and “Cupid and
+My Campasbe” (1558-1606) are three dainty poems recommended by Mrs.
+Margaret Mooney, of the Albany Teachers’ College, in her “Foundation
+Studies in Literature.” Children are always delighted with them.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">T’other day as I was twining<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Roses, for a crown to dine in,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What, of all things, ’mid the heap,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Should I light on, fast asleep,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the little desperate elf,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The tiny traitor, Love, himself!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By the wings I picked him up<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a bee, and in a cup<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of my wine I plunged and sank him,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then what d’ye think I did?&mdash;I drank him.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Faith, I thought him dead. Not he!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There he lives with tenfold glee;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And now this moment with his wings<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I feel him tickling my heart-strings.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Leigh Hunt.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Cupid_Stung" id="Cupid_Stung"></a>Cupid Stung.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Cupid once upon a bed<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of roses laid his weary head;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Luckless urchin, not to see<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Within the leaves a slumbering bee.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The bee awak’d&mdash;with anger wild<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The bee awak’d, and stung the child.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Loud and piteous are his cries;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To Venus quick he runs, he flies;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Oh, Mother! I am wounded through&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I die with pain&mdash;in sooth I do!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stung by some little angry thing,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Some serpent on a tiny wing&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A bee it was&mdash;for once, I know,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I heard a rustic call it so.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus he spoke, and she the while<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Heard him with a soothing smile;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then said, “My infant, if so much<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou feel the little wild bee’s touch,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How must the heart, ah, Cupid! be,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The hapless heart that’s stung by thee!”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Thomas Moore.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Cupid_and_My_Campasbe" id="Cupid_and_My_Campasbe"></a>Cupid and My <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: This spelling occurs throughout the book, however the usual spelling is 'Campaspe'.">Campasbe</ins>.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Cupid and my Campasbe played<br></span>
+<span class="i0">At cards for kisses. Cupid paid.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His mother’s doves and team of sparrows.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Loses them, too; then down he throws<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The coral of his lips, the rose<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Growing on his cheek, but none knows how;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With them the crystal of his brow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And then the dimple of his chin.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All these did my Campasbe win.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">At last he set her both his eyes;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She won and Cupid blind did rise.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, Love, hath she done this to thee!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What shall, alas, become of me!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">John Lyly.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="A_Ballad_for_a_Boy" id="A_Ballad_for_a_Boy"></a>A Ballad for a Boy.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>Violo Roseboro, one of our good authors, brought to me “A Ballad for a
+Boy,” saying: “I believe it is one of the poems that every child ought
+to know.” It is included in this compilation out of respect to her
+opinion and also because the boys to whom I have read it said it was
+“great,” The lesson in it is certainly fine. Men who are true men want
+to settle their own disputes by a hand-to-hand fight, but they will
+always help each other when a third party or the elements interfere.
+Humanity is greater than human interests.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When George the Third was reigning, a hundred years ago,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He ordered Captain Farmer to chase the foreign foe,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“You’re not afraid of shot,” said he, “you’re not afraid of wreck,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So cruise about the west of France in the frigate called <i>Quebec</i>.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Quebec was once a Frenchman’s town, but twenty years ago<br></span>
+<span class="i0">King George the Second sent a man called General Wolfe, you know,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To clamber up a precipice and look into Quebec,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As you’d look down a hatchway when standing on the deck.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“If Wolfe could beat the Frenchmen then, so you can beat them now.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Before he got inside the town he died, I must allow.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But since the town was won for us it is a lucky name,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And you’ll remember Wolfe’s good work, and you shall do the same.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then Farmer said, “I’ll try, sir,” and Farmer bowed so low<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That George could see his pigtail tied in a velvet bow.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">George gave him his commission, and that it might be safer,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Signed “King of Britain, King of France,” and sealed it with a wafer.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then proud was Captain Farmer in a frigate of his own,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And grander on his quarter-deck than George upon his throne.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He’d two guns in his cabin, and on the spar-deck ten,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And twenty on the gun-deck, and more than ten-score men.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And as a huntsman scours the brakes with sixteen brace of dogs,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With two-and-thirty cannon the ship explored the fogs.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From Cape la Hogue to Ushant, from Rochefort to Belleisle,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She hunted game till reef and mud were rubbing on her keel.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The fogs are dried, the frigate’s side is bright with melting tar,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The lad up in the foretop sees square white sails afar;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The east wind drives three square-sailed masts from out the Breton bay,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And “Clear for action!” Farmer shouts, and reefers yell “Hooray!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Frenchmen’s captain had a name I wish I could pronounce;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A Breton gentleman was he, and wholly free from bounce,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">One like those famous fellows who died by guillotine<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For honour and the fleur-de-lys, and Antoinette the Queen.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Catholic for Louis, the Protestant for George,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Each captain drew as bright a sword as saintly smiths could forge;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And both were simple seamen, but both could understand<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How each was bound to win or die for flag and native land.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The French ship was <i>La Surveillante</i>, which means the watchful maid;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She folded up her head-dress and began to cannonade.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her hull was clean, and ours was foul; we had to spread more sail.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On canvas, stays, and topsail yards her bullets came like hail.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sore smitten were both captains, and many lads beside,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And still to cut our rigging the foreign gunners tried.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A sail-clad spar came flapping down athwart a blazing gun;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We could not quench the rushing flames, and so the Frenchman won.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Our quarter-deck was crowded, the waist was all aglow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Men hung upon the taffrail half scorched, but loth to go;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Our captain sat where once he stood, and would not quit his chair.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He bade his comrades leap for life, and leave him bleeding there.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The guns were hushed on either side, the Frenchmen lowered boats,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They flung us planks and hen-coops, and everything that floats.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They risked their lives, good fellows! to bring their rivals aid.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Twas by the conflagration the peace was strangely made.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>La Surveillante</i> was like a sieve; the victors had no rest;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They had to dodge the east wind to reach the port of Brest.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And where the waves leapt lower and the riddled ship went slower,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In triumph, yet in funeral guise, came fisher-boats to tow her.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They dealt with us as brethren, they mourned for Farmer dead;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And as the wounded captives passed each Breton bowed the head.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then spoke the French Lieutenant, “Twas fire that won, not we.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">You never struck your flag to us; you’ll go to England free.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Twas the sixth day of October, seventeen hundred seventy-nine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A year when nations ventured against us to combine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Quebec</i> was burned and Farmer slain, by us remembered not;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But thanks be to the French book wherein they’re not forgot.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now you, if you’ve to fight the French, my youngster, bear in mind<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Those seamen of King Louis so chivalrous and kind;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Think of the Breton gentlemen who took our lads to Brest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And treat some rescued Breton as a comrade and a guest.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Skeleton_in_Armour" id="The_Skeleton_in_Armour"></a>The Skeleton in Armour.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Skeleton in Armour” (Longfellow, 1807-82) is a “boy’s poem.” It
+it pure literature and good history.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who, with thy hollow breast<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Still in rude armour drest,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Comest to daunt me!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wrapt not in Eastern balms,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But with thy fleshless palms<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stretched, as if asking alms,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Why dost thou haunt me?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then from those cavernous eyes<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Pale flashes seemed to rise,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As when the Northern skies<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Gleam in December;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, like the water’s flow<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Under December’s snow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Came a dull voice of woe<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From the heart’s chamber.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I was a Viking old!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My deeds, though manifold,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">No Skald in song has told,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">No Saga taught thee!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Take heed that in thy verse<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou dost the tale rehearse,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Else dread a dead man’s curse;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For this I sought thee.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Far in the Northern Land,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By the wild Baltic’s strand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I, with my childish hand,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Tamed the gerfalcon;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, with my skates fast-bound,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Skimmed the half-frozen Sound,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That the poor whimpering hound<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Trembled to walk on.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Oft to his frozen lair<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tracked I the grizzly bear,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While from my path the hare<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Fled like a shadow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oft through the forest dark<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Followed the were-wolf’s bark,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Until the soaring lark<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Sang from the meadow.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“But when I older grew,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Joining a corsair’s crew,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er the dark sea I flew<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With the marauders.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wild was the life we led;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Many the souls that sped,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Many the hearts that bled,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">By our stern orders.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Many a wassail-bout<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wore the long Winter out;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Often our midnight shout<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Set the cocks crowing,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As we the Berserk’s tale<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Measured in cups of ale,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Draining the oaken pail<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Filled to overflowing.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Once as I told in glee<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tales of the stormy sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Soft eyes did gaze on me,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Burning yet tender;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And as the white stars shine<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On the dark Norway pine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On that dark heart of mine<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Fell their soft splendour.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I wooed the blue-eyed maid,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Yielding, yet half afraid,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And in the forest’s shade<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Our vows were plighted.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Under its loosened vest<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fluttered her little breast,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like birds within their nest<br></span>
+<span class="i2">By the hawk frighted.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Bright in her father’s hall<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shields gleamed upon the wall,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Loud sang the minstrels all,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Chanting his glory;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When of old Hildebrand<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I asked his daughter’s hand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Mute did the minstrels stand<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To hear my story.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“While the brown ale he quaffed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Loud then the champion laughed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And as the wind-gusts waft<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The sea-foam brightly,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So the loud laugh of scorn,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of those lips unshorn,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the deep drinking-horn<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Blew the foam lightly.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“She was a Prince’s child,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I but a Viking wild,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And though she blushed and smiled,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I was discarded!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Should not the dove so white<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Follow the sea-mew’s flight?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Why did they leave that night<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Her nest unguarded?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Scarce had I put to sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bearing the maid with me,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fairest of all was she<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Among the Norsemen!&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When on the white sea-strand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Waving his armed hand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Saw we old Hildebrand,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With twenty horsemen.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Then launched they to the blast,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bent like a reed each mast,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet we were gaining fast,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When the wind failed us;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And with a sudden flaw<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Came round the gusty Skaw,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So that our foe we saw<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Laugh as he hailed us.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“And as to catch the gale<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Round veered the flapping sail,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">'Death!’ was the helmsman’s hail,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">'Death without quarter!’<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Midships with iron keel<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Struck we her ribs of steel;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Down her black hulk did reel<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Through the black water!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“As with his wings aslant,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sails the fierce cormorant,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Seeking some rocky haunt,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With his prey laden,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So toward the open main,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Beating to sea again,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the wild hurricane,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Bore I the maiden.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Three weeks we westward bore,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And when the storm was o’er,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Cloud-like we saw the shore<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Stretching to leeward;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There for my lady’s bower<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Built I the lofty tower<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Which to this very hour<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Stands looking seaward.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“There lived we many years;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Time dried the maiden’s tears;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She had forgot her fears,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">She was a mother;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Death closed her mild blue eyes;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Under that tower she lies;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ne’er shall the sun arise<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On such another.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Still grew my bosom then,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Still as a stagnant fen!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hateful to me were men,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The sunlight hateful!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the vast forest here,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Clad in my warlike gear,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fell I upon my spear,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Oh, death was grateful!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Thus, seamed with many scars,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bursting these prison bars,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Up to its native stars<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My soul ascended!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There from the flowing bowl<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep drinks the warrior’s soul,<br></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Skoal</i>! to the Northland! <i>skoal</i>!”<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Thus the tale ended.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Revenge" id="The_Revenge"></a>The Revenge.<br><span class="subtitle">A BALLAD OF THE FLEET</span></h3>
+
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>Tennyson’s (1807-92) “The <i>Revenge</i>” finds a welcome here because it is
+a favourite with teachers of elocution and their audiences. It teaches
+us to hold life cheap when the nation’s safety is at stake.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from away:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: “’Fore God, I am no coward;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: “I know you are no coward;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">You fly them for a moment, to fight with them again.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But I’ve ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So Lord Howard passed away with five ships of war that day,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Very carefully and slow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Men of Bideford in Devon,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And we laid them on the ballast down below;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For we brought them all aboard,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And they blest him in their pain that they were not left to Spain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he sail’d away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Shall we fight or shall we fly?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Good Sir Richard, tell us now,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For to fight is but to die!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“There’ll be little of us left by the time this sun be set”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And Sir Richard said again: “We be all good Englishmen.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For I never turn’d my back upon Don or devil yet.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sir Richard spoke and he laugh’d, and we roar’d a hurrah, and so<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The little <i>Revenge</i> ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the little <i>Revenge</i> ran on thro’ the long sea-lane between.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thousands of their soldiers looked down from their decks and laugh’d,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Running on and on, till delay’d<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By their mountain-like <i>San Philip</i> that, of fifteen hundred tons,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Took the breath from our sails, and we stay’d.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And while now the great <i>San Philip</i> hung above us like a cloud<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Whence the thunderbolt will fall<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Long and loud.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Four galleons drew away<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the Spanish fleet that day,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the battle-thunder broke from them all.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But anon the great <i>San Philip</i>, she bethought herself and went,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Having that within her womb that had left her ill content;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And a dozen times we shook ’em off as a dog that shakes his ears<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When he leaps from the water to the land.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For some were sunk and many were shatter’d, and so could fight us no more&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For he said, “Fight on! fight on!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tho’ his vessel was all but a wreck;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With a grisly wound to be drest he had left the deck,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he said, “Fight on! Fight on!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But they dared not touch us again, for they fear’d that we still could sting,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So they watched what the end would be.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And we had not fought them in vain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But in perilous plight were we,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And half of the rest of us maim’d for life<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But Sir Richard cried in his English pride:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“We have fought such a fight for a day and a night<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As may never be fought again!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We have won great glory, my men!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And a day less or more<br></span>
+<span class="i0">At sea or ashore,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We die&mdash;does it matter when?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sink me the ship, Master Gunner&mdash;sink her, split her in twain!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And the gunner said. “Ay, ay,” but the seamen made reply:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“We have children, we have wives,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the Lord hath spared our lives.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We shall live to fight again, and to strike another blow.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With a joyful spirit I, Sir Richard Grenville, die!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he fell upon their decks, and he died.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That he dared her with one little ship and his English few.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But they sank his body with honour down into the deep,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And they mann’d the <i>Revenge</i> with a swarthier alien crew,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And away she sail’d with her loss and long’d for her own;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When a wind from the lands they had ruin’d awoke from sleep,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the water began to heave and the weather to moan,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till it smote on their hulls, and their sails, and their masts, and their flags,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shatter’d navy of Spain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the little <i>Revenge</i> herself went down by the island crags,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To be lost evermore in the main.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Sir_Galahad" id="Sir_Galahad"></a>Sir Galahad.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>Sir Galahad is the most moral and upright of all the Knights of the
+Round Table. The strong lines of the poem (Tennyson, 1809-92) are the
+strong lines of human destiny&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>
+“My strength is as the strength of ten<br>
+Because my heart is pure.”<br>
+</p></blockquote>
+</div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My good blade carves the casques of men,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My tough lance thrusteth sure,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My strength is as the strength of ten,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Because my heart is pure.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The shattering trumpet shrilleth high,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The hard brands shiver on the steel,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The splintered spear-shafts crack and fly,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The horse and rider reel:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They reel, they roll in clanging lists,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And when the tide of combat stands,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Perfume and flowers fall in showers,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That lightly rain from ladies’ hands.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How sweet are looks that ladies bend<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On whom their favours fall!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For them I battle till the end,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To save from shame and thrall:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But all my heart is drawn above,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My knees are bow’d in crypt and shrine:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I never felt the kiss of love,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor maiden’s hand in mine.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">More bounteous aspects on me beam,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Me mightier transports move and thrill;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So keep I fair thro’ faith and prayer<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A virgin heart in work and will.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When down the stormy crescent goes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A light before me swims,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Between dark stems the forest glows,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I hear a noise of hymns:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then by some secret shrine I ride;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I hear a voice, but none are there;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The stalls are void, the doors are wide,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The tapers burning fair.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The silver vessels sparkle clean,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The shrill bell rings, the censer swings,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And solemn chaunts resound between.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I find a magic bark;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I leap on board: no helmsman steers,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I float till all is dark.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A gentle sound, an awful light!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Three angels bear the holy Grail:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With folded feet, in stoles of white,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On sleeping wings they sail.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, bless&egrave;d vision! blood of God!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My spirit beats her mortal bars,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As down dark tides the glory slides,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And star-like mingles with the stars.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When on my goodly charger borne<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Thro’ dreaming towns I go,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The cock crows ere the Christmas morn,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The streets are dumb with snow.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The tempest crackles on the leads,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And, ringing, springs from brand and mail;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But o’er the dark a glory spreads,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And gilds the driving hail.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I leave the plain, I climb the height;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">No branchy thicket shelter yields;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But bless&egrave;d forms in whistling storms<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Fly o’er waste fens and windy fields.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A maiden knight&mdash;to me is given<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Such hope, I know not fear;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That often meet me here.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I muse on joy that will not cease,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Pure spaces cloth’d in living beams,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Pure lilies of eternal peace,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose odours haunt my dreams;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, stricken by an angel’s hand,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">This mortal armour that I wear,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">This weight and size, this heart and eyes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Are touch’d, are turn’d to finest air.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The clouds are broken in the sky,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And thro’ the mountain-walls<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A rolling organ-harmony<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Swells up, and shakes and falls.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then move the trees, the copses nod,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Wings flutter, voices hover clear:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“O just and faithful knight of God!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Ride on! the prize is near.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So pass I hostel, hall, and grange;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">By bridge and ford, by park and pale,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All-arm’d I ride, whate’er betide,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Until I find the holy Grail.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="A_Name_in_the_Sand" id="A_Name_in_the_Sand"></a>A Name in the Sand.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“A Name in the Sand,” by Hannah Flagg Gould (1789-1865), is a poem to
+correct our ready overestimate of our own importance.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alone I walked the ocean strand;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A pearly shell was in my hand:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I stooped and wrote upon the sand<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My name&mdash;the year&mdash;the day.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As onward from the spot I passed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">One lingering look behind I cast;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A wave came rolling high and fast,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And washed my lines away.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And so, methought, ’twill shortly be<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With every mark on earth from me:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A wave of dark oblivion’s sea<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Will sweep across the place<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where I have trod the sandy shore<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of time, and been, to be no more,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of me&mdash;my day&mdash;the name I bore,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To leave nor track nor trace.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And yet, with Him who counts the sands<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And holds the waters in His hands,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I know a lasting record stands<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Inscribed against my name,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of all this mortal part has wrought,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of all this thinking soul has thought,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And from these fleeting moments caught<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For glory or for shame.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Hannah Flagg Gould.</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter"><a name="PART_VI" id="PART_VI"></a>
+<h2>PART VI.</h2>
+<div style="text-align:left;">
+ <img class='plain' src='images/part6.png' alt='A tall stalk of gladioli' height='450' width='170' >
+<span style="float:right; text-align:center; margin:3em; margin-left:0; margin-right:0;">
+“Grow old along with me!<br>
+The best is yet to be,&mdash;<br>
+The last of life, for which the first was made.”
+</span></div>
+<p style="clear:both;"></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3 style="clear:both;"><a name="The_Voice_of_Spring" id="The_Voice_of_Spring"></a>The Voice of Spring.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Voice of Spring,” by Felicia Hemans (1749-1835), becomes
+attractive as years go on. The line in this poem that captivated my
+youthful fancy was:</p>
+<blockquote><p>
+“The larch has hung all his tassels forth,”<br>
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The delight with which trees hang out their new little tassels every
+year is one of the charms of “the pine family.” John Burroughs sent us
+down a tiny hemlock, that grew in our window-box at school for five
+years, and every spring it was a new joy on account of the fine, tender
+tassels. Mrs. Hemans had a vivid imagination backed up by an abundant
+information.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I come, I come! ye have called me long;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I come o’er the mountains, with light and song.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye may trace my step o’er the waking earth<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By the winds which tell of the violet’s birth,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By the green leaves opening as I pass.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have breathed on the South, and the chestnut-flowers<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By thousands have burst from the forest bowers,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the ancient graves and the fallen fanes<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Are veiled with wreaths on Italian plains;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To speak of the ruin or the tomb!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have looked o’er the hills of the stormy North,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the larch has hung all his tassels forth;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The fisher is out on the sunny sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the reindeer bounds o’er the pastures free,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the pine has a fringe of softer green,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the moss looks bright, where my step has been.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have sent through the wood-paths a glowing sigh,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And called out each voice of the deep blue sky,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the night-bird’s lay through the starry time,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the groves of the soft Hesperian clime,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To the swan’s wild note by the Iceland lakes,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When the dark fir-branch into verdure breaks.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They are sweeping on to the silvery main,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They are flashing down from the mountain brows,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They are flinging spray o’er the forest boughs,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the earth resounds with the joy of waves.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Felicia Hemans.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Forsaken_Merman" id="The_Forsaken_Merman"></a>The Forsaken Merman.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Forsaken Merman,” by Matthew Arnold (1822-88), is a poem that I do
+not expect children to appreciate fully, even when they care enough for
+it to learn it. It is too long for most children to commit to memory,
+and I generally assign one stanza to one pupil and another to another
+pupil until it is divided up among them. The poem is a masterpiece.
+Doubtless the poet meant to show that the forsaken merman had a greater
+soul to save than the woman who sought to save her soul by deserting
+natural duty. Salvation does not come through the faith that builds
+itself at the expense of love.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Come, dear children, let us away;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Down and away below!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now my brothers call from the bay,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now the great winds shoreward blow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now the salt tides seaward flow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now the wild white horses play,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Children dear, let us away!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">This way, this way!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Call her once before you go&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Call once yet!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In a voice that she will know:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Margaret! Margaret!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Children’s voices should be dear<br></span>
+<span class="i0">(Call once more) to a mother’s ear;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Children’s voices, wild with pain&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Surely she will come again!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Call her once and come away;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">This way, this way!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Mother dear, we cannot stay!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The wild white horses foam and fret.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Margaret! Margaret!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Come, dear children, come away down;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Call no more!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">One last look at the white-wall’d town,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the little gray church on the windy shore;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then come down!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She will not come though you call all day;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come away, come away!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Children dear, was it yesterday<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We heard the sweet bells over the bay?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the caverns where we lay,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the surf and through the swell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The far-off sound of a silver bell?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the winds are all asleep;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the salt weed sways in the stream,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dry their mail and bask in the brine;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where great whales come sailing by,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sail and sail, with unshut eye,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Round the world forever and aye?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When did music come this way?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Children dear, was it yesterday?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Children dear, was it yesterday<br></span>
+<span class="i0">(Call yet once) that she went away?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Once she sate with you and me,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the youngest sate on her knee.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She comb’d its bright hair, and she tended it well,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When down swung the sound of a far-off bell.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She sigh’d, she look’d up through the clear green sea;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She said: “I must go, for my kinsfolk pray<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the little gray church on the shore to-day.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twill be Easter-time in the world&mdash;ah me!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I said: “Go up, dear heart, through the waves;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She smil’d, she went up through the surf in the bay.<br></span>
+<span class="i0"><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original put this line in the following stanza.">Children dear, was it yesterday?</ins><br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Children dear, were we long alone?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Long prayers,” I said, “in the world they say;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come!” I said; and we rose through the surf in the bay.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We went up the beach, by the sandy down<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall’d town;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the narrow pav’d streets, where all was still,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To the little gray church on the windy hill.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But we stood without in the cold blowing airs.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We climb’d on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And we gaz’d up the aisle through the small leaded panes.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dear heart,” I said, “we are long alone;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But, ah, she gave me never a look,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For her eyes were seal’d to the holy book!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Loud prays the priest: shut stands the door.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come away, children, call no more!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come away, come down, call no more!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Down, down, down!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Down to the depths of the sea!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She sits at her wheel in the humming town,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Singing most joyfully.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hark what she sings: “O joy, O joy,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the humming street, and the child with its toy!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the wheel where I spun,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the bless&egrave;d light of the sun!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And so she sings her fill,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Singing most joyfully,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the spindle drops from her hand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the whizzing wheel stands still.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She steals to the window, and looks at the sand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And over the sand at the sea;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And her eyes are set in a stare;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And anon there breaks a sigh,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And anon there drops a tear,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From a sorrow-clouded eye,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And a heart sorrow-laden,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A long, long sigh;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the gleam of her golden hair.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: This stanza and the first two lines of the next are indented in the original.">Come away, away, children;</ins><br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come, children, come down!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The hoarse wind blows colder;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lights shine in the town.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She will start from her slumber<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When gusts shake the door;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She will hear the winds howling,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Will hear the waves roar.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We shall see, while above us<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The waves roar and whirl,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A ceiling of amber,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A pavement of pearl.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Singing: “Here came a mortal,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But faithless was she!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And alone dwell forever<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The kings of the sea.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But, children, at midnight,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When soft the winds blow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When clear falls the moonlight,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When spring-tides are low;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When sweet airs come seaward<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From heaths starr’d with broom,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And high rocks throw mildly<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On the blanch’d sands a gloom;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Up the still, glistening beaches,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Up the creeks we will hie,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Over banks of bright seaweed<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The ebb-tide leaves dry.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We will gaze, from the sand-hills,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">At the white, sleeping town;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">At the church on the hill-side&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And then come back down.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Singing: “There dwells a lov’d one,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But cruel is she!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She left lonely forever<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The kings of the sea.”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Matthew Arnold.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Banks_o_Doon" id="The_Banks_o_Doon"></a>The Banks o’ Doon.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Banks o’ Doon,” by Robert Burns (1759-96). Bonnie Doon is in the
+southwestern part of Scotland. Robert Burns’s old home it close to it.
+The house has low walls, a thatched roof, and only two rooms. Alloway
+Kirk and the two bridges so famous in Robert Burns’s verse are near by.
+This is an enchanted land, and the Scotch people for miles around Ayr
+speak of the poet with sincere affection. Burns, more than any other
+poet, has thrown the enchantment of poetry over his own locality.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">How can ye blume sae fair!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How can ye chant, ye little birds,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And I sae fu’ o’ care.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou’lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That sings upon the bough;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou minds me o’ the happy days<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When my fause luve was true.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou’lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That sings beside thy mate;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For sae I sat, and sae I sang,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And wist na o’ my fate.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Aft hae I rov’d by bonnie Doon,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To see the woodbine twine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And ilka bird sang o’ its love,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And sae did I o’ mine.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wi’ lightsome heart I pu’d a rose<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Frae off its thorny tree;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And my fause luver staw the rose,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But left the thorn wi’ me.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Burns.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Light_of_Other_Days" id="The_Light_of_Other_Days"></a>The Light of Other Days.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oft in the stilly night<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fond Memory brings the light<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of other days around me:<br></span>
+<span class="i4">The smiles, the tears<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Of boyhood’s years,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The words of love then spoken;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">The eyes that shone,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Now dimmed and gone,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The cheerful hearts now broken!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus in the stilly night<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sad Memory brings the light<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of other days around me.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When I remember all<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The friends so link’d together<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I’ve seen around me fall<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Like leaves in wintry weather,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">I feel like one<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Who treads alone<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Some banquet-hall deserted,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Whose lights are fled,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Whose garlands dead,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And all but he departed!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus in the stilly night<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sad Memory brings the light<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of other days around me.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Thomas Moore.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="My_Own_Shall_Come_to_Me" id="My_Own_Shall_Come_to_Me"></a>My Own Shall Come to Me.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>If John Burroughs (1837-) had never written any other poem than “My Own
+Shall Come to Me,” he would have stood to all ages as one of the
+greatest of American poets. The poem is most characteristic of the
+tall, majestic, slow-going poet and naturalist. There is no greater
+line in Greek or English literature than</p>
+<blockquote><p>
+“I stand amid the eternal ways.”<br>
+</p></blockquote>
+</div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Serene I fold my hands and wait,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I rave no more ’gainst time or fate,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For lo! my own shall come to me.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I stay my haste, I make delays,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For what avails this eager pace?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I stand amid the eternal ways,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And what is mine shall know my face.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Asleep, awake, by night or day<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The friends I seek are seeking me;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">No wind can drive my bark astray,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor change the tide of destiny.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What matter if I stand alone?<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I wait with joy the coming years;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My heart shall reap when it has sown,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And gather up its fruit of tears.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The stars come nightly to the sky;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The tidal wave comes to the sea;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Can keep my own away from me.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The waters know their own and draw<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The brook that springs in yonder heights;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So flows the good with equal law<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Unto the soul of pure delights.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">John Burroughs.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Ode_to_a_Skylark" id="Ode_to_a_Skylark"></a>Ode to a Skylark.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Ode to a Skylark,” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), is usually
+assigned to “grammar grades” of schools. It is included here out of
+respect to a boy of eleven years who was more impressed with these
+lines than with any other lines in any poem:</p>
+<blockquote><p>
+“Like a poet hidden,<br>
+In the light of thought<br>
+Singing songs unbidden<br>
+Till the world is wrought<br>
+To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.”<br>
+</p></blockquote>
+</div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Hail to thee, blithe spirit&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Bird thou never wert&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That from heaven or near it<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Pourest thy full heart<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Higher still and higher<br></span>
+<span class="i4">From the earth thou springest,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Like a cloud of fire;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">The blue deep thou wingest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">In the golden lightning<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Of the sunken sun,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">O’er which clouds are brightening,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Thou dost float and run,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">The pale purple even<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Melts around thy flight;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Like a star of heaven,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">In the broad daylight<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">All the earth and air<br></span>
+<span class="i4">With thy voice is loud,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As, when night is bare,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">From one lonely cloud<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">What thou art we know not;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">What is most like thee?<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From rainbow-clouds there flow not<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Drops so bright to see<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:&mdash;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Like a poet hidden<br></span>
+<span class="i4">In the light of thought;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Singing hymns unbidden,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Till the world is wrought<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Teach us, sprite or bird,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">What sweet thoughts are thine:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I have never heard<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Praise of love or wine<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Chorus hymeneal<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Or triumphal chaunt,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Matched with thine, would be all<br></span>
+<span class="i4">But an empty vaunt&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">What objects are the fountains<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Of thy happy strain?<br></span>
+<span class="i2">What fields, or waves, or mountains?<br></span>
+<span class="i4">What shapes of sky or plain?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Teach me half the gladness<br></span>
+<span class="i4">That thy brain must know,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Such harmonious madness<br></span>
+<span class="i4">From my lips would flow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The world should listen then, as I am listening now!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Percy Bysshe Shelley.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Sands_of_Dee" id="The_Sands_of_Dee"></a>The Sands of Dee.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>I have often had the pleasure of riding across the coast from Chester,
+England, to Rhyl, on the north coast of Wales, where stretch “The Sands
+of Dee” (Charles Kingsley, 1819-75). These purple sands at low tide
+stretch off into the sea miles away, and are said to be full of
+quicksands.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“O Mary, go and call the cattle home,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">And call the cattle home,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">And call the cattle home,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Across the sands of Dee.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The western wind was wild and dark with foam<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And all alone went she.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The western tide crept up along the sand,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">And o’er and o’er the sand,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">And round and round the sand,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As far as eye could see.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The rolling mist came down and hid the land;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And never home came she.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i6">A tress of golden hair,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">A drown&egrave;d maiden’s hair,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Above the nets at sea?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Was never salmon yet that shone so fair<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Among the stakes on Dee.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They rowed her in across the rolling foam,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">The cruel crawling foam,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">The cruel hungry foam,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To her grave beside the sea.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Across the sands of Dee.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Charles Kingsley.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="A_Wish" id="A_Wish"></a>A Wish.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“A Wish” (by Samuel Rogers, 1763-1855) and “Lucy” (by Wordsworth,
+1770-1850) are two gems that can be valued only for the spirit of quiet
+and modesty diffused by them.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mine be a cot beside the hill;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A bee-hive’s hum shall soothe my ear;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A willowy brook that turns a mill<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With many a fall shall linger near.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The swallow, oft, beneath my thatch<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall twitter from her clay-built nest;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And share my meal, a welcome guest.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Around my ivied porch shall spring<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And Lucy, at her wheel, shall sing<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In russet gown and apron blue.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The village church among the trees,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Where first our marriage-vows were given,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With merry peals shall swell the breeze<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And point with taper spire to Heaven.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">S. Rogers.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Lucy" id="Lucy"></a>Lucy.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She dwelt among the untrodden ways<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Beside the springs of Dove;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A maid whom there were none to praise,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And very few to love.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A violet by a mossy stone<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Half-hidden from the eye!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fair as a star, when only one<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Is shining in the sky.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She lived unknown, and few could know<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When Lucy ceased to be;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But she is in her grave, and, oh,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The difference to me!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Wordsworth.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Solitude" id="Solitude"></a>Solitude.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Happy the man, whose wish and care<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A few paternal acres bound,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Content to breathe his native air<br></span>
+<span class="i12">In his own ground.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose flocks supply him with attire;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose trees in summer yield him shade,<br></span>
+<span class="i12">In winter fire.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Blest, who can unconcern’dly find<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hours, days, and years slide soft away<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In health of body, peace of mind,<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Quiet by day,<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sound sleep by night; study and ease<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Together mixt, sweet recreation,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And innocence, which most does please<br></span>
+<span class="i12">With meditation.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus unlamented let me die;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Steal from the world, and not a stone<br></span>
+<span class="i12">Tell where I lie.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Alexander Pope.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="John_Anderson" id="John_Anderson"></a>John Anderson</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“John Anderson,” by Robert Burns (1759-96). This poem is included to
+please several teachers.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">John Anderson, my jo, John,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When we were first acquent<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Your locks were like the raven,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Your bonnie brow was brent;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But now your brow is bald, John,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Your locks are like the snow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But blessings on your frosty pow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">John Anderson, my jo.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">John Anderson, my jo, John,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We clamb the hill thegither,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And mony a canty day, John,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ve had wi’ ane anither;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now we maun totter down, John,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But hand in hand we’ll go,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And sleep thegither at the foot,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">John Anderson, my jo.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Burns.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_God_of_Music" id="The_God_of_Music"></a>The God of Music.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The God of Music,” by Edith M. Thomas, an Ohio poetess now living. In
+this sonnet the poetess has touched the power of Wordsworth or Keats
+and placed herself among the immortals.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The God of Music dwelleth out of doors.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All seasons through his minstrelsy we meet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Breathing by field and covert haunting-sweet<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From organ-lofts in forests old he pours:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A solemn harmony: on leafy floors<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To smooth autumnal pipes he moves his feet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Or with the tingling plectrum of the sleet<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In winter keen beats out his thrilling scores.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Leave me the reed unplucked beside the stream.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he will stoop and fill it with the breeze;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Leave me the viol’s frame in secret trees,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Unwrought, and it shall wake a druid theme;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Leave me the whispering shell on Nereid shores.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The God of Music dwelleth out of doors.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Edith M. Thomas.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="A_Musical_Instrument" id="A_Musical_Instrument"></a>A Musical Instrument.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“A Musical Instrument” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61). This
+poem is the supreme masterpiece of Mrs. Browning. The prime thought in
+it is the sacrifice and pain that must go to make a poet of any genius.</p>
+<blockquote><p>
+“The great god sighed for the cost and the pain.”<br>
+</p></blockquote>
+</div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What was he doing, the great god Pan,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Down in the reeds by the river?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Spreading ruin and scattering ban,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And breaking the golden lilies afloat<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With the dragon-fly on the river.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From the deep cool bed of the river:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The limpid water turbidly ran,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the broken lilies a-dying lay,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the dragon-fly had fled away,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Ere he brought it out of the river.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">High on the shore sat the great god Pan,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">While turbidly flow’d the river;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And hack’d and hew’d as a great god can,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To prove it fresh from the river.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He cut it short, did the great god Pan<br></span>
+<span class="i2">(How tall it stood in the river!),<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Steadily from the outside ring,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And notched the poor dry empty thing<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In holes, as he sat by the river.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“This is the way,” laugh’d the great god Pan<br></span>
+<span class="i2">(Laugh’d while he sat by the river),<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“The only way, since gods began<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To make sweet music, they could succeed.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He blew in power by the river.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Piercing sweet by the river!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The sun on the hill forgot to die,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the lilies reviv’d, and the dragon-fly<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Came back to dream on the river.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To laugh as he sits by the river,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Making a poet out of a man:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the reed which grows nevermore again<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As a reed with the reeds in the river.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Elizabeth Barrett Browning.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Brides_of_Enderby" id="The_Brides_of_Enderby"></a>The Brides of Enderby.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Brides of Enderby,” by Jean Ingelow (1830-97). This poem is very
+dramatic, and the music of the refrain has done much to make it
+popular. But the pathos is that which endears it.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The old mayor climb’d the belfry tower,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The ringers ran by two, by three;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Pull, if ye never pull’d before;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Good ringers, pull your best,” quoth he.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston bells!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ply all your changes, all your swells,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Play uppe, 'The Brides of Enderby.’”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Men say it was a stolen tyde&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The Lord that sent it, He knows all;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But in myne ears doth still abide<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The message that the bells let fall:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And there was naught of strange, beside<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The flight of mews and peewits pied<br></span>
+<span class="i2">By millions crouch’d on the old sea wall.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I sat and spun within the doore,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My thread brake off, I raised myne eyes;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The level sun, like ruddy ore,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Lay sinking in the barren skies;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And dark against day’s golden death<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She moved where Lindis wandereth,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My sonne’s faire wife, Elizabeth.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!” calling,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere the early dews were falling,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Farre away I heard her song,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Cusha! Cusha!” all along;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the reedy Lindis floweth,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Floweth, floweth,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the meads where melick groweth<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Faintly came her milking song&mdash;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!” calling,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“For the dews will soone be falling;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Leave your meadow grasses mellow,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Mellow, mellow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come uppe, Whitefoot, come uppe, Lightfoot;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Quit the stalks of parsley hollow,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Hollow, hollow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come uppe, Jetty, rise and follow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the clovers lift your head;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come uppe, Whitefoot, come uppe, Lightfoot,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come uppe, Jetty, rise and follow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Jetty, to the milking shed.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If it be long ay, long ago,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When I beginne to think howe long,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Againe I hear the Lindis flow,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Swift as an arrowe, sharpe and strong;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the aire, it seemeth mee,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bin full of floating bells (sayth shee),<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That ring the tune of Enderby.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alle fresh the level pasture lay,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And not a shadowe mote be seene,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Save where full fyve good miles away<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The steeple tower’d from out the greene;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And lo! the great bell farre and wide<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Was heard in all the country side<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That Saturday at eventide.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The swanherds where their sedges are<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Mov’d on in sunset’s golden breath,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The shepherde lads I heard afarre,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And my sonne’s wife, Elizabeth;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till floating o’er the grassy sea<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Came downe that kyndly message free,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The “Brides of Mavis Enderby.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then some look’d uppe into the sky,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And all along where Lindis flows<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To where the goodly vessels lie,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And where the lordly steeple shows.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They sayde, “And why should this thing be?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What danger lowers by land or sea?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They ring the tune of Enderby!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“For evil news from Mablethorpe,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Of pyrate galleys warping down;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For shippes ashore beyond the scorpe,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They have not spar’d to wake the towne:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But while the west bin red to see,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And storms be none, and pyrates flee,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Why ring 'The Brides of Enderby’?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I look’d without, and lo! my sonne<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Came riding downe with might and main;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He rais’d a shout as he drew on,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Till all the welkin rang again,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Elizabeth! Elizabeth!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">(A sweeter woman ne’er drew breath<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Than my sonne’s wife, Elizabeth.)<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“The olde sea wall,” he cried, “is downe,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The rising tide comes on apace,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And boats adrift in yonder towne<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Go sailing uppe the market-place.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He shook as one that looks on death:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“God save you, mother!” straight he saith<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Where is my wife, Elizabeth?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Good sonne, where Lindis winds her way<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With her two bairns I marked her long;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And ere yon bells beganne to play<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Afar I heard her milking song.”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He looked across the grassy lea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To right, to left, “Ho, Enderby!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They rang “The Brides of Enderby!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With that he cried and beat his breast;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For, lo! along the river’s bed<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A mighty eygre rear’d his crest,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And uppe the Lindis raging sped.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It swept with thunderous noises loud;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shap’d like a curling snow-white cloud,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Or like a demon in a shroud.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And rearing Lindis backward press’d<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Shook all her trembling bankes amaine;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then madly at the eygre’s breast<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Flung uppe her weltering walls again.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then bankes came downe with ruin and rout&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then beaten foam flew round about&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then all the mighty floods were out.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So farre, so fast the eygre drave,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The heart had hardly time to beat<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Before a shallow seething wave<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Sobb’d in the grasses at oure feet:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The feet had hardly time to flee<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Before it brake against the knee,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the world was in the sea.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Upon the roofe we sate that night,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The noise of bells went sweeping by;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I mark’d the lofty beacon light<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Stream from the church tower, red and high&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A lurid mark and dread to see;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And awsome bells they were to mee,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That in the dark rang “Enderby.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They rang the sailor lads to guide<br></span>
+<span class="i2">From roofe to roofe who fearless row’d;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I&mdash;my sonne was at my side,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And yet the ruddy beacon glow’d:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet he moan’d beneath his breath,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“O come in life, or come in death!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O lost! my love, Elizabeth.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And didst thou visit him no more?<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Thou didst, thou didst, my daughter deare<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The waters laid thee at his doore,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Ere yet the early dawn was clear.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy pretty bairns in fast embrace,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The lifted sun shone on thy face,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Downe drifted to thy dwelling-place.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That flow strew’d wrecks about the grass,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That ebbe swept out the flocks to sea;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A fatal ebbe and flow, alas!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To manye more than myne and mee;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But each will mourn his own (she saith);<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And sweeter woman ne’er drew breath<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Than my sonne’s wife, Elizabeth.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I shall never hear her more<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By the reedy Lindis shore,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!” calling,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere the early dews be falling;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall never hear her song,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Cusha! Cusha!” all along<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the sunny Lindis floweth,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Goeth, floweth;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the meads where melick groweth,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When the water winding down,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Onward floweth to the town.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I shall never see her more<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the reeds and rushes quiver,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Shiver, quiver;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stand beside the sobbing river,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sobbing, throbbing, in its falling<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To the sandy lonesome shore;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall never hear her calling,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Leave your meadow grasses mellow,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Mellow, mellow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Come uppe, Whitefoot, come uppe, Lightfoot;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Quit your pipes of parsley hollow,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Hollow, hollow;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come uppe, Lightfoot, rise and follow;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Lightfoot, Whitefoot,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From your clovers lift the head;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Come uppe, Jetty, follow, follow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Jetty, to the milking shed.”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Jean Ingelow.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Lye" id="The_Lye"></a>The Lye.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Lye,” by Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), is one of the strongest
+and most appealing poems a teacher can read to her pupils when teaching
+early American history. The poem is full of magnificent lines, such as
+“Go, soul, the body’s guest.” The poem never lacks an attentive
+audience of young people when correlated with the study of North
+Carolina and Sir Walter Raleigh. The solitary, majestic character of
+Sir Walter Raleigh, his intrepidity while undergoing tortures inflicted
+by a cowardly king, the ring of indignation&mdash;- all these make a weapon
+for him stronger than the ax that beheaded him. In this poem he “has
+the last word.”</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Goe, soule, the bodie’s guest,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Upon a thanklesse arrant;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Feare not to touche the best&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The truth shall be thy warrant!<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Goe, since I needs must dye,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">And give the world the lye.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Goe tell the court it glowes<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And shines like rotten wood;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Goe tell the church it showes<br></span>
+<span class="i2">What’s good, and doth no good;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">If church and court reply,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Then give them both the lye.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tell potentates they live<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Acting by others’ actions&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Not loved unlesse they give,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Not strong but by their factions;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">If potentates reply,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Give potentates the lye.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tell men of high condition,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That rule affairs of state,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Their purpose is ambition,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Their practice only hate;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">And if they once reply,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Then give them all the lye.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tell zeale it lacks devotion;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Tell love it is but lust;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell time it is but motion;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Tell flesh it is but dust;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">And wish them not reply,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">For thou must give the lye.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tell wit how much it wrangles<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In tickle points of nicenesse;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell wisdome she entangles<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Herselfe in over-wisenesse;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">And if they do reply,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Straight give them both the lye.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tell physicke of her boldnesse;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Tell skill it is pretension;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell charity of coldnesse;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Tell law it is contention;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">And as they yield reply,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">So give them still the lye.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tell fortune of her blindnesse;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Tell nature of decay;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell friendship of unkindnesse;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Tell justice of delay;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">And if they dare reply,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Then give them all the lye.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tell arts they have no soundnesse,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">But vary by esteeming;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell schooles they want profoundnesse,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And stand too much on seeming;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">If arts and schooles reply,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Give arts and schooles the lye.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So, when thou hast, as I<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Commanded thee, done blabbing&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Although to give the lye<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Deserves no less than stabbing&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Yet stab at thee who will,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">No stab the soule can kill.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Sir Walter Raleigh.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="LEnvoi" id="LEnvoi"></a>L’Envoi.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“L’Envoi,” by Rudyard Kipling, is a favourite on account of its
+sweeping assertion of the individual’s right to self-development.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When Earth’s last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it&mdash;lie down for an &aelig;on or two,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall set us to work anew!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And those who were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet’s hair;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They shall find real saints to draw from&mdash;Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Contentment" id="Contentment"></a>Contentment</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Contentment,” by Edward Dyer (1545-1607). This poem holds much to
+comfort and control people who are shut up to the joys of
+meditation&mdash;people to whom the world of activity is closed. To be
+independent of things material&mdash;this is the soul’s pleasure.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My mind to me a kingdom is;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Such perfect joy therein I find<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As far excels all earthly bliss<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That God or Nature hath assigned;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Though much I want that most would have,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet still my mind forbids to crave.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Content I live; this is my stay,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I seek no more than may suffice.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I press to bear no haughty sway;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Look, what I lack my mind supplies.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo, thus I triumph like a king,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Content with that my mind doth bring.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I laugh not at another’s loss,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I grudge not at another’s gain;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">No worldly wave my mind can toss;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">I brook that is another’s bane.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I fear no foe, nor fawn on friend;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I loathe not life, nor dread mine end.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My wealth is health and perfect ease;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My conscience clear my chief defense;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I never seek by bribes to please<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor by desert to give offense.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus do I live, thus will I die;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Would all did so as well as I!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Edward Dyer.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Harp_That_Once_Through_Taras_Halls" id="The_Harp_That_Once_Through_Taras_Halls"></a>The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The harp that once through Tara’s halls<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The soul of music shed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As if that soul were fled.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So sleeps the pride of former days,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">So glory’s thrill is o’er,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And hearts, that once beat high for praise,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Now feel that pulse no more.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No more to chiefs and ladies bright<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The harp of Tara swells;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The chord alone, that breaks at night,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Its tale of ruin tells.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The only throb she gives<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Is when some heart indignant breaks,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To show that still she lives.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Thomas Moore.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Old_Oaken_Bucket" id="The_Old_Oaken_Bucket"></a>The Old Oaken Bucket</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Old Oaken Bucket,” by Samuel Woodworth (1785-1848), is a poem we
+love because it is an elegant expression of something very dear and
+homely.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">When fond recollection presents them to view!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild-wood,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And every loved spot which my infancy knew!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that stood by it,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The bridge, and the rock where the cataract fell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The cot of my father, the dairy-house nigh it,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And e’en the rude bucket that hung in the well&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The moss-covered bucket which hung in the well.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That moss-covered vessel I hailed as a treasure,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">For often at noon, when returned from the field,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The purest and sweetest that nature can yield.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then soon, with the emblem of truth overflowing,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The moss-covered bucket arose from the well.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How sweet from the green mossy brim to receive it<br></span>
+<span class="i2">As poised on the curb it inclined to my lips!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a full blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The brightest that beauty or revelry sips.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And now, far removed from the loved habitation,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The tear of regret will intrusively swell.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As fancy reverts to my father’s plantation,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And sighs for the bucket that hangs in the well&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The moss-covered bucket that hangs in the well!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Samuel Woodworth.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Raven" id="The_Raven"></a>The Raven.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Raven,” by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), is placed here because so
+many college men speak of it at once as the great poem of their
+boyhood. The poem caught me when a child by its refrain and weird
+picturesqueness. It has never outgrown its mechanical charm.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door“<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Only this, and nothing more.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah! distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From my books surcease of sorrow&mdash;sorrow for the lost Lenore&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Nameless here for evermore.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thrilled me&mdash;filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">This it is, and nothing more.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Sir,” said I, “or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That I scarce was sure I heard you.” Here I opened wide the door:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Darkness there, and nothing more.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Merely this, and nothing more.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Back into my chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Soon again I heard a rapping, something louder than before:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore.<br></span>
+<span class="i8">’Tis the wind, and nothing more.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In there stepped a stately Raven, of the saintly days of yore;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Not the least obeisance made he, not a minute stopped or stayed he;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Perched above a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Perched, and sat, and nothing more.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure, no craven;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven, wandering from the nightly shore,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night’s Plutonian shore?”<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Though its answer, little meaning, little relevancy bore;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door<br></span>
+<span class="i8">With such a name as “Nevermore.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nothing further then he uttered, not a feather then he fluttered,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till I scarcely more than muttered&mdash;“Other friends have flown before,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Startled by the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Followed fast and followed faster, till his songs one burden bore&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the dirges of his hope this melancholy burden bore&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Of 'Never, nevermore,’”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust, and door;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fancy into fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thus I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On the cushion’s velvet lining, that the lamp-light gloated o’er,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But whose velvet violet lining, with the lamp-light gloating o’er,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">She shall press, ah, nevermore!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Swung by seraphim, whose footfalls twinkled on the tufted floor.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee&mdash;by these angels He hath sent thee<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Respite&mdash;respite and nepenthe from my memories of Lenore!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!”<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Prophet,” said I, “thing of evil&mdash;prophet still, if bird or devil!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On this home by horror haunted&mdash;tell me truly, I implore,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Is there&mdash;<i>is</i> there balm in Gilead?&mdash;tell me, tell me, I implore!”<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Prophet,” said I, “thing of evil!&mdash;prophet still if bird or devil!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By that heaven that bends above us&mdash;by that God we both adore&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell this soul, with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aiden<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore?”<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Be that our sign of parting, bird or fiend,” I shrieked, upstarting&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Get thee back into the tempest and the night’s Plutonian shore;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Leave my loneliness unbroken&mdash;quit the bust above my door,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Take thy beak from out my heart and take thy form from off my door!”<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the lamp-light o’er him streaming, throws his shadow on the floor;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And my soul from out that shadow, that lies floating on the floor,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Shall be lifted&mdash;nevermore!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Edgar Allan Poe.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Arnold_von_Winkleried" id="Arnold_von_Winkleried"></a>Arnold von Winkleried.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Make way for liberty!” he cried,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Make way for liberty, and died.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In arms the Austrian phalanx stood,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A living wall, a human wood,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A wall, where every conscious stone<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Seemed to its kindred thousands grown.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A rampart all assaults to bear,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till time to dust their frames should wear;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So still, so dense the Austrians stood,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A living wall, a human wood.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Impregnable their front appears,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All horrent with projected spears.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose polished points before them shine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From flank to flank, one brilliant line,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bright as the breakers’ splendours run<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Along the billows to the sun.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Opposed to these a hovering band<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Contended for their fatherland;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Peasants, whose new-found strength had broke<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From manly necks the ignoble yoke,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And beat their fetters into swords,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On equal terms to fight their lords;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And what insurgent rage had gained,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In many a mortal fray maintained;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Marshalled, once more, at Freedom’s call,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They came to conquer or to fall,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where he who conquered, he who fell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Was deemed a dead or living Tell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Such virtue had that patriot breathed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So to the soil his soul bequeathed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That wheresoe’er his arrows flew,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Heroes in his own likeness grew,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And warriors sprang from every sod,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Which his awakening footstep trod.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And now the work of life and death<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hung on the passing of a breath;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The fire of conflict burned within,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The battle trembled to begin;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet, while the Austrians held their ground,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Point for attack was nowhere found;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where’er the impatient Switzers gazed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The unbroken line of lances blazed;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That line ’twere suicide to meet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And perish at their tyrant’s feet;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How could they rest within their graves,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And leave their homes, the homes of slaves!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Would not they feel their children tread,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With clanging chains, above their head?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It must not be; this day, this hour,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Annihilates the invader’s power;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All Switzerland is in the field;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She will not fly,&mdash;she cannot yield,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She must not fall; her better fate<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Here gives her an immortal date.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Few were the numbers she could boast,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But every freeman was a host,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And felt as ’twere a secret known<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That one should turn the scale alone,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While each unto himself was he<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On whose sole arm hung victory.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It did depend on one indeed;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Behold him,&mdash;Arnold Winkelried;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There sounds not to the trump of fame<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The echo of a nobler name.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Unmarked he stood amid the throng,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In rumination deep and long,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till you might see, with sudden grace,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The very thought come o’er his face;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, by the motion of his form,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Anticipate the bursting storm,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, by the uplifting of his brow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell where the bolt would strike, and how.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But ’twas no sooner thought than done!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The field was in a moment won;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Make way for liberty!” he cried,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Then ran, with arms extended wide,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As if his dearest friend to clasp;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ten spears he swept within his grasp.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Make way for liberty!” he cried.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Their keen points crossed from side to side;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He bowed amidst them like a tree,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And thus made way for liberty.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Swift to the breach his comrades fly,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Make way for liberty!” they cry,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And through the Austrian phalanx dart,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As rushed the spears through Arnold’s heart.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While instantaneous as his fall,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rout, ruin, panic, seized them all;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An earthquake could not overthrow<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A city with a surer blow.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thus Switzerland again was free;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus Death made way for Liberty!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">James Montgomery.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Life_I_Know_Not_What_Thou_Art" id="Life_I_Know_Not_What_Thou_Art"></a>Life, I Know Not What Thou Art.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Life! I know not what thou art.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But know that thou and I must part;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And when, or how, or where we met,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I own to me’s a secret yet.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Life! we’ve been long together<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tis hard to part when friends are dear&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Perhaps ’twill cost a sigh, a tear;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Then steal away, give little warning,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Choose thine own time;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Say not Good Night,&mdash;but in some brighter clime<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bid me Good Morning.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">A.L. Barbauld.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Mercy" id="Mercy"></a>Mercy.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Mercy,” an excerpt from “The Merchant of Venice,” “Polonius’ Advice,”
+from “Hamlet,” and “Antony’s Speech,” from “Julius C&aelig;sar” (all
+fragments from Shakespeare, 1564-1616), find a place in this book
+because a well-known New York teacher&mdash;one who is unremitting in his
+efforts to raise the good taste and character of his pupils&mdash;says: “A
+book of poetry could not be complete without these extracts.”</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The quality of mercy is not strain’d;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The throned monarch better than his crown:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His scepter shows the force of temporal power,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The attribute to awe and majesty,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But mercy is above his sceptered sway;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It is an attribute to God himself;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And earthly power doth then show likest God’s<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When mercy seasons justice.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span> (“Merchant of Venice”).</p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Polonius_Advice" id="Polonius_Advice"></a>Polonius’ Advice.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor any unproportion’d thought his act.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But do not dull thy palm with entertainment<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade. Beware<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bear ’t that th’ opposed may beware of thee.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the apparel oft proclaims the man.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Neither a borrower nor a lender be;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For loan oft loses both itself and friend,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">This above all: to thine own self be true;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And it must follow, as the night the day,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou canst not then be false to any man.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span> (“Hamlet”).</p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="A_Fragment_from_Julius_Caesar" id="A_Fragment_from_Julius_Caesar"></a>A Fragment from Mark Antony’s Speech.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This was the noblest Roman of them all:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All the conspirators, save only he,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Did that they did in envy of great C&aelig;sar;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He only, in a general honest thought<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And common good to all, made one of them.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His life was gentle; and the elements<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So mix’d in him, that Nature might stand up,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And say to all the world, “This was a man!”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span> (“Julius C&aelig;sar”).</p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Skylark" id="The_Skylark"></a>The Skylark.</h3>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Bird of the wilderness,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Blithesome and cumberless,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet be thy matin o’er moorland and lea!<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Emblem of happiness,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Blest is thy dwelling-place&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Wild is thy lay and loud,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Far in the downy cloud,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Love gives it energy, love gave it birth.<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Where, on thy dewy wing,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Where art thou journeying?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">O’er fell and fountain sheen,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">O’er moor and mountain green,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er the red streamer that heralds the day,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Over the cloudlet dim,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Over the rainbow’s rim,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Musical cherub, soar, singing, away!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Then, when the gloaming comes,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Low in the heather blooms<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Emblem of happiness,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Blest is thy dwelling-place&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Thomas Hogg.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Choir_Invisible" id="The_Choir_Invisible"></a>The Choir Invisible.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Choir Invisible” (by George Eliot, 1819-80) is a fitting
+exposition in poetry of this “Shakespeare of prose.”</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O, may I join the choir invisible<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of those immortal dead who live again<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In minds made better by their presence; live<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In pulses stirred to generosity,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of miserable aims that end with self,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And with their mild persistence urge men’s minds<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To vaster issues.<br></span>
+<span class="i16">May I reach<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That purest heaven,&mdash;be to other souls<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The cup of strength in some great agony,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Be the sweet presence of good diffused,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And in diffusion ever more intense!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So shall I join the choir invisible,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose music is the gladness of the world.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">George Eliot.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_World_Is_Too_Much_With_Us" id="The_World_Is_Too_Much_With_Us"></a>The World Is Too Much With Us.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The World Is Too Much With Us,” by Wordsworth (1770-1850), is perhaps
+the greatest sonnet ever written. It is true that “the eyes of the
+soul” are blinded by a surfeit of worldly “goods.” “I went to the Lake
+District” (England), said John Burroughs, “to see what kind of a
+country could produce a Wordsworth.” Of course he found simple houses,
+simple people, barren moors, heather-clad mountains, wild flowers, calm
+lakes, plain, rugged simplicity.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The world is too much with us; late and soon,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Little we see in Nature that is ours.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">This sea, that bares her bosom to the moon,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The winds that will be howling at all hours,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For this, for everything, we are out of tune;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Have sight of Proteus, rising from the sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Wordsworth.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="On_His_Blindness" id="On_His_Blindness"></a>On His Blindness.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Sonnet on His Blindness” (by John Milton, 1608-74). This is the most
+stately and pathetic sonnet in existence. The soul enduring enforced
+idleness and loss of power without repining. Inactivity made to serve a
+higher end.</p>
+<blockquote><p>
+“All service ranks the same with God!<br>
+There is no first or last.”<br>
+</p></blockquote>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When I consider how my light is spent<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And that one talent which is death to hide,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lodg’d with me useless, though my soul more bent<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To serve therewith my Maker, and present<br></span>
+<span class="i2">My true account, lest He, returning, chide;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I fondly ask: but Patience, to prevent<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Either man’s work, or His own gifts; who best<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best; His state<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And post o’er land and ocean without rest;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They also serve who only stand and wait.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">John Milton.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="She_Was_a_Phantom_of_Delight" id="She_Was_a_Phantom_of_Delight"></a>She Was a Phantom of Delight.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“She Was a Phantom of Delight” (by William Wordsworth, 1770-1850) is
+included here because it is a picture of woman as she should be, not
+made dainty by finery, but by fine ideals&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>
+“And not too good<br>
+For human nature’s daily food.”<br>
+</p></blockquote>
+</div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She was a Phantom of delight<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When first she gleamed upon my sight;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A lovely Apparition, sent<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To be a moment’s ornament;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like Twilight’s, too, her dusky hair:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But all things else about her drawn<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From May-time and the cheerful Dawn.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A dancing Shape, an Image gay,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To haunt, to startle, and waylay.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I saw her upon nearer view,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A Spirit, yet a Woman too!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her household motions light and free,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And steps of virgin liberty;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A countenance in which did meet<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet records, promises as sweet;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A Creature not too bright or good<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For human nature’s daily food;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For transient sorrows, simple wiles,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And now I see with eye serene<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The very pulse of the machine;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A Being breathing thoughtful breath,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A Traveller between life and death:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The reason firm, the temperate will,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A perfect Woman, nobly planned,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To warn, to comfort, and command;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet a Spirit still, and bright,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With something of angelic light.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Wordsworth.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Elegy_Written_in_a_Country_Churchyard" id="Elegy_Written_in_a_Country_Churchyard"></a>Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (Gray, 1716-71). I once drove
+from Windsor Castle through Eton, down the long hedge-bound road which
+passes the estate of William Penn’s descendants to Stoke <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: This is usually spelt 'Poges'.">Pogis</ins>, the
+little churchyard where this poem was written. They were trimming a
+great yew-tree under which Gray was said to have written this poem. The
+scene is one of peace and quiet. The “elegy” was a favourite form of
+poem with the ancients, but Gray is said to have reached the climax
+among poets in this style of verse. The great line of the poem is:</p>
+<blockquote><p>
+“The path of glory leads but to the grave.”<br>
+</p></blockquote>
+<p>It would almost seem that poetry has for its greatest mission the
+lesson of a proper humility.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The plowman homeward plods his weary way,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And leaves the world to darkness and to me.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And all the air a solemn stillness holds,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow’r<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The moping owl does to the moon complain<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of such as, wandering near her secret bow’r,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Molest her ancient solitary reign.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Each in his narrow cell forever laid,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The swallow twitt’ring from the straw-built shed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Or busy housewife ply her evening care:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">No children run to lisp their sire’s return,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How jocund did they drive their team afield!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">How bow’d the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The short and simple annals of the Poor.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Await alike th’ inevitable hour.<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The paths of glory lead but to the grave.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Forgive, ye Proud, th’ involuntary fault<br></span>
+<span class="i2">If Memory to these no trophies raise,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where thro’ the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Can storied urn or animated bust<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Or Flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hands that the rod of empire might have sway’d,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And froze the genial current of the soul.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Full many a gem of purest ray serene,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And waste its sweetness on the desert air.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The little tyrant of his fields withstood;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Th’ applause of listening senates to command,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The threats of pain and ruin to despise,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And read their history in a nation’s eyes,<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride<br></span>
+<span class="i2">With incense, kindled at the Muse’s flame.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Along the cool sequester’d vale of life<br></span>
+<span class="i2">They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet e’en those bones from insult to protect<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Some frail memorial still erected nigh,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With uncouth rhimes and shapeless sculpture deck’d,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Their name, their years, spelt by th’ unlettered Muse,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The place of fame and elegy supply.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And many a holy text around she strews<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That teach the rustic moralist to die.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">This pleasing anxious being e’er resigned,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor cast one longing, ling’ring look behind?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On some fond breast the parting soul relies,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Some pious drops the closing eye requires;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">E’en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">E’en in our ashes live their wonted fires.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For thee, who, mindful of th’ unhonour’d dead,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“There at the foot of yonder nodding beech<br></span>
+<span class="i2">That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His listless length at noon-tide would he stretch,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And pore upon the brook that babbles by.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“One morn I miss’d him on the custom’d hill,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Another came; nor yet beside the rill,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“The next with dirges due in sad array<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Slow thro’ the church-way path we saw him borne.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Graved on the stone beneath yon ag&egrave;d thorn.”<br></span>
+</div>
+<h4>THE EPITAPH.</h4>
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth<br></span>
+<span class="i2">A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fair Science frown’d not on his humble birth,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And Melancholy mark’d him for her own.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Heaven did a recompense as largely send:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He gave to Mis’ry all he had, a tear:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">He gain’d from Heav’n (’twas all he wish’d) a friend.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No farther seek his merits to disclose,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">(There they alike in trembling hope repose,)<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The bosom of his Father and his God.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Thomas Gray.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Rabbi_Ben_Ezra" id="Rabbi_Ben_Ezra"></a>Rabbi Ben Ezra</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Rabbi Ben Ezra” (by Robert Browning, 1812-89). Youth is for dispute
+and age for counsel; each year, each period of a man’s life is but the
+necessary step to the next. Youth is an uncertain thing to bank on.</p>
+<blockquote><p>
+“Grow old along with me!<br>
+The best is yet to be,<br>
+The last of life for which the first was made.”<br>
+</p></blockquote>
+<p>“Rabbi Ben Ezra” is a plea for each period in life. Aspiration is the
+keynote.</p>
+<blockquote><p>
+“ ... Trust God; see all, nor be afraid!”<br>
+</p></blockquote>
+</div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Grow old along with me!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">The best is yet to be,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The last of life, for which the first was made:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Our times are in His hand<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Who saith, “A whole I plann’d,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Youth shows but half; trust God: see all nor be afraid!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Not that, amassing flowers,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Youth sigh’d, “Which rose make ours,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Which lily leave and then as best recall?”<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Not that, admiring stars,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">It yearn’d, “Nor Jove, nor Mars;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Not for such hopes and fears<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Annulling youth’s brief years,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Rather I prize the doubt<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Low kinds exist without,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Finish’d and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Poor vaunt of life indeed,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Were man but formed to feed<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On joy, to solely seek and find and feast:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Such feasting ended, then<br></span>
+<span class="i8">As sure an end to men;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-cramm’d beast?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Rejoice we are allied<br></span>
+<span class="i8">To That which doth provide<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And not partake, effect and not receive!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">A spark disturbs our clod;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Nearer we hold of God<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Then, welcome each rebuff<br></span>
+<span class="i8">That turns earth’s smoothness rough,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Each sting, that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Be our joys three parts pain!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Strive, and hold cheap the strain;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">For thence,&mdash;a paradox<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Which comforts while it mocks,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">What I aspired to be,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">And was not, comforts me:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A brute I might have been, but would not sink i’ the scale.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">What is he but a brute<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Whose flesh has soul to suit,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To man, propose this test&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Thy body at its best,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Yet gifts should prove their use:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">I own the Past profuse<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of power each side, perfection every turn:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Eyes, ears took in their dole,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Brain treasured up the whole:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Should not the heart beat once “How good to live and learn?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Not once beat “Praise be Thine!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">I see the whole design,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I, who saw power, see now love perfect too:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Perfect I call Thy plan:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Thanks that I was a man!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Maker, remake, complete,&mdash;I trust what Thou shalt do!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">For pleasant is this flesh,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Our soul, in its rose-mesh<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Pull’d ever to the earth, still yearns for rest;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Would we some prize might hold<br></span>
+<span class="i8">To match those manifold<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Possessions of the brute,&mdash;gain most, as we did best!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Let us not always say,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">“Spite of this flesh to-day<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As the bird wings and sings,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Let us cry, “All good things<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Therefore I summon age<br></span>
+<span class="i8">To grant youth’s heritage,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Life’s struggle having so far reached its term:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Thence shall I pass, approved<br></span>
+<span class="i8">A man, for aye removed<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the developed brute; a god though in the germ.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">And I shall thereupon<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Take rest, ere I be gone<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Once more on my adventure brave and new:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Fearless and unperplex’d,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">When I wage battle next,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What weapons to select, what armour to indue.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Youth ended, I shall try<br></span>
+<span class="i8">My gain or loss thereby;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">And I shall weigh the same,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Give life its praise or blame:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">For note, when evening shuts,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">A certain moment cuts<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The deed off, calls the glory from the gray:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">A whisper from the west<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Shoots&mdash;“Add this to the rest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Take it and try its worth: here dies another day.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So, still within this life,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Though lifted o’er its strife,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">“This rage was right i’ the main,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">That acquiescence vain:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Future I may face now I have proved the Past”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">For more is not reserved<br></span>
+<span class="i8">To man, with soul just nerved<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To act to-morrow what he learns to-day:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Here, work enough to watch<br></span>
+<span class="i8">The Master work, and catch<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool’s true play.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">As it was better, youth<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Should strive, through acts uncouth,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Toward making, than repose on aught found made:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">So, better, age, exempt<br></span>
+<span class="i8">From strife, should know, than tempt<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Further. Thou waitedest age: wait death nor be afraid!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Enough now, if the Right<br></span>
+<span class="i8">And Good and Infinite<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">With knowledge absolute,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Subject to no dispute<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Be there, for once and all,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Sever’d great minds from small,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Announced to each his station in the Past!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Was I, the world arraigned,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Were they, my soul disdain’d,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Now, who shall arbitrate?<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Ten men love what I hate,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Ten, who in ears and eyes<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Match me: we all surmise,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Not on the vulgar mass<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Call’d “work,” must sentence pass,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Things done, that took the eye and had the price;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">O’er which, from level stand,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">The low world laid its hand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">But all, the world’s coarse thumb<br></span>
+<span class="i8">And finger fail’d to plumb,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So pass’d in making up the main account;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">All instincts immature,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">All purposes unsure,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That weigh’d not as his work, yet swell’d the man’s amount:<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Thoughts hardly to be pack’d<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Into a narrow act,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fancies that broke through language and escaped,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">All I could never be,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">All, men ignored in me,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Ay, note that Potter’s wheel,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">That metaphor! and feel<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Thou, to whom fools propound,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">When the wine makes its round,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Fool! All that is, at all,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Lasts ever, past recall;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">What enter’d into thee,<br></span>
+<span class="i8"><i>That</i> was, is, and shall be:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Time’s wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">He fix’d thee ’mid this dance<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Of plastic circumstance,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Machinery just meant<br></span>
+<span class="i8">To give thy soul its bent,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impress’d.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">What though the earlier grooves<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Which ran the laughing loves<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Around thy base, no longer pause and press?<br></span>
+<span class="i8">What though, about thy rim,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Scull-things in order grim<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Look not thou down but up!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">To uses of a cup,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The festal board, lamp’s flash and trumpet’s peal,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">The new wine’s foaming flow,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">The master’s lips aglow!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou, heaven’s consummate cup, what need’st thou with earth’s wheel?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">But I need, now as then,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Thee, God, who mouldest men;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And since, not even while the whirl was worst<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Did I,&mdash;to the wheel of life<br></span>
+<span class="i8">With shapes and colours rife,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bound dizzily,&mdash;mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">So, take and use Thy work:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Amend what flaws may lurk,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What strain o’ the stuff, what warpings past the aim!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">My times be in Thy hand!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Perfect the cup as plann’d!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest age approve of youth, and death complete the same!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Browning.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Prospice" id="Prospice"></a>Prospice.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Prospice,” by Robert Browning (1812-89), is the greatest death song
+ever written. It is a battle-song and a p&aelig;an of victory.</p>
+<blockquote><p>
+“The journey is done, the summit attained,<br>
+And the strong man must go.”<br>
+“I would hate that Death bandaged my eyes and forebore,<br>
+And bade me creep past.”<br>
+“No! let me taste the whole of it”<br>
+“The reward of all.”<br>
+</p></blockquote>
+<p>This poem is included in this book because these lines are enough to
+reconcile any one to any fate.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fear death?&mdash;to feel the fog in my throat,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">The mist in <i>my</i> face,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When the snows begin, and the blasts denote<br></span>
+<span class="i8">I am nearing the place,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The power of the night, the press of the storm,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">The post of the foe;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Yet the strong man must go:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the journey is done and the summit attained,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">And the barriers fall,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Though a battle’s to fight ere a guerdon be gained,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">The reward of it all.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I was ever a fighter, so&mdash;one fight more.<br></span>
+<span class="i8">The best and the last!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">And bade me creep past.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers<br></span>
+<span class="i8">The heroes of old,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrears<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Of pain, darkness, and cold.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">The black minute’s at end.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the elements’ rage, the fiend-voices that rave<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Shall dwindle, shall blend,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Then a light, then thy breast,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">And with God be the rest!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Browning.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Recessional" id="Recessional"></a>Recessional.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>The “Recessional” (by Rudyard Kipling, 1865-) is one of the most
+popular poems of this century. It is a warning to an age and a nation
+drunk with power, a rebuke to materialistic tendencies and
+boastfulness, a protest against pride.</p>
+<blockquote><p>
+“Reverence is the master-key of knowledge.”<br>
+</p></blockquote>
+</div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">God of our fathers, known of old&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Lord of our far-flung battle-line&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath whose awful Hand we hold<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Dominion over palm and pine&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest we forget&mdash;lest we forget!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The tumult and the shouting dies&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">The captains and the kings depart&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">An humble and a contrite heart.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest we forget&mdash;lest we forget!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Far-called our navies melt away&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">On dune and headland sinks the fire&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo, all our pomp of yesterday<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest we forget&mdash;lest we forget!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If, drunk with sight of power, we loose<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Such boasting as the Gentiles use<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Or lesser breeds without the Law&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest we forget&mdash;lest we forget!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For heathen heart that puts her trust<br></span>
+<span class="i2">In reeking tube and iron shard&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All valiant dust that builds on dust,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">And guarding calls not Thee to guard&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For frantic boast and foolish word,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord! Amen.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Ozymandias_of_Egypt" id="Ozymandias_of_Egypt"></a>Ozymandias of Egypt.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Ozymandias of Egypt,” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). This sonnet
+is a rebuke to the insolent pride of kings and empires. It is extremely
+picturesque. It finds a place here because more elderly scholars of
+good judgment are pleased with it. I remember an old gray-haired
+scholar in Chicago who often recited it to his friends merely because
+it touched his fancy.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I met a traveller from an antique land<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell that its sculptor well those passions read<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And on the pedestal these words appear:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nothing beside remains. Round the decay<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The lone and level sands stretch far away.”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Percy Bysshe Shelley.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Mortality" id="Mortality"></a>Mortality.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Mortality” (by William Knox, 1789-1825) is always quoted as Lincoln’s
+favourite poem.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He passes from life to his rest in the grave.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Be scattered around and together be laid;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the young and the old, and the low and the high,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The child that a mother attended and loved,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The mother that infant’s affection that proved,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The husband that mother and infant that blessed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Each, all, are away to their dwelling of rest.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shone beauty and pleasure,&mdash;her triumphs are by;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the memory of those that beloved her and praised<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Are alike from the minds of the living erased.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The hand of the king that the scepter hath borne,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The brow of the priest that the miter hath worn,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The herdsman who climbed with his goats to the steep,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The beggar that wandered in search of his bread,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Have faded away like the grass that we tread.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The saint that enjoyed the communion of heaven,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The sinner that dared to remain unforgiven,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So the multitude goes, like the flower and the weed<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That wither away to let others succeed;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So the multitude comes, even those we behold,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To repeat every tale that hath often been told.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For we are the same that our fathers have been;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We see the same sights that our fathers have seen,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We drink the same stream, and we feel the same sun,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And we run the same course that our fathers have run.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The thoughts we are thinking, our fathers would think;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the death we are shrinking from, they too would shrink;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But it speeds from the earth like a bird on the wing.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They loved, but their story we cannot unfold;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers may come;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They enjoyed, but the voice of their gladness is dumb.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They died, ay! they died! and we things that are now,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who make in their dwellings a transient abode,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Meet the changes they met on their pilgrimage road.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea! hope and despondence, and pleasure and pain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Are mingled together like sunshine and rain;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the smile and the tear, and the song and the dirge,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">’Tis the wink of an eye, ’tis the draught of a breath,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">William Knox.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="On_First_Looking_Into_Chapmans_Homer" id="On_First_Looking_Into_Chapmans_Homer"></a>On First Looking Into Chapman’s “Homer.”</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“On First Looking Into Chapman’s 'Homer,’” by John Keats (1795-1821).
+The last four lines of this sonnet form the most tremendous climax in
+literature. The picture is as vivid as if done with a brush. Every
+great book, every great poem is a new world, an undiscovered country.
+Every learned person is a whole territory, a universe of new thought.
+Every one who does anything with a heart for it, every specialist every
+one, however simple, who is strenuous and genuine, is a “new
+discovery.” Let us give credit to the smallest planet that is true to
+its own orbit.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Round many western islands have I been<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oft of one wide expanse had I been told<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet did I never breathe its pure serene<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then felt I like some watcher of the skies<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When a new planet swims into his ken;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He stared at the Pacific&mdash;and all his men<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Look’d at each other with a wild surmise&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Silent, upon a peak in Darien.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">John Keats.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Herveacute_Riel" id="Herveacute_Riel"></a>Herv&eacute; Riel.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“Herv&eacute; Riel” (by Robert Browning, 1812-89) is a poem for older boys.
+Here is a hero who does a great deed simply as a part of his day’s
+work. He puts no value on what he has done, because he could have done
+no other way.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Did the English fight the French&mdash;woe to France!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">With the English fleet in view.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">’Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Close on him fled, great and small,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Twenty-two good ships in all;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">And they signalled to the place,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">“Help the winners of a race!<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Get us guidance, give us harbour, take us quick&mdash;or, quicker still,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Here’s the English can and will!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leaped on board:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to pass?” laughed they;<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred and scored,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall the <i>Formidable</i> here, with her twelve and eighty guns,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Trust to enter where ’tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And with flow at full beside?<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Now ’tis slackest ebb of tide.<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Reach the mooring! Rather say,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">While rock stands or water runs,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Not a ship will leave the bay!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Then was called a council straight;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Brief and bitter the debate:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Here’s the English at our heels; would you have them take in tow<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All that’s left us of the fleet, linked together stern and bow,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">For a prize to Plymouth Sound?&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Better run the ships aground!”<br></span>
+<span class="i8">(Ended Damfreville his speech.)<br></span>
+<span class="i8">“Not a minute more to wait!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Let the captains all and each<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the beach!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">France must undergo her fate.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">“Give the word!”&mdash;But no such word<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Was ever spoke or heard;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all these&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A captain? A lieutenant? A mate&mdash;first, second, third?<br></span>
+<span class="i8">No such man of mark, and meet<br></span>
+<span class="i8">With his betters to compete!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But a simple Breton sailor pressed by Tourville for the fleet&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A poor coasting pilot he, Herv&eacute; Riel, the Croisiekese.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And “What mockery or malice have we here?” cries Herv&eacute; Riel:<br></span>
+<span class="i2">“Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, fools, or rogues?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">’Twixt the offing here and Gr&egrave;ve where the river disembogues?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying’s for?<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Morn and eve, night and day.<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Have I piloted your bay,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor.<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were worse than fifty Hogues!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me there’s a way!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Only let me lead the line,<br></span>
+<span class="i10">Have the biggest ship to steer,<br></span>
+<span class="i10">Get this <i>Formidable</i> clear,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Make the others follow mine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know well,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Right to Solidor past Gr&egrave;ve,<br></span>
+<span class="i10">And there lay them safe and sound;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">And if one ship misbehave,<br></span>
+<span class="i10">&mdash;Keel so much as grate the ground,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, I’ve nothing but my life,&mdash;here’s my head!” cries Herv&eacute; Riel.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not a minute more to wait<br></span>
+<span class="i8">“Steer us in, then, small and great!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!” cried its chief.<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Captains, give the sailor place!<br></span>
+<span class="i10">He is Admiral, in brief.<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Still the north wind, by God’s grace!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">See the noble fellow’s face<br></span>
+<span class="i8">As the big ship, with a bound,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Clears the entry like a hound,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide sea’s profound!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">See, safe through shoal and rock,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">How they follow in a flock,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Not a spar that comes to grief!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">The peril, see, is past,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">All are harboured to the last,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And just as Herv&eacute; Riel hollas “Anchor!”&mdash;sure as fate,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Up the English come&mdash;too late!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">So, the storm subsides to calm:<br></span>
+<span class="i10">They see the green trees wave<br></span>
+<span class="i8">On the heights o’erlooking Gr&egrave;ve.<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Hearts that bled are stanched with balm,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">“Just our rapture to enhance,<br></span>
+<span class="i10">Let the English rake the bay,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Gnash their teeth and glare askance<br></span>
+<span class="i10">As they cannonade away!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Rance!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How hope succeeds despair on each Captain’s countenance!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Out burst all with one accord,<br></span>
+<span class="i10">“This is Paradise for Hell!<br></span>
+<span class="i10">Let France, let France’s King<br></span>
+<span class="i10">Thank the man that did the thing!”<br></span>
+<span class="i8">What a shout, and all one word,<br></span>
+<span class="i10">“Herv&eacute; Riel!”<br></span>
+<span class="i8">As he stepped in front once more,<br></span>
+<span class="i10">Not a symptom of surprise<br></span>
+<span class="i10">In the frank blue Breton eyes,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Just the same man as before.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Then said Damfreville, “My friend,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">I must speak out at the end,<br></span>
+<span class="i10">Though I find the speaking hard.<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Praise is deeper than the lips:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">You have saved the King his ships,<br></span>
+<span class="i10">You must name your own reward.<br></span>
+<span class="i8">’Faith, our sun was near eclipse!<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Demand whate’er you will,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">France remains your debtor still.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ask to heart’s content and have! or my name’s not Damfreville.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Then a beam of fun outbroke<br></span>
+<span class="i8">On the bearded mouth that spoke,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">As the honest heart laughed through<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Those frank eyes of Breton blue:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">“Since I needs must say my say,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Since on board the duty’s done,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it but a run?&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Since ’tis ask and have, I may&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i10">Since the others go ashore&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Come! A good whole holiday!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That he asked and that he got,&mdash;nothing more.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Name and deed alike are lost:<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Not a pillar nor a post<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell;<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Not a head in white and black<br></span>
+<span class="i8">On a single fishing smack,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack<br></span>
+<span class="i2">All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell.<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Go to Paris: rank on rank<br></span>
+<span class="i10">Search the heroes flung pell-mell<br></span>
+<span class="i8">On the Louvre, face and flank!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">You shall look long enough ere you come to Herv&eacute; Riel.<br></span>
+<span class="i8">So, for better and for worse,<br></span>
+<span class="i8">Herv&eacute; Riel, accept my verse!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In my verse, Herv&eacute; Riel, do thou once more<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Save the squadron, honour France, love thy wife the Belle Aurore!<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Robert Browning.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Problem" id="The_Problem"></a>The Problem.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Problem” (by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-80) is quoted from one end
+of the world to the other. Emerson teaches one lesson above all others,
+that each soul must work out for itself its latent force, its own
+individual expression, and that with a “sad sincerity.” “The bishop of
+the soul” can do no more.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I like a church; I like a cowl;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I love a prophet of the soul;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And on my heart monastic aisles<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet not for all his faith can see<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Would I that cowl&egrave;d churchman be.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Why should the vest on him allure,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Which I could not on me endure?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not from a vain or shallow thought<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His awful Jove young Phidias brought;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Never from lips of cunning fell<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The thrilling Delphic oracle;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Out from the heart of nature rolled<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The burdens of the Bible old;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The litanies of nations came,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the volcano’s tongue of flame,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Up from the burning core below,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The canticles of love and woe:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The hand that rounded Peter’s dome<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And groined the aisles of Christian Rome<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wrought in a sad sincerity;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Himself from God he could not free;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He builded better than he knew;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The conscious stone to beauty grew.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Knowst thou what wove yon woodbird’s nest<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of leaves and feathers from her breast?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Painting with morn each annual cell?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Or how the sacred pine-tree adds<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To her old leaves new myriads?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Such and so grew these holy piles,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While love and terror laid the tiles.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As the best gem upon her zone,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And Morning opes with haste her lids<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To gaze upon the Pyramids;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er England’s abbeys bends the sky,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As on its friends, with kindred eye;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For out of Thought’s interior sphere<br></span>
+<span class="i0">These wonders rose to upper air;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And Nature gladly gave them place,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Adopted them into her race,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And granted them an equal date<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With Andes and with Ararat.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">These temples grew as grows the grass;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Art might obey, but not surpass.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The passive Master lent his hand<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To the vast soul that o’er him planned;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the same power that reared the shrine<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ever the fiery Pentecost<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Girds with one flame the countless host,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Trances the heart through chanting choirs,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And through the priest the mind inspires.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The word unto the prophet spoken<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Was writ on tables yet unbroken;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The word by seers or sibyls told,<br></span>
+<span class="i0"><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original had a page break here: a stanza break may not have been intended.">In groves of oak, or fanes of gold.</ins><br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Still floats upon the morning wind,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Still whispers to the willing mind.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">One accent of the Holy Ghost<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The heedless world hath never lost.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I know what say the fathers wise,&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Book itself before me lies,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he who blent both in his line,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The younger Golden Lips or mines,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">His words are music in my ear,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I see his cowl&egrave;d portrait dear;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet, for all his faith could see,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I would not the good bishop be.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Ralph Waldo Emerson.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="To_America" id="To_America"></a>To America.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“To America,” included by permission of the Poet Laureate, is a good
+poem and a great poem. It is a keen thrust at the common practice of
+teaching American children to hate the English of these days on account
+of the actions of a silly old king dead a hundred years. Alfred Austin
+deserves great credit for this poem.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">What is the voice I hear<br></span>
+<span class="i6">On the winds of the western sea?<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Sentinel, listen from out Cape Clear<br></span>
+<span class="i6">And say what the voice may be.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis a proud free people calling loud to a people proud and free.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">And it says to them: “Kinsmen, hail!<br></span>
+<span class="i6">We severed have been too long.<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Now let us have done with a worn-out tale&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i6">The tale of an ancient wrong&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And our friendship last long as our love doth and be stronger than death is strong.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Answer them, sons of the self-same race,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">And blood of the self-same clan;<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Let us speak with each other face to face<br></span>
+<span class="i6">And answer as man to man,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And loyally love and trust each other as none but free men can.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Now fling them out to the breeze,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Shamrock, Thistle, and Rose,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">And the Star-spangled Banner unfurl with these&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i6">A message to friends and foes<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherever the sails of peace are seen and wherever the war-wind blows&mdash;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">A message to bond and thrall to wake,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">For wherever we come, we twain,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">The throne of the tyrant shall rock and quake,<br></span>
+<span class="i6">And his menace be void and vain;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For you are lords of a strong land and we are lords of the main.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Yes, this is the voice of the bluff March gale;<br></span>
+<span class="i6">We severed have been too long,<br></span>
+<span class="i4">But now we have done with a worn-out tale&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i6">The tale of an ancient wrong&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And our friendship last long as love doth last and stronger than death is strong.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Alfred Austin.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_English_Flag" id="The_English_Flag"></a>The English Flag.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>It is quite true that the English flag stands for freedom the world
+over. Wherever it floats almost any one is safe, whether English or
+not.</p></div>
+
+<p>[Above the portico the Union Jack remained fluttering in the flames for
+some time, but ultimately when it fell the crowds rent the air with
+shouts, and seemed to see significance in the incident.&mdash;<i>Daily
+Papers</i>.]</p>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Winds of the World, give answer? They are whimpering to and fro&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And what should they know of England who only England know?&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the English Flag!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Must we borrow a clout from the Boer&mdash;to plaster anew with dirt?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">An Irish liar’s bandage, or an English coward’s shirt?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">We may not speak of England; her Flag’s to sell or share.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What is the Flag of England? Winds of the World, declare!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The North Wind blew:&mdash;“From Bergen my steel-shod van-guards go;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I chase your lazy whalers home from the Disko floe;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">By the great North Lights above me I work the will of God,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That the liner splits on the ice-field or the Dogger fills with cod.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I barred my gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ere the spirit passed.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“The lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long Arctic night,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the Northern Light:<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my bergs to dare,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye have but my drifts to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The South Wind sighed:&mdash;“From The Virgins my mid-sea course was ta’en<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Over a thousand islands lost in an idle main,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the sea-egg flames on the coral and the long-backed breakers croon<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Strayed amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I waked the palms to laughter&mdash;I tossed the scud in the breeze&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag was flown.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I have wrenched it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp on the Horn;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I have chased it north to the Lizard&mdash;ribboned and rolled and torn;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I have spread its fold o’er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“My basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it is there!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The East Wind roared:&mdash;“From the Kuriles, the Bitter Seas, I come,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And me men call the Home-Wind, for I bring the English home.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Look&mdash;look well to your shipping! By the breath of my mad typhoon<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I swept your close-packed Praya and beached your best at Kowloon!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“The reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I raped your richest roadstead&mdash;I plundered Singapore!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Never the lotos closes, never the wild-fowl wake,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But a soul goes out on the East Wind that died for England’s sake&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Because on the bones of the English the English Flag is stayed.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-ass knows.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my sun to dare,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye have but my sands to travel. Go forth, for it is there!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The West Wind called:&mdash;“In squadrons the thoughtless galleons fly<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That bear the wheat and cattle lest street-bred people die.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They make my might their porter, they make my house their path,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Till I loose my neck from their rudder and whelm them all in my wrath.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I draw the gliding fog-bank as a snake is drawn from the hole;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They bellow one to the other, the frightened ship-bells toll,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For day is a drifting terror till I raise the shroud with my breath,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And they see strange bows above them and the two go locked to death.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“But whether in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag goes by.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“The dead dumb fog hath wrapped it&mdash;the frozen dews have kissed&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The naked stars have seen it, a fellow-star in the mist.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my breath to dare,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye have but my waves to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!”<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Man_With_the_Hoe" id="The_Man_With_the_Hoe"></a>The Man With the Hoe.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Man With the Hoe” is purely an American product, and every
+American ought to be proud of it, for we want no such type allowed to
+be developed in this country as the low-browed peasant of France. This
+poem is a stroke of genius. The story goes that it so offended a modern
+plutocrat that he offered a reward of $10,000 to any one who could
+write an equally good poem in rebuttal. “The Man With the Hoe” has won
+for Edwin Markham the title of “Poet Laureate of the Labouring
+Classes.”</p></div>
+
+<h3><span class="subtitle">WRITTEN AFTER SEEING THE PAINTING BY MILLET.</span></h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>God made man in His own image, in the image of God made He
+him.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Genesis.</span></p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The emptiness of ages in his face,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And on his back the burden of the world.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who made him dead to rapture and despair,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To have dominion over sea and land;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To feel the passion of Eternity?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf<br></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no shape more terrible than this&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">More filled with signs and portents for the soul&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">More fraught with menace to the universe.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What gulfs between him and the seraphim!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Slave of the wheel of labour, what to him<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What the long reaches of the peaks of song,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Plundered, profaned, and disinherited,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Cries protest to the Judges of the World,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A protest that is also prophecy.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Is this the handiwork you give to God,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How will you ever straighten up this shape;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Touch it again with immortality;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Give back the upward looking and the light;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rebuild in it the music and the dream;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Make right the immemorial infamies,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How will the future reckon with this Man?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How answer his brute question in that hour<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How will it be with kingdoms and with kings&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With those who shaped him to the thing he is&mdash;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">When this dumb Terror shall reply to God,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">After the silence of the centuries?<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Edwin Markham.</span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Song_of_Myself" id="Song_of_Myself"></a>Song of Myself.</h3>
+
+<div class="pre_poem"><p>“The Song of Myself” is one of Walt Whitman’s (1819-92) most
+characteristic poems. I love the swing and the stride of his great long
+lines. I love his rough-shod way of trampling down and kicking out of
+the way the conventionalities that spring up like poisonous mushrooms
+to make the world a vast labyrinth of petty “proprieties” until
+everything is nasty. I love the oxygen he pours on the world. I love
+his genius for brotherliness, his picture of the Negro with rolling
+eyes and the firelock in the corner. These excerpts are some of his
+best lines.</p></div>
+
+<table class="poem"><tr><td><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I celebrate myself, and sing myself,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And what I assume you shall assume,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I loafe and invite my soul,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hoping to cease not till death.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original reads 'hail or'.">harbor</ins> for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nature without check with original energy.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Have you practised so long to learn to read?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">You shall possess the good of the earth and sun (there are millions of suns left),<br></span>
+<span class="i0">You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A child said, “<i>What is the grass?</i>” fetching it to me with full hands;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Or, I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A scented gift and remembrance designedly dropt,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Bearing the owner’s name some way in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say, “<i>Whose?</i>”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill’d game,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Falling asleep on the gathered leaves with my dog and gun by my side.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle and scud,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from the deck.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The boatman and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I tucked my trouser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d feet,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And gave him a room that entered from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and passed north,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I had him sit next me at table, my firelock lean’d in the corner.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I understand the large hearts of heroes,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The courage of present times and all times,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch and was faithful of days and faithful of nights,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And chalked in large letters on a board, “<i>Be of good cheer, we will not desert you</i>”;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How he followed with them and tack’d with them three days and would not give it up,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How he saved the drifting company at last,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How the lank loose-gown’d women looked when boated from the side of their prepared graves,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipp’d unshaved men;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I am the man, I suffered, I was there.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The disdain and calmness of martyrs,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The mother of old, condemned for a witch, burned with dry wood, her children gazing on,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original reads 'pounded'.">hounded</ins> slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence blowing, covered with sweat.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn’d with the ooze of my skin,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I fall on the weeds and stones,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I say to any man or woman, “Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Others will punctually come forever and ever.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Listener up there! What have you to confide in me?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who has done his day’s work? Who will soonest be through with his supper?<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Who wishes to walk with me?<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.<br></span>
+</div></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h2>
+<table class="az">
+ <tr>
+ <td><a href="#IX_A">A</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_B">B</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_C">C</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_D">D</a></td>
+ <td>E</td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_F">F</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_G">G</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_H">H</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_I">I</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_J">J</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_K">K</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_L">L</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_M">M</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td><a href="#IX_N">N</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_O">O</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_P">P</a></td>
+ <td>Q</td>
+ <td>R</td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_S">S</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_T">T</a></td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_U">U</a></td>
+ <td>V</td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_W">W</a></td>
+ <td>X</td>
+ <td><a href="#IX_Y">Y</a></td>
+ <td>Z</td>
+ </tr>
+</table>
+
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_A" id="IX_A"></a>A barking sound the shepherd hears, <a href="#Fidelity">120</a>
+</li>
+<li>Abide with me! fast falls the eventide, <a href="#Abide_With_Me">223</a>
+</li>
+<li>Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase), <a href="#Abou_Ben_Adhem">89</a>
+</li>
+<li>A chieftain to the Highlands bound, <a href="#Lord_Ullins_Daughter">105</a>
+</li>
+<li>Across the lonely beach, <a href="#The_Sandpiper">71</a>
+</li>
+<li>A life on the ocean wave, <a href="#A_Life_on_the_Ocean_Wave">85</a>
+</li>
+<li>Alone I walked the ocean strand, <a href="#A_Name_in_the_Sand">256</a>
+</li>
+<li>A nightingale that all day long, <a href="#The_Nightingale_and_the_Glow-worm">34</a>
+</li>
+<li>A supercilious nabob of the East, <a href="#A_Modest_Wit">165</a>
+</li>
+<li>At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, <a href="#The_Revenge">246</a>
+</li>
+<li>At midnight in his guarded tent, <a href="#Marco_Bozzaris">128</a>
+</li>
+<li>A traveller on <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem reads 'a' not 'the'.">the</ins> dusty road, <a href="#Song_of_Life">48</a>
+</li>
+<li>A well there is in the west country, <a href="#The_Well_of_St_Keyne">180</a>
+</li>
+<li>Ay, tear her tattered ensign down, <a href="#Old_Ironsides">53</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_B" id="IX_B"></a>Behind him lay the gray Azores, <a href="#Columbus">169</a>
+</li>
+<li>Beneath the low-hung night cloud, <a href="#The_Three_Bells_of_Glasgow">67</a>
+</li>
+<li>Bird of the wilderness, <a href="#The_Skylark">302</a>
+</li>
+<li>Blow, blow, thou winter wind, <a href="#Ingratitude">58</a>
+</li>
+<li>Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans, <a href="#The_Man_With_the_Hoe">342</a>
+</li>
+<li>Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies, <a href="#The_Tournament">110</a>
+</li>
+<li>Buttercups and daisies, <a href="#Buttercups_and_Daisies">51</a>
+</li>
+<li>By the shores of Gitche Gumee, <a href="#Hiawathas_Childhood">79</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_C" id="IX_C"></a>Come, let us plant the apple-tree, <a href="#The_Planting_of_the_Apple-Tree">211</a>
+</li>
+<li>Come, dear children, let us away, <a href="#The_Forsaken_Merman">260</a>
+</li>
+<li>“Courage!” he said, and pointed toward the land, <a href="#The_Lotos-Eaters">231</a>
+</li>
+<li>Cupid and my Campasbe played, <a href="#Cupid_and_My_Campasbe">235</a>
+</li>
+<li>Cupid once upon a bed, <a href="#Cupid_Stung">234</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_D" id="IX_D"></a>Down in a green and shady bed, <a href="#The_Violet">27</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_F" id="IX_F"></a><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem reads 'Farewell, farewell!'.">Farewell! Farewell!</ins> But this I tell, <a href="#He_Prayeth_Best">5</a>
+</li>
+<li>Fear death?&mdash;to feel the fog in my throat, <a href="#Prospice">320</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_G" id="IX_G"></a>“Give us a song!” the soldiers cried, <a href="#The_Song_in_Camp">64</a>
+</li>
+<li>God of our fathers, known of old, <a href="#Recessional">321</a>
+</li>
+<li>Goe, soule, the bodie’s guest, <a href="#The_Lye">283</a>
+</li>
+<li>Grow old along with me, <a href="#Rabbi_Ben_Ezra">312</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_H" id="IX_H"></a>Hail to thee, blithe spirit, <a href="#Ode_to_a_Skylark">268</a>
+</li>
+<li>Half a league, half a league, <a href="#The_Charge_of_the_Light_Brigade">107</a>
+</li>
+<li>Happy the man whose wish and care, <a href="#Solitude">273</a>
+</li>
+<li>Hats off! <a href="#The_Flag_Goes_By">133</a>
+</li>
+<li>Heaven is not reached at a single bound, <a href="#Heaven_Is_Not_Reached_at_a_Single_Bound">117</a>
+</li>
+<li>How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, <a href="#The_Old_Oaken_Bucket">288</a>
+</li>
+<li>“How I should like a birthday!” said the child, <a href="#Stevensons_Birthday">164</a>
+</li>
+<li>How happy is he born and taught, <a href="#A_Happy_Life">220</a>
+</li>
+<li>How sleep the brave, who sing to rest, <a href="#How_Sleep_the_Brave">133</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_I" id="IX_I"></a>I am monarch of all I survey, <a href="#The_Solitude_of_Alexander_Selkirk">190</a>
+</li>
+<li>I celebrate myself, and sing myself, <a href="#Song_of_Myself">344</a>
+</li>
+<li>I chatter, chatter, as I flow, <a href="#The_Brook">153</a>
+</li>
+<li>I come, I come! ye have called me long, <a href="#The_Voice_of_Spring">259</a>
+</li>
+<li>If I had but two little wings, <a href="#If_I_Had_But_Two_Little_Wings">21</a>
+</li>
+<li>I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, <a href="#My_Shadow">9</a>
+</li>
+<li>I heard last night a little child go singing, <a href="#From_Casa_Guidi_Windows">222</a>
+</li>
+<li>I like a church: I like a cowl, <a href="#The_Problem">333</a>
+</li>
+<li>“I’ll tell you how the leaves came down,” <a href="#How_the_Leaves_Came_Down">12</a>
+</li>
+<li>I met a traveller from an antique land, <a href="#Ozymandias_of_Egypt">322</a>
+</li>
+<li>In her ear he whispers gaily, <a href="#The_Lord_of_Burleigh">75</a>
+</li>
+<li>In the name of the Empress of India, make way, <a href="#The_Overland-Mail">125</a>
+</li>
+<li>I remember, I remember, <a href="#I_Remember_I_Remember">159</a>
+</li>
+<li>I shot an arrow into the air, <a href="#The_Arrow_and_the_Song">3</a>
+</li>
+<li>“Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”&mdash;ay, it is He, <a href="#Jesus_the_Carpenter">114</a>
+</li>
+<li>I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he, <a href="#How_They_Brought_the_Good_News_from_Ghent_to_Aix">173</a>
+</li>
+<li>Is there, for honest poverty, <a href="#For_a_That">151</a>
+</li>
+<li>It is not growing like a tree, <a href="#The_Noble_Nature">60</a>
+</li>
+<li>It was a summer’s evening, <a href="#The_Battle_of_Blenheim">117</a>
+</li>
+<li>It was our war-ship <i>Clampherdown</i>, <a href="#The_Ballad_of_the_Clampherdown">154</a>
+</li>
+<li>It was the schooner <i>Hesperus</i>, <a href="#The_Wreck_of_the_Hesperus">138</a>
+</li>
+<li>It was the time when lilies blow, <a href="#Lady_Clare">72</a>
+</li>
+<li>I wandered lonely as a cloud, <a href="#I_Wandered_Lonely_as_a_Cloud">82</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_J" id="IX_J"></a>John Anderson, my jo, John, <a href="#John_Anderson">274</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_K" id="IX_K"></a>King Francis was a hearty king and loved a royal sport, <a href="#The_Glove_and_the_Lions">184</a>
+</li>
+<li>Krinken was a little child, <a href="#Krinken">162</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_L" id="IX_L"></a>Lars Porsena of Clusium, <a href="#Horatius_at_the_Bridge">193</a>
+</li>
+<li>Lead kindly light, amid th’ encircling gloom, <a href="#Lead_Kindly_Light">224</a>
+</li>
+<li>Let dogs delight to bark and bite, <a href="#Let_Dogs_Delight_to_Bark_and_Bite">4</a>
+</li>
+<li>Life! I know not what thou art, <a href="#Life_I_Know_Not_What_Thou_Art">299</a>
+</li>
+<li>Little drops of water, <a href="#Little_Things">5</a>
+</li>
+<li>Little orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay, <a href="#Little_Orphant_Annie">54</a>
+</li>
+<li>Little <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Poem starts these words with capital letters.">white lily</ins>, <a href="#Little_White_Lily">10</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_M" id="IX_M"></a>“Make way for liberty!” he cried, <a href="#Arnold_von_Winkleried">296</a>
+</li>
+<li>Maxwelton braes are bonnie, <a href="#Annie_Laurie">226</a>
+</li>
+<li>Merrily swinging on brier and weed, <a href="#Robert_of_Lincoln">44</a>
+</li>
+<li>Methought I heard a butterfly, <a href="#The_Butterfly_and_the_Bee">42</a>
+</li>
+<li>’Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, <a href="#Home_Sweet_Home">220</a>
+</li>
+<li>Mine be a cot beside the hill, <a href="#A_Wish">272</a>
+</li>
+<li>My country ’tis of thee, <a href="#America">228</a>
+</li>
+<li>My fairest child, I have no song to give you, <a href="#A_Farewell">21</a>
+</li>
+<li>My good blade carves the casques of men, <a href="#Sir_Galahad">253</a>
+</li>
+<li>My heart leaps up when I behold, <a href="#The_RainbowW">28</a>
+</li>
+<li>My little M&auml;dchen found one day, <a href="#A_Chrysalis">149</a>
+</li>
+<li>My mind to me a kingdom is, <a href="#Contentment">286</a>
+</li>
+<li>My soul is sailing through the sea, <a href="#Barnacles">219</a>
+</li>
+<li>Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, <a href="#On_First_Looking_Into_Chapmans_Homer">326</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_N" id="IX_N"></a>Nae shoon to hide her tiny taes, <a href="#The_Babie">4</a>
+</li>
+<li>No stir in the air, no stir in the sea, <a href="#The_Inchcape_Rock">145</a>
+</li>
+<li>Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, <a href="#The_Burial_of_Sir_John_Moore_at_Corunna">176</a>
+</li>
+<li>Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are, <a href="#Ivry">179</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_O" id="IX_O"></a>O, a dainty plant is the ivy green, <a href="#The_Ivy_Green">59</a>
+</li>
+<li>O Captain! my Captain, our fearful trip is done, <a href="#O_Captain_My_Captain">57</a>
+</li>
+<li>Of all the woodland creatures, <a href="#The_Flying_Squirrel">60</a>
+</li>
+<li>Oft in the stilly night, <a href="#The_Light_of_Other_Days">266</a>
+</li>
+<li>Oh where! and oh where! is your Highland laddie gone, <a href="#The_Bluebell_of_Scotland">20</a>
+</li>
+<li>Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the West, <a href="#Lochinvar">103</a>
+</li>
+<li>Old Grimes is dead; that good old man, <a href="#Old_Grimes">47</a>
+</li>
+<li>“O Mary, go and call the cattle home”, <a href="#The_Sands_of_Dee">271</a>
+</li>
+<li>O, may I join the choir invisible, <a href="#The_Choir_Invisible">303</a>
+</li>
+<li>Once a dream did wave a shade, <a href="#A_Dream">116</a>
+</li>
+<li>Once there was a little boy, <a href="#The_Boy_Who_Never_Told_a_Lie">19</a>
+</li>
+<li>Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, <a href="#The_Raven">289</a>
+</li>
+<li>On Linden, when the sun was low, <a href="#Hohenlinden">134</a>
+</li>
+<li>On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, <a href="#Herveacute_Riel">326</a>
+</li>
+<li>Out of the clover and blue-eyed grass, <a href="#Driving_Home_the_Cows">160</a>
+</li>
+<li>Over the hill the farm-boy goes, <a href="#Farm-Yard_Song">90</a>
+</li>
+<li>O! <ins class="correction" title="Poem has a comma after 'say'.">say</ins> can you see, by the dawn’s early light, <a href="#The_Star-Spangled_Banner">31</a>
+</li>
+<li>O why should the spirit of mortal be proud, <a href="#Mortality">323</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_P" id="IX_P"></a>Pussy can sit by the fire and sing, <a href="#Playing_Robinson_Crusoe">8</a>
+</li>
+<li>Pibroch of Donuil Dhu, <a href="#Gathering_Song_of_Donald_Dhu">126</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_S" id="IX_S"></a>Said the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem starts 'Wind' and 'Moon' with capital letters.">wind to the moon</ins>, “I will blow you out,”<a href="#The_Wind_and_the_Moon">111</a>
+</li>
+<li>Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State, <a href="#The_Ship_of_State">227</a>
+</li>
+<li>Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled, <a href="#Bannockburn">142</a>
+</li>
+<li>See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, <a href="#Polonius_Advice">301</a>
+</li>
+<li>Serene I fold my hands and wait, <a href="#My_Own_Shall_Come_to_Me">267</a>
+</li>
+<li>Shed no tear! O shed no tear, <a href="#Fairy_Song">50</a>
+</li>
+<li>She dwelt among the untrodden ways, <a href="#Lucy">272</a>
+</li>
+<li>She was a <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem starts this word with a capital letter.">phantom</ins> of delight, <a href="#She_Was_a_Phantom_of_Delight">305</a>
+</li>
+<li>Speak! speak! thou fearful guest, <a href="#The_Skeleton_in_Armour">240</a>
+</li>
+<li>Stand! the ground’s your own, my braves!, <a href="#Warrens_Address_to_the_American_Soldiers">63</a>
+</li>
+<li>Sunset and evening star, <a href="#Crossing_the_Bar">124</a>
+</li>
+<li>Sweet and low, sweet and low, <a href="#Sweet_and_Low">27</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_T" id="IX_T"></a>Tell me <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Poem has a comma after 'not'.">not</ins> in mournful numbers, <a href="#A_Psalm_of_Life">218</a>
+</li>
+<li>The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, <a href="#The_Destruction_of_Sennacherib">158</a>
+</li>
+<li>The boy stood on the burning deck, <a href="#Casabianca">22</a>
+</li>
+<li>The breaking waves dashed high, <a href="#The_Landing_of_the_Pilgrims">229</a>
+</li>
+<li>The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, <a href="#Elegy_Written_in_a_Country_Churchyard">306</a>
+</li>
+<li>The Frost looked forth, one still, clear night, <a href="#The_Frost">39</a>
+</li>
+<li>The gingham dog and the calico cat, <a href="#The_Duel">18</a>
+</li>
+<li>The God of Music dwelleth out of doors, <a href="#The_God_of_Music">275</a>
+</li>
+<li>The harp that once through Tara’s halls, <a href="#The_Harp_That_Once_Through_Taras_Halls">287</a>
+</li>
+<li>The nautilus and the ammonite, <a href="#The_Nautilus_and_the_Ammonite">188</a>
+</li>
+<li>The old mayor climb’d the belfry tower, <a href="#The_Brides_of_Enderby">277</a>
+</li>
+<li>The Owl and the Pussy Cat went to sea, <a href="#The_Owl_and_the_Pussy-Cat">15</a>
+</li>
+<li>The quality of mercy is not strained, <a href="#Mercy">300</a>
+</li>
+<li>There came a youth upon the earth, <a href="#The_Shepherd_of_King_Admetus">171</a>
+</li>
+<li>There came to port last Sunday night, <a href="#A_New_Arrival">152</a>
+</li>
+<li>There lay upon the ocean’s shore, <a href="#The_Finding_of_the_Lyre">148</a>
+</li>
+<li>There was a sound of revelry by night, <a href="#The_Eve_of_Waterloo">177</a>
+</li>
+<li>There was never a Queen like Balkis, <a href="#True_Royalty">7</a>
+</li>
+<li>There were three kings into the East, <a href="#John_Barleycorn">83</a>
+</li>
+<li>There were three sailors of Bristol <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem spells 'city' all in lower-case.">City</ins>, <a href="#Little_Billee">41</a>
+</li>
+<li>The splendour falls on castle walls, <a href="#The_Bugle_Song">66</a>
+</li>
+<li>The stately homes of England, <a href="#The_Homes_of_England">192</a>
+</li>
+<li>The summer and autumn had been so wet, <a href="#The_Legend_of_Bishop_Hatto">166</a>
+</li>
+<li>The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home, <a href="#My_Old_Kentucky_Home">136</a>
+</li>
+<li>The world is too much with us; late and soon, <a href="#The_World_Is_Too_Much_With_Us">304</a>
+</li>
+<li>The year’s at the spring, <a href="#Pippa">6</a>
+</li>
+<li>Thirty days hath September, <a href="#The_Days_of_the_Month">7</a>
+</li>
+<li>This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, <a href="#The_Chambered_Nautilus">122</a>
+</li>
+<li>This was the noblest Roman of them all, <a href="#A_Fragment_from_Julius_Caesar">301</a>
+</li>
+<li>’Tis the last rose of summer, <a href="#The_Last_Rose_of_Summer">225</a>
+</li>
+<li>T’other day as I was twining, <a href="#Cupid_Drowned">234</a>
+</li>
+<li>Traveller, pluck a stem of moly, <a href="#Moly">233</a>
+</li>
+<li>Triumphal <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem has a comma after 'arch'.">arch</ins> that fills the sky, <a href="#The_Rainbow">53</a>
+</li>
+<li>’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, <a href="#A_Visit_From_St_Nicholas">29</a>
+</li>
+<li>Twinkle, twinkle little star, <a href="#Twinkle_Twinkle_Little_Star">6</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_U" id="IX_U"></a>Under a spreading chestnut tree, <a href="#The_Village_Blacksmith">25</a>
+</li>
+<li>Up from the meadows rich with corn, <a href="#Barbara_Frietchie">96</a>
+</li>
+<li>Up from the South at break of day, <a href="#Sheridans_Ride">68</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_W" id="IX_W"></a>Way down upon de Swanee <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem starts this word with a capital letter.">ribber</ins>, <a href="#Old_Folks_at_Home">137</a>
+</li>
+<li>Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, <a href="#To_a_Mountain_Daisy">94</a>
+</li>
+<li>Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie, <a href="#To_a_Mouse">92</a>
+</li>
+<li>Wee Willie Winkie rins through the town, <a href="#Willie_Winkie">13</a>
+</li>
+<li>We were crowded in the cabin, <a href="#The_Captains_Daughter">23</a>
+</li>
+<li>Whatever brawls disturb the street, <a href="#Love_Between_Brothers_and_Sisters">20</a>
+</li>
+<li>What is so rare as a day in June, <a href="#June">217</a>
+</li>
+<li>What is the voice I hear, <a href="#To_America">335</a>
+</li>
+<li>What was he doing, the great god Pan, <a href="#A_Musical_Instrument">275</a>
+</li>
+<li>When cats run home and light is come, <a href="#The_Owl">40</a>
+</li>
+<li>When earth’s last picture is painted, <a href="#LEnvoi">285</a>
+</li>
+<li>When George the Third was reigning, a hundred years ago, <a href="#A_Ballad_for_a_Boy">236</a>
+</li>
+<li>When I consider how my light is spent, <a href="#On_His_Blindness">304</a>
+</li>
+<li>When Letty had scarce pass’d her third glad year, <a href="#Lettys_Globe">115</a>
+</li>
+<li>Where the pools are bright and deep, <a href="#A_Boys_Song">50</a>
+</li>
+<li>Wild was the night, yet a wilder night, <a href="#The_Death_of_Napoleon">131</a>
+</li>
+<li>Winds of the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem reads 'World, give answer?'.">world, give answer</ins>, <a href="#The_English_Flag">337</a>
+</li>
+<li>Woodman, spare that <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem has an exclamation mark after 'tree'.">tree</ins>, <a href="#Woodman_Spare_That_Tree">222</a>
+</li>
+<li>Wynken, <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem has a comma after 'Blynken'.">Blynken</ins> and Nod one night, <a href="#Wynken_Blynken_and_Nod">16</a>
+</li></ul>
+<ul class="IX">
+<li><a name="IX_Y" id="IX_Y"></a>Ye banks and braes <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Poem has the contraction 'o'' rather than 'of'.">of</ins> bonnie Doon, <a href="#The_Banks_o_Doon">265</a>
+</li>
+<li>“You are old, Father William,” the young man said, <a href="#Father_William">33</a>
+</li>
+<li>You know, we French storm’d Ratisbon, <a href="#An_Incident_of_the_French_Camp">43</a>
+</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
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+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #16436 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16436)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems Every Child Should Know, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Poems Every Child Should Know
+ The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Mary E. Burt
+
+Release Date: August 4, 2005 [EBook #16436]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Laura Wisewell and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: When the shadows are long]
+
+
+
+ POEMS
+
+ Every Child Should Know
+
+
+ EDITED BY
+ Mary E. Burt
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+ THE WHAT-EVERY-CHILD-
+ SHOULD-KNOW-LIBRARY
+
+ Published by
+ DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & CO., INC., for
+ THE PARENTS' INSTITUTE, INC.
+ Publishers of "The Parents' Magazine"
+ 9 EAST 40th STREET, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+ COPYRIGHT. 1904, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
+ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY,
+ N.Y.
+
+
+
+
+ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO PUBLISHERS AND AUTHORS
+
+
+ It sometimes happens that there are people who do not know that authors
+ are protected by copyright laws. A publisher once cited to me an
+ instance of a teacher who innocently put forth a little volume of poems
+ that she loved and admired, without asking permission of any one. Her
+ annoyance was boundless when she found that she had no right to the
+ poems.
+
+ Special permission has been obtained for each copyrighted poem in this
+ volume, and the right to publish has been purchased of the author or
+ publisher, except in those cases where the author or the publisher has,
+ for reasons of courtesy and friendship, given the permission.
+
+ In addition to the business arrangements which have been made, we wish
+ to extend our thanks and acknowledgments to those firms which have so
+ kindly allowed us to use their material.
+
+ To HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY, of Boston, we are indebted for
+ the use of the following poems: From the copyrighted works of
+ Longfellow--"The Arrow and the Song," "A Fragment of Hiawatha's
+ Childhood," "The Skeleton in Armour," "The Wreck of the
+ _Hesperus_," "The Ship of State," "The Psalm of Life," "The
+ Village Blacksmith." From Whittier--"Barbara Frietchie" and "The
+ _Three Bells_ of Glasgow." From Emerson--"The Problem." From
+ Burroughs--"My Own Shall Come to Me." From Lowell--"The Finding of
+ the Lyre," "The Shepherd of King Admetus," and a fragment of "The
+ Vision of Sir Launfal," From Holmes--"The Chambered Nautilus" and
+ "Old Ironsides." From James T. Fields--"The Captain's Daughter."
+ From Bayard Taylor--"The Song in Camp," From Celia Thaxter--"The
+ Sandpiper." From J.T. Trowbridge--"Farm-Yard Song." From Edith M.
+ Thomas--"The God of Music" and Hermes' "Moly."
+
+ To CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS we are indebted for the use of the
+ following poems: From the copyrighted works of Eugene
+ Field--"Wynken Blynken, and Nod," "Krinken," and "The Duel." From
+ Robert Louis Stevenson--"My Shadow." From James Whitcomb Riley's
+ poems--"Little Orphant Annie." From the poems of Sidney
+ Lanier--"Barnacles" and "The Tournament." From "The Poems of
+ Patriotism"--"Sheridan's Ride."
+
+ We are further indebted to CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, as well as
+ to MR. GEORGE W. CABLE, for "The New Arrival," taken from
+ "The Cable Story Book," and to MRS. KATHERINE MILLER and
+ _Scribner's Magazine_ for "Stevenson's Birthday."
+
+ To J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY we are indebted for the use of
+ "Sheridan's Ride," from the complete works of T. Buchanan Read.
+
+ To HARPER & BROTHERS for the use of "Driving Home the Cows,"
+ by Kate Putnam Osgood.
+
+ To LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY, of Boston, "How the Leaves Came
+ Down," by Susan Coolidge.
+
+ To the WHITAKER & RAY COMPANY, of San Francisco, "Columbus,"
+ by Joaquin Miller, from his complete works published and
+ copyrighted by that company.
+
+ To D. APPLETON & COMPANY for "The Planting of the Apple-Tree"
+ and "Robert of Lincoln," from the complete works of William Cullen
+ Bryant; also for "Marco Bozzaris," from the works of Fitz-Greene
+ Halleck.
+
+ To the MACMILLAN COMPANY for "The Forsaken Merman," by Matthew
+ Arnold, from the complete volume of his poems published by that
+ company.
+
+ To the HOWARD UNIVERSITY PRINT, Washington, D.C., for Jeremiah
+ Rankin's little poem, "The Babie," from "Ingleside Rhaims."
+
+ To the heirs of MARY EMILY BRADLEY for "A Chrysalis."
+
+ To HENRY HOLCOMB BENNETT for "The Flag Goes By."
+
+
+
+
+ PREFACE
+
+
+ Is this another collection of stupid poems that children cannot use?
+ Will they look hopelessly through this volume for poems that suit them?
+ Will they say despairingly, "This is too long," and "That is too hard,"
+ and "I don't like that because it is not interesting"?
+
+ Are there three or four pleasing poems and are all the rest put in to
+ fill up the book? Nay, verily! The poems in this collection are those
+ that children love. With the exception of seven, they are short enough
+ for children to commit to memory without wearying themselves or losing
+ interest in the poem. If one boy learns "The Overland Mail," or "The
+ Recruit," or "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod," or "The Song in Camp," or "Old
+ Ironsides," or "I Have a Little Shadow," or "The Tournament," or "The
+ Duel," nine boys out of ten will be eager to follow him. I know because
+ I have tried it a dozen times. Every boy loves "Paul Revere's Ride"
+ (alas! I have not been able to include it), and is ambitious to learn
+ it, but only boys having a quick memory will persevere to the end. Shall
+ the slower boy be deprived of the pleasure of reading the whole poem and
+ getting its inspiring sentiment and learning as many stanzas as his mind
+ will take? No, indeed. Half of such a poem is better than none. Let the
+ slow boy learn and recite as many stanzas as he can and the boy of quick
+ memory follow him up with the rest. It does not help the slow boy's
+ memory to keep it down entirely or deprive it of its smaller activity
+ because he cannot learn the whole. Some people will invariably give the
+ slow child a very short poem. It is often better to divide a long poem
+ among the children, letting each child learn a part. The sustained
+ interest of a long poem is worth while. "The Merman," "The Battle of
+ Ivry," "Horatius at the Bridge," "Krinken," "The Skeleton in Armour,"
+"The Raven" and "Herv Riel" may all profitably be learned that way.
+ Nevertheless, the child enjoys most the poem that is just long enough,
+ and there is much to be said in favour of the selection that is adapted,
+ in length, to the average mind; for the child hesitates in the presence
+ of quantity rather than in the presence of subtle thought. I make claim
+ for this collection that it is made up of poems that the majority of
+ children will learn of their own free will. There are people who believe
+ that in the matter of learning poetry there is no "_ought_," but this is
+ a false belief. There is a _duty_, even there; for every American
+ citizen _ought_ to know the great national songs that keep alive the
+ spirit of patriotism. Children should build for their future--and get,
+ while they are children, what only the fresh imagination of the child
+ can assimilate.
+
+ They should store up an untold wealth of heroic sentiment; they should
+ acquire the habit of carrying a literary quality in their conversation;
+ they should carry a heart full of the fresh and delightful associations
+ and memories, connected with poetry hours to brighten mature years. They
+ should develop their memories while they have memories to develop.
+
+ Will the boy who took every poetry hour for a whole school year to learn
+"Henry of Navarre" ever regret it, or will the children who listened to
+ it? No. It was fresh every week and they brought fresh interest in
+ listening. The boy will always love it because he used to love it. There
+ were boys who scrambled for the right to recite "The Tournament," "The
+ Charge of the Light Brigade," "The Star-Spangled Banner," and so on. The
+ boy who was first to reach the front had the privilege. The triumph of
+ getting the chance to recite added to the zest of it. Will they ever
+ forget it?
+
+ I know Lowell's "The Finding of the Lyre." Attention, Sir Knights! See
+ who can learn it first as I say it to you. But I find that I have
+ forgotten a line of it, so you may open your books and teach it to me.
+ Now, I can recite every word of it. How much of it can you repeat from
+ memory? One boy can say it all. Nearly every child has learned the most
+ of it. Now, it will be easy for you to learn it alone. And Memory, the
+ Goddess Beautiful, will henceforth go with you to recall this happy
+ hour.
+
+ MARY E. BURT.
+
+ The John A. Browning School, 1904.
+
+
+
+
+ POEMS
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+
+ PART I
+
+ 1. The Arrow and the Song 3
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 2. The Babie 4
+ JEREMIAH EAMES RANKIN
+
+ 3. Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite 4
+ ISAAC WATTS
+
+ 4. Little Things 5
+ EBENEZER COBHAM BREWER
+
+ 5. He Prayeth Best 5
+ SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE
+
+ 6. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star 6
+ ANONYMOUS
+
+ 7. Pippa 6
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 8. The Days of the Month 7
+ AN OLD SONG
+
+ 9. True Royalty 7
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 10. Playing Robinson Crusoe 8
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 11. My Shadow 9
+ ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+ 12. Little White Lily 10
+ GEORGE MACDONALD
+
+ 13. How the Leaves Came Down 12
+ SUSAN COOLIDGE
+
+ 14. Willie Winkie 13
+ WILLIAM MILLER
+
+ 15. The Owl and the Pussy-Cat 15
+ EDWARD LEAR
+
+ 16. Wynken, Blynken, and Nod 16
+ EUGENE FIELD
+
+ 17. The Duel 18
+ EUGENE FIELD
+
+ 18. The Boy Who Never Told a Lie 19
+ ANONYMOUS
+
+ 19. Love Between Brothers and Sisters 20
+ ISAAC WATTS
+
+ 20. The Bluebell of Scotland 20
+ ANONYMOUS
+
+ 21. If I Had But Two Little Wings 21
+ SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE
+
+ 22. A Farewell 21
+ CHARLES KINGSLEY
+
+ 23. Casabianca 22
+ FELICIA HEMANS
+
+ 24. The Captain's Daughter 23
+ JAMES T. FIELDS
+
+ 25. The Village Blacksmith 25
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 26. Sweet and Low 27
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 27. The Violet 27
+ JANE TAYLOR
+
+ 28. The Rainbow (a fragment) 28
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 29. A Visit From St. Nicholas 29
+ CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE
+
+ 30. The Star-Spangled Banner 31
+ FRANCIS SCOTT KEY
+
+ 31. Father William 33
+ LEWIS CARROLL
+
+ 32. The Nightingale and the Glow-worm 34
+ WILLIAM COWPER
+
+
+ PART II
+
+ 33. The Frost 39
+ HANNAH FLAGG GOULD
+
+ 34. The Owl 40
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 35. Little Billee 41
+ WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
+
+ 36. The Butterfly and the Bee 42
+ WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES
+
+ 37. An Incident of the French Camp 43
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 38. Robert of Lincoln 44
+ WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
+
+ 39. Old Grimes 47
+ ALBERT GORTON GREENE
+
+ 40. Song of Life 48
+ CHARLES MACKAY
+
+ 41. Fairy Song 50
+ JOHN KEATS
+
+ 42. A Boy's Song 50
+ JAMES HOGG
+
+ 43. Buttercups and Daisies 51
+ MARY HOWITT
+
+ 44. The Rainbow 53
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL
+
+ 45. Old Ironsides 53
+ OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
+
+ 46. Little Orphant Annie 54
+ JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
+
+ 47. O Captain! My Captain! 57
+ WALT WHITMAN
+
+ 48. Ingratitude 58
+ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
+
+ 49. The Ivy Green 59
+ CHARLES DICKENS
+
+ 50. The Noble Nature 60
+ BEN JONSON
+
+ 51. The Flying Squirrel 60
+ MARY E. BURT
+
+ 52. Warren's Address 63
+ JOHN PIERPONT
+
+ 53. The Song in Camp 64
+ BAYARD TAYLOR
+
+ 54. The Bugle Song 66
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 55. The _Three Bells_ of Glasgow 67
+ JOHN G. WHITTIER
+
+ 56. Sheridan's Ride 68
+ THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
+
+ 57. The Sandpiper 71
+ CELIA THAXTER
+
+ 58. Lady Clare 72
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 59. The Lord of Burleigh 75
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 60. Hiawatha's Childhood 79
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 61. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud 82
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 62. John Barleycorn 83
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 63. A Life on the Ocean Wave 85
+ EPES SARGENT
+
+ 64. The Death of the Old Year 86
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 65. Abou Ben Adhem 89
+ LEIGH HUNT
+
+ 66. Farm-Yard Song 90
+ J.T. TROWBRIDGE
+
+ 67. To a Mouse 92
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 68. To a Mountain Daisy 94
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 69. Barbara Frietchie 96
+ JOHN G. WHITTIER
+
+
+ PART III
+
+ 70. Lochinvar 103
+ SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+ 71. Lord Ullin's Daughter 105
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL
+
+ 72. The Charge of the Light Brigade 107
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 73. The Tournament 110
+ SIDNEY LANIER
+
+ 74. The Wind and the Moon 111
+ GEORGE MACDONALD
+
+ 75. Jesus the Carpenter 114
+ CATHERINE C. LIDDELL
+
+ 76. Letty's Globe 115
+ CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER
+
+ 77. A Dream 116
+ WILLIAM BLAKE
+
+ 78. Heaven Is Not Reached at a Single Bound 117
+ J.G. HOLLAND
+
+ 79. The Battle of Blenheim 117
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+ 80. Fidelity 120
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 81. The Chambered Nautilus 122
+ OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
+
+ 82. Crossing the Bar 124
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 83. The Overland-Mail 125
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 84. Gathering Song of Donald Dhu 126
+ SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+ 85. Marco Bozzaris 128
+ FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
+
+ 86. The Death of Napoleon 131
+ ISAAC MCCLELLAN
+
+ 87. How Sleep the Brave 133
+ WILLIAM COLLINS
+
+ 88. The Flag Goes By 133
+ HENRY HOLCOMB BENNETT
+
+ 89. Hohenlinden 134
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL
+
+ 90. My Old Kentucky Home 136
+ STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER
+
+ 91. Old Folks at Home 137
+ STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER
+
+ 92. The Wreck of the _Hesperus_ 138
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 93. Bannockburn 142
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+
+ PART IV
+
+ 94. The Inchcape Rock 145
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+ 95. The Finding of the Lyre 148
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
+
+ 96. A Chrysalis 149
+ MARY EMILY BRADLEY
+
+ 97. For a' That 151
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 98. The New Arrival 152
+ GEORGE W. CABLE
+
+ 99. The Brook 153
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 100. The Ballad of the _Clampherdown_ 154
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 101. The Destruction of Sennacherib 158
+ LORD BYRON
+
+ 102. I Remember, I Remember 159
+ THOMAS HOOD
+
+ 103. Driving Home the Cows 160
+ KATE PUTNAM OSGOOD
+
+ 104. Krinken 162
+ EUGENE FIELD
+
+ 105. Stevenson's Birthday 164
+ KATHERINE MILLER
+
+ 106. A Modest Wit 165
+ SELLECK OSBORNE
+
+ 107. The Legend of Bishop Hatto 166
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+ 108. Columbus 160
+ JOAQUIN MILLER
+
+ 109. The Shepherd of King Admetus 171
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
+
+ 110. How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to 173
+ Aix
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 111. The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna 176
+ C. WOLFE
+
+ 112. The Eve of Waterloo 177
+ LORD BYRON
+
+ 113. Ivry 179
+ THOMAS B. MACAULAY
+
+ 114. The Glove and the Lions 184
+ LEIGH HUNT
+
+ 115. The Well of St. Keyne 186
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+ 116. The Nautilus and the Ammonite 188
+ ANONYMOUS
+
+ 117. The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk 190
+ WILLIAM COWPER
+
+ 118. The Homes of England 192
+ FELICIA HEMANS
+
+ 119. Horatius at the Bridge 193
+ THOMAS B. MACAULAY
+
+ 120. The Planting of the Apple-Tree 211
+ WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
+
+
+ PART V
+
+ 121. June 217
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
+
+ 122. A Psalm of Life 218
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 123. Barnacles 219
+ SIDNEY LANIER
+
+ 124. A Happy Life 220
+ SIR HENRY WOTTON
+
+ 125. Home, Sweet Home 220
+ JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
+
+ 126. From Casa Guidi Windows 222
+ ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
+
+ 127. Woodman, Spare That Tree! 222
+ GEORGE POPE MORRIS
+
+ 128. Abide With Me 223
+ HENRY FRANCIS LYTE
+
+ 129. Lead, Kindly Light 224
+ JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
+
+ 130. The Last Rose of Summer 225
+ THOMAS MOORE
+
+ 131. Annie Laurie 226
+ WILLIAM DOUGLAS
+
+ 132. The Ship of State 227
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 133. America 228
+ SAMUEL FRANCIS SMITH
+
+ 134. The Landing of the Pilgrims 229
+ FELICIA HEMANS
+
+ 135. The Lotos-Eaters 231
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 136. Moly 233
+ EDITH M. THOMAS
+
+ 137. Cupid Drowned 234
+ LEIGH HUNT
+
+ 138. Cupid Stung 234
+ THOMAS MOORE
+
+ 139. Cupid and My Campasbe 235
+ JOHN LYLY
+
+ 140. A Ballad for a Boy 236
+ ANONYMOUS
+
+ 141. The Skeleton in Armour 240
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 142. The _Revenge_ 246
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 143. Sir Galahad 253
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 144. A Name in the Sand 256
+ HANNAH FLAGG GOULD
+
+
+ PART VI
+
+ 145. The Voice of Spring 259
+ FELICIA HEMANS
+
+ 146. The Forsaken Merman 260
+ MATTHEW ARNOLD
+
+ 147. The Banks o' Doon 265
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 148. The Light of Other Days 266
+ THOMAS MOORE
+
+ 149. My Own Shall Come to Me 267
+ JOHN BURROUGHS
+
+ 150. Ode to a Skylark 268
+ PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
+
+ 151. The Sands of Dee 271
+ CHARLES KINGSLEY
+
+ 152. A Wish 272
+ SAMUEL ROGERS
+
+ 153. Lucy 272
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 154. Solitude 273
+ ALEXANDER POPE
+
+ 155. John Anderson 274
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 156. The God of Music 275
+ EDITH M. THOMAS
+
+ 157. A Musical Instrument 275
+ ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
+
+ 158. The Brides of Enderby 277
+ JEAN INGELOW
+
+ 159. The Lye 283
+ SIR WALTER RALEIGH
+
+ 160. L'Envoi 285
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 161. Contentment 286
+ EDWARD DYER
+
+ 162. The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls 287
+ THOMAS MOORE
+
+ 163. The Old Oaken Bucket 288
+ SAMUEL WOODWORTH
+
+ 164. The Raven 289
+ EDGAR ALLAN POE
+
+ 165. Arnold von Winkleried 296
+ JAMES MONTGOMERY
+
+ 166. Life, I Know Not What Thou Art 299
+ A.L. BARBAULD
+
+ 167. Mercy 300
+ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
+
+ 168. Polonius' Advice 301
+ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
+
+ 169. A Fragment from "Julius Csar" 301
+ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
+
+ 170. The Skylark 302
+ THOMAS HOGG
+
+ 171. The Choir Invisible 303
+ GEORGE ELIOT
+
+ 172. The World Is Too Much With Us 304
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 173. On His Blindness 304
+ JOHN MILTON
+
+ 174. She Was a Phantom of Delight 305
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 175. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 306
+ THOMAS GRAY
+
+ 176. Rabbi Ben Ezra 312
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 177. Prospice 320
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 178. Recessional 321
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 179. Ozymandias of Egypt 322
+ PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
+
+ 180. Mortality 323
+ WILLIAM KNOX
+
+ 181. On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer 326
+ JOHN KEATS
+
+ 182. Herv Riel 326
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 183. The Problem 333
+ RALPH WALDO EMERSON
+
+ 184. To America 335
+ ALFRED AUSTIN
+
+ 185. The English Flag 337
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 186. The Man With the Hoe 342
+ EDWIN MARKHAM
+
+ 187. Song of Myself 344
+ WALT WHITMAN
+
+ Index 350
+
+
+
+
+ INDEX OF AUTHORS
+
+
+ ANONYMOUS
+ Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, 6
+ The Days of the Month, 7
+ The Boy who Never Told a Lie, 19
+ The Bluebell of Scotland, 20
+ The Nautilus and the Ammonite, 188
+ A Ballad for a Boy, 236
+ ARNOLD, MATTHEW
+ The Forsaken Merman, 260
+ AUSTIN, ALFRED
+ To America, 335
+
+ BARBAULD, A.L.
+ Life, I Know Not What Thou Art, 299
+ BENNETT, HENRY HOLCOMB
+ The Flag Goes By, 133
+ BLAKE, WILLIAM
+ A Dream, 116
+ BOWLES, WILLIAM LISLE
+ The Butterfly and the Bee, 42
+ BRADLEY, MARY EMILY
+ A Chrysalis, 149
+ BREWER, EBENEZER COBHAM
+ Little Things, 5
+ BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT
+ From Casa Guidi Windows, 222
+ A Musical Instrument, 275
+ BROWNING, ROBERT
+ Pippa, 6
+ An Incident of the French Camp, 43
+ How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, 173
+ Rabbi Ben Ezra, 312
+ Prospice, 320
+ Herv Riel, 326
+ BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN
+ Robert of Lincoln, 44
+ The Planting of the Apple Tree, 211
+ BURNS, ROBERT
+ John Barleycorn, 83
+ To a Mouse, 92
+ To a Mountain Daisy, 94
+ Bannockburn, 142
+ For a' That, 151
+ The Banks o' Doon, 265
+ John Anderson, 274
+ BURROUGHS, JOHN
+ My Own Shall Come to Me, 267
+ BURT, MARY E.
+ The Flying Squirrel, 60
+ BYRON, LORD
+ The Destruction of Sennacherib, 158
+ The Eve of Waterloo, 177
+
+ CABLE, GEORGE W.
+ The New Arrival, 152
+ CAMPBELL, THOMAS
+ The Rainbow, 53
+ Lord Ullin's Daughter, 105
+ Hohenlinden, 134
+ CARROLL, LEWIS
+ Father William, 33
+ COLERIDGE, SAMUEL T.
+ He Prayeth Best, 5
+ If I Had But Two Little Wings, 21
+ COLLINS, WILLIAM
+ How Sleep the Brave, 133
+ COOLIDGE, SUSAN
+ How the Leaves Came Down, 12
+ COWPER, WILLIAM
+ The Nightingale and the Glow-worm, 34
+ The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk, 190
+
+ DICKENS, CHARLES
+ The Ivy Green, 59
+ DOUGLAS, WILLIAM
+ Annie Laurie, 226
+ DYER, EDWARD
+ Contentment, 286
+
+ ELIOT, GEORGE
+ The Choir Invisible, 303
+ EMERSON, RALPH WALDO
+ The Problem, 333
+
+ FIELD, EUGENE
+ Wynken, Blynken and Nod, 16
+ The Duel, 18
+ Krinken, 162
+ FIELDS, JAMES T.
+ The Captain's Daughter, 23
+ FOSTER, STEPHEN COLLINS
+ My Old Kentucky Home, 136
+ Old Folks at Home, 137
+
+ GOULD, HANNAH FLAGG
+ The Frost, 39
+ A Name in the Sand, 256
+ GRAY, THOMAS
+ Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, 306
+ GREENE, ALBERT GORTON
+ Old Grimes, 47
+
+ HALLECK, FITZ-GREENE
+ Marco Bozzaris, 128
+ HEMANS, FELICIA
+ Casabianca, 22
+ The Homes of England, 192
+ The Landing of the Pilgrims, 229
+ The Voice of Spring, 259
+ HOOD, THOMAS
+ I Remember, I Remember, 159
+ HOGG, JAMES
+ A Boy's Song, 50
+ The Skylark, 302
+ HOLLAND, J.G.
+ Heaven is Not Reached at a Single Bound, 117
+ HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL
+ Old Ironsides, 53
+ The Chambered Nautilus, 122
+ HOWITT, MARY
+ Buttercups and Daisies, 51
+ HUNT, LEIGH
+ Abou Ben Adhem, 89
+ The Glove and the Lions, 184
+ Cupid Drowned, 234
+
+ INGELOW, JEAN
+ The Brides of Enderby, 277
+
+ JONSON. BEN
+ The Noble Nature, 60
+
+ KEATS, JOHN
+ Fairy Song, 50
+ On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer, 326
+ KEY, FRANCIS SCOTT
+ The Star-Spangled Banner, 31
+ KINGSLEY, CHARLES
+ A Farewell, 21
+ The Sands of Dee, 271
+ KIPLING, RUDYARD
+ True Royalty, 7
+ Playing Robinson Crusoe, 8
+ The Overland Mail, 125
+ The Ballad of the Clampherdown, 154
+ L'Envoi, 285
+ Recessional, 321
+ The English Flag, 337
+ KNOX, WILLIAM
+ Mortality, 323
+
+ LANIER, SIDNEY
+ The Tournament, 110
+ Barnacles, 219
+ LEAR, EDWARD
+ The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, 15
+ LIDDELL, CATHERINE C.
+ Jesus the Carpenter, 114
+ LONGFELLOW, HENRY W.
+ The Arrow and the Song, 3
+ The Village Blacksmith, 25
+ Hiawatha's Childhood, 79
+ The Wreck of the Hesperus, 138
+ A Psalm of Life, 218
+ The Ship of State, 227
+ The Skeleton in Armour, 240
+ LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL
+ The Finding of the Lyre, 148
+ The Shepherd of King Admetus, 171
+ June, 217
+ LYLY, JOHN
+ Cupid and My Campasbe, 235
+ LYTE, HENRY FRANCIS
+ Abide With Me, 223
+
+ MACAULAY, THOMAS B.
+ Ivry, 179
+ Horatius at the Bridge, 193
+ MACDONALD, GEORGE
+ Little White Lily, 10
+ The Wind and the Moon, 111
+ MACKAY, CHARLES
+ Song of Life, 48
+ MARKHAM, EDWIN
+ The Man With the Hoe, 342
+ MCCLELLAN, ISAAC
+ The Death of Napoleon, 131
+ MILLER, JOAQUIN
+ Columbus, 169
+ MILLER, KATHERINE
+ Stevenson's Birthday, 164
+ MILLER, WILLIAM
+ Willie Winkie, 13
+ MILTON, JOHN
+ On His Blindness, 304
+ MONTGOMERY, JAMES
+ Arnold von Winkleried, 296
+ MOORE, CLEMENT CLARKE
+ A Visit from St. Nicholas, 29
+ MOORE, THOMAS
+ The Last Rose of Summer, 234
+ Cupid Stung, 234
+ The Light of Other Days, 266
+ The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls, 287
+ MORRIS, GEORGE POPE
+ Woodman, Spare That Tree, 222
+
+ NEWMAN, JOHN HENRY
+ Lead, Kindly Light, 224
+
+ OSBORNE, SELLECK
+ A Modest Wit, 165
+ OSGOOD, KATE PUTNAM
+ Driving Home the Cows, 160
+
+ PAYNE, JOHN HOWARD
+ Home, Sweet Home, 220
+ PIERPONT, JOHN
+ Warren's Address, 63
+ POE, EDGAR ALLAN
+ The Raven, 289
+ POPE, ALEXANDER
+ Solitude, 273
+
+ RALEIGH, SIR WALTER
+ The Lye, 283
+ RANKIN. JEREMIAH EAMES
+ The Babie, 4
+ READ, THOMAS BUCHANAN
+ Sheridan's Ride, 68
+ RILEY, JAMES WHITCOMB
+ Little Orphant Annie, 54
+ ROGERS, SAMUEL
+ A Wish, 272
+
+ SARGENT, EPES
+ A Life on the Ocean Wave, 85
+ SCOTT, SIR WALTER
+ Lochinvar, 103
+ The Gathering Song of Donald Dhu, 126
+ SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
+ Ingratitude, 58
+ Mercy, 300
+ Polonius' Advice, 301
+ A Fragment from Julius Csar, 301
+ SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE
+ Ode to a Skylark, 268
+ Ozymandias in the Desert, 322
+ SMITH, SAMUEL FRANCIS
+ America, 228
+ SOUTHEY, ROBERT
+ The Battle of Blenheim, 117
+ The Inchcape Rock, 145
+ The Legend of Bishop Hatto, 166
+ The Well of St. Keyne, 186
+ STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS
+ My Shadow, 9
+
+ TAYLOR, BAYARD
+ The Song in Camp, 64
+ TAYLOR, JANE
+ The Violet, 27
+ TENNYSON, ALFRED
+ Sweet and Low, 27
+ The Owl, 40
+ The Bugle Song, 66
+ Lady Clare, 72
+ The Lord of Burleigh, 75
+ The Death of the Old Year, 86
+ The Charge of the Light Brigade, 107
+ Crossing the Bar, 124
+ The Brook, 153
+ The Lotos Eaters, 231
+ The REVENGE, 246
+ Sir Galahad, 253
+ THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE
+ Little Billee, 41
+ THAXTER, CELIA
+ The Sandpiper, 71
+ THOMAS, EDITH
+ Moly, 233
+ The God of Music, 275
+ TROWBRIDGE, J.T.
+ Farmyard Song, 90
+ TURNER, CHARLES TENNYSON
+ Letty's Globe, 115
+
+ WATTS, ISAAC
+ Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite, 4
+ Love Between Brothers and Sisters, 20
+ WHITMAN, WALT
+ O Captain! My Captain! 57
+ Song of Myself, 344
+ WHITTIER, JOHN G.
+ The Three Bells of Glasgow, 67
+ Barbara Frietchie, 96
+ WOLFE, C.
+ The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna, 176
+ WOODWORTH, SAMUEL
+ The Old Oaken Bucket, 288
+ WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM
+ The Rainbow (a fragment), 28
+ I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, 82
+ Fidelity, 120
+ Lucy, 272
+ The World is Too Much With Us, 304
+ She Was a Phantom of Delight, 305
+ WOTTON, SIR HENRY
+ A Happy Life, 220
+
+
+
+
+ PART I.
+
+ The Budding Moment
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ Poems That Every Child Should Know
+
+
+ THE ARROW AND THE SONG.
+
+"The Arrow and the Song," by Longfellow (1807-82), is placed first in
+ this volume out of respect to a little girl of six years who used to
+ love to recite it to me. She knew many poems, but this was her
+ favourite.
+
+ I shot an arrow into the air,
+ It fell to earth, I knew not where;
+ For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
+ Could not follow it in its flight.
+
+ I breathed a song into the air,
+ It fell to earth, I knew not where;
+ For who has sight so keen and strong
+ That it can follow the flight of song?
+
+ Long, long afterward, in an oak
+ I found the arrow, still unbroke;
+ And the song, from beginning to end,
+ I found again in the heart of a friend.
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ THE BABIE.
+
+ I found "The Babie" in Stedman's "Anthology." It is placed in this
+ volume by permission of the poet, Jeremiah Eames Rankin, of Cleveland
+ (1828-), because it captured the heart of a ten-year-old boy whose
+ fancy was greatly moved by the two beautiful lines:
+
+ "Her face is like an angel's face,
+ I'm glad she has no wings."
+
+
+ Nae shoon to hide her tiny taes,
+ Nae stockin' on her feet;
+ Her supple ankles white as snaw,
+ Or early blossoms sweet.
+
+ Her simple dress o' sprinkled pink,
+ Her double, dimplit chin,
+ Her puckered lips, and baumy mou',
+ With na ane tooth within.
+
+ Her een sae like her mither's een,
+ Twa gentle, liquid things;
+ Her face is like an angel's face:
+ We're glad she has nae wings.
+
+ JEREMIAH EAMES RANKIN.
+
+
+ LET DOGS DELIGHT TO BARK AND BITE.
+
+"Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite," by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), and
+"Little Drops of Water," by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer (1810-97), are poems
+ that the world cannot outgrow. Once in the mind, they fasten. They were
+ not born to die.
+
+ Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
+ For God hath made them so;
+ Let bears and lions growl and fight,
+ For 'tis their nature too.
+
+ But, children, you should never let
+ Such angry passions rise;
+ Your little hands were never made
+ To tear each other's eyes.
+
+ ISAAC WATTS.
+
+
+ LITTLE THINGS.
+
+ Little drops of water,
+ Little grains of sand,
+ Make the mighty ocean
+ And the pleasant land.
+
+ Thus the little minutes,
+ Humble though they be,
+ Make the mighty ages
+ Of eternity.
+
+ EBENEZER COBHAM BREWER.
+
+
+ HE PRAYETH BEST.
+
+ These two stanzas, the very heart of that great poem, "The Ancient
+ Mariner," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), sum up the lesson of
+ this masterpiece--"Insensibility is a crime."
+
+ Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
+ To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
+ He prayeth well who loveth well
+ Both man and bird and beast.
+
+ He prayeth best who loveth best
+ All things, both great and small:
+ For the dear God who loveth us,
+ He made and loveth all.
+
+ SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE.
+
+
+ TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE STAR.
+
+ Twinkle, twinkle, little star!
+ How I wonder what you are,
+ Up above the world so high,
+ Like a diamond in the sky.
+
+ When the glorious sun is set,
+ When the grass with dew is wet,
+ Then you show your little light,
+ Twinkle, twinkle all the night.
+
+ In the dark-blue sky you keep,
+ And often through my curtains peep,
+ For you never shut your eye,
+ Till the sun is in the sky.
+
+ As your bright and tiny spark
+ Guides the traveller in the dark,
+ Though I know not what you are,
+ Twinkle, twinkle, little star!
+
+
+ PIPPA.
+
+"Spring's at the Morn," from "Pippa Passes," by Robert Browning
+ (1812-89), has become a very popular stanza with little folks. "All's
+ right with the world" is a cheerful motto for the nursery and
+ schoolroom.
+
+ The year's at the spring,
+ The 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!
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ THE DAYS OF THE MONTH.
+
+"The Days of the Month" is a useful bit of doggerel that we need all
+ through life. It is anonymous.
+
+ Thirty days hath September,
+ April, June, and November;
+ February has twenty-eight alone.
+ All the rest have thirty-one,
+ Excepting leap-year--that's the time
+ When February's days are twenty-nine.
+
+ OLD SONG.
+
+
+ TRUE ROYALTY.
+
+"True Royalty" and "Playing Robinson Crusoe" are pleasing stanzas from
+"The Just So Stories" of Rudyard Kipling (1865-).
+
+ There was never a Queen like Balkis,
+ From here to the wide world's end;
+ But Balkis talked to a butterfly
+ As you would talk to a friend.
+
+ There was never a King like Solomon,
+ Not since the world began;
+ But Solomon talked to a butterfly
+ As a man would talk to a man.
+
+ _She_ was Queen of Sabaea--
+ And _he_ was Asia's Lord--
+ But they both of 'em talked to butterflies
+ When they took their walks abroad.
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+ (In "The Just So Stories.")
+
+
+ PLAYING ROBINSON CRUSOE.
+
+ Pussy can sit by the fire and sing,
+ Pussy can climb a tree,
+ Or play with a silly old cork and string
+ To 'muse herself, not me.
+ But I like Binkie, my dog, because
+ He knows how to behave;
+ So, Binkie's the same as the First Friend was,
+ And I am the Man in the Cave.
+
+ Pussy will play Man-Friday till
+ It's time to wet her paw
+ And make her walk on the window-sill
+ (For the footprint Crusoe saw);
+ Then she fluffles her tail and mews,
+ And scratches and won't attend.
+ But Binkie will play whatever I choose,
+ And he is my true First Friend.
+
+ Pussy will rub my knees with her head,
+ Pretending she loves me hard;
+ But the very minute I go to my bed
+ Pussy runs out in the yard.
+
+ And there she stays till the morning light;
+ So I know it is only pretend;
+ But Binkie, he snores at my feet all night,
+ And he is my Firstest Friend!
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+ (In "The Just So Stories.")
+
+
+ MY SHADOW.
+
+"My Shadow," by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94), is one of the most
+ popular short poems extant. I have taught it to a great many very young
+ boys, and not one has ever tried to evade learning it. Older pupils
+ like it equally well.
+
+ I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
+ And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
+ He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
+ And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
+
+ The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow--
+ Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
+ For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
+ And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.
+
+ He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
+ And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
+ He stays so close beside me, he's a coward, you can see;
+ I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
+
+ One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
+ I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
+ But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
+ Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
+
+ ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+ LITTLE WHITE LILY.
+
+ This poem (George Macdonald, 1828-) finds a place in this volume
+ because, as a child, I loved it. It completely filled my heart, and has
+ made every member of the lily family dear to me. George Macdonald's
+ charming book, "At the Back of the North Wind," also was my wonder and
+ delight.
+
+ Little White Lily
+ Sat by a stone,
+ Drooping and waiting
+ Till the sun shone.
+ Little White Lily
+ Sunshine has fed;
+ Little White Lily
+ Is lifting her head.
+
+ Little White Lily
+ Said: "It is good
+ Little White Lily's
+ Clothing and food."
+ Little White Lily
+ Dressed like a bride!
+ Shining with whiteness,
+ And crownd beside!
+
+ Little White Lily
+ Drooping with pain,
+ Waiting and waiting
+ For the wet rain.
+ Little White Lily
+ Holdeth her cup;
+ Rain is fast falling
+ And filling it up.
+
+ Little White Lily
+ Said: "Good again,
+ When I am thirsty
+ To have the nice rain.
+ Now I am stronger,
+ Now I am cool;
+ Heat cannot burn me,
+ My veins are so full."
+
+ Little White Lily
+ Smells very sweet;
+ On her head sunshine,
+ Rain at her feet.
+ Thanks to the sunshine,
+ Thanks to the rain,
+ Little White Lily
+ Is happy again.
+
+ GEORGE MACDONALD.
+
+
+ HOW THE LEAVES CAME DOWN.
+
+"How the Leaves Came Down," by Susan Coolidge (1845-), appeals to
+ children because it helps to reconcile them to going to bed. "I go to
+ bed by day" is one of the crosses of childhood.
+
+ "I'll tell you how the leaves came down,"
+ The great Tree to his children said:
+ "You're getting sleepy, Yellow and Brown,
+ Yes, very sleepy, little Red.
+ It is quite time to go to bed."
+
+ "Ah!" begged each silly, pouting leaf,
+ "Let us a little longer stay;
+ Dear Father Tree, behold our grief!
+ 'Tis such a very pleasant day,
+ We do not want to go away."
+
+ So, for just one more merry day
+ To the great Tree the leaflets clung,
+ Frolicked and danced, and had their way,
+ Upon the autumn breezes swung,
+ Whispering all their sports among--
+
+ "Perhaps the great Tree will forget,
+ And let us stay until the spring,
+ If we all beg, and coax, and fret."
+ But the great Tree did no such thing;
+ He smiled to hear their whispering.
+
+ "Come, children, all to bed," he cried;
+ And ere the leaves could urge their prayer,
+ He shook his head, and far and wide,
+ Fluttering and rustling everywhere,
+ Down sped the leaflets through the air.
+
+ I saw them; on the ground they lay,
+ Golden and red, a huddled swarm,
+ Waiting till one from far away,
+ White bedclothes heaped upon her arm,
+ Should come to wrap them safe and warm.
+
+ The great bare Tree looked down and smiled.
+ "Good-night, dear little leaves," he said.
+ And from below each sleepy child
+ Replied, "Good-night," and murmured,
+ "It is _so_ nice to go to bed!"
+
+ SUSAN COOLIDGE.
+
+
+ WILLIE WINKIE.
+
+"Wee Willie Winkie," by William Miller (1810-72), is included in this
+ volume out of respect to an eight-year-old child who chose it from
+ among hundreds. We had one poetry hour every week, and he studied and
+ recited it with unabated interest to the end of the year.
+
+ Wee Willie Winkie rins through the town,
+ Up-stairs and doon-stairs, in his nicht-gown,
+ Tirlin' at the window, cryin' at the lock,
+ "Are the weans in their bed?--for it's now ten o'clock."
+
+ Hey, Willie Winkie! are ye comin' ben?
+ The cat's singin' gay thrums to the sleepin' hen,
+ The doug's speldered on the floor, and disna gie a cheep;
+ But here's a waukrife laddie that winna fa' asleep.
+
+ Onything but sleep, ye rogue! glow'rin' like the moon,
+ Rattlin' in an airn jug wi' an airn spoon,
+ Rumblin' tumblin' roun' about, crowin' like a cock,
+ Skirlin' like a kenna-what--wauknin' sleepin' folk.
+
+ Hey, Willie Winkie! the wean's in a creel!
+ Waumblin' aff a body's knee like a vera eel,
+ Ruggin' at the cat's lug, and ravellin' a' her thrums,--
+ Hey, Willie Winkie!--See, there he comes!
+
+ Wearie is the mither that has a storie wean,
+ A wee stumpie stoussie that canna rin his lane,
+ That has a battle aye wi' sleep before he'll close an ee;
+ But a kiss frae aff his rosy lips gies strength anew to me.
+
+ WILLIAM MILLER.
+
+
+ THE OWL AND THE PUSSY-CAT.
+
+"The Owl and the Pussy-Cat," by Edward Lear (1812-88), is placed here
+ because I once found that a timid child was much strengthened and
+ developed by learning it. It is a song that appeals to the imagination
+ of children, and they like to sing it.
+
+ The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
+ In a beautiful pea-green boat;
+ They took some honey, and plenty of money
+ Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
+ The Owl looked up to the moon above,
+ And sang to a small guitar,
+ "O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love!
+ What a beautiful Pussy you are,--
+ You are,
+ What a beautiful Pussy you are!"
+
+ Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl!
+ How wonderful sweet you sing!
+ Oh, let us be married,--too long we have tarried,--
+ But what shall we do for a ring?"
+ They sailed away for a year and a day
+ To the land where the Bong-tree grows,
+ And there in a wood a piggy-wig stood
+ With a ring in the end of his nose,--
+ His nose,
+ With a ring in the end of his nose.
+
+ "Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
+ Your ring?" Said the piggy, "I will,"
+ So they took it away, and were married next day
+ By the turkey who lives on the hill.
+ They dined upon mince and slices of quince,
+ Which they ate with a runcible spoon,
+ And hand in hand on the edge of the sand
+ They danced by the light of the moon,--
+ The moon,
+ They danced by the light of the moon.
+
+ EDWARD LEAR.
+
+
+ WYNKEN, BLYNKEN, AND NOD.
+
+"Wynken, Blynken, and Nod," by Eugene Field (1850-95), pleases
+ children, who are all by nature sailors and adventurers.
+
+ Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
+ Sailed off in a wooden shoe,--
+ Sailed on a river of crystal light
+ Into a sea of dew.
+ "Where are you going, and what do you wish?"
+ The old moon asked the three.
+ "We have come to fish for the herring-fish
+ That live in this beautiful sea;
+ Nets of silver and gold have we,"
+ Said Wynken,
+ Blynken,
+ And Nod.
+
+ The old moon laughed and sang a song,
+ As they rocked in the wooden shoe;
+ And the wind that sped them all night long
+ Ruffled the waves of dew;
+ The little stars were the herring-fish
+ That lived in the beautiful sea.
+ "Now cast your nets wherever you wish,--
+ Never afeard are we!"
+ So cried the stars to the fishermen three,
+ Wynken,
+ Blynken,
+ And Nod.
+
+ All night long their nets they threw
+ To the stars in the twinkling foam,--
+ Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,
+ Bringing the fishermen home:
+ 'Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed
+ As if it could not be;
+ And some folk thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed
+ Of sailing that beautiful sea;
+ But I shall name you the fishermen three:
+ Wynken,
+ Blynken,
+ And Nod.
+
+ Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
+ And Nod is a little head,
+ And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
+ Is a wee one's trundle-bed;
+ So shut your eyes while Mother sings
+ Of wonderful sights that be,
+ And you shall see the beautiful things
+ As you rock on the misty sea
+ Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three,
+ Wynken,
+ Blynken,
+ And Nod.
+
+ EUGENE FIELD.
+
+
+ THE DUEL.
+
+"The Duel," by Eugene Field (1850-95), is almost the most popular
+ humorous poem that has come under my notice. In making such a
+ collection as this it is not easy to find poems at once delicate,
+ witty, and graphic. I have taught "The Duel" hundreds of times, and
+ children invariably love it.
+
+ The gingham dog and the calico cat
+ Side by side on the table sat;
+ 'Twas half-past twelve, and (what do you think!)
+ Nor one nor t'other had slept a wink!
+ The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate
+ Appeared to know as sure as fate
+ There was going to be a terrible spat.
+ (_I wasn't there; I simply state
+ What was told to me by the Chinese plate_!)
+
+ The gingham dog went "bow-wow-wow!"
+ And the calico cat replied "mee-ow!"
+ The air was littered, an hour or so,
+ With bits of gingham and calico,
+ While the old Dutch clock in the chimney-place
+ Up with its hands before its face,
+ For it always dreaded a family row!
+ (_Now mind: I'm only telling you
+ What the old Dutch clock declares is true_!)
+
+ The Chinese plate looked very blue,
+ And wailed, "Oh, dear! what shall we do!"
+ But the gingham dog and the calico cat
+ Wallowed this way and tumbled that,
+ Employing every tooth and claw
+ In the awfullest way you ever saw--
+ And, oh! how the gingham and calico flew!
+ (_Don't fancy I exaggerate!
+ I got my views from the Chinese plate_!)
+
+ Next morning where the two had sat
+ They found no trace of the dog or cat;
+ And some folks think unto this day
+ That burglars stole the pair away!
+ But the truth about the cat and the pup
+ Is this: They ate each other up!
+ Now what do you really think of that!
+ (_The old Dutch clock it told me so,
+ And that is how I came to know_.)
+
+ EUGENE FIELD.
+
+
+ THE BOY WHO NEVER TOLD A LIE.
+
+"The Boy Who Never Told a Lie" (anonymous), as well as "Whatever Brawls
+ Disturb the Street," by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), are real gems. A few
+ years ago they were more in favour than the poorer verse that has been
+ put forward. But they are sure to be revived.
+
+ Once there was a little boy,
+ With curly hair and pleasant eye--
+ A boy who always told the truth,
+ And never, never told a lie.
+
+ And when he trotted off to school,
+ The children all about would cry,
+ "There goes the curly-headed boy--
+ The boy that never tells a lie."
+
+ And everybody loved him so,
+ Because he always told the truth,
+ That every day, as he grew up,
+ 'Twas said, "There goes the honest youth."
+
+ And when the people that stood near
+ Would turn to ask the reason why,
+ The answer would be always this:
+ "Because he never tells a lie."
+
+
+ LOVE BETWEEN BROTHERS AND SISTERS.
+
+ Whatever brawls disturb the street,
+ There should be peace at home;
+ Where sisters dwell and brothers meet,
+ Quarrels should never come.
+
+ Birds in their little nests agree;
+ And 'tis a shameful sight,
+ When children of one family
+ Fall out and chide and fight.
+
+ ISAAC WATTS.
+
+
+ THE BLUEBELL OF SCOTLAND.
+
+ Oh where! and oh where! is your Highland laddie gone?
+ He's gone to fight the French for King George upon the throne;
+ And it's oh! in my heart how I wish him safe at home.
+
+ Oh where! and oh where! does your Highland laddie dwell?
+ He dwells in merry Scotland at the sign of the Bluebell;
+ And it's oh! in my heart that I love my laddie well.
+
+
+ IF I HAD BUT TWO LITTLE WINGS.
+
+"If I Had But Two Little Wings," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
+ (1772-1834), is recommended by a number of teachers and school-girls.
+
+ If I had but two little wings
+ And were a little feathery bird,
+ To you I'd fly, my dear!
+ But thoughts like these are idle things
+ And I stay here.
+
+ But in my sleep to you I fly:
+ I'm always with you in my sleep!
+ The world is all one's own.
+ And then one wakes, and where am I?
+ All, all alone.
+
+ SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE.
+
+
+ A FAREWELL.
+
+"A Farewell," by Charles Kingsley (1819-75), makes it seem worth while
+ to be good.
+
+ My fairest child, I have no song to give you;
+ No lark could pipe to skies so dull and gray;
+ Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you
+ For every day.
+
+ Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
+ Do noble things, not dream them all day long:
+ And so make life, death, and that vast forever
+ One grand, sweet song.
+
+ CHARLES KINGSLEY.
+
+
+ CASABIANCA.
+
+"Casabianca," by Felicia Hemans (1793-1835), is the portrait of a
+ faithful heart, an example of unreasoning obedience. It is right that a
+ child should obey even to the death the commands of a loving parent.
+
+ The boy stood on the burning deck,
+ Whence all but him had fled;
+ The flame that lit the battle's wreck
+ Shone round him o'er the dead.
+
+ Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
+ As born to rule the storm;
+ A creature of heroic blood,
+ A proud though childlike form.
+
+ The flames rolled on--he would not go
+ Without his father's word;
+ That father, faint in death below,
+ His voice no longer heard.
+
+ He called aloud, "Say, father, say
+ If yet my task is done?"
+ He knew not that the chieftain lay
+ Unconscious of his son.
+
+ "Speak, father!" once again he cried,
+ "If I may yet be gone!"
+ And but the booming shots replied,
+ And fast the flames rolled on.
+
+ Upon his brow he felt their breath,
+ And in his waving hair;
+ And looked from that lone post of death
+ In still, yet brave despair.
+
+ And shouted but once more aloud
+ "My father! must I stay?"
+ While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud,
+ The wreathing fires made way.
+
+ They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
+ They caught the flag on high,
+ And streamed above the gallant child
+ Like banners in the sky.
+
+ Then came a burst of thunder sound--
+ The boy--oh! where was he?
+ --Ask of the winds that far around
+ With fragments strew the sea;
+
+ With mast, and helm, and pennon fair.
+ That well had borne their part--
+ But the noblest thing that perished there
+ Was that young, faithful heart.
+
+ FELICIA HEMANS.
+
+
+ THE CAPTAIN'S DAUGHTER.
+
+"The Captain's Daughter," by James T. Fields (1816-81), carries weight
+ with every young audience. It is pointed to an end that children
+ love--viz., trust in a higher power.
+
+ We were crowded in the cabin,
+ Not a soul would dare to sleep,--
+ It was midnight on the waters,
+ And a storm was on the deep.
+
+ 'Tis a fearful thing in winter
+ To be shattered by the blast,
+ And to hear the rattling trumpet
+ Thunder, "Cut away the mast!"
+
+ So we shuddered there in silence,--
+ For the stoutest held his breath,
+ While the hungry sea was roaring
+ And the breakers talked with Death.
+
+ As thus we sat in darkness,
+ Each one busy with his prayers,
+ "We are lost!" the captain shouted
+ As he staggered down the stairs.
+
+ But his little daughter whispered,
+ As she took his icy hand,
+ "Isn't God upon the ocean,
+ Just the same as on the land?"
+
+ Then we kissed the little maiden.
+ And we spoke in better cheer,
+ And we anchored safe in harbour
+ When the morn was shining clear.
+
+ JAMES T. FIELDS.
+
+ ["The 'village smithy' stood in Brattle Street, Cambridge. There came a
+ time when the chestnut-tree that shaded it was cut down, and then the
+ children of the place put their pence together and had a chair made for
+ the poet from its wood."]
+
+
+ THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH.
+
+ Longfellow (1807-82) is truly the children's poet. His poems are as
+ simple, pathetic, artistic, and philosophical as if they were intended
+ to tell the plain everyday story of life to older people. "The Village
+ Blacksmith" has been learned by thousands of children, and there is no
+ criticism to be put upon it. The age of the child has nothing whatever
+ to do with his learning it. Age does not grade children nor is poetry
+ wholly to be so graded. "Time is the false reply."
+
+ Under a spreading chestnut-tree
+ The village smithy stands;
+ The smith, a mighty man is he,
+ With large and sinewy hands,
+ And the muscles of his brawny arms
+ Are strong as iron bands.
+
+ His hair is crisp, and black, and long;
+ His face is like the tan;
+ His brow is wet with honest sweat,
+ He earns whate'er he can,
+ And looks the whole world in the face,
+ For he owes not any man.
+
+ Week in, week out, from morn till night,
+ You can hear his bellows blow;
+ You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
+ With measured beat and slow,
+ Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
+ When the evening sun is low.
+
+ And children coming home from school
+ Look in at the open door;
+ They love to see the flaming forge,
+ And hear the bellows roar,
+ And catch the burning sparks that fly
+ Like chaff from a threshing-floor.
+
+ He goes on Sunday to the church,
+ And sits among his boys;
+ He hears the parson pray and preach,
+ He hears his daughter's voice
+ Singing in the village choir,
+ And it makes his heart rejoice.
+
+ It sounds to him like her mother's voice,
+ Singing in Paradise!
+ He needs must think of her once more,
+ How in the grave she lies;
+ And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
+ A tear out of his eyes.
+
+ Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing,
+ Onward through life he goes;
+ Each morning sees some task begin,
+ Each evening sees it close;
+ Something attempted, something done,
+ Has earned a night's repose.
+
+ Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
+ For the lesson thou hast taught!
+ Thus at the flaming forge of life
+ Our fortunes must be wrought;
+ Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
+ Each burning deed and thought.
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ SWEET AND LOW.
+
+ Sweet and low, sweet and low,
+ Wind of the western sea,
+ Low, low, breathe and blow,
+ Wind of the western sea!
+ Over the rolling waters go,
+ Come from the dropping moon and blow,
+ Blow him again to me;
+ While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps.
+
+ Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,
+ Father will come to thee soon;
+ Rest, rest, on mother's breast,
+ Father will come to thee soon;
+ Father will come to his babe in the nest,
+ Silver sails all out of the west
+ Under the silver moon:
+ Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE VIOLET.
+
+"The Violet," by Jane Taylor (1783-1824), is another of those dear
+ old-fashioned poems, pure poetry and pure violet. It is included in
+ this volume out of respect to my own love for it when I was a child.
+
+ Down in a green and shady bed
+ A modest violet grew;
+ Its stalk was bent, it hung its head,
+ As if to hide from view.
+
+ And yet it was a lovely flower,
+ No colours bright and fair;
+ It might have graced a rosy bower,
+ Instead of hiding there.
+
+ Yet there it was content to bloom,
+ In modest tints arrayed;
+ And there diffused its sweet perfume,
+ Within the silent shade.
+
+ Then let me to the valley go,
+ This pretty flower to see;
+ That I may also learn to grow
+ In sweet humility.
+
+ JANE TAYLOR.
+
+
+ THE RAINBOW.
+
+ (A FRAGMENT.)
+
+"The Rainbow," by William Wordsworth (1770-1850), accords with every
+ child's feelings. It voices the spirit of all ages that would love to
+ imagine it "a bridge to heaven."
+
+ My heart leaps up when I behold
+ A rainbow in the sky;
+ So was it when my life began,
+ So is it now I am a man,
+ So be it when I shall grow old,
+ Or let me die!
+ The child is father of the man;
+ And I could wish my days to be
+ Bound each to each by natural piety.
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ A VISIT FROM ST. NICHOLAS.
+
+"A Visit From St. Nicholas," by Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863) is the
+ most popular Christmas poem ever written. It carries Santa Claus on
+ from year to year and the spirit of Santa Claus.
+
+ 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
+ Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
+ The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
+ In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
+ The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
+ While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
+ And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
+ Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,
+ When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
+ I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
+ Away to the window I flew like a flash,
+ Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
+ The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
+ Gave the luster of mid-day to objects below,
+ When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
+ But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer.
+ With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
+ I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
+ More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
+ And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:
+ "Now, _Dasher_! now, _Dancer_! now, _Prancer_ and _Vixen_!
+ On, _Comet_! on, _Cupid_! on, _Donder_ and _Blitzen_!
+ To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
+ Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"
+ As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
+ When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
+ So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
+ With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas, too.
+ And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
+ The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
+ As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
+ Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
+ He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
+ And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
+ A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
+ And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
+ His eyes--how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
+ His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
+ His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
+ And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
+ The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
+ And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
+ He had a broad face and a little round belly,
+ That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.
+ He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
+ And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
+ A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
+ Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
+ He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
+ And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
+ And laying his finger aside of his nose,
+ And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
+ He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
+ And away they all flew like the down on a thistle.
+ But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
+ "_Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night_."
+
+ CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE.
+
+
+ THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.
+
+ 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, through 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 through 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 through 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 victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
+ Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
+ Then conquer we must, for 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.
+
+ FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.
+
+
+ FATHER WILLIAM.
+
+"Father William" a parody by Lewis Carroll (1833-), is even more clever
+ than the original. Harmless fun brightens the world. It takes a real
+ genius to create wit that carries no sting.
+
+ "You are old, Father William," the young man said,
+ "And your hair has become very white;
+ And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
+ Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
+
+ "In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
+ "I feared it might injure the brain;
+ But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
+ Why, I do it again and again."
+
+ "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
+ And have grown most uncommonly fat;
+ Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door--
+ Pray, what is the reason of that?"
+
+ "In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his gray locks,
+ "I kept all my limbs very supple
+ By the use of this ointment--one shilling the box--
+ Allow me to sell you a couple."
+
+ "You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
+ For anything tougher than suet;
+ Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak:
+ Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
+
+ "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
+ And argued each case with my wife;
+ And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw
+ Has lasted the rest of my life."
+
+ "You are old," said the youth; "one would hardly suppose
+ That your eye was as steady as ever;
+ Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose--
+ What made you so awfully clever?"
+
+ "I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
+ Said his father, "don't give yourself airs!
+ Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
+ Be off, or I'll kick you down-stairs!"
+
+ LEWIS CARROLL.
+
+ ("Alice in Wonderland.")
+
+
+ THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE GLOW-WORM.
+
+"The Nightingale," by William Cowper (1731-1800), is a favourite with a
+ teacher of good taste, and I include it at her request.
+
+ A nightingale, that all day long
+ Had cheered the village with his song,
+ Nor yet at eve his note suspended,
+ Nor yet when eventide was ended,
+ Began to feel, as well he might,
+ The keen demands of appetite;
+ When, looking eagerly around,
+ He spied far off, upon the ground,
+ A something shining in the dark,
+ And knew the glow-worm by his spark;
+ So, stooping down from hawthorn top,
+ He thought to put him in his crop.
+ The worm, aware of his intent,
+ Harangued him thus, right eloquent:
+ "Did you admire my lamp," quoth he,
+ "As much as I your minstrelsy,
+ You would abhor to do me wrong,
+ As much as I to spoil your song;
+ For 'twas the self-same power divine,
+ Taught you to sing and me to shine;
+ That you with music, I with light,
+ Might beautify and cheer the night."
+ The songster heard his short oration,
+ And warbling out his approbation,
+ Released him, as my story tells,
+ And found a supper somewhere else.
+
+ WILLIAM COWPER.
+
+
+
+
+ PART II.
+
+ The Little Child
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+
+ THE FROST.
+
+"Jack Frost," by Hannah Flagg Gould (1789-1865), is perhaps a hundred
+ years old, but he is the same rollicking fellow to-day as of yore. The
+ poem puts his merry pranks to the front and prepares the way for
+ science to give him a true analysis.
+
+ The Frost looked forth, one still, clear night,
+ And whispered, "Now I shall be out of sight;
+ So through the valley and over the height,
+ In silence I'll take my way:
+ I will not go on with that blustering train,
+ The wind and the snow, the hail and the rain,
+ Who make so much bustle and noise in vain,
+ But I'll be as busy as they."
+
+ Then he flew to the mountain and powdered its crest;
+ He lit on the trees, and their boughs he dressed
+ In diamond beads--and over the breast
+ Of the quivering lake he spread
+ A coat of mail, that it need not fear
+ The downward point of many a spear
+ That hung on its margin far and near,
+ Where a rock could rear its head.
+
+ He went to the windows of those who slept,
+ And over each pane, like a fairy, crept;
+ Wherever he breathed, wherever he slept,
+ By the light of the moon were seen
+ Most beautiful things--there were flowers and trees;
+ There were bevies of birds and swarms of bees;
+ There were cities with temples and towers, and these
+ All pictured in silver sheen!
+
+ But he did one thing that was hardly fair;
+ He peeped in the cupboard, and finding there
+ That all had forgotten for him to prepare--
+ "Now just to set them a-thinking,
+ I'll bite this basket of fruit," said he,
+ "This costly pitcher I'll burst in three,
+ And the glass of water they've left for me
+ Shall '_tchich!_' to tell them I'm drinking."
+
+ HANNAH FLAGG GOULD.
+
+
+ THE OWL.
+
+ When cats run home and light is come,
+ And dew is cold upon the ground,
+ And the far-off stream is dumb,
+ And the whirring sail goes round,
+ And the whirring sail goes round;
+ Alone and warming his five wits,
+ The white owl in the belfry sits.
+
+ When merry milkmaids click the latch,
+ And rarely smells the new-mown hay,
+ And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch
+ Twice or thrice his roundelay,
+ Twice or thrice his roundelay;
+ Alone and warming his five wits,
+ The white owl in the belfry sits.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ LITTLE BILLEE.
+
+"Little Billee," by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), finds a
+ place here because it carries a good lesson good-naturedly rendered. An
+ accomplished teacher recommends it, and I recollect two young children
+ in Chicago who sang it frequently for years without getting tired of
+ it.
+
+ There were three sailors of Bristol city
+ Who took a boat and went to sea.
+ But first with beef and captain's biscuits
+ And pickled pork they loaded she.
+
+ There was gorging Jack and guzzling Jimmy,
+ And the youngest he was little Billee.
+ Now when they got so far as the Equator
+ They'd nothing left but one split pea.
+
+ Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy,
+ "I am extremely hungaree."
+ To gorging Jack says guzzling Jimmy,
+ "We've nothing left, us must eat we."
+
+ Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy,
+ "With one another, we shouldn't agree!
+ There's little Bill, he's young and tender,
+ We're old and tough, so let's eat he."
+
+ "Oh! Billy, we're going to kill and eat you,
+ So undo the button of your chemie."
+ When Bill received this information
+ He used his pocket-handkerchie.
+
+ "First let me say my catechism,
+ Which my poor mammy taught to me."
+ "Make haste, make haste," says guzzling Jimmy
+ While Jack pulled out his snickersnee.
+
+ So Billy went up to the main-topgallant mast,
+ And down he fell on his bended knee.
+ He scarce had come to the Twelfth Commandment
+ When up he jumps, "There's land I see.
+
+ "Jerusalem and Madagascar,
+ And North and South Amerikee:
+ There's the British flag a-riding at anchor,
+ With Admiral Napier, K.C.B."
+
+ So when they got aboard of the Admiral's
+ He hanged fat Jack and flogged Jimmee;
+ But as for little Bill, he made him
+ The Captain of a Seventy-three.
+
+ WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.
+
+
+ THE BUTTERFLY AND THE BEE.
+
+"The Butterfly and the Bee," by William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), is
+ recommended by some school-girls. It carries a lesson in favour of the
+ worker.
+
+ Methought I heard a butterfly
+ Say to a labouring bee:
+ "Thou hast no colours of the sky
+ On painted wings like me."
+
+ "Poor child of vanity! those dyes,
+ And colours bright and rare,"
+ With mild reproof, the bee replies,
+ "Are all beneath my care.
+
+ "Content I toil from morn to eve,
+ And scorning idleness,
+ To tribes of gaudy sloth I leave
+ The vanity of dress."
+
+ WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES.
+
+
+ AN INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP.
+
+"An Incident of the French Camp," by Robert Browning (1812-89), is
+ included in this volume out of regard to a boy of eight years who did
+ not care for many poems, but this one stirred his heart to its depths.
+
+ You know, we French storm'd Ratisbon:
+ A mile or so away
+ On a little mound, Napoleon
+ Stood on our storming-day;
+ With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
+ Legs wide, arms lock'd behind,
+ As if to balance the prone brow
+ Oppressive with its mind.
+
+ Just as perhaps he mus'd "My plans
+ That soar, to earth may fall,
+ Let once my army leader Lannes
+ Waver at yonder wall,"--
+ Out 'twixt the battery smokes there flew
+ A rider, bound on bound
+ Full-galloping; nor bridle drew
+ Until he reach'd the mound.
+
+ Then off there flung in smiling joy,
+ And held himself erect
+ By just his horse's mane, a boy:
+ You hardly could suspect--
+ (So tight he kept his lips compress'd,
+ Scarce any blood came through)
+ You look'd twice ere you saw his breast
+ Was all but shot in two.
+
+ "Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace
+ We've got you Ratisbon!
+ The Marshal's in the market-place,
+ And you'll be there anon
+ To see your flag-bird flap his vans
+ Where I, to heart's desire,
+ Perched him!" The chief's eye flashed; his plans
+ Soared up again like fire.
+
+ The chief's eye flashed; but presently
+ Softened itself, as sheathes
+ A film the mother-eagle's eye
+ When her bruised eaglet breathes;
+ "You're wounded!" "Nay," the soldier's pride
+ Touched to the quick, he said:
+ "I'm killed, Sire!" And his chief beside,
+ Smiling the boy fell dead.
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ ROBERT OF LINCOLN.
+
+"Robert of Lincoln," by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), is one of
+ the finest bird poems ever written. It finds a place here because I
+ have seen it used effectively as a memory gem in the Cook County Normal
+ School (Colonel Parker's school), year after year, and because my own
+ pupils invariably like to commit it to memory. With the child of six to
+ the student of twenty years it stands a source of delight.
+
+ Merrily swinging on brier and weed,
+ Near to the nest of his little dame,
+ Over the mountain-side or mead,
+ Robert of Lincoln is telling his name.
+ Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Snug and safe is this nest of ours,
+ Hidden among the summer flowers.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Robert of Lincoln is gayly dressed,
+ Wearing a bright, black wedding-coat;
+ White are his shoulders, and white his crest,
+ Hear him call in his merry note,
+ Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Look what a nice, new coat is mine;
+ Sure there was never a bird so fine.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife,
+ Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings,
+ Passing at home a patient life,
+ Broods in the grass while her husband sings,
+ Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Brood, kind creature, you need not fear
+ Thieves and robbers while I am here.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Modest and shy as a nun is she;
+ One weak chirp is her only note;
+ Braggart, and prince of braggarts is he,
+ Pouring boasts from his little throat,
+ Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Never was I afraid of man,
+ Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Six white eggs on a bed of hay,
+ Flecked with purple, a pretty sight:
+ There as the mother sits all day,
+ Robert is singing with all his might,
+ Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Nice good wife that never goes out,
+ Keeping house while I frolic about.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Soon as the little ones chip the shell,
+ Six wide mouths are open for food;
+ Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well,
+ Gathering seeds for the hungry brood:
+ Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ This new life is likely to be
+ Hard for a gay young fellow like me.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Robert of Lincoln at length is made
+ Sober with work, and silent with care,
+ Off is his holiday garment laid,
+ Half forgotten that merry air,
+ Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Nobody knows but my mate and I,
+ Where our nest and our nestlings lie.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Summer wanes; the children are grown;
+ Fun and frolic no more he knows;
+ Robert of Lincoln's a hum-drum drone;
+ Off he flies, and we sing as he goes,
+ Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ When you can pipe that merry old strain,
+ Robert of Lincoln, come back again.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
+
+
+ OLD GRIMES.
+
+"Old Grimes" is an heirloom, an antique gem. We learn it as a matter of
+ course for its sparkle and glow.
+
+ Old Grimes is dead; that good old man,
+ We ne'er shall see him more;
+ He used to wear a long, black coat,
+ All buttoned down before.
+
+ His heart was open as the day,
+ His feelings all were true;
+ His hair was some inclined to gray,
+ He wore it in a queue.
+
+ He lived at peace with all mankind,
+ In friendship he was true;
+ His coat had pocket-holes behind,
+ His pantaloons were blue.
+
+ He modest merit sought to find,
+ And pay it its desert;
+ He had no malice in his mind,
+ No ruffles on his shirt.
+
+ His neighbours he did not abuse,
+ Was sociable and gay;
+ He wore large buckles on his shoes,
+ And changed them every day.
+
+ His knowledge, hid from public gaze,
+ He did not bring to view,
+ Nor make a noise town-meeting days,
+ As many people do.
+
+ His worldly goods he never threw
+ In trust to fortune's chances,
+ But lived (as all his brothers do)
+ In easy circumstances.
+
+ Thus undisturbed by anxious cares
+ His peaceful moments ran;
+ And everybody said he was
+ A fine old gentleman.
+
+ ALBERT GORTON GREENE.
+
+
+ SONG OF LIFE.
+
+ A traveller on a dusty road
+ Strewed acorns on the lea;
+ And one took root and sprouted up,
+ And grew into a tree.
+ Love sought its shade at evening-time,
+ To breathe its early vows;
+ And Age was pleased, in heights of noon,
+ To bask beneath its boughs.
+ The dormouse loved its dangling twigs,
+ The birds sweet music bore--
+ It stood a glory in its place,
+ A blessing evermore.
+
+ A little spring had lost its way
+ Amid the grass and fern;
+ A passing stranger scooped a well
+ Where weary men might turn.
+ He walled it in, and hung with care
+ A ladle on the brink;
+ He thought not of the deed he did,
+ But judged that Toil might drink.
+ He passed again; and lo! the well,
+ By summer never dried,
+ Had cooled ten thousand parchd tongues,
+ And saved a life beside.
+
+ A nameless man, amid the crowd
+ That thronged the daily mart,
+ Let fall a word of hope and love,
+ Unstudied from the heart,
+ A whisper on the tumult thrown,
+ A transitory breath,
+ It raised a brother from the dust,
+ It saved a soul from death.
+ O germ! O fount! O word of love!
+ O thought at random cast!
+ Ye were but little at the first,
+ But mighty at the last.
+
+ CHARLES MACKAY.
+
+
+ FAIRY SONG.
+
+ Shed no tear! O shed no tear!
+ The flower will bloom another year.
+ Weep no more! O, weep no more!
+ Young buds sleep in the root's white core.
+ Dry your eyes! Oh! dry your eyes!
+ For I was taught in Paradise
+ To ease my breast of melodies--
+ Shed no tear.
+
+ Overhead! look overhead!
+ 'Mong the blossoms white and red--
+ Look up, look up. I flutter now
+ On this flush pomegranate bough.
+ See me! 'tis this silvery bell
+ Ever cures the good man's ill.
+ Shed no tear! O, shed no tear!
+ The flowers will bloom another year.
+ Adieu, adieu--I fly, adieu,
+ I vanish in the heaven's blue--
+ Adieu, adieu!
+
+ JOHN KEATS.
+
+
+ A BOY'S SONG
+
+"A Boy's Song," by James Hogg (1770-1835), is a sparkling poem, very
+ attractive to children.
+
+ Where the pools are bright and deep,
+ Where the gray trout lies asleep,
+ Up the river and o'er the lea,
+ That's the way for Billy and me.
+
+ Where the blackbird sings the latest,
+ Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest,
+ Where the nestlings chirp and flee,
+ That's the way for Billy and me.
+
+ Where the mowers mow the cleanest,
+ Where the hay lies thick and greenest,
+ There to trace the homeward bee,
+ That's the way for Billy and me.
+
+ Where the hazel bank is steepest,
+ Where the shadow falls the deepest,
+ Where the clustering nuts fall free.
+ That's the way for Billy and me.
+
+ Why the boys should drive away,
+ Little sweet maidens from the play,
+ Or love to banter and fight so well,
+ That's the thing I never could tell.
+
+ But this I know, I love to play,
+ Through the meadow, among the hay;
+ Up the water and o'er the lea,
+ That's the way for Billy and me.
+
+ JAMES HOGG.
+
+
+ BUTTERCUPS AND DAISIES.
+
+ Buttercups and daisies,
+ Oh, the pretty flowers,
+ Coming ere the spring time,
+ To tell of sunny hours.
+ While the tree are leafless,
+ While the fields are bare,
+ Buttercups and daisies
+ Spring up here and there.
+
+ Ere the snowdrop peepeth,
+ Ere the crocus bold,
+ Ere the early primrose
+ Opes its paly gold,
+ Somewhere on the sunny bank
+ Buttercups are bright;
+ Somewhere 'mong the frozen grass
+ Peeps the daisy white.
+
+ Little hardy flowers,
+ Like to children poor,
+ Playing in their sturdy health
+ By their mother's door,
+ Purple with the north wind,
+ Yet alert and bold;
+ Fearing not, and caring not,
+ Though they be a-cold!
+
+ What to them is winter!
+ What are stormy showers!
+ Buttercups and daisies
+ Are these human flowers!
+ He who gave them hardships
+ And a life of care,
+ Gave them likewise hardy strength
+ And patient hearts to bear.
+
+ MARY HOWITT.
+
+
+ THE RAINBOW.
+
+ Triumphal arch, that fills the sky
+ When storms prepare to part,
+ I ask not proud Philosophy
+ To teach me what thou art.
+
+ Still seem, as to my childhood's sight,
+ A midway station given,
+ For happy spirits to alight,
+ Betwixt the earth and heaven.
+
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL.
+
+
+ OLD IRONSIDES.
+
+"Old Ironsides," by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94), is learned
+ readily. Children are untouched by the commercial spirit which is the
+ reproach of this age. "Ingratitude is the vice of republics," and this
+ poem puts to shame the love of money and the spirit of ingratitude that
+ could let a national servant become a wreck.
+
+ Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
+ Long has it waved on high,
+ And many an eye has danced to see
+ That banner in the sky;
+ Beneath it rung the battle shout,
+ And burst the cannon's roar;--
+ The meteor of the ocean air
+ Shall sweep the clouds no more.
+
+ Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
+ Where knelt the vanquished foe,
+ When winds were hurrying o'er the flood
+ And waves were white below.
+ No more shall feel the victor's tread,
+ Or know the conquered knee;
+ The harpies of the shore shall pluck
+ The eagle of the sea!
+
+ O, better that her shattered hulk
+ Should sink beneath the wave;
+ Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
+ And there should be her grave;
+ Nail to the mast her holy flag,
+ Set every threadbare sail,
+ And give her to the god of storms,
+ The lightning and the gale!
+
+ OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
+
+
+ LITTLE ORPHANT ANNIE.
+
+"Little Orphant Annie" certainly earns her "board and keep" when she
+ has "washed the dishes," "swept up the crumbs," "driven the chickens
+ from the porch," and done all the other odds and ends of work on a
+ farm. The poet, James Whitcomb Riley (1853-), has shown how truly a
+ little child may be overtaxed and yet preserve a brave spirit and keen
+ imagination. Children invariably love to learn this poem.
+
+ Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay,
+ An' wash the cups and saucers up, an' brush the crumbs away,
+ An' shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth, an' sweep,
+ An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an'-keep;
+ An' all us other children, when the supper things is done,
+ We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun
+ A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about,
+ An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you
+ Ef you
+ Don't
+ Watch
+ Out!
+
+ Onc't they was a little boy wouldn't say his pray'rs--
+ An' when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs,
+ His mammy heerd him holler, an' his daddy heerd him bawl,
+ An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wasn't there at all!
+ An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby hole, an' press,
+ An' seeked him up the chimbly flue, an' ever'-wheres, I guess;
+ But all they ever found was thist his pants an' roundabout!
+ An' the Gobble-uns'll git you
+ Ef you
+ Don't
+ Watch
+ Out!
+
+ An' one time a little girl 'ud allus laugh an' grin,
+ An' make fun of ever' one, an' all her blood-an'-kin;
+ An' onc't when they was "company," an' ole folks was there,
+ She mocked 'em an' shocked 'em, an' said she didn't care!
+ An' thist as she kicked her heels, an' turn't to run an' hide,
+ They was two great big Black Things a-standin' by her side,
+ An' they snatched her through the ceilin' 'fore she
+ knowed what she's about!
+ An' the Gobble-uns'll git you
+ Ef you
+ Don't
+ Watch
+ Out!
+
+ An' little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,
+ An' the lampwick sputters, an' the wind goes woo-oo!
+ An' you hear the crickets quit, an' the moon is gray,
+ An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew is all squenched away,--
+ You better mind yer parents, an' yer teachers fond an' dear,
+ An' churish them 'at loves you, an' dry the orphant's tear,
+ An' he'p the pore an' needy ones 'at clusters all about,
+ Er the Gobble-uns'll git you
+ Ef you
+ Don't
+ Watch
+ Out!
+
+ JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.
+
+
+ O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
+
+"O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman (1819-92), is placed here out
+ of compliment to a little boy aged ten who wanted to recite it once a
+ week for a year. This song and Edwin Markham's poem on Lincoln are two
+ of the greatest tributes ever paid to that hero.
+
+ O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
+ The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
+ The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
+ While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
+ But O heart! heart! heart!
+ O the bleeding drops of red,
+ Where on the deck my Captain lies,
+ Fallen cold and dead.
+
+ O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
+ Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills,
+ For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding,
+ For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
+ Here Captain! dear father!
+ This arm beneath your head!
+ It is some dream that on the deck
+ You've fallen cold and dead.
+
+ My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
+ My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will.
+ The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
+ From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
+ Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
+ But I, with mournful tread,
+ Walk the deck my Captain lies,
+ Fallen cold and dead.
+
+ WALT WHITMAN.
+
+
+ INGRATITUDE.
+
+"Ingratitude," by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), is an incisive
+ thrust at a refined vice. It is a part of education to learn to be
+ grateful.
+
+ Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
+ Thou are not so unkind
+ As man's ingratitude;
+ Thy tooth is not so keen
+ Because thou are not seen,
+ Although thy breath be rude.
+
+ Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
+ Thou dost not bite so nigh
+ As benefits forgot;
+ Though thou the waters warp,
+ Thy sting is not so sharp
+ As friend remembered not.
+
+ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+ THE IVY GREEN.
+
+"The Ivy Green," by Charles Dickens (1812-70), is a hardy poem in
+ honour of a hardy plant. There is a wonderful ivy growing at Rhudlan,
+ in northern Wales. Its roots are so large and strong that they form a
+ comfortable seat for many persons, and no one can remember when they
+ were smaller. This ivy envelops a great castle in ruins. Every child in
+ that locality loves the old ivy. It is typical of the ivy as seen all
+ through Wales and England.
+
+ O, a dainty plant is the ivy green,
+ That creepeth o'er ruins old!
+ Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,
+ In his cell so lone and cold.
+ The walls must be crumbled, the stones decayed.
+ To pleasure his dainty whim;
+ And the mouldering dust that years have made
+ Is a merry meal for him.
+ Creeping where no life is seen,
+ A rare old plant is the ivy green.
+
+ Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,
+ And a staunch old heart has he!
+ How closely he twineth, how tight he clings
+ To his friend, the huge oak tree!
+ And slyly he traileth along the ground,
+ And his leaves he gently waves,
+ And he joyously twines and hugs around
+ The rich mould of dead men's graves.
+ Creeping where no life is seen,
+ A rare old plant is the ivy green.
+
+ Whole ages have fled, and their works decayed,
+ And nations have scattered been;
+ But the stout old ivy shall never fade
+ From its hale and hearty green.
+ The brave old plant in its lonely days
+ Shall fatten upon the past;
+ For the stateliest building man can raise
+ Is the ivy's food at last.
+ Creeping where no life is seen,
+ A rare old plant is the ivy green.
+
+ CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+
+ THE NOBLE NATURE.
+
+"The Noble Nature," by Ben Jonson (1574-1637), needs no plea. A small
+ virtue well polished is better than none.
+
+ It is not growing like a tree
+ In bulk doth make man better be;
+ Or standing long an oak, three hundred year
+ To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear
+ A lily of a day
+ Is fairer far in May,
+ Although it fall and die that night,--
+ It was the plant and flower of light.
+ In small proportions we just beauties see;
+ And in short measures life may perfect be.
+
+ BEN JONSON.
+
+
+ THE FLYING SQUIRREL.
+
+"The Flying Squirrel" is an honest account of a live creature that won
+ his way into scores of hearts by his mad pranks and affectionate ways.
+ It is enough that John Burroughs has commended the poem.
+
+ Of all the woodland creatures,
+ The quaintest little sprite
+ Is the dainty flying squirrel
+ In vest of shining white,
+ In coat of silver gray,
+ And vest of shining white.
+
+ His furry Quaker jacket
+ Is trimmed with stripe of black;
+ A furry plume to match it
+ Is curling o'er his back;
+ New curved with every motion,
+ His plume curls o'er his back.
+
+ No little new-born baby
+ Has pinker feet than he;
+ Each tiny toe is cushioned
+ With velvet cushions three;
+ Three wee, pink, velvet cushions
+ Almost too small to see.
+
+ Who said, "The foot of baby
+ Might tempt an angel's kiss"?
+ I know a score of school-boys
+ Who put their lips to this,--
+ This wee foot of the squirrel,
+ And left a loving kiss.
+
+ The tiny thief has hidden
+ My candy and my plum;
+ Ah, there he comes unbidden
+ To gently nip my thumb,--
+ Down in his home (my pocket)
+ He gently nips my thumb.
+
+ How strange the food he covets,
+ The restless, restless wight;--
+ Fred's old stuffed armadillo
+ He found a tempting bite,
+ Fred's old stuffed armadillo,
+ With ears a perfect fright.
+
+ The Lady Ruth's great bureau,
+ Each foot a dragon's paw!
+ The midget ate the nails from
+ His famous antique claw.
+ Oh, what a cruel beastie
+ To hurt a dragon's claw!
+
+ To autographic copies
+ Upon my choicest shelf,--
+ To every dainty volume
+ The rogue has helped himself.
+ My books! Oh dear! No matter!
+ The rogue has helped himself.
+
+ And yet, my little squirrel,
+ Your taste is not so bad;
+ You've swallowed Caird completely
+ And psychologic Ladd.
+ Rosmini you've digested,
+ And Kant in rags you've clad.
+
+ Gnaw on, my elfish rodent!
+ Lay all the sages low!
+ My pretty lace and ribbons,
+ They're yours for weal or woe!
+ My pocket-book's in tatters
+ Because you like it so.
+
+ MARY E. BURT.
+
+
+ WARREN'S ADDRESS TO THE AMERICAN SOLDIERS.
+
+ There is never a boy who objects to learning "Warren's Address," by
+ John Pierpont (1785-1866). To stand by one's own rights is inherent in
+ every true American. This poem is doubtless developed from Robert
+ Burns's "Bannockburn." (1785-1866.)
+
+ Stand! the ground's your own, my braves!
+ Will ye give it up to slaves?
+ Will ye look for greener graves?
+ Hope ye mercy still?
+ What's the mercy despots feel?
+ Hear it in that battle-peal!
+ Read it on yon bristling steel!
+ Ask it,--ye who will.
+
+ Fear ye foes who kill for hire?
+ Will ye to your homes retire?
+ Look behind you! they're afire!
+ And, before you, see
+ Who have done it!--From the vale
+ On they come!--And will ye quail?--
+ Leaden rain and iron hail
+ Let their welcome be!
+
+ In the God of battles trust!
+ Die we may,--and die we must;
+ But, O, where can dust to dust
+ Be consigned so well,
+ As where Heaven its dews shall shed
+ On the martyred patriot's bed,
+ And the rocks shall raise their head,
+ Of his deeds to tell!
+
+ JOHN PIERPONT.
+
+
+ THE SONG IN CAMP.
+
+"The Song in Camp" is Bayard Taylor's best effort as far as young boys
+ and girls are concerned. It is a most valuable poem. I once heard a
+ clergyman in Chicago use it as a text for his sermon. Since then "Annie
+ Laurie" has become the song of the Labour party. "The Song in Camp"
+ voices a universal feeling. (1825-78.)
+
+ "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 belched its thunder.
+
+ There was a pause. A guardsman said,
+ "We storm the forts to-morrow;
+ 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 learned
+ How English love remembers.
+
+ And once again a fire of hell
+ Rained on the Russian quarters,
+ With scream of shot, and burst of shell,
+ And bellowing of the mortars!
+
+ And Irish Nora's eyes are dim
+ For a singer, dumb and gory;
+ And English Mary mourns for him
+ Who sang of "Annie Laurie."
+
+ Sleep, soldiers! still in honoured rest
+ Your truth and valour wearing:
+ The bravest are the tenderest,--
+ The loving are the daring.
+
+ BAYARD TAYLOR.
+
+
+ THE BUGLE SONG.
+
+"The Bugle Song" (by Alfred Tennyson, 1809-90), says Heydrick, "has for
+ its central theme the undying power of human love. The music is notable
+ for sweetness and delicacy."
+
+ The splendour 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.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE "THREE BELLS" OF GLASGOW.
+
+"The Three Bells of Glasgow," by Whittier (1807-92), cannot be praised
+ too highly for its ethical value. Children always love to learn it
+ after hearing it read correctly and by one who understands and
+ appreciates it. "Stand by" is the motto. My pupils teach it to me once
+ a year and learn it themselves, too.
+
+ Beneath the low-hung night cloud
+ That raked her splintering mast
+ The good ship settled slowly,
+ The cruel leak gained fast.
+
+ Over the awful ocean
+ Her signal guns pealed out.
+ Dear God! was that Thy answer
+ From the horror round about?
+
+ A voice came down the wild wind,
+ "Ho! ship ahoy!" its cry:
+ "Our stout _Three Bells_ of Glasgow
+ Shall stand till daylight by!"
+
+ Hour after hour crept slowly,
+ Yet on the heaving swells
+ Tossed up and down the ship-lights,
+ The lights of the _Three Bells_!
+
+ And ship to ship made signals,
+ Man answered back to man,
+ While oft, to cheer and hearten,
+ The _Three Bells_ nearer ran:
+
+ And the captain from her taffrail
+ Sent down his hopeful cry.
+ "Take heart! Hold on!" he shouted,
+ "The _Three Bells_ shall stand by!"
+
+ All night across the waters
+ The tossing lights shone clear;
+ All night from reeling taffrail
+ The _Three Bells_ sent her cheer.
+
+ And when the dreary watches
+ Of storm and darkness passed,
+ Just as the wreck lurched under,
+ All souls were saved at last.
+
+ Sail on, _Three Bells_, forever,
+ In grateful memory sail!
+ Ring on, _Three Bells_ of rescue,
+ Above the wave and gale!
+
+ Type of the Love eternal,
+ Repeat the Master's cry,
+ As tossing through our darkness
+ The lights of God draw nigh!
+
+ JOHN G. WHITTIER.
+
+
+ SHERIDAN'S RIDE.
+
+ There never was a boy who did not like "Sheridan's Ride," by T.
+ Buchanan Read (1822-72). The swing and gallop in it take every boy off
+ from his feet. The children never teach this poem to me, because they
+ love to learn it at first sight. It is easily memorised.
+
+ Up from the South at break of day,
+ Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
+ The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
+ Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door,
+ The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar,
+ Telling the battle was on once more,
+ And Sheridan twenty miles away.
+
+ And wider still those billows of war
+ Thundered along the horizon's bar;
+ And louder yet into Winchester rolled
+ The roar of that red sea uncontrolled,
+ Making the blood of the listener cold
+ As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,
+ And Sheridan twenty miles away.
+
+ But there is a road from Winchester town,
+ A good, broad highway leading down;
+ And there, through the flush of the morning light,
+ A steed as black as the steeds of night
+ Was seen to pass as with eagle flight;
+ As if he knew the terrible need,
+ He stretched away with his utmost speed;
+ Hills rose and fell; but his heart was gay,
+ With Sheridan fifteen miles away.
+
+ Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering South,
+ The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth;
+ Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster,
+ Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster.
+ The heart of the steed and the heart of the master
+ Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
+ Impatient to be where the battle-field calls;
+ Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,
+ With Sheridan only ten miles away.
+
+ Under his spurning feet the road
+ Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,
+ And the landscape sped away behind
+ Like an ocean flying before the wind.
+ And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace fire,
+ Swept on, with his wild eye full of ire.
+ But lo! he is nearing his heart's desire;
+ He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray,
+ With Sheridan only five miles away.
+
+ The first that the General saw were the groups
+ Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops.
+ What was done--what to do? A glance told him both,
+ Then striking his spurs, with a terrible oath,
+ He dashed down the line, mid a storm of huzzas,
+ And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because
+ The sight of the master compelled it to pause.
+ With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;
+ By the flash of his eye, and the red nostrils' play,
+ He seemed to the whole great army to say:
+ "I have brought you Sheridan all the way
+ From Winchester down to save the day!"
+
+ Hurrah! hurrah for Sheridan!
+ Hurrah! hurrah for horse and man!
+ And when their statues are placed on high,
+ Under the dome of the Union sky,
+ The American soldiers' Temple of Fame,
+ There with the glorious General's name
+ Be it said, in letters both bold and bright:
+ "Here is the steed that saved the day,
+ By carrying Sheridan into the fight
+ From Winchester, twenty miles away!"
+
+ THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.
+
+
+ THE SANDPIPER.
+
+"The Sandpiper," by Celia Thaxter (1836-94), is placed here because a
+ goodly percentage of the children who read it want to learn it.
+
+ Across the lonely beach we flit,
+ One little sandpiper and I,
+ And fast I gather, bit by bit,
+ The scattered driftwood, bleached and dry.
+ The wild waves reach their hands for it,
+ The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,
+ As up and down the beach we flit,
+ One little sandpiper and I.
+
+ Above our heads the sullen clouds
+ Scud, black and swift, across the sky;
+ Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds
+ Stand out the white lighthouses high.
+ Almost as far as eye can reach
+ I see the close-reefed vessels fly,
+ As fast we flit along the beach,
+ One little sandpiper and I.
+
+ I watch him as he skims along,
+ Uttering his sweet and mournful cry;
+ He starts not at my fitful song,
+ Nor flash of fluttering drapery.
+ He has no thought of any wrong,
+ He scans me with a fearless eye;
+ Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong,
+ The little sandpiper and I.
+
+ Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night,
+ When the loosed storm breaks furiously?
+ My driftwood fire will burn so bright!
+ To what warm shelter canst thou fly?
+ I do not fear for thee, though wroth
+ The tempest rushes through the sky;
+ For are we not God's children both,
+ Thou, little sandpiper, and I?
+
+ CELIA THAXTER.
+
+
+ LADY CLARE.
+
+ Girls always love "Lady Clare" and "The Lord of Burleigh." They like to
+ think that it is enough to be a splendid woman without title or wealth.
+ They want to be loved, if they are loved at all, for their good hearts
+ and graces of mind. Tennyson (1809-92) makes this point repeatedly
+ through his poems.
+
+ It was the time when lilies blow
+ And clouds are highest up in air;
+ Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe
+ To give his cousin, Lady Clare.
+
+ I trow they did not part in scorn:
+ Lovers long-betroth'd were they:
+ They too will wed the morrow morn:
+ God's blessing on the day!
+
+ "He does not love me for my birth,
+ Nor for my lands so broad and fair;
+ He loves me for my own true worth,
+ And that is well," said Lady Clare.
+
+ In there came old Alice the nurse;
+ Said: "Who was this that went from thee?"
+ "It was my cousin," said Lady Clare;
+ "To-morrow he weds with me."
+
+ "O God be thank'd!" said Alice the nurse,
+ "That all comes round so just and fair:
+ Lord Ronald is heir of all your lands,
+ And you are not the Lady Clare."
+
+ "Are ye out of your mind, my nurse, my nurse,"
+ Said Lady Clare, "that ye speak so wild?"
+ "As God's above," said Alice the nurse,
+ "I speak the truth: you are my child.
+
+ "The old Earl's daughter died at my breast;
+ I speak the truth, as I live by bread!
+ I buried her like my own sweet child,
+ And put my child in her stead."
+
+ "Falsely, falsely have ye done,
+ O mother," she said, "if this be true,
+ To keep the best man under the sun
+ So many years from his due."
+
+ "Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse,
+ "But keep the secret for your life,
+ And all you have will be Lord Ronald's
+ When you are man and wife."
+
+ "If I'm a beggar born," she said,
+ "I will speak out, for I dare not lie.
+ Pull off, pull off the brooch of gold,
+ And fling the diamond necklace by."
+
+ "Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse,
+ "But keep the secret all ye can."
+ She said: "Not so: but I will know
+ If there be any faith in man."
+
+ "Nay now, what faith?" said Alice the nurse,
+ "The man will cleave unto his right,"
+ "And he shall have it," the lady replied,
+ "Tho' I should die to-night."
+
+ "Yet give one kiss to your mother dear!
+ Alas! my child, I sinn'd for thee."
+ "O mother, mother, mother," she said,
+ "So strange it seems to me.
+
+ "Yet here's a kiss for my mother dear,
+ My mother dear, if this be so,
+ And lay your hand upon my head,
+ And bless me, mother, ere I go."
+
+ She clad herself in a russet gown,
+ She was no longer Lady Clare:
+ She went by dale, and she went by down,
+ With a single rose in her hair.
+
+ The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought
+ Leapt up from where she lay,
+ Dropt her head in the maiden's hand,
+ And follow'd her all the way.
+
+ Down stept Lord Ronald from his tower:
+ "O Lady Clare, you shame your worth!
+ Why come you drest like a village maid,
+ That are the flower of the earth?"
+
+ "If I come drest like a village maid,
+ I am but as my fortunes are:
+ I am a beggar born," she said,
+ "And not the Lady Clare."
+
+ "Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald,
+ "For I am yours in word and in deed.
+ Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald,
+ "Your riddle is hard to read."
+
+ O and proudly stood she up!
+ Her heart within her did not fail:
+ She look'd into Lord Ronald's eyes,
+ And told him all her nurse's tale.
+
+ He laugh'd a laugh of merry scorn:
+ He turn'd and kiss'd her where she stood:
+ "If you are not the heiress born?
+ And I," said he, "the next in blood--
+
+ "If you are not the heiress born,
+ And I," said he, "the lawful heir,
+ We two will wed to-morrow morn,
+ And you shall still be Lady Clare."
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE LORD OF BURLEIGH.
+
+ In her ear he whispers gaily,
+ "If my heart by signs can tell,
+ Maiden, I have watched thee daily,
+ And I think thou lov'st me well."
+ She replies, in accents fainter,
+ "There is none I love like thee."
+ He is but a landscape-painter,
+ And a village maiden she.
+
+ He to lips, that fondly falter,
+ Presses his without reproof;
+ Leads her to the village altar,
+ And they leave her father's roof.
+
+ "I can make no marriage present;
+ Little can I give my wife.
+ Love will make our cottage pleasant,
+ And I love thee more than life."
+
+ They by parks and lodges going
+ See the lordly castles stand;
+ Summer woods, about them blowing,
+ Made a murmur in the land.
+
+ From deep thought himself he rouses,
+ Says to her that loves him well,
+ "Let us see these handsome houses
+ Where the wealthy nobles dwell."
+
+ So she goes by him attended,
+ Hears him lovingly converse,
+ Sees whatever fair and splendid
+ Lay betwixt his home and hers.
+
+ Parks with oak and chestnut shady,
+ Parks and order'd gardens great,
+ Ancient homes of lord and lady,
+ Built for pleasure and for state.
+
+ All he shows her makes him dearer;
+ Evermore she seems to gaze
+ On that cottage growing nearer,
+ Where they twain will spend their days.
+
+ O but she will love him truly!
+ He shall have a cheerful home;
+ She will order all things duly
+ When beneath his roof they come.
+
+ Thus her heart rejoices greatly
+ Till a gateway she discerns
+ With armorial bearings stately,
+ And beneath the gate she turns;
+ Sees a mansion more majestic
+ Than all those she saw before;
+ Many a gallant gay domestic
+ Bows before him at the door.
+
+ And they speak in gentle murmur
+ When they answer to his call,
+ While he treads with footstep firmer,
+ Leading on from hall to hall.
+
+ And while now she wanders blindly,
+ Nor the meaning can divine,
+ Proudly turns he round and kindly,
+ "All of this is mine and thine."
+
+ Here he lives in state and bounty,
+ Lord of Burleigh, fair and free.
+ Not a lord in all the county
+ Is so great a lord as he.
+ All at once the colour flushes
+ Her sweet face from brow to chin;
+ As it were with same she blushes,
+ And her spirit changed within.
+
+ Then her countenance all over
+ Pale again as death did prove:
+ But he clasp'd her like a lover,
+ And he cheer'd her soul with love.
+
+ So she strove against her weakness,
+ Tho' at times her spirits sank;
+ Shaped her heart with woman's meekness
+ To all duties of her rank;
+ And a gentle consort made he,
+ And her gentle mind was such
+ That she grew a noble lady,
+ And the people loved her much.
+ But a trouble weigh'd upon her
+ And perplex'd her, night and morn,
+ With the burden of an honour
+ Unto which she was not born.
+
+ Faint she grew and ever fainter.
+ As she murmur'd, "Oh, that he
+ Were once more that landscape-painter
+ Which did win my heart from me!"
+
+ So she droop'd and droop'd before him,
+ Fading slowly from his side;
+ Three fair children first she bore him,
+ Then before her time she died.
+
+ Weeping, weeping late and early,
+ Walking up and pacing down,
+ Deeply mourn'd the Lord of Burleigh,
+ Burleigh-house by Stamford-town.
+
+ And he came to look upon her,
+ And he look'd at her and said,
+ "Bring the dress and put it on her
+ That she wore when she was wed."
+
+ Then her people, softly treading,
+ Bore to earth her body, drest
+ In the dress that she was wed in,
+ That her spirit might have rest.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ HIAWATHA'S CHILDHOOD.
+
+"Hiawatha" needs no commendation. Hundreds of thousands of children in
+ our land know snatches of it It is a child's poem, every line of it.
+ One summer in Boston more than 50,000 people went to take a peep at the
+ poet's house. (1807-82.)
+
+ By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
+ By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
+ Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
+ Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
+ Dark behind it rose the forest,
+ Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
+ Rose the firs with cones upon them;
+ Bright before it beat the water,
+ Beat the clear and sunny water,
+ Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
+
+ There the wrinkled old Nokomis
+ Nursed the little Hiawatha,
+ Rocked him in his linden cradle,
+ Bedded soft in moss and rushes,
+ Safely bound with reindeer sinews;
+ Stilled his fretful wail by saying,
+ "Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!"
+ Lulled him into slumber, singing,
+ "Ewa-yea! my little owlet!
+ Who is this that lights the wigwam?
+ With his great eyes lights the wigwam?
+ Ewa-yea! my little owlet!"
+
+ Many things Nokomis taught him
+ Of the stars that shine in heaven;
+ Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet,
+ Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses;
+ Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits,
+ Warriors with their plumes and war-clubs,
+ Flaring far away to northward
+ In the frosty nights of winter;
+ Showed the broad, white road in heaven,
+ Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows,
+ Running straight across the heavens,
+ Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows.
+
+ At the door, on summer evenings,
+ Sat the little Hiawatha;
+ Heard the whispering of the pine-trees,
+ Heard the lapping of the water,
+ Sounds of music, words of wonder;
+ "Minnie-wawa!" said the pine-trees,
+ "Mudway-aushka!" said the water;
+ Saw the fire-fly, Wah-wah-taysee,
+ Flitting through the dusk of evening,
+ With the twinkle of its candle
+ Lighting up the brakes and bushes,
+ And he sang the song of children.
+ Sang the song Nokomis taught him:
+ "Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly,
+ Little, flitting, white-fire insect,
+ Little, dancing, white-fire creature,
+ Light me with your little candle,
+ Ere upon my bed I lay me,
+ Ere in sleep I close my eyelids!"
+
+ Saw the moon rise from the water
+ Rippling, rounding from the water,
+ Saw the flecks and shadows on it,
+ Whispered, "What is that, Nokomis?"
+ And the good Nokomis answered:
+ "Once a warrior, very angry,
+ Seized his grandmother, and threw her
+ Up into the sky at midnight;
+ Right against the moon he threw her;
+ 'Tis her body that you see there."
+
+ Saw the rainbow in the heaven,
+ In the eastern sky, the rainbow,
+ Whispered, "What is that, Nokomis?"
+ And the good Nokomis answered:
+ "Tis the heaven of flowers you see there;
+ All the wild-flowers of the forest,
+ All the lilies of the prairie,
+ When on earth they fade and perish,
+ Blossom in that heaven above us."
+
+ When he heard the owls at midnight,
+ Hooting, laughing in the forest,
+ "What is that?" he cried, in terror;
+ "What is that," he said, "Nokomis?"
+ And the good Nokomis answered:
+ "That is but the owl and owlet,
+ Talking in their native language,
+ Talking, scolding at each other."
+
+ Then the little Hiawatha
+ Learned of every bird its language,
+ Learned their names and all their secrets,
+ How they built their nests in summer,
+ Where they hid themselves in winter,
+ Talked with them whene'er he met them,
+ Called them "Hiawatha's Chickens."
+
+ Of all beasts he learned the language,
+ Learned their names and all their secrets,
+ How the beavers built their lodges,
+ Where the squirrels hid their acorns,
+ How the reindeer ran so swiftly,
+ Why the rabbit was so timid,
+ Talked with them whene'er he met them,
+ Called them "Hiawatha's Brothers."
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD.
+
+"The Daffodil" is here out of compliment to a splendid school and a
+ splendid teacher at Poughkeepsie. I found the pupils learning the poem,
+ the teacher having placed a bunch of daffodils in a vase before them.
+ It was a charming lesson. (1770-96.)
+
+ 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 stretched 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 a jocund company;
+ I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
+ What wealth the show to me 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.
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ JOHN BARLEYCORN.
+
+"John Barleycorn" is a favourite with boys because it pictures a
+ successful struggle. One editor has made a temperance poem of it,
+ mistaking its true intent. The poem is a strong expression of a
+ plow-man's love for a hardy, food-giving grain which has sprung to life
+ through his efforts. (1759-96.)
+
+ There were three kings into the East,
+ Three kings both great and high;
+ And they ha'e sworn a solemn oath
+ John Barleycorn should die.
+
+ They took a plow and plowed him down,
+ Put clods upon his head;
+ And they ha'e sworn a solemn oath
+ John Barleycorn was dead.
+
+ But the cheerful spring came kindly on,
+ And showers began to fall;
+ John Barleycorn got up again,
+ And sore surprised them all.
+
+ The sultry suns of summer came,
+ And he grew thick and strong;
+ His head well arm'd wi' pointed spears,
+ That no one should him wrong.
+
+ The sober autumn entered mild,
+ And he grew wan and pale;
+ His bending joints and drooping head
+ Showed he began to fail.
+
+ His colour sickened more and more,
+ He faded into age;
+ And then his enemies began
+ To show their deadly rage.
+
+ They took a weapon long and sharp,
+ And cut him by the knee,
+ Then tied him fast upon a cart,
+ Like a rogue for forgery.
+
+ They laid him down upon his back,
+ And cudgelled him full sore;
+ They hung him up before the storm,
+ And turn'd him o'er and o'er.
+
+ They filled up then a darksome pit
+ With water to the brim,
+ And heaved in poor John Barleycorn,
+ To let him sink or swim.
+
+ They laid him out upon the floor,
+ To work him further woe;
+ And still as signs of life appeared,
+ They tossed him to and fro.
+
+ They wasted o'er a scorching flame
+ The marrow of his bones;
+ But a miller used him worst of all--
+ He crushed him 'tween two stones.
+
+ And they have taken his very heart's blood,
+ And drunk it round and round;
+ And still the more and more they drank,
+ Their joy did more abound.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE.
+
+"A Life on the Ocean Wave," by Epes Sargent (1813-80), gives the swing
+ and motion of the water of the great ocean. Children remember it almost
+ unconsciously after hearing it read several times.
+
+ A life on the ocean wave,
+ A home on the rolling deep,
+ Where the scattered waters rave,
+ And the winds their revels keep!
+ Like an eagle caged, I pine
+ On this dull, unchanging shore:
+ Oh! give me the flashing brine,
+ The spray and the tempest's roar!
+
+ Once more on the deck I stand
+ Of my own swift-gliding craft:
+ Set sail! farewell to the land!
+ The gale follows fair abaft.
+ We shoot through the sparkling foam
+ Like an ocean-bird set free;--
+ Like the ocean-bird, our home
+ We'll find far out on the sea.
+
+ The land is no longer in view,
+ The clouds have begun to frown;
+ But with a stout vessel and crew,
+ We'll say, Let the storm come down!
+ And the song of our hearts shall be,
+ While the winds and the waters rave,
+ A home on the rolling sea!
+ A life on the ocean wave!
+
+ EPES SARGENT.
+
+
+ THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR.
+
+ It is customary, every New Year's eve in America, to ring bells, fire
+ guns, send up rockets, and, in many other ways, to show joy and
+ gratitude that the old year has been so kind, and that the new year is
+ so auspicious. The emphasis in Tennyson's poem is laid on gratitude for
+ past benefits so easily forgotten rather than upon the possible
+ advantages of the unknown and untried future.
+
+ Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
+ And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
+ Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,
+ And tread softly and speak low,
+ For the old year lies a-dying.
+ Old year, you must not die;
+ You came to us so readily,
+ You lived with us so steadily,
+ Old year, you shall not die.
+
+ He lieth still: he doth not move:
+ He will not see the dawn of day.
+ He hath no other life above.
+ He gave me a friend, and a true true-love,
+ And the New-year will take 'em away.
+ Old year, you must not go;
+ So long as you have been with us,
+ Such joy as you have seen with us,
+ Old year, you shall not go.
+
+ He froth'd his bumpers to the brim;
+ A jollier year we shall not see.
+ But tho' his eyes are waxing dim,
+ And tho' his foes speak ill of him,
+ He was a friend to me.
+ Old year, you shall not die;
+ We did so laugh and cry with you,
+ I've half a mind to die with you,
+ Old year, if you must die.
+
+ He was full of joke and jest,
+ But all his merry quips are o'er.
+ To see him die, across the waste
+ His son and heir doth ride post-haste,
+ But he'll be dead before.
+ Every one for his own.
+ The night is starry and cold, my friend,
+ And the New-year blithe and bold, my friend,
+ Comes up to take his own.
+
+ How hard he breathes! over the snow
+ I heard just now the crowing cock.
+ The shadows flicker to and fro:
+ The cricket chirps: the light burns low:
+ 'Tis nearly twelve o'clock.
+ Shake hands, before you die.
+ Old year, we'll dearly rue for you:
+ What is it we can do for you?
+ Speak out before you die.
+
+ His face is growing sharp and thin.
+ Alack! our friend is gone.
+ Close up his eyes: tie up his chin:
+ Step from the corpse, and let him in
+ That standeth there alone,
+ And waiteth at the door.
+ There's a new foot on the floor, my friend,
+ And a new face at the door, my friend,
+ A new face at the door.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ ABOU BEN ADHEM.
+
+"Abou Ben Adhem" has won its way to the popular heart because the
+"Brotherhood of Man" is the motto of this age. (1784-1859.)
+
+ Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
+ Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
+ And saw within the moonlight in 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 of all sweet accord,
+ Answered, "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 cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
+ Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
+
+ The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
+ It came again, with a great wakening light,
+ And showed the names whom love of God had blessed;
+ And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.
+
+ LEIGH HUNT.
+
+
+ FARM-YARD SONG.
+
+"A Farm-Yard Song" was popular years ago with Burbank, the great
+ reader. How the boys and girls loved it! The author, J.T. Trowbridge
+ (1827-still living), "is a boy-hearted man," says John Burroughs. The
+ poem is just as popular as it ever was.
+
+ Over the hill the farm-boy goes,
+ His shadow lengthens along the land,
+ A giant staff in a giant hand;
+ In the poplar-tree, above the spring,
+ The katydid begins to sing;
+ The early dews are falling;--
+ Into the stone-heap darts the mink;
+ The swallows skim the river's brink;
+ And home to the woodland fly the crows,
+ When over the hill the farm-boy goes,
+ Cheerily calling,--
+ "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'! co'!"
+ Farther, farther over the hill,
+ Faintly calling, calling still,--
+ "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'!"
+
+ Into the yard the farmer goes,
+ With grateful heart, at the close of day;
+ Harness and chain are hung away;
+ In the wagon-shed stand yoke and plow;
+ The straw's in the stack, the hay in the mow;
+ The cooling dews are falling;--
+ The friendly sheep his welcome bleat,
+ The pigs come grunting to his feet,
+ The whinnying mare her master knows,
+ When into the yard the farmer goes,
+ His cattle calling,--
+ "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'! co'!"
+ While still the cow-boy, far away,
+ Goes seeking those that have gone astray,--
+ "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'!"
+
+ Now to her task the milkmaid goes.
+ The cattle come crowding through the gate,
+ Lowing, pushing, little and great;
+ About the trough, by the farm-yard pump,
+ The frolicsome yearlings frisk and jump,
+ While the pleasant dews are falling;--
+ The new-milch heifer is quick and shy,
+ But the old cow waits with tranquil eye;
+ And the white stream into the bright pail flows,
+ When to her task the milkmaid goes,
+ Soothingly calling,--
+ "So, boss! so, boss! so! so! so!"
+ The cheerful milkmaid takes her stool,
+ And sits and milks in the twilight cool,
+ Saying, "So! so, boss! so! so!"
+
+ To supper at last the farmer goes.
+ The apples are pared, the paper read,
+ The stories are told, then all to bed.
+ Without, the crickets' ceaseless song
+ Makes shrill the silence all night long;
+ The heavy dews are falling.
+ The housewife's hand has turned the lock;
+ Drowsily ticks the kitchen clock;
+ The household sinks to deep repose;
+ But still in sleep the farm-boy goes.
+ Singing, calling,--
+ "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'! co'!"
+ And oft the milkmaid, in her dreams,
+ Drums in the pail with the flashing streams,
+ Murmuring, "So, boss! so!"
+
+ J.T. TROWBRIDGE.
+
+
+ TO A MOUSE,
+
+ ON TURNING UP HER NEST WITH THE PLOW, NOVEMBER, 1785
+
+"To a Mouse" and "To a Mountain Daisy," by Robert Burns (1759-96), are
+ the ineffable touches of tenderness that illumine the sturdy plowman.
+ The contrast between the strong man and the delicate flower or creature
+ at his mercy makes tenderness in man a vital point in character.
+
+ The lines "To a Mouse" seem by report to have been composed while Burns
+ was actually plowing. One of the poet's first editors wrote: "John
+ Blane, who had acted as gaudsman to Burns, and who lived sixty years
+ afterward, had a distinct recollection of the turning up of the mouse.
+ Like a thoughtless youth as he was, he ran after the creature to kill
+ it, but was checked and recalled by his master, who he observed became
+ thereafter thoughtful and abstracted. Burns, who treated his servants
+ with the familiarity of fellow-labourers, soon afterward read the poem
+ to Blane."
+
+ Wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie,
+ Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie!
+ Thou needna start awa' sae hasty,
+ Wi' bickering brattle!
+ I wad be laith to rin and chase thee,
+ Wi' murd'ring pattle!
+
+ I'm truly sorry man's dominion
+ Has broken Nature's social union,
+ And justifies that ill opinion,
+ Which makes thee startle
+ At me, thy poor earth-born companion
+ And fellow-mortal!
+
+ I doubtna, whiles, but thou may thieve;
+ What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
+ A daimen icker in a thrave
+ 'S a sma' request:
+ I'll get a blessin' wi' the lave,
+ And never miss 't!
+
+ Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
+ Its silly wa's the win's are strewin'!
+ And naething now to big a new ane
+ O' foggage green,
+ And bleak December's winds ensuin',
+ Baith snell and keen!
+
+ Thou saw the fields laid bare and waste,
+ And weary winter comin' fast,
+ And cozie here, beneath the blast,
+ Thou thought to dwell,
+ Till, crash! the cruel coulter passed
+ Out through thy cell.
+
+ That wee bit heap o' leaves and stibble
+ Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
+ Now thou's turned out for a' thy trouble,
+ But house or hald,
+ To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
+ And cranreuch cauld!
+
+ But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
+ In proving foresight may be vain:
+ The best-laid schemes o' mice and men
+ Gang aft a-gley,
+ And lea'e us naught but grief and pain,
+ For promised joy.
+
+ Still thou art blest, compared wi' me!
+ The present only toucheth thee:
+ But, och! I backward cast my e'e
+ On prospects drear!
+ And forward, though I canna see,
+ I guess and fear.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY,
+
+ ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOW IN APRIL, 1786
+
+ Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower,
+ Thou's met me in an evil hour;
+ For I maun crush amang the stoure
+ Thy slender stem:
+ To spare thee now is past my power,
+ Thou bonny gem.
+
+ Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet,
+ The bonny lark, companion meet,
+ Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet,
+ Wi' speckled breast,
+ When upward-springing, blithe, to greet
+ The purpling east!
+
+ Cauld blew the bitter biting north
+ Upon thy early, humble birth;
+ Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
+ Amid the storm,
+ Scarce reared above the parent earth
+ Thy tender form.
+
+ The flaunting flowers our gardens yield,
+ High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield,
+ But thou, beneath the random bield
+ O' clod or stane,
+ Adorns the histie stibble-field,
+ Unseen, alane.
+
+ There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
+ Thy snawie bosom sunward spread,
+ Thou lifts thy unassuming head
+ In humble guise;
+ But now the share uptears thy bed,
+ And low thou lies!
+
+ Such is the fate of artless maid,
+ Sweet floweret of the rural shade!
+ By love's simplicity betrayed,
+ And guileless trust,
+ Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid
+ Low i' the dust.
+
+ Such is the fate of simple bard,
+ On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd!
+ Unskilful he to note the card
+ Of prudent lore,
+ Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,
+ And whelm him o'er!
+
+ Such fate to suffering worth is given,
+ Who long with wants and woes has striven,
+ By human pride or cunning driven
+ To misery's brink,
+ Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven,
+ He, ruined, sink!
+
+ Even thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate,
+ That fate is thine--no distant date;
+ Stern Ruin's plowshare drives, elate,
+ Full on thy bloom,
+ Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight
+ Shall be thy doom.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ BARBARA FRIETCHIE.
+
+"Barbara Frietchie" will be beloved of all times because she was an old
+ woman (not necessarily an old lady) _worthy of her years_. Old age is
+ honourable if it carries a head that has a halo. (1807-92.)
+
+ Up from the meadows rich with corn,
+ Clear in the cool September morn,
+
+ The clustered spires of Frederick stand
+ Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
+
+ Roundabout them orchards sweep,
+ Apple and peach tree fruited deep,
+
+ Fair as the garden of the Lord
+ To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,
+
+ On that pleasant morn of the early fall
+ When Lee marched over the mountain-wall,
+
+ Over the mountains winding down,
+ Horse and foot, into Frederick town.
+
+ Forty flags with their silver stars,
+ Forty flags with their crimson bars,
+
+ Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
+ Of noon looked down, and saw not one.
+
+ Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
+ Bowed with her fourscore years and ten,
+
+ Bravest of all in Frederick town,
+ She took up the flag the men hauled down.
+
+ In her attic window the staff she set,
+ To show that one heart was loyal yet.
+
+ Up the street came the rebel tread,
+ Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
+
+ Under his slouched hat left and right
+ He glanced: the old flag met his sight.
+
+ "Halt!"--the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
+ "Fire!"--out blazed the rifle-blast.
+
+ It shivered the window, pane and sash;
+ It rent the banner with seam and gash.
+
+ Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
+ Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.
+
+ She leaned far out on the window-sill,
+ And shook it forth with a royal will.
+
+ "Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
+ But spare your country's flag," she said.
+
+ A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
+ Over the face of the leader came;
+
+ The nobler nature within him stirred
+ To life at that woman's deed and word:
+
+ "Who touches a hair of yon gray head
+ Dies like a dog! March on!" he said.
+
+ All day long through Frederick street
+ Sounded the tread of marching feet:
+
+ All day long that free flag tost
+ Over the heads of the rebel host.
+
+ Even its torn folds rose and fell
+ On the loyal winds that loved it well;
+
+ And through the hill-gaps sunset light
+ Shone over it with a warm good-night.
+
+ Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er,
+ And the rebel rides on his raids no more.
+
+ Honour to her! and let a tear
+ Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.
+
+ Over Barbara Frietchie's grave,
+ Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!
+
+ Peace and order and beauty draw
+ Round thy symbol of light and law;
+
+ And ever the stars above look down
+ On thy stars below in Frederick town!
+
+ JOHN G. WHITTIER.
+
+
+
+
+ PART III.
+
+ The Day's at the Morn
+
+
+ LOCHINVAR.
+
+"Lochinvar" and "Lord Ullin's Daughter," the first by Scott (1771-1832)
+ and the second by Campbell (1777-1844), are companions in sentiment and
+ equally popular with boys who love to win anything desirable by heroic
+ effort.
+
+ Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west.
+ Through all the wide Border his steed was the best,
+ And save his good broadsword he weapons had none;
+ He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone.
+ So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
+ There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.
+
+ He stayed not for brake, and he stopped not for stone,
+ He swam the Eske River where ford there was none;
+ But ere he alighted at Netherby gate
+ The bride had consented, the gallant came late:
+ For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war
+ Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.
+
+ So boldly he entered the Netherby Hall,
+ Among bridesmen and kinsmen and brothers and all:
+ Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword
+ (For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word),
+ "Oh, come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,
+ Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?"
+
+ "I long woo'd your daughter, my suit you denied;--
+ Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide--
+ And now am I come, with this lost love of mine,
+ To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.
+ There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,
+ That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar."
+
+ The bride kissed the goblet; the knight took it up;
+ He quaffed of the wine, and he threw down the cup.
+ She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh,
+ With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.
+ He took her soft hand ere her mother could bar,--
+ "Now tread we a measure!" said young Lochinvar.
+
+ So stately his form, and so lovely her face,
+ That never a hall such a galliard did grace;
+ While her mother did fret, and her father did fume,
+ And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume,
+ And the bridemaidens whispered, "'Twere better by far
+ To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar."
+
+ One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
+ When they reached the hall door, and the charger stood near;
+ So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,
+ So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
+ "She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;
+ They'll have fleet steeds that follow," quoth young Lochinvar.
+
+ There was mounting 'mong Grmes of the Netherby clan;
+ Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran:
+ There was racing and chasing, on Cannobie Lee,
+ But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see.
+ So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
+ Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?
+
+ SIR WALTER SCOTT.
+
+
+ LORD ULLIN'S DAUGHTER.
+
+ A chieftain, to the Highlands bound,
+ Cries, "Boatman, do not tarry!
+ And I'll give thee a silver pound,
+ To row us o'er the ferry."
+
+ "Now who be ye, would cross Lochgyle,
+ This dark and stormy water?"
+ "O, I'm the chief of Ulva's isle,
+ And this Lord Ullin's daughter.
+
+ "And fast before her father's men
+ Three days we've fled together,
+ For should he find us in the glen,
+ My blood would stain the heather.
+
+ "His horsemen hard behind us ride;
+ Should they our steps discover,
+ Then who will cheer my bonny bride
+ When they have slain her lover?"
+
+ Outspoke the hardy Highland wight,
+ "I'll go, my chief--I'm ready;
+ It is not for your silver bright,
+ But for your winsome lady:
+
+ "And by my word! the bonny bird
+ In danger shall not tarry;
+ So though the waves are raging white,
+ I'll row you o'er the ferry."
+
+ By this the storm grew loud apace,
+ The water-wraith was shrieking;
+ And in the scowl of heaven each face
+ Grew dark as they were speaking.
+
+ But still as wilder blew the wind,
+ And as the night grew drearer,
+ Adown the glen rode armd men,
+ Their trampling sounded nearer.
+
+ "O haste thee, haste!" the lady cries,
+ "Though tempests round us gather;
+ I'll meet the raging of the skies,
+ But not an angry father."
+
+ The boat has left a stormy land,
+ A stormy sea before her,--
+ When, oh! too strong for human hand,
+ The tempest gathered o'er her.
+
+ And still they row'd amid the roar
+ Of waters fast prevailing:
+ Lord Ullin reach'd that fatal shore,
+ His wrath was changed to wailing.
+
+ For sore dismay'd through storm and shade,
+ His child he did discover:--
+ One lovely hand she stretch'd for aid,
+ And one was round her lover.
+
+ "Come back! come back!" he cried in grief,
+ "Across this stormy water:
+ And I'll forgive your Highland chief,
+ My daughter!--oh my daughter!"
+
+ 'Twas vain the loud waves lashed the shore,
+ Return or aid preventing;--
+ The waters wild went o'er his child,--
+ And he was left lamenting.
+
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL.
+
+
+ THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE.
+
+"The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1809-92) unlike "Casabianca" shows
+ obedience under stern necessity. Obedience is the salvation of any
+ army. John Burroughs says: "I never hear that poem but what it thrills
+ me through and through."
+
+ Half a league, half a league,
+ Half a league onward,
+ All in the valley of Death
+ Rode the six hundred.
+ "Forward, the Light Brigade!
+ Charge for the guns!" he said:
+ Into the valley of Death
+ Rode the six hundred.
+
+ "Forward, the Light Brigade!"
+ Was there a man dismay'd?
+ Not tho' the soldier knew
+ Some one had blunder'd:
+ Theirs not to make reply,
+ Theirs not to reason why.
+ Theirs but to do and die:
+ Into the valley of Death
+ Rode the six hundred.
+
+ Cannon to right of them,
+ Cannon to left of them,
+ Cannon in front of them
+ Volley'd and thunder'd;
+ Storm'd at with shot and shell
+ Boldly they rode and well,
+ Into the jaws of Death,
+ Into the mouth of Hell
+ Rode the six hundred.
+
+ Flash'd all their sabers bare,
+ Flash'd as they turn'd in air
+ Sab'ring the gunners there,
+ Charging an army, while
+ All the world wonder'd:
+ Plunged in the battery-smoke
+ Right thro' the line they broke;
+ Cossack and Russian
+ Reel'd from the saber-stroke
+ Shatter'd and sunder'd.
+ Then they rode back, but not
+ Not the six hundred.
+
+ Cannon to right of them,
+ Cannon to left of them,
+ Cannon behind them
+ Volleyed and thundered:
+ Stormed at with shot and shell,
+ While horse and hero fell,
+ They that had fought so well
+ Came through the jaws of death
+ Back from the mouth of hell,
+ All that was left of them--
+ Left of six hundred.
+
+ When can their glory fade?
+ Oh, the wild charge they made!
+ All the world wondered.
+ Honour the charge they made!
+ Honour the Light Brigade--
+ Noble six hundred!
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE TOURNAMENT.
+
+ There are several of Sidney Lanier's (1842-81) poems that children love
+ to learn. "Tampa Robins," "The Tournament" (Joust 1.), "Barnacles,"
+"The Song of the Chattahoochee," and "The First Steamboat Up the
+ Alabama" are among them. At our "poetry contests" the children have
+ plainly demonstrated that this great poet has reached his hand down to
+ the youngest. The time will doubtless come when it will be a part of
+ education to be acquainted with Lanier, as it is now to be acquainted
+ with Longfellow or Tennyson.
+
+
+ I.
+
+ Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies,
+ And the knights still hurried amain
+ To the tournament under the ladies' eyes,
+ Where the jousters were Heart and Brain.
+
+
+ II.
+
+ Flourished the trumpets, entered Heart,
+ A youth in crimson and gold;
+ Flourished again; Brain stood apart,
+ Steel-armoured, dark and cold.
+
+
+ III.
+
+ Heart's palfrey caracoled gaily round,
+ Heart tra-li-ra'd merrily;
+ But Brain sat still, with never a sound,
+ So cynical-calm was he.
+
+
+ IV.
+
+ Heart's helmet-crest bore favours three
+ From his lady's white hand caught;
+ While Brain wore a plumeless casque; not he
+ Or favour gave or sought.
+
+
+ V.
+
+ The trumpet blew; Heart shot a glance
+ To catch his lady's eye.
+ But Brain gazed straight ahead, his lance
+ To aim more faithfully.
+
+
+ VI.
+
+ They charged, they struck; both fell, both bled;
+ Brain rose again, ungloved;
+ Heart, dying, smiled and faintly said,
+ "My love to my beloved."
+
+ SIDNEY LANIER.
+
+
+ THE WIND AND THE MOON.
+
+ Little Laddie, do you remember learning "The Wind and the Moon"? You
+ were eight or nine years old, and you shut your eyes and puffed out
+ your cheeks when you came to the line "He blew and He blew." The saucy
+ wind made a great racket and the calm moon never noticed it. That gave
+ you a great deal of pleasure, didn't it? We did not care much for the
+ noisy, conceited wind. (1824-.)
+
+ Said the Wind to the Moon, "I will blow you out,
+ You stare
+ In the air
+ Like a ghost in a chair,
+ Always looking what I am about--
+ I hate to be watched; I'll blow you out."
+
+ The Wind blew hard, and out went the Moon.
+ So, deep
+ On a heap
+ Of clouds to sleep,
+ Down lay the Wind, and slumbered soon,
+ Muttering low, "I've done for that Moon."
+
+ He turned in his bed; she was there again!
+ On high
+ In the sky,
+ With her one ghost eye,
+ The Moon shone white and alive and plain.
+ Said the Wind, "I will blow you out again."
+
+ The Wind blew hard, and the Moon grew dim.
+ "With my sledge,
+ And my wedge,
+ I have knocked off her edge!
+ If only I blow right fierce and grim,
+ The creature will soon be dimmer than dim."
+
+ He blew and he blew, and she thinned to a thread.
+ "One puff
+ More's enough
+ To blow her to snuff!
+ One good puff more where the last was bred,
+ And glimmer, glimmer, glum will go the thread."
+
+ He blew a great blast, and the thread was gone
+ In the air
+ Nowhere
+ Was a moonbeam bare;
+ Far off and harmless the shy stars shone--
+ Sure and certain the Moon was gone!
+
+ The Wind he took to his revels once more;
+ On down,
+ In town,
+ Like a merry-mad clown,
+ He leaped and hallooed with whistle and roar--
+ "What's that?" The glimmering thread once more!
+
+ He flew in a rage--he danced and blew;
+ But in vain
+ Was the pain
+ Of his bursting brain;
+ For still the broader the Moon-scrap grew,
+ The broader he swelled his big cheeks and blew.
+
+ Slowly she grew--till she filled the night,
+ And shone
+ On her throne
+ In the sky alone,
+ A matchless, wonderful silvery light,
+ Radiant and lovely, the queen of the night.
+
+ Said the Wind: "What a marvel of power am I
+ With my breath,
+ Good faith!
+ I blew her to death--
+ First blew her away right out of the sky--
+ Then blew her in; what strength have I!"
+
+ But the Moon she knew nothing about the affair;
+ For high
+ In the sky,
+ With her one white eye,
+ Motionless, miles above the air,
+ She had never heard the great Wind blare.
+
+ GEORGE MACDONALD.
+
+
+ JESUS THE CARPENTER.
+
+"Jesus the Carpenter"--"same trade as me"--strikes a high note in
+ favour of honest toil. (1848-.)
+
+ "Isn't this Joseph's son?"--ay, it is He;
+ Joseph the carpenter--same trade as me--
+ I thought as I'd find it--I knew it was here--
+ But my sight's getting queer.
+
+ I don't know right where as His shed must ha' stood--
+ But often, as I've been a-planing my wood,
+ I've took off my hat, just with thinking of He
+ At the same work as me.
+
+ He warn't that set up that He couldn't stoop down
+ And work in the country for folks in the town;
+ And I'll warrant He felt a bit pride, like I've done,
+ At a good job begun.
+
+ The parson he knows that I'll not make too free,
+ But on Sunday I feels as pleased as can be,
+ When I wears my clean smock, and sits in a pew,
+ And has taught a few.
+
+ I think of as how not the parson hissen,
+ As is teacher and father and shepherd o' men,
+ Not he knows as much of the Lord in that shed,
+ Where He earned His own bread.
+
+ And when I goes home to my missus, says she,
+ "Are ye wanting your key?"
+ For she knows my queer ways, and my love for the shed
+ (We've been forty years wed).
+
+ So I comes right away by mysen, with the book,
+ And I turns the old pages and has a good look
+ For the text as I've found, as tells me as He
+ Were the same trade as me.
+
+ Why don't I mark it? Ah, many say so,
+ But I think I'd as lief, with your leaves, let it go:
+ It do seem that nice when I fall on it sudden--
+ Unexpected, you know!
+
+ CATHERINE C. LIDDELL.
+
+
+ LETTY'S GLOBE.
+
+"Letty's Globe" gives us the picture of a little golden-haired girl who
+ covers all Europe with her dainty hands and tresses while giving a kiss
+ to England, her own dear native land. (1808-79.)
+
+ When Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year,
+ And her young, artless words began to flow,
+ One day we gave the child a colour'd sphere
+ Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,
+ By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
+ She patted all the world; old empires peep'd
+ Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
+ Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap'd,
+ And laugh'd and prattled in her world-wide bliss!
+ But when we turn'd her sweet unlearned eye
+ On our own isle, she rais'd a joyous cry,
+ "Oh! yes, I see it! Letty's home is there!"
+ And, while she hid all England with a kiss,
+ Bright over Europe fell her golden hair!
+
+ CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER.
+
+
+ A DREAM.
+
+ Once a dream did wave a shade
+ O'er my angel-guarded bed,
+ That an emmet lost its way
+ When on grass methought I lay.
+
+ Troubled, 'wildered, and forlorn,
+ Dark, benighted, travel-worn,
+ Over many a tangled spray,
+ All heart-broke, I heard her say:
+
+ "Oh, my children! do they cry?
+ Do they hear their father sigh?
+ Now they look abroad to see.
+ Now return and weep for me."
+
+ Pitying, I dropped a tear;
+ But I saw a glow-worm near,
+ Who replied, "What wailing wight
+ Calls the watchman of the night?
+
+ "I am set to light the ground
+ While the beetle goes his round.
+ Follow now the beetle's hum--
+ Little wanderer, hie thee home!"
+
+ WILLIAM BLAKE.
+
+
+ HEAVEN IS NOT REACHED AT A SINGLE BOUND.
+
+ (A FRAGMENT.)
+
+"We build the ladder by which we climb" is a line worthy of any poet.
+ J.G. Holland (1819-81) has immortalised himself in this line, at least.
+
+ Heaven is not reached at a single bound,
+ But we build the ladder by which we rise
+ From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
+ And we mount to its summit round by round.
+
+ I count this thing to be grandly true:
+ That a noble deed is a step toward God,--
+ Lifting the soul from the common clod
+ To a purer air and a broader view.
+
+ J.G. HOLLAND.
+
+
+ THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM.
+
+ Have you been to Woodstock, near Oxford, England? If so, you have seen
+ the palace of the Duke of Marlborough, who won the battle of Blenheim.
+ The main point of the poem is the doubtful honour in killing in our
+ great wars. Southey, the poet, lived from 1774 to 1843.
+
+ It was a summer's evening,
+ Old Kaspar's work was done,
+ And he before his cottage door
+ Was sitting in the sun;
+ And by him sported on the green
+ His little grandchild Wilhelmine.
+
+ She saw her brother Peterkin
+ Roll something large and round,
+ Which he, beside the rivulet,
+ In playing there, had found.
+ He came to ask what he had found,
+ That was so large, and smooth, and round.
+
+ Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
+ Who stood expectant by;
+ And then the old man shook his head,
+ And, with a natural sigh,
+ "'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he,
+ "Who fell in the great victory!
+
+ "I find them in the garden,
+ For there's many hereabout;
+ And often when I go to plow,
+ The plowshare turns them out;
+ For many thousand men," said he,
+ "Were slain in that great victory!"
+
+ "Now tell us what 'twas all about,"
+ Young Peterkin he cries;
+ And little Wilhelmine looks up
+ With wonder-waiting eyes;
+ "Now tell us all about the war,
+ And what they killed each other for."
+
+ "It was the English," Kaspar cried,
+ "Who put the French to rout;
+ But what they killed each other for
+ I could not well make out.
+ But everybody said," quoth he,
+ "That 'twas a famous victory!
+
+ "My father lived at Blenheim then,
+ Yon little stream hard by:
+ They burned his dwelling to the ground
+ And he was forced to fly;
+ So with his wife and child he fled,
+ Nor had he where to rest his head.
+
+ "With fire and sword the country round
+ Was wasted far and wide;
+ And many a childing mother then
+ And new-born baby died.
+ But things like that, you know, must be
+ At every famous victory.
+
+ "They say it was a shocking sight
+ After the field was won;
+ For many thousand bodies here
+ Lay rotting in the sun.
+ But things like that, you know, must be
+ After a famous victory.
+
+ "Great praise the Duke of Marlborough won,
+ And our good Prince Eugene."
+ "Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!"
+ Said little Wilhelmine.
+ "Nay, nay, my little girl," quoth he,
+ "It was a famous victory!
+
+ "And everybody praised the Duke
+ Who this great fight did win."
+ "But what good came of it at last?"
+ Quoth little Peterkin.
+ "Why, that I cannot tell," said he,
+ "But 'twas a famous victory."
+
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY.
+
+
+ FIDELITY.
+
+"Fidelity," by William Wordsworth (1770-1850), is placed here out of
+ respect to a boy of eleven years who liked the poem well enough to
+ recite it frequently. The scene is laid on Helvellyn, to me the most
+ impressive mountain of the Lake District of England. Wordsworth is a
+ part of this country. I once heard John Burroughs say: "I went to the
+ Lake District to see what kind of a country it could be that would
+ produce a Wordsworth."
+
+ A barking sound the Shepherd hears,
+ A cry as of a dog or fox;
+ He halts--and searches with his eyes
+ Among the scattered rocks;
+ And now at distance can discern
+ A stirring in a brake of fern;
+ And instantly a Dog is seen,
+ Glancing through that covert green.
+
+ The Dog is not of mountain breed;
+ Its motions, too, are wild and shy;
+ With something, as the Shepherd thinks,
+ Unusual in its cry:
+ Nor is there any one in sight
+ All round, in hollow or on height;
+ Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear;
+ What is the Creature doing here?
+
+ It was a cove, a huge recess,
+ That keeps, till June, December's snow.
+ A lofty precipice in front,
+ A silent tarn below!
+ Far in the bosom of Helvellyn,
+ Remote from public road or dwelling,
+ Pathway, or cultivated land;
+ From trace of human foot or hand.
+
+ There sometimes doth a leaping fish
+ Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
+ The crags repeat the raven's croak,
+ In symphony austere;
+ Thither the rainbow comes--the cloud--
+ And mists that spread the flying shroud;
+ And sunbeams; and the sounding blast,
+ That, if it could, would hurry past,
+ But that enormous barrier binds it fast.
+
+ Not free from boding thoughts, a while
+ The Shepherd stood: then makes his way
+ Toward the Dog, o'er rocks and stones,
+ As quickly as he may;
+ Nor far had gone, before he found
+ A human skeleton on the ground;
+ The appalled discoverer with a sigh
+ Looks round, to learn the history.
+
+ From those abrupt and perilous rocks
+ The Man had fallen, that place of fear!
+ At length upon the Shepherd's mind
+ It breaks, and all is clear:
+ He instantly recalled the name,
+ And who he was, and whence he came;
+ Remembered, too, the very day
+ On which the traveller passed this way.
+
+ But hear a wonder, for whose sake
+ This lamentable tale I tell!
+ A lasting monument of words
+ This wonder merits well.
+ The Dog, which still was hovering nigh,
+ Repeating the same timid cry,
+ This Dog had been through three months space
+ A dweller in that savage place.
+
+ Yes, proof was plain that, since the day
+ When this ill-fated traveller died,
+ The Dog had watched about the spot,
+ Or by his master's side:
+ How nourished here through such long time
+ He knows, who gave that love sublime;
+ And gave that strength of feeling, great
+ Above all human estimate.
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.
+
+ People are more and more coming to recognise the fact that each
+ individual soul has a right to its own stages of development. "The
+ Chambered Nautilus" is for that reason beloved of the masses. It is one
+ of the grandest poems ever written. "Build thee more stately mansions,
+ O my soul!" This line alone would make the poem immortal. (1809-94.)
+
+ This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
+ Sailed the unshadowed main,--
+ The venturous 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!
+
+ OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
+
+
+ CROSSING THE BAR
+
+ Tennyson's (1809-92) "Crossing the Bar" is one of the noblest
+ death-songs ever written. I include it in this volume out of respect to
+ a young Philadelphia publisher who recited it one stormy night before
+ the passengers of a ship when I was crossing the Atlantic, and also
+ because so many young people have the good taste to love it. It has
+ been said that next to Browning's "Prospice" it is the greatest
+ death-song ever written.
+
+ Sunset and evening star,
+ And one clear call for me!
+ And may there be no moaning of the bar,
+ When I put out to sea,
+
+ But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
+ Too full for sound and foam,
+ When that which drew from out the boundless deep
+ Turns again home.
+
+ Twilight and evening bell,
+ And after that the dark!
+ And may there be no sadness of farewell,
+ When I embark;
+
+ For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
+ The flood may bear me far,
+ I hope to see my Pilot face to face
+ When I have cross'd the bar.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE OVERLAND-MAIL.
+
+"The Overland-Mail" is a most desirable poem for children to learn.
+ When one boy learns it the others want to follow. It takes as a hero
+ the man who gives common service--the one who does not lead or command,
+ but follows the line of duty. (1865-.)
+
+ In the name of the Empress of India, make way,
+ O Lords of the Jungle wherever you roam,
+ The woods are astir at the close of the day--
+ We exiles are waiting for letters from Home--
+ Let the robber retreat; let the tiger turn tail,
+ In the name of the Empress the Overland-Mail!
+
+ With a jingle of bells as the dusk gathers in,
+ He turns to the foot-path that leads up the hill--
+ The bags on his back, and a cloth round his chin,
+ And, tucked in his belt, the Post-Office bill;--
+ "Despatched on this date, as received by the rail,
+ _Per_ runner, two bags of the Overland-Mail."
+
+ Is the torrent in spate? He must ford it or swim.
+ Has the rain wrecked the road? He must climb by the cliff.
+ Does the tempest cry "Halt"? What are tempests to him?
+ The service admits not a "but" or an "if";
+ While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail,
+ In the name of the Empress the Overland-Mail.
+
+ From aloe to rose-oak, from rose-oak to fir,
+ From level to upland, from upland to crest,
+ From rice-field to rock-ridge, from rock-ridge to spur,
+ Fly the soft-sandalled feet, strains the brawny brown chest.
+ From rail to ravine--to the peak from the vale--
+ Up, up through the night goes the Overland-Mail.
+
+ There's a speck on the hillside, a dot on the road--
+ A jingle of bells on the foot-path below--
+ There's a scuffle above in the monkeys' abode--
+ The world is awake, and the clouds are aglow--
+ For the great Sun himself must attend to the hail;--
+ In the name of the Empress the Overland-Mail.
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+
+ GATHERING SONG OF DONALD DHU.
+
+ Jon, do you remember when you used to spout "Pibroch of Donald Dhu"? I
+ think you were ten years old. Sir Walter Scott's men all have a genius
+ for standing up to their guns, and boys gather up the man's genius when
+ reciting his verse. (1771-1832.)
+
+ Pibroch of Donuil Dhu,
+ Pibroch of Donuil,
+ Wake thy wild voice anew,
+ Summon Clan Conuil.
+ Come away, come away,
+ Hark to the summons!
+ Come in your war-array,
+ Gentles and commons.
+
+ Come from deep glen, and
+ From mountain so rocky,
+ The war-pipe and pennon
+ Are at Inverlochy.
+ Come every hill-plaid, and
+ True heart that wears one,
+ Come every steel blade, and
+ Strong hand that bears one.
+
+ Leave untended the herd,
+ The flock without shelter;
+ Leave the corpse uninterr'd,
+ The bride at the altar;
+ Leave the deer, leave the steer,
+ Leave nets and barges:
+ Come with your fighting gear,
+ Broadswords and targes.
+
+ Come as the winds come, when
+ Forests are rended;
+ Come as the waves come, when
+ Navies are stranded:
+ Faster come, faster come,
+ Faster and faster,
+ Chief, vassal, page, and groom,
+ Tenant and master.
+
+ Fast they come, fast they come;
+ See how they gather!
+ Wide waves the eagle plume
+ Blended with heather,
+ Cast your plaids, draw your blades,
+ Forward each man set!
+ Pibroch of Donuil Dhu
+ Knell for the onset!
+
+ SIR WALTER SCOTT.
+
+
+ MARCO BOZZARIS.
+
+"Marco Bozzaris," by Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867), was in my old
+ school-reader. Boys and girls liked it then and they like it now. This
+ is another of the poems that was not born to die.
+
+ At midnight, in his guarded tent,
+ The Turk was dreaming of the hour
+ When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,
+ Should tremble at his power:
+ In dreams, through camp and court, he bore
+ The trophies of a conqueror;
+ In dreams his song of triumph heard;
+ Then wore his monarch's signet ring:
+ Then pressed that monarch's throne--a king;
+ As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,
+ As Eden's garden bird.
+
+ At midnight, in the forest shades,
+ Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band,
+ True as the steel of their tried blades,
+ Heroes in heart and hand.
+ There had the Persian's thousands stood,
+ There had the glad earth drunk their blood
+ On old Plata's day;
+ And now there breathed that haunted air
+ The sons of sires who conquered there,
+ With arm to strike and soul to dare,
+ As quick, as far as they.
+
+ An hour passed on--the Turk awoke;
+ That bright dream was his last;
+ He woke--to hear his sentries shriek,
+ "To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!"
+ He woke--to die midst flame, and smoke,
+ And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke,
+ And death-shots falling thick and fast
+ As lightnings from the mountain-cloud;
+ And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,
+ Bozzaris cheer his band:
+ "Strike--till the last armed foe expires;
+ Strike--for your altars and your fires;
+ Strike--for the green graves of your sires;
+ God--and your native land!"
+
+ They fought--like brave men, long and well;
+ They piled that ground with Moslem slain,
+ They conquered--but Bozzaris fell,
+ Bleeding at every vein.
+ His few surviving comrades saw
+ His smile when rang their proud hurrah,
+ And the red field was won;
+ Then saw in death his eyelids close
+ Calmly, as to a night's repose,
+ Like flowers at set of sun.
+
+ Come to the bridal-chamber, Death!
+ Come to the mother's, when she feels,
+ For the first time, her first-born's breath;
+ Come when the blessed seals
+ That close the pestilence are broke,
+ And crowded cities wail its stroke;
+ Come in consumption's ghastly form,
+ The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;
+ Come when the heart beats high and warm
+ With banquet-song, and dance, and wine;
+ And thou art terrible--the tear,
+ The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
+ And all we know, or dream, or fear
+ Of agony, are thine.
+
+ But to the hero, when his sword
+ Has won the battle for the free,
+ Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word;
+ And in its hollow tones are heard
+ The thanks of millions yet to be.
+ Come, when his task of fame is wrought--
+ Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought--
+ Come in her crowning hour--and then
+ Thy sunken eye's unearthly light
+ To him is welcome as the sight
+ Of sky and stars to prisoned men;
+ Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
+ Of brother in a foreign land;
+ Thy summons welcome as the cry
+ That told the Indian isles were nigh
+ To the world-seeking Genoese,
+ When the land wind, from woods of palm,
+ And orange-groves, and fields of balm,
+ Blew o'er the Haytian seas.
+
+ Bozzaris! with the storied brave
+ Greece nurtured in her glory's time,
+ Rest thee--there is no prouder grave,
+ Even in her own proud clime.
+ She wore no funeral-weeds for thee,
+ Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume
+ Like torn branch from death's leafless tree
+ In sorrow's pomp and pageantry,
+ The heartless luxury of the tomb;
+ But she remembers thee as one
+ Long loved and for a season gone;
+ For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed,
+ Her marble wrought, her music breathed;
+ For thee she rings the birthday bells;
+ Of thee her babe's first lisping tells;
+ For thine her evening prayer is said
+ At palace-couch and cottage-bed;
+ Her soldier, closing with the foe,
+ Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow,
+ His plighted maiden, when she fears
+ For him the joy of her young years,
+ Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears;
+ And she, the mother of thy boys,
+ Though in her eye and faded cheek
+ Is read the grief she will not speak,
+ The memory of her buried joys,
+ And even she who gave thee birth,
+ Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth,
+ Talk of thy doom without a sigh;
+ For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's:
+ One of the few, the immortal names,
+ That were not born to die.
+
+ FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.
+
+
+ THE DEATH OF NAPOLEON.
+
+"The Death of Napoleon," by Isaac McClellan (1806-99), was yet another
+ of the good old reader songs taught us by a teacher of good taste. We
+ love those teachers more the older we grow.
+
+ Wild was the night, yet a wilder night
+ Hung round the soldier's pillow;
+ In his bosom there waged a fiercer fight
+ Than the fight on the wrathful billow.
+
+ A few fond mourners were kneeling by,
+ The few that his stern heart cherished;
+ They knew, by his glazed and unearthly eye,
+ That life had nearly perished.
+
+ They knew by his awful and kingly look,
+ By the order hastily spoken,
+ That he dreamed of days when the nations shook,
+ And the nations' hosts were broken.
+
+ He dreamed that the Frenchman's sword still slew,
+ And triumphed the Frenchman's eagle,
+ And the struggling Austrian fled anew,
+ Like the hare before the beagle.
+
+ The bearded Russian he scourged again,
+ The Prussian's camp was routed,
+ And again on the hills of haughty Spain
+ His mighty armies shouted.
+
+ Over Egypt's sands, over Alpine snows,
+ At the pyramids, at the mountain,
+ Where the wave of the lordly Danube flows,
+ And by the Italian fountain,
+
+ On the snowy cliffs where mountain streams
+ Dash by the Switzer's dwelling,
+ He led again, in his dying dreams,
+ His hosts, the proud earth quelling.
+
+ Again Marengo's field was won,
+ And Jena's bloody battle;
+ Again the world was overrun,
+ Made pale at his cannon's rattle.
+
+ He died at the close of that darksome day,
+ A day that shall live in story;
+ In the rocky land they placed his clay,
+ "And left him alone with his glory."
+
+ ISAAC MCCLELLAN.
+
+
+ HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE.
+
+ How sleep the brave, who sink to rest
+ By all their country's wishes blest!
+ When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
+ Returns to deck their hallow'd mould,
+ She there shall dress a sweeter sod
+ Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.
+
+ By fairy hands their knell is rung,
+ By forms unseen their dirge is sung:
+ There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,
+ To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
+ And Freedom shall a while repair
+ To dwell a weeping hermit there!
+
+ WILLIAM COLLINS.
+
+
+ THE FLAG GOES BY.
+
+"The Flag Goes By" is included out of regard to a boy of eleven years
+ who pleased me by his great appreciation of it. It teaches the lesson
+ of reverence to our great national symbol. It is published by
+ permission of the author, Henry Holcomb Bennett, of Ohio. (1863-.)
+
+ Hats off!
+ Along the street there comes
+ A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums,
+ A flash of colour beneath the sky:
+ Hats off!
+ The flag is passing by!
+
+ Blue and crimson and white it shines
+ Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines.
+ Hats off!
+ The colours before us fly;
+ But more than the flag is passing by.
+
+ Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great,
+ Fought to make and to save the State:
+ Weary marches and sinking ships;
+ Cheers of victory on dying lips;
+
+ Days of plenty and years of peace;
+ March of a strong land's swift increase;
+ Equal justice, right, and law,
+ Stately honour and reverend awe;
+
+ Sign of a nation, great and strong
+ Toward her people from foreign wrong:
+ Pride and glory and honour,--all
+ Live in the colours to stand or fall.
+
+ Hats off!
+ Along the street there comes
+ A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums;
+ And loyal hearts are beating high:
+ Hats off!
+ The flag is passing by!
+
+ HENRY HOLCOMB BENNETT.
+
+
+ HOHENLINDEN.
+
+ On Linden, when the sun was low,
+ All bloodless lay th' untrodden snow;
+ And dark as winter was the flow
+ Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
+
+ But Linden saw another sight,
+ When the drum beat, at dead of night,
+ Commanding fires of death to light
+ The darkness of her scenery.
+
+ By torch and trumpet fast array'd
+ Each horseman drew his battle-blade,
+ And furious every charger neigh'd
+ To join the dreadful revelry.
+
+ Then shook the hills with thunder riven,
+ Then rush'd the steed to battle driven,
+ And louder than the bolts of Heaven,
+ Far flashed the red artillery.
+
+ But redder yet that light shall glow
+ On Linden's hills or staind snow;
+ And bloodier yet the torrent flow
+ Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
+
+ 'Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun
+ Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun,
+ Where furious Frank, and fiery Hun,
+ Shout in their sulphurous canopy.
+
+ The combat deepens. On, ye brave
+ Who rush to glory or the grave!
+ Wave, Munich! all thy banners wave,
+ And charge with all thy chivalry!
+
+ Few, few shall part, where many meet!
+ The snow shall be their winding-sheet,
+ And every turf beneath their feet
+ Shall be a soldier's sepulcher.
+
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL.
+
+
+ MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME.
+
+ The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home;
+ 'Tis summer, the darkeys are gay;
+ The corn-top's ripe, and the meadow's in the bloom,
+ While the birds make music all the day.
+ The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,
+ All merry, all happy and bright;
+ By-'n'-by hard times comes a-knocking at the door:--
+ Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!
+
+ Weep no more, my lady,
+ O, weep no more to-day!
+ We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home,
+ For the old Kentucky home, far away.
+
+ They hunt no more for the 'possum and the coon,
+ On the meadow, the hill, and the shore;
+ They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon,
+ On the bench by the old cabin door.
+ The day goes by like a shadow o'er the heart,
+ With sorrow, where all was delight;
+ The time has come when the darkeys have to part:--
+ Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!
+
+ The head must bow, and the back will have to bend,
+ Wherever the darkey may go;
+ A few more days, and the trouble all will end,
+ In the field where the sugar-canes grow.
+ A few more days for to tote the weary load,--
+ No matter, 'twill never be light;
+ A few more days till we totter on the road:--
+ Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!
+
+ Weep no more, my lady,
+ O, weep no more to-day!
+ We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home,
+ For the old Kentucky home, far away.
+
+ STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER.
+
+
+ OLD FOLKS AT HOME.
+
+ Way down upon de Swanee Ribber,
+ Far, far away,
+ Dere's wha my heart is turning ebber,
+ Dere's wha de old folks stay.
+ All up and down de whole creation
+ Sadly I roam,
+ Still longing for de old plantation,
+ And for de old folks at home.
+
+ All de world am sad and dreary,
+ Eberywhere I roam;
+ Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary,
+ Far from de old folks at home!
+
+ All round de little farm I wandered
+ When I was young,
+ Den many happy days I squandered,
+ Many de songs I sung.
+ When I was playing wid my brudder
+ Happy was I;
+ Oh, take me to my kind old mudder!
+ Dere let me live and die.
+
+ One little hut among de bushes,
+ One dat I love,
+ Still sadly to my memory rushes,
+ No matter where I rove.
+ When will I see de bees a-humming
+ All round de comb?
+ When will I hear de banjo tumming,
+ Down in my good old home?
+
+ All de world am sad and dreary,
+ Eberywhere I roam;
+ Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary,
+ Far from de old folks at home!
+
+ STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER.
+
+
+ THE WRECK OF THE "HESPERUS."
+
+"The Wreck of the _Hesperus_," by Longfellow (1807-82), on "Norman's
+ Woe," off the coast near Cape Ann, is a historic poem as well as an
+ imaginative composition.
+
+ It was the schooner _Hesperus_,
+ That sailed the wintry sea;
+ And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
+ To bear him company.
+
+ Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
+ Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
+ And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds
+ That ope in the month of May.
+
+ The skipper he stood beside the helm,
+ His pipe was in his mouth,
+ And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
+ The smoke now west, now south.
+
+ Then up and spake an old sailor,
+ Had sailed the Spanish Main,
+ "I pray thee put into yonder port,
+ For I fear a hurricane.
+
+ "Last night the moon had a golden ring,
+ And to-night no moon we see!"
+ The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe,
+ And a scornful laugh laughed he.
+
+ Colder and louder blew the wind,
+ A gale from the northeast,
+ The snow fell hissing in the brine,
+ And the billows frothed like yeast.
+
+ Down came the storm, and smote amain
+ The vessel in its strength;
+ She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
+ Then leaped her cable's length.
+
+ "Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
+ And do not tremble so;
+ For I can weather the roughest gale
+ That ever wind did blow."
+
+ He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
+ Against the stinging blast;
+ He cut a rope from a broken spar,
+ And bound her to the mast.
+
+ "O father! I hear the church-bells ring,
+ O say, what may it be?"
+ "Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"--
+ And he steered for the open sea.
+
+ "O father! I hear the sound of guns,
+ O say, what may it be?"
+ "Some ship in distress, that cannot live
+ In such an angry sea!"
+
+ "O father! I see a gleaming light,
+ O say, what may it be?"
+ But the father answered never a word,
+ A frozen corpse was he.
+
+ Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
+ With his face turned to the skies,
+ The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
+ On his fixed and glassy eyes.
+
+ Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
+ That savd she might be;
+ And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave
+ On the Lake of Galilee.
+
+ And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
+ Through the whistling sleet and snow,
+ Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept
+ Toward the reef of Norman's Woe.
+
+ And ever the fitful gusts between
+ A sound came from the land;
+ It was the sound of the trampling surf
+ On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.
+
+ The breakers were right beneath her bows,
+ She drifted a dreary wreck,
+ And a whooping billow swept the crew
+ Like icicles from her deck.
+
+ She struck where the white and fleecy waves
+ Looked soft as carded wool,
+ But the cruel rocks they gored her side
+ Like the horns of an angry bull.
+
+ Her rattling shrouds all sheathed in ice,
+ With the masts went by the board;
+ Like a vessel of glass she stove and sank,--
+ Ho! ho! the breakers roared!
+
+ At daybreak on the bleak sea-beach
+ A fisherman stood aghast,
+ To see the form of a maiden fair
+ Lashed close to a drifting mast.
+
+ The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
+ The salt tears in her eyes;
+ And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
+ On the billows fall and rise.
+
+ Such was the wreck of the _Hesperus_,
+ In the midnight and the snow!
+ Christ save us all from a death like this,
+ On the reef of Norman's Woe!
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ BANNOCKBURN.
+
+ ROBERT BRUCE'S ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY.
+
+ You can look down on the battle-field of Bannockburn from Stirling
+ Castle, Scotland, near which stands a magnificent statue of Robert, the
+ Bruce. How often have I trodden over the old battle-field. The monument
+ of William Wallace, too, looms up on the Ochil Hills, not far away.
+ (1759-96.)
+
+ Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
+ Scots, wham Bruce has aften led;
+ Welcome to your gory bed,
+ Or to victorie.
+
+ Now's the day, and now's the hour;
+ See the front o' battle lower;
+ See approach proud Edward's power--
+ 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 your 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!
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+
+
+ PART IV.
+
+ Lad and Lassie
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+
+ THE INCHCAPE ROCK.
+
+ The man is wrecked and his ship is sunken before he ever steps on board
+ or sees the water if his heart is hard and his estimate of human beings
+ low. "The Inchcape Rock" is a thrust at hard-heartedness. "What is the
+ use of life?" To bear one another's burdens, to develop a genius for
+ pulling people through hard places--that's the use of life. It is the
+ last resort of a mean mind to crack jokes that wreck innocent voyagers
+ on life's sea. (1774-1843.)
+
+ No stir in the air, no stir in the sea,
+ The ship was still as she could be;
+ Her sails from heaven received no motion;
+ Her keel was steady in the ocean.
+
+ Without either sign or sound of their shock,
+ The waves flowed over the Inchcape Rock;
+ So little they rose, so little they fell,
+ They did not move the Inchcape Bell.
+
+ The Abbot of Aberbrothok
+ Had placed that Bell on the Inchcape Rock;
+ On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung,
+ And over the waves its warning rung.
+
+ When the Rock was hid by the surge's swell,
+ The mariners heard the warning Bell;
+ And then they knew the perilous Rock,
+ And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok.
+
+ The sun in heaven was shining gay;
+ All things were joyful on that day;
+ The sea-birds screamed as they wheeled round,
+ And there was joyance in their sound.
+
+ The buoy of the Inchcape Bell was seen,
+ A dark spot on the ocean green;
+ Sir Ralph the Rover walked his deck,
+ And he fixed his eye on the darker speck.
+
+ He felt the cheering power of spring;
+ It made him whistle, it made him sing:
+ His heart was mirthful to excess,
+ But the Rover's mirth was wickedness.
+
+ His eye was on the Inchcape float.
+ Quoth he, "My men, put out the boat
+ And row me to the Inchcape Rock,
+ And I'll plague the Abbot of Aberbrothok."
+
+ The boat is lowered, the boatmen row,
+ And to the Inchcape Rock they go;
+ Sir Ralph bent over from the boat,
+ And he cut the Bell from the Inchcape float.
+
+ Down sank the Bell with a gurgling sound;
+ The bubbles rose and burst around.
+ Quoth Sir Ralph, "The next who comes to the Rock
+ Won't bless the Abbot of Aberbrothok."
+
+ Sir Ralph the Rover sailed away;
+ He scoured the sea for many a day;
+ And now grown rich with plundered store,
+ He steers his course for Scotland's shore.
+
+ So thick a haze o'erspread the sky,
+ They cannot see the sun on high:
+ The wind hath blown a gale all day,
+ At evening it hath died away.
+
+ On the deck the Rover takes his stand;
+ So dark it is they see no land.
+ Quoth Sir Ralph, "It will be brighter soon,
+ For there is the dawn of the rising moon."
+
+ "Canst hear," said one, "the broken roar?
+ For methinks we should be near the shore."
+ "Now where we are I cannot tell,
+ But I wish I could hear the Inchcape Bell."
+
+ They hear no sound; the swell is strong;
+ Though the wind hath fallen, they drift along
+ Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock:
+ "O Christ! it is the Inchcape Rock!"
+
+ Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair,
+ He curst himself in his despair:
+ The waves rush in on every side,
+ The ship is sinking beneath the tide.
+
+ But, even in his dying fear,
+ One dreadful sound could the Rover hear,--
+ A sound as if with the Inchcape Bell
+ The Devil below was ringing his knell.
+
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY.
+
+
+ THE FINDING OF THE LYRE.
+
+ Once a year my pupils teach me "The Finding of the Lyre." By the time I
+ have learned it they know the meaning of every line and have caught the
+ spirit of the verse. There is an ancient "lyre," or violin, made in
+ northern Africa, in the possession of a Boston lady, and I have found
+ the mud-turtle rattle among the Indians on the Indian reservation at
+ Syracuse, New York. They use it as a musical instrument in their
+ Thanksgiving dances. The poem helps to build an interest in history and
+ mythology while it develops a child's reverence and insight. (1819-91.)
+
+ There lay upon the ocean's shore
+ What once a tortoise served to cover;
+ A year and more, with rush and roar,
+ The surf had rolled it over,
+ Had played with it, and flung it by,
+ As wind and weather might decide it,
+ Then tossed it high where sand-drifts dry
+ Cheap burial might provide it.
+
+ It rested there to bleach or tan,
+ The rains had soaked, the sun had burned it;
+ With many a ban the fisherman
+ Had stumbled o'er and spurned it;
+ And there the fisher-girl would stay,
+ Conjecturing with her brother
+ How in their play the poor estray
+ Might serve some use or other.
+
+ So there it lay, through wet and dry,
+ As empty as the last new sonnet,
+ Till by and by came Mercury,
+ And, having mused upon it,
+ "Why, here," cried he, "the thing of things
+ In shape, material, and dimension!
+ Give it but strings, and, lo, it sings,
+ A wonderful invention!"
+
+ So said, so done; the chords he strained,
+ And, as his fingers o'er them hovered,
+ The shell disdained a soul had gained,
+ The lyre had been discovered.
+ O empty world that round us lies,
+ Dead shell, of soul and thought forsaken,
+ Brought we but eyes like Mercury's,
+ In thee what songs should waken!
+
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
+
+
+ A CHRYSALIS.
+
+"A Chrysalis" is a favourite poem with John Burroughs, and is found,
+ too, in Stedman's collection. We all come to a point in life where we
+ need to burst the shell and fly away into the new realm. (1835-98.)
+
+ My little Mdchen found one day
+ A curious something in her play,
+ That was not fruit, nor flower, nor seed;
+ It was not anything that grew,
+ Or crept, or climbed, or swam, or flew;
+ Had neither legs nor wings, indeed;
+ And yet she was not sure, she said,
+ Whether it was alive or dead.
+
+ She brought it in her tiny hand
+ To see if I would understand,
+ And wondered when I made reply,
+ "You've found a baby butterfly."
+ "A butterfly is not like this,"
+ With doubtful look she answered me.
+ So then I told her what would be
+ Some day within the chrysalis:
+ How, slowly, in the dull brown thing
+ Now still as death, a spotted wing,
+ And then another, would unfold,
+ Till from the empty shell would fly
+ A pretty creature, by and by,
+ All radiant in blue and gold.
+
+ "And will it, truly?" questioned she--
+ Her laughing lips and eager eyes
+ All in a sparkle of surprise--
+ "And shall your little Mdchen see?"
+ "She shall!" I said. How could I tell
+ That ere the worm within its shell
+ Its gauzy, splendid wings had spread,
+ My little Mdchen would be dead?
+
+ To-day the butterfly has flown,--
+ She was not here to see it fly,--
+ And sorrowing I wonder why
+ The empty shell is mine alone.
+ Perhaps the secret lies in this:
+ I too had found a chrysalis,
+ And Death that robbed me of delight
+ Was but the radiant creature's flight!
+
+ MARY EMILY BRADLEY.
+
+
+ FOR A' THAT.
+
+ Robert Burns, the plowman and poet, "dinnered wi' a lord." The story
+ goes that he was put at the second table. That lord is dead, but Robert
+ Burns still lives. He is immortal. It is "the survival of the fittest"
+"For a' That and a' That" is a poem that wipes out the superficial
+ value put on money and other externalities. This poem is more valuable
+ in education than good penmanship or good spelling. (1759-96.)
+
+ Is there, for honest poverty,
+ That hangs his head, and a' that?
+ The coward slave, we pass him by,
+ We dare be poor for a' that;
+ For a' that, and a' that,
+ Our toils obscure, and a' that;
+ The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
+ The man's the gowd for a' that!
+
+ What though on hamely fare we dine,
+ Wear hoddin-gray,[1] and a' that;
+ Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
+ A man's a man for a' that!
+ For a' that, and a' that,
+ Their tinsel show, and a' that;
+ The honest man, though e'er sae poor,
+ Is king o' men for a' that!
+
+ Ye see yon birkie[2] ca'd a lord,
+ Wha struts, and stares, and a' that;
+ Though hundreds worship at his word,
+ He's but a coof[3] for a' that;
+ For a' that, and a' that,
+ His riband, star, and a' that,
+ The man of independent mind,
+ He looks and laughs at a' that.
+
+ A prince can make a belted knight,
+ A marquis, duke, and a' that;
+ But an honest man's aboon his might.
+ Guid faith he maunna fa' that!
+ For a' that, and a' that,
+ Their dignities, and a' that,
+ The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth,
+ Are higher rank than a' that.
+
+ Then let us pray that come it may--
+ As come it will for a' that--
+ That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
+ May bear the gree, and a' that;
+ For a' that, and a' that,
+ It's coming yet for a' that,
+ That man to man, the warld o'er,
+ Shall brothers be for a' that!
+
+ FOOTNOTES:
+
+ [1] Coarse woolen clothes.
+
+ [2] Impudent fellow.
+
+ [3] Fool: blockhead.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ A NEW ARRIVAL.
+
+"The New Arrival" is a valuable poem because it expresses the joy of a
+ young father over his new baby. If girls should be educated to be good
+ mothers, so should boys be taught that fatherhood is the highest and
+ holiest joy and right of man. The child is educator to the man. He
+ teaches him how to take responsibility, how to give unbiased judgments,
+ and how to be fatherly like "Our Father who is in Heaven." (1844-.)
+
+ There came to port last Sunday night
+ The queerest little craft,
+ Without an inch of rigging on;
+ I looked and looked and laughed.
+ It seemed so curious that she
+ Should cross the Unknown water,
+ And moor herself right in my room,
+ My daughter, O my daughter!
+
+ Yet by these presents witness all
+ She's welcome fifty times,
+ And comes consigned to Hope and Love
+ And common-meter rhymes.
+ She has no manifest but this,
+ No flag floats o'er the water,
+ She's too new for the British Lloyds--
+ My daughter, O my daughter!
+
+ Ring out, wild bells, and tame ones too!
+ Ring out the lover's moon!
+ Ring in the little worsted socks!
+ Ring in the bib and spoon!
+ Ring out the muse! ring in the nurse!
+ Ring in the milk and water!
+ Away with paper, pen, and ink--
+ My daughter, O my daughter!
+
+ GEORGE W. CABLE.
+
+
+ THE BROOK.
+
+ Tennyson's "The Brook" is included out of love to a dear old schoolmate
+ in Colorado. The real brook, near Cambridge, England, is tame compared
+ to your Colorado streams, O beloved comrade. This poem is well liked by
+ the majority of pupils. (1809-92.)
+
+ I chatter, chatter, as I flow
+ To join the brimming river;
+ For men may come and men may go,
+ But I go on forever.
+
+ I wind about, and in and out,
+ With here a blossom sailing,
+ And here and there a lusty trout,
+ And here and there a grayling.
+
+ I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
+ I slide by hazel covers;
+ I move the sweet forget-me-nots
+ That grow for happy lovers.
+
+ I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
+ Among my skimming swallows;
+ I make the netted sunbeams dance
+ Against my sandy shallows.
+
+ I murmur under moon and stars
+ In brambly wildernesses;
+ I linger by my shingly bars;
+ I loiter round my cresses.
+
+ And out again I curve and flow
+ To join the brimming river;
+ For men may come and men may go,
+ But I go on forever.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE BALLAD OF THE "CLAMPHERDOWN."
+
+"The Ballad of the _Clampherdown_," by Rudyard Kipling, is included
+ because my boys always like it. It needs a great deal of explanation,
+ and few boys will hold out to the end in learning it. But "it pays."
+ (1865-.)
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_
+ Would sweep the Channel clean,
+ Wherefore she kept her hatches close
+ When the merry Channel chops arose,
+ To save the bleached marine.
+
+ She had one bow-gun of a hundred ton,
+ And a great stern-gun beside;
+ They dipped their noses deep in the sea,
+ They racked their stays and stanchions free
+ In the wash of the wind-whipped tide.
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_,
+ Fell in with a cruiser light
+ That carried the dainty Hotchkiss gun
+ And a pair o' heels wherewith to run,
+ From the grip of a close-fought fight.
+
+ She opened fire at seven miles--
+ As ye shoot at a bobbing cork--
+ And once she fired and twice she fired,
+ Till the bow-gun drooped like a lily tired
+ That lolls upon the stalk.
+
+ "Captain, the bow-gun melts apace,
+ The deck-beams break below,
+ 'Twere well to rest for an hour or twain,
+ And botch the shattered plates again."
+ And he answered, "Make it so."
+
+ She opened fire within the mile--
+ As ye shoot at the flying duck--
+ And the great stern-gun shot fair and true,
+ With the heave of the ship, to the stainless blue,
+ And the great stern-turret stuck.
+
+ "Captain, the turret fills with steam,
+ The feed-pipes burst below--
+ You can hear the hiss of helpless ram,
+ You can hear the twisted runners jam."
+ And he answered, "Turn and go!"
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_,
+ And grimly did she roll;
+ Swung round to take the cruiser's fire
+ As the White Whale faces the Thresher's ire,
+ When they war by the frozen Pole.
+
+ "Captain, the shells are falling fast,
+ And faster still fall we;
+ And it is not meet for English stock,
+ To bide in the heart of an eight-day clock,
+ The death they cannot see."
+
+ "Lie down, lie down, my bold A.B.,
+ We drift upon her beam;
+ We dare not ram, for she can run;
+ And dare ye fire another gun,
+ And die in the peeling steam?"
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_
+ That carried an armour-belt;
+ But fifty feet at stern and bow,
+ Lay bare as the paunch of the purser's sow,
+ To the hail of the Nordenfeldt.
+
+ "Captain, they lack us through and through;
+ The chilled steel bolts are swift!
+ We have emptied the bunkers in open sea,
+ Their shrapnel bursts where our coal should be."
+ And he answered, "Let her drift."
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_,
+ Swung round upon the tide.
+ Her two dumb guns glared south and north,
+ And the blood and the bubbling steam ran forth,
+ And she ground the cruiser's side.
+
+ "Captain, they cry the fight is done,
+ They bid you send your sword."
+ And he answered, "Grapple her stern and bow.
+ They have asked for the steel. They shall have it now;
+ Out cutlasses and board!"
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_,
+ Spewed up four hundred men;
+ And the scalded stokers yelped delight,
+ As they rolled in the waist and heard the fight,
+ Stamp o'er their steel-walled pen.
+
+ They cleared the cruiser end to end,
+ From conning-tower to hold.
+ They fought as they fought in Nelson's fleet;
+ They were stripped to the waist, they were bare to the feet,
+ As it was in the days of old.
+
+ It was the sinking _Clampherdown_
+ Heaved up her battered side--
+ And carried a million pounds in steel,
+ To the cod and the corpse-fed conger-eel,
+ And the scour of the Channel tide.
+
+ It was the crew of the _Clampherdown_
+ Stood out to sweep the sea,
+ On a cruiser won from an ancient foe,
+ As it was in the days of long-ago,
+ And as it still shall be.
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+
+ THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB.
+
+"The Destruction of Sennacherib," by Lord Byron, finds a place in this
+ collection because Johnnie, a ten-year-old, and many of his friends
+ say, "It's great." (1788-1824.)
+
+ The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,
+ And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
+ And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
+ When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
+
+ Like the leaves of the forest when the Summer is green,
+ That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
+ Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
+ That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
+
+ For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
+ And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
+ And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
+ And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still!
+
+ And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
+ But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
+ And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
+ And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
+
+ And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
+ With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail,
+ And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
+ The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
+
+ And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
+ And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
+ And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
+ Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
+
+ LORD BYRON.
+
+
+ I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER.
+
+ 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
+ The roses, red and white,
+ The violets, and the lily-cups--
+ Those flowers made of light!
+ The lilacs where the robin built,
+ And where my brother set
+ The laburnum on his birthday,--
+ The tree is living yet!
+
+ 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.
+
+ THOMAS HOOD.
+
+
+ DRIVING HOME THE COWS.
+
+ Out of the clover and blue-eyed grass
+ He turned them into the river lane;
+ One after another he let them pass,
+ Then fastened the meadow bars again.
+
+ Under the willows and over the hill,
+ He patiently followed their sober pace;
+ The merry whistle for once was still,
+ And something shadowed the sunny face.
+
+ Only a boy! and his father had said
+ He never could let his youngest go:
+ Two already were lying dead,
+ Under the feet of the trampling foe.
+
+ But after the evening work was done,
+ And the frogs were loud in the meadow-swamp,
+ Over his shoulder he slung his gun,
+ And stealthily followed the footpath damp.
+
+ Across the clover, and through the wheat,
+ With resolute heart and purpose grim:
+ Though the dew was on his hurrying feet,
+ And the blind bat's flitting startled him.
+
+ Thrice since then had the lanes been white,
+ And the orchards sweet with apple-bloom;
+ And now, when the cows came back at night,
+ The feeble father drove them home.
+
+ For news had come to the lonely farm
+ That three were lying where two had lain;
+ And the old man's tremulous, palsied arm
+ Could never lean on a son's again.
+
+ The summer day grew cool and late:
+ He went for the cows when the work was done;
+ But down the lane, as he opened the gate,
+ He saw them coming one by one:
+
+ Brindle, Ebony, Speckle, and Bess,
+ Shaking their horns in the evening wind;
+ Cropping the buttercups out of the grass,
+ But who was it following close behind?
+
+ Loosely swung in the idle air
+ The empty sleeve of army blue;
+ And worn and pale, from the crisping hair,
+ Looked out a face that the father knew.
+
+ For close-barred prisons will sometimes yawn,
+ And yield their dead unto life again;
+ And the day that comes with a cloudy dawn,
+ In golden glory at last may wane.
+
+ The great tears sprang to their meeting eyes;
+ For the heart must speak when the lips are dumb,
+ And under the silent evening skies
+ Together they followed the cattle home.
+
+ KATE PUTNAM OSGOOD.
+
+
+ KRINKEN.
+
+"Krinken" is the dearest of poems.
+
+ "Krinken was a little child.
+ It was summer when he smiled!"
+
+ Eugene Field, above all other poets, paid the finest tribute to
+ children. This poet only, could make the whole ocean warm because a
+ child's heart was there to warm it.
+
+ Krinken was a little child,--
+ It was summer when he smiled.
+ Oft the hoary sea and grim
+ Stretched its white arms out to him,
+ Calling, "Sun-child, come to me;
+ Let me warm my heart with thee!"
+ But the child heard not the sea
+ Calling, yearning evermore
+ For the summer on the shore.
+
+ Krinken on the beach one day
+ Saw a maiden Nis at play;
+ On the pebbly beach she played
+ In the summer Krinken made.
+ Fair, and very fair, was she,
+ Just a little child was he.
+ "Krinken," said the maiden Nis,
+ "Let me have a little kiss,--
+ Just a kiss, and go with me
+ To the summer-lands that be
+ Down within the silver sea."
+
+ Krinken was a little child--
+ By the maiden Nis beguiled,
+ Hand in hand with her went he
+ And 'twas summer in the sea.
+ And the hoary sea and grim
+ To its bosom folded him--
+ Clasped and kissed the little form,
+ And the ocean's heart was warm.
+
+ Now the sea calls out no more;
+ It is winter on the shore,--
+ Winter where that little child
+ Made sweet summer when he smiled;
+ Though 'tis summer on the sea
+ Where with maiden Nis went he,--
+ It is winter on the shore,
+ Winter, winter evermore.
+
+ Of the summer on the deep
+ Come sweet visions in my sleep;
+ _His_ fair face lifts from the sea,
+ _His_ dear voice calls out to me,--
+ These my dreams of summer be.
+
+ Krinken was a little child,
+ By the maiden Nis beguiled;
+ Oft the hoary sea and grim
+ Reached its longing arms to him,
+ Crying, "Sim-child, come to me;
+ Let me warm my heart with thee!"
+ But the sea calls out no more;
+ It is winter on the shore,--
+ Winter, cold and dark and wild.
+
+ Krinken was a little child,--
+ It was summer when he smiled;
+ Down he went into the sea,
+ And the winter bides with me,
+ Just a little child was he.
+
+ EUGENE FIELD.
+
+
+ STEVENSON'S BIRTHDAY.
+
+ "How I should like a birthday!" said the child,
+ "I have so few, and they so far apart."
+ She spoke to Stevenson--the Master smiled--
+ "Mine is to-day; I would with all my heart
+ That it were yours; too many years have I!
+ Too swift they come, and all too swiftly fly"
+
+ So by a formal deed he there conveyed
+ All right and title in his natal day,
+ To have and hold, to sell or give away,--
+ Then signed, and gave it to the little maid.
+
+ Joyful, yet fearing to believe too much,
+ She took the deed, but scarcely dared unfold.
+ Ah, liberal Genius! at whose potent touch
+ All common things shine with transmuted gold!
+ A day of Stevenson's will prove to be
+ Not part of Time, but Immortality.
+
+ KATHERINE MILLER.
+
+
+ A MODEST WIT.
+
+ I learned "A Modest Wit" as a reading-lesson when I was a child. It has
+ clung to me and so I cling to it. It is just as good as it ever was. It
+ is a sharp thrust at power that depends on externalities. Selleck
+ Osborne. (----.)
+
+ A supercilious nabob of the East--
+ Haughty, being great--purse-proud, being rich--
+ A governor, or general, at the least,
+ I have forgotten which--
+ Had in his family a humble youth,
+ Who went from England in his patron's suit,
+ An unassuming boy, in truth
+ A lad of decent parts, and good repute.
+
+ This youth had sense and spirit;
+ But yet with all his sense,
+ Excessive diffidence
+ Obscured his merit.
+
+ One day, at table, flushed with pride and wine,
+ His honour, proudly free, severely merry,
+ Conceived it would be vastly fine
+ To crack a joke upon his secretary.
+
+ "Young man," he said, "by what art, craft, or trade,
+ Did your good father gain a livelihood?"--
+ "He was a saddler, sir," Modestus said,
+ "And in his time was reckon'd good."
+
+ "A saddler, eh! and taught you Greek,
+ Instead of teaching you to sew!
+ Pray, why did not your father make
+ A saddler, sir, of you?"
+
+ Each parasite, then, as in duty bound,
+ The joke applauded, and the laugh went round.
+ At length Modestus, bowing low,
+ Said (craving pardon, if too free he made),
+ "Sir, by your leave, I fain would know
+ Your father's trade!"
+
+ "My father's trade! by heaven, that's too bad!
+ My father's trade? Why, blockhead, are you mad?
+ My father, sir, did never stoop so low--
+ He was a gentleman, I'd have you know."
+
+ "Excuse the liberty I take,"
+ Modestus said, with archness on his brow,
+ "Pray, why did not your father make
+ A gentleman of you?"
+
+ SELLECK OSBORNE.
+
+
+ THE LEGEND OF BISHOP HATTO.
+
+"The Legend of Bishop Hatto" is doubtless a myth (Robert Southey,
+ 1774-1843). But "The Mouse-Tower on the Rhine" is an object of interest
+ to travellers, and the story has a point
+
+ The summer and autumn had been so wet,
+ That in winter the corn was growing yet:
+ 'Twas a piteous sight to see, all around,
+ The grain lie rotting on the ground.
+
+ Every day the starving poor
+ Crowded around Bishop Hatto's door;
+ For he had a plentiful last-year's store,
+ And all the neighbourhood could tell
+ His granaries were furnished well.
+
+ At last Bishop Hatto appointed a day
+ To quiet the poor without delay:
+ He bade them to his great barn repair,
+ And they should have food for winter there.
+
+ Rejoiced such tidings good to hear,
+ The poor folk flocked from far and near;
+ The great barn was full as it could hold
+ Of women and children, and young and old.
+
+ Then, when he saw it could hold no more,
+ Bishop Hatto, he made fast the door;
+ And while for mercy on Christ they call,
+ He set fire to the barn and burned them all.
+
+ "I' faith, 'tis an excellent bonfire!" quoth he;
+ "And the country is greatly obliged to me
+ For ridding it in these times forlorn
+ Of Rats that only consume the corn."
+
+ So then to his palace returnd he,
+ And he sat down to supper merrily,
+ And he slept that night like an innocent man;
+ But Bishop Hatto never slept again.
+
+ In the morning as he entered the hall,
+ Where his picture hung against the wall,
+ A sweat-like death all over him came;
+ For the Rats had eaten it out of the frame.
+
+ As he looked, there came a man from his farm;
+ He had a countenance white with alarm:
+ "My Lord, I opened your granaries this morn,
+ And the Rats had eaten all your corn."
+
+ Another came running presently,
+ And he was pale as pale could be:
+ "Fly, my Lord Bishop, fly!" quoth he,
+ "Ten thousand Rats are coming this way;
+ The Lord forgive you yesterday!"
+
+ "I'll go to my town on the Rhine," replied he;
+ "'Tis the safest place in Germany;
+ The walls are high, and the shores are steep,
+ And the stream is strong, and the water deep."
+
+ Bishop Hatto fearfully hastened away,
+ And he crossed the Rhine without delay,
+ And reached his tower, and barred with care
+ All windows, doors, and loop-holes there.
+
+ He laid him down, and closed his eyes;
+ But soon a scream made him arise:
+ He started and saw two eyes of flame
+ On his pillow, from whence the screaming came.
+
+ He listened and looked; it was only the cat:
+ But the Bishop he grew more fearful for that;
+ For she sat screaming, mad with fear
+ At the army of Rats that was drawing near.
+
+ For they have swum over the river so deep,
+ And they have climbed the shore so steep;
+ And up the tower their way is bent,
+ To do the work for which they were sent.
+
+ They are not to be told by the dozen or score;
+ By thousands they come, and by myriads and more;
+ Such numbers had never been heard of before,
+ Such a judgment had never been witnessed of yore.
+
+ Down on his knees the Bishop fell,
+ And faster and faster his beads did tell,
+ As, louder and louder drawing near,
+ The gnawing of their teeth he could hear.
+
+ And in at the windows and in at the door,
+ And through the walls, helter-skelter they pour,
+ And down from the ceiling and up through the floor,
+ From the right and the left, from behind and before,
+ And all at once to the Bishop they go.
+
+ They have whetted their teeth against the stones;
+ And now they pick the Bishop's bones:
+ They gnawed the flesh from every limb;
+ For they were sent to do judgment on him!
+
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY.
+
+
+ COLUMBUS.
+
+ We are greatly indebted to Joaquin Miller for his "Sail On! Sail On!"
+ Endurance is the watchword of the poem and the watchword of our
+ republic. Every man to his gun! Columbus discovered America in his own
+ mind before he realised it or proved its existence. I have often drawn
+ a chart of Columbus's life and voyages to show what need he had of the
+ motto "Sail On!" to accomplish his end. This is one of our greatest
+ American poems. The writer still lives in California.
+
+ Behind him lay the gray Azores,
+ Behind the gates of Hercules;
+ Before him not the ghost of shores,
+ Before him only shoreless seas.
+ The good mate said: "Now must we pray,
+ For lo! the very stars are gone;
+ Speak, Admiral, what shall I say?"
+ "Why say, sail on! and on!"
+
+ "My men grow mut'nous day by day;
+ My men grow ghastly wan and weak."
+ The stout mate thought of home; a spray
+ Of salt wave wash'd his swarthy cheek.
+ "What shall I say, brave Admiral,
+ If we sight naught but seas at dawn?"
+ "Why, you shall say, at break of day:
+ 'Sail on! sail on! and on!'"
+
+ They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,
+ Until at last the blanch'd mate said;
+ "Why, now, not even God would know
+ Should I and all my men fall dead.
+ These very winds forget their way,
+ For God from these dread seas is gone.
+ Now speak, brave Admiral, and say----"
+ He said: "Sail on! and on!"
+
+ They sailed, they sailed, then spoke his mate:
+ "This mad sea shows his teeth to-night,
+ He curls his lip, he lies in wait,
+ With lifted teeth as if to bite!
+ Brave Admiral, say but one word;
+ What shall we do when hope is gone?"
+ The words leaped as a leaping sword:
+ "Sail on! sail on! and on!"
+
+ Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,
+ And thro' the darkness peered that night.
+ Ah, darkest night! and then a speck,--
+ A light! a light! a light! a light!
+ It grew--a star-lit flag unfurled!
+ It grew to be Time's burst of dawn;
+ He gained a world! he gave that world
+ Its watch-word: "On! and on!"
+
+ JOAQUIN MILLER.
+
+
+ THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS.
+
+ Once a year the children learn "The Shepherd of King Admetus," which is
+ one of the finest poems ever written as showing the possible growth of
+ real history into mythology, the tendency of mankind to deify what is
+ fine or sublime in human action. Not every child will learn this entire
+ poem, because it is too long. But every child will learn the best lines
+ in it while the children are teaching it to me and when I take my turn
+ in teaching it to them. No child fails to catch the spirit and intent
+ of the poem and to become entirely familiar with it. (1819-91.)
+
+ There came a youth upon the earth,
+ Some thousand years ago,
+ Whose slender hands were nothing worth,
+ Whether to plow, or reap, or sow.
+
+ Upon an empty tortoise-shell
+ He stretched some chords, and drew
+ Music that made men's bosoms swell
+ Fearless, or brimmed their eyes with dew.
+
+ Then King Admetus, one who had
+ Pure taste by right divine,
+ Decreed his singing not too bad
+ To hear between the cups of wine:
+
+ And so, well pleased with being soothed
+ Into a sweet half-sleep,
+ Three times his kingly beard he smoothed,
+ And made him viceroy o'er his sheep.
+
+ His words were simple words enough,
+ And yet he used them so,
+ That what in other mouths was rough
+ In his seemed musical and low.
+
+ Men called him but a shiftless youth,
+ In whom no good they saw;
+ And yet, unwittingly, in truth,
+ They made his careless words their law.
+
+ They knew not how he learned at all,
+ For idly, hour by hour,
+ He sat and watched the dead leaves fall,
+ Or mused upon a common flower.
+
+ It seemed the loveliness of things
+ Did teach him all their use,
+ For, in mere weeds, and stones, and springs,
+ He found a healing power profuse.
+
+ Men granted that his speech was wise,
+ But, when a glance they caught
+ Of his slim grace and woman's eyes,
+ They laughed, and called him good-for-naught.
+
+ Yet after he was dead and gone,
+ And e'en his memory dim,
+ Earth seemed more sweet to live upon,
+ More full of love, because of him.
+
+ And day by day more holy grew
+ Each spot where he had trod,
+ Till after-poets only knew
+ Their first-born brother as a god.
+
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
+
+
+ HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX.
+
+ I have an old essay written by a lad of fourteen years on "How They
+ Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix." I should judge from this
+ essay that any boy at that age would like the poem, even if he had not
+ himself been over the ground as this boy had. (1812-89.)
+
+ I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
+ I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
+ "Good speed!" cried the watch as the gate-bolts undrew;
+ "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through;
+ Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
+ And into the midnight we galloped abreast.
+
+ Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
+ Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
+ I turned in my saddle and made its girth tight,
+ Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
+ Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,
+ Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.
+
+ 'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near
+ Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;
+ At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;
+ At Dffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be;
+ And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,
+ So Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"
+
+ At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,
+ And against him the cattle stood black every one,
+ To stare through the mist at us galloping past,
+ And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,
+ With resolute shoulders, each butting away
+ The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:
+
+ And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
+ For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;
+ And one eye's black intelligence,--ever that glance
+ O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!
+ And the thick, heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon
+ His fierce lips shook upward in galloping on.
+
+ By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur!
+ Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her,
+ We'll remember at Aix"--for one heard the quick wheeze
+ Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,
+ And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
+ As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.
+
+ So, we were left galloping, Joris and I,
+ Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;
+ The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,
+ 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff;
+ Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,
+ And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!"
+
+ "How they'll greet us!"--and all in a moment his roan
+ Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;
+ And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
+ Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
+ With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
+ And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.
+
+ Then I cast loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall,
+ Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
+ Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,
+ Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;
+ Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,
+ Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.
+
+ And all I remember is--friends flocking round
+ As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground;
+ And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
+ As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
+ Which (the burgesses voting by common consent)
+ Was no more than his due who brought the good news from Ghent.
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA.
+
+"The Burial of Sir John Moore" was one of my reading-lessons when I was
+ a child. A distinguished teacher says: "It has become a part of popular
+ education," as has also "The Eve of Waterloo" and "The Death of
+ Napoleon." They are all poems of great rhythmical swing, intense and
+ graphic. (1791-1823.)
+
+ Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
+ As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
+ Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
+ O'er the grave where our hero we buried.
+
+ We buried him darkly at dead of night,
+ The sods with our bayonets turning;
+ By the struggling moonbeam's misty light,
+ And the lantern dimly burning.
+
+ No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
+ Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;
+ But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
+ With his martial cloak around him.
+
+ Few and short were the prayers we said,
+ And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
+ But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
+ And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
+
+ We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed,
+ And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
+ That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
+ And we far away on the billow!
+
+ Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
+ And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,--
+ But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
+ In the grave where a Briton has laid him.
+
+ But half of our heavy task was done
+ When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
+ And we heard the distant and random gun
+ That the foe was sullenly firing.
+
+ Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
+ From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
+ We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone--
+ But we left him alone with his glory!
+
+ C. WOLFE.
+
+
+ THE EVE OF WATERLOO.
+
+"The Eve of Waterloo," by Lord Byron (1788-1824). Here is another old
+ reading-book gem that will always be dear to every boy's heart if he
+ only reads it a few times.
+
+ There was a sound of revelry by night,
+ And Belgium's capital had gathered then
+ Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
+ The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men.
+ A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
+ Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
+ Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
+ And all went merry as a marriage-bell:
+ But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!
+
+ Did ye not hear it? No; 'twas but the wind,
+ Or the car rattling o'er the stony street.
+ On with the dance! let joy be unconfined!
+ No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
+ To chase the glowing hours with flying feet!
+ But hark!--that heavy sound breaks in once more,
+ As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
+ And nearer, clearer, deadlier, than before!
+ Arm! arm! it is--it is the cannon's opening roar!
+
+ Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro,
+ And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress
+ And cheeks all pale, which, but an hour ago,
+ Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness;
+ And there were sudden partings, such as press
+ The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs
+ Which ne'er might be repeated: who could guess
+ If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,
+ Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise?
+
+ And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed,
+ The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
+ Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
+ And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;
+ And the deep thunder peal on peal afar;
+ And near, the beat of the alarming drum
+ Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;
+ While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,
+ Or whispering with white lips, "The foe! They come! They come!"
+
+ And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,
+ Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass,
+ Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves,
+ Over the unreturning brave--alas!
+ Ere evening to be trodden like the grass
+ Which, now beneath them, but above shall grow
+ In its next verdure, when this fiery mass
+ Of living valour, rolling on the foe,
+ And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low.
+
+ Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,
+ Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay;
+ The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife,
+ The morn the marshalling in arms,--the day,
+ Battle's magnificently stern array!
+ The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which, when rent,
+ The earth is covered thick with other clay,
+ Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
+ Rider, and horse--friend, foe--in one red burial blent!
+
+ LORD BYRON.
+
+
+ IVRY.
+
+ A SONG OF THE HUGUENOTS.
+
+ Laddie, aged eleven, do you remember how you studied and recited "King
+ Henry of Navarre" every poetry hour for a year? It was a long poem, but
+ you stuck to it to the end. We did not know the meaning of a certain
+ word, but I found it up in Switzerland. It is the name of a little
+ town. (1800-59.)
+
+ Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are!
+ And glory to our Sovereign Liege, King Henry of Navarre!
+
+ Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance,
+ Through thy corn-fields green, and sunny vines, O pleasant
+ land of France!
+ And thou, Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters,
+ Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters.
+ As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy,
+ For cold, and stiff, and still are they who wrought thy walls annoy.
+ Hurrah! Hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of war,
+ Hurrah! Hurrah! for Ivry, and Henry of Navarre.
+
+ Oh! how our hearts were beating, when, at the dawn of day,
+ We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array;
+ With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers,
+ And Appenzel's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish spears.
+ There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land;
+ And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand;
+ And, as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood,
+ And good Coligni's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood;
+ And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war,
+ To fight for His own holy name, and Henry of Navarre.
+
+ The King is come to marshal us, in all his armour drest,
+ And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest.
+ He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye;
+ He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high.
+ Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing,
+ Down all our line, a deafening shout, "God save our Lord the King!"
+ "And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may,
+ For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray,
+ Press where ye see my white plume shine, amid the ranks of war,
+ And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre."
+
+ Hurrah! the foes are moving. Hark to the mingled din
+ Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin.
+ The fiery Duke is pricking fast across St. Andr's plain,
+ With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne.
+ Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France,
+ Charge for the golden lilies,--upon them with the lance.
+ A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest,
+ A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest;
+ And in they burst, and on they rushed, while like a guiding star,
+ Amid the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre.
+
+ Now, God be praised, the day is ours. Mayenne hath turned his rein.
+ D'Aumale hath cried for quarter. The Flemish count is slain.
+ Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale;
+ The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven mail.
+ And then we thought on vengeance, and, all along our van,
+ "Remember St. Bartholomew!" was passed from man to man.
+ But out spake gentle Henry, "No Frenchman is my foe:
+ Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go."
+ Oh! was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in war,
+ As our Sovereign Lord, King Henry, the soldier of Navarre?
+
+ Right well fought all the Frenchmen who fought for France to-day;
+ And many a lordly banner God gave them for a prey.
+ But we of the Religion have borne us best in fight;
+ And the good lord of Rosny has ta'en the cornet white.
+ Our own true Maximilian the cornet white hath ta'en,
+ The cornet white with crosses black, the flag of false Lorraine.
+ Up with it high; unfurl it wide; that all the host may know
+ How God hath humbled the proud house which wrought His church such woe.
+ Then on the ground, while trumpets sound their loudest points of war,
+ Fling the red shreds, a footcloth meet for Henry of Navarre.
+
+ Ho! maidens of Vienna; Ho! matrons of Lucerne;
+ Weep, weep, and rend your hair for those who never shall return.
+ Ho! Philip, send, for charity, thy Mexican pistoles,
+ That Antwerp monks may sing a mass for thy poor spearman's souls.
+ Ho! gallant nobles of the League, look that your arms be bright;
+ Ho! burghers of Saint Genevieve, keep watch and ward to-night.
+ For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the slave,
+ And mocked the counsel of the wise, the valour of the brave.
+ Then glory to His holy name, from whom all glories are;
+ And glory to our Sovereign Lord, King Henry of Navarre.
+
+ THOMAS B. MACAULAY.
+
+
+ THE GLOVE AND THE LIONS.
+
+"The Glove and the Lions" was one of my early reading-lessons. It is an
+ incisive thrust at the vanity of "fair" women. A woman be a "true
+ knight" as well as a man. Leigh Hunt (1784-1859.)
+
+ King Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport,
+ And one day as his lions fought, sat looking on the court;
+ The nobles filled the benches, with the ladies in their pride,
+ And 'mong them sat the Count de Lorge with one for whom he sighed:
+ And truly 'twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show,
+ Valour, and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below.
+
+ Ramp'd and roar'd the lions, with horrid laughing jaws;
+ They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind
+ went with their paws;
+ With wallowing might and stifled roar they rolled on one another,
+ Till all the pit with sand and mane was in a thunderous smother;
+ The bloody foam above the bars came whisking through the air;
+ Said Francis then, "Faith, gentlemen, we're better here than there."
+
+ De Lorge's love o'erheard the King,--a beauteous lively dame
+ With smiling lips and sharp, bright eyes, which always seem'd the same:
+ She thought, "The Count, my lover, is brave as brave can be;
+ He surely would do wondrous things to show his love of me;
+ King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is divine;
+ I'll drop my glove, to prove his love; great glory will be mine."
+
+ She dropped her glove, to prove his love, then look'd
+ at him and smiled;
+ He bowed, and in a moment leapt among the lions wild:
+ His leap was quick, return was quick, he has regain'd his place,
+ Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady's face.
+ "Well done!" cried Francis, "bravely done!" and he rose
+ from where he sat:
+ "No love," quoth he, "but vanity, sets love a task like that."
+
+ LEIGH HUNT.
+
+
+ THE WELL OF ST. KEYNE.
+
+ I found the Well of St. Keyne in Cornwall, England--not the poem, but
+ the real well. The poem is of the great body of world-lore. Southey
+ (1774-1843).
+
+ A well there is in the west country,
+ And a clearer one never was seen;
+ There is not a wife in the west-country
+ But has heard of the Well of St. Keyne.
+
+ An oak and an elm tree stand beside,
+ And behind does an ash tree grow,
+ And a willow from the bank above
+ Droops to the water below.
+
+ A traveller came to the Well of St. Keyne:
+ Pleasant it was to his eye,
+ For from cock-crow he had been travelling
+ And there was not a cloud in the sky.
+
+ He drank of the water so cool and clear,
+ For thirsty and hot was he,
+ And he sat down upon the bank,
+ Under the willow tree.
+
+ There came a man from the neighbouring town
+ At the well to fill his pail;
+ On the well-side he rested it,
+ And bade the stranger hail.
+
+ "Now, art thou a bachelor, stranger?" quoth he,
+ "For an if thou hast a wife,
+ The happiest draught thou hast drunk this day
+ That ever thou didst in thy life.
+
+ "Or has your good woman, if one you have,
+ In Cornwall ever been?
+ For an if she have, I'll venture my life
+ She has drunk of the Well of St. Keyne."
+
+ "I have left a good woman who never was here,"
+ The stranger he made reply;
+ "But that my draught should be better for that,
+ I pray you answer me why,"
+
+ "St. Keyne," quoth the countryman, "many a time
+ Drank of this crystal well,
+ And before the angel summoned her
+ She laid on the water a spell.
+
+ "If the husband of this gifted well
+ Shall drink before his wife,
+ A happy man thenceforth is he,
+ For he shall be master for life.
+
+ "But if the wife should drink of it first,
+ God help the husband then!"
+ The stranger stoop'd to the Well of St. Keyne,
+ And drank of the waters again.
+
+ "You drank of the well, I warrant, betimes?"
+ He to the countryman said;
+ But the countryman smiled as the stranger spake,
+ And sheepishly shook his head.
+
+ "I hastened as soon as the wedding was done,
+ And left my wife in the porch,
+ But i' faith she had been wiser than me,
+ For she took a bottle to church,"
+
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY.
+
+
+ THE NAUTILUS AND THE AMMONITE.
+
+"The Nautilus and the Ammonite" finds a place here out of respect to a
+ twelve-year-old girl who recited it at one of our poetry hours years
+ ago. It made a profound impression on the fifty pupils assembled, I
+ never read it without feeling that it stands test. Anonymous.
+
+ The nautilus and the ammonite
+ Were launched in friendly strife,
+ Each sent to float in its tiny boat
+ On the wide, wide sea of life.
+
+ For each could swim on the ocean's brim,
+ And, when wearied, its sail could furl,
+ And sink to sleep in the great sea-deep,
+ In its palace all of pearl.
+
+ And theirs was a bliss more fair than this
+ Which we taste in our colder clime;
+ For they were rife in a tropic life--
+ A brighter and better clime.
+
+ They swam 'mid isles whose summer smiles
+ Were dimmed by no alloy;
+ Whose groves were palm, whose air was balm,
+ And life one only joy.
+
+ They sailed all day through creek and bay,
+ And traversed the ocean deep;
+ And at night they sank on a coral bank,
+ In its fairy bowers to sleep.
+
+ And the monsters vast of ages past
+ They beheld in their ocean caves;
+ They saw them ride in their power and pride,
+ And sink in their deep-sea graves.
+
+ And hand in hand, from strand to strand,
+ They sailed in mirth and glee;
+ These fairy shells, with their crystal cells,
+ Twin sisters of the sea.
+
+ And they came at last to a sea long past,
+ But as they reached its shore,
+ The Almighty's breath spoke out in death,
+ And the ammonite was no more.
+
+ So the nautilus now in its shelly prow,
+ As over the deep it strays,
+ Still seems to seek, in bay and creek,
+ Its companion of other days.
+
+ And alike do we, on life's stormy sea,
+ As we roam from shore to shore,
+ Thus tempest-tossed, seek the loved, the lost,
+ And find them on earth no more.
+
+ Yet the hope how sweet, again to meet,
+ As we look to a distant strand,
+ Where heart meets heart, and no more they part
+ Who meet in that better land.
+
+ ANONYMOUS.
+
+
+ THE SOLITUDE OF ALEXANDER SELKIRK.
+
+ I am monarch of all I survey,
+ My right there is none to dispute,
+ From the center all round to the sea,
+ I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
+ O Solitude! where are the charms
+ That sages have seen in thy face?
+ Better dwell in the midst of alarms
+ Than reign in this horrible place.
+
+ I am out of humanity's reach,
+ I must finish my journey alone,
+ Never hear the sweet music of speech,--
+ I start at the sound of my own.
+ The beasts that roam over the plain
+ My form with indifference see;
+ They are so unacquainted with man,
+ Their tameness is shocking to me.
+
+ Society, Friendship, and Love,
+ Divinely bestow'd upon man,
+ Oh, had I the wings of a dove,
+ How soon would I taste you again!
+ My sorrows I then might assuage
+ In the ways of religion and truth,
+ Might learn from the wisdom of age,
+ And be cheer'd by the sallies of youth.
+
+ Ye winds that have made me your sport,
+ Convey to this desolate shore
+ Some cordial endearing report
+ Of a land I shall visit no more!
+
+ My friends--do they now and then send
+ A wish or a thought after me?
+ Oh, tell me I yet have a friend,
+ Though a friend I am never to see.
+
+ How fleet is a glance of the mind!
+ Compared with the speed of its flight,
+ The tempest itself lags behind,
+ And the swift-wingd arrows of light.
+ When I think of my own native land,
+ In a moment I seem to be there;
+ But alas! recollection at hand
+ Soon hurries me back to despair.
+
+ But the seafowl is gone to her nest,
+ The beast is laid down in his lair,
+ Even here is a season of rest,
+ And I to my cabin repair.
+ There's mercy in every place,
+ And mercy, encouraging thought!
+ Gives even affliction a grace,
+ And reconciles man to his lot.
+
+ WILLIAM COWPER.
+
+
+ THE HOMES OF ENGLAND.
+
+ I wonder if the English people appreciate "The Homes of England." It is
+ a stately poem worthy of a Goethe or a Shakespeare. England is
+ distinctively a country of homes, pretty, little, humble homes as well
+ as stately palaces and castles, homes well made of stone or brick for
+ the most part, and clad with ivy and roses. Who would not be proud to
+ have had such a home as Ann Hathaway's humble cottage or one of the
+ little huts in the Lake District? The homes of America are often more
+ palatial, especially in small cities, but the use of wood in America
+ makes them less substantial than the slate-and-brick houses of England.
+ (1749-1835.)
+
+ The stately homes of England!
+ How beautiful they stand,
+ Amidst their tall ancestral trees,
+ O'er all the pleasant land!
+ The deer across their greensward bound
+ Through shade and sunny gleam,
+ And the swan glides past them with the sound
+ Of some rejoicing stream.
+
+ The merry homes of England!
+ Around their hearths by night
+ What gladsome looks of household love
+ Meet in the ruddy light!
+ There woman's voice flows forth in song,
+ Or childish tale is told,
+ Or lips move tunefully along
+ Some glorious page of old.
+
+ The blessd homes of England!
+ How softly on their bowers
+ Is laid the holy quietness
+ That breathes from Sabbath hours!
+ Solemn, yet sweet, the church-bell's chime
+ Floats through their woods at morn;
+ All other sounds, in that still time,
+ Of breeze and leaf are born.
+
+ The cottage homes of England!
+ By thousands on her plains,
+ They are smiling o'er the silvery brooks,
+ And round the hamlets' fanes.
+ Through glowing orchards forth they peep,
+ Each from its nook of leaves;
+ And fearless there the lowly sleep,
+ As the bird beneath their eaves.
+
+ The free, fair homes of England!
+ Long, long, in hut and hall
+ May hearts of native proof be reared
+ To guard each hallowed wall!
+ And green forever be the groves,
+ And bright the flowery sod,
+ Where first the child's glad spirit loves
+ Its country and its God!
+
+ FELICIA HEMANS.
+
+
+ HORATIUS AT THE BRIDGE.
+
+"Horatius at the Bridge" is too long a poem for children to memorise.
+ But I never saw a boy who did not want some stanzas of it. "Hold the
+ bridge with me!" Boys like that motto instinctively. T.B. Macaulay
+ (1800-59).
+
+ Lars Porsena of Clusium,
+ By the Nine Gods he swore
+ That the great house of Tarquin
+ Should suffer wrong no more.
+ By the Nine Gods he swore it,
+ And named a trysting-day,
+ And bade his messengers ride forth,
+ East and west and south and north,
+ To summon his array.
+
+ East and west and south and north
+ The messengers ride fast,
+ And tower and town and cottage
+ Have heard the trumpet's blast.
+ Shame on the false Etruscan
+ Who lingers in his home
+ When Porsena of Clusium
+ Is on the march for Rome!
+
+ The horsemen and the footmen
+ Are pouring in amain,
+ From many a stately market-place,
+ From many a fruitful plain;
+ From many a lonely hamlet,
+ Which, hid by beech and pine,
+ Like an eagle's nest, hangs on the crest
+ Of purple Apennine.
+
+ The harvests of Arretium,
+ This year, old men shall reap;
+ This year, young boys in Umbro
+ Shall plunge the struggling sheep;
+ And in the vats of Luna,
+ This year, the must shall foam
+ Round the white feet of laughing girls
+ Whose sires have marched to Rome.
+
+ There be thirty chosen prophets,
+ The wisest of the land,
+ Who alway by Lars Porsena
+ Both morn and evening stand:
+ Evening and morn the Thirty
+ Have turned the verses o'er,
+ Traced from the right on linen white
+ By mighty seers of yore.
+
+ And with one voice the Thirty
+ Have their glad answer given:
+ "Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena;
+ Go forth, beloved of Heaven;
+ Go, and return in glory
+ To Clusium's royal dome;
+ And hang round Nurscia's altars
+ The golden shields of Rome."
+
+ And now hath every city
+ Sent up her tale of men;
+ The foot are fourscore thousand,
+ The horse are thousands ten.
+ Before the gates of Sutrium
+ Is met the great array.
+ A proud man was Lars Porsena
+ Upon the trysting-day.
+
+ For all the Etruscan armies
+ Were ranged beneath his eye,
+ And many a banished Roman,
+ And many a stout ally;
+ And with a mighty following
+ To join the muster came
+ The Tusculan Mamilius,
+ Prince of the Latian name.
+
+ But by the yellow Tiber
+ Was tumult and affright:
+ From all the spacious champaign
+ To Rome men took their flight.
+ A mile around the city,
+ The throng stopped up the ways;
+ A fearful sight it was to see
+ Through two long nights and days.
+
+ Now, from the rock Tarpeian,
+ Could the wan burghers spy
+ The line of blazing villages
+ Red in the midnight sky.
+ The Fathers of the City,
+ They sat all night and day,
+ For every hour some horseman came
+ With tidings of dismay.
+
+ To eastward and to westward
+ Have spread the Tuscan bands;
+ Nor house, nor fence, nor dovecot,
+ In Crustumerium stands.
+ Verbenna down to Ostia
+ Hath wasted all the plain;
+ Astur hath stormed Janiculum,
+ And the stout guards are slain.
+
+ I wis, in all the Senate,
+ There was no heart so bold,
+ But sore it ached, and fast it beat,
+ When that ill news was told.
+ Forthwith up rose the Consul,
+ Up rose the Fathers all;
+ In haste they girded up their gowns,
+ And hied them to the wall.
+
+ They held a council standing
+ Before the River Gate;
+ Short time was there, ye well may guess,
+ For musing or debate.
+ Out spoke the Consul roundly:
+ "The bridge must straight go down;
+ For, since Janiculum is lost,
+ Naught else can save the town."
+
+ Just then a scout came flying,
+ All wild with haste and fear:
+ "To arms! to arms! Sir Consul;
+ Lars Porsena is here."
+ On the low hills to westward
+ The Consul fixed his eye,
+ And saw the swarthy storm of dust
+ Rise fast along the sky.
+
+ And nearer, fast, and nearer
+ Doth the red whirlwind come;
+ And louder still, and still more loud,
+ From underneath that rolling cloud,
+ Is heard the trumpet's war-note proud,
+ The trampling and the hum.
+ And plainly and more plainly
+ Now through the gloom appears,
+ Far to left and far to right,
+ In broken gleams of dark-blue light,
+ The long array of helmets bright,
+ The long array of spears.
+
+ And plainly and more plainly,
+ Above the glimmering line,
+ Now might ye see the banners
+ Of twelve fair cities shine;
+ But the banner of proud Clusium
+ Was the highest of them all,
+ The terror of the Umbrian,
+ The terror of the Gaul.
+
+ Fast by the royal standard,
+ O'erlooking all the war,
+ Lars Porsena of Clusium
+ Sat in his ivory car.
+ By the right wheel rode Mamilius,
+ Prince of the Latian name,
+ And by the left false Sextus,
+ That wrought the deed of shame.
+
+ But when the face of Sextus
+ Was seen among the foes,
+ A yell that rent the firmament
+ From all the town arose.
+ On the house-tops was no woman
+ But spat toward him and hissed,
+ No child but screamed out curses,
+ And shook its little fist.
+
+ But the Consul's brow was sad,
+ And the Consul's speech was low,
+ And darkly looked he at the wall,
+ And darkly at the foe.
+ "Their van will be upon us
+ Before the bridge goes down;
+ And if they once may win the bridge,
+ What hope to save the town?"
+
+ Then out spake brave Horatius,
+ The Captain of the Gate:
+ "To every man upon this earth
+ Death cometh soon or late;
+ And how can man die better
+ Than facing fearful odds,
+ For the ashes of his fathers,
+ And the temples of his gods.
+
+ "And for the tender mother
+ Who dandled him to rest,
+ And for the wife who nurses
+ His baby at her breast,
+ And for the holy maidens
+ Who feed the eternal flame,
+ To save them from false Sextus
+ That wrought the deed of shame?
+
+ "Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul,
+ With all the speed ye may;
+ I, with two more to help me,
+ Will hold the foe in play.
+ In yon straight path a thousand
+ May well be stopped by three.
+ Now who will stand on either hand,
+ And keep the bridge with me?"
+
+ Then out spake Spurius Lartius--
+ A Ramnian proud was he--
+ I will stand at thy right hand,
+ And keep the bridge with thee."
+ And out spake strong Herminius--
+ Of Titian blood was he--
+ "I will abide on thy left side,
+ And keep the bridge with thee."
+
+ "Horatius," quoth the Consul,
+ "As thou say'st, so let it be,"
+ And straight against that great array
+ Forth went the dauntless Three.
+ For Romans in Rome's quarrel
+ Spared neither land nor gold,
+ Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
+ In the brave days of old.
+
+ Now while the Three were tightening
+ Their harness on their backs,
+ The Consul was the foremost man
+ To take in hand an ax;
+ And Fathers mixed with Commons
+ Seized hatchet, bar, and crow,
+ And smote upon the planks above,
+ And loosed the props below.
+ Meanwhile the Tuscan army,
+ Right glorious to behold,
+ Came flashing back the noonday light,
+ Rank behind rank, like surges bright
+ Of a broad sea of gold.
+
+ Four hundred trumpets sounded
+ A peal of warlike glee,
+ As that great host, with measured tread,
+ And spears advanced, and ensigns spread,
+ Rolled slowly toward the bridge's head,
+ Where stood the dauntless Three.
+
+ The Three stood calm and silent,
+ And looked upon the foes,
+ And a great shout of laughter
+ From all the vanguard rose:
+ And forth three chiefs came spurring
+ Before that deep array;
+ To earth they sprang, their swords they drew,
+ And lifted high their shields, and flew
+ To win the narrow way;
+
+ Aunus from green Tifernum,
+ Lord of the Hill of Vines;
+ And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves
+ Sicken in Ilva's mines;
+ And Picus, long to Clusium
+ Vassal in peace and war,
+ Who led to fight his Umbrian powers
+ From that gray crag where, girt with towers,
+ The fortress of Nequinum lowers
+ O'er the pale waves of Nar.
+
+ Stout Lartius hurled down Aunus
+ Into the stream beneath;
+ Herminius struck at Seius,
+ And clove him to the teeth;
+ At Picus brave Horatius
+ Darted one fiery thrust;
+ And the proud Umbrian's gilded arms
+ Clashed in the bloody dust.
+
+ Then Ocnus of Falerii
+ Rushed on the Roman Three;
+ And Lausulus of Urgo,
+ The rover of the sea;
+ And Aruns of Volsinium,
+ Who slew the great wild boar,
+ The great wild boar that had his den
+ Amid the reeds of Cosa's fen.
+ And wasted fields and slaughtered men
+ Along Albinia's shore.
+
+ Herminius smote down Aruns;
+ Lartius laid Ocnus low;
+ Right to the heart of Lausulus
+ Horatius sent a blow.
+ "Lie there," he cried, "fell pirate!
+ No more, aghast and pale,
+ From Ostia's walls the crowd shall mark
+ The tracks of thy destroying bark,
+ No more Campania's hinds shall fly
+ To woods and caverns when they spy
+ Thy thrice accursd sail."
+
+ But now no sound of laughter
+ Was heard among the foes.
+ A wild and wrathful clamour
+ From all the vanguard rose.
+ Six spears' length from the entrance
+ Halted that deep array,
+ And for a space no man came forth
+ To win the narrow way.
+
+ But hark! the cry is Astur:
+ And lo! the ranks divide;
+ And the great Lord of Luna
+ Comes with his stately stride.
+ Upon his ample shoulders
+ Clangs loud the fourfold shield,
+ And in his hand he shakes the brand
+ Which none but he can wield.
+
+ He smiled on those bold Romans,
+ A smile serene and high;
+ He eyed the flinching Tuscans,
+ And scorn was in his eye.
+ Quoth he: "The she-wolf's litter
+ Stand savagely at bay;
+ But will ye dare to follow,
+ If Astur clears the way?"
+
+ Then, whirling up his broadsword
+ With both hands to the height,
+ He rushed against Horatius,
+ And smote with all his might.
+ With shield and blade Horatius
+ Right deftly turned the blow.
+ The blow, though turned, came yet too nigh;
+ It missed his helm, but gashed his thigh:
+ The Tuscans raised a joyful cry
+ To see the red blood flow.
+
+ He reeled, and on Herminius
+ He leaned one breathing space;
+ Then, like a wildcat mad with wounds,
+ Sprang right at Astur's face.
+ Through teeth, and skull, and helmet,
+ So fierce a thrust he sped,
+ The good sword stood a handbreadth out
+ Behind the Tuscan's head.
+
+ And the great Lord of Luna
+ Fell at the deadly stroke,
+ As falls on Mount Alvernus
+ A thunder-smitten oak.
+ Far o'er the crashing forest
+ The giant arms lie spread;
+ And the pale augurs, muttering low,
+ Gaze on the blasted head.
+
+ On Astur's throat Horatius
+ Right firmly pressed his heel,
+ And thrice and four times tugged amain
+ Ere he wrenched out the steel.
+ "And see," he cried, "the welcome,
+ Fair guests, that waits you here!
+ What noble Lucumo comes next
+ To taste our Roman cheer?"
+
+ But at his haughty challenge
+ A sullen murmur ran,
+ Mingled of wrath, and shame, and dread,
+ Along that glittering van.
+ There lacked not men of prowess,
+ Nor men of lordly race;
+ For all Etruria's noblest
+ Were round the fatal place.
+
+ But all Etruria's noblest
+ Felt their hearts sink to see
+ On the earth the bloody corpses,
+ In the path the dauntless Three:
+ And, from the ghastly entrance
+ Where those bold Romans stood,
+ All shrank, like boys who unaware,
+ Ranging the woods to start a hare,
+ Come to the mouth of the dark lair
+ Where, growling low, a fierce old bear
+ Lies amid bones and blood.
+
+ Was none who would be foremost
+ To lead such dire attack?
+ But those behind cried "Forward!"
+ And those before cried "Back!"
+ And backward now and forward
+ Wavers the deep array;
+ And on the tossing sea of steel
+ To and fro the standards reel;
+ And the victorious trumpet peal
+ Dies fitfully away.
+
+ Yet one man for one moment
+ Strode out before the crowd;
+ Well known was he to all the Three,
+ And they gave him greeting loud:
+ "Now welcome, welcome, Sextus!
+ Now welcome to thy home!
+ Why dost thou stay, and turn away?
+ Here lies the road to Rome."
+
+ Thrice looked he at the city;
+ Thrice looked he at the dead;
+ And thrice came on in fury,
+ And thrice turned back in dread:
+ And, white with fear and hatred,
+ Scowled at the narrow way
+ Where, wallowing in a pool of blood,
+ The bravest Tuscans lay.
+
+ But meanwhile ax and lever
+ Have manfully been plied,
+ And now the bridge hangs tottering
+ Above the boiling tide.
+ "Come back, come back, Horatius!"
+ Loud cried the Fathers all.
+ "Back, Lartius! Back, Herminius!
+ Back, ere the ruin fall!"
+
+ Back darted Spurius Lartius;
+ Herminius darted back:
+ And, as they passed, beneath their feet
+ They felt the timbers crack.
+ But when they turned their faces,
+ And on the farther shore
+ Saw brave Horatius stand alone,
+ They would have crossed once more.
+
+ But with a crash like thunder
+ Fell every loosened beam,
+ And, like a dam, the mighty wreck
+ Lay right athwart the stream;
+ And a long shout of triumph
+ Rose from the walls of Rome,
+ As to the highest turret tops
+ Was splashed the yellow foam.
+
+ And, like a horse unbroken
+ When first he feels the rein,
+ The furious river struggled hard,
+ And tossed his tawny mane;
+ And burst the curb, and bounded,
+ Rejoicing to be free,
+ And whirling down, in fierce career,
+ Battlement, and plank, and pier,
+ Rushed headlong to the sea.
+
+ Alone stood brave Horatius,
+ But constant still in mind;
+ Thrice thirty thousand foes before,
+ And the broad flood behind.
+ "Down with him!" cried false Sextus,
+ With a smile on his pale face.
+ "Now yield thee," cried Lars Porsena,
+ "Now yield thee to our grace."
+
+ Round turned he, as not deigning
+ Those craven ranks to see;
+ Naught spake he to Lars Porsena,
+ To Sextus naught spake he;
+ But he saw on Palatinus
+ The white porch of his home;
+ And he spake to the noble river
+ That rolls by the towers of Rome:
+
+ "O Tiber! Father Tiber!
+ To whom the Romans pray,
+ A Roman's life, a Roman's arms,
+ Take thou in charge this day!"
+ So he spake, and speaking sheathed
+ The good sword by his side,
+ And, with his harness on his back,
+ Plunged headlong in the tide.
+
+ No sound of joy or sorrow
+ Was heard from either bank;
+ But friends and foes in dumb surprise,
+ With parted lips and straining eyes,
+ Stood gazing where he sank;
+ And when above the surges
+ They saw his crest appear,
+ All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry,
+ And even the ranks of Tuscany
+ Could scarce forbear to cheer.
+
+ And fiercely ran the current,
+ Swollen high by months of rain;
+ And fast his blood was flowing,
+ And he was sore in pain,
+ And heavy with his armour,
+ And spent with changing blows:
+ And oft they thought him sinking,
+ But still again he rose.
+
+ Never, I ween, did swimmer,
+ In such an evil case,
+ Struggle through such a raging flood
+ Safe to the landing place;
+ But his limbs were borne up bravely
+ By the brave heart within,
+ And our good Father Tiber
+ Bore bravely up his chin.
+
+ "Curse on him!" quoth false Sextus;
+ "Will not the villain drown?
+ But for this stay, ere close of day
+ We should have sacked the town!"
+ "Heaven help him!" quoth Lars Porsena,
+ "And bring him safe to shore;
+ For such a gallant feat of arms
+ Was never seen before."
+
+ And now he feels the bottom;
+ Now on dry earth he stands;
+ Now round him throng the Fathers
+ To press his gory hands;
+ And now with shouts and clapping,
+ And noise of weeping loud,
+ He enters through the River Gate,
+ Borne by the joyous crowd.
+
+ They gave him of the corn land,
+ That was of public right.
+ As much as two strong oxen
+ Could plow from morn till night:
+ And they made a molten image,
+ And set it up on high,
+ And there it stands unto this day
+ To witness if I lie.
+
+ It stands in the Comitium,
+ Plain for all folk to see,--
+ Horatius in his harness,
+ Halting upon one knee:
+ And underneath is written,
+ In letters all of gold,
+ How valiantly he kept the bridge
+ In the brave days of old.
+
+ And still his name sounds stirring
+ Unto the men of Rome,
+ As the trumpet blast that cries to them
+ To charge the Volscian home;
+ And wives still pray to Juno
+ For boys with hearts as bold
+ As his who kept the bridge so well
+ In the brave days of old.
+
+ And in the nights of winter,
+ When the cold north winds blow,
+ And the long howling of the wolves
+ Is heard amid the snow;
+ When round the lonely cottage
+ Roars loud the tempest's din,
+ And the good logs of Algidus
+ Roar louder yet within;
+
+ When the oldest cask is opened,
+ And the largest lamp is lit;
+ When the chestnuts glow in the embers,
+ And the kid turns on the spit;
+ When young and old in circle
+ Around the firebrands close;
+ When the girls are weaving baskets,
+ And the lads are shaping bows;
+
+ When the goodman mends his armour,
+ And trims his helmet's plume;
+ When the goodwife's shuttle merrily
+ Goes flashing through the loom,--
+ With weeping and with laughter
+ Still is the story told,
+ How well Horatius kept the bridge
+ In the brave days of old.
+
+ THOMAS B. MACAULAY.
+
+
+ THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE-TREE.
+
+"The Planting of the Apple-Tree" has become a favourite for "Arbour
+ Day" exercises. The planting of trees as against their destruction is a
+ vital point in our political and national welfare. William Cullen
+ Bryant (1794-1878).
+
+ Come, let us plant the apple-tree.
+ Cleave the tough greensward with the spade;
+ Wide let its hollow bed be made;
+ There gently lay the roots, and there
+ Sift the dark mould with kindly care,
+ And press it o'er them tenderly,
+ As round the sleeping infant's feet
+ We softly fold the cradle sheet;
+ So plant we the apple-tree.
+
+ What plant we in this apple-tree?
+ Buds, which the breath of summer days
+ Shall lengthen into leafy sprays;
+ Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast,
+ Shall haunt, and sing, and hide her nest;
+ We plant, upon the sunny lea,
+ A shadow for the noontide hour,
+ A shelter from the summer shower,
+ When we plant the apple-tree.
+
+ What plant we in this apple-tree?
+ Sweets for a hundred flowery springs,
+ To load the May wind's restless wings,
+ When, from the orchard row, he pours
+ Its fragrance through our open doors;
+ A world of blossoms for the bee,
+ Flowers for the sick girl's silent room,
+ For the glad infant sprigs of bloom,
+ We plant with the apple-tree.
+
+ What plant we in this apple-tree?
+ Fruits that shall swell in sunny June,
+ And redden in the August noon,
+ And drop, when gentle airs come by,
+ That fan the blue September sky,
+ While children come, with cries of glee,
+ And seek them where the fragrant grass
+ Betrays their bed to those who pass,
+ At the foot of the apple-tree.
+
+ And when, above this apple-tree,
+ The winter stars are quivering bright,
+ The winds go howling through the night,
+ Girls, whose eyes o'erflow with mirth,
+ Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth,
+ And guests in prouder homes shall see,
+ Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine,
+ And golden orange of the line,
+ The fruit of the apple-tree.
+
+ The fruitage of this apple-tree,
+ Winds and our flag of stripe and star
+ Shall bear to coasts that lie afar,
+ Where men shall wonder at the view,
+ And ask in what fair groves they grew;
+ And sojourners beyond the sea
+ Shall think of childhood's careless day,
+ And long, long hours of summer play,
+ In the shade of the apple-tree.
+
+ Each year shall give this apple-tree
+ A broader flush of roseate bloom,
+ A deeper maze of verdurous gloom,
+ And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower,
+ The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower.
+ The years shall come and pass, but we
+ Shall hear no longer, where we lie,
+ The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh,
+ In the boughs of the apple-tree.
+
+ And time shall waste this apple-tree.
+ Oh, when its aged branches throw
+ Thin shadows on the ground below,
+ Shall fraud and force and iron will
+ Oppress the weak and helpless still!
+ What shall the tasks of mercy be,
+ Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears
+ Of those who live when length of years
+ Is wasting this apple-tree?
+
+ "Who planted this old apple-tree?"
+ The children of that distant day
+ Thus to some aged man shall say;
+ And, gazing on its mossy stem,
+ The gray-haired man shall answer them:
+ "A poet of the land was he,
+ Born in the rude but good old times;
+ 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes
+ On planting the apple-tree."
+
+ WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ PART V.
+
+ On and On
+
+
+ JUNE.
+
+"June" (by James Russell Lowell, 1819-91), is a fragment from "The
+ Vision of Sir Launfal." It finds a place in this volume because it is
+ the most perfect description of a charming day ever written.
+
+ What is so rare as a day in June?
+ Then, if ever, come perfect days;
+ Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
+ And over it softly her warm ear lays:
+ Whether we look, or whether we listen,
+ We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
+ Every clod feels a stir of might,
+ An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
+ And, groping blindly above it for light,
+ Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
+ The flush of life may well be seen
+ Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
+ The cowslip startles in meadows green.
+ The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
+ And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean
+ To be some happy creature's palace;
+ The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
+ Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
+ And lets his illumined being o'errun
+ With the deluge of summer it receives;
+ His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
+ And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
+ He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,--
+ In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?
+
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
+
+
+ A PSALM OF LIFE.
+
+ WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST.
+
+"A Psalm of Life," by Henry W. Longfellow (1807-82), is like a treasure
+ laid up in heaven. It should be learned for its future value to the
+ child, not necessarily because the child likes it. Its value will dawn
+ on him.
+
+ Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
+ Life is but an empty dream!--
+ For the soul is dead that slumbers,
+ And things are not what they seem.
+
+ Life is real! Life is earnest!
+ And the grave is not its goal;
+ Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
+ Was not spoken of the soul.
+
+ Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
+ Is our destined end or way;
+ But to act, that each to-morrow
+ Find us farther than to-day.
+
+ Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
+ And our hearts, though stout and brave,
+ Still, like muffled drums, are beating
+ Funeral marches to the grave.
+
+ In the world's broad field of battle,
+ In the bivouac of Life,
+ Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
+ Be a hero in the strife!
+
+ Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
+ Let the dead Past bury its dead!
+ Act,--act in the living Present!
+ Heart within, and God o'erhead!
+
+ Lives of great men all remind us
+ We can make our lives sublime,
+ And, departing, leave behind us
+ Footprints on the sands of time;
+
+ Footprints, that perhaps another,
+ Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
+ A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
+ Seeing, shall take heart again.
+
+ Let us, then, be up and doing,
+ With a heart for any fate;
+ Still achieving, still pursuing,
+ Learn to labour and to wait.
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ BARNACLES.
+
+"Barnacles" (by Sidney Lanier, 1842-81), is a poem that I teach in
+ connection with my lessons on natural history. We have a good specimen
+ of a barnacle, and the children see them on the shells on the coast.
+ The ethical point is invaluable.
+
+ My soul is sailing through the sea,
+ But the Past is heavy and hindereth me.
+ The Past hath crusted cumbrous shells
+ That hold the flesh of cold sea-mells
+ About my soul.
+ The huge waves wash, the high waves roll,
+ Each barnacle clingeth and worketh dole
+ And hindereth me from sailing!
+
+ Old Past, let go, and drop i' the sea
+ Till fathomless waters cover thee!
+ For I am living, but thou art dead;
+ Thou drawest back, I strive ahead
+ The Day to find.
+ Thy shells unbind! Night comes behind;
+ I needs must hurry with the wind
+ And trim me best for sailing.
+
+ SIDNEY LANIER.
+
+
+ A HAPPY LIFE.
+
+ How happy is he born and taught
+ That serveth not another's will;
+ Whose armour is his honest thought,
+ And simple truth his utmost skill!
+
+ Whose passions not his master's are,
+ Whose soul is still prepared for death,
+ Not tied unto the world with care
+ Of public fame, or private breath.
+
+ SIR HENRY WOTTON.
+
+
+ HOME, SWEET HOME!
+
+"Home, Sweet Home" (John Howard Payne, 1791-1852) is a poem that
+ reaches into the heart. What is home? A place where we experience
+ independence, safety, privacy, and where we can dispense hospitality.
+"The family is the true unit."
+
+ 'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
+ Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;
+ A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,
+ Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere.
+ Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!
+ There's no place like Home! there's no place like Home!
+
+ An exile from Home, splendour dazzles in vain;
+ O, give me my lowly thatched cottage again!
+ The birds singing gaily, that came at my call,--
+ Give me them,--and the peace of mind, dearer than all!
+ Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!
+ There's no place like Home! there's no place like Home!
+
+ How sweet 'tis to sit 'neath a fond father's smile,
+ And the cares of a mother to soothe and beguile!
+ Let others delight 'mid new pleasures to roam,
+ But give me, oh, give me, the pleasures of Home!
+ Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!
+ There's no place like Home! there's no place like Home!
+
+ To thee I'll return, overburdened with care;
+ The heart's dearest solace will smile on me there;
+ No more from that cottage again will I roam;
+ Be it ever so humble, there's no place like Home.
+ Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!
+ There's no place like Home! there's no place like Home!
+
+ JOHN HOWARD PAYNE.
+
+
+ FROM CASA GUIDI WINDOWS.
+
+ JULIET OF NATIONS.
+
+ I heard last night a little child go singing
+ 'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church,
+ _O bella libert, O bella!_--stringing
+ The same words still on notes he went in search
+ So high for, you concluded the upspringing
+ Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch
+ Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green,
+ And that the heart of Italy must beat,
+ While such a voice had leave to rise serene
+ 'Twixt church and palace of a Florence street;
+ A little child, too, who not long had been
+ By mother's finger steadied on his feet,
+ And still _O bella libert_ he sang.
+
+ ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
+
+
+ WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE!
+
+"Woodman, Spare That Tree" (by George Pope Morris, 1802-64) is included
+ in this collection because I have loved it all my life, and I never
+ knew any one who could or would offer a criticism upon it. Its value
+ lies in its recognition of childhood's pleasures.
+
+ Woodman, spare that tree!
+ Touch not a single bough!
+ In youth it sheltered me,
+ And I'll protect it now.
+ 'Twas my forefather's hand
+ That placed it near his cot;
+ There, woodman, let it stand,
+ Thy ax shall harm it not.
+
+ That old familiar tree,
+ Whose glory and renown
+ Are spread o'er land and sea--
+ And wouldst thou hew it down?
+ Woodman, forbear thy stroke!
+ Cut not its earth-bound ties;
+ Oh, spare that agd oak
+ Now towering to the skies!
+
+ When but an idle boy,
+ I sought its grateful shade;
+ In all their gushing joy
+ Here, too, my sisters played.
+ My mother kissed me here;
+ My father pressed my hand--
+ Forgive this foolish tear,
+ But let that old oak stand.
+
+ My heart-strings round thee cling,
+ Close as thy bark, old friend!
+ Here shall the wild-bird sing,
+ And still thy branches bend.
+ Old tree! the storm still brave!
+ And, woodman, leave the spot;
+ While I've a hand to save,
+ Thy ax shall harm it not.
+
+ GEORGE POPE MORRIS.
+
+
+ ABIDE WITH ME.
+
+"Abide With Me" (Henry Francis Lyte, 1793-1847) appeals to our natural
+ longing for the unchanging and to our love of security.
+
+ Abide with me! fast falls the eventide;
+ The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide!
+ When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
+ Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
+
+ Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;
+ Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
+ Change and decay in all around I see:
+ O Thou who changest not, abide with me!
+
+ HENRY FRANCIS LYTE.
+
+
+ LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT
+
+"Lead, Kindly Light," by John Henry Newman (1801-90), was written when
+ Cardinal Newman was in the stress and strain of perplexity and mental
+ distress and bodily pain. The poem has been a star in the darkness to
+ thousands. It was the favourite poem of President McKinley.
+
+ Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom,
+ Lead Thou me on,
+ The night is dark, and I am far from home,
+ Lead Thou me on.
+ Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
+ The distant scene; one step enough for me.
+
+ I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
+ Shouldst lead me on;
+ I loved to choose and see my path; but now
+ Lead Thou me on.
+ I loved the garish day; and, spite of fears,
+ Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.
+
+ So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
+ Will lead me on
+ O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
+ The night is gone,
+ And with the morn those angel faces smile,
+ Which I have loved long since, and lost a while.
+
+ JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.
+
+
+ THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER.
+
+ 'Tis the last rose of summer
+ Left blooming alone;
+ All her lovely companions
+ Are faded and gone;
+ No flower of her kindred,
+ No rose-bud 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,
+ O! who would inhabit
+ This bleak world alone?
+
+ THOMAS MOORE.
+
+
+ ANNIE LAURIE.
+
+"Annie Laurie" finds a place in this collection because it is the most
+ popular song on earth. Written by William Douglas, (----).
+
+ Maxwelton braes are bonnie
+ Where early fa's the dew,
+ And it's there that Annie Laurie
+ Gie'd me her promise true--
+ Gie'd me her promise true,
+ Which ne'er forgot will be;
+ And for bonnie Annie Laurie
+ I'd lay me doune and dee.
+
+ Her brow is like the snawdrift,
+ Her throat is like the swan,
+ Her face it is the fairest
+ That e'er the sun shone on--
+ That e'er the sun shone on;
+ And dark blue is her e'e;
+ And for bonnie Annie Laurie
+ I'd lay me doune and dee.
+
+ Like dew on the gowan lying
+ Is the fa' o' her fairy feet;
+ Like the winds in summer sighing,
+ Her voice is low and sweet--
+ Her voice is low and sweet;
+ And she's a' the world to me;
+ And for bonnie Annie Laurie
+ I'd lay me doune and dee.
+
+ WILLIAM DOUGLAS.
+
+
+ THE SHIP OF STATE.
+
+ A president of a well-known college writes me that "The Ship of State"
+ was his favourite poem when he was a boy, and did more than any other
+ to shape his course in life. Longfellow (1807-82).
+
+ Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State!
+ Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
+ Humanity, with all its fears,
+ With all the hopes of future years,
+ Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
+ We know what Master laid thy keel,
+ What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
+ Who made each mast, and sail, and rope;
+ What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
+ In what a forge and what a heat
+ Were forged the anchors of thy hope!
+ Fear not each sudden sound and shock--
+ 'Tis of the wave, and not the rock;
+ 'Tis but the flapping of the sail,
+ And not a rent made by the gale!
+ In spite of rock, and tempest roar,
+ In spite of false lights on the shore,
+ Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
+ Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
+ Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
+ Our faith, triumphant o'er our fears,
+ Are all with thee, are all with thee!
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+ The Constitution and Laws are here personified, and addressed as "The
+ Ship of State."
+
+
+ AMERICA.
+
+"America" (Samuel Francis Smith, 1808-95) is a good poem to learn as a
+ poem, regardless of the fact that every American who can sing it ought
+ to know it, that he may join in the chorus when patriotic celebrations
+ call for it. My boys love to repeat the entire poem, but I often find
+ masses of people trying to sing it, knowing only one stanza. It is our
+ national anthem, and a part of our education to know every word of it.
+
+ My country, 'tis of thee,
+ Sweet land of liberty,
+ Of thee I sing;
+ Land where my fathers died,
+ Land of the Pilgrims' pride;
+ From every mountain side,
+ Let freedom ring.
+
+ My native country, thee--
+ Land of the noble free--
+ Thy name I love;
+ I love thy rocks and rills,
+ Thy woods and templed hills;
+ My heart with rapture thrills,
+ Like that above.
+
+ Let music swell the breeze,
+ And ring from all the trees
+ Sweet freedom's song;
+ Let mortal tongues awake;
+ Let all that breathe partake;
+ Let rocks their silence break--
+ The sound prolong.
+
+ Our fathers' God, to Thee,
+ Author of liberty,
+ To Thee we sing:
+ Long may our land be bright
+ With freedom's holy light:
+ Protect us by Thy might,
+ Great God, our King.
+
+ S.F. SMITH.
+
+
+ THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS.
+
+"The Landing of the Pilgrims," by Felicia Hemans (1749-1835), is a poem
+ that children want when they study the early history of America.
+
+ The breaking waves dashed high
+ On a stern and rock-bound coast,
+ And the woods against a stormy sky
+ Their giant branches tossed.
+
+ And the heavy night hung dark
+ The hills and waters o'er,
+ When a band of exiles moored their bark
+ On the wild New England shore.
+
+ Not as the conqueror comes,
+ They, the true-hearted, came;
+ Not with the roll of the stirring drums,
+ And the trumpet that sings of fame.
+
+ Not as the flying come,
+ In silence and in fear;
+ They shook the depths of the desert gloom
+ With their hymns of lofty cheer.
+
+ Amid the storm they sang,
+ And the stars heard, and the sea,
+ And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
+ To the anthem of the free!
+
+ The ocean eagle soared
+ From his nest by the white wave's foam;
+ And the rocking pines of the forest roared,--
+ This was their welcome home!
+
+ There were men with hoary hair,
+ Amid that pilgrim band;
+ Why had _they_ come to wither there,
+ Away from their childhood's land?
+
+ There was woman's fearless eye,
+ Lit by her deep love's truth;
+ There was manhood's brow serenely high,
+ And the fiery heart of youth.
+
+ What sought they thus afar?
+ Bright jewels of the mine?
+ The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?--
+ They sought a faith's pure shrine!
+
+ Ay! call it holy ground,
+ The soil where first they trod:
+ They have left unstained what there they found,
+ Freedom to worship God.
+
+ FELICIA HEMANS.
+
+
+ THE LOTOS-EATERS.
+
+ The main idea in "The Lotos-Eaters" is, are we justified in running
+ away from unpleasant duties? Or, is insensibility justifiable?
+
+ Laddie, do you recollect learning this poem after we had read the story
+ of "Odysseus"? "The struggle of the soul urged to action, but held back
+ by the spirit of self-indulgence." These were the points we discussed.
+ Alfred Tennyson (1809-92).
+
+ "Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land,
+ "This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."
+ In the afternoon they came unto a land
+ In which it seemed always afternoon.
+ All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
+ Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
+ Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
+ And like a downward smoke, the slender stream
+ Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.
+
+ A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
+ Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
+ And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke,
+ Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
+ They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
+ From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,
+ Three silent pinnacles of agd snow,
+ Stood sunset-flush'd: and, dew'd with showery drops,
+ Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.
+
+ The charmd sunset linger'd low adown
+ In the red West: thro' mountain clefts the dale
+ Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
+ Border'd with palm, and many a winding vale
+ And meadow, set with slender galingale;
+ A land where all things always seem'd the same!
+ And round about the keel with faces pale,
+ Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
+ The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.
+
+ Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
+ Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
+ To each, but whoso did receive of them,
+ And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
+ Far, far away did seem to mourn and rave
+ On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
+ His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
+ And deep-asleep he seem'd, yet all awake,
+ And music in his ears his beating heart did make.
+
+ They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
+ Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
+ And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
+ Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
+ Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar,
+ Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
+ Then some one said, "We will return no more;"
+ And all at once they sang, "Our island home
+ Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam."
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ MOLY.
+
+"Moly" (mo'ly), by Edith M. Thomas (1850-), in the best possible
+ presentation of the value of integrity. This poem ranks with "Sir
+ Galahad," if not above it. It is a stroke of genius, and every American
+ ought to be proud of it. Every time my boys read "Odysseus" or the
+ story of Ulysses with me we read or learn "Moly." The plant moly grows
+ in the United States as well as in Europe.
+
+ Traveller, pluck a stem of moly,
+ If thou touch at Circe's isle,--
+ Hermes' moly, growing solely
+ To undo enchanter's wile!
+ When she proffers thee her chalice,--
+ Wine and spices mixed with malice,--
+ When she smites thee with her staff
+ To transform thee, do thou laugh!
+ Safe thou art if thou but bear
+ The least leaf of moly rare.
+ Close it grows beside her portal,
+ Springing from a stock immortal,
+ Yes! and often has the Witch
+ Sought to tear it from its niche;
+ But to thwart her cruel will
+ The wise God renews it still.
+ Though it grows in soil perverse,
+ Heaven hath been its jealous nurse,
+ And a flower of snowy mark
+ Springs from root and sheathing dark;
+ Kingly safeguard, only herb
+ That can brutish passion curb!
+ Some do think its name should be
+ Shield-Heart, White Integrity.
+ Traveller, pluck a stem of moly,
+ If thou touch at Circe's isle,--
+ Hermes' moly, growing solely
+ To undo enchanter's wile!
+
+ EDITH M. THOMAS.
+
+
+ CUPID DROWNED.
+
+"Cupid Drowned" (1784-1859), "Cupid Stung" (1779-1852), and "Cupid and
+ My Campasbe" (1558-1606) are three dainty poems recommended by Mrs.
+ Margaret Mooney, of the Albany Teachers' College, in her "Foundation
+ Studies in Literature." Children are always delighted with them.
+
+ T'other day as I was twining
+ Roses, for a crown to dine in,
+ What, of all things, 'mid the heap,
+ Should I light on, fast asleep,
+ But the little desperate elf,
+ The tiny traitor, Love, himself!
+ By the wings I picked him up
+ Like a bee, and in a cup
+ Of my wine I plunged and sank him,
+ Then what d'ye think I did?--I drank him.
+ Faith, I thought him dead. Not he!
+ There he lives with tenfold glee;
+ And now this moment with his wings
+ I feel him tickling my heart-strings.
+
+ LEIGH HUNT.
+
+
+ CUPID STUNG.
+
+ Cupid once upon a bed
+ Of roses laid his weary head;
+ Luckless urchin, not to see
+ Within the leaves a slumbering bee.
+ The bee awak'd--with anger wild
+ The bee awak'd, and stung the child.
+ Loud and piteous are his cries;
+ To Venus quick he runs, he flies;
+ "Oh, Mother! I am wounded through--
+ I die with pain--in sooth I do!
+ Stung by some little angry thing,
+ Some serpent on a tiny wing--
+ A bee it was--for once, I know,
+ I heard a rustic call it so."
+ Thus he spoke, and she the while
+ Heard him with a soothing smile;
+ Then said, "My infant, if so much
+ Thou feel the little wild bee's touch,
+ How must the heart, ah, Cupid! be,
+ The hapless heart that's stung by thee!"
+
+ THOMAS MOORE.
+
+
+ CUPID AND MY CAMPASBE.
+
+ Cupid and my Campasbe played
+ At cards for kisses. Cupid paid.
+ He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows,
+ His mother's doves and team of sparrows.
+ Loses them, too; then down he throws
+ The coral of his lips, the rose
+ Growing on his cheek, but none knows how;
+ With them the crystal of his brow,
+ And then the dimple of his chin.
+ All these did my Campasbe win.
+ At last he set her both his eyes;
+ She won and Cupid blind did rise.
+ Oh, Love, hath she done this to thee!
+ What shall, alas, become of me!
+
+ JOHN LYLY.
+
+
+ A BALLAD FOR A BOY.
+
+ Violo Roseboro, one of our good authors, brought to me "A Ballad for a
+ Boy," saying: "I believe it is one of the poems that every child ought
+ to know." It is included in this compilation out of respect to her
+ opinion and also because the boys to whom I have read it said it was
+"great," The lesson in it is certainly fine. Men who are true men want
+ to settle their own disputes by a hand-to-hand fight, but they will
+ always help each other when a third party or the elements interfere.
+ Humanity is greater than human interests.
+
+ When George the Third was reigning, a hundred years ago,
+ He ordered Captain Farmer to chase the foreign foe,
+ "You're not afraid of shot," said he, "you're not afraid of wreck,
+ So cruise about the west of France in the frigate called _Quebec_.
+
+ "Quebec was once a Frenchman's town, but twenty years ago
+ King George the Second sent a man called General Wolfe, you know,
+ To clamber up a precipice and look into Quebec,
+ As you'd look down a hatchway when standing on the deck.
+
+ "If Wolfe could beat the Frenchmen then, so you can beat them now.
+ Before he got inside the town he died, I must allow.
+ But since the town was won for us it is a lucky name,
+ And you'll remember Wolfe's good work, and you shall do the same."
+
+ Then Farmer said, "I'll try, sir," and Farmer bowed so low
+ That George could see his pigtail tied in a velvet bow.
+ George gave him his commission, and that it might be safer,
+ Signed "King of Britain, King of France," and sealed it with a wafer.
+
+ Then proud was Captain Farmer in a frigate of his own,
+ And grander on his quarter-deck than George upon his throne.
+ He'd two guns in his cabin, and on the spar-deck ten,
+ And twenty on the gun-deck, and more than ten-score men.
+
+ And as a huntsman scours the brakes with sixteen brace of dogs,
+ With two-and-thirty cannon the ship explored the fogs.
+ From Cape la Hogue to Ushant, from Rochefort to Belleisle,
+ She hunted game till reef and mud were rubbing on her keel.
+
+ The fogs are dried, the frigate's side is bright with melting tar,
+ The lad up in the foretop sees square white sails afar;
+ The east wind drives three square-sailed masts from out the Breton bay,
+ And "Clear for action!" Farmer shouts, and reefers yell "Hooray!"
+
+ The Frenchmen's captain had a name I wish I could pronounce;
+ A Breton gentleman was he, and wholly free from bounce,
+ One like those famous fellows who died by guillotine
+ For honour and the fleur-de-lys, and Antoinette the Queen.
+
+ The Catholic for Louis, the Protestant for George,
+ Each captain drew as bright a sword as saintly smiths could forge;
+ And both were simple seamen, but both could understand
+ How each was bound to win or die for flag and native land.
+
+ The French ship was _La Surveillante_, which means the watchful maid;
+ She folded up her head-dress and began to cannonade.
+ Her hull was clean, and ours was foul; we had to spread more sail.
+ On canvas, stays, and topsail yards her bullets came like hail.
+
+ Sore smitten were both captains, and many lads beside,
+ And still to cut our rigging the foreign gunners tried.
+ A sail-clad spar came flapping down athwart a blazing gun;
+ We could not quench the rushing flames, and so the Frenchman won.
+
+ Our quarter-deck was crowded, the waist was all aglow;
+ Men hung upon the taffrail half scorched, but loth to go;
+ Our captain sat where once he stood, and would not quit his chair.
+ He bade his comrades leap for life, and leave him bleeding there.
+
+ The guns were hushed on either side, the Frenchmen lowered boats,
+ They flung us planks and hen-coops, and everything that floats.
+ They risked their lives, good fellows! to bring their rivals aid.
+ Twas by the conflagration the peace was strangely made.
+
+ _La Surveillante_ was like a sieve; the victors had no rest;
+ They had to dodge the east wind to reach the port of Brest.
+ And where the waves leapt lower and the riddled ship went slower,
+ In triumph, yet in funeral guise, came fisher-boats to tow her.
+
+ They dealt with us as brethren, they mourned for Farmer dead;
+ And as the wounded captives passed each Breton bowed the head.
+ Then spoke the French Lieutenant, "Twas fire that won, not we.
+ You never struck your flag to us; you'll go to England free."
+
+ Twas the sixth day of October, seventeen hundred seventy-nine,
+ A year when nations ventured against us to combine,
+ _Quebec_ was burned and Farmer slain, by us remembered not;
+ But thanks be to the French book wherein they're not forgot.
+
+ Now you, if you've to fight the French, my youngster, bear in mind
+ Those seamen of King Louis so chivalrous and kind;
+ Think of the Breton gentlemen who took our lads to Brest,
+ And treat some rescued Breton as a comrade and a guest.
+
+
+ THE SKELETON IN ARMOUR.
+
+"The Skeleton in Armour" (Longfellow, 1807-82) is a "boy's poem." It
+ it pure literature and good history.
+
+ "Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!
+ Who, with thy hollow breast
+ Still in rude armour drest,
+ Comest to daunt me!
+ Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
+ But with thy fleshless palms
+ Stretched, as if asking alms,
+ Why dost thou haunt me?"
+
+ Then from those cavernous eyes
+ Pale flashes seemed to rise,
+ As when the Northern skies
+ Gleam in December;
+ And, like the water's flow
+ Under December's snow,
+ Came a dull voice of woe
+ From the heart's chamber.
+
+ "I was a Viking old!
+ My deeds, though manifold,
+ No Skald in song has told,
+ No Saga taught thee!
+ Take heed that in thy verse
+ Thou dost the tale rehearse,
+ Else dread a dead man's curse;
+ For this I sought thee.
+
+ "Far in the Northern Land,
+ By the wild Baltic's strand,
+ I, with my childish hand,
+ Tamed the gerfalcon;
+ And, with my skates fast-bound,
+ Skimmed the half-frozen Sound,
+ That the poor whimpering hound
+ Trembled to walk on.
+
+ "Oft to his frozen lair
+ Tracked I the grizzly bear,
+ While from my path the hare
+ Fled like a shadow;
+ Oft through the forest dark
+ Followed the were-wolf's bark,
+ Until the soaring lark
+ Sang from the meadow.
+
+ "But when I older grew,
+ Joining a corsair's crew,
+ O'er the dark sea I flew
+ With the marauders.
+ Wild was the life we led;
+ Many the souls that sped,
+ Many the hearts that bled,
+ By our stern orders.
+
+ "Many a wassail-bout
+ Wore the long Winter out;
+ Often our midnight shout
+ Set the cocks crowing,
+ As we the Berserk's tale
+ Measured in cups of ale,
+ Draining the oaken pail
+ Filled to overflowing.
+
+ "Once as I told in glee
+ Tales of the stormy sea,
+ Soft eyes did gaze on me,
+ Burning yet tender;
+ And as the white stars shine
+ On the dark Norway pine,
+ On that dark heart of mine
+ Fell their soft splendour.
+
+ "I wooed the blue-eyed maid,
+ Yielding, yet half afraid,
+ And in the forest's shade
+ Our vows were plighted.
+ Under its loosened vest
+ Fluttered her little breast,
+ Like birds within their nest
+ By the hawk frighted.
+
+ "Bright in her father's hall
+ Shields gleamed upon the wall,
+ Loud sang the minstrels all,
+ Chanting his glory;
+ When of old Hildebrand
+ I asked his daughter's hand,
+ Mute did the minstrels stand
+ To hear my story.
+
+ "While the brown ale he quaffed,
+ Loud then the champion laughed,
+ And as the wind-gusts waft
+ The sea-foam brightly,
+ So the loud laugh of scorn,
+ Out of those lips unshorn,
+ From the deep drinking-horn
+ Blew the foam lightly.
+
+ "She was a Prince's child,
+ I but a Viking wild,
+ And though she blushed and smiled,
+ I was discarded!
+ Should not the dove so white
+ Follow the sea-mew's flight?
+ Why did they leave that night
+ Her nest unguarded?
+
+ "Scarce had I put to sea,
+ Bearing the maid with me,--
+ Fairest of all was she
+ Among the Norsemen!--
+ When on the white sea-strand,
+ Waving his armed hand,
+ Saw we old Hildebrand,
+ With twenty horsemen.
+
+ "Then launched they to the blast,
+ Bent like a reed each mast,
+ Yet we were gaining fast,
+ When the wind failed us;
+ And with a sudden flaw
+ Came round the gusty Skaw,
+ So that our foe we saw
+ Laugh as he hailed us.
+
+ "And as to catch the gale
+ Round veered the flapping sail,
+ 'Death!' was the helmsman's hail,
+ 'Death without quarter!'
+ Midships with iron keel
+ Struck we her ribs of steel;
+ Down her black hulk did reel
+ Through the black water!
+
+ "As with his wings aslant,
+ Sails the fierce cormorant,
+ Seeking some rocky haunt,
+ With his prey laden,
+ So toward the open main,
+ Beating to sea again,
+ Through the wild hurricane,
+ Bore I the maiden.
+
+ "Three weeks we westward bore,
+ And when the storm was o'er,
+ Cloud-like we saw the shore
+ Stretching to leeward;
+ There for my lady's bower
+ Built I the lofty tower
+ Which to this very hour
+ Stands looking seaward.
+
+ "There lived we many years;
+ Time dried the maiden's tears;
+ She had forgot her fears,
+ She was a mother;
+ Death closed her mild blue eyes;
+ Under that tower she lies;
+ Ne'er shall the sun arise
+ On such another.
+
+ "Still grew my bosom then,
+ Still as a stagnant fen!
+ Hateful to me were men,
+ The sunlight hateful!
+ In the vast forest here,
+ Clad in my warlike gear,
+ Fell I upon my spear,
+ Oh, death was grateful!
+
+ "Thus, seamed with many scars,
+ Bursting these prison bars,
+ Up to its native stars
+ My soul ascended!
+ There from the flowing bowl
+ Deep drinks the warrior's soul,
+ _Skoal_! to the Northland! _skoal_!"
+ Thus the tale ended.
+
+ HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ THE REVENGE.
+
+ A BALLAD OF THE FLEET
+
+ Tennyson's (1807-92) "The _Revenge_" finds a welcome here because it is
+ a favourite with teachers of elocution and their audiences. It teaches
+ us to hold life cheap when the nation's safety is at stake.
+
+ At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,
+ And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from away:
+ "Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!"
+ Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: "'Fore God, I am no coward;
+ But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear,
+ And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick.
+ We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?"
+
+ Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: "I know you are no coward;
+ You fly them for a moment, to fight with them again.
+ But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore.
+ I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard,
+ To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain."
+
+ So Lord Howard passed away with five ships of war that day,
+ Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven;
+ But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land
+ Very carefully and slow,
+ Men of Bideford in Devon,
+ And we laid them on the ballast down below;
+ For we brought them all aboard,
+ And they blest him in their pain that they were not left to Spain,
+ To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.
+
+ He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,
+ And he sail'd away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,
+ With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow.
+ "Shall we fight or shall we fly?
+ Good Sir Richard, tell us now,
+ For to fight is but to die!
+
+ "There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set"
+ And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good Englishmen.
+ Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,
+ For I never turn'd my back upon Don or devil yet."
+
+ Sir Richard spoke and he laugh'd, and we roar'd a hurrah, and so
+ The little _Revenge_ ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,
+ With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;
+ For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen,
+ And the little _Revenge_ ran on thro' the long sea-lane between.
+
+ Thousands of their soldiers looked down from their decks and laugh'd,
+ Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft
+ Running on and on, till delay'd
+ By their mountain-like _San Philip_ that, of fifteen hundred tons,
+ And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,
+ Took the breath from our sails, and we stay'd.
+
+ And while now the great _San Philip_ hung above us like a cloud
+ Whence the thunderbolt will fall
+ Long and loud.
+ Four galleons drew away
+ From the Spanish fleet that day,
+ And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,
+ And the battle-thunder broke from them all.
+
+ But anon the great _San Philip_, she bethought herself and went,
+ Having that within her womb that had left her ill content;
+ And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,
+ For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,
+ And a dozen times we shook 'em off as a dog that shakes his ears
+ When he leaps from the water to the land.
+
+ And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea,
+ But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three;
+ Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,
+ Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder
+ and flame;
+ Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead
+ and her shame.
+ For some were sunk and many were shatter'd, and so could
+ fight us no more--
+ God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?
+
+ For he said, "Fight on! fight on!"
+ Tho' his vessel was all but a wreck;
+ And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone,
+ With a grisly wound to be drest he had left the deck,
+ But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,
+ And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head,
+ And he said, "Fight on! Fight on!"
+
+ And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far
+ over the summer sea,
+ And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring;
+ But they dared not touch us again, for they fear'd that
+ we still could sting,
+ So they watched what the end would be.
+ And we had not fought them in vain,
+ But in perilous plight were we,
+ Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,
+ And half of the rest of us maim'd for life
+ In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife;
+ And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold,
+ And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was
+ all of it spent;
+ And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side;
+ But Sir Richard cried in his English pride:
+ "We have fought such a fight for a day and a night
+ As may never be fought again!
+ We have won great glory, my men!
+ And a day less or more
+ At sea or ashore,
+ We die--does it matter when?
+ Sink me the ship, Master Gunner--sink her, split her in twain!
+ Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!"
+
+ And the gunner said. "Ay, ay," but the seamen made reply:
+ "We have children, we have wives,
+ And the Lord hath spared our lives.
+ We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go;
+ We shall live to fight again, and to strike another blow."
+ And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe.
+ And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then,
+ Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last,
+ And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace;
+ But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:
+ "I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true;
+ I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do.
+ With a joyful spirit I, Sir Richard Grenville, die!"
+ And he fell upon their decks, and he died.
+
+ And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true,
+ And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap
+ That he dared her with one little ship and his English few.
+ Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew,
+ But they sank his body with honour down into the deep,
+ And they mann'd the _Revenge_ with a swarthier alien crew,
+ And away she sail'd with her loss and long'd for her own;
+ When a wind from the lands they had ruin'd awoke from sleep,
+ And the water began to heave and the weather to moan,
+ And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,
+ And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew,
+ Till it smote on their hulls, and their sails, and their masts,
+ and their flags,
+ And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shatter'd navy of Spain,
+ And the little _Revenge_ herself went down by the island crags,
+ To be lost evermore in the main.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ SIR GALAHAD.
+
+ Sir Galahad is the most moral and upright of all the Knights of the
+ Round Table. The strong lines of the poem (Tennyson, 1809-92) are the
+ strong lines of human destiny--
+
+ "My strength is as the strength of ten
+ Because my heart is pure."
+
+
+ My good blade carves the casques of men,
+ My tough lance thrusteth sure,
+ My strength is as the strength of ten,
+ Because my heart is pure.
+ The shattering trumpet shrilleth high,
+ The hard brands shiver on the steel,
+ The splintered spear-shafts crack and fly,
+ The horse and rider reel:
+ They reel, they roll in clanging lists,
+ And when the tide of combat stands,
+ Perfume and flowers fall in showers,
+ That lightly rain from ladies' hands.
+
+ How sweet are looks that ladies bend
+ On whom their favours fall!
+ For them I battle till the end,
+ To save from shame and thrall:
+ But all my heart is drawn above,
+ My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine:
+ I never felt the kiss of love,
+ Nor maiden's hand in mine.
+ More bounteous aspects on me beam,
+ Me mightier transports move and thrill;
+ So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer
+ A virgin heart in work and will.
+
+ When down the stormy crescent goes,
+ A light before me swims,
+ Between dark stems the forest glows,
+ I hear a noise of hymns:
+ Then by some secret shrine I ride;
+ I hear a voice, but none are there;
+ The stalls are void, the doors are wide,
+ The tapers burning fair.
+ Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth,
+ The silver vessels sparkle clean,
+ The shrill bell rings, the censer swings,
+ And solemn chaunts resound between.
+
+ Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres
+ I find a magic bark;
+ I leap on board: no helmsman steers,
+ I float till all is dark.
+ A gentle sound, an awful light!
+ Three angels bear the holy Grail:
+ With folded feet, in stoles of white,
+ On sleeping wings they sail.
+ Ah, blessd vision! blood of God!
+ My spirit beats her mortal bars,
+ As down dark tides the glory slides,
+ And star-like mingles with the stars.
+
+ When on my goodly charger borne
+ Thro' dreaming towns I go,
+ The cock crows ere the Christmas morn,
+ The streets are dumb with snow.
+ The tempest crackles on the leads,
+ And, ringing, springs from brand and mail;
+ But o'er the dark a glory spreads,
+ And gilds the driving hail.
+ I leave the plain, I climb the height;
+ No branchy thicket shelter yields;
+ But blessd forms in whistling storms
+ Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields.
+
+ A maiden knight--to me is given
+ Such hope, I know not fear;
+ I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven
+ That often meet me here.
+ I muse on joy that will not cease,
+ Pure spaces cloth'd in living beams,
+ Pure lilies of eternal peace,
+ Whose odours haunt my dreams;
+ And, stricken by an angel's hand,
+ This mortal armour that I wear,
+ This weight and size, this heart and eyes,
+ Are touch'd, are turn'd to finest air.
+
+ The clouds are broken in the sky,
+ And thro' the mountain-walls
+ A rolling organ-harmony
+ Swells up, and shakes and falls.
+ Then move the trees, the copses nod,
+ Wings flutter, voices hover clear:
+ "O just and faithful knight of God!
+ Ride on! the prize is near."
+ So pass I hostel, hall, and grange;
+ By bridge and ford, by park and pale,
+ All-arm'd I ride, whate'er betide,
+ Until I find the holy Grail.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ A NAME IN THE SAND.
+
+"A Name in the Sand," by Hannah Flagg Gould (1789-1865), is a poem to
+ correct our ready overestimate of our own importance.
+
+ Alone I walked the ocean strand;
+ A pearly shell was in my hand:
+ I stooped and wrote upon the sand
+ My name--the year--the day.
+ As onward from the spot I passed,
+ One lingering look behind I cast;
+ A wave came rolling high and fast,
+ And washed my lines away.
+
+ And so, methought, 'twill shortly be
+ With every mark on earth from me:
+ A wave of dark oblivion's sea
+ Will sweep across the place
+ Where I have trod the sandy shore
+ Of time, and been, to be no more,
+ Of me--my day--the name I bore,
+ To leave nor track nor trace.
+
+ And yet, with Him who counts the sands
+ And holds the waters in His hands,
+ I know a lasting record stands
+ Inscribed against my name,
+ Of all this mortal part has wrought,
+ Of all this thinking soul has thought,
+ And from these fleeting moments caught
+ For glory or for shame.
+
+ HANNAH FLAGG GOULD.
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+ PART VI.
+
+ "Grow old along with me!
+ The best is yet to be,--
+ The last of life, for which the first was made."
+
+
+ THE VOICE OF SPRING.
+
+"The Voice of Spring," by Felicia Hemans (1749-1835), becomes
+ attractive as years go on. The line in this poem that captivated my
+ youthful fancy was:
+
+ "The larch has hung all his tassels forth,"
+
+ The delight with which trees hang out their new little tassels every
+ year is one of the charms of "the pine family." John Burroughs sent us
+ down a tiny hemlock, that grew in our window-box at school for five
+ years, and every spring it was a new joy on account of the fine, tender
+ tassels. Mrs. Hemans had a vivid imagination backed up by an abundant
+ information.
+
+ I come, I come! ye have called me long;
+ I come o'er the mountains, with light and song.
+ Ye may trace my step o'er the waking earth
+ By the winds which tell of the violet's birth,
+ By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,
+ By the green leaves opening as I pass.
+
+ I have breathed on the South, and the chestnut-flowers
+ By thousands have burst from the forest bowers,
+ And the ancient graves and the fallen fanes
+ Are veiled with wreaths on Italian plains;
+ But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom,
+ To speak of the ruin or the tomb!
+
+ I have looked o'er the hills of the stormy North,
+ And the larch has hung all his tassels forth;
+ The fisher is out on the sunny sea,
+ And the reindeer bounds o'er the pastures free,
+ And the pine has a fringe of softer green,
+ And the moss looks bright, where my step has been.
+
+ I have sent through the wood-paths a glowing sigh,
+ And called out each voice of the deep blue sky,
+ From the night-bird's lay through the starry time,
+ In the groves of the soft Hesperian clime,
+ To the swan's wild note by the Iceland lakes,
+ When the dark fir-branch into verdure breaks.
+
+ From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain;
+ They are sweeping on to the silvery main,
+ They are flashing down from the mountain brows,
+ They are flinging spray o'er the forest boughs,
+ They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves,
+ And the earth resounds with the joy of waves.
+
+ FELICIA HEMANS.
+
+
+ THE FORSAKEN MERMAN.
+
+"The Forsaken Merman," by Matthew Arnold (1822-88), is a poem that I do
+ not expect children to appreciate fully, even when they care enough for
+ it to learn it. It is too long for most children to commit to memory,
+ and I generally assign one stanza to one pupil and another to another
+ pupil until it is divided up among them. The poem is a masterpiece.
+ Doubtless the poet meant to show that the forsaken merman had a greater
+ soul to save than the woman who sought to save her soul by deserting
+ natural duty. Salvation does not come through the faith that builds
+ itself at the expense of love.
+
+ Come, dear children, let us away;
+ Down and away below!
+ Now my brothers call from the bay,
+ Now the great winds shoreward blow,
+ Now the salt tides seaward flow;
+ Now the wild white horses play,
+ Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
+ Children dear, let us away!
+ This way, this way!
+
+ Call her once before you go--
+ Call once yet!
+ In a voice that she will know:
+ "Margaret! Margaret!"
+ Children's voices should be dear
+ (Call once more) to a mother's ear;
+ Children's voices, wild with pain--
+ Surely she will come again!
+ Call her once and come away;
+ This way, this way!
+ "Mother dear, we cannot stay!
+ The wild white horses foam and fret."
+ Margaret! Margaret!
+
+ Come, dear children, come away down;
+ Call no more!
+ One last look at the white-wall'd town,
+ And the little gray church on the windy shore;
+ Then come down!
+ She will not come though you call all day;
+ Come away, come away!
+
+ Children dear, was it yesterday
+ We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
+ In the caverns where we lay,
+ Through the surf and through the swell,
+ The far-off sound of a silver bell?
+ Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
+ Where the winds are all asleep;
+ Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
+ Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
+ Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
+ Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;
+ Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
+ Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
+ Where great whales come sailing by,
+ Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
+ Round the world forever and aye?
+ When did music come this way?
+ Children dear, was it yesterday?
+
+ Children dear, was it yesterday
+ (Call yet once) that she went away?
+ Once she sate with you and me,
+ On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,
+ And the youngest sate on her knee.
+ She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well,
+ When down swung the sound of a far-off bell.
+ She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea;
+ She said: "I must go, for my kinsfolk pray
+ In the little gray church on the shore to-day.
+ 'Twill be Easter-time in the world--ah me!
+ And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee."
+ I said: "Go up, dear heart, through the waves;
+ Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves!"
+ She smil'd, she went up through the surf in the bay.
+ Children dear, was it yesterday?
+
+ Children dear, were we long alone?
+ "The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan;
+ Long prayers," I said, "in the world they say;
+ Come!" I said; and we rose through the surf in the bay.
+ We went up the beach, by the sandy down
+ Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall'd town;
+ Through the narrow pav'd streets, where all was still,
+ To the little gray church on the windy hill.
+ From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,
+ But we stood without in the cold blowing airs.
+ We climb'd on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,
+ And we gaz'd up the aisle through the small leaded panes.
+ She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:
+ "Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here!
+ Dear heart," I said, "we are long alone;
+ The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan."
+ But, ah, she gave me never a look,
+ For her eyes were seal'd to the holy book!
+ Loud prays the priest: shut stands the door.
+ Come away, children, call no more!
+ Come away, come down, call no more!
+
+ Down, down, down!
+ Down to the depths of the sea!
+ She sits at her wheel in the humming town,
+ Singing most joyfully.
+ Hark what she sings: "O joy, O joy,
+ For the humming street, and the child with its toy!
+ For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well;
+ For the wheel where I spun,
+ And the blessd light of the sun!"
+ And so she sings her fill,
+ Singing most joyfully,
+ Till the spindle drops from her hand,
+ And the whizzing wheel stands still.
+ She steals to the window, and looks at the sand,
+ And over the sand at the sea;
+ And her eyes are set in a stare;
+ And anon there breaks a sigh,
+ And anon there drops a tear,
+ From a sorrow-clouded eye,
+ And a heart sorrow-laden,
+ A long, long sigh;
+ For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden,
+ And the gleam of her golden hair.
+
+ Come away, away, children;
+ Come, children, come down!
+ The hoarse wind blows colder;
+ Lights shine in the town.
+ She will start from her slumber
+ When gusts shake the door;
+ She will hear the winds howling,
+ Will hear the waves roar.
+ We shall see, while above us
+ The waves roar and whirl,
+ A ceiling of amber,
+ A pavement of pearl.
+ Singing: "Here came a mortal,
+ But faithless was she!
+ And alone dwell forever
+ The kings of the sea."
+
+ But, children, at midnight,
+ When soft the winds blow,
+ When clear falls the moonlight,
+ When spring-tides are low;
+ When sweet airs come seaward
+ From heaths starr'd with broom,
+ And high rocks throw mildly
+ On the blanch'd sands a gloom;
+ Up the still, glistening beaches,
+ Up the creeks we will hie,
+ Over banks of bright seaweed
+ The ebb-tide leaves dry.
+ We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
+ At the white, sleeping town;
+ At the church on the hill-side--
+ And then come back down.
+ Singing: "There dwells a lov'd one,
+ But cruel is she!
+ She left lonely forever
+ The kings of the sea."
+
+ MATTHEW ARNOLD.
+
+
+ THE BANKS O' DOON.
+
+"The Banks o' Doon," by Robert Burns (1759-96). Bonnie Doon is in the
+ southwestern part of Scotland. Robert Burns's old home it close to it.
+ The house has low walls, a thatched roof, and only two rooms. Alloway
+ Kirk and the two bridges so famous in Robert Burns's verse are near by.
+ This is an enchanted land, and the Scotch people for miles around Ayr
+ speak of the poet with sincere affection. Burns, more than any other
+ poet, has thrown the enchantment of poetry over his own locality.
+
+ Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,
+ How can ye blume sae fair!
+ How can ye chant, ye little birds,
+ And I sae fu' o' care.
+
+ Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird
+ That sings upon the bough;
+ Thou minds me o' the happy days
+ When my fause luve was true.
+
+ Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird
+ That sings beside thy mate;
+ For sae I sat, and sae I sang,
+ And wist na o' my fate.
+
+ Aft hae I rov'd by bonnie Doon,
+ To see the woodbine twine,
+ And ilka bird sang o' its love,
+ And sae did I o' mine.
+
+ Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose
+ Frae off its thorny tree;
+ And my fause luver staw the rose,
+ But left the thorn wi' me.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS.
+
+ Oft in the stilly night
+ Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
+ Fond Memory brings the light
+ Of other days around me:
+ The smiles, the tears
+ Of boyhood's years,
+ The words of love then spoken;
+ The eyes that shone,
+ Now dimmed and gone,
+ The cheerful hearts now broken!
+ Thus in the stilly night
+ Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
+ Sad Memory brings the light
+ Of other days around me.
+
+ When I remember all
+ The friends so link'd together
+ I've seen around me fall
+ Like leaves in wintry weather,
+ I feel like one
+ Who treads alone
+ Some banquet-hall deserted,
+ Whose lights are fled,
+ Whose garlands dead,
+ And all but he departed!
+ Thus in the stilly night
+ Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
+ Sad Memory brings the light
+ Of other days around me.
+
+ THOMAS MOORE.
+
+
+ MY OWN SHALL COME TO ME.
+
+ If John Burroughs (1837-) had never written any other poem than "My Own
+ Shall Come to Me," he would have stood to all ages as one of the
+ greatest of American poets. The poem is most characteristic of the
+ tall, majestic, slow-going poet and naturalist. There is no greater
+ line in Greek or English literature than
+
+ "I stand amid the eternal ways."
+
+
+ Serene I fold my hands and wait,
+ Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea.
+ I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,
+ For lo! my own shall come to me.
+
+ I stay my haste, I make delays,
+ For what avails this eager pace?
+ I stand amid the eternal ways,
+ And what is mine shall know my face.
+
+ Asleep, awake, by night or day
+ The friends I seek are seeking me;
+ No wind can drive my bark astray,
+ Nor change the tide of destiny.
+
+ What matter if I stand alone?
+ I wait with joy the coming years;
+ My heart shall reap when it has sown,
+ And gather up its fruit of tears.
+
+ The stars come nightly to the sky;
+ The tidal wave comes to the sea;
+ Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
+ Can keep my own away from me.
+
+ The waters know their own and draw
+ The brook that springs in yonder heights;
+ So flows the good with equal law
+ Unto the soul of pure delights.
+
+ JOHN BURROUGHS.
+
+
+ ODE TO A SKYLARK.
+
+"Ode to a Skylark," by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), is usually
+ assigned to "grammar grades" of schools. It is included here out of
+ respect to a boy of eleven years who was more impressed with these
+ lines than with any other lines in any poem:
+
+ "Like a poet hidden,
+ In the light of thought
+ Singing songs unbidden
+ Till the world is wrought
+ To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not."
+
+
+ Hail to thee, blithe spirit--
+ Bird thou never wert--
+ That from heaven or near it
+ Pourest thy full heart
+ In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
+
+ Higher still and higher
+ From the earth thou springest,
+ Like a cloud of fire;
+ The blue deep thou wingest,
+ And singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest.
+
+ In the golden lightning
+ Of the sunken sun,
+ O'er which clouds are brightening,
+ Thou dost float and run,
+ Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
+
+ The pale purple even
+ Melts around thy flight;
+ Like a star of heaven,
+ In the broad daylight
+ Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.
+
+ All the earth and air
+ With thy voice is loud,
+ As, when night is bare,
+ From one lonely cloud
+ The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.
+
+ What thou art we know not;
+ What is most like thee?
+ From rainbow-clouds there flow not
+ Drops so bright to see
+ As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:--
+
+ Like a poet hidden
+ In the light of thought;
+ Singing hymns unbidden,
+ Till the world is wrought
+ To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.
+
+ Teach us, sprite or bird,
+ What sweet thoughts are thine:
+ I have never heard
+ Praise of love or wine
+ That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
+
+ Chorus hymeneal
+ Or triumphal chaunt,
+ Matched with thine, would be all
+ But an empty vaunt--
+ A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
+
+ What objects are the fountains
+ Of thy happy strain?
+ What fields, or waves, or mountains?
+ What shapes of sky or plain?
+ What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
+
+ Teach me half the gladness
+ That thy brain must know,
+ Such harmonious madness
+ From my lips would flow,
+ The world should listen then, as I am listening now!
+
+ PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
+
+
+ THE SANDS OF DEE.
+
+ I have often had the pleasure of riding across the coast from Chester,
+ England, to Rhyl, on the north coast of Wales, where stretch "The Sands
+ of Dee" (Charles Kingsley, 1819-75). These purple sands at low tide
+ stretch off into the sea miles away, and are said to be full of
+ quicksands.
+
+ "O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
+ And call the cattle home,
+ And call the cattle home,
+ Across the sands of Dee."
+ The western wind was wild and dark with foam
+ And all alone went she.
+
+ The western tide crept up along the sand,
+ And o'er and o'er the sand,
+ And round and round the sand,
+ As far as eye could see.
+ The rolling mist came down and hid the land;
+ And never home came she.
+ Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair,--
+ A tress of golden hair,
+ A drownd maiden's hair,
+ Above the nets at sea?
+ Was never salmon yet that shone so fair
+ Among the stakes on Dee.
+
+ They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
+ The cruel crawling foam,
+ The cruel hungry foam,
+ To her grave beside the sea.
+ But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home
+ Across the sands of Dee.
+
+ CHARLES KINGSLEY.
+
+
+ A WISH.
+
+"A Wish" (by Samuel Rogers, 1763-1855) and "Lucy" (by Wordsworth,
+ 1770-1850) are two gems that can be valued only for the spirit of quiet
+ and modesty diffused by them.
+
+ Mine be a cot beside the hill;
+ A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear;
+ A willowy brook that turns a mill
+ With many a fall shall linger near.
+
+ The swallow, oft, beneath my thatch
+ Shall twitter from her clay-built nest;
+ Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch,
+ And share my meal, a welcome guest.
+
+ Around my ivied porch shall spring
+ Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew;
+ And Lucy, at her wheel, shall sing
+ In russet gown and apron blue.
+
+ The village church among the trees,
+ Where first our marriage-vows were given,
+ With merry peals shall swell the breeze
+ And point with taper spire to Heaven.
+
+ S. ROGERS.
+
+
+ LUCY.
+
+ She dwelt among the untrodden ways
+ Beside the springs of Dove;
+ A maid whom there were none to praise,
+ And very few to love.
+
+ A violet by a mossy stone
+ Half-hidden from the eye!
+ Fair as a star, when only one
+ Is shining in the sky.
+
+ She lived unknown, and few could know
+ When Lucy ceased to be;
+ But she is in her grave, and, oh,
+ The difference to me!
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ SOLITUDE.
+
+ 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 does 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.
+
+ ALEXANDER POPE.
+
+
+ JOHN ANDERSON
+
+"John Anderson," by Robert Burns (1759-96). This poem is included to
+ please several teachers.
+
+ John Anderson, my jo, John,
+ When we were first acquent
+ Your locks were like the raven,
+ Your bonnie brow was brent;
+ But now your brow is bald, John,
+ Your locks are like the snow;
+ But blessings on your frosty pow,
+ John Anderson, my jo.
+
+ John Anderson, my jo, John,
+ We clamb the hill thegither,
+ And mony 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.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ THE GOD OF MUSIC.
+
+"The God of Music," by Edith M. Thomas, an Ohio poetess now living. In
+ this sonnet the poetess has touched the power of Wordsworth or Keats
+ and placed herself among the immortals.
+
+ The God of Music dwelleth out of doors.
+ All seasons through his minstrelsy we meet,
+ Breathing by field and covert haunting-sweet
+ From organ-lofts in forests old he pours:
+ A solemn harmony: on leafy floors
+ To smooth autumnal pipes he moves his feet,
+ Or with the tingling plectrum of the sleet
+ In winter keen beats out his thrilling scores.
+ Leave me the reed unplucked beside the stream.
+ And he will stoop and fill it with the breeze;
+ Leave me the viol's frame in secret trees,
+ Unwrought, and it shall wake a druid theme;
+ Leave me the whispering shell on Nereid shores.
+ The God of Music dwelleth out of doors.
+
+ EDITH M. THOMAS.
+
+
+ A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT.
+
+"A Musical Instrument" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61). This
+ poem is the supreme masterpiece of Mrs. Browning. The prime thought in
+ it is the sacrifice and pain that must go to make a poet of any genius.
+
+ "The great god sighed for the cost and the pain."
+
+
+ What was he doing, the great god Pan,
+ Down in the reeds by the river?
+ Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
+ Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
+ And breaking the golden lilies afloat
+ With the dragon-fly on the river.
+
+ He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
+ From the deep cool bed of the river:
+ The limpid water turbidly ran,
+ And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
+ And the dragon-fly had fled away,
+ Ere he brought it out of the river.
+
+ High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
+ While turbidly flow'd the river;
+ And hack'd and hew'd as a great god can,
+ With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
+ Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed
+ To prove it fresh from the river.
+
+ He cut it short, did the great god Pan
+ (How tall it stood in the river!),
+ Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
+ Steadily from the outside ring,
+ And notched the poor dry empty thing
+ In holes, as he sat by the river.
+
+ "This is the way," laugh'd the great god Pan
+ (Laugh'd while he sat by the river),
+ "The only way, since gods began
+ To make sweet music, they could succeed."
+ Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed
+ He blew in power by the river.
+
+ Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
+ Piercing sweet by the river!
+ Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
+ The sun on the hill forgot to die,
+ And the lilies reviv'd, and the dragon-fly
+ Came back to dream on the river.
+
+ Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
+ To laugh as he sits by the river,
+ Making a poet out of a man:
+ The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,--
+ For the reed which grows nevermore again
+ As a reed with the reeds in the river.
+
+ ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
+
+
+ THE BRIDES OF ENDERBY.
+
+"The Brides of Enderby," by Jean Ingelow (1830-97). This poem is very
+ dramatic, and the music of the refrain has done much to make it
+ popular. But the pathos is that which endears it.
+
+ The old mayor climb'd the belfry tower,
+ The ringers ran by two, by three;
+ "Pull, if ye never pull'd before;
+ Good ringers, pull your best," quoth he.
+ "Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston bells!
+ Ply all your changes, all your swells,
+ Play uppe, 'The Brides of Enderby.'"
+
+ Men say it was a stolen tyde--
+ The Lord that sent it, He knows all;
+ But in myne ears doth still abide
+ The message that the bells let fall:
+ And there was naught of strange, beside
+ The flight of mews and peewits pied
+ By millions crouch'd on the old sea wall.
+
+ I sat and spun within the doore,
+ My thread brake off, I raised myne eyes;
+ The level sun, like ruddy ore,
+ Lay sinking in the barren skies;
+ And dark against day's golden death
+ She moved where Lindis wandereth,
+ My sonne's faire wife, Elizabeth.
+
+ "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling,
+ Ere the early dews were falling,
+ Farre away I heard her song,
+ "Cusha! Cusha!" all along;
+ Where the reedy Lindis floweth,
+ Floweth, floweth,
+ From the meads where melick groweth
+ Faintly came her milking song--
+
+ "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling,
+ "For the dews will soone be falling;
+ Leave your meadow grasses mellow,
+ Mellow, mellow;
+ Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow;
+ Come uppe, Whitefoot, come uppe, Lightfoot;
+ Quit the stalks of parsley hollow,
+ Hollow, hollow;
+ Come uppe, Jetty, rise and follow,
+ From the clovers lift your head;
+ Come uppe, Whitefoot, come uppe, Lightfoot,
+ Come uppe, Jetty, rise and follow,
+ Jetty, to the milking shed."
+
+ If it be long ay, long ago,
+ When I beginne to think howe long,
+ Againe I hear the Lindis flow,
+ Swift as an arrowe, sharpe and strong;
+ And all the aire, it seemeth mee,
+ Bin full of floating bells (sayth shee),
+ That ring the tune of Enderby.
+
+ Alle fresh the level pasture lay,
+ And not a shadowe mote be seene,
+ Save where full fyve good miles away
+ The steeple tower'd from out the greene;
+ And lo! the great bell farre and wide
+ Was heard in all the country side
+ That Saturday at eventide.
+
+ The swanherds where their sedges are
+ Mov'd on in sunset's golden breath,
+ The shepherde lads I heard afarre,
+ And my sonne's wife, Elizabeth;
+ Till floating o'er the grassy sea
+ Came downe that kyndly message free,
+ The "Brides of Mavis Enderby."
+
+ Then some look'd uppe into the sky,
+ And all along where Lindis flows
+ To where the goodly vessels lie,
+ And where the lordly steeple shows.
+ They sayde, "And why should this thing be?
+ What danger lowers by land or sea?
+ They ring the tune of Enderby!
+
+ "For evil news from Mablethorpe,
+ Of pyrate galleys warping down;
+ For shippes ashore beyond the scorpe,
+ They have not spar'd to wake the towne:
+ But while the west bin red to see,
+ And storms be none, and pyrates flee,
+ Why ring 'The Brides of Enderby'?"
+
+ I look'd without, and lo! my sonne
+ Came riding downe with might and main;
+ He rais'd a shout as he drew on,
+ Till all the welkin rang again,
+ "Elizabeth! Elizabeth!"
+ (A sweeter woman ne'er drew breath
+ Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth.)
+
+ "The olde sea wall," he cried, "is downe,
+ The rising tide comes on apace,
+ And boats adrift in yonder towne
+ Go sailing uppe the market-place."
+ He shook as one that looks on death:
+ "God save you, mother!" straight he saith
+ "Where is my wife, Elizabeth?"
+
+ "Good sonne, where Lindis winds her way
+ With her two bairns I marked her long;
+ And ere yon bells beganne to play
+ Afar I heard her milking song."
+ He looked across the grassy lea,
+ To right, to left, "Ho, Enderby!"
+ They rang "The Brides of Enderby!"
+
+ With that he cried and beat his breast;
+ For, lo! along the river's bed
+ A mighty eygre rear'd his crest,
+ And uppe the Lindis raging sped.
+ It swept with thunderous noises loud;
+ Shap'd like a curling snow-white cloud,
+ Or like a demon in a shroud.
+
+ And rearing Lindis backward press'd
+ Shook all her trembling bankes amaine;
+ Then madly at the eygre's breast
+ Flung uppe her weltering walls again.
+ Then bankes came downe with ruin and rout--
+ Then beaten foam flew round about--
+ Then all the mighty floods were out.
+
+ So farre, so fast the eygre drave,
+ The heart had hardly time to beat
+ Before a shallow seething wave
+ Sobb'd in the grasses at oure feet:
+ The feet had hardly time to flee
+ Before it brake against the knee,
+ And all the world was in the sea.
+
+ Upon the roofe we sate that night,
+ The noise of bells went sweeping by;
+ I mark'd the lofty beacon light
+ Stream from the church tower, red and high--
+ A lurid mark and dread to see;
+ And awsome bells they were to mee,
+ That in the dark rang "Enderby."
+
+ They rang the sailor lads to guide
+ From roofe to roofe who fearless row'd;
+ And I--my sonne was at my side,
+ And yet the ruddy beacon glow'd:
+ And yet he moan'd beneath his breath,
+ "O come in life, or come in death!
+ O lost! my love, Elizabeth."
+
+ And didst thou visit him no more?
+ Thou didst, thou didst, my daughter deare
+ The waters laid thee at his doore,
+ Ere yet the early dawn was clear.
+ Thy pretty bairns in fast embrace,
+ The lifted sun shone on thy face,
+ Downe drifted to thy dwelling-place.
+
+ That flow strew'd wrecks about the grass,
+ That ebbe swept out the flocks to sea;
+ A fatal ebbe and flow, alas!
+ To manye more than myne and mee;
+ But each will mourn his own (she saith);
+ And sweeter woman ne'er drew breath
+ Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth.
+
+ I shall never hear her more
+ By the reedy Lindis shore,
+ "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling,
+ Ere the early dews be falling;
+ I shall never hear her song,
+ "Cusha! Cusha!" all along
+ Where the sunny Lindis floweth,
+ Goeth, floweth;
+ From the meads where melick groweth,
+ When the water winding down,
+ Onward floweth to the town.
+
+ I shall never see her more
+ Where the reeds and rushes quiver,
+ Shiver, quiver;
+ Stand beside the sobbing river,
+ Sobbing, throbbing, in its falling
+ To the sandy lonesome shore;
+ I shall never hear her calling,
+ "Leave your meadow grasses mellow,
+ Mellow, mellow;
+ Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow;
+
+ "Come uppe, Whitefoot, come uppe, Lightfoot;
+ Quit your pipes of parsley hollow,
+ Hollow, hollow;
+ Come uppe, Lightfoot, rise and follow;
+ Lightfoot, Whitefoot,
+ From your clovers lift the head;
+ Come uppe, Jetty, follow, follow,
+ Jetty, to the milking shed."
+
+ JEAN INGELOW.
+
+
+ THE LYE.
+
+"The Lye," by Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), is one of the strongest
+ and most appealing poems a teacher can read to her pupils when teaching
+ early American history. The poem is full of magnificent lines, such as
+"Go, soul, the body's guest." The poem never lacks an attentive
+ audience of young people when correlated with the study of North
+ Carolina and Sir Walter Raleigh. The solitary, majestic character of
+ Sir Walter Raleigh, his intrepidity while undergoing tortures inflicted
+ by a cowardly king, the ring of indignation--- all these make a weapon
+ for him stronger than the ax that beheaded him. In this poem he "has
+ the last word."
+
+ Goe, soule, the bodie's guest,
+ Upon a thanklesse arrant;
+ Feare not to touche the best--
+ The truth shall be thy warrant!
+ Goe, since I needs must dye,
+ And give the world the lye.
+
+ Goe tell the court it glowes
+ And shines like rotten wood;
+ Goe tell the church it showes
+ What's good, and doth no good;
+ If church and court reply,
+ Then give them both the lye.
+
+ Tell potentates they live
+ Acting by others' actions--
+ Not loved unlesse they give,
+ Not strong but by their factions;
+ If potentates reply,
+ Give potentates the lye.
+
+ Tell men of high condition,
+ That rule affairs of state,
+ Their purpose is ambition,
+ Their practice only hate;
+ And if they once reply,
+ Then give them all the lye.
+
+ Tell zeale it lacks devotion;
+ Tell love it is but lust;
+ Tell time it is but motion;
+ Tell flesh it is but dust;
+ And wish them not reply,
+ For thou must give the lye.
+
+ Tell wit how much it wrangles
+ In tickle points of nicenesse;
+ Tell wisdome she entangles
+ Herselfe in over-wisenesse;
+ And if they do reply,
+ Straight give them both the lye.
+
+ Tell physicke of her boldnesse;
+ Tell skill it is pretension;
+ Tell charity of coldnesse;
+ Tell law it is contention;
+ And as they yield reply,
+ So give them still the lye.
+
+ Tell fortune of her blindnesse;
+ Tell nature of decay;
+ Tell friendship of unkindnesse;
+ Tell justice of delay;
+ And if they dare reply,
+ Then give them all the lye.
+
+ Tell arts they have no soundnesse,
+ But vary by esteeming;
+ Tell schooles they want profoundnesse,
+ And stand too much on seeming;
+ If arts and schooles reply,
+ Give arts and schooles the lye.
+
+ So, when thou hast, as I
+ Commanded thee, done blabbing--
+ Although to give the lye
+ Deserves no less than stabbing--
+ Yet stab at thee who will,
+ No stab the soule can kill.
+
+ SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
+
+
+ L'ENVOI.
+
+"L'Envoi," by Rudyard Kipling, is a favourite on account of its
+ sweeping assertion of the individual's right to self-development.
+
+ When Earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are
+ twisted and dried,
+ When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
+ We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it--lie down
+ for an on or two,
+ Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall set us to work anew!
+
+ And those who were good shall be happy: they shall sit
+ in a golden chair;
+ They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet's hair;
+ They shall find real saints to draw from--Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
+ They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!
+
+ And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
+ And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame;
+ But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
+ Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are!
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+
+ CONTENTMENT
+
+"Contentment," by Edward Dyer (1545-1607). This poem holds much to
+ comfort and control people who are shut up to the joys of
+ meditation--people to whom the world of activity is closed. To be
+ independent of things material--this is the soul's pleasure.
+
+ My mind to me a kingdom is;
+ Such perfect joy therein I find
+ As far excels all earthly bliss
+ That God or Nature hath assigned;
+ Though much I want that most would have,
+ Yet still my mind forbids to crave.
+
+ Content I live; this is my stay,--
+ I seek no more than may suffice.
+ I press to bear no haughty sway;
+ Look, what I lack my mind supplies.
+ Lo, thus I triumph like a king,
+ Content with that my mind doth bring.
+
+ I laugh not at another's loss,
+ I grudge not at another's gain;
+ No worldly wave my mind can toss;
+ I brook that is another's bane.
+ I fear no foe, nor fawn on friend;
+ I loathe not life, nor dread mine end.
+
+ My wealth is health and perfect ease;
+ My conscience clear my chief defense;
+ I never seek by bribes to please
+ Nor by desert to give offense.
+ Thus do I live, thus will I die;
+ Would all did so as well as I!
+
+ EDWARD DYER.
+
+
+ THE HARP THAT ONCE THROUGH TARA'S HALLS.
+
+ The harp that once through Tara's halls
+ The soul of music shed,
+ Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls
+ As if that soul were fled.
+ So sleeps the pride of former days,
+ So glory's thrill is o'er,
+ And hearts, that once beat high for praise,
+ Now feel that pulse no more.
+
+ No more to chiefs and ladies bright
+ The harp of Tara swells;
+ The chord alone, that breaks at night,
+ Its tale of ruin tells.
+ Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes,
+ The only throb she gives
+ Is when some heart indignant breaks,
+ To show that still she lives.
+
+ THOMAS MOORE.
+
+
+ THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET
+
+"The Old Oaken Bucket," by Samuel Woodworth (1785-1848), is a poem we
+ love because it is an elegant expression of something very dear and
+ homely.
+
+ 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 wild-wood,
+ And every loved spot which my infancy knew!
+ The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that 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 that 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 hailed 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,
+ The brightest that beauty or revelry sips.
+ And now, far removed from the loved habitation,
+ The tear of regret will intrusively swell.
+ As fancy reverts to my father's plantation,
+ And sighs for the bucket that hangs in the well--
+ The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
+ The moss-covered bucket that hangs in the well!
+
+ SAMUEL WOODWORTH.
+
+
+ THE RAVEN.
+
+"The Raven," by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), is placed here because so
+ many college men speak of it at once as the great poem of their
+ boyhood. The poem caught me when a child by its refrain and weird
+ picturesqueness. It has never outgrown its mechanical charm.
+
+ Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
+ Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--
+ While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
+ As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door"
+ 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--
+ Only this, and nothing more."
+
+ Ah! distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
+ And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor;
+ Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
+ From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore--
+ For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore--
+ Nameless here for evermore.
+
+ And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
+ Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
+ So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
+ "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door--
+ Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door:
+ This it is, and nothing more."
+
+ Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
+ "Sir," said I, "or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
+ But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
+ And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
+ That I scarce was sure I heard you." Here I opened wide the door:
+ Darkness there, and nothing more.
+
+ Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering,
+ fearing,
+ Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
+ But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
+ And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!"
+ This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"
+ Merely this, and nothing more.
+
+ Back into my chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
+ Soon again I heard a rapping, something louder than before:
+ "Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;
+ Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore--
+ Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore.
+ 'Tis the wind, and nothing more."
+
+ Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
+ In there stepped a stately Raven, of the saintly days of yore;
+ Not the least obeisance made he, not a minute stopped or stayed he;
+ But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door--
+ Perched above a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door--
+ Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
+
+ Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
+ By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore;
+ "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art
+ sure, no craven;
+ Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven, wandering from the nightly shore,
+ Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's Plutonian shore?"
+ Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
+
+ Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
+ Though its answer, little meaning, little relevancy bore;
+ For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
+ Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door--
+ Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door
+ With such a name as "Nevermore."
+
+ But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only
+ That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour;
+ Nothing further then he uttered, not a feather then he fluttered,
+ Till I scarcely more than muttered--"Other friends have flown before,
+ On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
+ Then the bird said, "Nevermore."
+
+ Startled by the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
+ "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
+ Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster
+ Followed fast and followed faster, till his songs one burden bore--
+ Till the dirges of his hope this melancholy burden bore--
+ Of 'Never, nevermore,'"
+
+ But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
+ Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and
+ bust, and door;
+ Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
+ Fancy into fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore--
+ What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
+ Meant in croaking "Nevermore."
+
+ Thus I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
+ To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
+ This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
+ On the cushion's velvet lining, that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
+ But whose velvet violet lining, with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
+ She shall press, ah, nevermore!
+
+ Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
+ Swung by seraphim, whose footfalls twinkled on the tufted floor.
+ "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee--by these angels He
+ hath sent thee
+ Respite--respite and nepenthe from my memories of Lenore!
+ Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!"
+ Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
+
+ "Prophet," said I, "thing of evil--prophet still, if bird or devil!
+ Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore
+ Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted,
+ On this home by horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore,
+ Is there--_is_ there balm in Gilead?--tell me, tell me, I implore!"
+ Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
+
+ "Prophet," said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still if bird or devil!
+ By that heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore--
+ Tell this soul, with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aiden
+ It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore!
+ Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore?"
+ Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
+
+ "Be that our sign of parting, bird or fiend," I shrieked, upstarting--
+ "Get thee back into the tempest and the night's Plutonian shore;
+ Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken,
+ Leave my loneliness unbroken--quit the bust above my door,
+ Take thy beak from out my heart and take thy form from off my door!"
+ Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
+
+ And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting,
+ On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door;
+ And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
+ And the lamp-light o'er him streaming, throws his shadow on the floor;
+ And my soul from out that shadow, that lies floating on the floor,
+ Shall be lifted--nevermore!
+
+ EDGAR ALLAN POE.
+
+
+ ARNOLD VON WINKLERIED.
+
+ "Make way for liberty!" he cried,
+ Make way for liberty, and died.
+ In arms the Austrian phalanx stood,
+ A living wall, a human wood,--
+ A wall, where every conscious stone
+ Seemed to its kindred thousands grown.
+ A rampart all assaults to bear,
+ Till time to dust their frames should wear;
+ So still, so dense the Austrians stood,
+ A living wall, a human wood.
+
+ Impregnable their front appears,
+ All horrent with projected spears.
+ Whose polished points before them shine,
+ From flank to flank, one brilliant line,
+ Bright as the breakers' splendours run
+ Along the billows to the sun.
+
+ Opposed to these a hovering band
+ Contended for their fatherland;
+ Peasants, whose new-found strength had broke
+ From manly necks the ignoble yoke,
+ And beat their fetters into swords,
+ On equal terms to fight their lords;
+ And what insurgent rage had gained,
+ In many a mortal fray maintained;
+ Marshalled, once more, at Freedom's call,
+ They came to conquer or to fall,
+ Where he who conquered, he who fell,
+ Was deemed a dead or living Tell,
+ Such virtue had that patriot breathed,
+ So to the soil his soul bequeathed,
+ That wheresoe'er his arrows flew,
+ Heroes in his own likeness grew,
+ And warriors sprang from every sod,
+ Which his awakening footstep trod.
+
+ And now the work of life and death
+ Hung on the passing of a breath;
+ The fire of conflict burned within,
+ The battle trembled to begin;
+ Yet, while the Austrians held their ground,
+ Point for attack was nowhere found;
+ Where'er the impatient Switzers gazed,
+ The unbroken line of lances blazed;
+ That line 'twere suicide to meet,
+ And perish at their tyrant's feet;
+ How could they rest within their graves,
+ And leave their homes, the homes of slaves!
+ Would not they feel their children tread,
+ With clanging chains, above their head?
+
+ It must not be; this day, this hour,
+ Annihilates the invader's power;
+ All Switzerland is in the field;
+ She will not fly,--she cannot yield,--
+ She must not fall; her better fate
+ Here gives her an immortal date.
+ Few were the numbers she could boast,
+ But every freeman was a host,
+ And felt as 'twere a secret known
+ That one should turn the scale alone,
+ While each unto himself was he
+ On whose sole arm hung victory.
+
+ It did depend on one indeed;
+ Behold him,--Arnold Winkelried;
+ There sounds not to the trump of fame
+ The echo of a nobler name.
+ Unmarked he stood amid the throng,
+ In rumination deep and long,
+ Till you might see, with sudden grace,
+ The very thought come o'er his face;
+ And, by the motion of his form,
+ Anticipate the bursting storm,
+ And, by the uplifting of his brow,
+ Tell where the bolt would strike, and how.
+
+ But 'twas no sooner thought than done!
+ The field was in a moment won;
+ "Make way for liberty!" he cried,
+ Then ran, with arms extended wide,
+ As if his dearest friend to clasp;
+ Ten spears he swept within his grasp.
+ "Make way for liberty!" he cried.
+ Their keen points crossed from side to side;
+ He bowed amidst them like a tree,
+ And thus made way for liberty.
+
+ Swift to the breach his comrades fly,
+ "Make way for liberty!" they cry,
+ And through the Austrian phalanx dart,
+ As rushed the spears through Arnold's heart.
+ While instantaneous as his fall,
+ Rout, ruin, panic, seized them all;
+ An earthquake could not overthrow
+ A city with a surer blow.
+
+ Thus Switzerland again was free;
+ Thus Death made way for Liberty!
+
+ JAMES MONTGOMERY.
+
+
+ LIFE, I KNOW NOT WHAT THOU ART.
+
+ 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 'twill 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.
+
+ A.L. BARBAULD.
+
+
+ MERCY.
+
+"Mercy," an excerpt from "The Merchant of Venice," "Polonius' Advice,"
+ from "Hamlet," and "Antony's Speech," from "Julius Csar" (all
+ fragments from Shakespeare, 1564-1616), find a place in this book
+ because a well-known New York teacher--one who is unremitting in his
+ efforts to raise the good taste and character of his pupils--says: "A
+ book of poetry could not be complete without these extracts."
+
+ The quality of mercy is not strain'd;
+ It droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven
+ Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd;
+ It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
+ 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
+ The throned monarch better than his crown:
+ His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
+ The attribute to awe and majesty,
+ Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
+ But mercy is above his sceptered sway;
+ It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
+ It is an attribute to God himself;
+ And earthly power doth then show likest God's
+ When mercy seasons justice.
+
+ SHAKESPEARE ("Merchant of Venice").
+
+
+ POLONIUS' ADVICE.
+
+ See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
+ Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
+ Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:
+ The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
+ Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
+ But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
+ Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware
+ Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,
+ Bear 't that th' opposed may beware of thee.
+ Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
+ Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
+ Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy
+ But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
+ For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
+ Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
+ For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
+ And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
+ This above all: to thine own self be true;
+ And it must follow, as the night the day,
+ Thou canst not then be false to any man.
+
+ SHAKESPEARE ("Hamlet").
+
+
+ A FRAGMENT FROM MARK ANTONY'S SPEECH.
+
+ This was the noblest Roman of them all:
+ All the conspirators, save only he,
+ Did that they did in envy of great Csar;
+ He only, in a general honest thought
+ And common good to all, made one of them.
+ His life was gentle; and the elements
+ So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up,
+ And say to all the world, "This was a man!"
+
+ SHAKESPEARE ("Julius Csar").
+
+
+ THE SKYLARK.
+
+ Bird of the wilderness,
+ Blithesome and cumberless,
+ Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
+ Emblem of happiness,
+ Blest is thy dwelling-place--
+ Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!
+
+ Wild is thy lay and loud,
+ Far in the downy cloud,
+ Love gives it energy, love gave it birth.
+ Where, on thy dewy wing,
+ Where art thou journeying?
+ Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.
+
+ O'er fell and fountain sheen,
+ O'er moor and mountain green,
+ O'er the red streamer that heralds the day,
+ Over the cloudlet dim,
+ Over the rainbow's rim,
+ Musical cherub, soar, singing, away!
+
+ Then, when the gloaming comes,
+ Low in the heather blooms
+ Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be!
+ Emblem of happiness,
+ Blest is thy dwelling-place--
+ Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!
+
+ THOMAS HOGG.
+
+
+ THE CHOIR INVISIBLE.
+
+"The Choir Invisible" (by George Eliot, 1819-80) is a fitting
+ exposition in poetry of this "Shakespeare of prose."
+
+ O, may I join the choir invisible
+ Of those immortal dead who live again
+ In minds made better by their presence; live
+ In pulses stirred to generosity,
+ In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
+ Of miserable aims that end with self,
+ In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
+ And with their mild persistence urge men's minds
+ To vaster issues.
+ May I reach
+ That purest heaven,--be to other souls
+ The cup of strength in some great agony,
+ Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love,
+ Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
+ Be the sweet presence of good diffused,
+ And in diffusion ever more intense!
+ So shall I join the choir invisible,
+ Whose music is the gladness of the world.
+
+ GEORGE ELIOT.
+
+
+ THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US.
+
+"The World Is Too Much With Us," by Wordsworth (1770-1850), is perhaps
+ the greatest sonnet ever written. It is true that "the eyes of the
+ soul" are blinded by a surfeit of worldly "goods." "I went to the Lake
+ District" (England), said John Burroughs, "to see what kind of a
+ country could produce a Wordsworth." Of course he found simple houses,
+ simple people, barren moors, heather-clad mountains, wild flowers, calm
+ lakes, plain, rugged simplicity.
+
+ 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.
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ ON HIS BLINDNESS.
+
+"Sonnet on His Blindness" (by John Milton, 1608-74). This is the most
+ stately and pathetic sonnet in existence. The soul enduring enforced
+ idleness and loss of power without repining. Inactivity made to serve a
+ higher end.
+
+ "All service ranks the same with God!
+ There is no first or last."
+
+
+ When I consider how my light is spent
+ Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
+ And that one talent which is death to hide,
+ Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
+ To serve therewith my Maker, and present
+ My true account, lest He, returning, chide;
+ Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?
+ I fondly ask: but Patience, to prevent
+ That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
+ Either man's work, or His own gifts; who best
+ Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best; His state
+ Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed,
+ And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
+ They also serve who only stand and wait.
+
+ JOHN MILTON.
+
+
+ SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT.
+
+"She Was a Phantom of Delight" (by William Wordsworth, 1770-1850) is
+ included here because it is a picture of woman as she should be, not
+ made dainty by finery, but by fine ideals--
+
+ "And not too good
+ For human nature's daily food."
+
+
+ She was a Phantom of delight
+ When first she gleamed upon my sight;
+ A lovely Apparition, sent
+ To be a moment's ornament;
+ Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
+ Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair:
+ But all things else about her drawn
+ From May-time and the cheerful Dawn.
+ A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
+ To haunt, to startle, and waylay.
+
+ I saw her upon nearer view,
+ A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
+ Her household motions light and free,
+ And steps of virgin liberty;
+ A countenance in which did meet
+ Sweet records, promises as sweet;
+ A Creature not too bright or good
+ For human nature's daily food;
+ For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
+ Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
+
+ And now I see with eye serene
+ The very pulse of the machine;
+ A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
+ A Traveller between life and death:
+ The reason firm, the temperate will,
+ Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
+ A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
+ To warn, to comfort, and command;
+ And yet a Spirit still, and bright,
+ With something of angelic light.
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD.
+
+"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (Gray, 1716-71). I once drove
+ from Windsor Castle through Eton, down the long hedge-bound road which
+ passes the estate of William Penn's descendants to Stoke Pogis, the
+ little churchyard where this poem was written. They were trimming a
+ great yew-tree under which Gray was said to have written this poem. The
+ scene is one of peace and quiet. The "elegy" was a favourite form of
+ poem with the ancients, but Gray is said to have reached the climax
+ among poets in this style of verse. The great line of the poem is:
+
+ "The path of glory leads but to the grave."
+
+ It would almost seem that poetry has for its greatest mission the
+ lesson of a proper humility.
+
+ The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
+ The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
+ The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
+ And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
+
+ Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
+ And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
+ Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
+ And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.
+
+ Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r
+ The moping owl does to the moon complain
+ Of such as, wandering near her secret bow'r,
+ Molest her ancient solitary reign.
+
+ Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
+ Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,
+ Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
+ The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
+
+ The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
+ The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,
+ The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
+ No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
+
+ For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
+ Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
+ No children run to lisp their sire's return,
+ Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
+
+ Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
+ Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
+ How jocund did they drive their team afield!
+ How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
+
+ Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
+ Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
+ Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,
+ The short and simple annals of the Poor.
+
+ The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
+ And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
+ Await alike th' inevitable hour.
+ The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
+
+ Forgive, ye Proud, th' involuntary fault
+ If Memory to these no trophies raise,
+ Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
+ The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
+
+ Can storied urn or animated bust
+ Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
+ Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
+ Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
+
+ Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
+ Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire,
+ Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
+ Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.
+
+ But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
+ Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
+ Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,
+ And froze the genial current of the soul.
+
+ Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
+ The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
+ Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
+ And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
+
+ Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
+ The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
+ Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
+ Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.
+
+ Th' applause of listening senates to command,
+ The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
+ To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
+ And read their history in a nation's eyes,
+
+ Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone
+ Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined
+ Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,
+ And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,
+
+ The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
+ To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
+ Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
+ With incense, kindled at the Muse's flame.
+
+ Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
+ Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
+ Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
+ They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.
+
+ Yet e'en those bones from insult to protect
+ Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
+ With uncouth rhimes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
+ Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
+
+ Their name, their years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse,
+ The place of fame and elegy supply.
+ And many a holy text around she strews
+ That teach the rustic moralist to die.
+
+ For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
+ This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned,
+ Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
+ Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind?
+
+ On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
+ Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
+ E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
+ E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.
+
+ For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonour'd dead,
+ Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
+ If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
+ Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,
+
+ Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
+ "Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
+ Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
+ To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
+
+ "There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
+ That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
+ His listless length at noon-tide would he stretch,
+ And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
+
+ "Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
+ Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove;
+ Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
+ Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.
+
+ "One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
+ Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;
+ Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
+ Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he.
+
+ "The next with dirges due in sad array
+ Slow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne.
+ Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,
+ Graved on the stone beneath yon agd thorn."
+
+
+ THE EPITAPH.
+
+ Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
+ A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown;
+ Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,
+ And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.
+
+ Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
+ Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
+ He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear:
+ He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.
+
+ No farther seek his merits to disclose,
+ Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
+ (There they alike in trembling hope repose,)
+ The bosom of his Father and his God.
+
+ THOMAS GRAY.
+
+
+ RABBI BEN EZRA
+
+"Rabbi Ben Ezra" (by Robert Browning, 1812-89). Youth is for dispute
+ and age for counsel; each year, each period of a man's life is but the
+ necessary step to the next. Youth is an uncertain thing to bank on.
+
+ "Grow old along with me!
+ The best is yet to be,
+ The last of life for which the first was made."
+
+"Rabbi Ben Ezra" is a plea for each period in life. Aspiration is the
+ keynote.
+
+ " ... Trust God; see all, nor be afraid!"
+
+
+ Grow old along with me!
+ The best is yet to be,
+ The last of life, for which the first was made:
+ Our times are in His hand
+ Who saith, "A whole I plann'd,
+ Youth shows but half; trust God: see all nor be afraid!"
+
+ Not that, amassing flowers,
+ Youth sigh'd, "Which rose make ours,
+ Which lily leave and then as best recall?"
+ Not that, admiring stars,
+ It yearn'd, "Nor Jove, nor Mars;
+ Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"
+
+ Not for such hopes and fears
+ Annulling youth's brief years,
+ Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
+ Rather I prize the doubt
+ Low kinds exist without,
+ Finish'd and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
+
+ Poor vaunt of life indeed,
+ Were man but formed to feed
+ On joy, to solely seek and find and feast:
+ Such feasting ended, then
+ As sure an end to men;
+ Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-cramm'd beast?
+
+ Rejoice we are allied
+ To That which doth provide
+ And not partake, effect and not receive!
+ A spark disturbs our clod;
+ Nearer we hold of God
+ Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.
+
+ Then, welcome each rebuff
+ That turns earth's smoothness rough,
+ Each sting, that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!
+ Be our joys three parts pain!
+ Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
+ Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
+
+ For thence,--a paradox
+ Which comforts while it mocks,--
+ Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
+ What I aspired to be,
+ And was not, comforts me:
+ A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.
+
+ What is he but a brute
+ Whose flesh has soul to suit,
+ Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?
+ To man, propose this test--
+ Thy body at its best,
+ How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?
+
+ Yet gifts should prove their use:
+ I own the Past profuse
+ Of power each side, perfection every turn:
+ Eyes, ears took in their dole,
+ Brain treasured up the whole:
+ Should not the heart beat once "How good to live and learn?"
+
+ Not once beat "Praise be Thine!
+ I see the whole design,
+ I, who saw power, see now love perfect too:
+ Perfect I call Thy plan:
+ Thanks that I was a man!
+ Maker, remake, complete,--I trust what Thou shalt do!"
+
+ For pleasant is this flesh,
+ Our soul, in its rose-mesh
+ Pull'd ever to the earth, still yearns for rest;
+ Would we some prize might hold
+ To match those manifold
+ Possessions of the brute,--gain most, as we did best!
+
+ Let us not always say,
+ "Spite of this flesh to-day
+ I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!"
+ As the bird wings and sings,
+ Let us cry, "All good things
+ Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"
+
+ Therefore I summon age
+ To grant youth's heritage,
+ Life's struggle having so far reached its term:
+ Thence shall I pass, approved
+ A man, for aye removed
+ From the developed brute; a god though in the germ.
+
+ And I shall thereupon
+ Take rest, ere I be gone
+ Once more on my adventure brave and new:
+ Fearless and unperplex'd,
+ When I wage battle next,
+ What weapons to select, what armour to indue.
+
+ Youth ended, I shall try
+ My gain or loss thereby;
+ Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:
+ And I shall weigh the same,
+ Give life its praise or blame:
+ Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.
+
+ For note, when evening shuts,
+ A certain moment cuts
+ The deed off, calls the glory from the gray:
+ A whisper from the west
+ Shoots--"Add this to the rest,
+ Take it and try its worth: here dies another day."
+
+ So, still within this life,
+ Though lifted o'er its strife,
+ Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
+ "This rage was right i' the main,
+ That acquiescence vain:
+ The Future I may face now I have proved the Past"
+
+ For more is not reserved
+ To man, with soul just nerved
+ To act to-morrow what he learns to-day:
+ Here, work enough to watch
+ The Master work, and catch
+ Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.
+
+ As it was better, youth
+ Should strive, through acts uncouth,
+ Toward making, than repose on aught found made:
+ So, better, age, exempt
+ From strife, should know, than tempt
+ Further. Thou waitedest age: wait death nor be afraid!
+
+ Enough now, if the Right
+ And Good and Infinite
+ Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own,
+ With knowledge absolute,
+ Subject to no dispute
+ From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.
+
+ Be there, for once and all,
+ Sever'd great minds from small,
+ Announced to each his station in the Past!
+ Was I, the world arraigned,
+ Were they, my soul disdain'd,
+ Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
+
+ Now, who shall arbitrate?
+ Ten men love what I hate,
+ Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
+ Ten, who in ears and eyes
+ Match me: we all surmise,
+ They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?
+
+ Not on the vulgar mass
+ Call'd "work," must sentence pass,
+ Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
+ O'er which, from level stand,
+ The low world laid its hand,
+ Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:
+
+ But all, the world's coarse thumb
+ And finger fail'd to plumb,
+ So pass'd in making up the main account;
+ All instincts immature,
+ All purposes unsure,
+ That weigh'd not as his work, yet swell'd the man's amount:
+
+ Thoughts hardly to be pack'd
+ Into a narrow act,
+ Fancies that broke through language and escaped,
+ All I could never be,
+ All, men ignored in me,
+ This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
+
+ Ay, note that Potter's wheel,
+ That metaphor! and feel
+ Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,--
+ Thou, to whom fools propound,
+ When the wine makes its round,
+ "Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!"
+
+ Fool! All that is, at all,
+ Lasts ever, past recall;
+ Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure;
+ What enter'd into thee,
+ _That_ was, is, and shall be:
+ Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.
+
+ He fix'd thee 'mid this dance
+ Of plastic circumstance,
+ This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest
+ Machinery just meant
+ To give thy soul its bent,
+ Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impress'd.
+
+ What though the earlier grooves
+ Which ran the laughing loves
+ Around thy base, no longer pause and press?
+ What though, about thy rim,
+ Scull-things in order grim
+ Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?
+
+ Look not thou down but up!
+ To uses of a cup,
+ The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,
+ The new wine's foaming flow,
+ The master's lips aglow!
+ Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou with earth's wheel?
+
+ But I need, now as then,
+ Thee, God, who mouldest men;
+ And since, not even while the whirl was worst
+ Did I,--to the wheel of life
+ With shapes and colours rife,
+ Bound dizzily,--mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:
+
+ So, take and use Thy work:
+ Amend what flaws may lurk,
+ What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
+ My times be in Thy hand!
+ Perfect the cup as plann'd!
+ Lest age approve of youth, and death complete the same!
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ PROSPICE.
+
+"Prospice," by Robert Browning (1812-89), is the greatest death song
+ ever written. It is a battle-song and a pan of victory.
+
+ "The journey is done, the summit attained,
+ And the strong man must go."
+ "I would hate that Death bandaged my eyes and forebore,
+ And bade me creep past."
+ "No! let me taste the whole of it"
+ "The reward of all."
+
+ This poem is included in this book because these lines are enough to
+ reconcile any one to any fate.
+
+ Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,
+ The mist in _my_ face,
+ When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
+ I am nearing the place,
+ The power of the night, the press of the storm,
+ The post of the foe;
+ Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
+ Yet the strong man must go:
+ For the journey is done and the summit attained,
+ And the barriers fall,
+ Though a battle's to fight ere a guerdon be gained,
+ The reward of it all.
+ I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more.
+ The best and the last!
+ I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore,
+ And bade me creep past.
+ No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
+ The heroes of old,
+ Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
+ Of pain, darkness, and cold.
+ For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
+ The black minute's at end.
+ And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave
+ Shall dwindle, shall blend,
+ Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
+ Then a light, then thy breast,
+ O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
+ And with God be the rest!
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ RECESSIONAL.
+
+ The "Recessional" (by Rudyard Kipling, 1865-) is one of the most
+ popular poems of this century. It is a warning to an age and a nation
+ drunk with power, a rebuke to materialistic tendencies and
+ boastfulness, a protest against pride.
+
+ "Reverence is the master-key of knowledge."
+
+
+ God of our fathers, known of old--
+ Lord of our far-flung battle-line--
+ Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
+ Dominion over palm and pine--
+ Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
+ Lest we forget--lest we forget!
+
+ The tumult and the shouting dies--
+ The captains and the kings depart--
+ Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice,
+ An humble and a contrite heart.
+ Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
+ Lest we forget--lest we forget!
+
+ Far-called our navies melt away--
+ On dune and headland sinks the fire--
+ Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
+ Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
+ Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
+ Lest we forget--lest we forget!
+
+ If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
+ Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe--
+ Such boasting as the Gentiles use
+ Or lesser breeds without the Law--
+ Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
+ Lest we forget--lest we forget!
+
+ For heathen heart that puts her trust
+ In reeking tube and iron shard--
+ All valiant dust that builds on dust,
+ And guarding calls not Thee to guard--
+ For frantic boast and foolish word,
+ Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord! Amen.
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+
+ OZYMANDIAS OF EGYPT.
+
+"Ozymandias of Egypt," by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). This sonnet
+ is a rebuke to the insolent pride of kings and empires. It is extremely
+ picturesque. It finds a place here because more elderly scholars of
+ good judgment are pleased with it. I remember an old gray-haired
+ scholar in Chicago who often recited it to his friends merely because
+ it touched his fancy.
+
+ I met a traveller from an antique land
+ Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
+ Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
+ Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
+ And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
+ Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
+ Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
+ The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed;
+ And on the pedestal these words appear:
+ 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
+ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
+ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
+ Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
+ The lone and level sands stretch far away;"
+
+ PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
+
+
+ MORTALITY.
+
+"Mortality" (by William Knox, 1789-1825) is always quoted as Lincoln's
+ favourite poem.
+
+ O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
+ Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
+ A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
+ He passes from life to his rest in the grave.
+
+ The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
+ Be scattered around and together be laid;
+ And the young and the old, and the low and the high,
+ Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie.
+
+ The child that a mother attended and loved,
+ The mother that infant's affection that proved,
+ The husband that mother and infant that blessed,
+ Each, all, are away to their dwelling of rest.
+
+ The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,
+ Shone beauty and pleasure,--her triumphs are by;
+ And the memory of those that beloved her and praised
+ Are alike from the minds of the living erased.
+
+ The hand of the king that the scepter hath borne,
+ The brow of the priest that the miter hath worn,
+ The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave,
+ Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.
+
+ The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap,
+ The herdsman who climbed with his goats to the steep,
+ The beggar that wandered in search of his bread,
+ Have faded away like the grass that we tread.
+
+ The saint that enjoyed the communion of heaven,
+ The sinner that dared to remain unforgiven,
+ The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
+ Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.
+
+ So the multitude goes, like the flower and the weed
+ That wither away to let others succeed;
+ So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
+ To repeat every tale that hath often been told.
+
+ For we are the same that our fathers have been;
+ We see the same sights that our fathers have seen,--
+ We drink the same stream, and we feel the same sun,
+ And we run the same course that our fathers have run.
+
+ The thoughts we are thinking, our fathers would think;
+ From the death we are shrinking from, they too would shrink;
+ To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling;
+ But it speeds from the earth like a bird on the wing.
+
+ They loved, but their story we cannot unfold;
+ They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;
+ They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers may come;
+ They enjoyed, but the voice of their gladness is dumb.
+
+ They died, ay! they died! and we things that are now,
+ Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
+ Who make in their dwellings a transient abode,
+ Meet the changes they met on their pilgrimage road.
+
+ Yea! hope and despondence, and pleasure and pain,
+ Are mingled together like sunshine and rain;
+ And the smile and the tear, and the song and the dirge,
+ Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.
+
+ 'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath,
+ From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
+ From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,--
+ O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
+
+ WILLIAM KNOX.
+
+
+ ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S "HOMER."
+
+"On First Looking Into Chapman's 'Homer,'" by John Keats (1795-1821).
+ The last four lines of this sonnet form the most tremendous climax in
+ literature. The picture is as vivid as if done with a brush. Every
+ great book, every great poem is a new world, an undiscovered country.
+ Every learned person is a whole territory, a universe of new thought.
+ Every one who does anything with a heart for it, every specialist every
+ one, however simple, who is strenuous and genuine, is a "new
+ discovery." Let us give credit to the smallest planet that is true to
+ its own orbit.
+
+ Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
+ And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
+ Round many western islands have I been
+ Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
+
+ Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
+ That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:
+ Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
+ Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
+
+ Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
+ When a new planet swims into his ken;
+ Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
+
+ He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
+ Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--
+ Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
+
+ JOHN KEATS.
+
+
+ HERV RIEL.
+
+"Herv Riel" (by Robert Browning, 1812-89) is a poem for older boys.
+ Here is a hero who does a great deed simply as a part of his day's
+ work. He puts no value on what he has done, because he could have done
+ no other way.
+
+ On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two,
+ Did the English fight the French--woe to France!
+ And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue,
+ Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue,
+ Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance,
+ With the English fleet in view.
+
+ 'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase,
+ First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville;
+ Close on him fled, great and small,
+ Twenty-two good ships in all;
+ And they signalled to the place,
+ "Help the winners of a race!
+ Get us guidance, give us harbour, take us quick--or, quicker still,
+ Here's the English can and will!"
+
+ Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leaped on board:
+ "Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to pass?"
+ laughed they;
+ "Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred
+ and scored,
+ Shall the _Formidable_ here, with her twelve and eighty guns,
+ Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way,
+ Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons.
+ And with flow at full beside?
+ Now 'tis slackest ebb of tide.
+ Reach the mooring! Rather say,
+ While rock stands or water runs,
+ Not a ship will leave the bay!"
+
+ Then was called a council straight;
+ Brief and bitter the debate:
+ "Here's the English at our heels; would you have them take in tow
+ All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern and bow,
+ For a prize to Plymouth Sound?--
+ Better run the ships aground!"
+ (Ended Damfreville his speech.)
+ "Not a minute more to wait!
+ Let the captains all and each
+ Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the beach!
+ France must undergo her fate.
+
+ "Give the word!"--But no such word
+ Was ever spoke or heard;
+ For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all these--
+ A captain? A lieutenant? A mate--first, second, third?
+ No such man of mark, and meet
+ With his betters to compete!
+ But a simple Breton sailor pressed by Tourville for the fleet--
+ A poor coasting pilot he, Herv Riel, the Croisiekese.
+
+ And "What mockery or malice have we here?" cries Herv Riel:
+ "Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, fools, or rogues?
+ Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell
+ On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell,
+ 'Twixt the offing here and Grve where the river disembogues?
+ Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying's for?
+ Morn and eve, night and day.
+ Have I piloted your bay,
+ Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor.
+ Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were worse than fifty Hogues!
+ Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me there's a way!
+ Only let me lead the line,
+ Have the biggest ship to steer,
+ Get this _Formidable_ clear,
+ Make the others follow mine,
+ And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know well,
+ Right to Solidor past Grve,
+ And there lay them safe and sound;
+ And if one ship misbehave,
+ --Keel so much as grate the ground,
+ Why, I've nothing but my life,--here's my head!" cries Herv Riel.
+
+ Not a minute more to wait
+ "Steer us in, then, small and great!
+ Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!" cried its chief.
+ Captains, give the sailor place!
+ He is Admiral, in brief.
+ Still the north wind, by God's grace!
+ See the noble fellow's face
+ As the big ship, with a bound,
+ Clears the entry like a hound,
+ Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide sea's profound!
+ See, safe through shoal and rock,
+ How they follow in a flock,
+ Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground,
+ Not a spar that comes to grief!
+ The peril, see, is past,
+ All are harboured to the last,
+ And just as Herv Riel hollas "Anchor!"--sure as fate,
+ Up the English come--too late!
+
+ So, the storm subsides to calm:
+ They see the green trees wave
+ On the heights o'erlooking Grve.
+ Hearts that bled are stanched with balm,
+ "Just our rapture to enhance,
+ Let the English rake the bay,
+ Gnash their teeth and glare askance
+ As they cannonade away!
+ 'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Rance!"
+ How hope succeeds despair on each Captain's countenance!
+ Out burst all with one accord,
+ "This is Paradise for Hell!
+ Let France, let France's King
+ Thank the man that did the thing!"
+ What a shout, and all one word,
+ "Herv Riel!"
+ As he stepped in front once more,
+ Not a symptom of surprise
+ In the frank blue Breton eyes,
+ Just the same man as before.
+
+ Then said Damfreville, "My friend,
+ I must speak out at the end,
+ Though I find the speaking hard.
+ Praise is deeper than the lips:
+ You have saved the King his ships,
+ You must name your own reward.
+ 'Faith, our sun was near eclipse!
+ Demand whate'er you will,
+ France remains your debtor still.
+ Ask to heart's content and have! or my name's not Damfreville."
+
+ Then a beam of fun outbroke
+ On the bearded mouth that spoke,
+ As the honest heart laughed through
+ Those frank eyes of Breton blue:
+ "Since I needs must say my say,
+ Since on board the duty's done,
+ And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it but a run?--
+ Since 'tis ask and have, I may--
+ Since the others go ashore--
+ Come! A good whole holiday!
+ Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!"
+ That he asked and that he got,--nothing more.
+
+ Name and deed alike are lost:
+ Not a pillar nor a post
+ In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell;
+ Not a head in white and black
+ On a single fishing smack,
+ In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack
+ All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell.
+ Go to Paris: rank on rank
+ Search the heroes flung pell-mell
+ On the Louvre, face and flank!
+ You shall look long enough ere you come to Herv Riel.
+ So, for better and for worse,
+ Herv Riel, accept my verse!
+ In my verse, Herv Riel, do thou once more
+ Save the squadron, honour France, love thy wife the Belle Aurore!
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ THE PROBLEM.
+
+"The Problem" (by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-80) is quoted from one end
+ of the world to the other. Emerson teaches one lesson above all others,
+ that each soul must work out for itself its latent force, its own
+ individual expression, and that with a "sad sincerity." "The bishop of
+ the soul" can do no more.
+
+ I like a church; I like a cowl;
+ I love a prophet of the soul;
+ And on my heart monastic aisles
+ Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles:
+ Yet not for all his faith can see
+ Would I that cowld churchman be.
+ Why should the vest on him allure,
+ Which I could not on me endure?
+
+ Not from a vain or shallow thought
+ His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
+ Never from lips of cunning fell
+ The thrilling Delphic oracle;
+ Out from the heart of nature rolled
+ The burdens of the Bible old;
+ The litanies of nations came,
+ Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
+ Up from the burning core below,--
+ The canticles of love and woe:
+ The hand that rounded Peter's dome
+ And groined the aisles of Christian Rome
+ Wrought in a sad sincerity;
+ Himself from God he could not free;
+ He builded better than he knew;
+ The conscious stone to beauty grew.
+
+ Knowst thou what wove yon woodbird's nest
+ Of leaves and feathers from her breast?
+ Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
+ Painting with morn each annual cell?
+ Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
+ To her old leaves new myriads?
+ Such and so grew these holy piles,
+ While love and terror laid the tiles.
+ Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,
+ As the best gem upon her zone,
+ And Morning opes with haste her lids
+ To gaze upon the Pyramids;
+ O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
+ As on its friends, with kindred eye;
+ For out of Thought's interior sphere
+ These wonders rose to upper air;
+ And Nature gladly gave them place,
+ Adopted them into her race,
+ And granted them an equal date
+ With Andes and with Ararat.
+
+ These temples grew as grows the grass;
+ Art might obey, but not surpass.
+ The passive Master lent his hand
+ To the vast soul that o'er him planned;
+ And the same power that reared the shrine
+ Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.
+ Ever the fiery Pentecost
+ Girds with one flame the countless host,
+ Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
+ And through the priest the mind inspires.
+ The word unto the prophet spoken
+ Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
+ The word by seers or sibyls told,
+ In groves of oak, or fanes of gold.
+ Still floats upon the morning wind,
+ Still whispers to the willing mind.
+ One accent of the Holy Ghost
+ The heedless world hath never lost.
+ I know what say the fathers wise,--
+ The Book itself before me lies,
+ Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
+ And he who blent both in his line,
+ The younger Golden Lips or mines,
+ Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines.
+ His words are music in my ear,
+ I see his cowld portrait dear;
+ And yet, for all his faith could see,
+ I would not the good bishop be.
+
+ RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
+
+
+ TO AMERICA.
+
+"To America," included by permission of the Poet Laureate, is a good
+ poem and a great poem. It is a keen thrust at the common practice of
+ teaching American children to hate the English of these days on account
+ of the actions of a silly old king dead a hundred years. Alfred Austin
+ deserves great credit for this poem.
+
+ What is the voice I hear
+ On the winds of the western sea?
+ Sentinel, listen from out Cape Clear
+ And say what the voice may be.
+ 'Tis a proud free people calling loud to a people proud and free.
+
+ And it says to them: "Kinsmen, hail!
+ We severed have been too long.
+ Now let us have done with a worn-out tale--
+ The tale of an ancient wrong--
+ And our friendship last long as our love doth and be stronger
+ than death is strong."
+
+ Answer them, sons of the self-same race,
+ And blood of the self-same clan;
+ Let us speak with each other face to face
+ And answer as man to man,
+ And loyally love and trust each other as none but free men can.
+
+ Now fling them out to the breeze,
+ Shamrock, Thistle, and Rose,
+ And the Star-spangled Banner unfurl with these--
+ A message to friends and foes
+ Wherever the sails of peace are seen and wherever the war-wind blows--
+
+ A message to bond and thrall to wake,
+ For wherever we come, we twain,
+ The throne of the tyrant shall rock and quake,
+ And his menace be void and vain;
+ For you are lords of a strong land and we are lords of the main.
+
+ Yes, this is the voice of the bluff March gale;
+ We severed have been too long,
+ But now we have done with a worn-out tale--
+ The tale of an ancient wrong--
+ And our friendship last long as love doth last and stronger
+ than death is strong.
+
+ ALFRED AUSTIN.
+
+
+ THE ENGLISH FLAG.
+
+ It is quite true that the English flag stands for freedom the world
+ over. Wherever it floats almost any one is safe, whether English or
+ not.
+
+ [Above the portico the Union Jack remained fluttering in the flames for
+ some time, but ultimately when it fell the crowds rent the air with
+ shouts, and seemed to see significance in the incident.--_Daily
+ Papers_.]
+
+ Winds of the World, give answer? They are whimpering to and fro--
+ And what should they know of England who only England know?--
+ The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag,
+ They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at
+ the English Flag!
+
+ Must we borrow a clout from the Boer--to plaster anew with dirt?
+ An Irish liar's bandage, or an English coward's shirt?
+ We may not speak of England; her Flag's to sell or share.
+ What is the Flag of England? Winds of the World, declare!
+
+ The North Wind blew:--"From Bergen my steel-shod van-guards go;
+ I chase your lazy whalers home from the Disko floe;
+ By the great North Lights above me I work the will of God,
+ That the liner splits on the ice-field or the Dogger fills with cod.
+
+ "I barred my gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame,
+ Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came;
+ I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast,
+ And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ere the spirit passed.
+
+ "The lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long Arctic night,
+ The musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the Northern Light:
+ What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my bergs to dare,
+ Ye have but my drifts to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!"
+
+ The South Wind sighed:--"From The Virgins my mid-sea course was ta'en
+ Over a thousand islands lost in an idle main,
+ Where the sea-egg flames on the coral and the long-backed
+ breakers croon
+ Their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon.
+
+ "Strayed amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys,
+ I waked the palms to laughter--I tossed the scud in the breeze--
+ Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone,
+ But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag was flown.
+
+ "I have wrenched it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp
+ on the Horn;
+ I have chased it north to the Lizard--ribboned and rolled and torn;
+ I have spread its fold o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea;
+ I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free.
+
+ "My basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross,
+ Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross.
+ What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare,
+ Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it is there!"
+
+ The East Wind roared:--"From the Kuriles, the Bitter Seas, I come,
+ And me men call the Home-Wind, for I bring the English home.
+ Look--look well to your shipping! By the breath of my mad typhoon
+ I swept your close-packed Praya and beached your best at Kowloon!
+
+ "The reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before,
+ I raped your richest roadstead--I plundered Singapore!
+ I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose,
+ And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows.
+
+ "Never the lotos closes, never the wild-fowl wake,
+ But a soul goes out on the East Wind that died for England's sake--
+ Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid--
+ Because on the bones of the English the English Flag is stayed.
+
+ "The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-ass knows.
+ The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows.
+ What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my sun to dare,
+ Ye have but my sands to travel. Go forth, for it is there!"
+
+ The West Wind called:--"In squadrons the thoughtless galleons fly
+ That bear the wheat and cattle lest street-bred people die.
+ They make my might their porter, they make my house their path,
+ Till I loose my neck from their rudder and whelm them all in my wrath.
+
+ "I draw the gliding fog-bank as a snake is drawn from the hole;
+ They bellow one to the other, the frightened ship-bells toll,
+ For day is a drifting terror till I raise the shroud with my breath,
+ And they see strange bows above them and the two go locked to death.
+
+ "But whether in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day,
+ I heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away,
+ First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky,
+ Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag goes by.
+
+ "The dead dumb fog hath wrapped it--the frozen dews have kissed--
+ The naked stars have seen it, a fellow-star in the mist.
+ What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my breath to dare,
+ Ye have but my waves to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!"
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+
+ THE MAN WITH THE HOE.
+
+"The Man With the Hoe" is purely an American product, and every
+ American ought to be proud of it, for we want no such type allowed to
+ be developed in this country as the low-browed peasant of France. This
+ poem is a stroke of genius. The story goes that it so offended a modern
+ plutocrat that he offered a reward of $10,000 to any one who could
+ write an equally good poem in rebuttal. "The Man With the Hoe" has won
+ for Edwin Markham the title of "Poet Laureate of the Labouring
+ Classes."
+
+ WRITTEN AFTER SEEING THE PAINTING BY MILLET.
+
+ God made man in His own image, in the image of God made He
+ him.--GENESIS.
+
+ Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
+ Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
+ The emptiness of ages in his face,
+ And on his back the burden of the world.
+ Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
+ A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
+ Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
+ Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
+ Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
+ Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
+
+ Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
+ To have dominion over sea and land;
+ To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
+ To feel the passion of Eternity?
+ Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
+ And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
+ Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
+ There is no shape more terrible than this--
+ More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed--
+ More filled with signs and portents for the soul--
+ More fraught with menace to the universe.
+
+ What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
+ Slave of the wheel of labour, what to him
+ Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
+ What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
+ The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
+ Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
+ Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop;
+ Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
+ Plundered, profaned, and disinherited,
+ Cries protest to the Judges of the World,
+ A protest that is also prophecy.
+
+ O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands,
+ Is this the handiwork you give to God,
+ This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
+ How will you ever straighten up this shape;
+ Touch it again with immortality;
+ Give back the upward looking and the light;
+ Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
+ Make right the immemorial infamies,
+ Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
+
+ O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands,
+ How will the future reckon with this Man?
+ How answer his brute question in that hour
+ When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?
+ How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
+ With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
+ When this dumb Terror shall reply to God,
+ After the silence of the centuries?
+
+ EDWIN MARKHAM.
+
+
+ SONG OF MYSELF.
+
+"The Song of Myself" is one of Walt Whitman's (1819-92) most
+ characteristic poems. I love the swing and the stride of his great long
+ lines. I love his rough-shod way of trampling down and kicking out of
+ the way the conventionalities that spring up like poisonous mushrooms
+ to make the world a vast labyrinth of petty "proprieties" until
+ everything is nasty. I love the oxygen he pours on the world. I love
+ his genius for brotherliness, his picture of the Negro with rolling
+ eyes and the firelock in the corner. These excerpts are some of his
+ best lines.
+
+ I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
+ And what I assume you shall assume,
+ For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
+ I loafe and invite my soul,
+ I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
+ My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
+ Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
+ parents the same,
+ I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
+ Hoping to cease not till death.
+
+ I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
+ Nature without check with original energy.
+
+ Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the
+ earth much?
+ Have you practised so long to learn to read?
+ Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
+
+ Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin
+ of all poems,
+ You shall possess the good of the earth and sun (there are
+ millions of suns left),
+ You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
+ through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books,
+ You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
+ You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.
+
+ A child said, "_What is the grass?_" fetching it to me with full hands;
+ How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more
+ than he.
+ I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green
+ stuff woven.
+ Or, I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
+ A scented gift and remembrance designedly dropt,
+ Bearing the owner's name some way in the corners,
+ that we may see and remark, and say,
+ "_Whose?_"
+
+ Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
+ Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,
+ In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
+ Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill'd game,
+ Falling asleep on the gathered leaves with my dog and gun by my side.
+ The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle
+ and scud,
+ My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from
+ the deck.
+ The boatman and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,
+ I tucked my trouser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time;
+ You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.
+
+ The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,
+ I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
+ Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak,
+ And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him,
+ And brought water and fill'd a tub for his sweated body and
+ bruis'd feet,
+ And gave him a room that entered from my own, and gave him some
+ coarse clean clothes,
+ And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
+ And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
+ He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and passed north,
+ I had him sit next me at table, my firelock lean'd in the corner.
+
+ I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
+ And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
+ And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
+
+ I understand the large hearts of heroes,
+ The courage of present times and all times,
+ How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship,
+ and Death chasing it up and down the storm,
+ How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch and was faithful of
+ days and faithful of nights,
+ And chalked in large letters on a board, "_Be of good cheer, we will
+ not desert you_";
+ How he followed with them and tack'd with them three days and would
+ not give it up,
+ How he saved the drifting company at last,
+ How the lank loose-gown'd women looked when boated from the side
+ of their prepared graves,
+ How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the
+ sharp-lipp'd unshaved men;
+ All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,
+ I am the man, I suffered, I was there.
+ The disdain and calmness of martyrs,
+ The mother of old, condemned for a witch, burned with dry wood, her
+ children gazing on,
+ The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence blowing,
+ covered with sweat.
+ I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,
+ Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,
+ I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn'd with the
+ ooze of my skin,
+ I fall on the weeds and stones,
+ The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,
+ Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with
+ whip-stocks.
+
+ Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days!
+
+ See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
+ Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.
+ My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain,
+ The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms.
+ The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there.
+
+ And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own
+ funeral drest in his shroud.
+
+ And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds
+ the learning of all times,
+ And there is no trade or employment but the young man following
+ it may become a hero,
+ And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd
+ universe.
+ And I say to any man or woman, "Let your soul stand cool and composed
+ before a million universes."
+
+ I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each
+ moment then,
+ In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in
+ the glass,
+ I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is
+ sign'd by God's name,
+ And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go,
+ Others will punctually come forever and ever.
+
+ Listener up there! What have you to confide in me?
+ Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening.
+ (Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute
+ longer.)
+ Who has done his day's work? Who will soonest be through with
+ his supper?
+ Who wishes to walk with me?
+
+ I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
+ I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
+
+
+
+
+ INDEX
+
+
+ A barking sound the shepherd hears, 120
+
+ Abide with me! fast falls the eventide, 223
+
+ Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase), 89
+
+ A chieftain to the Highlands bound, 105
+
+ Across the lonely beach, 71
+
+ A life on the ocean wave, 85
+
+ Alone I walked the ocean strand, 256
+
+ A nightingale that all day long, 34
+
+ A supercilious nabob of the East, 165
+
+ At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, 246
+
+ At midnight in his guarded tent, 128
+
+ A traveller on the dusty road, 48
+
+ A well there is in the west country, 180
+
+ Ay, tear her tattered ensign down, 53
+
+
+ Behind him lay the gray Azores, 169
+
+ Beneath the low-hung night cloud, 67
+
+ Bird of the wilderness, 302
+
+ Blow, blow, thou winter wind, 58
+
+ Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans, 342
+
+ Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies, 110
+
+ Buttercups and daisies, 51
+
+ By the shores of Gitche Gumee, 79
+
+
+ Come, let us plant the apple-tree, 211
+
+ Come, dear children, let us away, 260
+
+"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land, 231
+
+ Cupid and my Campasbe played, 235
+
+ Cupid once upon a bed, 234
+
+
+ Down in a green and shady bed, 27
+
+
+ Farewell! Farewell! But this I tell, 5
+
+ Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat, 320
+
+
+"Give us a song!" the soldiers cried, 64
+
+ God of our fathers, known of old, 321
+
+ Goe, soule, the bodie's guest, 283
+
+ Grow old along with me, 312
+
+
+ Hail to thee, blithe spirit, 268
+
+ Half a league, half a league, 107
+
+ Happy the man whose wish and care, 273
+
+ Hats off! 133
+
+ Heaven is not reached at a single bound, 117
+
+ How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, 288
+
+"How I should like a birthday!" said the child, 164
+
+ How happy is he born and taught, 220
+
+ How sleep the brave, who sing to rest, 133
+
+
+ I am monarch of all I survey, 190
+
+ I celebrate myself, and sing myself, 344
+
+ I chatter, chatter, as I flow, 153
+
+ I come, I come! ye have called me long, 259
+
+ If I had but two little wings, 21
+
+ I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, 9
+
+ I heard last night a little child go singing, 222
+
+ I like a church: I like a cowl, 333
+
+"I'll tell you how the leaves came down," 12
+
+ I met a traveller from an antique land, 322
+
+ In her ear he whispers gaily, 75
+
+ In the name of the Empress of India, make way, 125
+
+ I remember, I remember, 159
+
+ I shot an arrow into the air, 3
+
+"Isn't this Joseph's son?"--ay, it is He, 114
+
+ I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he, 173
+
+ Is there, for honest poverty, 151
+
+ It is not growing like a tree, 60
+
+ It was a summer's evening, 117
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_, 154
+
+ It was the schooner _Hesperus_, 138
+
+ It was the time when lilies blow, 72
+
+ I wandered lonely as a cloud, 82
+
+
+ John Anderson, my jo, John, 274
+
+
+ King Francis was a hearty king and loved a royal sport, 184
+
+ Krinken was a little child, 162
+
+
+ Lars Porsena of Clusium, 193
+
+ Lead kindly light, amid th' encircling gloom, 224
+
+ Let dogs delight to bark and bite, 4
+
+ Life! I know not what thou art, 299
+
+ Little drops of water, 5
+
+ Little orphant Annie's come to our house to stay, 54
+
+ Little white lily, 10
+
+
+"Make way for liberty!" he cried, 296
+
+ Maxwelton braes are bonnie, 226
+
+ Merrily swinging on brier and weed, 44
+
+ Methought I heard a butterfly, 42
+
+ 'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, 220
+
+ Mine be a cot beside the hill, 272
+
+ My country 'tis of thee, 228
+
+ My fairest child, I have no song to give you, 21
+
+ My good blade carves the casques of men, 253
+
+ My heart leaps up when I behold, 28
+
+ My little Mdchen found one day, 149
+
+ My mind to me a kingdom is, 286
+
+ My soul is sailing through the sea, 219
+
+ Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, 326
+
+
+ Nae shoon to hide her tiny taes, 4
+
+ No stir in the air, no stir in the sea, 145
+
+ Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, 176
+
+ Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are, 179
+
+
+ O, a dainty plant is the ivy green, 59
+
+ O Captain! my Captain, our fearful trip is done, 57
+
+ Of all the woodland creatures, 60
+
+ Oft in the stilly night, 266
+
+ Oh where! and oh where! is your Highland laddie gone, 20
+
+ Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the West, 103
+
+ Old Grimes is dead; that good old man, 47
+
+"O Mary, go and call the cattle home, 271
+
+ O, may I join the choir invisible, 303
+
+ Once a dream did wave a shade, 116
+
+ Once there was a little boy, 19
+
+ Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, 289
+
+ On Linden, when the sun was low, 134
+
+ On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, 326
+
+ Out of the clover and blue-eyed grass, 160
+
+ Over the hill the farm-boy goes, 90
+
+ O! say can you see, by the dawn's early light, 31
+
+ O why should the spirit of mortal be proud, 323
+
+
+ Pussy can sit by the fire and sing, 8
+
+ Pibroch of Donuil Dhu, 126
+
+
+ Said the wind to the moon, "I will blow you out," 111
+
+ Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State, 227
+
+ Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled, 142
+
+ See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, 301
+
+ Serene I fold my hands and wait, 267
+
+ Shed no tear! O shed no tear, 50
+
+ She dwelt among the untrodden ways, 272
+
+ She was a phantom of delight, 305
+
+ Speak! speak! thou fearful guest, 240
+
+ Stand! the ground's your own, my braves!, 63
+
+ Sunset and evening star, 124
+
+ Sweet and low, sweet and low, 27
+
+
+ Tell me not in mournful numbers, 218
+
+ The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, 158
+
+ The boy stood on the burning deck, 22
+
+ The breaking waves dashed high, 229
+
+ The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 306
+
+ The Frost looked forth, one still, clear night, 39
+
+ The gingham dog and the calico cat, 18
+
+ The God of Music dwelleth out of doors, 275
+
+ The harp that once through Tara's halls, 287
+
+ The nautilus and the ammonite, 188
+
+ The old mayor climb'd the belfry tower, 277
+
+ The Owl and the Pussy Cat went to sea, 15
+
+ The quality of mercy is not strained, 300
+
+ There came a youth upon the earth, 171
+
+ There came to port last Sunday night, 152
+
+ There lay upon the ocean's shore, 148
+
+ There was a sound of revelry by night, 177
+
+ There was never a Queen like Balkis, 7
+
+ There were three kings into the East, 83
+
+ There were three sailors of Bristol City, 41
+
+ The splendour falls on castle walls, 66
+
+ The stately homes of England, 192
+
+ The summer and autumn had been so wet, 166
+
+ The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home, 136
+
+ The world is too much with us; late and soon, 304
+
+ The year's at the spring, 6
+
+ Thirty days hath September, 7
+
+ This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 122
+
+ This was the noblest Roman of them all, 301
+
+ 'Tis the last rose of summer, 225
+
+ T'other day as I was twining, 234
+
+ Traveller, pluck a stem of moly, 233
+
+ Triumphal arch that fills the sky, 53
+
+ 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, 29
+
+ Twinkle, twinkle little star, 6
+
+
+ Under a spreading chestnut tree, 25
+
+ Up from the meadows rich with corn, 96
+
+ Up from the South at break of day, 68
+
+
+ Way down upon de Swanee ribber, 137
+
+ Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, 94
+
+ Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie, 92
+
+ Wee Willie Winkie rins through the town, 13
+
+ We were crowded in the cabin, 23
+
+ Whatever brawls disturb the street, 20
+
+ What is so rare as a day in June, 217
+
+ What is the voice I hear, 335
+
+ What was he doing, the great god Pan, 275
+
+ When cats run home and light is come, 40
+
+ When earth's last picture is painted, 285
+
+ When George the Third was reigning, a hundred years ago, 236
+
+ When I consider how my light is spent, 304
+
+ When Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year, 115
+
+ Where the pools are bright and deep, 50
+
+ Wild was the night, yet a wilder night, 131
+
+ Winds of the world, give answer, 337
+
+ Woodman, spare that tree, 222
+
+ Wynken, Blynken and Nod one night, 16
+
+
+ Ye banks and braes of bonnie Doon, 265
+
+"You are old, Father William," the young man said, 33
+
+ You know, we French storm'd Ratisbon, 43
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Poems Every Child Should Know, by Various
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems Every Child Should Know, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Poems Every Child Should Know
+ The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Mary E. Burt
+
+Release Date: August 4, 2005 [EBook #16436]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Laura Wisewell and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: When the shadows are long]
+
+
+
+ POEMS
+
+ Every Child Should Know
+
+
+ EDITED BY
+ Mary E. Burt
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+ THE WHAT-EVERY-CHILD-
+ SHOULD-KNOW-LIBRARY
+
+ Published by
+ DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & CO., INC., for
+ THE PARENTS' INSTITUTE, INC.
+ Publishers of "The Parents' Magazine"
+ 9 EAST 40th STREET, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+ COPYRIGHT. 1904, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
+ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY,
+ N.Y.
+
+
+
+
+ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO PUBLISHERS AND AUTHORS
+
+
+ It sometimes happens that there are people who do not know that authors
+ are protected by copyright laws. A publisher once cited to me an
+ instance of a teacher who innocently put forth a little volume of poems
+ that she loved and admired, without asking permission of any one. Her
+ annoyance was boundless when she found that she had no right to the
+ poems.
+
+ Special permission has been obtained for each copyrighted poem in this
+ volume, and the right to publish has been purchased of the author or
+ publisher, except in those cases where the author or the publisher has,
+ for reasons of courtesy and friendship, given the permission.
+
+ In addition to the business arrangements which have been made, we wish
+ to extend our thanks and acknowledgments to those firms which have so
+ kindly allowed us to use their material.
+
+ To HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY, of Boston, we are indebted for
+ the use of the following poems: From the copyrighted works of
+ Longfellow--"The Arrow and the Song," "A Fragment of Hiawatha's
+ Childhood," "The Skeleton in Armour," "The Wreck of the
+ _Hesperus_," "The Ship of State," "The Psalm of Life," "The
+ Village Blacksmith." From Whittier--"Barbara Frietchie" and "The
+ _Three Bells_ of Glasgow." From Emerson--"The Problem." From
+ Burroughs--"My Own Shall Come to Me." From Lowell--"The Finding of
+ the Lyre," "The Shepherd of King Admetus," and a fragment of "The
+ Vision of Sir Launfal," From Holmes--"The Chambered Nautilus" and
+ "Old Ironsides." From James T. Fields--"The Captain's Daughter."
+ From Bayard Taylor--"The Song in Camp," From Celia Thaxter--"The
+ Sandpiper." From J.T. Trowbridge--"Farm-Yard Song." From Edith M.
+ Thomas--"The God of Music" and Hermes' "Moly."
+
+ To CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS we are indebted for the use of the
+ following poems: From the copyrighted works of Eugene
+ Field--"Wynken Blynken, and Nod," "Krinken," and "The Duel." From
+ Robert Louis Stevenson--"My Shadow." From James Whitcomb Riley's
+ poems--"Little Orphant Annie." From the poems of Sidney
+ Lanier--"Barnacles" and "The Tournament." From "The Poems of
+ Patriotism"--"Sheridan's Ride."
+
+ We are further indebted to CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, as well as
+ to MR. GEORGE W. CABLE, for "The New Arrival," taken from
+ "The Cable Story Book," and to MRS. KATHERINE MILLER and
+ _Scribner's Magazine_ for "Stevenson's Birthday."
+
+ To J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY we are indebted for the use of
+ "Sheridan's Ride," from the complete works of T. Buchanan Read.
+
+ To HARPER & BROTHERS for the use of "Driving Home the Cows,"
+ by Kate Putnam Osgood.
+
+ To LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY, of Boston, "How the Leaves Came
+ Down," by Susan Coolidge.
+
+ To the WHITAKER & RAY COMPANY, of San Francisco, "Columbus,"
+ by Joaquin Miller, from his complete works published and
+ copyrighted by that company.
+
+ To D. APPLETON & COMPANY for "The Planting of the Apple-Tree"
+ and "Robert of Lincoln," from the complete works of William Cullen
+ Bryant; also for "Marco Bozzaris," from the works of Fitz-Greene
+ Halleck.
+
+ To the MACMILLAN COMPANY for "The Forsaken Merman," by Matthew
+ Arnold, from the complete volume of his poems published by that
+ company.
+
+ To the HOWARD UNIVERSITY PRINT, Washington, D.C., for Jeremiah
+ Rankin's little poem, "The Babie," from "Ingleside Rhaims."
+
+ To the heirs of MARY EMILY BRADLEY for "A Chrysalis."
+
+ To HENRY HOLCOMB BENNETT for "The Flag Goes By."
+
+
+
+
+ PREFACE
+
+
+ Is this another collection of stupid poems that children cannot use?
+ Will they look hopelessly through this volume for poems that suit them?
+ Will they say despairingly, "This is too long," and "That is too hard,"
+ and "I don't like that because it is not interesting"?
+
+ Are there three or four pleasing poems and are all the rest put in to
+ fill up the book? Nay, verily! The poems in this collection are those
+ that children love. With the exception of seven, they are short enough
+ for children to commit to memory without wearying themselves or losing
+ interest in the poem. If one boy learns "The Overland Mail," or "The
+ Recruit," or "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod," or "The Song in Camp," or "Old
+ Ironsides," or "I Have a Little Shadow," or "The Tournament," or "The
+ Duel," nine boys out of ten will be eager to follow him. I know because
+ I have tried it a dozen times. Every boy loves "Paul Revere's Ride"
+ (alas! I have not been able to include it), and is ambitious to learn
+ it, but only boys having a quick memory will persevere to the end. Shall
+ the slower boy be deprived of the pleasure of reading the whole poem and
+ getting its inspiring sentiment and learning as many stanzas as his mind
+ will take? No, indeed. Half of such a poem is better than none. Let the
+ slow boy learn and recite as many stanzas as he can and the boy of quick
+ memory follow him up with the rest. It does not help the slow boy's
+ memory to keep it down entirely or deprive it of its smaller activity
+ because he cannot learn the whole. Some people will invariably give the
+ slow child a very short poem. It is often better to divide a long poem
+ among the children, letting each child learn a part. The sustained
+ interest of a long poem is worth while. "The Merman," "The Battle of
+ Ivry," "Horatius at the Bridge," "Krinken," "The Skeleton in Armour,"
+"The Raven" and "Herve Riel" may all profitably be learned that way.
+ Nevertheless, the child enjoys most the poem that is just long enough,
+ and there is much to be said in favour of the selection that is adapted,
+ in length, to the average mind; for the child hesitates in the presence
+ of quantity rather than in the presence of subtle thought. I make claim
+ for this collection that it is made up of poems that the majority of
+ children will learn of their own free will. There are people who believe
+ that in the matter of learning poetry there is no "_ought_," but this is
+ a false belief. There is a _duty_, even there; for every American
+ citizen _ought_ to know the great national songs that keep alive the
+ spirit of patriotism. Children should build for their future--and get,
+ while they are children, what only the fresh imagination of the child
+ can assimilate.
+
+ They should store up an untold wealth of heroic sentiment; they should
+ acquire the habit of carrying a literary quality in their conversation;
+ they should carry a heart full of the fresh and delightful associations
+ and memories, connected with poetry hours to brighten mature years. They
+ should develop their memories while they have memories to develop.
+
+ Will the boy who took every poetry hour for a whole school year to learn
+"Henry of Navarre" ever regret it, or will the children who listened to
+ it? No. It was fresh every week and they brought fresh interest in
+ listening. The boy will always love it because he used to love it. There
+ were boys who scrambled for the right to recite "The Tournament," "The
+ Charge of the Light Brigade," "The Star-Spangled Banner," and so on. The
+ boy who was first to reach the front had the privilege. The triumph of
+ getting the chance to recite added to the zest of it. Will they ever
+ forget it?
+
+ I know Lowell's "The Finding of the Lyre." Attention, Sir Knights! See
+ who can learn it first as I say it to you. But I find that I have
+ forgotten a line of it, so you may open your books and teach it to me.
+ Now, I can recite every word of it. How much of it can you repeat from
+ memory? One boy can say it all. Nearly every child has learned the most
+ of it. Now, it will be easy for you to learn it alone. And Memory, the
+ Goddess Beautiful, will henceforth go with you to recall this happy
+ hour.
+
+ MARY E. BURT.
+
+ The John A. Browning School, 1904.
+
+
+
+
+ POEMS
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+
+ PART I
+
+ 1. The Arrow and the Song 3
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 2. The Babie 4
+ JEREMIAH EAMES RANKIN
+
+ 3. Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite 4
+ ISAAC WATTS
+
+ 4. Little Things 5
+ EBENEZER COBHAM BREWER
+
+ 5. He Prayeth Best 5
+ SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE
+
+ 6. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star 6
+ ANONYMOUS
+
+ 7. Pippa 6
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 8. The Days of the Month 7
+ AN OLD SONG
+
+ 9. True Royalty 7
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 10. Playing Robinson Crusoe 8
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 11. My Shadow 9
+ ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+ 12. Little White Lily 10
+ GEORGE MACDONALD
+
+ 13. How the Leaves Came Down 12
+ SUSAN COOLIDGE
+
+ 14. Willie Winkie 13
+ WILLIAM MILLER
+
+ 15. The Owl and the Pussy-Cat 15
+ EDWARD LEAR
+
+ 16. Wynken, Blynken, and Nod 16
+ EUGENE FIELD
+
+ 17. The Duel 18
+ EUGENE FIELD
+
+ 18. The Boy Who Never Told a Lie 19
+ ANONYMOUS
+
+ 19. Love Between Brothers and Sisters 20
+ ISAAC WATTS
+
+ 20. The Bluebell of Scotland 20
+ ANONYMOUS
+
+ 21. If I Had But Two Little Wings 21
+ SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE
+
+ 22. A Farewell 21
+ CHARLES KINGSLEY
+
+ 23. Casabianca 22
+ FELICIA HEMANS
+
+ 24. The Captain's Daughter 23
+ JAMES T. FIELDS
+
+ 25. The Village Blacksmith 25
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 26. Sweet and Low 27
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 27. The Violet 27
+ JANE TAYLOR
+
+ 28. The Rainbow (a fragment) 28
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 29. A Visit From St. Nicholas 29
+ CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE
+
+ 30. The Star-Spangled Banner 31
+ FRANCIS SCOTT KEY
+
+ 31. Father William 33
+ LEWIS CARROLL
+
+ 32. The Nightingale and the Glow-worm 34
+ WILLIAM COWPER
+
+
+ PART II
+
+ 33. The Frost 39
+ HANNAH FLAGG GOULD
+
+ 34. The Owl 40
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 35. Little Billee 41
+ WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
+
+ 36. The Butterfly and the Bee 42
+ WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES
+
+ 37. An Incident of the French Camp 43
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 38. Robert of Lincoln 44
+ WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
+
+ 39. Old Grimes 47
+ ALBERT GORTON GREENE
+
+ 40. Song of Life 48
+ CHARLES MACKAY
+
+ 41. Fairy Song 50
+ JOHN KEATS
+
+ 42. A Boy's Song 50
+ JAMES HOGG
+
+ 43. Buttercups and Daisies 51
+ MARY HOWITT
+
+ 44. The Rainbow 53
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL
+
+ 45. Old Ironsides 53
+ OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
+
+ 46. Little Orphant Annie 54
+ JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
+
+ 47. O Captain! My Captain! 57
+ WALT WHITMAN
+
+ 48. Ingratitude 58
+ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
+
+ 49. The Ivy Green 59
+ CHARLES DICKENS
+
+ 50. The Noble Nature 60
+ BEN JONSON
+
+ 51. The Flying Squirrel 60
+ MARY E. BURT
+
+ 52. Warren's Address 63
+ JOHN PIERPONT
+
+ 53. The Song in Camp 64
+ BAYARD TAYLOR
+
+ 54. The Bugle Song 66
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 55. The _Three Bells_ of Glasgow 67
+ JOHN G. WHITTIER
+
+ 56. Sheridan's Ride 68
+ THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
+
+ 57. The Sandpiper 71
+ CELIA THAXTER
+
+ 58. Lady Clare 72
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 59. The Lord of Burleigh 75
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 60. Hiawatha's Childhood 79
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 61. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud 82
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 62. John Barleycorn 83
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 63. A Life on the Ocean Wave 85
+ EPES SARGENT
+
+ 64. The Death of the Old Year 86
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 65. Abou Ben Adhem 89
+ LEIGH HUNT
+
+ 66. Farm-Yard Song 90
+ J.T. TROWBRIDGE
+
+ 67. To a Mouse 92
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 68. To a Mountain Daisy 94
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 69. Barbara Frietchie 96
+ JOHN G. WHITTIER
+
+
+ PART III
+
+ 70. Lochinvar 103
+ SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+ 71. Lord Ullin's Daughter 105
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL
+
+ 72. The Charge of the Light Brigade 107
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 73. The Tournament 110
+ SIDNEY LANIER
+
+ 74. The Wind and the Moon 111
+ GEORGE MACDONALD
+
+ 75. Jesus the Carpenter 114
+ CATHERINE C. LIDDELL
+
+ 76. Letty's Globe 115
+ CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER
+
+ 77. A Dream 116
+ WILLIAM BLAKE
+
+ 78. Heaven Is Not Reached at a Single Bound 117
+ J.G. HOLLAND
+
+ 79. The Battle of Blenheim 117
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+ 80. Fidelity 120
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 81. The Chambered Nautilus 122
+ OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
+
+ 82. Crossing the Bar 124
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 83. The Overland-Mail 125
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 84. Gathering Song of Donald Dhu 126
+ SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+ 85. Marco Bozzaris 128
+ FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
+
+ 86. The Death of Napoleon 131
+ ISAAC MCCLELLAN
+
+ 87. How Sleep the Brave 133
+ WILLIAM COLLINS
+
+ 88. The Flag Goes By 133
+ HENRY HOLCOMB BENNETT
+
+ 89. Hohenlinden 134
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL
+
+ 90. My Old Kentucky Home 136
+ STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER
+
+ 91. Old Folks at Home 137
+ STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER
+
+ 92. The Wreck of the _Hesperus_ 138
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 93. Bannockburn 142
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+
+ PART IV
+
+ 94. The Inchcape Rock 145
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+ 95. The Finding of the Lyre 148
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
+
+ 96. A Chrysalis 149
+ MARY EMILY BRADLEY
+
+ 97. For a' That 151
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 98. The New Arrival 152
+ GEORGE W. CABLE
+
+ 99. The Brook 153
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 100. The Ballad of the _Clampherdown_ 154
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 101. The Destruction of Sennacherib 158
+ LORD BYRON
+
+ 102. I Remember, I Remember 159
+ THOMAS HOOD
+
+ 103. Driving Home the Cows 160
+ KATE PUTNAM OSGOOD
+
+ 104. Krinken 162
+ EUGENE FIELD
+
+ 105. Stevenson's Birthday 164
+ KATHERINE MILLER
+
+ 106. A Modest Wit 165
+ SELLECK OSBORNE
+
+ 107. The Legend of Bishop Hatto 166
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+ 108. Columbus 160
+ JOAQUIN MILLER
+
+ 109. The Shepherd of King Admetus 171
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
+
+ 110. How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to 173
+ Aix
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 111. The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna 176
+ C. WOLFE
+
+ 112. The Eve of Waterloo 177
+ LORD BYRON
+
+ 113. Ivry 179
+ THOMAS B. MACAULAY
+
+ 114. The Glove and the Lions 184
+ LEIGH HUNT
+
+ 115. The Well of St. Keyne 186
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+ 116. The Nautilus and the Ammonite 188
+ ANONYMOUS
+
+ 117. The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk 190
+ WILLIAM COWPER
+
+ 118. The Homes of England 192
+ FELICIA HEMANS
+
+ 119. Horatius at the Bridge 193
+ THOMAS B. MACAULAY
+
+ 120. The Planting of the Apple-Tree 211
+ WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
+
+
+ PART V
+
+ 121. June 217
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
+
+ 122. A Psalm of Life 218
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 123. Barnacles 219
+ SIDNEY LANIER
+
+ 124. A Happy Life 220
+ SIR HENRY WOTTON
+
+ 125. Home, Sweet Home 220
+ JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
+
+ 126. From Casa Guidi Windows 222
+ ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
+
+ 127. Woodman, Spare That Tree! 222
+ GEORGE POPE MORRIS
+
+ 128. Abide With Me 223
+ HENRY FRANCIS LYTE
+
+ 129. Lead, Kindly Light 224
+ JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
+
+ 130. The Last Rose of Summer 225
+ THOMAS MOORE
+
+ 131. Annie Laurie 226
+ WILLIAM DOUGLAS
+
+ 132. The Ship of State 227
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 133. America 228
+ SAMUEL FRANCIS SMITH
+
+ 134. The Landing of the Pilgrims 229
+ FELICIA HEMANS
+
+ 135. The Lotos-Eaters 231
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 136. Moly 233
+ EDITH M. THOMAS
+
+ 137. Cupid Drowned 234
+ LEIGH HUNT
+
+ 138. Cupid Stung 234
+ THOMAS MOORE
+
+ 139. Cupid and My Campasbe 235
+ JOHN LYLY
+
+ 140. A Ballad for a Boy 236
+ ANONYMOUS
+
+ 141. The Skeleton in Armour 240
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
+
+ 142. The _Revenge_ 246
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 143. Sir Galahad 253
+ ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+ 144. A Name in the Sand 256
+ HANNAH FLAGG GOULD
+
+
+ PART VI
+
+ 145. The Voice of Spring 259
+ FELICIA HEMANS
+
+ 146. The Forsaken Merman 260
+ MATTHEW ARNOLD
+
+ 147. The Banks o' Doon 265
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 148. The Light of Other Days 266
+ THOMAS MOORE
+
+ 149. My Own Shall Come to Me 267
+ JOHN BURROUGHS
+
+ 150. Ode to a Skylark 268
+ PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
+
+ 151. The Sands of Dee 271
+ CHARLES KINGSLEY
+
+ 152. A Wish 272
+ SAMUEL ROGERS
+
+ 153. Lucy 272
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 154. Solitude 273
+ ALEXANDER POPE
+
+ 155. John Anderson 274
+ ROBERT BURNS
+
+ 156. The God of Music 275
+ EDITH M. THOMAS
+
+ 157. A Musical Instrument 275
+ ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
+
+ 158. The Brides of Enderby 277
+ JEAN INGELOW
+
+ 159. The Lye 283
+ SIR WALTER RALEIGH
+
+ 160. L'Envoi 285
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 161. Contentment 286
+ EDWARD DYER
+
+ 162. The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls 287
+ THOMAS MOORE
+
+ 163. The Old Oaken Bucket 288
+ SAMUEL WOODWORTH
+
+ 164. The Raven 289
+ EDGAR ALLAN POE
+
+ 165. Arnold von Winkleried 296
+ JAMES MONTGOMERY
+
+ 166. Life, I Know Not What Thou Art 299
+ A.L. BARBAULD
+
+ 167. Mercy 300
+ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
+
+ 168. Polonius' Advice 301
+ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
+
+ 169. A Fragment from "Julius Caesar" 301
+ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
+
+ 170. The Skylark 302
+ THOMAS HOGG
+
+ 171. The Choir Invisible 303
+ GEORGE ELIOT
+
+ 172. The World Is Too Much With Us 304
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 173. On His Blindness 304
+ JOHN MILTON
+
+ 174. She Was a Phantom of Delight 305
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+ 175. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 306
+ THOMAS GRAY
+
+ 176. Rabbi Ben Ezra 312
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 177. Prospice 320
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 178. Recessional 321
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 179. Ozymandias of Egypt 322
+ PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
+
+ 180. Mortality 323
+ WILLIAM KNOX
+
+ 181. On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer 326
+ JOHN KEATS
+
+ 182. Herve Riel 326
+ ROBERT BROWNING
+
+ 183. The Problem 333
+ RALPH WALDO EMERSON
+
+ 184. To America 335
+ ALFRED AUSTIN
+
+ 185. The English Flag 337
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+ 186. The Man With the Hoe 342
+ EDWIN MARKHAM
+
+ 187. Song of Myself 344
+ WALT WHITMAN
+
+ Index 350
+
+
+
+
+ INDEX OF AUTHORS
+
+
+ ANONYMOUS
+ Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, 6
+ The Days of the Month, 7
+ The Boy who Never Told a Lie, 19
+ The Bluebell of Scotland, 20
+ The Nautilus and the Ammonite, 188
+ A Ballad for a Boy, 236
+ ARNOLD, MATTHEW
+ The Forsaken Merman, 260
+ AUSTIN, ALFRED
+ To America, 335
+
+ BARBAULD, A.L.
+ Life, I Know Not What Thou Art, 299
+ BENNETT, HENRY HOLCOMB
+ The Flag Goes By, 133
+ BLAKE, WILLIAM
+ A Dream, 116
+ BOWLES, WILLIAM LISLE
+ The Butterfly and the Bee, 42
+ BRADLEY, MARY EMILY
+ A Chrysalis, 149
+ BREWER, EBENEZER COBHAM
+ Little Things, 5
+ BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT
+ From Casa Guidi Windows, 222
+ A Musical Instrument, 275
+ BROWNING, ROBERT
+ Pippa, 6
+ An Incident of the French Camp, 43
+ How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, 173
+ Rabbi Ben Ezra, 312
+ Prospice, 320
+ Herve Riel, 326
+ BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN
+ Robert of Lincoln, 44
+ The Planting of the Apple Tree, 211
+ BURNS, ROBERT
+ John Barleycorn, 83
+ To a Mouse, 92
+ To a Mountain Daisy, 94
+ Bannockburn, 142
+ For a' That, 151
+ The Banks o' Doon, 265
+ John Anderson, 274
+ BURROUGHS, JOHN
+ My Own Shall Come to Me, 267
+ BURT, MARY E.
+ The Flying Squirrel, 60
+ BYRON, LORD
+ The Destruction of Sennacherib, 158
+ The Eve of Waterloo, 177
+
+ CABLE, GEORGE W.
+ The New Arrival, 152
+ CAMPBELL, THOMAS
+ The Rainbow, 53
+ Lord Ullin's Daughter, 105
+ Hohenlinden, 134
+ CARROLL, LEWIS
+ Father William, 33
+ COLERIDGE, SAMUEL T.
+ He Prayeth Best, 5
+ If I Had But Two Little Wings, 21
+ COLLINS, WILLIAM
+ How Sleep the Brave, 133
+ COOLIDGE, SUSAN
+ How the Leaves Came Down, 12
+ COWPER, WILLIAM
+ The Nightingale and the Glow-worm, 34
+ The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk, 190
+
+ DICKENS, CHARLES
+ The Ivy Green, 59
+ DOUGLAS, WILLIAM
+ Annie Laurie, 226
+ DYER, EDWARD
+ Contentment, 286
+
+ ELIOT, GEORGE
+ The Choir Invisible, 303
+ EMERSON, RALPH WALDO
+ The Problem, 333
+
+ FIELD, EUGENE
+ Wynken, Blynken and Nod, 16
+ The Duel, 18
+ Krinken, 162
+ FIELDS, JAMES T.
+ The Captain's Daughter, 23
+ FOSTER, STEPHEN COLLINS
+ My Old Kentucky Home, 136
+ Old Folks at Home, 137
+
+ GOULD, HANNAH FLAGG
+ The Frost, 39
+ A Name in the Sand, 256
+ GRAY, THOMAS
+ Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, 306
+ GREENE, ALBERT GORTON
+ Old Grimes, 47
+
+ HALLECK, FITZ-GREENE
+ Marco Bozzaris, 128
+ HEMANS, FELICIA
+ Casabianca, 22
+ The Homes of England, 192
+ The Landing of the Pilgrims, 229
+ The Voice of Spring, 259
+ HOOD, THOMAS
+ I Remember, I Remember, 159
+ HOGG, JAMES
+ A Boy's Song, 50
+ The Skylark, 302
+ HOLLAND, J.G.
+ Heaven is Not Reached at a Single Bound, 117
+ HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL
+ Old Ironsides, 53
+ The Chambered Nautilus, 122
+ HOWITT, MARY
+ Buttercups and Daisies, 51
+ HUNT, LEIGH
+ Abou Ben Adhem, 89
+ The Glove and the Lions, 184
+ Cupid Drowned, 234
+
+ INGELOW, JEAN
+ The Brides of Enderby, 277
+
+ JONSON. BEN
+ The Noble Nature, 60
+
+ KEATS, JOHN
+ Fairy Song, 50
+ On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer, 326
+ KEY, FRANCIS SCOTT
+ The Star-Spangled Banner, 31
+ KINGSLEY, CHARLES
+ A Farewell, 21
+ The Sands of Dee, 271
+ KIPLING, RUDYARD
+ True Royalty, 7
+ Playing Robinson Crusoe, 8
+ The Overland Mail, 125
+ The Ballad of the Clampherdown, 154
+ L'Envoi, 285
+ Recessional, 321
+ The English Flag, 337
+ KNOX, WILLIAM
+ Mortality, 323
+
+ LANIER, SIDNEY
+ The Tournament, 110
+ Barnacles, 219
+ LEAR, EDWARD
+ The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, 15
+ LIDDELL, CATHERINE C.
+ Jesus the Carpenter, 114
+ LONGFELLOW, HENRY W.
+ The Arrow and the Song, 3
+ The Village Blacksmith, 25
+ Hiawatha's Childhood, 79
+ The Wreck of the Hesperus, 138
+ A Psalm of Life, 218
+ The Ship of State, 227
+ The Skeleton in Armour, 240
+ LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL
+ The Finding of the Lyre, 148
+ The Shepherd of King Admetus, 171
+ June, 217
+ LYLY, JOHN
+ Cupid and My Campasbe, 235
+ LYTE, HENRY FRANCIS
+ Abide With Me, 223
+
+ MACAULAY, THOMAS B.
+ Ivry, 179
+ Horatius at the Bridge, 193
+ MACDONALD, GEORGE
+ Little White Lily, 10
+ The Wind and the Moon, 111
+ MACKAY, CHARLES
+ Song of Life, 48
+ MARKHAM, EDWIN
+ The Man With the Hoe, 342
+ MCCLELLAN, ISAAC
+ The Death of Napoleon, 131
+ MILLER, JOAQUIN
+ Columbus, 169
+ MILLER, KATHERINE
+ Stevenson's Birthday, 164
+ MILLER, WILLIAM
+ Willie Winkie, 13
+ MILTON, JOHN
+ On His Blindness, 304
+ MONTGOMERY, JAMES
+ Arnold von Winkleried, 296
+ MOORE, CLEMENT CLARKE
+ A Visit from St. Nicholas, 29
+ MOORE, THOMAS
+ The Last Rose of Summer, 234
+ Cupid Stung, 234
+ The Light of Other Days, 266
+ The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls, 287
+ MORRIS, GEORGE POPE
+ Woodman, Spare That Tree, 222
+
+ NEWMAN, JOHN HENRY
+ Lead, Kindly Light, 224
+
+ OSBORNE, SELLECK
+ A Modest Wit, 165
+ OSGOOD, KATE PUTNAM
+ Driving Home the Cows, 160
+
+ PAYNE, JOHN HOWARD
+ Home, Sweet Home, 220
+ PIERPONT, JOHN
+ Warren's Address, 63
+ POE, EDGAR ALLAN
+ The Raven, 289
+ POPE, ALEXANDER
+ Solitude, 273
+
+ RALEIGH, SIR WALTER
+ The Lye, 283
+ RANKIN. JEREMIAH EAMES
+ The Babie, 4
+ READ, THOMAS BUCHANAN
+ Sheridan's Ride, 68
+ RILEY, JAMES WHITCOMB
+ Little Orphant Annie, 54
+ ROGERS, SAMUEL
+ A Wish, 272
+
+ SARGENT, EPES
+ A Life on the Ocean Wave, 85
+ SCOTT, SIR WALTER
+ Lochinvar, 103
+ The Gathering Song of Donald Dhu, 126
+ SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
+ Ingratitude, 58
+ Mercy, 300
+ Polonius' Advice, 301
+ A Fragment from Julius Caesar, 301
+ SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE
+ Ode to a Skylark, 268
+ Ozymandias in the Desert, 322
+ SMITH, SAMUEL FRANCIS
+ America, 228
+ SOUTHEY, ROBERT
+ The Battle of Blenheim, 117
+ The Inchcape Rock, 145
+ The Legend of Bishop Hatto, 166
+ The Well of St. Keyne, 186
+ STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS
+ My Shadow, 9
+
+ TAYLOR, BAYARD
+ The Song in Camp, 64
+ TAYLOR, JANE
+ The Violet, 27
+ TENNYSON, ALFRED
+ Sweet and Low, 27
+ The Owl, 40
+ The Bugle Song, 66
+ Lady Clare, 72
+ The Lord of Burleigh, 75
+ The Death of the Old Year, 86
+ The Charge of the Light Brigade, 107
+ Crossing the Bar, 124
+ The Brook, 153
+ The Lotos Eaters, 231
+ The REVENGE, 246
+ Sir Galahad, 253
+ THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE
+ Little Billee, 41
+ THAXTER, CELIA
+ The Sandpiper, 71
+ THOMAS, EDITH
+ Moly, 233
+ The God of Music, 275
+ TROWBRIDGE, J.T.
+ Farmyard Song, 90
+ TURNER, CHARLES TENNYSON
+ Letty's Globe, 115
+
+ WATTS, ISAAC
+ Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite, 4
+ Love Between Brothers and Sisters, 20
+ WHITMAN, WALT
+ O Captain! My Captain! 57
+ Song of Myself, 344
+ WHITTIER, JOHN G.
+ The Three Bells of Glasgow, 67
+ Barbara Frietchie, 96
+ WOLFE, C.
+ The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna, 176
+ WOODWORTH, SAMUEL
+ The Old Oaken Bucket, 288
+ WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM
+ The Rainbow (a fragment), 28
+ I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, 82
+ Fidelity, 120
+ Lucy, 272
+ The World is Too Much With Us, 304
+ She Was a Phantom of Delight, 305
+ WOTTON, SIR HENRY
+ A Happy Life, 220
+
+
+
+
+ PART I.
+
+ The Budding Moment
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ Poems That Every Child Should Know
+
+
+ THE ARROW AND THE SONG.
+
+"The Arrow and the Song," by Longfellow (1807-82), is placed first in
+ this volume out of respect to a little girl of six years who used to
+ love to recite it to me. She knew many poems, but this was her
+ favourite.
+
+ I shot an arrow into the air,
+ It fell to earth, I knew not where;
+ For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
+ Could not follow it in its flight.
+
+ I breathed a song into the air,
+ It fell to earth, I knew not where;
+ For who has sight so keen and strong
+ That it can follow the flight of song?
+
+ Long, long afterward, in an oak
+ I found the arrow, still unbroke;
+ And the song, from beginning to end,
+ I found again in the heart of a friend.
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ THE BABIE.
+
+ I found "The Babie" in Stedman's "Anthology." It is placed in this
+ volume by permission of the poet, Jeremiah Eames Rankin, of Cleveland
+ (1828-), because it captured the heart of a ten-year-old boy whose
+ fancy was greatly moved by the two beautiful lines:
+
+ "Her face is like an angel's face,
+ I'm glad she has no wings."
+
+
+ Nae shoon to hide her tiny taes,
+ Nae stockin' on her feet;
+ Her supple ankles white as snaw,
+ Or early blossoms sweet.
+
+ Her simple dress o' sprinkled pink,
+ Her double, dimplit chin,
+ Her puckered lips, and baumy mou',
+ With na ane tooth within.
+
+ Her een sae like her mither's een,
+ Twa gentle, liquid things;
+ Her face is like an angel's face:
+ We're glad she has nae wings.
+
+ JEREMIAH EAMES RANKIN.
+
+
+ LET DOGS DELIGHT TO BARK AND BITE.
+
+"Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite," by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), and
+"Little Drops of Water," by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer (1810-97), are poems
+ that the world cannot outgrow. Once in the mind, they fasten. They were
+ not born to die.
+
+ Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
+ For God hath made them so;
+ Let bears and lions growl and fight,
+ For 'tis their nature too.
+
+ But, children, you should never let
+ Such angry passions rise;
+ Your little hands were never made
+ To tear each other's eyes.
+
+ ISAAC WATTS.
+
+
+ LITTLE THINGS.
+
+ Little drops of water,
+ Little grains of sand,
+ Make the mighty ocean
+ And the pleasant land.
+
+ Thus the little minutes,
+ Humble though they be,
+ Make the mighty ages
+ Of eternity.
+
+ EBENEZER COBHAM BREWER.
+
+
+ HE PRAYETH BEST.
+
+ These two stanzas, the very heart of that great poem, "The Ancient
+ Mariner," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), sum up the lesson of
+ this masterpiece--"Insensibility is a crime."
+
+ Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
+ To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
+ He prayeth well who loveth well
+ Both man and bird and beast.
+
+ He prayeth best who loveth best
+ All things, both great and small:
+ For the dear God who loveth us,
+ He made and loveth all.
+
+ SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE.
+
+
+ TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE STAR.
+
+ Twinkle, twinkle, little star!
+ How I wonder what you are,
+ Up above the world so high,
+ Like a diamond in the sky.
+
+ When the glorious sun is set,
+ When the grass with dew is wet,
+ Then you show your little light,
+ Twinkle, twinkle all the night.
+
+ In the dark-blue sky you keep,
+ And often through my curtains peep,
+ For you never shut your eye,
+ Till the sun is in the sky.
+
+ As your bright and tiny spark
+ Guides the traveller in the dark,
+ Though I know not what you are,
+ Twinkle, twinkle, little star!
+
+
+ PIPPA.
+
+"Spring's at the Morn," from "Pippa Passes," by Robert Browning
+ (1812-89), has become a very popular stanza with little folks. "All's
+ right with the world" is a cheerful motto for the nursery and
+ schoolroom.
+
+ The year's at the spring,
+ The 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!
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ THE DAYS OF THE MONTH.
+
+"The Days of the Month" is a useful bit of doggerel that we need all
+ through life. It is anonymous.
+
+ Thirty days hath September,
+ April, June, and November;
+ February has twenty-eight alone.
+ All the rest have thirty-one,
+ Excepting leap-year--that's the time
+ When February's days are twenty-nine.
+
+ OLD SONG.
+
+
+ TRUE ROYALTY.
+
+"True Royalty" and "Playing Robinson Crusoe" are pleasing stanzas from
+"The Just So Stories" of Rudyard Kipling (1865-).
+
+ There was never a Queen like Balkis,
+ From here to the wide world's end;
+ But Balkis talked to a butterfly
+ As you would talk to a friend.
+
+ There was never a King like Solomon,
+ Not since the world began;
+ But Solomon talked to a butterfly
+ As a man would talk to a man.
+
+ _She_ was Queen of Sabaea--
+ And _he_ was Asia's Lord--
+ But they both of 'em talked to butterflies
+ When they took their walks abroad.
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+ (In "The Just So Stories.")
+
+
+ PLAYING ROBINSON CRUSOE.
+
+ Pussy can sit by the fire and sing,
+ Pussy can climb a tree,
+ Or play with a silly old cork and string
+ To 'muse herself, not me.
+ But I like Binkie, my dog, because
+ He knows how to behave;
+ So, Binkie's the same as the First Friend was,
+ And I am the Man in the Cave.
+
+ Pussy will play Man-Friday till
+ It's time to wet her paw
+ And make her walk on the window-sill
+ (For the footprint Crusoe saw);
+ Then she fluffles her tail and mews,
+ And scratches and won't attend.
+ But Binkie will play whatever I choose,
+ And he is my true First Friend.
+
+ Pussy will rub my knees with her head,
+ Pretending she loves me hard;
+ But the very minute I go to my bed
+ Pussy runs out in the yard.
+
+ And there she stays till the morning light;
+ So I know it is only pretend;
+ But Binkie, he snores at my feet all night,
+ And he is my Firstest Friend!
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+ (In "The Just So Stories.")
+
+
+ MY SHADOW.
+
+"My Shadow," by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94), is one of the most
+ popular short poems extant. I have taught it to a great many very young
+ boys, and not one has ever tried to evade learning it. Older pupils
+ like it equally well.
+
+ I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
+ And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
+ He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
+ And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
+
+ The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow--
+ Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
+ For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
+ And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.
+
+ He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
+ And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
+ He stays so close beside me, he's a coward, you can see;
+ I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
+
+ One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
+ I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
+ But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
+ Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
+
+ ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+
+ LITTLE WHITE LILY.
+
+ This poem (George Macdonald, 1828-) finds a place in this volume
+ because, as a child, I loved it. It completely filled my heart, and has
+ made every member of the lily family dear to me. George Macdonald's
+ charming book, "At the Back of the North Wind," also was my wonder and
+ delight.
+
+ Little White Lily
+ Sat by a stone,
+ Drooping and waiting
+ Till the sun shone.
+ Little White Lily
+ Sunshine has fed;
+ Little White Lily
+ Is lifting her head.
+
+ Little White Lily
+ Said: "It is good
+ Little White Lily's
+ Clothing and food."
+ Little White Lily
+ Dressed like a bride!
+ Shining with whiteness,
+ And crowned beside!
+
+ Little White Lily
+ Drooping with pain,
+ Waiting and waiting
+ For the wet rain.
+ Little White Lily
+ Holdeth her cup;
+ Rain is fast falling
+ And filling it up.
+
+ Little White Lily
+ Said: "Good again,
+ When I am thirsty
+ To have the nice rain.
+ Now I am stronger,
+ Now I am cool;
+ Heat cannot burn me,
+ My veins are so full."
+
+ Little White Lily
+ Smells very sweet;
+ On her head sunshine,
+ Rain at her feet.
+ Thanks to the sunshine,
+ Thanks to the rain,
+ Little White Lily
+ Is happy again.
+
+ GEORGE MACDONALD.
+
+
+ HOW THE LEAVES CAME DOWN.
+
+"How the Leaves Came Down," by Susan Coolidge (1845-), appeals to
+ children because it helps to reconcile them to going to bed. "I go to
+ bed by day" is one of the crosses of childhood.
+
+ "I'll tell you how the leaves came down,"
+ The great Tree to his children said:
+ "You're getting sleepy, Yellow and Brown,
+ Yes, very sleepy, little Red.
+ It is quite time to go to bed."
+
+ "Ah!" begged each silly, pouting leaf,
+ "Let us a little longer stay;
+ Dear Father Tree, behold our grief!
+ 'Tis such a very pleasant day,
+ We do not want to go away."
+
+ So, for just one more merry day
+ To the great Tree the leaflets clung,
+ Frolicked and danced, and had their way,
+ Upon the autumn breezes swung,
+ Whispering all their sports among--
+
+ "Perhaps the great Tree will forget,
+ And let us stay until the spring,
+ If we all beg, and coax, and fret."
+ But the great Tree did no such thing;
+ He smiled to hear their whispering.
+
+ "Come, children, all to bed," he cried;
+ And ere the leaves could urge their prayer,
+ He shook his head, and far and wide,
+ Fluttering and rustling everywhere,
+ Down sped the leaflets through the air.
+
+ I saw them; on the ground they lay,
+ Golden and red, a huddled swarm,
+ Waiting till one from far away,
+ White bedclothes heaped upon her arm,
+ Should come to wrap them safe and warm.
+
+ The great bare Tree looked down and smiled.
+ "Good-night, dear little leaves," he said.
+ And from below each sleepy child
+ Replied, "Good-night," and murmured,
+ "It is _so_ nice to go to bed!"
+
+ SUSAN COOLIDGE.
+
+
+ WILLIE WINKIE.
+
+"Wee Willie Winkie," by William Miller (1810-72), is included in this
+ volume out of respect to an eight-year-old child who chose it from
+ among hundreds. We had one poetry hour every week, and he studied and
+ recited it with unabated interest to the end of the year.
+
+ Wee Willie Winkie rins through the town,
+ Up-stairs and doon-stairs, in his nicht-gown,
+ Tirlin' at the window, cryin' at the lock,
+ "Are the weans in their bed?--for it's now ten o'clock."
+
+ Hey, Willie Winkie! are ye comin' ben?
+ The cat's singin' gay thrums to the sleepin' hen,
+ The doug's speldered on the floor, and disna gie a cheep;
+ But here's a waukrife laddie that winna fa' asleep.
+
+ Onything but sleep, ye rogue! glow'rin' like the moon,
+ Rattlin' in an airn jug wi' an airn spoon,
+ Rumblin' tumblin' roun' about, crowin' like a cock,
+ Skirlin' like a kenna-what--wauknin' sleepin' folk.
+
+ Hey, Willie Winkie! the wean's in a creel!
+ Waumblin' aff a body's knee like a vera eel,
+ Ruggin' at the cat's lug, and ravellin' a' her thrums,--
+ Hey, Willie Winkie!--See, there he comes!
+
+ Wearie is the mither that has a storie wean,
+ A wee stumpie stoussie that canna rin his lane,
+ That has a battle aye wi' sleep before he'll close an ee;
+ But a kiss frae aff his rosy lips gies strength anew to me.
+
+ WILLIAM MILLER.
+
+
+ THE OWL AND THE PUSSY-CAT.
+
+"The Owl and the Pussy-Cat," by Edward Lear (1812-88), is placed here
+ because I once found that a timid child was much strengthened and
+ developed by learning it. It is a song that appeals to the imagination
+ of children, and they like to sing it.
+
+ The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
+ In a beautiful pea-green boat;
+ They took some honey, and plenty of money
+ Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
+ The Owl looked up to the moon above,
+ And sang to a small guitar,
+ "O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love!
+ What a beautiful Pussy you are,--
+ You are,
+ What a beautiful Pussy you are!"
+
+ Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl!
+ How wonderful sweet you sing!
+ Oh, let us be married,--too long we have tarried,--
+ But what shall we do for a ring?"
+ They sailed away for a year and a day
+ To the land where the Bong-tree grows,
+ And there in a wood a piggy-wig stood
+ With a ring in the end of his nose,--
+ His nose,
+ With a ring in the end of his nose.
+
+ "Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
+ Your ring?" Said the piggy, "I will,"
+ So they took it away, and were married next day
+ By the turkey who lives on the hill.
+ They dined upon mince and slices of quince,
+ Which they ate with a runcible spoon,
+ And hand in hand on the edge of the sand
+ They danced by the light of the moon,--
+ The moon,
+ They danced by the light of the moon.
+
+ EDWARD LEAR.
+
+
+ WYNKEN, BLYNKEN, AND NOD.
+
+"Wynken, Blynken, and Nod," by Eugene Field (1850-95), pleases
+ children, who are all by nature sailors and adventurers.
+
+ Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
+ Sailed off in a wooden shoe,--
+ Sailed on a river of crystal light
+ Into a sea of dew.
+ "Where are you going, and what do you wish?"
+ The old moon asked the three.
+ "We have come to fish for the herring-fish
+ That live in this beautiful sea;
+ Nets of silver and gold have we,"
+ Said Wynken,
+ Blynken,
+ And Nod.
+
+ The old moon laughed and sang a song,
+ As they rocked in the wooden shoe;
+ And the wind that sped them all night long
+ Ruffled the waves of dew;
+ The little stars were the herring-fish
+ That lived in the beautiful sea.
+ "Now cast your nets wherever you wish,--
+ Never afeard are we!"
+ So cried the stars to the fishermen three,
+ Wynken,
+ Blynken,
+ And Nod.
+
+ All night long their nets they threw
+ To the stars in the twinkling foam,--
+ Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,
+ Bringing the fishermen home:
+ 'Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed
+ As if it could not be;
+ And some folk thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed
+ Of sailing that beautiful sea;
+ But I shall name you the fishermen three:
+ Wynken,
+ Blynken,
+ And Nod.
+
+ Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
+ And Nod is a little head,
+ And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
+ Is a wee one's trundle-bed;
+ So shut your eyes while Mother sings
+ Of wonderful sights that be,
+ And you shall see the beautiful things
+ As you rock on the misty sea
+ Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three,
+ Wynken,
+ Blynken,
+ And Nod.
+
+ EUGENE FIELD.
+
+
+ THE DUEL.
+
+"The Duel," by Eugene Field (1850-95), is almost the most popular
+ humorous poem that has come under my notice. In making such a
+ collection as this it is not easy to find poems at once delicate,
+ witty, and graphic. I have taught "The Duel" hundreds of times, and
+ children invariably love it.
+
+ The gingham dog and the calico cat
+ Side by side on the table sat;
+ 'Twas half-past twelve, and (what do you think!)
+ Nor one nor t'other had slept a wink!
+ The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate
+ Appeared to know as sure as fate
+ There was going to be a terrible spat.
+ (_I wasn't there; I simply state
+ What was told to me by the Chinese plate_!)
+
+ The gingham dog went "bow-wow-wow!"
+ And the calico cat replied "mee-ow!"
+ The air was littered, an hour or so,
+ With bits of gingham and calico,
+ While the old Dutch clock in the chimney-place
+ Up with its hands before its face,
+ For it always dreaded a family row!
+ (_Now mind: I'm only telling you
+ What the old Dutch clock declares is true_!)
+
+ The Chinese plate looked very blue,
+ And wailed, "Oh, dear! what shall we do!"
+ But the gingham dog and the calico cat
+ Wallowed this way and tumbled that,
+ Employing every tooth and claw
+ In the awfullest way you ever saw--
+ And, oh! how the gingham and calico flew!
+ (_Don't fancy I exaggerate!
+ I got my views from the Chinese plate_!)
+
+ Next morning where the two had sat
+ They found no trace of the dog or cat;
+ And some folks think unto this day
+ That burglars stole the pair away!
+ But the truth about the cat and the pup
+ Is this: They ate each other up!
+ Now what do you really think of that!
+ (_The old Dutch clock it told me so,
+ And that is how I came to know_.)
+
+ EUGENE FIELD.
+
+
+ THE BOY WHO NEVER TOLD A LIE.
+
+"The Boy Who Never Told a Lie" (anonymous), as well as "Whatever Brawls
+ Disturb the Street," by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), are real gems. A few
+ years ago they were more in favour than the poorer verse that has been
+ put forward. But they are sure to be revived.
+
+ Once there was a little boy,
+ With curly hair and pleasant eye--
+ A boy who always told the truth,
+ And never, never told a lie.
+
+ And when he trotted off to school,
+ The children all about would cry,
+ "There goes the curly-headed boy--
+ The boy that never tells a lie."
+
+ And everybody loved him so,
+ Because he always told the truth,
+ That every day, as he grew up,
+ 'Twas said, "There goes the honest youth."
+
+ And when the people that stood near
+ Would turn to ask the reason why,
+ The answer would be always this:
+ "Because he never tells a lie."
+
+
+ LOVE BETWEEN BROTHERS AND SISTERS.
+
+ Whatever brawls disturb the street,
+ There should be peace at home;
+ Where sisters dwell and brothers meet,
+ Quarrels should never come.
+
+ Birds in their little nests agree;
+ And 'tis a shameful sight,
+ When children of one family
+ Fall out and chide and fight.
+
+ ISAAC WATTS.
+
+
+ THE BLUEBELL OF SCOTLAND.
+
+ Oh where! and oh where! is your Highland laddie gone?
+ He's gone to fight the French for King George upon the throne;
+ And it's oh! in my heart how I wish him safe at home.
+
+ Oh where! and oh where! does your Highland laddie dwell?
+ He dwells in merry Scotland at the sign of the Bluebell;
+ And it's oh! in my heart that I love my laddie well.
+
+
+ IF I HAD BUT TWO LITTLE WINGS.
+
+"If I Had But Two Little Wings," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
+ (1772-1834), is recommended by a number of teachers and school-girls.
+
+ If I had but two little wings
+ And were a little feathery bird,
+ To you I'd fly, my dear!
+ But thoughts like these are idle things
+ And I stay here.
+
+ But in my sleep to you I fly:
+ I'm always with you in my sleep!
+ The world is all one's own.
+ And then one wakes, and where am I?
+ All, all alone.
+
+ SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE.
+
+
+ A FAREWELL.
+
+"A Farewell," by Charles Kingsley (1819-75), makes it seem worth while
+ to be good.
+
+ My fairest child, I have no song to give you;
+ No lark could pipe to skies so dull and gray;
+ Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you
+ For every day.
+
+ Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
+ Do noble things, not dream them all day long:
+ And so make life, death, and that vast forever
+ One grand, sweet song.
+
+ CHARLES KINGSLEY.
+
+
+ CASABIANCA.
+
+"Casabianca," by Felicia Hemans (1793-1835), is the portrait of a
+ faithful heart, an example of unreasoning obedience. It is right that a
+ child should obey even to the death the commands of a loving parent.
+
+ The boy stood on the burning deck,
+ Whence all but him had fled;
+ The flame that lit the battle's wreck
+ Shone round him o'er the dead.
+
+ Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
+ As born to rule the storm;
+ A creature of heroic blood,
+ A proud though childlike form.
+
+ The flames rolled on--he would not go
+ Without his father's word;
+ That father, faint in death below,
+ His voice no longer heard.
+
+ He called aloud, "Say, father, say
+ If yet my task is done?"
+ He knew not that the chieftain lay
+ Unconscious of his son.
+
+ "Speak, father!" once again he cried,
+ "If I may yet be gone!"
+ And but the booming shots replied,
+ And fast the flames rolled on.
+
+ Upon his brow he felt their breath,
+ And in his waving hair;
+ And looked from that lone post of death
+ In still, yet brave despair.
+
+ And shouted but once more aloud
+ "My father! must I stay?"
+ While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud,
+ The wreathing fires made way.
+
+ They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
+ They caught the flag on high,
+ And streamed above the gallant child
+ Like banners in the sky.
+
+ Then came a burst of thunder sound--
+ The boy--oh! where was he?
+ --Ask of the winds that far around
+ With fragments strew the sea;
+
+ With mast, and helm, and pennon fair.
+ That well had borne their part--
+ But the noblest thing that perished there
+ Was that young, faithful heart.
+
+ FELICIA HEMANS.
+
+
+ THE CAPTAIN'S DAUGHTER.
+
+"The Captain's Daughter," by James T. Fields (1816-81), carries weight
+ with every young audience. It is pointed to an end that children
+ love--viz., trust in a higher power.
+
+ We were crowded in the cabin,
+ Not a soul would dare to sleep,--
+ It was midnight on the waters,
+ And a storm was on the deep.
+
+ 'Tis a fearful thing in winter
+ To be shattered by the blast,
+ And to hear the rattling trumpet
+ Thunder, "Cut away the mast!"
+
+ So we shuddered there in silence,--
+ For the stoutest held his breath,
+ While the hungry sea was roaring
+ And the breakers talked with Death.
+
+ As thus we sat in darkness,
+ Each one busy with his prayers,
+ "We are lost!" the captain shouted
+ As he staggered down the stairs.
+
+ But his little daughter whispered,
+ As she took his icy hand,
+ "Isn't God upon the ocean,
+ Just the same as on the land?"
+
+ Then we kissed the little maiden.
+ And we spoke in better cheer,
+ And we anchored safe in harbour
+ When the morn was shining clear.
+
+ JAMES T. FIELDS.
+
+ ["The 'village smithy' stood in Brattle Street, Cambridge. There came a
+ time when the chestnut-tree that shaded it was cut down, and then the
+ children of the place put their pence together and had a chair made for
+ the poet from its wood."]
+
+
+ THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH.
+
+ Longfellow (1807-82) is truly the children's poet. His poems are as
+ simple, pathetic, artistic, and philosophical as if they were intended
+ to tell the plain everyday story of life to older people. "The Village
+ Blacksmith" has been learned by thousands of children, and there is no
+ criticism to be put upon it. The age of the child has nothing whatever
+ to do with his learning it. Age does not grade children nor is poetry
+ wholly to be so graded. "Time is the false reply."
+
+ Under a spreading chestnut-tree
+ The village smithy stands;
+ The smith, a mighty man is he,
+ With large and sinewy hands,
+ And the muscles of his brawny arms
+ Are strong as iron bands.
+
+ His hair is crisp, and black, and long;
+ His face is like the tan;
+ His brow is wet with honest sweat,
+ He earns whate'er he can,
+ And looks the whole world in the face,
+ For he owes not any man.
+
+ Week in, week out, from morn till night,
+ You can hear his bellows blow;
+ You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
+ With measured beat and slow,
+ Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
+ When the evening sun is low.
+
+ And children coming home from school
+ Look in at the open door;
+ They love to see the flaming forge,
+ And hear the bellows roar,
+ And catch the burning sparks that fly
+ Like chaff from a threshing-floor.
+
+ He goes on Sunday to the church,
+ And sits among his boys;
+ He hears the parson pray and preach,
+ He hears his daughter's voice
+ Singing in the village choir,
+ And it makes his heart rejoice.
+
+ It sounds to him like her mother's voice,
+ Singing in Paradise!
+ He needs must think of her once more,
+ How in the grave she lies;
+ And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
+ A tear out of his eyes.
+
+ Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing,
+ Onward through life he goes;
+ Each morning sees some task begin,
+ Each evening sees it close;
+ Something attempted, something done,
+ Has earned a night's repose.
+
+ Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
+ For the lesson thou hast taught!
+ Thus at the flaming forge of life
+ Our fortunes must be wrought;
+ Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
+ Each burning deed and thought.
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ SWEET AND LOW.
+
+ Sweet and low, sweet and low,
+ Wind of the western sea,
+ Low, low, breathe and blow,
+ Wind of the western sea!
+ Over the rolling waters go,
+ Come from the dropping moon and blow,
+ Blow him again to me;
+ While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps.
+
+ Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,
+ Father will come to thee soon;
+ Rest, rest, on mother's breast,
+ Father will come to thee soon;
+ Father will come to his babe in the nest,
+ Silver sails all out of the west
+ Under the silver moon:
+ Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE VIOLET.
+
+"The Violet," by Jane Taylor (1783-1824), is another of those dear
+ old-fashioned poems, pure poetry and pure violet. It is included in
+ this volume out of respect to my own love for it when I was a child.
+
+ Down in a green and shady bed
+ A modest violet grew;
+ Its stalk was bent, it hung its head,
+ As if to hide from view.
+
+ And yet it was a lovely flower,
+ No colours bright and fair;
+ It might have graced a rosy bower,
+ Instead of hiding there.
+
+ Yet there it was content to bloom,
+ In modest tints arrayed;
+ And there diffused its sweet perfume,
+ Within the silent shade.
+
+ Then let me to the valley go,
+ This pretty flower to see;
+ That I may also learn to grow
+ In sweet humility.
+
+ JANE TAYLOR.
+
+
+ THE RAINBOW.
+
+ (A FRAGMENT.)
+
+"The Rainbow," by William Wordsworth (1770-1850), accords with every
+ child's feelings. It voices the spirit of all ages that would love to
+ imagine it "a bridge to heaven."
+
+ My heart leaps up when I behold
+ A rainbow in the sky;
+ So was it when my life began,
+ So is it now I am a man,
+ So be it when I shall grow old,
+ Or let me die!
+ The child is father of the man;
+ And I could wish my days to be
+ Bound each to each by natural piety.
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ A VISIT FROM ST. NICHOLAS.
+
+"A Visit From St. Nicholas," by Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863) is the
+ most popular Christmas poem ever written. It carries Santa Claus on
+ from year to year and the spirit of Santa Claus.
+
+ 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
+ Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
+ The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
+ In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
+ The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
+ While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
+ And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
+ Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,
+ When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
+ I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
+ Away to the window I flew like a flash,
+ Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
+ The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
+ Gave the luster of mid-day to objects below,
+ When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
+ But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer.
+ With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
+ I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
+ More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
+ And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:
+ "Now, _Dasher_! now, _Dancer_! now, _Prancer_ and _Vixen_!
+ On, _Comet_! on, _Cupid_! on, _Donder_ and _Blitzen_!
+ To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
+ Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"
+ As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
+ When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
+ So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
+ With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas, too.
+ And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
+ The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
+ As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
+ Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
+ He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
+ And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
+ A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
+ And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
+ His eyes--how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
+ His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
+ His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
+ And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
+ The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
+ And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
+ He had a broad face and a little round belly,
+ That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.
+ He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
+ And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
+ A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
+ Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
+ He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
+ And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
+ And laying his finger aside of his nose,
+ And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
+ He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
+ And away they all flew like the down on a thistle.
+ But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
+ "_Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night_."
+
+ CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE.
+
+
+ THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.
+
+ 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, through 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 through 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 through 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 victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
+ Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
+ Then conquer we must, for 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.
+
+ FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.
+
+
+ FATHER WILLIAM.
+
+"Father William" a parody by Lewis Carroll (1833-), is even more clever
+ than the original. Harmless fun brightens the world. It takes a real
+ genius to create wit that carries no sting.
+
+ "You are old, Father William," the young man said,
+ "And your hair has become very white;
+ And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
+ Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
+
+ "In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
+ "I feared it might injure the brain;
+ But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
+ Why, I do it again and again."
+
+ "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
+ And have grown most uncommonly fat;
+ Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door--
+ Pray, what is the reason of that?"
+
+ "In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his gray locks,
+ "I kept all my limbs very supple
+ By the use of this ointment--one shilling the box--
+ Allow me to sell you a couple."
+
+ "You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
+ For anything tougher than suet;
+ Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak:
+ Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
+
+ "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
+ And argued each case with my wife;
+ And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw
+ Has lasted the rest of my life."
+
+ "You are old," said the youth; "one would hardly suppose
+ That your eye was as steady as ever;
+ Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose--
+ What made you so awfully clever?"
+
+ "I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
+ Said his father, "don't give yourself airs!
+ Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
+ Be off, or I'll kick you down-stairs!"
+
+ LEWIS CARROLL.
+
+ ("Alice in Wonderland.")
+
+
+ THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE GLOW-WORM.
+
+"The Nightingale," by William Cowper (1731-1800), is a favourite with a
+ teacher of good taste, and I include it at her request.
+
+ A nightingale, that all day long
+ Had cheered the village with his song,
+ Nor yet at eve his note suspended,
+ Nor yet when eventide was ended,
+ Began to feel, as well he might,
+ The keen demands of appetite;
+ When, looking eagerly around,
+ He spied far off, upon the ground,
+ A something shining in the dark,
+ And knew the glow-worm by his spark;
+ So, stooping down from hawthorn top,
+ He thought to put him in his crop.
+ The worm, aware of his intent,
+ Harangued him thus, right eloquent:
+ "Did you admire my lamp," quoth he,
+ "As much as I your minstrelsy,
+ You would abhor to do me wrong,
+ As much as I to spoil your song;
+ For 'twas the self-same power divine,
+ Taught you to sing and me to shine;
+ That you with music, I with light,
+ Might beautify and cheer the night."
+ The songster heard his short oration,
+ And warbling out his approbation,
+ Released him, as my story tells,
+ And found a supper somewhere else.
+
+ WILLIAM COWPER.
+
+
+
+
+ PART II.
+
+ The Little Child
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+
+ THE FROST.
+
+"Jack Frost," by Hannah Flagg Gould (1789-1865), is perhaps a hundred
+ years old, but he is the same rollicking fellow to-day as of yore. The
+ poem puts his merry pranks to the front and prepares the way for
+ science to give him a true analysis.
+
+ The Frost looked forth, one still, clear night,
+ And whispered, "Now I shall be out of sight;
+ So through the valley and over the height,
+ In silence I'll take my way:
+ I will not go on with that blustering train,
+ The wind and the snow, the hail and the rain,
+ Who make so much bustle and noise in vain,
+ But I'll be as busy as they."
+
+ Then he flew to the mountain and powdered its crest;
+ He lit on the trees, and their boughs he dressed
+ In diamond beads--and over the breast
+ Of the quivering lake he spread
+ A coat of mail, that it need not fear
+ The downward point of many a spear
+ That hung on its margin far and near,
+ Where a rock could rear its head.
+
+ He went to the windows of those who slept,
+ And over each pane, like a fairy, crept;
+ Wherever he breathed, wherever he slept,
+ By the light of the moon were seen
+ Most beautiful things--there were flowers and trees;
+ There were bevies of birds and swarms of bees;
+ There were cities with temples and towers, and these
+ All pictured in silver sheen!
+
+ But he did one thing that was hardly fair;
+ He peeped in the cupboard, and finding there
+ That all had forgotten for him to prepare--
+ "Now just to set them a-thinking,
+ I'll bite this basket of fruit," said he,
+ "This costly pitcher I'll burst in three,
+ And the glass of water they've left for me
+ Shall '_tchich!_' to tell them I'm drinking."
+
+ HANNAH FLAGG GOULD.
+
+
+ THE OWL.
+
+ When cats run home and light is come,
+ And dew is cold upon the ground,
+ And the far-off stream is dumb,
+ And the whirring sail goes round,
+ And the whirring sail goes round;
+ Alone and warming his five wits,
+ The white owl in the belfry sits.
+
+ When merry milkmaids click the latch,
+ And rarely smells the new-mown hay,
+ And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch
+ Twice or thrice his roundelay,
+ Twice or thrice his roundelay;
+ Alone and warming his five wits,
+ The white owl in the belfry sits.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ LITTLE BILLEE.
+
+"Little Billee," by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), finds a
+ place here because it carries a good lesson good-naturedly rendered. An
+ accomplished teacher recommends it, and I recollect two young children
+ in Chicago who sang it frequently for years without getting tired of
+ it.
+
+ There were three sailors of Bristol city
+ Who took a boat and went to sea.
+ But first with beef and captain's biscuits
+ And pickled pork they loaded she.
+
+ There was gorging Jack and guzzling Jimmy,
+ And the youngest he was little Billee.
+ Now when they got so far as the Equator
+ They'd nothing left but one split pea.
+
+ Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy,
+ "I am extremely hungaree."
+ To gorging Jack says guzzling Jimmy,
+ "We've nothing left, us must eat we."
+
+ Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy,
+ "With one another, we shouldn't agree!
+ There's little Bill, he's young and tender,
+ We're old and tough, so let's eat he."
+
+ "Oh! Billy, we're going to kill and eat you,
+ So undo the button of your chemie."
+ When Bill received this information
+ He used his pocket-handkerchie.
+
+ "First let me say my catechism,
+ Which my poor mammy taught to me."
+ "Make haste, make haste," says guzzling Jimmy
+ While Jack pulled out his snickersnee.
+
+ So Billy went up to the main-topgallant mast,
+ And down he fell on his bended knee.
+ He scarce had come to the Twelfth Commandment
+ When up he jumps, "There's land I see.
+
+ "Jerusalem and Madagascar,
+ And North and South Amerikee:
+ There's the British flag a-riding at anchor,
+ With Admiral Napier, K.C.B."
+
+ So when they got aboard of the Admiral's
+ He hanged fat Jack and flogged Jimmee;
+ But as for little Bill, he made him
+ The Captain of a Seventy-three.
+
+ WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.
+
+
+ THE BUTTERFLY AND THE BEE.
+
+"The Butterfly and the Bee," by William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), is
+ recommended by some school-girls. It carries a lesson in favour of the
+ worker.
+
+ Methought I heard a butterfly
+ Say to a labouring bee:
+ "Thou hast no colours of the sky
+ On painted wings like me."
+
+ "Poor child of vanity! those dyes,
+ And colours bright and rare,"
+ With mild reproof, the bee replies,
+ "Are all beneath my care.
+
+ "Content I toil from morn to eve,
+ And scorning idleness,
+ To tribes of gaudy sloth I leave
+ The vanity of dress."
+
+ WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES.
+
+
+ AN INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP.
+
+"An Incident of the French Camp," by Robert Browning (1812-89), is
+ included in this volume out of regard to a boy of eight years who did
+ not care for many poems, but this one stirred his heart to its depths.
+
+ You know, we French storm'd Ratisbon:
+ A mile or so away
+ On a little mound, Napoleon
+ Stood on our storming-day;
+ With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
+ Legs wide, arms lock'd behind,
+ As if to balance the prone brow
+ Oppressive with its mind.
+
+ Just as perhaps he mus'd "My plans
+ That soar, to earth may fall,
+ Let once my army leader Lannes
+ Waver at yonder wall,"--
+ Out 'twixt the battery smokes there flew
+ A rider, bound on bound
+ Full-galloping; nor bridle drew
+ Until he reach'd the mound.
+
+ Then off there flung in smiling joy,
+ And held himself erect
+ By just his horse's mane, a boy:
+ You hardly could suspect--
+ (So tight he kept his lips compress'd,
+ Scarce any blood came through)
+ You look'd twice ere you saw his breast
+ Was all but shot in two.
+
+ "Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace
+ We've got you Ratisbon!
+ The Marshal's in the market-place,
+ And you'll be there anon
+ To see your flag-bird flap his vans
+ Where I, to heart's desire,
+ Perched him!" The chief's eye flashed; his plans
+ Soared up again like fire.
+
+ The chief's eye flashed; but presently
+ Softened itself, as sheathes
+ A film the mother-eagle's eye
+ When her bruised eaglet breathes;
+ "You're wounded!" "Nay," the soldier's pride
+ Touched to the quick, he said:
+ "I'm killed, Sire!" And his chief beside,
+ Smiling the boy fell dead.
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ ROBERT OF LINCOLN.
+
+"Robert of Lincoln," by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), is one of
+ the finest bird poems ever written. It finds a place here because I
+ have seen it used effectively as a memory gem in the Cook County Normal
+ School (Colonel Parker's school), year after year, and because my own
+ pupils invariably like to commit it to memory. With the child of six to
+ the student of twenty years it stands a source of delight.
+
+ Merrily swinging on brier and weed,
+ Near to the nest of his little dame,
+ Over the mountain-side or mead,
+ Robert of Lincoln is telling his name.
+ Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Snug and safe is this nest of ours,
+ Hidden among the summer flowers.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Robert of Lincoln is gayly dressed,
+ Wearing a bright, black wedding-coat;
+ White are his shoulders, and white his crest,
+ Hear him call in his merry note,
+ Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Look what a nice, new coat is mine;
+ Sure there was never a bird so fine.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife,
+ Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings,
+ Passing at home a patient life,
+ Broods in the grass while her husband sings,
+ Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Brood, kind creature, you need not fear
+ Thieves and robbers while I am here.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Modest and shy as a nun is she;
+ One weak chirp is her only note;
+ Braggart, and prince of braggarts is he,
+ Pouring boasts from his little throat,
+ Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Never was I afraid of man,
+ Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Six white eggs on a bed of hay,
+ Flecked with purple, a pretty sight:
+ There as the mother sits all day,
+ Robert is singing with all his might,
+ Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Nice good wife that never goes out,
+ Keeping house while I frolic about.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Soon as the little ones chip the shell,
+ Six wide mouths are open for food;
+ Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well,
+ Gathering seeds for the hungry brood:
+ Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ This new life is likely to be
+ Hard for a gay young fellow like me.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Robert of Lincoln at length is made
+ Sober with work, and silent with care,
+ Off is his holiday garment laid,
+ Half forgotten that merry air,
+ Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ Nobody knows but my mate and I,
+ Where our nest and our nestlings lie.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ Summer wanes; the children are grown;
+ Fun and frolic no more he knows;
+ Robert of Lincoln's a hum-drum drone;
+ Off he flies, and we sing as he goes,
+ Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
+ Spink, spank, spink,
+ When you can pipe that merry old strain,
+ Robert of Lincoln, come back again.
+ Chee, chee, chee.
+
+ WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
+
+
+ OLD GRIMES.
+
+"Old Grimes" is an heirloom, an antique gem. We learn it as a matter of
+ course for its sparkle and glow.
+
+ Old Grimes is dead; that good old man,
+ We ne'er shall see him more;
+ He used to wear a long, black coat,
+ All buttoned down before.
+
+ His heart was open as the day,
+ His feelings all were true;
+ His hair was some inclined to gray,
+ He wore it in a queue.
+
+ He lived at peace with all mankind,
+ In friendship he was true;
+ His coat had pocket-holes behind,
+ His pantaloons were blue.
+
+ He modest merit sought to find,
+ And pay it its desert;
+ He had no malice in his mind,
+ No ruffles on his shirt.
+
+ His neighbours he did not abuse,
+ Was sociable and gay;
+ He wore large buckles on his shoes,
+ And changed them every day.
+
+ His knowledge, hid from public gaze,
+ He did not bring to view,
+ Nor make a noise town-meeting days,
+ As many people do.
+
+ His worldly goods he never threw
+ In trust to fortune's chances,
+ But lived (as all his brothers do)
+ In easy circumstances.
+
+ Thus undisturbed by anxious cares
+ His peaceful moments ran;
+ And everybody said he was
+ A fine old gentleman.
+
+ ALBERT GORTON GREENE.
+
+
+ SONG OF LIFE.
+
+ A traveller on a dusty road
+ Strewed acorns on the lea;
+ And one took root and sprouted up,
+ And grew into a tree.
+ Love sought its shade at evening-time,
+ To breathe its early vows;
+ And Age was pleased, in heights of noon,
+ To bask beneath its boughs.
+ The dormouse loved its dangling twigs,
+ The birds sweet music bore--
+ It stood a glory in its place,
+ A blessing evermore.
+
+ A little spring had lost its way
+ Amid the grass and fern;
+ A passing stranger scooped a well
+ Where weary men might turn.
+ He walled it in, and hung with care
+ A ladle on the brink;
+ He thought not of the deed he did,
+ But judged that Toil might drink.
+ He passed again; and lo! the well,
+ By summer never dried,
+ Had cooled ten thousand parched tongues,
+ And saved a life beside.
+
+ A nameless man, amid the crowd
+ That thronged the daily mart,
+ Let fall a word of hope and love,
+ Unstudied from the heart,
+ A whisper on the tumult thrown,
+ A transitory breath,
+ It raised a brother from the dust,
+ It saved a soul from death.
+ O germ! O fount! O word of love!
+ O thought at random cast!
+ Ye were but little at the first,
+ But mighty at the last.
+
+ CHARLES MACKAY.
+
+
+ FAIRY SONG.
+
+ Shed no tear! O shed no tear!
+ The flower will bloom another year.
+ Weep no more! O, weep no more!
+ Young buds sleep in the root's white core.
+ Dry your eyes! Oh! dry your eyes!
+ For I was taught in Paradise
+ To ease my breast of melodies--
+ Shed no tear.
+
+ Overhead! look overhead!
+ 'Mong the blossoms white and red--
+ Look up, look up. I flutter now
+ On this flush pomegranate bough.
+ See me! 'tis this silvery bell
+ Ever cures the good man's ill.
+ Shed no tear! O, shed no tear!
+ The flowers will bloom another year.
+ Adieu, adieu--I fly, adieu,
+ I vanish in the heaven's blue--
+ Adieu, adieu!
+
+ JOHN KEATS.
+
+
+ A BOY'S SONG
+
+"A Boy's Song," by James Hogg (1770-1835), is a sparkling poem, very
+ attractive to children.
+
+ Where the pools are bright and deep,
+ Where the gray trout lies asleep,
+ Up the river and o'er the lea,
+ That's the way for Billy and me.
+
+ Where the blackbird sings the latest,
+ Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest,
+ Where the nestlings chirp and flee,
+ That's the way for Billy and me.
+
+ Where the mowers mow the cleanest,
+ Where the hay lies thick and greenest,
+ There to trace the homeward bee,
+ That's the way for Billy and me.
+
+ Where the hazel bank is steepest,
+ Where the shadow falls the deepest,
+ Where the clustering nuts fall free.
+ That's the way for Billy and me.
+
+ Why the boys should drive away,
+ Little sweet maidens from the play,
+ Or love to banter and fight so well,
+ That's the thing I never could tell.
+
+ But this I know, I love to play,
+ Through the meadow, among the hay;
+ Up the water and o'er the lea,
+ That's the way for Billy and me.
+
+ JAMES HOGG.
+
+
+ BUTTERCUPS AND DAISIES.
+
+ Buttercups and daisies,
+ Oh, the pretty flowers,
+ Coming ere the spring time,
+ To tell of sunny hours.
+ While the tree are leafless,
+ While the fields are bare,
+ Buttercups and daisies
+ Spring up here and there.
+
+ Ere the snowdrop peepeth,
+ Ere the crocus bold,
+ Ere the early primrose
+ Opes its paly gold,
+ Somewhere on the sunny bank
+ Buttercups are bright;
+ Somewhere 'mong the frozen grass
+ Peeps the daisy white.
+
+ Little hardy flowers,
+ Like to children poor,
+ Playing in their sturdy health
+ By their mother's door,
+ Purple with the north wind,
+ Yet alert and bold;
+ Fearing not, and caring not,
+ Though they be a-cold!
+
+ What to them is winter!
+ What are stormy showers!
+ Buttercups and daisies
+ Are these human flowers!
+ He who gave them hardships
+ And a life of care,
+ Gave them likewise hardy strength
+ And patient hearts to bear.
+
+ MARY HOWITT.
+
+
+ THE RAINBOW.
+
+ Triumphal arch, that fills the sky
+ When storms prepare to part,
+ I ask not proud Philosophy
+ To teach me what thou art.
+
+ Still seem, as to my childhood's sight,
+ A midway station given,
+ For happy spirits to alight,
+ Betwixt the earth and heaven.
+
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL.
+
+
+ OLD IRONSIDES.
+
+"Old Ironsides," by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94), is learned
+ readily. Children are untouched by the commercial spirit which is the
+ reproach of this age. "Ingratitude is the vice of republics," and this
+ poem puts to shame the love of money and the spirit of ingratitude that
+ could let a national servant become a wreck.
+
+ Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
+ Long has it waved on high,
+ And many an eye has danced to see
+ That banner in the sky;
+ Beneath it rung the battle shout,
+ And burst the cannon's roar;--
+ The meteor of the ocean air
+ Shall sweep the clouds no more.
+
+ Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
+ Where knelt the vanquished foe,
+ When winds were hurrying o'er the flood
+ And waves were white below.
+ No more shall feel the victor's tread,
+ Or know the conquered knee;
+ The harpies of the shore shall pluck
+ The eagle of the sea!
+
+ O, better that her shattered hulk
+ Should sink beneath the wave;
+ Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
+ And there should be her grave;
+ Nail to the mast her holy flag,
+ Set every threadbare sail,
+ And give her to the god of storms,
+ The lightning and the gale!
+
+ OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
+
+
+ LITTLE ORPHANT ANNIE.
+
+"Little Orphant Annie" certainly earns her "board and keep" when she
+ has "washed the dishes," "swept up the crumbs," "driven the chickens
+ from the porch," and done all the other odds and ends of work on a
+ farm. The poet, James Whitcomb Riley (1853-), has shown how truly a
+ little child may be overtaxed and yet preserve a brave spirit and keen
+ imagination. Children invariably love to learn this poem.
+
+ Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay,
+ An' wash the cups and saucers up, an' brush the crumbs away,
+ An' shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth, an' sweep,
+ An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an'-keep;
+ An' all us other children, when the supper things is done,
+ We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun
+ A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about,
+ An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you
+ Ef you
+ Don't
+ Watch
+ Out!
+
+ Onc't they was a little boy wouldn't say his pray'rs--
+ An' when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs,
+ His mammy heerd him holler, an' his daddy heerd him bawl,
+ An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wasn't there at all!
+ An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby hole, an' press,
+ An' seeked him up the chimbly flue, an' ever'-wheres, I guess;
+ But all they ever found was thist his pants an' roundabout!
+ An' the Gobble-uns'll git you
+ Ef you
+ Don't
+ Watch
+ Out!
+
+ An' one time a little girl 'ud allus laugh an' grin,
+ An' make fun of ever' one, an' all her blood-an'-kin;
+ An' onc't when they was "company," an' ole folks was there,
+ She mocked 'em an' shocked 'em, an' said she didn't care!
+ An' thist as she kicked her heels, an' turn't to run an' hide,
+ They was two great big Black Things a-standin' by her side,
+ An' they snatched her through the ceilin' 'fore she
+ knowed what she's about!
+ An' the Gobble-uns'll git you
+ Ef you
+ Don't
+ Watch
+ Out!
+
+ An' little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,
+ An' the lampwick sputters, an' the wind goes woo-oo!
+ An' you hear the crickets quit, an' the moon is gray,
+ An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew is all squenched away,--
+ You better mind yer parents, an' yer teachers fond an' dear,
+ An' churish them 'at loves you, an' dry the orphant's tear,
+ An' he'p the pore an' needy ones 'at clusters all about,
+ Er the Gobble-uns'll git you
+ Ef you
+ Don't
+ Watch
+ Out!
+
+ JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.
+
+
+ O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
+
+"O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman (1819-92), is placed here out
+ of compliment to a little boy aged ten who wanted to recite it once a
+ week for a year. This song and Edwin Markham's poem on Lincoln are two
+ of the greatest tributes ever paid to that hero.
+
+ O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
+ The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
+ The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
+ While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
+ But O heart! heart! heart!
+ O the bleeding drops of red,
+ Where on the deck my Captain lies,
+ Fallen cold and dead.
+
+ O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
+ Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills,
+ For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding,
+ For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
+ Here Captain! dear father!
+ This arm beneath your head!
+ It is some dream that on the deck
+ You've fallen cold and dead.
+
+ My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
+ My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will.
+ The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
+ From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
+ Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
+ But I, with mournful tread,
+ Walk the deck my Captain lies,
+ Fallen cold and dead.
+
+ WALT WHITMAN.
+
+
+ INGRATITUDE.
+
+"Ingratitude," by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), is an incisive
+ thrust at a refined vice. It is a part of education to learn to be
+ grateful.
+
+ Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
+ Thou are not so unkind
+ As man's ingratitude;
+ Thy tooth is not so keen
+ Because thou are not seen,
+ Although thy breath be rude.
+
+ Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
+ Thou dost not bite so nigh
+ As benefits forgot;
+ Though thou the waters warp,
+ Thy sting is not so sharp
+ As friend remembered not.
+
+ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+ THE IVY GREEN.
+
+"The Ivy Green," by Charles Dickens (1812-70), is a hardy poem in
+ honour of a hardy plant. There is a wonderful ivy growing at Rhudlan,
+ in northern Wales. Its roots are so large and strong that they form a
+ comfortable seat for many persons, and no one can remember when they
+ were smaller. This ivy envelops a great castle in ruins. Every child in
+ that locality loves the old ivy. It is typical of the ivy as seen all
+ through Wales and England.
+
+ O, a dainty plant is the ivy green,
+ That creepeth o'er ruins old!
+ Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,
+ In his cell so lone and cold.
+ The walls must be crumbled, the stones decayed.
+ To pleasure his dainty whim;
+ And the mouldering dust that years have made
+ Is a merry meal for him.
+ Creeping where no life is seen,
+ A rare old plant is the ivy green.
+
+ Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,
+ And a staunch old heart has he!
+ How closely he twineth, how tight he clings
+ To his friend, the huge oak tree!
+ And slyly he traileth along the ground,
+ And his leaves he gently waves,
+ And he joyously twines and hugs around
+ The rich mould of dead men's graves.
+ Creeping where no life is seen,
+ A rare old plant is the ivy green.
+
+ Whole ages have fled, and their works decayed,
+ And nations have scattered been;
+ But the stout old ivy shall never fade
+ From its hale and hearty green.
+ The brave old plant in its lonely days
+ Shall fatten upon the past;
+ For the stateliest building man can raise
+ Is the ivy's food at last.
+ Creeping where no life is seen,
+ A rare old plant is the ivy green.
+
+ CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+
+ THE NOBLE NATURE.
+
+"The Noble Nature," by Ben Jonson (1574-1637), needs no plea. A small
+ virtue well polished is better than none.
+
+ It is not growing like a tree
+ In bulk doth make man better be;
+ Or standing long an oak, three hundred year
+ To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear
+ A lily of a day
+ Is fairer far in May,
+ Although it fall and die that night,--
+ It was the plant and flower of light.
+ In small proportions we just beauties see;
+ And in short measures life may perfect be.
+
+ BEN JONSON.
+
+
+ THE FLYING SQUIRREL.
+
+"The Flying Squirrel" is an honest account of a live creature that won
+ his way into scores of hearts by his mad pranks and affectionate ways.
+ It is enough that John Burroughs has commended the poem.
+
+ Of all the woodland creatures,
+ The quaintest little sprite
+ Is the dainty flying squirrel
+ In vest of shining white,
+ In coat of silver gray,
+ And vest of shining white.
+
+ His furry Quaker jacket
+ Is trimmed with stripe of black;
+ A furry plume to match it
+ Is curling o'er his back;
+ New curved with every motion,
+ His plume curls o'er his back.
+
+ No little new-born baby
+ Has pinker feet than he;
+ Each tiny toe is cushioned
+ With velvet cushions three;
+ Three wee, pink, velvet cushions
+ Almost too small to see.
+
+ Who said, "The foot of baby
+ Might tempt an angel's kiss"?
+ I know a score of school-boys
+ Who put their lips to this,--
+ This wee foot of the squirrel,
+ And left a loving kiss.
+
+ The tiny thief has hidden
+ My candy and my plum;
+ Ah, there he comes unbidden
+ To gently nip my thumb,--
+ Down in his home (my pocket)
+ He gently nips my thumb.
+
+ How strange the food he covets,
+ The restless, restless wight;--
+ Fred's old stuffed armadillo
+ He found a tempting bite,
+ Fred's old stuffed armadillo,
+ With ears a perfect fright.
+
+ The Lady Ruth's great bureau,
+ Each foot a dragon's paw!
+ The midget ate the nails from
+ His famous antique claw.
+ Oh, what a cruel beastie
+ To hurt a dragon's claw!
+
+ To autographic copies
+ Upon my choicest shelf,--
+ To every dainty volume
+ The rogue has helped himself.
+ My books! Oh dear! No matter!
+ The rogue has helped himself.
+
+ And yet, my little squirrel,
+ Your taste is not so bad;
+ You've swallowed Caird completely
+ And psychologic Ladd.
+ Rosmini you've digested,
+ And Kant in rags you've clad.
+
+ Gnaw on, my elfish rodent!
+ Lay all the sages low!
+ My pretty lace and ribbons,
+ They're yours for weal or woe!
+ My pocket-book's in tatters
+ Because you like it so.
+
+ MARY E. BURT.
+
+
+ WARREN'S ADDRESS TO THE AMERICAN SOLDIERS.
+
+ There is never a boy who objects to learning "Warren's Address," by
+ John Pierpont (1785-1866). To stand by one's own rights is inherent in
+ every true American. This poem is doubtless developed from Robert
+ Burns's "Bannockburn." (1785-1866.)
+
+ Stand! the ground's your own, my braves!
+ Will ye give it up to slaves?
+ Will ye look for greener graves?
+ Hope ye mercy still?
+ What's the mercy despots feel?
+ Hear it in that battle-peal!
+ Read it on yon bristling steel!
+ Ask it,--ye who will.
+
+ Fear ye foes who kill for hire?
+ Will ye to your homes retire?
+ Look behind you! they're afire!
+ And, before you, see
+ Who have done it!--From the vale
+ On they come!--And will ye quail?--
+ Leaden rain and iron hail
+ Let their welcome be!
+
+ In the God of battles trust!
+ Die we may,--and die we must;
+ But, O, where can dust to dust
+ Be consigned so well,
+ As where Heaven its dews shall shed
+ On the martyred patriot's bed,
+ And the rocks shall raise their head,
+ Of his deeds to tell!
+
+ JOHN PIERPONT.
+
+
+ THE SONG IN CAMP.
+
+"The Song in Camp" is Bayard Taylor's best effort as far as young boys
+ and girls are concerned. It is a most valuable poem. I once heard a
+ clergyman in Chicago use it as a text for his sermon. Since then "Annie
+ Laurie" has become the song of the Labour party. "The Song in Camp"
+ voices a universal feeling. (1825-78.)
+
+ "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 belched its thunder.
+
+ There was a pause. A guardsman said,
+ "We storm the forts to-morrow;
+ 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 learned
+ How English love remembers.
+
+ And once again a fire of hell
+ Rained on the Russian quarters,
+ With scream of shot, and burst of shell,
+ And bellowing of the mortars!
+
+ And Irish Nora's eyes are dim
+ For a singer, dumb and gory;
+ And English Mary mourns for him
+ Who sang of "Annie Laurie."
+
+ Sleep, soldiers! still in honoured rest
+ Your truth and valour wearing:
+ The bravest are the tenderest,--
+ The loving are the daring.
+
+ BAYARD TAYLOR.
+
+
+ THE BUGLE SONG.
+
+"The Bugle Song" (by Alfred Tennyson, 1809-90), says Heydrick, "has for
+ its central theme the undying power of human love. The music is notable
+ for sweetness and delicacy."
+
+ The splendour 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.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE "THREE BELLS" OF GLASGOW.
+
+"The Three Bells of Glasgow," by Whittier (1807-92), cannot be praised
+ too highly for its ethical value. Children always love to learn it
+ after hearing it read correctly and by one who understands and
+ appreciates it. "Stand by" is the motto. My pupils teach it to me once
+ a year and learn it themselves, too.
+
+ Beneath the low-hung night cloud
+ That raked her splintering mast
+ The good ship settled slowly,
+ The cruel leak gained fast.
+
+ Over the awful ocean
+ Her signal guns pealed out.
+ Dear God! was that Thy answer
+ From the horror round about?
+
+ A voice came down the wild wind,
+ "Ho! ship ahoy!" its cry:
+ "Our stout _Three Bells_ of Glasgow
+ Shall stand till daylight by!"
+
+ Hour after hour crept slowly,
+ Yet on the heaving swells
+ Tossed up and down the ship-lights,
+ The lights of the _Three Bells_!
+
+ And ship to ship made signals,
+ Man answered back to man,
+ While oft, to cheer and hearten,
+ The _Three Bells_ nearer ran:
+
+ And the captain from her taffrail
+ Sent down his hopeful cry.
+ "Take heart! Hold on!" he shouted,
+ "The _Three Bells_ shall stand by!"
+
+ All night across the waters
+ The tossing lights shone clear;
+ All night from reeling taffrail
+ The _Three Bells_ sent her cheer.
+
+ And when the dreary watches
+ Of storm and darkness passed,
+ Just as the wreck lurched under,
+ All souls were saved at last.
+
+ Sail on, _Three Bells_, forever,
+ In grateful memory sail!
+ Ring on, _Three Bells_ of rescue,
+ Above the wave and gale!
+
+ Type of the Love eternal,
+ Repeat the Master's cry,
+ As tossing through our darkness
+ The lights of God draw nigh!
+
+ JOHN G. WHITTIER.
+
+
+ SHERIDAN'S RIDE.
+
+ There never was a boy who did not like "Sheridan's Ride," by T.
+ Buchanan Read (1822-72). The swing and gallop in it take every boy off
+ from his feet. The children never teach this poem to me, because they
+ love to learn it at first sight. It is easily memorised.
+
+ Up from the South at break of day,
+ Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
+ The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
+ Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door,
+ The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar,
+ Telling the battle was on once more,
+ And Sheridan twenty miles away.
+
+ And wider still those billows of war
+ Thundered along the horizon's bar;
+ And louder yet into Winchester rolled
+ The roar of that red sea uncontrolled,
+ Making the blood of the listener cold
+ As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,
+ And Sheridan twenty miles away.
+
+ But there is a road from Winchester town,
+ A good, broad highway leading down;
+ And there, through the flush of the morning light,
+ A steed as black as the steeds of night
+ Was seen to pass as with eagle flight;
+ As if he knew the terrible need,
+ He stretched away with his utmost speed;
+ Hills rose and fell; but his heart was gay,
+ With Sheridan fifteen miles away.
+
+ Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering South,
+ The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth;
+ Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster,
+ Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster.
+ The heart of the steed and the heart of the master
+ Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
+ Impatient to be where the battle-field calls;
+ Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,
+ With Sheridan only ten miles away.
+
+ Under his spurning feet the road
+ Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,
+ And the landscape sped away behind
+ Like an ocean flying before the wind.
+ And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace fire,
+ Swept on, with his wild eye full of ire.
+ But lo! he is nearing his heart's desire;
+ He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray,
+ With Sheridan only five miles away.
+
+ The first that the General saw were the groups
+ Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops.
+ What was done--what to do? A glance told him both,
+ Then striking his spurs, with a terrible oath,
+ He dashed down the line, mid a storm of huzzas,
+ And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because
+ The sight of the master compelled it to pause.
+ With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;
+ By the flash of his eye, and the red nostrils' play,
+ He seemed to the whole great army to say:
+ "I have brought you Sheridan all the way
+ From Winchester down to save the day!"
+
+ Hurrah! hurrah for Sheridan!
+ Hurrah! hurrah for horse and man!
+ And when their statues are placed on high,
+ Under the dome of the Union sky,
+ The American soldiers' Temple of Fame,
+ There with the glorious General's name
+ Be it said, in letters both bold and bright:
+ "Here is the steed that saved the day,
+ By carrying Sheridan into the fight
+ From Winchester, twenty miles away!"
+
+ THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.
+
+
+ THE SANDPIPER.
+
+"The Sandpiper," by Celia Thaxter (1836-94), is placed here because a
+ goodly percentage of the children who read it want to learn it.
+
+ Across the lonely beach we flit,
+ One little sandpiper and I,
+ And fast I gather, bit by bit,
+ The scattered driftwood, bleached and dry.
+ The wild waves reach their hands for it,
+ The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,
+ As up and down the beach we flit,
+ One little sandpiper and I.
+
+ Above our heads the sullen clouds
+ Scud, black and swift, across the sky;
+ Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds
+ Stand out the white lighthouses high.
+ Almost as far as eye can reach
+ I see the close-reefed vessels fly,
+ As fast we flit along the beach,
+ One little sandpiper and I.
+
+ I watch him as he skims along,
+ Uttering his sweet and mournful cry;
+ He starts not at my fitful song,
+ Nor flash of fluttering drapery.
+ He has no thought of any wrong,
+ He scans me with a fearless eye;
+ Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong,
+ The little sandpiper and I.
+
+ Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night,
+ When the loosed storm breaks furiously?
+ My driftwood fire will burn so bright!
+ To what warm shelter canst thou fly?
+ I do not fear for thee, though wroth
+ The tempest rushes through the sky;
+ For are we not God's children both,
+ Thou, little sandpiper, and I?
+
+ CELIA THAXTER.
+
+
+ LADY CLARE.
+
+ Girls always love "Lady Clare" and "The Lord of Burleigh." They like to
+ think that it is enough to be a splendid woman without title or wealth.
+ They want to be loved, if they are loved at all, for their good hearts
+ and graces of mind. Tennyson (1809-92) makes this point repeatedly
+ through his poems.
+
+ It was the time when lilies blow
+ And clouds are highest up in air;
+ Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe
+ To give his cousin, Lady Clare.
+
+ I trow they did not part in scorn:
+ Lovers long-betroth'd were they:
+ They too will wed the morrow morn:
+ God's blessing on the day!
+
+ "He does not love me for my birth,
+ Nor for my lands so broad and fair;
+ He loves me for my own true worth,
+ And that is well," said Lady Clare.
+
+ In there came old Alice the nurse;
+ Said: "Who was this that went from thee?"
+ "It was my cousin," said Lady Clare;
+ "To-morrow he weds with me."
+
+ "O God be thank'd!" said Alice the nurse,
+ "That all comes round so just and fair:
+ Lord Ronald is heir of all your lands,
+ And you are not the Lady Clare."
+
+ "Are ye out of your mind, my nurse, my nurse,"
+ Said Lady Clare, "that ye speak so wild?"
+ "As God's above," said Alice the nurse,
+ "I speak the truth: you are my child.
+
+ "The old Earl's daughter died at my breast;
+ I speak the truth, as I live by bread!
+ I buried her like my own sweet child,
+ And put my child in her stead."
+
+ "Falsely, falsely have ye done,
+ O mother," she said, "if this be true,
+ To keep the best man under the sun
+ So many years from his due."
+
+ "Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse,
+ "But keep the secret for your life,
+ And all you have will be Lord Ronald's
+ When you are man and wife."
+
+ "If I'm a beggar born," she said,
+ "I will speak out, for I dare not lie.
+ Pull off, pull off the brooch of gold,
+ And fling the diamond necklace by."
+
+ "Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse,
+ "But keep the secret all ye can."
+ She said: "Not so: but I will know
+ If there be any faith in man."
+
+ "Nay now, what faith?" said Alice the nurse,
+ "The man will cleave unto his right,"
+ "And he shall have it," the lady replied,
+ "Tho' I should die to-night."
+
+ "Yet give one kiss to your mother dear!
+ Alas! my child, I sinn'd for thee."
+ "O mother, mother, mother," she said,
+ "So strange it seems to me.
+
+ "Yet here's a kiss for my mother dear,
+ My mother dear, if this be so,
+ And lay your hand upon my head,
+ And bless me, mother, ere I go."
+
+ She clad herself in a russet gown,
+ She was no longer Lady Clare:
+ She went by dale, and she went by down,
+ With a single rose in her hair.
+
+ The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought
+ Leapt up from where she lay,
+ Dropt her head in the maiden's hand,
+ And follow'd her all the way.
+
+ Down stept Lord Ronald from his tower:
+ "O Lady Clare, you shame your worth!
+ Why come you drest like a village maid,
+ That are the flower of the earth?"
+
+ "If I come drest like a village maid,
+ I am but as my fortunes are:
+ I am a beggar born," she said,
+ "And not the Lady Clare."
+
+ "Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald,
+ "For I am yours in word and in deed.
+ Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald,
+ "Your riddle is hard to read."
+
+ O and proudly stood she up!
+ Her heart within her did not fail:
+ She look'd into Lord Ronald's eyes,
+ And told him all her nurse's tale.
+
+ He laugh'd a laugh of merry scorn:
+ He turn'd and kiss'd her where she stood:
+ "If you are not the heiress born?
+ And I," said he, "the next in blood--
+
+ "If you are not the heiress born,
+ And I," said he, "the lawful heir,
+ We two will wed to-morrow morn,
+ And you shall still be Lady Clare."
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE LORD OF BURLEIGH.
+
+ In her ear he whispers gaily,
+ "If my heart by signs can tell,
+ Maiden, I have watched thee daily,
+ And I think thou lov'st me well."
+ She replies, in accents fainter,
+ "There is none I love like thee."
+ He is but a landscape-painter,
+ And a village maiden she.
+
+ He to lips, that fondly falter,
+ Presses his without reproof;
+ Leads her to the village altar,
+ And they leave her father's roof.
+
+ "I can make no marriage present;
+ Little can I give my wife.
+ Love will make our cottage pleasant,
+ And I love thee more than life."
+
+ They by parks and lodges going
+ See the lordly castles stand;
+ Summer woods, about them blowing,
+ Made a murmur in the land.
+
+ From deep thought himself he rouses,
+ Says to her that loves him well,
+ "Let us see these handsome houses
+ Where the wealthy nobles dwell."
+
+ So she goes by him attended,
+ Hears him lovingly converse,
+ Sees whatever fair and splendid
+ Lay betwixt his home and hers.
+
+ Parks with oak and chestnut shady,
+ Parks and order'd gardens great,
+ Ancient homes of lord and lady,
+ Built for pleasure and for state.
+
+ All he shows her makes him dearer;
+ Evermore she seems to gaze
+ On that cottage growing nearer,
+ Where they twain will spend their days.
+
+ O but she will love him truly!
+ He shall have a cheerful home;
+ She will order all things duly
+ When beneath his roof they come.
+
+ Thus her heart rejoices greatly
+ Till a gateway she discerns
+ With armorial bearings stately,
+ And beneath the gate she turns;
+ Sees a mansion more majestic
+ Than all those she saw before;
+ Many a gallant gay domestic
+ Bows before him at the door.
+
+ And they speak in gentle murmur
+ When they answer to his call,
+ While he treads with footstep firmer,
+ Leading on from hall to hall.
+
+ And while now she wanders blindly,
+ Nor the meaning can divine,
+ Proudly turns he round and kindly,
+ "All of this is mine and thine."
+
+ Here he lives in state and bounty,
+ Lord of Burleigh, fair and free.
+ Not a lord in all the county
+ Is so great a lord as he.
+ All at once the colour flushes
+ Her sweet face from brow to chin;
+ As it were with same she blushes,
+ And her spirit changed within.
+
+ Then her countenance all over
+ Pale again as death did prove:
+ But he clasp'd her like a lover,
+ And he cheer'd her soul with love.
+
+ So she strove against her weakness,
+ Tho' at times her spirits sank;
+ Shaped her heart with woman's meekness
+ To all duties of her rank;
+ And a gentle consort made he,
+ And her gentle mind was such
+ That she grew a noble lady,
+ And the people loved her much.
+ But a trouble weigh'd upon her
+ And perplex'd her, night and morn,
+ With the burden of an honour
+ Unto which she was not born.
+
+ Faint she grew and ever fainter.
+ As she murmur'd, "Oh, that he
+ Were once more that landscape-painter
+ Which did win my heart from me!"
+
+ So she droop'd and droop'd before him,
+ Fading slowly from his side;
+ Three fair children first she bore him,
+ Then before her time she died.
+
+ Weeping, weeping late and early,
+ Walking up and pacing down,
+ Deeply mourn'd the Lord of Burleigh,
+ Burleigh-house by Stamford-town.
+
+ And he came to look upon her,
+ And he look'd at her and said,
+ "Bring the dress and put it on her
+ That she wore when she was wed."
+
+ Then her people, softly treading,
+ Bore to earth her body, drest
+ In the dress that she was wed in,
+ That her spirit might have rest.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ HIAWATHA'S CHILDHOOD.
+
+"Hiawatha" needs no commendation. Hundreds of thousands of children in
+ our land know snatches of it It is a child's poem, every line of it.
+ One summer in Boston more than 50,000 people went to take a peep at the
+ poet's house. (1807-82.)
+
+ By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
+ By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
+ Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
+ Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
+ Dark behind it rose the forest,
+ Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
+ Rose the firs with cones upon them;
+ Bright before it beat the water,
+ Beat the clear and sunny water,
+ Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
+
+ There the wrinkled old Nokomis
+ Nursed the little Hiawatha,
+ Rocked him in his linden cradle,
+ Bedded soft in moss and rushes,
+ Safely bound with reindeer sinews;
+ Stilled his fretful wail by saying,
+ "Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!"
+ Lulled him into slumber, singing,
+ "Ewa-yea! my little owlet!
+ Who is this that lights the wigwam?
+ With his great eyes lights the wigwam?
+ Ewa-yea! my little owlet!"
+
+ Many things Nokomis taught him
+ Of the stars that shine in heaven;
+ Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet,
+ Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses;
+ Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits,
+ Warriors with their plumes and war-clubs,
+ Flaring far away to northward
+ In the frosty nights of winter;
+ Showed the broad, white road in heaven,
+ Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows,
+ Running straight across the heavens,
+ Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows.
+
+ At the door, on summer evenings,
+ Sat the little Hiawatha;
+ Heard the whispering of the pine-trees,
+ Heard the lapping of the water,
+ Sounds of music, words of wonder;
+ "Minnie-wawa!" said the pine-trees,
+ "Mudway-aushka!" said the water;
+ Saw the fire-fly, Wah-wah-taysee,
+ Flitting through the dusk of evening,
+ With the twinkle of its candle
+ Lighting up the brakes and bushes,
+ And he sang the song of children.
+ Sang the song Nokomis taught him:
+ "Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly,
+ Little, flitting, white-fire insect,
+ Little, dancing, white-fire creature,
+ Light me with your little candle,
+ Ere upon my bed I lay me,
+ Ere in sleep I close my eyelids!"
+
+ Saw the moon rise from the water
+ Rippling, rounding from the water,
+ Saw the flecks and shadows on it,
+ Whispered, "What is that, Nokomis?"
+ And the good Nokomis answered:
+ "Once a warrior, very angry,
+ Seized his grandmother, and threw her
+ Up into the sky at midnight;
+ Right against the moon he threw her;
+ 'Tis her body that you see there."
+
+ Saw the rainbow in the heaven,
+ In the eastern sky, the rainbow,
+ Whispered, "What is that, Nokomis?"
+ And the good Nokomis answered:
+ "Tis the heaven of flowers you see there;
+ All the wild-flowers of the forest,
+ All the lilies of the prairie,
+ When on earth they fade and perish,
+ Blossom in that heaven above us."
+
+ When he heard the owls at midnight,
+ Hooting, laughing in the forest,
+ "What is that?" he cried, in terror;
+ "What is that," he said, "Nokomis?"
+ And the good Nokomis answered:
+ "That is but the owl and owlet,
+ Talking in their native language,
+ Talking, scolding at each other."
+
+ Then the little Hiawatha
+ Learned of every bird its language,
+ Learned their names and all their secrets,
+ How they built their nests in summer,
+ Where they hid themselves in winter,
+ Talked with them whene'er he met them,
+ Called them "Hiawatha's Chickens."
+
+ Of all beasts he learned the language,
+ Learned their names and all their secrets,
+ How the beavers built their lodges,
+ Where the squirrels hid their acorns,
+ How the reindeer ran so swiftly,
+ Why the rabbit was so timid,
+ Talked with them whene'er he met them,
+ Called them "Hiawatha's Brothers."
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD.
+
+"The Daffodil" is here out of compliment to a splendid school and a
+ splendid teacher at Poughkeepsie. I found the pupils learning the poem,
+ the teacher having placed a bunch of daffodils in a vase before them.
+ It was a charming lesson. (1770-96.)
+
+ 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 stretched 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 a jocund company;
+ I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
+ What wealth the show to me 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.
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ JOHN BARLEYCORN.
+
+"John Barleycorn" is a favourite with boys because it pictures a
+ successful struggle. One editor has made a temperance poem of it,
+ mistaking its true intent. The poem is a strong expression of a
+ plow-man's love for a hardy, food-giving grain which has sprung to life
+ through his efforts. (1759-96.)
+
+ There were three kings into the East,
+ Three kings both great and high;
+ And they ha'e sworn a solemn oath
+ John Barleycorn should die.
+
+ They took a plow and plowed him down,
+ Put clods upon his head;
+ And they ha'e sworn a solemn oath
+ John Barleycorn was dead.
+
+ But the cheerful spring came kindly on,
+ And showers began to fall;
+ John Barleycorn got up again,
+ And sore surprised them all.
+
+ The sultry suns of summer came,
+ And he grew thick and strong;
+ His head well arm'd wi' pointed spears,
+ That no one should him wrong.
+
+ The sober autumn entered mild,
+ And he grew wan and pale;
+ His bending joints and drooping head
+ Showed he began to fail.
+
+ His colour sickened more and more,
+ He faded into age;
+ And then his enemies began
+ To show their deadly rage.
+
+ They took a weapon long and sharp,
+ And cut him by the knee,
+ Then tied him fast upon a cart,
+ Like a rogue for forgery.
+
+ They laid him down upon his back,
+ And cudgelled him full sore;
+ They hung him up before the storm,
+ And turn'd him o'er and o'er.
+
+ They filled up then a darksome pit
+ With water to the brim,
+ And heaved in poor John Barleycorn,
+ To let him sink or swim.
+
+ They laid him out upon the floor,
+ To work him further woe;
+ And still as signs of life appeared,
+ They tossed him to and fro.
+
+ They wasted o'er a scorching flame
+ The marrow of his bones;
+ But a miller used him worst of all--
+ He crushed him 'tween two stones.
+
+ And they have taken his very heart's blood,
+ And drunk it round and round;
+ And still the more and more they drank,
+ Their joy did more abound.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE.
+
+"A Life on the Ocean Wave," by Epes Sargent (1813-80), gives the swing
+ and motion of the water of the great ocean. Children remember it almost
+ unconsciously after hearing it read several times.
+
+ A life on the ocean wave,
+ A home on the rolling deep,
+ Where the scattered waters rave,
+ And the winds their revels keep!
+ Like an eagle caged, I pine
+ On this dull, unchanging shore:
+ Oh! give me the flashing brine,
+ The spray and the tempest's roar!
+
+ Once more on the deck I stand
+ Of my own swift-gliding craft:
+ Set sail! farewell to the land!
+ The gale follows fair abaft.
+ We shoot through the sparkling foam
+ Like an ocean-bird set free;--
+ Like the ocean-bird, our home
+ We'll find far out on the sea.
+
+ The land is no longer in view,
+ The clouds have begun to frown;
+ But with a stout vessel and crew,
+ We'll say, Let the storm come down!
+ And the song of our hearts shall be,
+ While the winds and the waters rave,
+ A home on the rolling sea!
+ A life on the ocean wave!
+
+ EPES SARGENT.
+
+
+ THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR.
+
+ It is customary, every New Year's eve in America, to ring bells, fire
+ guns, send up rockets, and, in many other ways, to show joy and
+ gratitude that the old year has been so kind, and that the new year is
+ so auspicious. The emphasis in Tennyson's poem is laid on gratitude for
+ past benefits so easily forgotten rather than upon the possible
+ advantages of the unknown and untried future.
+
+ Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
+ And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
+ Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,
+ And tread softly and speak low,
+ For the old year lies a-dying.
+ Old year, you must not die;
+ You came to us so readily,
+ You lived with us so steadily,
+ Old year, you shall not die.
+
+ He lieth still: he doth not move:
+ He will not see the dawn of day.
+ He hath no other life above.
+ He gave me a friend, and a true true-love,
+ And the New-year will take 'em away.
+ Old year, you must not go;
+ So long as you have been with us,
+ Such joy as you have seen with us,
+ Old year, you shall not go.
+
+ He froth'd his bumpers to the brim;
+ A jollier year we shall not see.
+ But tho' his eyes are waxing dim,
+ And tho' his foes speak ill of him,
+ He was a friend to me.
+ Old year, you shall not die;
+ We did so laugh and cry with you,
+ I've half a mind to die with you,
+ Old year, if you must die.
+
+ He was full of joke and jest,
+ But all his merry quips are o'er.
+ To see him die, across the waste
+ His son and heir doth ride post-haste,
+ But he'll be dead before.
+ Every one for his own.
+ The night is starry and cold, my friend,
+ And the New-year blithe and bold, my friend,
+ Comes up to take his own.
+
+ How hard he breathes! over the snow
+ I heard just now the crowing cock.
+ The shadows flicker to and fro:
+ The cricket chirps: the light burns low:
+ 'Tis nearly twelve o'clock.
+ Shake hands, before you die.
+ Old year, we'll dearly rue for you:
+ What is it we can do for you?
+ Speak out before you die.
+
+ His face is growing sharp and thin.
+ Alack! our friend is gone.
+ Close up his eyes: tie up his chin:
+ Step from the corpse, and let him in
+ That standeth there alone,
+ And waiteth at the door.
+ There's a new foot on the floor, my friend,
+ And a new face at the door, my friend,
+ A new face at the door.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ ABOU BEN ADHEM.
+
+"Abou Ben Adhem" has won its way to the popular heart because the
+"Brotherhood of Man" is the motto of this age. (1784-1859.)
+
+ Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
+ Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
+ And saw within the moonlight in 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 of all sweet accord,
+ Answered, "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 cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
+ Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
+
+ The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
+ It came again, with a great wakening light,
+ And showed the names whom love of God had blessed;
+ And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.
+
+ LEIGH HUNT.
+
+
+ FARM-YARD SONG.
+
+"A Farm-Yard Song" was popular years ago with Burbank, the great
+ reader. How the boys and girls loved it! The author, J.T. Trowbridge
+ (1827-still living), "is a boy-hearted man," says John Burroughs. The
+ poem is just as popular as it ever was.
+
+ Over the hill the farm-boy goes,
+ His shadow lengthens along the land,
+ A giant staff in a giant hand;
+ In the poplar-tree, above the spring,
+ The katydid begins to sing;
+ The early dews are falling;--
+ Into the stone-heap darts the mink;
+ The swallows skim the river's brink;
+ And home to the woodland fly the crows,
+ When over the hill the farm-boy goes,
+ Cheerily calling,--
+ "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'! co'!"
+ Farther, farther over the hill,
+ Faintly calling, calling still,--
+ "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'!"
+
+ Into the yard the farmer goes,
+ With grateful heart, at the close of day;
+ Harness and chain are hung away;
+ In the wagon-shed stand yoke and plow;
+ The straw's in the stack, the hay in the mow;
+ The cooling dews are falling;--
+ The friendly sheep his welcome bleat,
+ The pigs come grunting to his feet,
+ The whinnying mare her master knows,
+ When into the yard the farmer goes,
+ His cattle calling,--
+ "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'! co'!"
+ While still the cow-boy, far away,
+ Goes seeking those that have gone astray,--
+ "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'!"
+
+ Now to her task the milkmaid goes.
+ The cattle come crowding through the gate,
+ Lowing, pushing, little and great;
+ About the trough, by the farm-yard pump,
+ The frolicsome yearlings frisk and jump,
+ While the pleasant dews are falling;--
+ The new-milch heifer is quick and shy,
+ But the old cow waits with tranquil eye;
+ And the white stream into the bright pail flows,
+ When to her task the milkmaid goes,
+ Soothingly calling,--
+ "So, boss! so, boss! so! so! so!"
+ The cheerful milkmaid takes her stool,
+ And sits and milks in the twilight cool,
+ Saying, "So! so, boss! so! so!"
+
+ To supper at last the farmer goes.
+ The apples are pared, the paper read,
+ The stories are told, then all to bed.
+ Without, the crickets' ceaseless song
+ Makes shrill the silence all night long;
+ The heavy dews are falling.
+ The housewife's hand has turned the lock;
+ Drowsily ticks the kitchen clock;
+ The household sinks to deep repose;
+ But still in sleep the farm-boy goes.
+ Singing, calling,--
+ "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'! co'!"
+ And oft the milkmaid, in her dreams,
+ Drums in the pail with the flashing streams,
+ Murmuring, "So, boss! so!"
+
+ J.T. TROWBRIDGE.
+
+
+ TO A MOUSE,
+
+ ON TURNING UP HER NEST WITH THE PLOW, NOVEMBER, 1785
+
+"To a Mouse" and "To a Mountain Daisy," by Robert Burns (1759-96), are
+ the ineffable touches of tenderness that illumine the sturdy plowman.
+ The contrast between the strong man and the delicate flower or creature
+ at his mercy makes tenderness in man a vital point in character.
+
+ The lines "To a Mouse" seem by report to have been composed while Burns
+ was actually plowing. One of the poet's first editors wrote: "John
+ Blane, who had acted as gaudsman to Burns, and who lived sixty years
+ afterward, had a distinct recollection of the turning up of the mouse.
+ Like a thoughtless youth as he was, he ran after the creature to kill
+ it, but was checked and recalled by his master, who he observed became
+ thereafter thoughtful and abstracted. Burns, who treated his servants
+ with the familiarity of fellow-labourers, soon afterward read the poem
+ to Blane."
+
+ Wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie,
+ Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie!
+ Thou needna start awa' sae hasty,
+ Wi' bickering brattle!
+ I wad be laith to rin and chase thee,
+ Wi' murd'ring pattle!
+
+ I'm truly sorry man's dominion
+ Has broken Nature's social union,
+ And justifies that ill opinion,
+ Which makes thee startle
+ At me, thy poor earth-born companion
+ And fellow-mortal!
+
+ I doubtna, whiles, but thou may thieve;
+ What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
+ A daimen icker in a thrave
+ 'S a sma' request:
+ I'll get a blessin' wi' the lave,
+ And never miss 't!
+
+ Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
+ Its silly wa's the win's are strewin'!
+ And naething now to big a new ane
+ O' foggage green,
+ And bleak December's winds ensuin',
+ Baith snell and keen!
+
+ Thou saw the fields laid bare and waste,
+ And weary winter comin' fast,
+ And cozie here, beneath the blast,
+ Thou thought to dwell,
+ Till, crash! the cruel coulter passed
+ Out through thy cell.
+
+ That wee bit heap o' leaves and stibble
+ Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
+ Now thou's turned out for a' thy trouble,
+ But house or hald,
+ To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
+ And cranreuch cauld!
+
+ But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
+ In proving foresight may be vain:
+ The best-laid schemes o' mice and men
+ Gang aft a-gley,
+ And lea'e us naught but grief and pain,
+ For promised joy.
+
+ Still thou art blest, compared wi' me!
+ The present only toucheth thee:
+ But, och! I backward cast my e'e
+ On prospects drear!
+ And forward, though I canna see,
+ I guess and fear.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY,
+
+ ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOW IN APRIL, 1786
+
+ Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower,
+ Thou's met me in an evil hour;
+ For I maun crush amang the stoure
+ Thy slender stem:
+ To spare thee now is past my power,
+ Thou bonny gem.
+
+ Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet,
+ The bonny lark, companion meet,
+ Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet,
+ Wi' speckled breast,
+ When upward-springing, blithe, to greet
+ The purpling east!
+
+ Cauld blew the bitter biting north
+ Upon thy early, humble birth;
+ Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
+ Amid the storm,
+ Scarce reared above the parent earth
+ Thy tender form.
+
+ The flaunting flowers our gardens yield,
+ High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield,
+ But thou, beneath the random bield
+ O' clod or stane,
+ Adorns the histie stibble-field,
+ Unseen, alane.
+
+ There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
+ Thy snawie bosom sunward spread,
+ Thou lifts thy unassuming head
+ In humble guise;
+ But now the share uptears thy bed,
+ And low thou lies!
+
+ Such is the fate of artless maid,
+ Sweet floweret of the rural shade!
+ By love's simplicity betrayed,
+ And guileless trust,
+ Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid
+ Low i' the dust.
+
+ Such is the fate of simple bard,
+ On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd!
+ Unskilful he to note the card
+ Of prudent lore,
+ Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,
+ And whelm him o'er!
+
+ Such fate to suffering worth is given,
+ Who long with wants and woes has striven,
+ By human pride or cunning driven
+ To misery's brink,
+ Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven,
+ He, ruined, sink!
+
+ Even thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate,
+ That fate is thine--no distant date;
+ Stern Ruin's plowshare drives, elate,
+ Full on thy bloom,
+ Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight
+ Shall be thy doom.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ BARBARA FRIETCHIE.
+
+"Barbara Frietchie" will be beloved of all times because she was an old
+ woman (not necessarily an old lady) _worthy of her years_. Old age is
+ honourable if it carries a head that has a halo. (1807-92.)
+
+ Up from the meadows rich with corn,
+ Clear in the cool September morn,
+
+ The clustered spires of Frederick stand
+ Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
+
+ Roundabout them orchards sweep,
+ Apple and peach tree fruited deep,
+
+ Fair as the garden of the Lord
+ To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,
+
+ On that pleasant morn of the early fall
+ When Lee marched over the mountain-wall,
+
+ Over the mountains winding down,
+ Horse and foot, into Frederick town.
+
+ Forty flags with their silver stars,
+ Forty flags with their crimson bars,
+
+ Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
+ Of noon looked down, and saw not one.
+
+ Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
+ Bowed with her fourscore years and ten,
+
+ Bravest of all in Frederick town,
+ She took up the flag the men hauled down.
+
+ In her attic window the staff she set,
+ To show that one heart was loyal yet.
+
+ Up the street came the rebel tread,
+ Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
+
+ Under his slouched hat left and right
+ He glanced: the old flag met his sight.
+
+ "Halt!"--the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
+ "Fire!"--out blazed the rifle-blast.
+
+ It shivered the window, pane and sash;
+ It rent the banner with seam and gash.
+
+ Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
+ Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.
+
+ She leaned far out on the window-sill,
+ And shook it forth with a royal will.
+
+ "Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
+ But spare your country's flag," she said.
+
+ A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
+ Over the face of the leader came;
+
+ The nobler nature within him stirred
+ To life at that woman's deed and word:
+
+ "Who touches a hair of yon gray head
+ Dies like a dog! March on!" he said.
+
+ All day long through Frederick street
+ Sounded the tread of marching feet:
+
+ All day long that free flag tost
+ Over the heads of the rebel host.
+
+ Even its torn folds rose and fell
+ On the loyal winds that loved it well;
+
+ And through the hill-gaps sunset light
+ Shone over it with a warm good-night.
+
+ Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er,
+ And the rebel rides on his raids no more.
+
+ Honour to her! and let a tear
+ Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.
+
+ Over Barbara Frietchie's grave,
+ Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!
+
+ Peace and order and beauty draw
+ Round thy symbol of light and law;
+
+ And ever the stars above look down
+ On thy stars below in Frederick town!
+
+ JOHN G. WHITTIER.
+
+
+
+
+ PART III.
+
+ The Day's at the Morn
+
+
+ LOCHINVAR.
+
+"Lochinvar" and "Lord Ullin's Daughter," the first by Scott (1771-1832)
+ and the second by Campbell (1777-1844), are companions in sentiment and
+ equally popular with boys who love to win anything desirable by heroic
+ effort.
+
+ Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west.
+ Through all the wide Border his steed was the best,
+ And save his good broadsword he weapons had none;
+ He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone.
+ So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
+ There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.
+
+ He stayed not for brake, and he stopped not for stone,
+ He swam the Eske River where ford there was none;
+ But ere he alighted at Netherby gate
+ The bride had consented, the gallant came late:
+ For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war
+ Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.
+
+ So boldly he entered the Netherby Hall,
+ Among bridesmen and kinsmen and brothers and all:
+ Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword
+ (For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word),
+ "Oh, come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,
+ Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?"
+
+ "I long woo'd your daughter, my suit you denied;--
+ Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide--
+ And now am I come, with this lost love of mine,
+ To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.
+ There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,
+ That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar."
+
+ The bride kissed the goblet; the knight took it up;
+ He quaffed of the wine, and he threw down the cup.
+ She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh,
+ With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.
+ He took her soft hand ere her mother could bar,--
+ "Now tread we a measure!" said young Lochinvar.
+
+ So stately his form, and so lovely her face,
+ That never a hall such a galliard did grace;
+ While her mother did fret, and her father did fume,
+ And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume,
+ And the bridemaidens whispered, "'Twere better by far
+ To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar."
+
+ One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
+ When they reached the hall door, and the charger stood near;
+ So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,
+ So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
+ "She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;
+ They'll have fleet steeds that follow," quoth young Lochinvar.
+
+ There was mounting 'mong Graemes of the Netherby clan;
+ Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran:
+ There was racing and chasing, on Cannobie Lee,
+ But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see.
+ So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
+ Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?
+
+ SIR WALTER SCOTT.
+
+
+ LORD ULLIN'S DAUGHTER.
+
+ A chieftain, to the Highlands bound,
+ Cries, "Boatman, do not tarry!
+ And I'll give thee a silver pound,
+ To row us o'er the ferry."
+
+ "Now who be ye, would cross Lochgyle,
+ This dark and stormy water?"
+ "O, I'm the chief of Ulva's isle,
+ And this Lord Ullin's daughter.
+
+ "And fast before her father's men
+ Three days we've fled together,
+ For should he find us in the glen,
+ My blood would stain the heather.
+
+ "His horsemen hard behind us ride;
+ Should they our steps discover,
+ Then who will cheer my bonny bride
+ When they have slain her lover?"
+
+ Outspoke the hardy Highland wight,
+ "I'll go, my chief--I'm ready;
+ It is not for your silver bright,
+ But for your winsome lady:
+
+ "And by my word! the bonny bird
+ In danger shall not tarry;
+ So though the waves are raging white,
+ I'll row you o'er the ferry."
+
+ By this the storm grew loud apace,
+ The water-wraith was shrieking;
+ And in the scowl of heaven each face
+ Grew dark as they were speaking.
+
+ But still as wilder blew the wind,
+ And as the night grew drearer,
+ Adown the glen rode armed men,
+ Their trampling sounded nearer.
+
+ "O haste thee, haste!" the lady cries,
+ "Though tempests round us gather;
+ I'll meet the raging of the skies,
+ But not an angry father."
+
+ The boat has left a stormy land,
+ A stormy sea before her,--
+ When, oh! too strong for human hand,
+ The tempest gathered o'er her.
+
+ And still they row'd amid the roar
+ Of waters fast prevailing:
+ Lord Ullin reach'd that fatal shore,
+ His wrath was changed to wailing.
+
+ For sore dismay'd through storm and shade,
+ His child he did discover:--
+ One lovely hand she stretch'd for aid,
+ And one was round her lover.
+
+ "Come back! come back!" he cried in grief,
+ "Across this stormy water:
+ And I'll forgive your Highland chief,
+ My daughter!--oh my daughter!"
+
+ 'Twas vain the loud waves lashed the shore,
+ Return or aid preventing;--
+ The waters wild went o'er his child,--
+ And he was left lamenting.
+
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL.
+
+
+ THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE.
+
+"The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1809-92) unlike "Casabianca" shows
+ obedience under stern necessity. Obedience is the salvation of any
+ army. John Burroughs says: "I never hear that poem but what it thrills
+ me through and through."
+
+ Half a league, half a league,
+ Half a league onward,
+ All in the valley of Death
+ Rode the six hundred.
+ "Forward, the Light Brigade!
+ Charge for the guns!" he said:
+ Into the valley of Death
+ Rode the six hundred.
+
+ "Forward, the Light Brigade!"
+ Was there a man dismay'd?
+ Not tho' the soldier knew
+ Some one had blunder'd:
+ Theirs not to make reply,
+ Theirs not to reason why.
+ Theirs but to do and die:
+ Into the valley of Death
+ Rode the six hundred.
+
+ Cannon to right of them,
+ Cannon to left of them,
+ Cannon in front of them
+ Volley'd and thunder'd;
+ Storm'd at with shot and shell
+ Boldly they rode and well,
+ Into the jaws of Death,
+ Into the mouth of Hell
+ Rode the six hundred.
+
+ Flash'd all their sabers bare,
+ Flash'd as they turn'd in air
+ Sab'ring the gunners there,
+ Charging an army, while
+ All the world wonder'd:
+ Plunged in the battery-smoke
+ Right thro' the line they broke;
+ Cossack and Russian
+ Reel'd from the saber-stroke
+ Shatter'd and sunder'd.
+ Then they rode back, but not
+ Not the six hundred.
+
+ Cannon to right of them,
+ Cannon to left of them,
+ Cannon behind them
+ Volleyed and thundered:
+ Stormed at with shot and shell,
+ While horse and hero fell,
+ They that had fought so well
+ Came through the jaws of death
+ Back from the mouth of hell,
+ All that was left of them--
+ Left of six hundred.
+
+ When can their glory fade?
+ Oh, the wild charge they made!
+ All the world wondered.
+ Honour the charge they made!
+ Honour the Light Brigade--
+ Noble six hundred!
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE TOURNAMENT.
+
+ There are several of Sidney Lanier's (1842-81) poems that children love
+ to learn. "Tampa Robins," "The Tournament" (Joust 1.), "Barnacles,"
+"The Song of the Chattahoochee," and "The First Steamboat Up the
+ Alabama" are among them. At our "poetry contests" the children have
+ plainly demonstrated that this great poet has reached his hand down to
+ the youngest. The time will doubtless come when it will be a part of
+ education to be acquainted with Lanier, as it is now to be acquainted
+ with Longfellow or Tennyson.
+
+
+ I.
+
+ Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies,
+ And the knights still hurried amain
+ To the tournament under the ladies' eyes,
+ Where the jousters were Heart and Brain.
+
+
+ II.
+
+ Flourished the trumpets, entered Heart,
+ A youth in crimson and gold;
+ Flourished again; Brain stood apart,
+ Steel-armoured, dark and cold.
+
+
+ III.
+
+ Heart's palfrey caracoled gaily round,
+ Heart tra-li-ra'd merrily;
+ But Brain sat still, with never a sound,
+ So cynical-calm was he.
+
+
+ IV.
+
+ Heart's helmet-crest bore favours three
+ From his lady's white hand caught;
+ While Brain wore a plumeless casque; not he
+ Or favour gave or sought.
+
+
+ V.
+
+ The trumpet blew; Heart shot a glance
+ To catch his lady's eye.
+ But Brain gazed straight ahead, his lance
+ To aim more faithfully.
+
+
+ VI.
+
+ They charged, they struck; both fell, both bled;
+ Brain rose again, ungloved;
+ Heart, dying, smiled and faintly said,
+ "My love to my beloved."
+
+ SIDNEY LANIER.
+
+
+ THE WIND AND THE MOON.
+
+ Little Laddie, do you remember learning "The Wind and the Moon"? You
+ were eight or nine years old, and you shut your eyes and puffed out
+ your cheeks when you came to the line "He blew and He blew." The saucy
+ wind made a great racket and the calm moon never noticed it. That gave
+ you a great deal of pleasure, didn't it? We did not care much for the
+ noisy, conceited wind. (1824-.)
+
+ Said the Wind to the Moon, "I will blow you out,
+ You stare
+ In the air
+ Like a ghost in a chair,
+ Always looking what I am about--
+ I hate to be watched; I'll blow you out."
+
+ The Wind blew hard, and out went the Moon.
+ So, deep
+ On a heap
+ Of clouds to sleep,
+ Down lay the Wind, and slumbered soon,
+ Muttering low, "I've done for that Moon."
+
+ He turned in his bed; she was there again!
+ On high
+ In the sky,
+ With her one ghost eye,
+ The Moon shone white and alive and plain.
+ Said the Wind, "I will blow you out again."
+
+ The Wind blew hard, and the Moon grew dim.
+ "With my sledge,
+ And my wedge,
+ I have knocked off her edge!
+ If only I blow right fierce and grim,
+ The creature will soon be dimmer than dim."
+
+ He blew and he blew, and she thinned to a thread.
+ "One puff
+ More's enough
+ To blow her to snuff!
+ One good puff more where the last was bred,
+ And glimmer, glimmer, glum will go the thread."
+
+ He blew a great blast, and the thread was gone
+ In the air
+ Nowhere
+ Was a moonbeam bare;
+ Far off and harmless the shy stars shone--
+ Sure and certain the Moon was gone!
+
+ The Wind he took to his revels once more;
+ On down,
+ In town,
+ Like a merry-mad clown,
+ He leaped and hallooed with whistle and roar--
+ "What's that?" The glimmering thread once more!
+
+ He flew in a rage--he danced and blew;
+ But in vain
+ Was the pain
+ Of his bursting brain;
+ For still the broader the Moon-scrap grew,
+ The broader he swelled his big cheeks and blew.
+
+ Slowly she grew--till she filled the night,
+ And shone
+ On her throne
+ In the sky alone,
+ A matchless, wonderful silvery light,
+ Radiant and lovely, the queen of the night.
+
+ Said the Wind: "What a marvel of power am I
+ With my breath,
+ Good faith!
+ I blew her to death--
+ First blew her away right out of the sky--
+ Then blew her in; what strength have I!"
+
+ But the Moon she knew nothing about the affair;
+ For high
+ In the sky,
+ With her one white eye,
+ Motionless, miles above the air,
+ She had never heard the great Wind blare.
+
+ GEORGE MACDONALD.
+
+
+ JESUS THE CARPENTER.
+
+"Jesus the Carpenter"--"same trade as me"--strikes a high note in
+ favour of honest toil. (1848-.)
+
+ "Isn't this Joseph's son?"--ay, it is He;
+ Joseph the carpenter--same trade as me--
+ I thought as I'd find it--I knew it was here--
+ But my sight's getting queer.
+
+ I don't know right where as His shed must ha' stood--
+ But often, as I've been a-planing my wood,
+ I've took off my hat, just with thinking of He
+ At the same work as me.
+
+ He warn't that set up that He couldn't stoop down
+ And work in the country for folks in the town;
+ And I'll warrant He felt a bit pride, like I've done,
+ At a good job begun.
+
+ The parson he knows that I'll not make too free,
+ But on Sunday I feels as pleased as can be,
+ When I wears my clean smock, and sits in a pew,
+ And has taught a few.
+
+ I think of as how not the parson hissen,
+ As is teacher and father and shepherd o' men,
+ Not he knows as much of the Lord in that shed,
+ Where He earned His own bread.
+
+ And when I goes home to my missus, says she,
+ "Are ye wanting your key?"
+ For she knows my queer ways, and my love for the shed
+ (We've been forty years wed).
+
+ So I comes right away by mysen, with the book,
+ And I turns the old pages and has a good look
+ For the text as I've found, as tells me as He
+ Were the same trade as me.
+
+ Why don't I mark it? Ah, many say so,
+ But I think I'd as lief, with your leaves, let it go:
+ It do seem that nice when I fall on it sudden--
+ Unexpected, you know!
+
+ CATHERINE C. LIDDELL.
+
+
+ LETTY'S GLOBE.
+
+"Letty's Globe" gives us the picture of a little golden-haired girl who
+ covers all Europe with her dainty hands and tresses while giving a kiss
+ to England, her own dear native land. (1808-79.)
+
+ When Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year,
+ And her young, artless words began to flow,
+ One day we gave the child a colour'd sphere
+ Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,
+ By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
+ She patted all the world; old empires peep'd
+ Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
+ Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap'd,
+ And laugh'd and prattled in her world-wide bliss!
+ But when we turn'd her sweet unlearned eye
+ On our own isle, she rais'd a joyous cry,
+ "Oh! yes, I see it! Letty's home is there!"
+ And, while she hid all England with a kiss,
+ Bright over Europe fell her golden hair!
+
+ CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER.
+
+
+ A DREAM.
+
+ Once a dream did wave a shade
+ O'er my angel-guarded bed,
+ That an emmet lost its way
+ When on grass methought I lay.
+
+ Troubled, 'wildered, and forlorn,
+ Dark, benighted, travel-worn,
+ Over many a tangled spray,
+ All heart-broke, I heard her say:
+
+ "Oh, my children! do they cry?
+ Do they hear their father sigh?
+ Now they look abroad to see.
+ Now return and weep for me."
+
+ Pitying, I dropped a tear;
+ But I saw a glow-worm near,
+ Who replied, "What wailing wight
+ Calls the watchman of the night?
+
+ "I am set to light the ground
+ While the beetle goes his round.
+ Follow now the beetle's hum--
+ Little wanderer, hie thee home!"
+
+ WILLIAM BLAKE.
+
+
+ HEAVEN IS NOT REACHED AT A SINGLE BOUND.
+
+ (A FRAGMENT.)
+
+"We build the ladder by which we climb" is a line worthy of any poet.
+ J.G. Holland (1819-81) has immortalised himself in this line, at least.
+
+ Heaven is not reached at a single bound,
+ But we build the ladder by which we rise
+ From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
+ And we mount to its summit round by round.
+
+ I count this thing to be grandly true:
+ That a noble deed is a step toward God,--
+ Lifting the soul from the common clod
+ To a purer air and a broader view.
+
+ J.G. HOLLAND.
+
+
+ THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM.
+
+ Have you been to Woodstock, near Oxford, England? If so, you have seen
+ the palace of the Duke of Marlborough, who won the battle of Blenheim.
+ The main point of the poem is the doubtful honour in killing in our
+ great wars. Southey, the poet, lived from 1774 to 1843.
+
+ It was a summer's evening,
+ Old Kaspar's work was done,
+ And he before his cottage door
+ Was sitting in the sun;
+ And by him sported on the green
+ His little grandchild Wilhelmine.
+
+ She saw her brother Peterkin
+ Roll something large and round,
+ Which he, beside the rivulet,
+ In playing there, had found.
+ He came to ask what he had found,
+ That was so large, and smooth, and round.
+
+ Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
+ Who stood expectant by;
+ And then the old man shook his head,
+ And, with a natural sigh,
+ "'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he,
+ "Who fell in the great victory!
+
+ "I find them in the garden,
+ For there's many hereabout;
+ And often when I go to plow,
+ The plowshare turns them out;
+ For many thousand men," said he,
+ "Were slain in that great victory!"
+
+ "Now tell us what 'twas all about,"
+ Young Peterkin he cries;
+ And little Wilhelmine looks up
+ With wonder-waiting eyes;
+ "Now tell us all about the war,
+ And what they killed each other for."
+
+ "It was the English," Kaspar cried,
+ "Who put the French to rout;
+ But what they killed each other for
+ I could not well make out.
+ But everybody said," quoth he,
+ "That 'twas a famous victory!
+
+ "My father lived at Blenheim then,
+ Yon little stream hard by:
+ They burned his dwelling to the ground
+ And he was forced to fly;
+ So with his wife and child he fled,
+ Nor had he where to rest his head.
+
+ "With fire and sword the country round
+ Was wasted far and wide;
+ And many a childing mother then
+ And new-born baby died.
+ But things like that, you know, must be
+ At every famous victory.
+
+ "They say it was a shocking sight
+ After the field was won;
+ For many thousand bodies here
+ Lay rotting in the sun.
+ But things like that, you know, must be
+ After a famous victory.
+
+ "Great praise the Duke of Marlborough won,
+ And our good Prince Eugene."
+ "Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!"
+ Said little Wilhelmine.
+ "Nay, nay, my little girl," quoth he,
+ "It was a famous victory!
+
+ "And everybody praised the Duke
+ Who this great fight did win."
+ "But what good came of it at last?"
+ Quoth little Peterkin.
+ "Why, that I cannot tell," said he,
+ "But 'twas a famous victory."
+
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY.
+
+
+ FIDELITY.
+
+"Fidelity," by William Wordsworth (1770-1850), is placed here out of
+ respect to a boy of eleven years who liked the poem well enough to
+ recite it frequently. The scene is laid on Helvellyn, to me the most
+ impressive mountain of the Lake District of England. Wordsworth is a
+ part of this country. I once heard John Burroughs say: "I went to the
+ Lake District to see what kind of a country it could be that would
+ produce a Wordsworth."
+
+ A barking sound the Shepherd hears,
+ A cry as of a dog or fox;
+ He halts--and searches with his eyes
+ Among the scattered rocks;
+ And now at distance can discern
+ A stirring in a brake of fern;
+ And instantly a Dog is seen,
+ Glancing through that covert green.
+
+ The Dog is not of mountain breed;
+ Its motions, too, are wild and shy;
+ With something, as the Shepherd thinks,
+ Unusual in its cry:
+ Nor is there any one in sight
+ All round, in hollow or on height;
+ Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear;
+ What is the Creature doing here?
+
+ It was a cove, a huge recess,
+ That keeps, till June, December's snow.
+ A lofty precipice in front,
+ A silent tarn below!
+ Far in the bosom of Helvellyn,
+ Remote from public road or dwelling,
+ Pathway, or cultivated land;
+ From trace of human foot or hand.
+
+ There sometimes doth a leaping fish
+ Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
+ The crags repeat the raven's croak,
+ In symphony austere;
+ Thither the rainbow comes--the cloud--
+ And mists that spread the flying shroud;
+ And sunbeams; and the sounding blast,
+ That, if it could, would hurry past,
+ But that enormous barrier binds it fast.
+
+ Not free from boding thoughts, a while
+ The Shepherd stood: then makes his way
+ Toward the Dog, o'er rocks and stones,
+ As quickly as he may;
+ Nor far had gone, before he found
+ A human skeleton on the ground;
+ The appalled discoverer with a sigh
+ Looks round, to learn the history.
+
+ From those abrupt and perilous rocks
+ The Man had fallen, that place of fear!
+ At length upon the Shepherd's mind
+ It breaks, and all is clear:
+ He instantly recalled the name,
+ And who he was, and whence he came;
+ Remembered, too, the very day
+ On which the traveller passed this way.
+
+ But hear a wonder, for whose sake
+ This lamentable tale I tell!
+ A lasting monument of words
+ This wonder merits well.
+ The Dog, which still was hovering nigh,
+ Repeating the same timid cry,
+ This Dog had been through three months space
+ A dweller in that savage place.
+
+ Yes, proof was plain that, since the day
+ When this ill-fated traveller died,
+ The Dog had watched about the spot,
+ Or by his master's side:
+ How nourished here through such long time
+ He knows, who gave that love sublime;
+ And gave that strength of feeling, great
+ Above all human estimate.
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.
+
+ People are more and more coming to recognise the fact that each
+ individual soul has a right to its own stages of development. "The
+ Chambered Nautilus" is for that reason beloved of the masses. It is one
+ of the grandest poems ever written. "Build thee more stately mansions,
+ O my soul!" This line alone would make the poem immortal. (1809-94.)
+
+ This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
+ Sailed the unshadowed main,--
+ The venturous 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!
+
+ OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
+
+
+ CROSSING THE BAR
+
+ Tennyson's (1809-92) "Crossing the Bar" is one of the noblest
+ death-songs ever written. I include it in this volume out of respect to
+ a young Philadelphia publisher who recited it one stormy night before
+ the passengers of a ship when I was crossing the Atlantic, and also
+ because so many young people have the good taste to love it. It has
+ been said that next to Browning's "Prospice" it is the greatest
+ death-song ever written.
+
+ Sunset and evening star,
+ And one clear call for me!
+ And may there be no moaning of the bar,
+ When I put out to sea,
+
+ But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
+ Too full for sound and foam,
+ When that which drew from out the boundless deep
+ Turns again home.
+
+ Twilight and evening bell,
+ And after that the dark!
+ And may there be no sadness of farewell,
+ When I embark;
+
+ For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
+ The flood may bear me far,
+ I hope to see my Pilot face to face
+ When I have cross'd the bar.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE OVERLAND-MAIL.
+
+"The Overland-Mail" is a most desirable poem for children to learn.
+ When one boy learns it the others want to follow. It takes as a hero
+ the man who gives common service--the one who does not lead or command,
+ but follows the line of duty. (1865-.)
+
+ In the name of the Empress of India, make way,
+ O Lords of the Jungle wherever you roam,
+ The woods are astir at the close of the day--
+ We exiles are waiting for letters from Home--
+ Let the robber retreat; let the tiger turn tail,
+ In the name of the Empress the Overland-Mail!
+
+ With a jingle of bells as the dusk gathers in,
+ He turns to the foot-path that leads up the hill--
+ The bags on his back, and a cloth round his chin,
+ And, tucked in his belt, the Post-Office bill;--
+ "Despatched on this date, as received by the rail,
+ _Per_ runner, two bags of the Overland-Mail."
+
+ Is the torrent in spate? He must ford it or swim.
+ Has the rain wrecked the road? He must climb by the cliff.
+ Does the tempest cry "Halt"? What are tempests to him?
+ The service admits not a "but" or an "if";
+ While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail,
+ In the name of the Empress the Overland-Mail.
+
+ From aloe to rose-oak, from rose-oak to fir,
+ From level to upland, from upland to crest,
+ From rice-field to rock-ridge, from rock-ridge to spur,
+ Fly the soft-sandalled feet, strains the brawny brown chest.
+ From rail to ravine--to the peak from the vale--
+ Up, up through the night goes the Overland-Mail.
+
+ There's a speck on the hillside, a dot on the road--
+ A jingle of bells on the foot-path below--
+ There's a scuffle above in the monkeys' abode--
+ The world is awake, and the clouds are aglow--
+ For the great Sun himself must attend to the hail;--
+ In the name of the Empress the Overland-Mail.
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+
+ GATHERING SONG OF DONALD DHU.
+
+ Jon, do you remember when you used to spout "Pibroch of Donald Dhu"? I
+ think you were ten years old. Sir Walter Scott's men all have a genius
+ for standing up to their guns, and boys gather up the man's genius when
+ reciting his verse. (1771-1832.)
+
+ Pibroch of Donuil Dhu,
+ Pibroch of Donuil,
+ Wake thy wild voice anew,
+ Summon Clan Conuil.
+ Come away, come away,
+ Hark to the summons!
+ Come in your war-array,
+ Gentles and commons.
+
+ Come from deep glen, and
+ From mountain so rocky,
+ The war-pipe and pennon
+ Are at Inverlochy.
+ Come every hill-plaid, and
+ True heart that wears one,
+ Come every steel blade, and
+ Strong hand that bears one.
+
+ Leave untended the herd,
+ The flock without shelter;
+ Leave the corpse uninterr'd,
+ The bride at the altar;
+ Leave the deer, leave the steer,
+ Leave nets and barges:
+ Come with your fighting gear,
+ Broadswords and targes.
+
+ Come as the winds come, when
+ Forests are rended;
+ Come as the waves come, when
+ Navies are stranded:
+ Faster come, faster come,
+ Faster and faster,
+ Chief, vassal, page, and groom,
+ Tenant and master.
+
+ Fast they come, fast they come;
+ See how they gather!
+ Wide waves the eagle plume
+ Blended with heather,
+ Cast your plaids, draw your blades,
+ Forward each man set!
+ Pibroch of Donuil Dhu
+ Knell for the onset!
+
+ SIR WALTER SCOTT.
+
+
+ MARCO BOZZARIS.
+
+"Marco Bozzaris," by Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867), was in my old
+ school-reader. Boys and girls liked it then and they like it now. This
+ is another of the poems that was not born to die.
+
+ At midnight, in his guarded tent,
+ The Turk was dreaming of the hour
+ When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,
+ Should tremble at his power:
+ In dreams, through camp and court, he bore
+ The trophies of a conqueror;
+ In dreams his song of triumph heard;
+ Then wore his monarch's signet ring:
+ Then pressed that monarch's throne--a king;
+ As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,
+ As Eden's garden bird.
+
+ At midnight, in the forest shades,
+ Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band,
+ True as the steel of their tried blades,
+ Heroes in heart and hand.
+ There had the Persian's thousands stood,
+ There had the glad earth drunk their blood
+ On old Plataea's day;
+ And now there breathed that haunted air
+ The sons of sires who conquered there,
+ With arm to strike and soul to dare,
+ As quick, as far as they.
+
+ An hour passed on--the Turk awoke;
+ That bright dream was his last;
+ He woke--to hear his sentries shriek,
+ "To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!"
+ He woke--to die midst flame, and smoke,
+ And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke,
+ And death-shots falling thick and fast
+ As lightnings from the mountain-cloud;
+ And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,
+ Bozzaris cheer his band:
+ "Strike--till the last armed foe expires;
+ Strike--for your altars and your fires;
+ Strike--for the green graves of your sires;
+ God--and your native land!"
+
+ They fought--like brave men, long and well;
+ They piled that ground with Moslem slain,
+ They conquered--but Bozzaris fell,
+ Bleeding at every vein.
+ His few surviving comrades saw
+ His smile when rang their proud hurrah,
+ And the red field was won;
+ Then saw in death his eyelids close
+ Calmly, as to a night's repose,
+ Like flowers at set of sun.
+
+ Come to the bridal-chamber, Death!
+ Come to the mother's, when she feels,
+ For the first time, her first-born's breath;
+ Come when the blessed seals
+ That close the pestilence are broke,
+ And crowded cities wail its stroke;
+ Come in consumption's ghastly form,
+ The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;
+ Come when the heart beats high and warm
+ With banquet-song, and dance, and wine;
+ And thou art terrible--the tear,
+ The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
+ And all we know, or dream, or fear
+ Of agony, are thine.
+
+ But to the hero, when his sword
+ Has won the battle for the free,
+ Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word;
+ And in its hollow tones are heard
+ The thanks of millions yet to be.
+ Come, when his task of fame is wrought--
+ Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought--
+ Come in her crowning hour--and then
+ Thy sunken eye's unearthly light
+ To him is welcome as the sight
+ Of sky and stars to prisoned men;
+ Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
+ Of brother in a foreign land;
+ Thy summons welcome as the cry
+ That told the Indian isles were nigh
+ To the world-seeking Genoese,
+ When the land wind, from woods of palm,
+ And orange-groves, and fields of balm,
+ Blew o'er the Haytian seas.
+
+ Bozzaris! with the storied brave
+ Greece nurtured in her glory's time,
+ Rest thee--there is no prouder grave,
+ Even in her own proud clime.
+ She wore no funeral-weeds for thee,
+ Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume
+ Like torn branch from death's leafless tree
+ In sorrow's pomp and pageantry,
+ The heartless luxury of the tomb;
+ But she remembers thee as one
+ Long loved and for a season gone;
+ For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed,
+ Her marble wrought, her music breathed;
+ For thee she rings the birthday bells;
+ Of thee her babe's first lisping tells;
+ For thine her evening prayer is said
+ At palace-couch and cottage-bed;
+ Her soldier, closing with the foe,
+ Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow,
+ His plighted maiden, when she fears
+ For him the joy of her young years,
+ Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears;
+ And she, the mother of thy boys,
+ Though in her eye and faded cheek
+ Is read the grief she will not speak,
+ The memory of her buried joys,
+ And even she who gave thee birth,
+ Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth,
+ Talk of thy doom without a sigh;
+ For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's:
+ One of the few, the immortal names,
+ That were not born to die.
+
+ FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.
+
+
+ THE DEATH OF NAPOLEON.
+
+"The Death of Napoleon," by Isaac McClellan (1806-99), was yet another
+ of the good old reader songs taught us by a teacher of good taste. We
+ love those teachers more the older we grow.
+
+ Wild was the night, yet a wilder night
+ Hung round the soldier's pillow;
+ In his bosom there waged a fiercer fight
+ Than the fight on the wrathful billow.
+
+ A few fond mourners were kneeling by,
+ The few that his stern heart cherished;
+ They knew, by his glazed and unearthly eye,
+ That life had nearly perished.
+
+ They knew by his awful and kingly look,
+ By the order hastily spoken,
+ That he dreamed of days when the nations shook,
+ And the nations' hosts were broken.
+
+ He dreamed that the Frenchman's sword still slew,
+ And triumphed the Frenchman's eagle,
+ And the struggling Austrian fled anew,
+ Like the hare before the beagle.
+
+ The bearded Russian he scourged again,
+ The Prussian's camp was routed,
+ And again on the hills of haughty Spain
+ His mighty armies shouted.
+
+ Over Egypt's sands, over Alpine snows,
+ At the pyramids, at the mountain,
+ Where the wave of the lordly Danube flows,
+ And by the Italian fountain,
+
+ On the snowy cliffs where mountain streams
+ Dash by the Switzer's dwelling,
+ He led again, in his dying dreams,
+ His hosts, the proud earth quelling.
+
+ Again Marengo's field was won,
+ And Jena's bloody battle;
+ Again the world was overrun,
+ Made pale at his cannon's rattle.
+
+ He died at the close of that darksome day,
+ A day that shall live in story;
+ In the rocky land they placed his clay,
+ "And left him alone with his glory."
+
+ ISAAC MCCLELLAN.
+
+
+ HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE.
+
+ How sleep the brave, who sink to rest
+ By all their country's wishes blest!
+ When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
+ Returns to deck their hallow'd mould,
+ She there shall dress a sweeter sod
+ Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.
+
+ By fairy hands their knell is rung,
+ By forms unseen their dirge is sung:
+ There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,
+ To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
+ And Freedom shall a while repair
+ To dwell a weeping hermit there!
+
+ WILLIAM COLLINS.
+
+
+ THE FLAG GOES BY.
+
+"The Flag Goes By" is included out of regard to a boy of eleven years
+ who pleased me by his great appreciation of it. It teaches the lesson
+ of reverence to our great national symbol. It is published by
+ permission of the author, Henry Holcomb Bennett, of Ohio. (1863-.)
+
+ Hats off!
+ Along the street there comes
+ A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums,
+ A flash of colour beneath the sky:
+ Hats off!
+ The flag is passing by!
+
+ Blue and crimson and white it shines
+ Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines.
+ Hats off!
+ The colours before us fly;
+ But more than the flag is passing by.
+
+ Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great,
+ Fought to make and to save the State:
+ Weary marches and sinking ships;
+ Cheers of victory on dying lips;
+
+ Days of plenty and years of peace;
+ March of a strong land's swift increase;
+ Equal justice, right, and law,
+ Stately honour and reverend awe;
+
+ Sign of a nation, great and strong
+ Toward her people from foreign wrong:
+ Pride and glory and honour,--all
+ Live in the colours to stand or fall.
+
+ Hats off!
+ Along the street there comes
+ A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums;
+ And loyal hearts are beating high:
+ Hats off!
+ The flag is passing by!
+
+ HENRY HOLCOMB BENNETT.
+
+
+ HOHENLINDEN.
+
+ On Linden, when the sun was low,
+ All bloodless lay th' untrodden snow;
+ And dark as winter was the flow
+ Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
+
+ But Linden saw another sight,
+ When the drum beat, at dead of night,
+ Commanding fires of death to light
+ The darkness of her scenery.
+
+ By torch and trumpet fast array'd
+ Each horseman drew his battle-blade,
+ And furious every charger neigh'd
+ To join the dreadful revelry.
+
+ Then shook the hills with thunder riven,
+ Then rush'd the steed to battle driven,
+ And louder than the bolts of Heaven,
+ Far flashed the red artillery.
+
+ But redder yet that light shall glow
+ On Linden's hills or stained snow;
+ And bloodier yet the torrent flow
+ Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
+
+ 'Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun
+ Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun,
+ Where furious Frank, and fiery Hun,
+ Shout in their sulphurous canopy.
+
+ The combat deepens. On, ye brave
+ Who rush to glory or the grave!
+ Wave, Munich! all thy banners wave,
+ And charge with all thy chivalry!
+
+ Few, few shall part, where many meet!
+ The snow shall be their winding-sheet,
+ And every turf beneath their feet
+ Shall be a soldier's sepulcher.
+
+ THOMAS CAMPBELL.
+
+
+ MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME.
+
+ The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home;
+ 'Tis summer, the darkeys are gay;
+ The corn-top's ripe, and the meadow's in the bloom,
+ While the birds make music all the day.
+ The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,
+ All merry, all happy and bright;
+ By-'n'-by hard times comes a-knocking at the door:--
+ Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!
+
+ Weep no more, my lady,
+ O, weep no more to-day!
+ We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home,
+ For the old Kentucky home, far away.
+
+ They hunt no more for the 'possum and the coon,
+ On the meadow, the hill, and the shore;
+ They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon,
+ On the bench by the old cabin door.
+ The day goes by like a shadow o'er the heart,
+ With sorrow, where all was delight;
+ The time has come when the darkeys have to part:--
+ Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!
+
+ The head must bow, and the back will have to bend,
+ Wherever the darkey may go;
+ A few more days, and the trouble all will end,
+ In the field where the sugar-canes grow.
+ A few more days for to tote the weary load,--
+ No matter, 'twill never be light;
+ A few more days till we totter on the road:--
+ Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!
+
+ Weep no more, my lady,
+ O, weep no more to-day!
+ We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home,
+ For the old Kentucky home, far away.
+
+ STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER.
+
+
+ OLD FOLKS AT HOME.
+
+ Way down upon de Swanee Ribber,
+ Far, far away,
+ Dere's wha my heart is turning ebber,
+ Dere's wha de old folks stay.
+ All up and down de whole creation
+ Sadly I roam,
+ Still longing for de old plantation,
+ And for de old folks at home.
+
+ All de world am sad and dreary,
+ Eberywhere I roam;
+ Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary,
+ Far from de old folks at home!
+
+ All round de little farm I wandered
+ When I was young,
+ Den many happy days I squandered,
+ Many de songs I sung.
+ When I was playing wid my brudder
+ Happy was I;
+ Oh, take me to my kind old mudder!
+ Dere let me live and die.
+
+ One little hut among de bushes,
+ One dat I love,
+ Still sadly to my memory rushes,
+ No matter where I rove.
+ When will I see de bees a-humming
+ All round de comb?
+ When will I hear de banjo tumming,
+ Down in my good old home?
+
+ All de world am sad and dreary,
+ Eberywhere I roam;
+ Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary,
+ Far from de old folks at home!
+
+ STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER.
+
+
+ THE WRECK OF THE "HESPERUS."
+
+"The Wreck of the _Hesperus_," by Longfellow (1807-82), on "Norman's
+ Woe," off the coast near Cape Ann, is a historic poem as well as an
+ imaginative composition.
+
+ It was the schooner _Hesperus_,
+ That sailed the wintry sea;
+ And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
+ To bear him company.
+
+ Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
+ Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
+ And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds
+ That ope in the month of May.
+
+ The skipper he stood beside the helm,
+ His pipe was in his mouth,
+ And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
+ The smoke now west, now south.
+
+ Then up and spake an old sailor,
+ Had sailed the Spanish Main,
+ "I pray thee put into yonder port,
+ For I fear a hurricane.
+
+ "Last night the moon had a golden ring,
+ And to-night no moon we see!"
+ The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe,
+ And a scornful laugh laughed he.
+
+ Colder and louder blew the wind,
+ A gale from the northeast,
+ The snow fell hissing in the brine,
+ And the billows frothed like yeast.
+
+ Down came the storm, and smote amain
+ The vessel in its strength;
+ She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
+ Then leaped her cable's length.
+
+ "Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
+ And do not tremble so;
+ For I can weather the roughest gale
+ That ever wind did blow."
+
+ He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
+ Against the stinging blast;
+ He cut a rope from a broken spar,
+ And bound her to the mast.
+
+ "O father! I hear the church-bells ring,
+ O say, what may it be?"
+ "Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"--
+ And he steered for the open sea.
+
+ "O father! I hear the sound of guns,
+ O say, what may it be?"
+ "Some ship in distress, that cannot live
+ In such an angry sea!"
+
+ "O father! I see a gleaming light,
+ O say, what may it be?"
+ But the father answered never a word,
+ A frozen corpse was he.
+
+ Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
+ With his face turned to the skies,
+ The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
+ On his fixed and glassy eyes.
+
+ Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
+ That saved she might be;
+ And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave
+ On the Lake of Galilee.
+
+ And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
+ Through the whistling sleet and snow,
+ Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept
+ Toward the reef of Norman's Woe.
+
+ And ever the fitful gusts between
+ A sound came from the land;
+ It was the sound of the trampling surf
+ On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.
+
+ The breakers were right beneath her bows,
+ She drifted a dreary wreck,
+ And a whooping billow swept the crew
+ Like icicles from her deck.
+
+ She struck where the white and fleecy waves
+ Looked soft as carded wool,
+ But the cruel rocks they gored her side
+ Like the horns of an angry bull.
+
+ Her rattling shrouds all sheathed in ice,
+ With the masts went by the board;
+ Like a vessel of glass she stove and sank,--
+ Ho! ho! the breakers roared!
+
+ At daybreak on the bleak sea-beach
+ A fisherman stood aghast,
+ To see the form of a maiden fair
+ Lashed close to a drifting mast.
+
+ The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
+ The salt tears in her eyes;
+ And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
+ On the billows fall and rise.
+
+ Such was the wreck of the _Hesperus_,
+ In the midnight and the snow!
+ Christ save us all from a death like this,
+ On the reef of Norman's Woe!
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ BANNOCKBURN.
+
+ ROBERT BRUCE'S ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY.
+
+ You can look down on the battle-field of Bannockburn from Stirling
+ Castle, Scotland, near which stands a magnificent statue of Robert, the
+ Bruce. How often have I trodden over the old battle-field. The monument
+ of William Wallace, too, looms up on the Ochil Hills, not far away.
+ (1759-96.)
+
+ Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
+ Scots, wham Bruce has aften led;
+ Welcome to your gory bed,
+ Or to victorie.
+
+ Now's the day, and now's the hour;
+ See the front o' battle lower;
+ See approach proud Edward's power--
+ 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 your 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!
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+
+
+ PART IV.
+
+ Lad and Lassie
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+
+ THE INCHCAPE ROCK.
+
+ The man is wrecked and his ship is sunken before he ever steps on board
+ or sees the water if his heart is hard and his estimate of human beings
+ low. "The Inchcape Rock" is a thrust at hard-heartedness. "What is the
+ use of life?" To bear one another's burdens, to develop a genius for
+ pulling people through hard places--that's the use of life. It is the
+ last resort of a mean mind to crack jokes that wreck innocent voyagers
+ on life's sea. (1774-1843.)
+
+ No stir in the air, no stir in the sea,
+ The ship was still as she could be;
+ Her sails from heaven received no motion;
+ Her keel was steady in the ocean.
+
+ Without either sign or sound of their shock,
+ The waves flowed over the Inchcape Rock;
+ So little they rose, so little they fell,
+ They did not move the Inchcape Bell.
+
+ The Abbot of Aberbrothok
+ Had placed that Bell on the Inchcape Rock;
+ On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung,
+ And over the waves its warning rung.
+
+ When the Rock was hid by the surge's swell,
+ The mariners heard the warning Bell;
+ And then they knew the perilous Rock,
+ And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok.
+
+ The sun in heaven was shining gay;
+ All things were joyful on that day;
+ The sea-birds screamed as they wheeled round,
+ And there was joyance in their sound.
+
+ The buoy of the Inchcape Bell was seen,
+ A dark spot on the ocean green;
+ Sir Ralph the Rover walked his deck,
+ And he fixed his eye on the darker speck.
+
+ He felt the cheering power of spring;
+ It made him whistle, it made him sing:
+ His heart was mirthful to excess,
+ But the Rover's mirth was wickedness.
+
+ His eye was on the Inchcape float.
+ Quoth he, "My men, put out the boat
+ And row me to the Inchcape Rock,
+ And I'll plague the Abbot of Aberbrothok."
+
+ The boat is lowered, the boatmen row,
+ And to the Inchcape Rock they go;
+ Sir Ralph bent over from the boat,
+ And he cut the Bell from the Inchcape float.
+
+ Down sank the Bell with a gurgling sound;
+ The bubbles rose and burst around.
+ Quoth Sir Ralph, "The next who comes to the Rock
+ Won't bless the Abbot of Aberbrothok."
+
+ Sir Ralph the Rover sailed away;
+ He scoured the sea for many a day;
+ And now grown rich with plundered store,
+ He steers his course for Scotland's shore.
+
+ So thick a haze o'erspread the sky,
+ They cannot see the sun on high:
+ The wind hath blown a gale all day,
+ At evening it hath died away.
+
+ On the deck the Rover takes his stand;
+ So dark it is they see no land.
+ Quoth Sir Ralph, "It will be brighter soon,
+ For there is the dawn of the rising moon."
+
+ "Canst hear," said one, "the broken roar?
+ For methinks we should be near the shore."
+ "Now where we are I cannot tell,
+ But I wish I could hear the Inchcape Bell."
+
+ They hear no sound; the swell is strong;
+ Though the wind hath fallen, they drift along
+ Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock:
+ "O Christ! it is the Inchcape Rock!"
+
+ Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair,
+ He curst himself in his despair:
+ The waves rush in on every side,
+ The ship is sinking beneath the tide.
+
+ But, even in his dying fear,
+ One dreadful sound could the Rover hear,--
+ A sound as if with the Inchcape Bell
+ The Devil below was ringing his knell.
+
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY.
+
+
+ THE FINDING OF THE LYRE.
+
+ Once a year my pupils teach me "The Finding of the Lyre." By the time I
+ have learned it they know the meaning of every line and have caught the
+ spirit of the verse. There is an ancient "lyre," or violin, made in
+ northern Africa, in the possession of a Boston lady, and I have found
+ the mud-turtle rattle among the Indians on the Indian reservation at
+ Syracuse, New York. They use it as a musical instrument in their
+ Thanksgiving dances. The poem helps to build an interest in history and
+ mythology while it develops a child's reverence and insight. (1819-91.)
+
+ There lay upon the ocean's shore
+ What once a tortoise served to cover;
+ A year and more, with rush and roar,
+ The surf had rolled it over,
+ Had played with it, and flung it by,
+ As wind and weather might decide it,
+ Then tossed it high where sand-drifts dry
+ Cheap burial might provide it.
+
+ It rested there to bleach or tan,
+ The rains had soaked, the sun had burned it;
+ With many a ban the fisherman
+ Had stumbled o'er and spurned it;
+ And there the fisher-girl would stay,
+ Conjecturing with her brother
+ How in their play the poor estray
+ Might serve some use or other.
+
+ So there it lay, through wet and dry,
+ As empty as the last new sonnet,
+ Till by and by came Mercury,
+ And, having mused upon it,
+ "Why, here," cried he, "the thing of things
+ In shape, material, and dimension!
+ Give it but strings, and, lo, it sings,
+ A wonderful invention!"
+
+ So said, so done; the chords he strained,
+ And, as his fingers o'er them hovered,
+ The shell disdained a soul had gained,
+ The lyre had been discovered.
+ O empty world that round us lies,
+ Dead shell, of soul and thought forsaken,
+ Brought we but eyes like Mercury's,
+ In thee what songs should waken!
+
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
+
+
+ A CHRYSALIS.
+
+"A Chrysalis" is a favourite poem with John Burroughs, and is found,
+ too, in Stedman's collection. We all come to a point in life where we
+ need to burst the shell and fly away into the new realm. (1835-98.)
+
+ My little Maedchen found one day
+ A curious something in her play,
+ That was not fruit, nor flower, nor seed;
+ It was not anything that grew,
+ Or crept, or climbed, or swam, or flew;
+ Had neither legs nor wings, indeed;
+ And yet she was not sure, she said,
+ Whether it was alive or dead.
+
+ She brought it in her tiny hand
+ To see if I would understand,
+ And wondered when I made reply,
+ "You've found a baby butterfly."
+ "A butterfly is not like this,"
+ With doubtful look she answered me.
+ So then I told her what would be
+ Some day within the chrysalis:
+ How, slowly, in the dull brown thing
+ Now still as death, a spotted wing,
+ And then another, would unfold,
+ Till from the empty shell would fly
+ A pretty creature, by and by,
+ All radiant in blue and gold.
+
+ "And will it, truly?" questioned she--
+ Her laughing lips and eager eyes
+ All in a sparkle of surprise--
+ "And shall your little Maedchen see?"
+ "She shall!" I said. How could I tell
+ That ere the worm within its shell
+ Its gauzy, splendid wings had spread,
+ My little Maedchen would be dead?
+
+ To-day the butterfly has flown,--
+ She was not here to see it fly,--
+ And sorrowing I wonder why
+ The empty shell is mine alone.
+ Perhaps the secret lies in this:
+ I too had found a chrysalis,
+ And Death that robbed me of delight
+ Was but the radiant creature's flight!
+
+ MARY EMILY BRADLEY.
+
+
+ FOR A' THAT.
+
+ Robert Burns, the plowman and poet, "dinnered wi' a lord." The story
+ goes that he was put at the second table. That lord is dead, but Robert
+ Burns still lives. He is immortal. It is "the survival of the fittest"
+"For a' That and a' That" is a poem that wipes out the superficial
+ value put on money and other externalities. This poem is more valuable
+ in education than good penmanship or good spelling. (1759-96.)
+
+ Is there, for honest poverty,
+ That hangs his head, and a' that?
+ The coward slave, we pass him by,
+ We dare be poor for a' that;
+ For a' that, and a' that,
+ Our toils obscure, and a' that;
+ The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
+ The man's the gowd for a' that!
+
+ What though on hamely fare we dine,
+ Wear hoddin-gray,[1] and a' that;
+ Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
+ A man's a man for a' that!
+ For a' that, and a' that,
+ Their tinsel show, and a' that;
+ The honest man, though e'er sae poor,
+ Is king o' men for a' that!
+
+ Ye see yon birkie[2] ca'd a lord,
+ Wha struts, and stares, and a' that;
+ Though hundreds worship at his word,
+ He's but a coof[3] for a' that;
+ For a' that, and a' that,
+ His riband, star, and a' that,
+ The man of independent mind,
+ He looks and laughs at a' that.
+
+ A prince can make a belted knight,
+ A marquis, duke, and a' that;
+ But an honest man's aboon his might.
+ Guid faith he maunna fa' that!
+ For a' that, and a' that,
+ Their dignities, and a' that,
+ The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth,
+ Are higher rank than a' that.
+
+ Then let us pray that come it may--
+ As come it will for a' that--
+ That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
+ May bear the gree, and a' that;
+ For a' that, and a' that,
+ It's coming yet for a' that,
+ That man to man, the warld o'er,
+ Shall brothers be for a' that!
+
+ FOOTNOTES:
+
+ [1] Coarse woolen clothes.
+
+ [2] Impudent fellow.
+
+ [3] Fool: blockhead.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ A NEW ARRIVAL.
+
+"The New Arrival" is a valuable poem because it expresses the joy of a
+ young father over his new baby. If girls should be educated to be good
+ mothers, so should boys be taught that fatherhood is the highest and
+ holiest joy and right of man. The child is educator to the man. He
+ teaches him how to take responsibility, how to give unbiased judgments,
+ and how to be fatherly like "Our Father who is in Heaven." (1844-.)
+
+ There came to port last Sunday night
+ The queerest little craft,
+ Without an inch of rigging on;
+ I looked and looked and laughed.
+ It seemed so curious that she
+ Should cross the Unknown water,
+ And moor herself right in my room,
+ My daughter, O my daughter!
+
+ Yet by these presents witness all
+ She's welcome fifty times,
+ And comes consigned to Hope and Love
+ And common-meter rhymes.
+ She has no manifest but this,
+ No flag floats o'er the water,
+ She's too new for the British Lloyds--
+ My daughter, O my daughter!
+
+ Ring out, wild bells, and tame ones too!
+ Ring out the lover's moon!
+ Ring in the little worsted socks!
+ Ring in the bib and spoon!
+ Ring out the muse! ring in the nurse!
+ Ring in the milk and water!
+ Away with paper, pen, and ink--
+ My daughter, O my daughter!
+
+ GEORGE W. CABLE.
+
+
+ THE BROOK.
+
+ Tennyson's "The Brook" is included out of love to a dear old schoolmate
+ in Colorado. The real brook, near Cambridge, England, is tame compared
+ to your Colorado streams, O beloved comrade. This poem is well liked by
+ the majority of pupils. (1809-92.)
+
+ I chatter, chatter, as I flow
+ To join the brimming river;
+ For men may come and men may go,
+ But I go on forever.
+
+ I wind about, and in and out,
+ With here a blossom sailing,
+ And here and there a lusty trout,
+ And here and there a grayling.
+
+ I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
+ I slide by hazel covers;
+ I move the sweet forget-me-nots
+ That grow for happy lovers.
+
+ I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
+ Among my skimming swallows;
+ I make the netted sunbeams dance
+ Against my sandy shallows.
+
+ I murmur under moon and stars
+ In brambly wildernesses;
+ I linger by my shingly bars;
+ I loiter round my cresses.
+
+ And out again I curve and flow
+ To join the brimming river;
+ For men may come and men may go,
+ But I go on forever.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ THE BALLAD OF THE "CLAMPHERDOWN."
+
+"The Ballad of the _Clampherdown_," by Rudyard Kipling, is included
+ because my boys always like it. It needs a great deal of explanation,
+ and few boys will hold out to the end in learning it. But "it pays."
+ (1865-.)
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_
+ Would sweep the Channel clean,
+ Wherefore she kept her hatches close
+ When the merry Channel chops arose,
+ To save the bleached marine.
+
+ She had one bow-gun of a hundred ton,
+ And a great stern-gun beside;
+ They dipped their noses deep in the sea,
+ They racked their stays and stanchions free
+ In the wash of the wind-whipped tide.
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_,
+ Fell in with a cruiser light
+ That carried the dainty Hotchkiss gun
+ And a pair o' heels wherewith to run,
+ From the grip of a close-fought fight.
+
+ She opened fire at seven miles--
+ As ye shoot at a bobbing cork--
+ And once she fired and twice she fired,
+ Till the bow-gun drooped like a lily tired
+ That lolls upon the stalk.
+
+ "Captain, the bow-gun melts apace,
+ The deck-beams break below,
+ 'Twere well to rest for an hour or twain,
+ And botch the shattered plates again."
+ And he answered, "Make it so."
+
+ She opened fire within the mile--
+ As ye shoot at the flying duck--
+ And the great stern-gun shot fair and true,
+ With the heave of the ship, to the stainless blue,
+ And the great stern-turret stuck.
+
+ "Captain, the turret fills with steam,
+ The feed-pipes burst below--
+ You can hear the hiss of helpless ram,
+ You can hear the twisted runners jam."
+ And he answered, "Turn and go!"
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_,
+ And grimly did she roll;
+ Swung round to take the cruiser's fire
+ As the White Whale faces the Thresher's ire,
+ When they war by the frozen Pole.
+
+ "Captain, the shells are falling fast,
+ And faster still fall we;
+ And it is not meet for English stock,
+ To bide in the heart of an eight-day clock,
+ The death they cannot see."
+
+ "Lie down, lie down, my bold A.B.,
+ We drift upon her beam;
+ We dare not ram, for she can run;
+ And dare ye fire another gun,
+ And die in the peeling steam?"
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_
+ That carried an armour-belt;
+ But fifty feet at stern and bow,
+ Lay bare as the paunch of the purser's sow,
+ To the hail of the Nordenfeldt.
+
+ "Captain, they lack us through and through;
+ The chilled steel bolts are swift!
+ We have emptied the bunkers in open sea,
+ Their shrapnel bursts where our coal should be."
+ And he answered, "Let her drift."
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_,
+ Swung round upon the tide.
+ Her two dumb guns glared south and north,
+ And the blood and the bubbling steam ran forth,
+ And she ground the cruiser's side.
+
+ "Captain, they cry the fight is done,
+ They bid you send your sword."
+ And he answered, "Grapple her stern and bow.
+ They have asked for the steel. They shall have it now;
+ Out cutlasses and board!"
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_,
+ Spewed up four hundred men;
+ And the scalded stokers yelped delight,
+ As they rolled in the waist and heard the fight,
+ Stamp o'er their steel-walled pen.
+
+ They cleared the cruiser end to end,
+ From conning-tower to hold.
+ They fought as they fought in Nelson's fleet;
+ They were stripped to the waist, they were bare to the feet,
+ As it was in the days of old.
+
+ It was the sinking _Clampherdown_
+ Heaved up her battered side--
+ And carried a million pounds in steel,
+ To the cod and the corpse-fed conger-eel,
+ And the scour of the Channel tide.
+
+ It was the crew of the _Clampherdown_
+ Stood out to sweep the sea,
+ On a cruiser won from an ancient foe,
+ As it was in the days of long-ago,
+ And as it still shall be.
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+
+ THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB.
+
+"The Destruction of Sennacherib," by Lord Byron, finds a place in this
+ collection because Johnnie, a ten-year-old, and many of his friends
+ say, "It's great." (1788-1824.)
+
+ The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,
+ And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
+ And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
+ When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
+
+ Like the leaves of the forest when the Summer is green,
+ That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
+ Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
+ That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
+
+ For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
+ And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
+ And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
+ And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still!
+
+ And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
+ But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
+ And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
+ And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
+
+ And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
+ With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail,
+ And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
+ The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
+
+ And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
+ And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
+ And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
+ Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
+
+ LORD BYRON.
+
+
+ I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER.
+
+ 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
+ The roses, red and white,
+ The violets, and the lily-cups--
+ Those flowers made of light!
+ The lilacs where the robin built,
+ And where my brother set
+ The laburnum on his birthday,--
+ The tree is living yet!
+
+ 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.
+
+ THOMAS HOOD.
+
+
+ DRIVING HOME THE COWS.
+
+ Out of the clover and blue-eyed grass
+ He turned them into the river lane;
+ One after another he let them pass,
+ Then fastened the meadow bars again.
+
+ Under the willows and over the hill,
+ He patiently followed their sober pace;
+ The merry whistle for once was still,
+ And something shadowed the sunny face.
+
+ Only a boy! and his father had said
+ He never could let his youngest go:
+ Two already were lying dead,
+ Under the feet of the trampling foe.
+
+ But after the evening work was done,
+ And the frogs were loud in the meadow-swamp,
+ Over his shoulder he slung his gun,
+ And stealthily followed the footpath damp.
+
+ Across the clover, and through the wheat,
+ With resolute heart and purpose grim:
+ Though the dew was on his hurrying feet,
+ And the blind bat's flitting startled him.
+
+ Thrice since then had the lanes been white,
+ And the orchards sweet with apple-bloom;
+ And now, when the cows came back at night,
+ The feeble father drove them home.
+
+ For news had come to the lonely farm
+ That three were lying where two had lain;
+ And the old man's tremulous, palsied arm
+ Could never lean on a son's again.
+
+ The summer day grew cool and late:
+ He went for the cows when the work was done;
+ But down the lane, as he opened the gate,
+ He saw them coming one by one:
+
+ Brindle, Ebony, Speckle, and Bess,
+ Shaking their horns in the evening wind;
+ Cropping the buttercups out of the grass,
+ But who was it following close behind?
+
+ Loosely swung in the idle air
+ The empty sleeve of army blue;
+ And worn and pale, from the crisping hair,
+ Looked out a face that the father knew.
+
+ For close-barred prisons will sometimes yawn,
+ And yield their dead unto life again;
+ And the day that comes with a cloudy dawn,
+ In golden glory at last may wane.
+
+ The great tears sprang to their meeting eyes;
+ For the heart must speak when the lips are dumb,
+ And under the silent evening skies
+ Together they followed the cattle home.
+
+ KATE PUTNAM OSGOOD.
+
+
+ KRINKEN.
+
+"Krinken" is the dearest of poems.
+
+ "Krinken was a little child.
+ It was summer when he smiled!"
+
+ Eugene Field, above all other poets, paid the finest tribute to
+ children. This poet only, could make the whole ocean warm because a
+ child's heart was there to warm it.
+
+ Krinken was a little child,--
+ It was summer when he smiled.
+ Oft the hoary sea and grim
+ Stretched its white arms out to him,
+ Calling, "Sun-child, come to me;
+ Let me warm my heart with thee!"
+ But the child heard not the sea
+ Calling, yearning evermore
+ For the summer on the shore.
+
+ Krinken on the beach one day
+ Saw a maiden Nis at play;
+ On the pebbly beach she played
+ In the summer Krinken made.
+ Fair, and very fair, was she,
+ Just a little child was he.
+ "Krinken," said the maiden Nis,
+ "Let me have a little kiss,--
+ Just a kiss, and go with me
+ To the summer-lands that be
+ Down within the silver sea."
+
+ Krinken was a little child--
+ By the maiden Nis beguiled,
+ Hand in hand with her went he
+ And 'twas summer in the sea.
+ And the hoary sea and grim
+ To its bosom folded him--
+ Clasped and kissed the little form,
+ And the ocean's heart was warm.
+
+ Now the sea calls out no more;
+ It is winter on the shore,--
+ Winter where that little child
+ Made sweet summer when he smiled;
+ Though 'tis summer on the sea
+ Where with maiden Nis went he,--
+ It is winter on the shore,
+ Winter, winter evermore.
+
+ Of the summer on the deep
+ Come sweet visions in my sleep;
+ _His_ fair face lifts from the sea,
+ _His_ dear voice calls out to me,--
+ These my dreams of summer be.
+
+ Krinken was a little child,
+ By the maiden Nis beguiled;
+ Oft the hoary sea and grim
+ Reached its longing arms to him,
+ Crying, "Sim-child, come to me;
+ Let me warm my heart with thee!"
+ But the sea calls out no more;
+ It is winter on the shore,--
+ Winter, cold and dark and wild.
+
+ Krinken was a little child,--
+ It was summer when he smiled;
+ Down he went into the sea,
+ And the winter bides with me,
+ Just a little child was he.
+
+ EUGENE FIELD.
+
+
+ STEVENSON'S BIRTHDAY.
+
+ "How I should like a birthday!" said the child,
+ "I have so few, and they so far apart."
+ She spoke to Stevenson--the Master smiled--
+ "Mine is to-day; I would with all my heart
+ That it were yours; too many years have I!
+ Too swift they come, and all too swiftly fly"
+
+ So by a formal deed he there conveyed
+ All right and title in his natal day,
+ To have and hold, to sell or give away,--
+ Then signed, and gave it to the little maid.
+
+ Joyful, yet fearing to believe too much,
+ She took the deed, but scarcely dared unfold.
+ Ah, liberal Genius! at whose potent touch
+ All common things shine with transmuted gold!
+ A day of Stevenson's will prove to be
+ Not part of Time, but Immortality.
+
+ KATHERINE MILLER.
+
+
+ A MODEST WIT.
+
+ I learned "A Modest Wit" as a reading-lesson when I was a child. It has
+ clung to me and so I cling to it. It is just as good as it ever was. It
+ is a sharp thrust at power that depends on externalities. Selleck
+ Osborne. (----.)
+
+ A supercilious nabob of the East--
+ Haughty, being great--purse-proud, being rich--
+ A governor, or general, at the least,
+ I have forgotten which--
+ Had in his family a humble youth,
+ Who went from England in his patron's suit,
+ An unassuming boy, in truth
+ A lad of decent parts, and good repute.
+
+ This youth had sense and spirit;
+ But yet with all his sense,
+ Excessive diffidence
+ Obscured his merit.
+
+ One day, at table, flushed with pride and wine,
+ His honour, proudly free, severely merry,
+ Conceived it would be vastly fine
+ To crack a joke upon his secretary.
+
+ "Young man," he said, "by what art, craft, or trade,
+ Did your good father gain a livelihood?"--
+ "He was a saddler, sir," Modestus said,
+ "And in his time was reckon'd good."
+
+ "A saddler, eh! and taught you Greek,
+ Instead of teaching you to sew!
+ Pray, why did not your father make
+ A saddler, sir, of you?"
+
+ Each parasite, then, as in duty bound,
+ The joke applauded, and the laugh went round.
+ At length Modestus, bowing low,
+ Said (craving pardon, if too free he made),
+ "Sir, by your leave, I fain would know
+ Your father's trade!"
+
+ "My father's trade! by heaven, that's too bad!
+ My father's trade? Why, blockhead, are you mad?
+ My father, sir, did never stoop so low--
+ He was a gentleman, I'd have you know."
+
+ "Excuse the liberty I take,"
+ Modestus said, with archness on his brow,
+ "Pray, why did not your father make
+ A gentleman of you?"
+
+ SELLECK OSBORNE.
+
+
+ THE LEGEND OF BISHOP HATTO.
+
+"The Legend of Bishop Hatto" is doubtless a myth (Robert Southey,
+ 1774-1843). But "The Mouse-Tower on the Rhine" is an object of interest
+ to travellers, and the story has a point
+
+ The summer and autumn had been so wet,
+ That in winter the corn was growing yet:
+ 'Twas a piteous sight to see, all around,
+ The grain lie rotting on the ground.
+
+ Every day the starving poor
+ Crowded around Bishop Hatto's door;
+ For he had a plentiful last-year's store,
+ And all the neighbourhood could tell
+ His granaries were furnished well.
+
+ At last Bishop Hatto appointed a day
+ To quiet the poor without delay:
+ He bade them to his great barn repair,
+ And they should have food for winter there.
+
+ Rejoiced such tidings good to hear,
+ The poor folk flocked from far and near;
+ The great barn was full as it could hold
+ Of women and children, and young and old.
+
+ Then, when he saw it could hold no more,
+ Bishop Hatto, he made fast the door;
+ And while for mercy on Christ they call,
+ He set fire to the barn and burned them all.
+
+ "I' faith, 'tis an excellent bonfire!" quoth he;
+ "And the country is greatly obliged to me
+ For ridding it in these times forlorn
+ Of Rats that only consume the corn."
+
+ So then to his palace returned he,
+ And he sat down to supper merrily,
+ And he slept that night like an innocent man;
+ But Bishop Hatto never slept again.
+
+ In the morning as he entered the hall,
+ Where his picture hung against the wall,
+ A sweat-like death all over him came;
+ For the Rats had eaten it out of the frame.
+
+ As he looked, there came a man from his farm;
+ He had a countenance white with alarm:
+ "My Lord, I opened your granaries this morn,
+ And the Rats had eaten all your corn."
+
+ Another came running presently,
+ And he was pale as pale could be:
+ "Fly, my Lord Bishop, fly!" quoth he,
+ "Ten thousand Rats are coming this way;
+ The Lord forgive you yesterday!"
+
+ "I'll go to my town on the Rhine," replied he;
+ "'Tis the safest place in Germany;
+ The walls are high, and the shores are steep,
+ And the stream is strong, and the water deep."
+
+ Bishop Hatto fearfully hastened away,
+ And he crossed the Rhine without delay,
+ And reached his tower, and barred with care
+ All windows, doors, and loop-holes there.
+
+ He laid him down, and closed his eyes;
+ But soon a scream made him arise:
+ He started and saw two eyes of flame
+ On his pillow, from whence the screaming came.
+
+ He listened and looked; it was only the cat:
+ But the Bishop he grew more fearful for that;
+ For she sat screaming, mad with fear
+ At the army of Rats that was drawing near.
+
+ For they have swum over the river so deep,
+ And they have climbed the shore so steep;
+ And up the tower their way is bent,
+ To do the work for which they were sent.
+
+ They are not to be told by the dozen or score;
+ By thousands they come, and by myriads and more;
+ Such numbers had never been heard of before,
+ Such a judgment had never been witnessed of yore.
+
+ Down on his knees the Bishop fell,
+ And faster and faster his beads did tell,
+ As, louder and louder drawing near,
+ The gnawing of their teeth he could hear.
+
+ And in at the windows and in at the door,
+ And through the walls, helter-skelter they pour,
+ And down from the ceiling and up through the floor,
+ From the right and the left, from behind and before,
+ And all at once to the Bishop they go.
+
+ They have whetted their teeth against the stones;
+ And now they pick the Bishop's bones:
+ They gnawed the flesh from every limb;
+ For they were sent to do judgment on him!
+
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY.
+
+
+ COLUMBUS.
+
+ We are greatly indebted to Joaquin Miller for his "Sail On! Sail On!"
+ Endurance is the watchword of the poem and the watchword of our
+ republic. Every man to his gun! Columbus discovered America in his own
+ mind before he realised it or proved its existence. I have often drawn
+ a chart of Columbus's life and voyages to show what need he had of the
+ motto "Sail On!" to accomplish his end. This is one of our greatest
+ American poems. The writer still lives in California.
+
+ Behind him lay the gray Azores,
+ Behind the gates of Hercules;
+ Before him not the ghost of shores,
+ Before him only shoreless seas.
+ The good mate said: "Now must we pray,
+ For lo! the very stars are gone;
+ Speak, Admiral, what shall I say?"
+ "Why say, sail on! and on!"
+
+ "My men grow mut'nous day by day;
+ My men grow ghastly wan and weak."
+ The stout mate thought of home; a spray
+ Of salt wave wash'd his swarthy cheek.
+ "What shall I say, brave Admiral,
+ If we sight naught but seas at dawn?"
+ "Why, you shall say, at break of day:
+ 'Sail on! sail on! and on!'"
+
+ They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,
+ Until at last the blanch'd mate said;
+ "Why, now, not even God would know
+ Should I and all my men fall dead.
+ These very winds forget their way,
+ For God from these dread seas is gone.
+ Now speak, brave Admiral, and say----"
+ He said: "Sail on! and on!"
+
+ They sailed, they sailed, then spoke his mate:
+ "This mad sea shows his teeth to-night,
+ He curls his lip, he lies in wait,
+ With lifted teeth as if to bite!
+ Brave Admiral, say but one word;
+ What shall we do when hope is gone?"
+ The words leaped as a leaping sword:
+ "Sail on! sail on! and on!"
+
+ Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,
+ And thro' the darkness peered that night.
+ Ah, darkest night! and then a speck,--
+ A light! a light! a light! a light!
+ It grew--a star-lit flag unfurled!
+ It grew to be Time's burst of dawn;
+ He gained a world! he gave that world
+ Its watch-word: "On! and on!"
+
+ JOAQUIN MILLER.
+
+
+ THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS.
+
+ Once a year the children learn "The Shepherd of King Admetus," which is
+ one of the finest poems ever written as showing the possible growth of
+ real history into mythology, the tendency of mankind to deify what is
+ fine or sublime in human action. Not every child will learn this entire
+ poem, because it is too long. But every child will learn the best lines
+ in it while the children are teaching it to me and when I take my turn
+ in teaching it to them. No child fails to catch the spirit and intent
+ of the poem and to become entirely familiar with it. (1819-91.)
+
+ There came a youth upon the earth,
+ Some thousand years ago,
+ Whose slender hands were nothing worth,
+ Whether to plow, or reap, or sow.
+
+ Upon an empty tortoise-shell
+ He stretched some chords, and drew
+ Music that made men's bosoms swell
+ Fearless, or brimmed their eyes with dew.
+
+ Then King Admetus, one who had
+ Pure taste by right divine,
+ Decreed his singing not too bad
+ To hear between the cups of wine:
+
+ And so, well pleased with being soothed
+ Into a sweet half-sleep,
+ Three times his kingly beard he smoothed,
+ And made him viceroy o'er his sheep.
+
+ His words were simple words enough,
+ And yet he used them so,
+ That what in other mouths was rough
+ In his seemed musical and low.
+
+ Men called him but a shiftless youth,
+ In whom no good they saw;
+ And yet, unwittingly, in truth,
+ They made his careless words their law.
+
+ They knew not how he learned at all,
+ For idly, hour by hour,
+ He sat and watched the dead leaves fall,
+ Or mused upon a common flower.
+
+ It seemed the loveliness of things
+ Did teach him all their use,
+ For, in mere weeds, and stones, and springs,
+ He found a healing power profuse.
+
+ Men granted that his speech was wise,
+ But, when a glance they caught
+ Of his slim grace and woman's eyes,
+ They laughed, and called him good-for-naught.
+
+ Yet after he was dead and gone,
+ And e'en his memory dim,
+ Earth seemed more sweet to live upon,
+ More full of love, because of him.
+
+ And day by day more holy grew
+ Each spot where he had trod,
+ Till after-poets only knew
+ Their first-born brother as a god.
+
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
+
+
+ HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX.
+
+ I have an old essay written by a lad of fourteen years on "How They
+ Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix." I should judge from this
+ essay that any boy at that age would like the poem, even if he had not
+ himself been over the ground as this boy had. (1812-89.)
+
+ I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
+ I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
+ "Good speed!" cried the watch as the gate-bolts undrew;
+ "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through;
+ Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
+ And into the midnight we galloped abreast.
+
+ Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
+ Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
+ I turned in my saddle and made its girth tight,
+ Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
+ Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,
+ Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.
+
+ 'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near
+ Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;
+ At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;
+ At Dueffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be;
+ And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,
+ So Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"
+
+ At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,
+ And against him the cattle stood black every one,
+ To stare through the mist at us galloping past,
+ And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,
+ With resolute shoulders, each butting away
+ The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:
+
+ And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
+ For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;
+ And one eye's black intelligence,--ever that glance
+ O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!
+ And the thick, heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon
+ His fierce lips shook upward in galloping on.
+
+ By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur!
+ Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her,
+ We'll remember at Aix"--for one heard the quick wheeze
+ Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,
+ And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
+ As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.
+
+ So, we were left galloping, Joris and I,
+ Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;
+ The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,
+ 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff;
+ Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,
+ And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!"
+
+ "How they'll greet us!"--and all in a moment his roan
+ Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;
+ And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
+ Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
+ With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
+ And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.
+
+ Then I cast loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall,
+ Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
+ Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,
+ Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;
+ Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,
+ Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.
+
+ And all I remember is--friends flocking round
+ As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground;
+ And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
+ As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
+ Which (the burgesses voting by common consent)
+ Was no more than his due who brought the good news from Ghent.
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA.
+
+"The Burial of Sir John Moore" was one of my reading-lessons when I was
+ a child. A distinguished teacher says: "It has become a part of popular
+ education," as has also "The Eve of Waterloo" and "The Death of
+ Napoleon." They are all poems of great rhythmical swing, intense and
+ graphic. (1791-1823.)
+
+ Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
+ As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
+ Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
+ O'er the grave where our hero we buried.
+
+ We buried him darkly at dead of night,
+ The sods with our bayonets turning;
+ By the struggling moonbeam's misty light,
+ And the lantern dimly burning.
+
+ No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
+ Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;
+ But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
+ With his martial cloak around him.
+
+ Few and short were the prayers we said,
+ And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
+ But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
+ And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
+
+ We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed,
+ And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
+ That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
+ And we far away on the billow!
+
+ Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
+ And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,--
+ But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
+ In the grave where a Briton has laid him.
+
+ But half of our heavy task was done
+ When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
+ And we heard the distant and random gun
+ That the foe was sullenly firing.
+
+ Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
+ From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
+ We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone--
+ But we left him alone with his glory!
+
+ C. WOLFE.
+
+
+ THE EVE OF WATERLOO.
+
+"The Eve of Waterloo," by Lord Byron (1788-1824). Here is another old
+ reading-book gem that will always be dear to every boy's heart if he
+ only reads it a few times.
+
+ There was a sound of revelry by night,
+ And Belgium's capital had gathered then
+ Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
+ The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men.
+ A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
+ Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
+ Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
+ And all went merry as a marriage-bell:
+ But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!
+
+ Did ye not hear it? No; 'twas but the wind,
+ Or the car rattling o'er the stony street.
+ On with the dance! let joy be unconfined!
+ No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
+ To chase the glowing hours with flying feet!
+ But hark!--that heavy sound breaks in once more,
+ As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
+ And nearer, clearer, deadlier, than before!
+ Arm! arm! it is--it is the cannon's opening roar!
+
+ Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro,
+ And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress
+ And cheeks all pale, which, but an hour ago,
+ Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness;
+ And there were sudden partings, such as press
+ The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs
+ Which ne'er might be repeated: who could guess
+ If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,
+ Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise?
+
+ And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed,
+ The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
+ Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
+ And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;
+ And the deep thunder peal on peal afar;
+ And near, the beat of the alarming drum
+ Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;
+ While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,
+ Or whispering with white lips, "The foe! They come! They come!"
+
+ And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,
+ Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass,
+ Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves,
+ Over the unreturning brave--alas!
+ Ere evening to be trodden like the grass
+ Which, now beneath them, but above shall grow
+ In its next verdure, when this fiery mass
+ Of living valour, rolling on the foe,
+ And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low.
+
+ Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,
+ Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay;
+ The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife,
+ The morn the marshalling in arms,--the day,
+ Battle's magnificently stern array!
+ The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which, when rent,
+ The earth is covered thick with other clay,
+ Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
+ Rider, and horse--friend, foe--in one red burial blent!
+
+ LORD BYRON.
+
+
+ IVRY.
+
+ A SONG OF THE HUGUENOTS.
+
+ Laddie, aged eleven, do you remember how you studied and recited "King
+ Henry of Navarre" every poetry hour for a year? It was a long poem, but
+ you stuck to it to the end. We did not know the meaning of a certain
+ word, but I found it up in Switzerland. It is the name of a little
+ town. (1800-59.)
+
+ Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are!
+ And glory to our Sovereign Liege, King Henry of Navarre!
+
+ Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance,
+ Through thy corn-fields green, and sunny vines, O pleasant
+ land of France!
+ And thou, Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters,
+ Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters.
+ As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy,
+ For cold, and stiff, and still are they who wrought thy walls annoy.
+ Hurrah! Hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of war,
+ Hurrah! Hurrah! for Ivry, and Henry of Navarre.
+
+ Oh! how our hearts were beating, when, at the dawn of day,
+ We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array;
+ With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers,
+ And Appenzel's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish spears.
+ There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land;
+ And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand;
+ And, as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood,
+ And good Coligni's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood;
+ And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war,
+ To fight for His own holy name, and Henry of Navarre.
+
+ The King is come to marshal us, in all his armour drest,
+ And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest.
+ He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye;
+ He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high.
+ Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing,
+ Down all our line, a deafening shout, "God save our Lord the King!"
+ "And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may,
+ For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray,
+ Press where ye see my white plume shine, amid the ranks of war,
+ And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre."
+
+ Hurrah! the foes are moving. Hark to the mingled din
+ Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin.
+ The fiery Duke is pricking fast across St. Andre's plain,
+ With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne.
+ Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France,
+ Charge for the golden lilies,--upon them with the lance.
+ A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest,
+ A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest;
+ And in they burst, and on they rushed, while like a guiding star,
+ Amid the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre.
+
+ Now, God be praised, the day is ours. Mayenne hath turned his rein.
+ D'Aumale hath cried for quarter. The Flemish count is slain.
+ Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale;
+ The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven mail.
+ And then we thought on vengeance, and, all along our van,
+ "Remember St. Bartholomew!" was passed from man to man.
+ But out spake gentle Henry, "No Frenchman is my foe:
+ Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go."
+ Oh! was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in war,
+ As our Sovereign Lord, King Henry, the soldier of Navarre?
+
+ Right well fought all the Frenchmen who fought for France to-day;
+ And many a lordly banner God gave them for a prey.
+ But we of the Religion have borne us best in fight;
+ And the good lord of Rosny has ta'en the cornet white.
+ Our own true Maximilian the cornet white hath ta'en,
+ The cornet white with crosses black, the flag of false Lorraine.
+ Up with it high; unfurl it wide; that all the host may know
+ How God hath humbled the proud house which wrought His church such woe.
+ Then on the ground, while trumpets sound their loudest points of war,
+ Fling the red shreds, a footcloth meet for Henry of Navarre.
+
+ Ho! maidens of Vienna; Ho! matrons of Lucerne;
+ Weep, weep, and rend your hair for those who never shall return.
+ Ho! Philip, send, for charity, thy Mexican pistoles,
+ That Antwerp monks may sing a mass for thy poor spearman's souls.
+ Ho! gallant nobles of the League, look that your arms be bright;
+ Ho! burghers of Saint Genevieve, keep watch and ward to-night.
+ For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the slave,
+ And mocked the counsel of the wise, the valour of the brave.
+ Then glory to His holy name, from whom all glories are;
+ And glory to our Sovereign Lord, King Henry of Navarre.
+
+ THOMAS B. MACAULAY.
+
+
+ THE GLOVE AND THE LIONS.
+
+"The Glove and the Lions" was one of my early reading-lessons. It is an
+ incisive thrust at the vanity of "fair" women. A woman be a "true
+ knight" as well as a man. Leigh Hunt (1784-1859.)
+
+ King Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport,
+ And one day as his lions fought, sat looking on the court;
+ The nobles filled the benches, with the ladies in their pride,
+ And 'mong them sat the Count de Lorge with one for whom he sighed:
+ And truly 'twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show,
+ Valour, and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below.
+
+ Ramp'd and roar'd the lions, with horrid laughing jaws;
+ They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind
+ went with their paws;
+ With wallowing might and stifled roar they rolled on one another,
+ Till all the pit with sand and mane was in a thunderous smother;
+ The bloody foam above the bars came whisking through the air;
+ Said Francis then, "Faith, gentlemen, we're better here than there."
+
+ De Lorge's love o'erheard the King,--a beauteous lively dame
+ With smiling lips and sharp, bright eyes, which always seem'd the same:
+ She thought, "The Count, my lover, is brave as brave can be;
+ He surely would do wondrous things to show his love of me;
+ King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is divine;
+ I'll drop my glove, to prove his love; great glory will be mine."
+
+ She dropped her glove, to prove his love, then look'd
+ at him and smiled;
+ He bowed, and in a moment leapt among the lions wild:
+ His leap was quick, return was quick, he has regain'd his place,
+ Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady's face.
+ "Well done!" cried Francis, "bravely done!" and he rose
+ from where he sat:
+ "No love," quoth he, "but vanity, sets love a task like that."
+
+ LEIGH HUNT.
+
+
+ THE WELL OF ST. KEYNE.
+
+ I found the Well of St. Keyne in Cornwall, England--not the poem, but
+ the real well. The poem is of the great body of world-lore. Southey
+ (1774-1843).
+
+ A well there is in the west country,
+ And a clearer one never was seen;
+ There is not a wife in the west-country
+ But has heard of the Well of St. Keyne.
+
+ An oak and an elm tree stand beside,
+ And behind does an ash tree grow,
+ And a willow from the bank above
+ Droops to the water below.
+
+ A traveller came to the Well of St. Keyne:
+ Pleasant it was to his eye,
+ For from cock-crow he had been travelling
+ And there was not a cloud in the sky.
+
+ He drank of the water so cool and clear,
+ For thirsty and hot was he,
+ And he sat down upon the bank,
+ Under the willow tree.
+
+ There came a man from the neighbouring town
+ At the well to fill his pail;
+ On the well-side he rested it,
+ And bade the stranger hail.
+
+ "Now, art thou a bachelor, stranger?" quoth he,
+ "For an if thou hast a wife,
+ The happiest draught thou hast drunk this day
+ That ever thou didst in thy life.
+
+ "Or has your good woman, if one you have,
+ In Cornwall ever been?
+ For an if she have, I'll venture my life
+ She has drunk of the Well of St. Keyne."
+
+ "I have left a good woman who never was here,"
+ The stranger he made reply;
+ "But that my draught should be better for that,
+ I pray you answer me why,"
+
+ "St. Keyne," quoth the countryman, "many a time
+ Drank of this crystal well,
+ And before the angel summoned her
+ She laid on the water a spell.
+
+ "If the husband of this gifted well
+ Shall drink before his wife,
+ A happy man thenceforth is he,
+ For he shall be master for life.
+
+ "But if the wife should drink of it first,
+ God help the husband then!"
+ The stranger stoop'd to the Well of St. Keyne,
+ And drank of the waters again.
+
+ "You drank of the well, I warrant, betimes?"
+ He to the countryman said;
+ But the countryman smiled as the stranger spake,
+ And sheepishly shook his head.
+
+ "I hastened as soon as the wedding was done,
+ And left my wife in the porch,
+ But i' faith she had been wiser than me,
+ For she took a bottle to church,"
+
+ ROBERT SOUTHEY.
+
+
+ THE NAUTILUS AND THE AMMONITE.
+
+"The Nautilus and the Ammonite" finds a place here out of respect to a
+ twelve-year-old girl who recited it at one of our poetry hours years
+ ago. It made a profound impression on the fifty pupils assembled, I
+ never read it without feeling that it stands test. Anonymous.
+
+ The nautilus and the ammonite
+ Were launched in friendly strife,
+ Each sent to float in its tiny boat
+ On the wide, wide sea of life.
+
+ For each could swim on the ocean's brim,
+ And, when wearied, its sail could furl,
+ And sink to sleep in the great sea-deep,
+ In its palace all of pearl.
+
+ And theirs was a bliss more fair than this
+ Which we taste in our colder clime;
+ For they were rife in a tropic life--
+ A brighter and better clime.
+
+ They swam 'mid isles whose summer smiles
+ Were dimmed by no alloy;
+ Whose groves were palm, whose air was balm,
+ And life one only joy.
+
+ They sailed all day through creek and bay,
+ And traversed the ocean deep;
+ And at night they sank on a coral bank,
+ In its fairy bowers to sleep.
+
+ And the monsters vast of ages past
+ They beheld in their ocean caves;
+ They saw them ride in their power and pride,
+ And sink in their deep-sea graves.
+
+ And hand in hand, from strand to strand,
+ They sailed in mirth and glee;
+ These fairy shells, with their crystal cells,
+ Twin sisters of the sea.
+
+ And they came at last to a sea long past,
+ But as they reached its shore,
+ The Almighty's breath spoke out in death,
+ And the ammonite was no more.
+
+ So the nautilus now in its shelly prow,
+ As over the deep it strays,
+ Still seems to seek, in bay and creek,
+ Its companion of other days.
+
+ And alike do we, on life's stormy sea,
+ As we roam from shore to shore,
+ Thus tempest-tossed, seek the loved, the lost,
+ And find them on earth no more.
+
+ Yet the hope how sweet, again to meet,
+ As we look to a distant strand,
+ Where heart meets heart, and no more they part
+ Who meet in that better land.
+
+ ANONYMOUS.
+
+
+ THE SOLITUDE OF ALEXANDER SELKIRK.
+
+ I am monarch of all I survey,
+ My right there is none to dispute,
+ From the center all round to the sea,
+ I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
+ O Solitude! where are the charms
+ That sages have seen in thy face?
+ Better dwell in the midst of alarms
+ Than reign in this horrible place.
+
+ I am out of humanity's reach,
+ I must finish my journey alone,
+ Never hear the sweet music of speech,--
+ I start at the sound of my own.
+ The beasts that roam over the plain
+ My form with indifference see;
+ They are so unacquainted with man,
+ Their tameness is shocking to me.
+
+ Society, Friendship, and Love,
+ Divinely bestow'd upon man,
+ Oh, had I the wings of a dove,
+ How soon would I taste you again!
+ My sorrows I then might assuage
+ In the ways of religion and truth,
+ Might learn from the wisdom of age,
+ And be cheer'd by the sallies of youth.
+
+ Ye winds that have made me your sport,
+ Convey to this desolate shore
+ Some cordial endearing report
+ Of a land I shall visit no more!
+
+ My friends--do they now and then send
+ A wish or a thought after me?
+ Oh, tell me I yet have a friend,
+ Though a friend I am never to see.
+
+ How fleet is a glance of the mind!
+ Compared with the speed of its flight,
+ The tempest itself lags behind,
+ And the swift-winged arrows of light.
+ When I think of my own native land,
+ In a moment I seem to be there;
+ But alas! recollection at hand
+ Soon hurries me back to despair.
+
+ But the seafowl is gone to her nest,
+ The beast is laid down in his lair,
+ Even here is a season of rest,
+ And I to my cabin repair.
+ There's mercy in every place,
+ And mercy, encouraging thought!
+ Gives even affliction a grace,
+ And reconciles man to his lot.
+
+ WILLIAM COWPER.
+
+
+ THE HOMES OF ENGLAND.
+
+ I wonder if the English people appreciate "The Homes of England." It is
+ a stately poem worthy of a Goethe or a Shakespeare. England is
+ distinctively a country of homes, pretty, little, humble homes as well
+ as stately palaces and castles, homes well made of stone or brick for
+ the most part, and clad with ivy and roses. Who would not be proud to
+ have had such a home as Ann Hathaway's humble cottage or one of the
+ little huts in the Lake District? The homes of America are often more
+ palatial, especially in small cities, but the use of wood in America
+ makes them less substantial than the slate-and-brick houses of England.
+ (1749-1835.)
+
+ The stately homes of England!
+ How beautiful they stand,
+ Amidst their tall ancestral trees,
+ O'er all the pleasant land!
+ The deer across their greensward bound
+ Through shade and sunny gleam,
+ And the swan glides past them with the sound
+ Of some rejoicing stream.
+
+ The merry homes of England!
+ Around their hearths by night
+ What gladsome looks of household love
+ Meet in the ruddy light!
+ There woman's voice flows forth in song,
+ Or childish tale is told,
+ Or lips move tunefully along
+ Some glorious page of old.
+
+ The blessed homes of England!
+ How softly on their bowers
+ Is laid the holy quietness
+ That breathes from Sabbath hours!
+ Solemn, yet sweet, the church-bell's chime
+ Floats through their woods at morn;
+ All other sounds, in that still time,
+ Of breeze and leaf are born.
+
+ The cottage homes of England!
+ By thousands on her plains,
+ They are smiling o'er the silvery brooks,
+ And round the hamlets' fanes.
+ Through glowing orchards forth they peep,
+ Each from its nook of leaves;
+ And fearless there the lowly sleep,
+ As the bird beneath their eaves.
+
+ The free, fair homes of England!
+ Long, long, in hut and hall
+ May hearts of native proof be reared
+ To guard each hallowed wall!
+ And green forever be the groves,
+ And bright the flowery sod,
+ Where first the child's glad spirit loves
+ Its country and its God!
+
+ FELICIA HEMANS.
+
+
+ HORATIUS AT THE BRIDGE.
+
+"Horatius at the Bridge" is too long a poem for children to memorise.
+ But I never saw a boy who did not want some stanzas of it. "Hold the
+ bridge with me!" Boys like that motto instinctively. T.B. Macaulay
+ (1800-59).
+
+ Lars Porsena of Clusium,
+ By the Nine Gods he swore
+ That the great house of Tarquin
+ Should suffer wrong no more.
+ By the Nine Gods he swore it,
+ And named a trysting-day,
+ And bade his messengers ride forth,
+ East and west and south and north,
+ To summon his array.
+
+ East and west and south and north
+ The messengers ride fast,
+ And tower and town and cottage
+ Have heard the trumpet's blast.
+ Shame on the false Etruscan
+ Who lingers in his home
+ When Porsena of Clusium
+ Is on the march for Rome!
+
+ The horsemen and the footmen
+ Are pouring in amain,
+ From many a stately market-place,
+ From many a fruitful plain;
+ From many a lonely hamlet,
+ Which, hid by beech and pine,
+ Like an eagle's nest, hangs on the crest
+ Of purple Apennine.
+
+ The harvests of Arretium,
+ This year, old men shall reap;
+ This year, young boys in Umbro
+ Shall plunge the struggling sheep;
+ And in the vats of Luna,
+ This year, the must shall foam
+ Round the white feet of laughing girls
+ Whose sires have marched to Rome.
+
+ There be thirty chosen prophets,
+ The wisest of the land,
+ Who alway by Lars Porsena
+ Both morn and evening stand:
+ Evening and morn the Thirty
+ Have turned the verses o'er,
+ Traced from the right on linen white
+ By mighty seers of yore.
+
+ And with one voice the Thirty
+ Have their glad answer given:
+ "Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena;
+ Go forth, beloved of Heaven;
+ Go, and return in glory
+ To Clusium's royal dome;
+ And hang round Nurscia's altars
+ The golden shields of Rome."
+
+ And now hath every city
+ Sent up her tale of men;
+ The foot are fourscore thousand,
+ The horse are thousands ten.
+ Before the gates of Sutrium
+ Is met the great array.
+ A proud man was Lars Porsena
+ Upon the trysting-day.
+
+ For all the Etruscan armies
+ Were ranged beneath his eye,
+ And many a banished Roman,
+ And many a stout ally;
+ And with a mighty following
+ To join the muster came
+ The Tusculan Mamilius,
+ Prince of the Latian name.
+
+ But by the yellow Tiber
+ Was tumult and affright:
+ From all the spacious champaign
+ To Rome men took their flight.
+ A mile around the city,
+ The throng stopped up the ways;
+ A fearful sight it was to see
+ Through two long nights and days.
+
+ Now, from the rock Tarpeian,
+ Could the wan burghers spy
+ The line of blazing villages
+ Red in the midnight sky.
+ The Fathers of the City,
+ They sat all night and day,
+ For every hour some horseman came
+ With tidings of dismay.
+
+ To eastward and to westward
+ Have spread the Tuscan bands;
+ Nor house, nor fence, nor dovecot,
+ In Crustumerium stands.
+ Verbenna down to Ostia
+ Hath wasted all the plain;
+ Astur hath stormed Janiculum,
+ And the stout guards are slain.
+
+ I wis, in all the Senate,
+ There was no heart so bold,
+ But sore it ached, and fast it beat,
+ When that ill news was told.
+ Forthwith up rose the Consul,
+ Up rose the Fathers all;
+ In haste they girded up their gowns,
+ And hied them to the wall.
+
+ They held a council standing
+ Before the River Gate;
+ Short time was there, ye well may guess,
+ For musing or debate.
+ Out spoke the Consul roundly:
+ "The bridge must straight go down;
+ For, since Janiculum is lost,
+ Naught else can save the town."
+
+ Just then a scout came flying,
+ All wild with haste and fear:
+ "To arms! to arms! Sir Consul;
+ Lars Porsena is here."
+ On the low hills to westward
+ The Consul fixed his eye,
+ And saw the swarthy storm of dust
+ Rise fast along the sky.
+
+ And nearer, fast, and nearer
+ Doth the red whirlwind come;
+ And louder still, and still more loud,
+ From underneath that rolling cloud,
+ Is heard the trumpet's war-note proud,
+ The trampling and the hum.
+ And plainly and more plainly
+ Now through the gloom appears,
+ Far to left and far to right,
+ In broken gleams of dark-blue light,
+ The long array of helmets bright,
+ The long array of spears.
+
+ And plainly and more plainly,
+ Above the glimmering line,
+ Now might ye see the banners
+ Of twelve fair cities shine;
+ But the banner of proud Clusium
+ Was the highest of them all,
+ The terror of the Umbrian,
+ The terror of the Gaul.
+
+ Fast by the royal standard,
+ O'erlooking all the war,
+ Lars Porsena of Clusium
+ Sat in his ivory car.
+ By the right wheel rode Mamilius,
+ Prince of the Latian name,
+ And by the left false Sextus,
+ That wrought the deed of shame.
+
+ But when the face of Sextus
+ Was seen among the foes,
+ A yell that rent the firmament
+ From all the town arose.
+ On the house-tops was no woman
+ But spat toward him and hissed,
+ No child but screamed out curses,
+ And shook its little fist.
+
+ But the Consul's brow was sad,
+ And the Consul's speech was low,
+ And darkly looked he at the wall,
+ And darkly at the foe.
+ "Their van will be upon us
+ Before the bridge goes down;
+ And if they once may win the bridge,
+ What hope to save the town?"
+
+ Then out spake brave Horatius,
+ The Captain of the Gate:
+ "To every man upon this earth
+ Death cometh soon or late;
+ And how can man die better
+ Than facing fearful odds,
+ For the ashes of his fathers,
+ And the temples of his gods.
+
+ "And for the tender mother
+ Who dandled him to rest,
+ And for the wife who nurses
+ His baby at her breast,
+ And for the holy maidens
+ Who feed the eternal flame,
+ To save them from false Sextus
+ That wrought the deed of shame?
+
+ "Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul,
+ With all the speed ye may;
+ I, with two more to help me,
+ Will hold the foe in play.
+ In yon straight path a thousand
+ May well be stopped by three.
+ Now who will stand on either hand,
+ And keep the bridge with me?"
+
+ Then out spake Spurius Lartius--
+ A Ramnian proud was he--
+ I will stand at thy right hand,
+ And keep the bridge with thee."
+ And out spake strong Herminius--
+ Of Titian blood was he--
+ "I will abide on thy left side,
+ And keep the bridge with thee."
+
+ "Horatius," quoth the Consul,
+ "As thou say'st, so let it be,"
+ And straight against that great array
+ Forth went the dauntless Three.
+ For Romans in Rome's quarrel
+ Spared neither land nor gold,
+ Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
+ In the brave days of old.
+
+ Now while the Three were tightening
+ Their harness on their backs,
+ The Consul was the foremost man
+ To take in hand an ax;
+ And Fathers mixed with Commons
+ Seized hatchet, bar, and crow,
+ And smote upon the planks above,
+ And loosed the props below.
+ Meanwhile the Tuscan army,
+ Right glorious to behold,
+ Came flashing back the noonday light,
+ Rank behind rank, like surges bright
+ Of a broad sea of gold.
+
+ Four hundred trumpets sounded
+ A peal of warlike glee,
+ As that great host, with measured tread,
+ And spears advanced, and ensigns spread,
+ Rolled slowly toward the bridge's head,
+ Where stood the dauntless Three.
+
+ The Three stood calm and silent,
+ And looked upon the foes,
+ And a great shout of laughter
+ From all the vanguard rose:
+ And forth three chiefs came spurring
+ Before that deep array;
+ To earth they sprang, their swords they drew,
+ And lifted high their shields, and flew
+ To win the narrow way;
+
+ Aunus from green Tifernum,
+ Lord of the Hill of Vines;
+ And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves
+ Sicken in Ilva's mines;
+ And Picus, long to Clusium
+ Vassal in peace and war,
+ Who led to fight his Umbrian powers
+ From that gray crag where, girt with towers,
+ The fortress of Nequinum lowers
+ O'er the pale waves of Nar.
+
+ Stout Lartius hurled down Aunus
+ Into the stream beneath;
+ Herminius struck at Seius,
+ And clove him to the teeth;
+ At Picus brave Horatius
+ Darted one fiery thrust;
+ And the proud Umbrian's gilded arms
+ Clashed in the bloody dust.
+
+ Then Ocnus of Falerii
+ Rushed on the Roman Three;
+ And Lausulus of Urgo,
+ The rover of the sea;
+ And Aruns of Volsinium,
+ Who slew the great wild boar,
+ The great wild boar that had his den
+ Amid the reeds of Cosa's fen.
+ And wasted fields and slaughtered men
+ Along Albinia's shore.
+
+ Herminius smote down Aruns;
+ Lartius laid Ocnus low;
+ Right to the heart of Lausulus
+ Horatius sent a blow.
+ "Lie there," he cried, "fell pirate!
+ No more, aghast and pale,
+ From Ostia's walls the crowd shall mark
+ The tracks of thy destroying bark,
+ No more Campania's hinds shall fly
+ To woods and caverns when they spy
+ Thy thrice accursed sail."
+
+ But now no sound of laughter
+ Was heard among the foes.
+ A wild and wrathful clamour
+ From all the vanguard rose.
+ Six spears' length from the entrance
+ Halted that deep array,
+ And for a space no man came forth
+ To win the narrow way.
+
+ But hark! the cry is Astur:
+ And lo! the ranks divide;
+ And the great Lord of Luna
+ Comes with his stately stride.
+ Upon his ample shoulders
+ Clangs loud the fourfold shield,
+ And in his hand he shakes the brand
+ Which none but he can wield.
+
+ He smiled on those bold Romans,
+ A smile serene and high;
+ He eyed the flinching Tuscans,
+ And scorn was in his eye.
+ Quoth he: "The she-wolf's litter
+ Stand savagely at bay;
+ But will ye dare to follow,
+ If Astur clears the way?"
+
+ Then, whirling up his broadsword
+ With both hands to the height,
+ He rushed against Horatius,
+ And smote with all his might.
+ With shield and blade Horatius
+ Right deftly turned the blow.
+ The blow, though turned, came yet too nigh;
+ It missed his helm, but gashed his thigh:
+ The Tuscans raised a joyful cry
+ To see the red blood flow.
+
+ He reeled, and on Herminius
+ He leaned one breathing space;
+ Then, like a wildcat mad with wounds,
+ Sprang right at Astur's face.
+ Through teeth, and skull, and helmet,
+ So fierce a thrust he sped,
+ The good sword stood a handbreadth out
+ Behind the Tuscan's head.
+
+ And the great Lord of Luna
+ Fell at the deadly stroke,
+ As falls on Mount Alvernus
+ A thunder-smitten oak.
+ Far o'er the crashing forest
+ The giant arms lie spread;
+ And the pale augurs, muttering low,
+ Gaze on the blasted head.
+
+ On Astur's throat Horatius
+ Right firmly pressed his heel,
+ And thrice and four times tugged amain
+ Ere he wrenched out the steel.
+ "And see," he cried, "the welcome,
+ Fair guests, that waits you here!
+ What noble Lucumo comes next
+ To taste our Roman cheer?"
+
+ But at his haughty challenge
+ A sullen murmur ran,
+ Mingled of wrath, and shame, and dread,
+ Along that glittering van.
+ There lacked not men of prowess,
+ Nor men of lordly race;
+ For all Etruria's noblest
+ Were round the fatal place.
+
+ But all Etruria's noblest
+ Felt their hearts sink to see
+ On the earth the bloody corpses,
+ In the path the dauntless Three:
+ And, from the ghastly entrance
+ Where those bold Romans stood,
+ All shrank, like boys who unaware,
+ Ranging the woods to start a hare,
+ Come to the mouth of the dark lair
+ Where, growling low, a fierce old bear
+ Lies amid bones and blood.
+
+ Was none who would be foremost
+ To lead such dire attack?
+ But those behind cried "Forward!"
+ And those before cried "Back!"
+ And backward now and forward
+ Wavers the deep array;
+ And on the tossing sea of steel
+ To and fro the standards reel;
+ And the victorious trumpet peal
+ Dies fitfully away.
+
+ Yet one man for one moment
+ Strode out before the crowd;
+ Well known was he to all the Three,
+ And they gave him greeting loud:
+ "Now welcome, welcome, Sextus!
+ Now welcome to thy home!
+ Why dost thou stay, and turn away?
+ Here lies the road to Rome."
+
+ Thrice looked he at the city;
+ Thrice looked he at the dead;
+ And thrice came on in fury,
+ And thrice turned back in dread:
+ And, white with fear and hatred,
+ Scowled at the narrow way
+ Where, wallowing in a pool of blood,
+ The bravest Tuscans lay.
+
+ But meanwhile ax and lever
+ Have manfully been plied,
+ And now the bridge hangs tottering
+ Above the boiling tide.
+ "Come back, come back, Horatius!"
+ Loud cried the Fathers all.
+ "Back, Lartius! Back, Herminius!
+ Back, ere the ruin fall!"
+
+ Back darted Spurius Lartius;
+ Herminius darted back:
+ And, as they passed, beneath their feet
+ They felt the timbers crack.
+ But when they turned their faces,
+ And on the farther shore
+ Saw brave Horatius stand alone,
+ They would have crossed once more.
+
+ But with a crash like thunder
+ Fell every loosened beam,
+ And, like a dam, the mighty wreck
+ Lay right athwart the stream;
+ And a long shout of triumph
+ Rose from the walls of Rome,
+ As to the highest turret tops
+ Was splashed the yellow foam.
+
+ And, like a horse unbroken
+ When first he feels the rein,
+ The furious river struggled hard,
+ And tossed his tawny mane;
+ And burst the curb, and bounded,
+ Rejoicing to be free,
+ And whirling down, in fierce career,
+ Battlement, and plank, and pier,
+ Rushed headlong to the sea.
+
+ Alone stood brave Horatius,
+ But constant still in mind;
+ Thrice thirty thousand foes before,
+ And the broad flood behind.
+ "Down with him!" cried false Sextus,
+ With a smile on his pale face.
+ "Now yield thee," cried Lars Porsena,
+ "Now yield thee to our grace."
+
+ Round turned he, as not deigning
+ Those craven ranks to see;
+ Naught spake he to Lars Porsena,
+ To Sextus naught spake he;
+ But he saw on Palatinus
+ The white porch of his home;
+ And he spake to the noble river
+ That rolls by the towers of Rome:
+
+ "O Tiber! Father Tiber!
+ To whom the Romans pray,
+ A Roman's life, a Roman's arms,
+ Take thou in charge this day!"
+ So he spake, and speaking sheathed
+ The good sword by his side,
+ And, with his harness on his back,
+ Plunged headlong in the tide.
+
+ No sound of joy or sorrow
+ Was heard from either bank;
+ But friends and foes in dumb surprise,
+ With parted lips and straining eyes,
+ Stood gazing where he sank;
+ And when above the surges
+ They saw his crest appear,
+ All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry,
+ And even the ranks of Tuscany
+ Could scarce forbear to cheer.
+
+ And fiercely ran the current,
+ Swollen high by months of rain;
+ And fast his blood was flowing,
+ And he was sore in pain,
+ And heavy with his armour,
+ And spent with changing blows:
+ And oft they thought him sinking,
+ But still again he rose.
+
+ Never, I ween, did swimmer,
+ In such an evil case,
+ Struggle through such a raging flood
+ Safe to the landing place;
+ But his limbs were borne up bravely
+ By the brave heart within,
+ And our good Father Tiber
+ Bore bravely up his chin.
+
+ "Curse on him!" quoth false Sextus;
+ "Will not the villain drown?
+ But for this stay, ere close of day
+ We should have sacked the town!"
+ "Heaven help him!" quoth Lars Porsena,
+ "And bring him safe to shore;
+ For such a gallant feat of arms
+ Was never seen before."
+
+ And now he feels the bottom;
+ Now on dry earth he stands;
+ Now round him throng the Fathers
+ To press his gory hands;
+ And now with shouts and clapping,
+ And noise of weeping loud,
+ He enters through the River Gate,
+ Borne by the joyous crowd.
+
+ They gave him of the corn land,
+ That was of public right.
+ As much as two strong oxen
+ Could plow from morn till night:
+ And they made a molten image,
+ And set it up on high,
+ And there it stands unto this day
+ To witness if I lie.
+
+ It stands in the Comitium,
+ Plain for all folk to see,--
+ Horatius in his harness,
+ Halting upon one knee:
+ And underneath is written,
+ In letters all of gold,
+ How valiantly he kept the bridge
+ In the brave days of old.
+
+ And still his name sounds stirring
+ Unto the men of Rome,
+ As the trumpet blast that cries to them
+ To charge the Volscian home;
+ And wives still pray to Juno
+ For boys with hearts as bold
+ As his who kept the bridge so well
+ In the brave days of old.
+
+ And in the nights of winter,
+ When the cold north winds blow,
+ And the long howling of the wolves
+ Is heard amid the snow;
+ When round the lonely cottage
+ Roars loud the tempest's din,
+ And the good logs of Algidus
+ Roar louder yet within;
+
+ When the oldest cask is opened,
+ And the largest lamp is lit;
+ When the chestnuts glow in the embers,
+ And the kid turns on the spit;
+ When young and old in circle
+ Around the firebrands close;
+ When the girls are weaving baskets,
+ And the lads are shaping bows;
+
+ When the goodman mends his armour,
+ And trims his helmet's plume;
+ When the goodwife's shuttle merrily
+ Goes flashing through the loom,--
+ With weeping and with laughter
+ Still is the story told,
+ How well Horatius kept the bridge
+ In the brave days of old.
+
+ THOMAS B. MACAULAY.
+
+
+ THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE-TREE.
+
+"The Planting of the Apple-Tree" has become a favourite for "Arbour
+ Day" exercises. The planting of trees as against their destruction is a
+ vital point in our political and national welfare. William Cullen
+ Bryant (1794-1878).
+
+ Come, let us plant the apple-tree.
+ Cleave the tough greensward with the spade;
+ Wide let its hollow bed be made;
+ There gently lay the roots, and there
+ Sift the dark mould with kindly care,
+ And press it o'er them tenderly,
+ As round the sleeping infant's feet
+ We softly fold the cradle sheet;
+ So plant we the apple-tree.
+
+ What plant we in this apple-tree?
+ Buds, which the breath of summer days
+ Shall lengthen into leafy sprays;
+ Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast,
+ Shall haunt, and sing, and hide her nest;
+ We plant, upon the sunny lea,
+ A shadow for the noontide hour,
+ A shelter from the summer shower,
+ When we plant the apple-tree.
+
+ What plant we in this apple-tree?
+ Sweets for a hundred flowery springs,
+ To load the May wind's restless wings,
+ When, from the orchard row, he pours
+ Its fragrance through our open doors;
+ A world of blossoms for the bee,
+ Flowers for the sick girl's silent room,
+ For the glad infant sprigs of bloom,
+ We plant with the apple-tree.
+
+ What plant we in this apple-tree?
+ Fruits that shall swell in sunny June,
+ And redden in the August noon,
+ And drop, when gentle airs come by,
+ That fan the blue September sky,
+ While children come, with cries of glee,
+ And seek them where the fragrant grass
+ Betrays their bed to those who pass,
+ At the foot of the apple-tree.
+
+ And when, above this apple-tree,
+ The winter stars are quivering bright,
+ The winds go howling through the night,
+ Girls, whose eyes o'erflow with mirth,
+ Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth,
+ And guests in prouder homes shall see,
+ Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine,
+ And golden orange of the line,
+ The fruit of the apple-tree.
+
+ The fruitage of this apple-tree,
+ Winds and our flag of stripe and star
+ Shall bear to coasts that lie afar,
+ Where men shall wonder at the view,
+ And ask in what fair groves they grew;
+ And sojourners beyond the sea
+ Shall think of childhood's careless day,
+ And long, long hours of summer play,
+ In the shade of the apple-tree.
+
+ Each year shall give this apple-tree
+ A broader flush of roseate bloom,
+ A deeper maze of verdurous gloom,
+ And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower,
+ The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower.
+ The years shall come and pass, but we
+ Shall hear no longer, where we lie,
+ The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh,
+ In the boughs of the apple-tree.
+
+ And time shall waste this apple-tree.
+ Oh, when its aged branches throw
+ Thin shadows on the ground below,
+ Shall fraud and force and iron will
+ Oppress the weak and helpless still!
+ What shall the tasks of mercy be,
+ Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears
+ Of those who live when length of years
+ Is wasting this apple-tree?
+
+ "Who planted this old apple-tree?"
+ The children of that distant day
+ Thus to some aged man shall say;
+ And, gazing on its mossy stem,
+ The gray-haired man shall answer them:
+ "A poet of the land was he,
+ Born in the rude but good old times;
+ 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes
+ On planting the apple-tree."
+
+ WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ PART V.
+
+ On and On
+
+
+ JUNE.
+
+"June" (by James Russell Lowell, 1819-91), is a fragment from "The
+ Vision of Sir Launfal." It finds a place in this volume because it is
+ the most perfect description of a charming day ever written.
+
+ What is so rare as a day in June?
+ Then, if ever, come perfect days;
+ Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
+ And over it softly her warm ear lays:
+ Whether we look, or whether we listen,
+ We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
+ Every clod feels a stir of might,
+ An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
+ And, groping blindly above it for light,
+ Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
+ The flush of life may well be seen
+ Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
+ The cowslip startles in meadows green.
+ The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
+ And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean
+ To be some happy creature's palace;
+ The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
+ Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
+ And lets his illumined being o'errun
+ With the deluge of summer it receives;
+ His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
+ And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
+ He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,--
+ In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?
+
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
+
+
+ A PSALM OF LIFE.
+
+ WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST.
+
+"A Psalm of Life," by Henry W. Longfellow (1807-82), is like a treasure
+ laid up in heaven. It should be learned for its future value to the
+ child, not necessarily because the child likes it. Its value will dawn
+ on him.
+
+ Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
+ Life is but an empty dream!--
+ For the soul is dead that slumbers,
+ And things are not what they seem.
+
+ Life is real! Life is earnest!
+ And the grave is not its goal;
+ Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
+ Was not spoken of the soul.
+
+ Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
+ Is our destined end or way;
+ But to act, that each to-morrow
+ Find us farther than to-day.
+
+ Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
+ And our hearts, though stout and brave,
+ Still, like muffled drums, are beating
+ Funeral marches to the grave.
+
+ In the world's broad field of battle,
+ In the bivouac of Life,
+ Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
+ Be a hero in the strife!
+
+ Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
+ Let the dead Past bury its dead!
+ Act,--act in the living Present!
+ Heart within, and God o'erhead!
+
+ Lives of great men all remind us
+ We can make our lives sublime,
+ And, departing, leave behind us
+ Footprints on the sands of time;
+
+ Footprints, that perhaps another,
+ Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
+ A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
+ Seeing, shall take heart again.
+
+ Let us, then, be up and doing,
+ With a heart for any fate;
+ Still achieving, still pursuing,
+ Learn to labour and to wait.
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ BARNACLES.
+
+"Barnacles" (by Sidney Lanier, 1842-81), is a poem that I teach in
+ connection with my lessons on natural history. We have a good specimen
+ of a barnacle, and the children see them on the shells on the coast.
+ The ethical point is invaluable.
+
+ My soul is sailing through the sea,
+ But the Past is heavy and hindereth me.
+ The Past hath crusted cumbrous shells
+ That hold the flesh of cold sea-mells
+ About my soul.
+ The huge waves wash, the high waves roll,
+ Each barnacle clingeth and worketh dole
+ And hindereth me from sailing!
+
+ Old Past, let go, and drop i' the sea
+ Till fathomless waters cover thee!
+ For I am living, but thou art dead;
+ Thou drawest back, I strive ahead
+ The Day to find.
+ Thy shells unbind! Night comes behind;
+ I needs must hurry with the wind
+ And trim me best for sailing.
+
+ SIDNEY LANIER.
+
+
+ A HAPPY LIFE.
+
+ How happy is he born and taught
+ That serveth not another's will;
+ Whose armour is his honest thought,
+ And simple truth his utmost skill!
+
+ Whose passions not his master's are,
+ Whose soul is still prepared for death,
+ Not tied unto the world with care
+ Of public fame, or private breath.
+
+ SIR HENRY WOTTON.
+
+
+ HOME, SWEET HOME!
+
+"Home, Sweet Home" (John Howard Payne, 1791-1852) is a poem that
+ reaches into the heart. What is home? A place where we experience
+ independence, safety, privacy, and where we can dispense hospitality.
+"The family is the true unit."
+
+ 'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
+ Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;
+ A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,
+ Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere.
+ Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!
+ There's no place like Home! there's no place like Home!
+
+ An exile from Home, splendour dazzles in vain;
+ O, give me my lowly thatched cottage again!
+ The birds singing gaily, that came at my call,--
+ Give me them,--and the peace of mind, dearer than all!
+ Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!
+ There's no place like Home! there's no place like Home!
+
+ How sweet 'tis to sit 'neath a fond father's smile,
+ And the cares of a mother to soothe and beguile!
+ Let others delight 'mid new pleasures to roam,
+ But give me, oh, give me, the pleasures of Home!
+ Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!
+ There's no place like Home! there's no place like Home!
+
+ To thee I'll return, overburdened with care;
+ The heart's dearest solace will smile on me there;
+ No more from that cottage again will I roam;
+ Be it ever so humble, there's no place like Home.
+ Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!
+ There's no place like Home! there's no place like Home!
+
+ JOHN HOWARD PAYNE.
+
+
+ FROM CASA GUIDI WINDOWS.
+
+ JULIET OF NATIONS.
+
+ I heard last night a little child go singing
+ 'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church,
+ _O bella liberta, O bella!_--stringing
+ The same words still on notes he went in search
+ So high for, you concluded the upspringing
+ Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch
+ Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green,
+ And that the heart of Italy must beat,
+ While such a voice had leave to rise serene
+ 'Twixt church and palace of a Florence street;
+ A little child, too, who not long had been
+ By mother's finger steadied on his feet,
+ And still _O bella liberta_ he sang.
+
+ ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
+
+
+ WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE!
+
+"Woodman, Spare That Tree" (by George Pope Morris, 1802-64) is included
+ in this collection because I have loved it all my life, and I never
+ knew any one who could or would offer a criticism upon it. Its value
+ lies in its recognition of childhood's pleasures.
+
+ Woodman, spare that tree!
+ Touch not a single bough!
+ In youth it sheltered me,
+ And I'll protect it now.
+ 'Twas my forefather's hand
+ That placed it near his cot;
+ There, woodman, let it stand,
+ Thy ax shall harm it not.
+
+ That old familiar tree,
+ Whose glory and renown
+ Are spread o'er land and sea--
+ And wouldst thou hew it down?
+ Woodman, forbear thy stroke!
+ Cut not its earth-bound ties;
+ Oh, spare that aged oak
+ Now towering to the skies!
+
+ When but an idle boy,
+ I sought its grateful shade;
+ In all their gushing joy
+ Here, too, my sisters played.
+ My mother kissed me here;
+ My father pressed my hand--
+ Forgive this foolish tear,
+ But let that old oak stand.
+
+ My heart-strings round thee cling,
+ Close as thy bark, old friend!
+ Here shall the wild-bird sing,
+ And still thy branches bend.
+ Old tree! the storm still brave!
+ And, woodman, leave the spot;
+ While I've a hand to save,
+ Thy ax shall harm it not.
+
+ GEORGE POPE MORRIS.
+
+
+ ABIDE WITH ME.
+
+"Abide With Me" (Henry Francis Lyte, 1793-1847) appeals to our natural
+ longing for the unchanging and to our love of security.
+
+ Abide with me! fast falls the eventide;
+ The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide!
+ When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
+ Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
+
+ Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;
+ Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
+ Change and decay in all around I see:
+ O Thou who changest not, abide with me!
+
+ HENRY FRANCIS LYTE.
+
+
+ LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT
+
+"Lead, Kindly Light," by John Henry Newman (1801-90), was written when
+ Cardinal Newman was in the stress and strain of perplexity and mental
+ distress and bodily pain. The poem has been a star in the darkness to
+ thousands. It was the favourite poem of President McKinley.
+
+ Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom,
+ Lead Thou me on,
+ The night is dark, and I am far from home,
+ Lead Thou me on.
+ Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
+ The distant scene; one step enough for me.
+
+ I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
+ Shouldst lead me on;
+ I loved to choose and see my path; but now
+ Lead Thou me on.
+ I loved the garish day; and, spite of fears,
+ Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.
+
+ So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
+ Will lead me on
+ O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
+ The night is gone,
+ And with the morn those angel faces smile,
+ Which I have loved long since, and lost a while.
+
+ JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.
+
+
+ THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER.
+
+ 'Tis the last rose of summer
+ Left blooming alone;
+ All her lovely companions
+ Are faded and gone;
+ No flower of her kindred,
+ No rose-bud 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,
+ O! who would inhabit
+ This bleak world alone?
+
+ THOMAS MOORE.
+
+
+ ANNIE LAURIE.
+
+"Annie Laurie" finds a place in this collection because it is the most
+ popular song on earth. Written by William Douglas, (----).
+
+ Maxwelton braes are bonnie
+ Where early fa's the dew,
+ And it's there that Annie Laurie
+ Gie'd me her promise true--
+ Gie'd me her promise true,
+ Which ne'er forgot will be;
+ And for bonnie Annie Laurie
+ I'd lay me doune and dee.
+
+ Her brow is like the snawdrift,
+ Her throat is like the swan,
+ Her face it is the fairest
+ That e'er the sun shone on--
+ That e'er the sun shone on;
+ And dark blue is her e'e;
+ And for bonnie Annie Laurie
+ I'd lay me doune and dee.
+
+ Like dew on the gowan lying
+ Is the fa' o' her fairy feet;
+ Like the winds in summer sighing,
+ Her voice is low and sweet--
+ Her voice is low and sweet;
+ And she's a' the world to me;
+ And for bonnie Annie Laurie
+ I'd lay me doune and dee.
+
+ WILLIAM DOUGLAS.
+
+
+ THE SHIP OF STATE.
+
+ A president of a well-known college writes me that "The Ship of State"
+ was his favourite poem when he was a boy, and did more than any other
+ to shape his course in life. Longfellow (1807-82).
+
+ Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State!
+ Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
+ Humanity, with all its fears,
+ With all the hopes of future years,
+ Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
+ We know what Master laid thy keel,
+ What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
+ Who made each mast, and sail, and rope;
+ What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
+ In what a forge and what a heat
+ Were forged the anchors of thy hope!
+ Fear not each sudden sound and shock--
+ 'Tis of the wave, and not the rock;
+ 'Tis but the flapping of the sail,
+ And not a rent made by the gale!
+ In spite of rock, and tempest roar,
+ In spite of false lights on the shore,
+ Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
+ Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
+ Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
+ Our faith, triumphant o'er our fears,
+ Are all with thee, are all with thee!
+
+ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+ The Constitution and Laws are here personified, and addressed as "The
+ Ship of State."
+
+
+ AMERICA.
+
+"America" (Samuel Francis Smith, 1808-95) is a good poem to learn as a
+ poem, regardless of the fact that every American who can sing it ought
+ to know it, that he may join in the chorus when patriotic celebrations
+ call for it. My boys love to repeat the entire poem, but I often find
+ masses of people trying to sing it, knowing only one stanza. It is our
+ national anthem, and a part of our education to know every word of it.
+
+ My country, 'tis of thee,
+ Sweet land of liberty,
+ Of thee I sing;
+ Land where my fathers died,
+ Land of the Pilgrims' pride;
+ From every mountain side,
+ Let freedom ring.
+
+ My native country, thee--
+ Land of the noble free--
+ Thy name I love;
+ I love thy rocks and rills,
+ Thy woods and templed hills;
+ My heart with rapture thrills,
+ Like that above.
+
+ Let music swell the breeze,
+ And ring from all the trees
+ Sweet freedom's song;
+ Let mortal tongues awake;
+ Let all that breathe partake;
+ Let rocks their silence break--
+ The sound prolong.
+
+ Our fathers' God, to Thee,
+ Author of liberty,
+ To Thee we sing:
+ Long may our land be bright
+ With freedom's holy light:
+ Protect us by Thy might,
+ Great God, our King.
+
+ S.F. SMITH.
+
+
+ THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS.
+
+"The Landing of the Pilgrims," by Felicia Hemans (1749-1835), is a poem
+ that children want when they study the early history of America.
+
+ The breaking waves dashed high
+ On a stern and rock-bound coast,
+ And the woods against a stormy sky
+ Their giant branches tossed.
+
+ And the heavy night hung dark
+ The hills and waters o'er,
+ When a band of exiles moored their bark
+ On the wild New England shore.
+
+ Not as the conqueror comes,
+ They, the true-hearted, came;
+ Not with the roll of the stirring drums,
+ And the trumpet that sings of fame.
+
+ Not as the flying come,
+ In silence and in fear;
+ They shook the depths of the desert gloom
+ With their hymns of lofty cheer.
+
+ Amid the storm they sang,
+ And the stars heard, and the sea,
+ And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
+ To the anthem of the free!
+
+ The ocean eagle soared
+ From his nest by the white wave's foam;
+ And the rocking pines of the forest roared,--
+ This was their welcome home!
+
+ There were men with hoary hair,
+ Amid that pilgrim band;
+ Why had _they_ come to wither there,
+ Away from their childhood's land?
+
+ There was woman's fearless eye,
+ Lit by her deep love's truth;
+ There was manhood's brow serenely high,
+ And the fiery heart of youth.
+
+ What sought they thus afar?
+ Bright jewels of the mine?
+ The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?--
+ They sought a faith's pure shrine!
+
+ Ay! call it holy ground,
+ The soil where first they trod:
+ They have left unstained what there they found,
+ Freedom to worship God.
+
+ FELICIA HEMANS.
+
+
+ THE LOTOS-EATERS.
+
+ The main idea in "The Lotos-Eaters" is, are we justified in running
+ away from unpleasant duties? Or, is insensibility justifiable?
+
+ Laddie, do you recollect learning this poem after we had read the story
+ of "Odysseus"? "The struggle of the soul urged to action, but held back
+ by the spirit of self-indulgence." These were the points we discussed.
+ Alfred Tennyson (1809-92).
+
+ "Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land,
+ "This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."
+ In the afternoon they came unto a land
+ In which it seemed always afternoon.
+ All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
+ Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
+ Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
+ And like a downward smoke, the slender stream
+ Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.
+
+ A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
+ Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
+ And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke,
+ Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
+ They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
+ From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,
+ Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
+ Stood sunset-flush'd: and, dew'd with showery drops,
+ Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.
+
+ The charmed sunset linger'd low adown
+ In the red West: thro' mountain clefts the dale
+ Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
+ Border'd with palm, and many a winding vale
+ And meadow, set with slender galingale;
+ A land where all things always seem'd the same!
+ And round about the keel with faces pale,
+ Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
+ The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.
+
+ Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
+ Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
+ To each, but whoso did receive of them,
+ And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
+ Far, far away did seem to mourn and rave
+ On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
+ His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
+ And deep-asleep he seem'd, yet all awake,
+ And music in his ears his beating heart did make.
+
+ They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
+ Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
+ And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
+ Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
+ Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar,
+ Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
+ Then some one said, "We will return no more;"
+ And all at once they sang, "Our island home
+ Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam."
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ MOLY.
+
+"Moly" (mo'ly), by Edith M. Thomas (1850-), in the best possible
+ presentation of the value of integrity. This poem ranks with "Sir
+ Galahad," if not above it. It is a stroke of genius, and every American
+ ought to be proud of it. Every time my boys read "Odysseus" or the
+ story of Ulysses with me we read or learn "Moly." The plant moly grows
+ in the United States as well as in Europe.
+
+ Traveller, pluck a stem of moly,
+ If thou touch at Circe's isle,--
+ Hermes' moly, growing solely
+ To undo enchanter's wile!
+ When she proffers thee her chalice,--
+ Wine and spices mixed with malice,--
+ When she smites thee with her staff
+ To transform thee, do thou laugh!
+ Safe thou art if thou but bear
+ The least leaf of moly rare.
+ Close it grows beside her portal,
+ Springing from a stock immortal,
+ Yes! and often has the Witch
+ Sought to tear it from its niche;
+ But to thwart her cruel will
+ The wise God renews it still.
+ Though it grows in soil perverse,
+ Heaven hath been its jealous nurse,
+ And a flower of snowy mark
+ Springs from root and sheathing dark;
+ Kingly safeguard, only herb
+ That can brutish passion curb!
+ Some do think its name should be
+ Shield-Heart, White Integrity.
+ Traveller, pluck a stem of moly,
+ If thou touch at Circe's isle,--
+ Hermes' moly, growing solely
+ To undo enchanter's wile!
+
+ EDITH M. THOMAS.
+
+
+ CUPID DROWNED.
+
+"Cupid Drowned" (1784-1859), "Cupid Stung" (1779-1852), and "Cupid and
+ My Campasbe" (1558-1606) are three dainty poems recommended by Mrs.
+ Margaret Mooney, of the Albany Teachers' College, in her "Foundation
+ Studies in Literature." Children are always delighted with them.
+
+ T'other day as I was twining
+ Roses, for a crown to dine in,
+ What, of all things, 'mid the heap,
+ Should I light on, fast asleep,
+ But the little desperate elf,
+ The tiny traitor, Love, himself!
+ By the wings I picked him up
+ Like a bee, and in a cup
+ Of my wine I plunged and sank him,
+ Then what d'ye think I did?--I drank him.
+ Faith, I thought him dead. Not he!
+ There he lives with tenfold glee;
+ And now this moment with his wings
+ I feel him tickling my heart-strings.
+
+ LEIGH HUNT.
+
+
+ CUPID STUNG.
+
+ Cupid once upon a bed
+ Of roses laid his weary head;
+ Luckless urchin, not to see
+ Within the leaves a slumbering bee.
+ The bee awak'd--with anger wild
+ The bee awak'd, and stung the child.
+ Loud and piteous are his cries;
+ To Venus quick he runs, he flies;
+ "Oh, Mother! I am wounded through--
+ I die with pain--in sooth I do!
+ Stung by some little angry thing,
+ Some serpent on a tiny wing--
+ A bee it was--for once, I know,
+ I heard a rustic call it so."
+ Thus he spoke, and she the while
+ Heard him with a soothing smile;
+ Then said, "My infant, if so much
+ Thou feel the little wild bee's touch,
+ How must the heart, ah, Cupid! be,
+ The hapless heart that's stung by thee!"
+
+ THOMAS MOORE.
+
+
+ CUPID AND MY CAMPASBE.
+
+ Cupid and my Campasbe played
+ At cards for kisses. Cupid paid.
+ He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows,
+ His mother's doves and team of sparrows.
+ Loses them, too; then down he throws
+ The coral of his lips, the rose
+ Growing on his cheek, but none knows how;
+ With them the crystal of his brow,
+ And then the dimple of his chin.
+ All these did my Campasbe win.
+ At last he set her both his eyes;
+ She won and Cupid blind did rise.
+ Oh, Love, hath she done this to thee!
+ What shall, alas, become of me!
+
+ JOHN LYLY.
+
+
+ A BALLAD FOR A BOY.
+
+ Violo Roseboro, one of our good authors, brought to me "A Ballad for a
+ Boy," saying: "I believe it is one of the poems that every child ought
+ to know." It is included in this compilation out of respect to her
+ opinion and also because the boys to whom I have read it said it was
+"great," The lesson in it is certainly fine. Men who are true men want
+ to settle their own disputes by a hand-to-hand fight, but they will
+ always help each other when a third party or the elements interfere.
+ Humanity is greater than human interests.
+
+ When George the Third was reigning, a hundred years ago,
+ He ordered Captain Farmer to chase the foreign foe,
+ "You're not afraid of shot," said he, "you're not afraid of wreck,
+ So cruise about the west of France in the frigate called _Quebec_.
+
+ "Quebec was once a Frenchman's town, but twenty years ago
+ King George the Second sent a man called General Wolfe, you know,
+ To clamber up a precipice and look into Quebec,
+ As you'd look down a hatchway when standing on the deck.
+
+ "If Wolfe could beat the Frenchmen then, so you can beat them now.
+ Before he got inside the town he died, I must allow.
+ But since the town was won for us it is a lucky name,
+ And you'll remember Wolfe's good work, and you shall do the same."
+
+ Then Farmer said, "I'll try, sir," and Farmer bowed so low
+ That George could see his pigtail tied in a velvet bow.
+ George gave him his commission, and that it might be safer,
+ Signed "King of Britain, King of France," and sealed it with a wafer.
+
+ Then proud was Captain Farmer in a frigate of his own,
+ And grander on his quarter-deck than George upon his throne.
+ He'd two guns in his cabin, and on the spar-deck ten,
+ And twenty on the gun-deck, and more than ten-score men.
+
+ And as a huntsman scours the brakes with sixteen brace of dogs,
+ With two-and-thirty cannon the ship explored the fogs.
+ From Cape la Hogue to Ushant, from Rochefort to Belleisle,
+ She hunted game till reef and mud were rubbing on her keel.
+
+ The fogs are dried, the frigate's side is bright with melting tar,
+ The lad up in the foretop sees square white sails afar;
+ The east wind drives three square-sailed masts from out the Breton bay,
+ And "Clear for action!" Farmer shouts, and reefers yell "Hooray!"
+
+ The Frenchmen's captain had a name I wish I could pronounce;
+ A Breton gentleman was he, and wholly free from bounce,
+ One like those famous fellows who died by guillotine
+ For honour and the fleur-de-lys, and Antoinette the Queen.
+
+ The Catholic for Louis, the Protestant for George,
+ Each captain drew as bright a sword as saintly smiths could forge;
+ And both were simple seamen, but both could understand
+ How each was bound to win or die for flag and native land.
+
+ The French ship was _La Surveillante_, which means the watchful maid;
+ She folded up her head-dress and began to cannonade.
+ Her hull was clean, and ours was foul; we had to spread more sail.
+ On canvas, stays, and topsail yards her bullets came like hail.
+
+ Sore smitten were both captains, and many lads beside,
+ And still to cut our rigging the foreign gunners tried.
+ A sail-clad spar came flapping down athwart a blazing gun;
+ We could not quench the rushing flames, and so the Frenchman won.
+
+ Our quarter-deck was crowded, the waist was all aglow;
+ Men hung upon the taffrail half scorched, but loth to go;
+ Our captain sat where once he stood, and would not quit his chair.
+ He bade his comrades leap for life, and leave him bleeding there.
+
+ The guns were hushed on either side, the Frenchmen lowered boats,
+ They flung us planks and hen-coops, and everything that floats.
+ They risked their lives, good fellows! to bring their rivals aid.
+ Twas by the conflagration the peace was strangely made.
+
+ _La Surveillante_ was like a sieve; the victors had no rest;
+ They had to dodge the east wind to reach the port of Brest.
+ And where the waves leapt lower and the riddled ship went slower,
+ In triumph, yet in funeral guise, came fisher-boats to tow her.
+
+ They dealt with us as brethren, they mourned for Farmer dead;
+ And as the wounded captives passed each Breton bowed the head.
+ Then spoke the French Lieutenant, "Twas fire that won, not we.
+ You never struck your flag to us; you'll go to England free."
+
+ Twas the sixth day of October, seventeen hundred seventy-nine,
+ A year when nations ventured against us to combine,
+ _Quebec_ was burned and Farmer slain, by us remembered not;
+ But thanks be to the French book wherein they're not forgot.
+
+ Now you, if you've to fight the French, my youngster, bear in mind
+ Those seamen of King Louis so chivalrous and kind;
+ Think of the Breton gentlemen who took our lads to Brest,
+ And treat some rescued Breton as a comrade and a guest.
+
+
+ THE SKELETON IN ARMOUR.
+
+"The Skeleton in Armour" (Longfellow, 1807-82) is a "boy's poem." It
+ it pure literature and good history.
+
+ "Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!
+ Who, with thy hollow breast
+ Still in rude armour drest,
+ Comest to daunt me!
+ Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
+ But with thy fleshless palms
+ Stretched, as if asking alms,
+ Why dost thou haunt me?"
+
+ Then from those cavernous eyes
+ Pale flashes seemed to rise,
+ As when the Northern skies
+ Gleam in December;
+ And, like the water's flow
+ Under December's snow,
+ Came a dull voice of woe
+ From the heart's chamber.
+
+ "I was a Viking old!
+ My deeds, though manifold,
+ No Skald in song has told,
+ No Saga taught thee!
+ Take heed that in thy verse
+ Thou dost the tale rehearse,
+ Else dread a dead man's curse;
+ For this I sought thee.
+
+ "Far in the Northern Land,
+ By the wild Baltic's strand,
+ I, with my childish hand,
+ Tamed the gerfalcon;
+ And, with my skates fast-bound,
+ Skimmed the half-frozen Sound,
+ That the poor whimpering hound
+ Trembled to walk on.
+
+ "Oft to his frozen lair
+ Tracked I the grizzly bear,
+ While from my path the hare
+ Fled like a shadow;
+ Oft through the forest dark
+ Followed the were-wolf's bark,
+ Until the soaring lark
+ Sang from the meadow.
+
+ "But when I older grew,
+ Joining a corsair's crew,
+ O'er the dark sea I flew
+ With the marauders.
+ Wild was the life we led;
+ Many the souls that sped,
+ Many the hearts that bled,
+ By our stern orders.
+
+ "Many a wassail-bout
+ Wore the long Winter out;
+ Often our midnight shout
+ Set the cocks crowing,
+ As we the Berserk's tale
+ Measured in cups of ale,
+ Draining the oaken pail
+ Filled to overflowing.
+
+ "Once as I told in glee
+ Tales of the stormy sea,
+ Soft eyes did gaze on me,
+ Burning yet tender;
+ And as the white stars shine
+ On the dark Norway pine,
+ On that dark heart of mine
+ Fell their soft splendour.
+
+ "I wooed the blue-eyed maid,
+ Yielding, yet half afraid,
+ And in the forest's shade
+ Our vows were plighted.
+ Under its loosened vest
+ Fluttered her little breast,
+ Like birds within their nest
+ By the hawk frighted.
+
+ "Bright in her father's hall
+ Shields gleamed upon the wall,
+ Loud sang the minstrels all,
+ Chanting his glory;
+ When of old Hildebrand
+ I asked his daughter's hand,
+ Mute did the minstrels stand
+ To hear my story.
+
+ "While the brown ale he quaffed,
+ Loud then the champion laughed,
+ And as the wind-gusts waft
+ The sea-foam brightly,
+ So the loud laugh of scorn,
+ Out of those lips unshorn,
+ From the deep drinking-horn
+ Blew the foam lightly.
+
+ "She was a Prince's child,
+ I but a Viking wild,
+ And though she blushed and smiled,
+ I was discarded!
+ Should not the dove so white
+ Follow the sea-mew's flight?
+ Why did they leave that night
+ Her nest unguarded?
+
+ "Scarce had I put to sea,
+ Bearing the maid with me,--
+ Fairest of all was she
+ Among the Norsemen!--
+ When on the white sea-strand,
+ Waving his armed hand,
+ Saw we old Hildebrand,
+ With twenty horsemen.
+
+ "Then launched they to the blast,
+ Bent like a reed each mast,
+ Yet we were gaining fast,
+ When the wind failed us;
+ And with a sudden flaw
+ Came round the gusty Skaw,
+ So that our foe we saw
+ Laugh as he hailed us.
+
+ "And as to catch the gale
+ Round veered the flapping sail,
+ 'Death!' was the helmsman's hail,
+ 'Death without quarter!'
+ Midships with iron keel
+ Struck we her ribs of steel;
+ Down her black hulk did reel
+ Through the black water!
+
+ "As with his wings aslant,
+ Sails the fierce cormorant,
+ Seeking some rocky haunt,
+ With his prey laden,
+ So toward the open main,
+ Beating to sea again,
+ Through the wild hurricane,
+ Bore I the maiden.
+
+ "Three weeks we westward bore,
+ And when the storm was o'er,
+ Cloud-like we saw the shore
+ Stretching to leeward;
+ There for my lady's bower
+ Built I the lofty tower
+ Which to this very hour
+ Stands looking seaward.
+
+ "There lived we many years;
+ Time dried the maiden's tears;
+ She had forgot her fears,
+ She was a mother;
+ Death closed her mild blue eyes;
+ Under that tower she lies;
+ Ne'er shall the sun arise
+ On such another.
+
+ "Still grew my bosom then,
+ Still as a stagnant fen!
+ Hateful to me were men,
+ The sunlight hateful!
+ In the vast forest here,
+ Clad in my warlike gear,
+ Fell I upon my spear,
+ Oh, death was grateful!
+
+ "Thus, seamed with many scars,
+ Bursting these prison bars,
+ Up to its native stars
+ My soul ascended!
+ There from the flowing bowl
+ Deep drinks the warrior's soul,
+ _Skoal_! to the Northland! _skoal_!"
+ Thus the tale ended.
+
+ HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+ THE REVENGE.
+
+ A BALLAD OF THE FLEET
+
+ Tennyson's (1807-92) "The _Revenge_" finds a welcome here because it is
+ a favourite with teachers of elocution and their audiences. It teaches
+ us to hold life cheap when the nation's safety is at stake.
+
+ At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,
+ And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from away:
+ "Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!"
+ Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: "'Fore God, I am no coward;
+ But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear,
+ And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick.
+ We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?"
+
+ Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: "I know you are no coward;
+ You fly them for a moment, to fight with them again.
+ But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore.
+ I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard,
+ To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain."
+
+ So Lord Howard passed away with five ships of war that day,
+ Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven;
+ But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land
+ Very carefully and slow,
+ Men of Bideford in Devon,
+ And we laid them on the ballast down below;
+ For we brought them all aboard,
+ And they blest him in their pain that they were not left to Spain,
+ To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.
+
+ He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,
+ And he sail'd away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,
+ With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow.
+ "Shall we fight or shall we fly?
+ Good Sir Richard, tell us now,
+ For to fight is but to die!
+
+ "There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set"
+ And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good Englishmen.
+ Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,
+ For I never turn'd my back upon Don or devil yet."
+
+ Sir Richard spoke and he laugh'd, and we roar'd a hurrah, and so
+ The little _Revenge_ ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,
+ With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;
+ For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen,
+ And the little _Revenge_ ran on thro' the long sea-lane between.
+
+ Thousands of their soldiers looked down from their decks and laugh'd,
+ Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft
+ Running on and on, till delay'd
+ By their mountain-like _San Philip_ that, of fifteen hundred tons,
+ And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,
+ Took the breath from our sails, and we stay'd.
+
+ And while now the great _San Philip_ hung above us like a cloud
+ Whence the thunderbolt will fall
+ Long and loud.
+ Four galleons drew away
+ From the Spanish fleet that day,
+ And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,
+ And the battle-thunder broke from them all.
+
+ But anon the great _San Philip_, she bethought herself and went,
+ Having that within her womb that had left her ill content;
+ And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,
+ For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,
+ And a dozen times we shook 'em off as a dog that shakes his ears
+ When he leaps from the water to the land.
+
+ And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea,
+ But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three;
+ Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,
+ Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder
+ and flame;
+ Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead
+ and her shame.
+ For some were sunk and many were shatter'd, and so could
+ fight us no more--
+ God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?
+
+ For he said, "Fight on! fight on!"
+ Tho' his vessel was all but a wreck;
+ And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone,
+ With a grisly wound to be drest he had left the deck,
+ But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,
+ And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head,
+ And he said, "Fight on! Fight on!"
+
+ And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far
+ over the summer sea,
+ And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring;
+ But they dared not touch us again, for they fear'd that
+ we still could sting,
+ So they watched what the end would be.
+ And we had not fought them in vain,
+ But in perilous plight were we,
+ Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,
+ And half of the rest of us maim'd for life
+ In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife;
+ And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold,
+ And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was
+ all of it spent;
+ And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side;
+ But Sir Richard cried in his English pride:
+ "We have fought such a fight for a day and a night
+ As may never be fought again!
+ We have won great glory, my men!
+ And a day less or more
+ At sea or ashore,
+ We die--does it matter when?
+ Sink me the ship, Master Gunner--sink her, split her in twain!
+ Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!"
+
+ And the gunner said. "Ay, ay," but the seamen made reply:
+ "We have children, we have wives,
+ And the Lord hath spared our lives.
+ We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go;
+ We shall live to fight again, and to strike another blow."
+ And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe.
+ And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then,
+ Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last,
+ And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace;
+ But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:
+ "I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true;
+ I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do.
+ With a joyful spirit I, Sir Richard Grenville, die!"
+ And he fell upon their decks, and he died.
+
+ And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true,
+ And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap
+ That he dared her with one little ship and his English few.
+ Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew,
+ But they sank his body with honour down into the deep,
+ And they mann'd the _Revenge_ with a swarthier alien crew,
+ And away she sail'd with her loss and long'd for her own;
+ When a wind from the lands they had ruin'd awoke from sleep,
+ And the water began to heave and the weather to moan,
+ And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,
+ And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew,
+ Till it smote on their hulls, and their sails, and their masts,
+ and their flags,
+ And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shatter'd navy of Spain,
+ And the little _Revenge_ herself went down by the island crags,
+ To be lost evermore in the main.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ SIR GALAHAD.
+
+ Sir Galahad is the most moral and upright of all the Knights of the
+ Round Table. The strong lines of the poem (Tennyson, 1809-92) are the
+ strong lines of human destiny--
+
+ "My strength is as the strength of ten
+ Because my heart is pure."
+
+
+ My good blade carves the casques of men,
+ My tough lance thrusteth sure,
+ My strength is as the strength of ten,
+ Because my heart is pure.
+ The shattering trumpet shrilleth high,
+ The hard brands shiver on the steel,
+ The splintered spear-shafts crack and fly,
+ The horse and rider reel:
+ They reel, they roll in clanging lists,
+ And when the tide of combat stands,
+ Perfume and flowers fall in showers,
+ That lightly rain from ladies' hands.
+
+ How sweet are looks that ladies bend
+ On whom their favours fall!
+ For them I battle till the end,
+ To save from shame and thrall:
+ But all my heart is drawn above,
+ My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine:
+ I never felt the kiss of love,
+ Nor maiden's hand in mine.
+ More bounteous aspects on me beam,
+ Me mightier transports move and thrill;
+ So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer
+ A virgin heart in work and will.
+
+ When down the stormy crescent goes,
+ A light before me swims,
+ Between dark stems the forest glows,
+ I hear a noise of hymns:
+ Then by some secret shrine I ride;
+ I hear a voice, but none are there;
+ The stalls are void, the doors are wide,
+ The tapers burning fair.
+ Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth,
+ The silver vessels sparkle clean,
+ The shrill bell rings, the censer swings,
+ And solemn chaunts resound between.
+
+ Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres
+ I find a magic bark;
+ I leap on board: no helmsman steers,
+ I float till all is dark.
+ A gentle sound, an awful light!
+ Three angels bear the holy Grail:
+ With folded feet, in stoles of white,
+ On sleeping wings they sail.
+ Ah, blessed vision! blood of God!
+ My spirit beats her mortal bars,
+ As down dark tides the glory slides,
+ And star-like mingles with the stars.
+
+ When on my goodly charger borne
+ Thro' dreaming towns I go,
+ The cock crows ere the Christmas morn,
+ The streets are dumb with snow.
+ The tempest crackles on the leads,
+ And, ringing, springs from brand and mail;
+ But o'er the dark a glory spreads,
+ And gilds the driving hail.
+ I leave the plain, I climb the height;
+ No branchy thicket shelter yields;
+ But blessed forms in whistling storms
+ Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields.
+
+ A maiden knight--to me is given
+ Such hope, I know not fear;
+ I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven
+ That often meet me here.
+ I muse on joy that will not cease,
+ Pure spaces cloth'd in living beams,
+ Pure lilies of eternal peace,
+ Whose odours haunt my dreams;
+ And, stricken by an angel's hand,
+ This mortal armour that I wear,
+ This weight and size, this heart and eyes,
+ Are touch'd, are turn'd to finest air.
+
+ The clouds are broken in the sky,
+ And thro' the mountain-walls
+ A rolling organ-harmony
+ Swells up, and shakes and falls.
+ Then move the trees, the copses nod,
+ Wings flutter, voices hover clear:
+ "O just and faithful knight of God!
+ Ride on! the prize is near."
+ So pass I hostel, hall, and grange;
+ By bridge and ford, by park and pale,
+ All-arm'd I ride, whate'er betide,
+ Until I find the holy Grail.
+
+ ALFRED TENNYSON.
+
+
+ A NAME IN THE SAND.
+
+"A Name in the Sand," by Hannah Flagg Gould (1789-1865), is a poem to
+ correct our ready overestimate of our own importance.
+
+ Alone I walked the ocean strand;
+ A pearly shell was in my hand:
+ I stooped and wrote upon the sand
+ My name--the year--the day.
+ As onward from the spot I passed,
+ One lingering look behind I cast;
+ A wave came rolling high and fast,
+ And washed my lines away.
+
+ And so, methought, 'twill shortly be
+ With every mark on earth from me:
+ A wave of dark oblivion's sea
+ Will sweep across the place
+ Where I have trod the sandy shore
+ Of time, and been, to be no more,
+ Of me--my day--the name I bore,
+ To leave nor track nor trace.
+
+ And yet, with Him who counts the sands
+ And holds the waters in His hands,
+ I know a lasting record stands
+ Inscribed against my name,
+ Of all this mortal part has wrought,
+ Of all this thinking soul has thought,
+ And from these fleeting moments caught
+ For glory or for shame.
+
+ HANNAH FLAGG GOULD.
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+ PART VI.
+
+ "Grow old along with me!
+ The best is yet to be,--
+ The last of life, for which the first was made."
+
+
+ THE VOICE OF SPRING.
+
+"The Voice of Spring," by Felicia Hemans (1749-1835), becomes
+ attractive as years go on. The line in this poem that captivated my
+ youthful fancy was:
+
+ "The larch has hung all his tassels forth,"
+
+ The delight with which trees hang out their new little tassels every
+ year is one of the charms of "the pine family." John Burroughs sent us
+ down a tiny hemlock, that grew in our window-box at school for five
+ years, and every spring it was a new joy on account of the fine, tender
+ tassels. Mrs. Hemans had a vivid imagination backed up by an abundant
+ information.
+
+ I come, I come! ye have called me long;
+ I come o'er the mountains, with light and song.
+ Ye may trace my step o'er the waking earth
+ By the winds which tell of the violet's birth,
+ By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,
+ By the green leaves opening as I pass.
+
+ I have breathed on the South, and the chestnut-flowers
+ By thousands have burst from the forest bowers,
+ And the ancient graves and the fallen fanes
+ Are veiled with wreaths on Italian plains;
+ But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom,
+ To speak of the ruin or the tomb!
+
+ I have looked o'er the hills of the stormy North,
+ And the larch has hung all his tassels forth;
+ The fisher is out on the sunny sea,
+ And the reindeer bounds o'er the pastures free,
+ And the pine has a fringe of softer green,
+ And the moss looks bright, where my step has been.
+
+ I have sent through the wood-paths a glowing sigh,
+ And called out each voice of the deep blue sky,
+ From the night-bird's lay through the starry time,
+ In the groves of the soft Hesperian clime,
+ To the swan's wild note by the Iceland lakes,
+ When the dark fir-branch into verdure breaks.
+
+ From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain;
+ They are sweeping on to the silvery main,
+ They are flashing down from the mountain brows,
+ They are flinging spray o'er the forest boughs,
+ They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves,
+ And the earth resounds with the joy of waves.
+
+ FELICIA HEMANS.
+
+
+ THE FORSAKEN MERMAN.
+
+"The Forsaken Merman," by Matthew Arnold (1822-88), is a poem that I do
+ not expect children to appreciate fully, even when they care enough for
+ it to learn it. It is too long for most children to commit to memory,
+ and I generally assign one stanza to one pupil and another to another
+ pupil until it is divided up among them. The poem is a masterpiece.
+ Doubtless the poet meant to show that the forsaken merman had a greater
+ soul to save than the woman who sought to save her soul by deserting
+ natural duty. Salvation does not come through the faith that builds
+ itself at the expense of love.
+
+ Come, dear children, let us away;
+ Down and away below!
+ Now my brothers call from the bay,
+ Now the great winds shoreward blow,
+ Now the salt tides seaward flow;
+ Now the wild white horses play,
+ Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
+ Children dear, let us away!
+ This way, this way!
+
+ Call her once before you go--
+ Call once yet!
+ In a voice that she will know:
+ "Margaret! Margaret!"
+ Children's voices should be dear
+ (Call once more) to a mother's ear;
+ Children's voices, wild with pain--
+ Surely she will come again!
+ Call her once and come away;
+ This way, this way!
+ "Mother dear, we cannot stay!
+ The wild white horses foam and fret."
+ Margaret! Margaret!
+
+ Come, dear children, come away down;
+ Call no more!
+ One last look at the white-wall'd town,
+ And the little gray church on the windy shore;
+ Then come down!
+ She will not come though you call all day;
+ Come away, come away!
+
+ Children dear, was it yesterday
+ We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
+ In the caverns where we lay,
+ Through the surf and through the swell,
+ The far-off sound of a silver bell?
+ Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
+ Where the winds are all asleep;
+ Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
+ Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
+ Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
+ Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;
+ Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
+ Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
+ Where great whales come sailing by,
+ Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
+ Round the world forever and aye?
+ When did music come this way?
+ Children dear, was it yesterday?
+
+ Children dear, was it yesterday
+ (Call yet once) that she went away?
+ Once she sate with you and me,
+ On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,
+ And the youngest sate on her knee.
+ She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well,
+ When down swung the sound of a far-off bell.
+ She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea;
+ She said: "I must go, for my kinsfolk pray
+ In the little gray church on the shore to-day.
+ 'Twill be Easter-time in the world--ah me!
+ And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee."
+ I said: "Go up, dear heart, through the waves;
+ Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves!"
+ She smil'd, she went up through the surf in the bay.
+ Children dear, was it yesterday?
+
+ Children dear, were we long alone?
+ "The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan;
+ Long prayers," I said, "in the world they say;
+ Come!" I said; and we rose through the surf in the bay.
+ We went up the beach, by the sandy down
+ Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall'd town;
+ Through the narrow pav'd streets, where all was still,
+ To the little gray church on the windy hill.
+ From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,
+ But we stood without in the cold blowing airs.
+ We climb'd on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,
+ And we gaz'd up the aisle through the small leaded panes.
+ She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:
+ "Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here!
+ Dear heart," I said, "we are long alone;
+ The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan."
+ But, ah, she gave me never a look,
+ For her eyes were seal'd to the holy book!
+ Loud prays the priest: shut stands the door.
+ Come away, children, call no more!
+ Come away, come down, call no more!
+
+ Down, down, down!
+ Down to the depths of the sea!
+ She sits at her wheel in the humming town,
+ Singing most joyfully.
+ Hark what she sings: "O joy, O joy,
+ For the humming street, and the child with its toy!
+ For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well;
+ For the wheel where I spun,
+ And the blessed light of the sun!"
+ And so she sings her fill,
+ Singing most joyfully,
+ Till the spindle drops from her hand,
+ And the whizzing wheel stands still.
+ She steals to the window, and looks at the sand,
+ And over the sand at the sea;
+ And her eyes are set in a stare;
+ And anon there breaks a sigh,
+ And anon there drops a tear,
+ From a sorrow-clouded eye,
+ And a heart sorrow-laden,
+ A long, long sigh;
+ For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden,
+ And the gleam of her golden hair.
+
+ Come away, away, children;
+ Come, children, come down!
+ The hoarse wind blows colder;
+ Lights shine in the town.
+ She will start from her slumber
+ When gusts shake the door;
+ She will hear the winds howling,
+ Will hear the waves roar.
+ We shall see, while above us
+ The waves roar and whirl,
+ A ceiling of amber,
+ A pavement of pearl.
+ Singing: "Here came a mortal,
+ But faithless was she!
+ And alone dwell forever
+ The kings of the sea."
+
+ But, children, at midnight,
+ When soft the winds blow,
+ When clear falls the moonlight,
+ When spring-tides are low;
+ When sweet airs come seaward
+ From heaths starr'd with broom,
+ And high rocks throw mildly
+ On the blanch'd sands a gloom;
+ Up the still, glistening beaches,
+ Up the creeks we will hie,
+ Over banks of bright seaweed
+ The ebb-tide leaves dry.
+ We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
+ At the white, sleeping town;
+ At the church on the hill-side--
+ And then come back down.
+ Singing: "There dwells a lov'd one,
+ But cruel is she!
+ She left lonely forever
+ The kings of the sea."
+
+ MATTHEW ARNOLD.
+
+
+ THE BANKS O' DOON.
+
+"The Banks o' Doon," by Robert Burns (1759-96). Bonnie Doon is in the
+ southwestern part of Scotland. Robert Burns's old home it close to it.
+ The house has low walls, a thatched roof, and only two rooms. Alloway
+ Kirk and the two bridges so famous in Robert Burns's verse are near by.
+ This is an enchanted land, and the Scotch people for miles around Ayr
+ speak of the poet with sincere affection. Burns, more than any other
+ poet, has thrown the enchantment of poetry over his own locality.
+
+ Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,
+ How can ye blume sae fair!
+ How can ye chant, ye little birds,
+ And I sae fu' o' care.
+
+ Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird
+ That sings upon the bough;
+ Thou minds me o' the happy days
+ When my fause luve was true.
+
+ Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird
+ That sings beside thy mate;
+ For sae I sat, and sae I sang,
+ And wist na o' my fate.
+
+ Aft hae I rov'd by bonnie Doon,
+ To see the woodbine twine,
+ And ilka bird sang o' its love,
+ And sae did I o' mine.
+
+ Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose
+ Frae off its thorny tree;
+ And my fause luver staw the rose,
+ But left the thorn wi' me.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS.
+
+ Oft in the stilly night
+ Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
+ Fond Memory brings the light
+ Of other days around me:
+ The smiles, the tears
+ Of boyhood's years,
+ The words of love then spoken;
+ The eyes that shone,
+ Now dimmed and gone,
+ The cheerful hearts now broken!
+ Thus in the stilly night
+ Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
+ Sad Memory brings the light
+ Of other days around me.
+
+ When I remember all
+ The friends so link'd together
+ I've seen around me fall
+ Like leaves in wintry weather,
+ I feel like one
+ Who treads alone
+ Some banquet-hall deserted,
+ Whose lights are fled,
+ Whose garlands dead,
+ And all but he departed!
+ Thus in the stilly night
+ Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
+ Sad Memory brings the light
+ Of other days around me.
+
+ THOMAS MOORE.
+
+
+ MY OWN SHALL COME TO ME.
+
+ If John Burroughs (1837-) had never written any other poem than "My Own
+ Shall Come to Me," he would have stood to all ages as one of the
+ greatest of American poets. The poem is most characteristic of the
+ tall, majestic, slow-going poet and naturalist. There is no greater
+ line in Greek or English literature than
+
+ "I stand amid the eternal ways."
+
+
+ Serene I fold my hands and wait,
+ Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea.
+ I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,
+ For lo! my own shall come to me.
+
+ I stay my haste, I make delays,
+ For what avails this eager pace?
+ I stand amid the eternal ways,
+ And what is mine shall know my face.
+
+ Asleep, awake, by night or day
+ The friends I seek are seeking me;
+ No wind can drive my bark astray,
+ Nor change the tide of destiny.
+
+ What matter if I stand alone?
+ I wait with joy the coming years;
+ My heart shall reap when it has sown,
+ And gather up its fruit of tears.
+
+ The stars come nightly to the sky;
+ The tidal wave comes to the sea;
+ Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
+ Can keep my own away from me.
+
+ The waters know their own and draw
+ The brook that springs in yonder heights;
+ So flows the good with equal law
+ Unto the soul of pure delights.
+
+ JOHN BURROUGHS.
+
+
+ ODE TO A SKYLARK.
+
+"Ode to a Skylark," by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), is usually
+ assigned to "grammar grades" of schools. It is included here out of
+ respect to a boy of eleven years who was more impressed with these
+ lines than with any other lines in any poem:
+
+ "Like a poet hidden,
+ In the light of thought
+ Singing songs unbidden
+ Till the world is wrought
+ To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not."
+
+
+ Hail to thee, blithe spirit--
+ Bird thou never wert--
+ That from heaven or near it
+ Pourest thy full heart
+ In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
+
+ Higher still and higher
+ From the earth thou springest,
+ Like a cloud of fire;
+ The blue deep thou wingest,
+ And singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest.
+
+ In the golden lightning
+ Of the sunken sun,
+ O'er which clouds are brightening,
+ Thou dost float and run,
+ Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
+
+ The pale purple even
+ Melts around thy flight;
+ Like a star of heaven,
+ In the broad daylight
+ Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.
+
+ All the earth and air
+ With thy voice is loud,
+ As, when night is bare,
+ From one lonely cloud
+ The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.
+
+ What thou art we know not;
+ What is most like thee?
+ From rainbow-clouds there flow not
+ Drops so bright to see
+ As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:--
+
+ Like a poet hidden
+ In the light of thought;
+ Singing hymns unbidden,
+ Till the world is wrought
+ To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.
+
+ Teach us, sprite or bird,
+ What sweet thoughts are thine:
+ I have never heard
+ Praise of love or wine
+ That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
+
+ Chorus hymeneal
+ Or triumphal chaunt,
+ Matched with thine, would be all
+ But an empty vaunt--
+ A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
+
+ What objects are the fountains
+ Of thy happy strain?
+ What fields, or waves, or mountains?
+ What shapes of sky or plain?
+ What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
+
+ Teach me half the gladness
+ That thy brain must know,
+ Such harmonious madness
+ From my lips would flow,
+ The world should listen then, as I am listening now!
+
+ PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
+
+
+ THE SANDS OF DEE.
+
+ I have often had the pleasure of riding across the coast from Chester,
+ England, to Rhyl, on the north coast of Wales, where stretch "The Sands
+ of Dee" (Charles Kingsley, 1819-75). These purple sands at low tide
+ stretch off into the sea miles away, and are said to be full of
+ quicksands.
+
+ "O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
+ And call the cattle home,
+ And call the cattle home,
+ Across the sands of Dee."
+ The western wind was wild and dark with foam
+ And all alone went she.
+
+ The western tide crept up along the sand,
+ And o'er and o'er the sand,
+ And round and round the sand,
+ As far as eye could see.
+ The rolling mist came down and hid the land;
+ And never home came she.
+ Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair,--
+ A tress of golden hair,
+ A drowned maiden's hair,
+ Above the nets at sea?
+ Was never salmon yet that shone so fair
+ Among the stakes on Dee.
+
+ They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
+ The cruel crawling foam,
+ The cruel hungry foam,
+ To her grave beside the sea.
+ But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home
+ Across the sands of Dee.
+
+ CHARLES KINGSLEY.
+
+
+ A WISH.
+
+"A Wish" (by Samuel Rogers, 1763-1855) and "Lucy" (by Wordsworth,
+ 1770-1850) are two gems that can be valued only for the spirit of quiet
+ and modesty diffused by them.
+
+ Mine be a cot beside the hill;
+ A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear;
+ A willowy brook that turns a mill
+ With many a fall shall linger near.
+
+ The swallow, oft, beneath my thatch
+ Shall twitter from her clay-built nest;
+ Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch,
+ And share my meal, a welcome guest.
+
+ Around my ivied porch shall spring
+ Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew;
+ And Lucy, at her wheel, shall sing
+ In russet gown and apron blue.
+
+ The village church among the trees,
+ Where first our marriage-vows were given,
+ With merry peals shall swell the breeze
+ And point with taper spire to Heaven.
+
+ S. ROGERS.
+
+
+ LUCY.
+
+ She dwelt among the untrodden ways
+ Beside the springs of Dove;
+ A maid whom there were none to praise,
+ And very few to love.
+
+ A violet by a mossy stone
+ Half-hidden from the eye!
+ Fair as a star, when only one
+ Is shining in the sky.
+
+ She lived unknown, and few could know
+ When Lucy ceased to be;
+ But she is in her grave, and, oh,
+ The difference to me!
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ SOLITUDE.
+
+ 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 does 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.
+
+ ALEXANDER POPE.
+
+
+ JOHN ANDERSON
+
+"John Anderson," by Robert Burns (1759-96). This poem is included to
+ please several teachers.
+
+ John Anderson, my jo, John,
+ When we were first acquent
+ Your locks were like the raven,
+ Your bonnie brow was brent;
+ But now your brow is bald, John,
+ Your locks are like the snow;
+ But blessings on your frosty pow,
+ John Anderson, my jo.
+
+ John Anderson, my jo, John,
+ We clamb the hill thegither,
+ And mony 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.
+
+ ROBERT BURNS.
+
+
+ THE GOD OF MUSIC.
+
+"The God of Music," by Edith M. Thomas, an Ohio poetess now living. In
+ this sonnet the poetess has touched the power of Wordsworth or Keats
+ and placed herself among the immortals.
+
+ The God of Music dwelleth out of doors.
+ All seasons through his minstrelsy we meet,
+ Breathing by field and covert haunting-sweet
+ From organ-lofts in forests old he pours:
+ A solemn harmony: on leafy floors
+ To smooth autumnal pipes he moves his feet,
+ Or with the tingling plectrum of the sleet
+ In winter keen beats out his thrilling scores.
+ Leave me the reed unplucked beside the stream.
+ And he will stoop and fill it with the breeze;
+ Leave me the viol's frame in secret trees,
+ Unwrought, and it shall wake a druid theme;
+ Leave me the whispering shell on Nereid shores.
+ The God of Music dwelleth out of doors.
+
+ EDITH M. THOMAS.
+
+
+ A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT.
+
+"A Musical Instrument" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61). This
+ poem is the supreme masterpiece of Mrs. Browning. The prime thought in
+ it is the sacrifice and pain that must go to make a poet of any genius.
+
+ "The great god sighed for the cost and the pain."
+
+
+ What was he doing, the great god Pan,
+ Down in the reeds by the river?
+ Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
+ Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
+ And breaking the golden lilies afloat
+ With the dragon-fly on the river.
+
+ He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
+ From the deep cool bed of the river:
+ The limpid water turbidly ran,
+ And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
+ And the dragon-fly had fled away,
+ Ere he brought it out of the river.
+
+ High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
+ While turbidly flow'd the river;
+ And hack'd and hew'd as a great god can,
+ With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
+ Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed
+ To prove it fresh from the river.
+
+ He cut it short, did the great god Pan
+ (How tall it stood in the river!),
+ Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
+ Steadily from the outside ring,
+ And notched the poor dry empty thing
+ In holes, as he sat by the river.
+
+ "This is the way," laugh'd the great god Pan
+ (Laugh'd while he sat by the river),
+ "The only way, since gods began
+ To make sweet music, they could succeed."
+ Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed
+ He blew in power by the river.
+
+ Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
+ Piercing sweet by the river!
+ Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
+ The sun on the hill forgot to die,
+ And the lilies reviv'd, and the dragon-fly
+ Came back to dream on the river.
+
+ Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
+ To laugh as he sits by the river,
+ Making a poet out of a man:
+ The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,--
+ For the reed which grows nevermore again
+ As a reed with the reeds in the river.
+
+ ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
+
+
+ THE BRIDES OF ENDERBY.
+
+"The Brides of Enderby," by Jean Ingelow (1830-97). This poem is very
+ dramatic, and the music of the refrain has done much to make it
+ popular. But the pathos is that which endears it.
+
+ The old mayor climb'd the belfry tower,
+ The ringers ran by two, by three;
+ "Pull, if ye never pull'd before;
+ Good ringers, pull your best," quoth he.
+ "Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston bells!
+ Ply all your changes, all your swells,
+ Play uppe, 'The Brides of Enderby.'"
+
+ Men say it was a stolen tyde--
+ The Lord that sent it, He knows all;
+ But in myne ears doth still abide
+ The message that the bells let fall:
+ And there was naught of strange, beside
+ The flight of mews and peewits pied
+ By millions crouch'd on the old sea wall.
+
+ I sat and spun within the doore,
+ My thread brake off, I raised myne eyes;
+ The level sun, like ruddy ore,
+ Lay sinking in the barren skies;
+ And dark against day's golden death
+ She moved where Lindis wandereth,
+ My sonne's faire wife, Elizabeth.
+
+ "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling,
+ Ere the early dews were falling,
+ Farre away I heard her song,
+ "Cusha! Cusha!" all along;
+ Where the reedy Lindis floweth,
+ Floweth, floweth,
+ From the meads where melick groweth
+ Faintly came her milking song--
+
+ "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling,
+ "For the dews will soone be falling;
+ Leave your meadow grasses mellow,
+ Mellow, mellow;
+ Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow;
+ Come uppe, Whitefoot, come uppe, Lightfoot;
+ Quit the stalks of parsley hollow,
+ Hollow, hollow;
+ Come uppe, Jetty, rise and follow,
+ From the clovers lift your head;
+ Come uppe, Whitefoot, come uppe, Lightfoot,
+ Come uppe, Jetty, rise and follow,
+ Jetty, to the milking shed."
+
+ If it be long ay, long ago,
+ When I beginne to think howe long,
+ Againe I hear the Lindis flow,
+ Swift as an arrowe, sharpe and strong;
+ And all the aire, it seemeth mee,
+ Bin full of floating bells (sayth shee),
+ That ring the tune of Enderby.
+
+ Alle fresh the level pasture lay,
+ And not a shadowe mote be seene,
+ Save where full fyve good miles away
+ The steeple tower'd from out the greene;
+ And lo! the great bell farre and wide
+ Was heard in all the country side
+ That Saturday at eventide.
+
+ The swanherds where their sedges are
+ Mov'd on in sunset's golden breath,
+ The shepherde lads I heard afarre,
+ And my sonne's wife, Elizabeth;
+ Till floating o'er the grassy sea
+ Came downe that kyndly message free,
+ The "Brides of Mavis Enderby."
+
+ Then some look'd uppe into the sky,
+ And all along where Lindis flows
+ To where the goodly vessels lie,
+ And where the lordly steeple shows.
+ They sayde, "And why should this thing be?
+ What danger lowers by land or sea?
+ They ring the tune of Enderby!
+
+ "For evil news from Mablethorpe,
+ Of pyrate galleys warping down;
+ For shippes ashore beyond the scorpe,
+ They have not spar'd to wake the towne:
+ But while the west bin red to see,
+ And storms be none, and pyrates flee,
+ Why ring 'The Brides of Enderby'?"
+
+ I look'd without, and lo! my sonne
+ Came riding downe with might and main;
+ He rais'd a shout as he drew on,
+ Till all the welkin rang again,
+ "Elizabeth! Elizabeth!"
+ (A sweeter woman ne'er drew breath
+ Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth.)
+
+ "The olde sea wall," he cried, "is downe,
+ The rising tide comes on apace,
+ And boats adrift in yonder towne
+ Go sailing uppe the market-place."
+ He shook as one that looks on death:
+ "God save you, mother!" straight he saith
+ "Where is my wife, Elizabeth?"
+
+ "Good sonne, where Lindis winds her way
+ With her two bairns I marked her long;
+ And ere yon bells beganne to play
+ Afar I heard her milking song."
+ He looked across the grassy lea,
+ To right, to left, "Ho, Enderby!"
+ They rang "The Brides of Enderby!"
+
+ With that he cried and beat his breast;
+ For, lo! along the river's bed
+ A mighty eygre rear'd his crest,
+ And uppe the Lindis raging sped.
+ It swept with thunderous noises loud;
+ Shap'd like a curling snow-white cloud,
+ Or like a demon in a shroud.
+
+ And rearing Lindis backward press'd
+ Shook all her trembling bankes amaine;
+ Then madly at the eygre's breast
+ Flung uppe her weltering walls again.
+ Then bankes came downe with ruin and rout--
+ Then beaten foam flew round about--
+ Then all the mighty floods were out.
+
+ So farre, so fast the eygre drave,
+ The heart had hardly time to beat
+ Before a shallow seething wave
+ Sobb'd in the grasses at oure feet:
+ The feet had hardly time to flee
+ Before it brake against the knee,
+ And all the world was in the sea.
+
+ Upon the roofe we sate that night,
+ The noise of bells went sweeping by;
+ I mark'd the lofty beacon light
+ Stream from the church tower, red and high--
+ A lurid mark and dread to see;
+ And awsome bells they were to mee,
+ That in the dark rang "Enderby."
+
+ They rang the sailor lads to guide
+ From roofe to roofe who fearless row'd;
+ And I--my sonne was at my side,
+ And yet the ruddy beacon glow'd:
+ And yet he moan'd beneath his breath,
+ "O come in life, or come in death!
+ O lost! my love, Elizabeth."
+
+ And didst thou visit him no more?
+ Thou didst, thou didst, my daughter deare
+ The waters laid thee at his doore,
+ Ere yet the early dawn was clear.
+ Thy pretty bairns in fast embrace,
+ The lifted sun shone on thy face,
+ Downe drifted to thy dwelling-place.
+
+ That flow strew'd wrecks about the grass,
+ That ebbe swept out the flocks to sea;
+ A fatal ebbe and flow, alas!
+ To manye more than myne and mee;
+ But each will mourn his own (she saith);
+ And sweeter woman ne'er drew breath
+ Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth.
+
+ I shall never hear her more
+ By the reedy Lindis shore,
+ "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling,
+ Ere the early dews be falling;
+ I shall never hear her song,
+ "Cusha! Cusha!" all along
+ Where the sunny Lindis floweth,
+ Goeth, floweth;
+ From the meads where melick groweth,
+ When the water winding down,
+ Onward floweth to the town.
+
+ I shall never see her more
+ Where the reeds and rushes quiver,
+ Shiver, quiver;
+ Stand beside the sobbing river,
+ Sobbing, throbbing, in its falling
+ To the sandy lonesome shore;
+ I shall never hear her calling,
+ "Leave your meadow grasses mellow,
+ Mellow, mellow;
+ Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow;
+
+ "Come uppe, Whitefoot, come uppe, Lightfoot;
+ Quit your pipes of parsley hollow,
+ Hollow, hollow;
+ Come uppe, Lightfoot, rise and follow;
+ Lightfoot, Whitefoot,
+ From your clovers lift the head;
+ Come uppe, Jetty, follow, follow,
+ Jetty, to the milking shed."
+
+ JEAN INGELOW.
+
+
+ THE LYE.
+
+"The Lye," by Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), is one of the strongest
+ and most appealing poems a teacher can read to her pupils when teaching
+ early American history. The poem is full of magnificent lines, such as
+"Go, soul, the body's guest." The poem never lacks an attentive
+ audience of young people when correlated with the study of North
+ Carolina and Sir Walter Raleigh. The solitary, majestic character of
+ Sir Walter Raleigh, his intrepidity while undergoing tortures inflicted
+ by a cowardly king, the ring of indignation--- all these make a weapon
+ for him stronger than the ax that beheaded him. In this poem he "has
+ the last word."
+
+ Goe, soule, the bodie's guest,
+ Upon a thanklesse arrant;
+ Feare not to touche the best--
+ The truth shall be thy warrant!
+ Goe, since I needs must dye,
+ And give the world the lye.
+
+ Goe tell the court it glowes
+ And shines like rotten wood;
+ Goe tell the church it showes
+ What's good, and doth no good;
+ If church and court reply,
+ Then give them both the lye.
+
+ Tell potentates they live
+ Acting by others' actions--
+ Not loved unlesse they give,
+ Not strong but by their factions;
+ If potentates reply,
+ Give potentates the lye.
+
+ Tell men of high condition,
+ That rule affairs of state,
+ Their purpose is ambition,
+ Their practice only hate;
+ And if they once reply,
+ Then give them all the lye.
+
+ Tell zeale it lacks devotion;
+ Tell love it is but lust;
+ Tell time it is but motion;
+ Tell flesh it is but dust;
+ And wish them not reply,
+ For thou must give the lye.
+
+ Tell wit how much it wrangles
+ In tickle points of nicenesse;
+ Tell wisdome she entangles
+ Herselfe in over-wisenesse;
+ And if they do reply,
+ Straight give them both the lye.
+
+ Tell physicke of her boldnesse;
+ Tell skill it is pretension;
+ Tell charity of coldnesse;
+ Tell law it is contention;
+ And as they yield reply,
+ So give them still the lye.
+
+ Tell fortune of her blindnesse;
+ Tell nature of decay;
+ Tell friendship of unkindnesse;
+ Tell justice of delay;
+ And if they dare reply,
+ Then give them all the lye.
+
+ Tell arts they have no soundnesse,
+ But vary by esteeming;
+ Tell schooles they want profoundnesse,
+ And stand too much on seeming;
+ If arts and schooles reply,
+ Give arts and schooles the lye.
+
+ So, when thou hast, as I
+ Commanded thee, done blabbing--
+ Although to give the lye
+ Deserves no less than stabbing--
+ Yet stab at thee who will,
+ No stab the soule can kill.
+
+ SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
+
+
+ L'ENVOI.
+
+"L'Envoi," by Rudyard Kipling, is a favourite on account of its
+ sweeping assertion of the individual's right to self-development.
+
+ When Earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are
+ twisted and dried,
+ When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
+ We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it--lie down
+ for an aeon or two,
+ Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall set us to work anew!
+
+ And those who were good shall be happy: they shall sit
+ in a golden chair;
+ They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet's hair;
+ They shall find real saints to draw from--Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
+ They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!
+
+ And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
+ And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame;
+ But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
+ Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are!
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+
+ CONTENTMENT
+
+"Contentment," by Edward Dyer (1545-1607). This poem holds much to
+ comfort and control people who are shut up to the joys of
+ meditation--people to whom the world of activity is closed. To be
+ independent of things material--this is the soul's pleasure.
+
+ My mind to me a kingdom is;
+ Such perfect joy therein I find
+ As far excels all earthly bliss
+ That God or Nature hath assigned;
+ Though much I want that most would have,
+ Yet still my mind forbids to crave.
+
+ Content I live; this is my stay,--
+ I seek no more than may suffice.
+ I press to bear no haughty sway;
+ Look, what I lack my mind supplies.
+ Lo, thus I triumph like a king,
+ Content with that my mind doth bring.
+
+ I laugh not at another's loss,
+ I grudge not at another's gain;
+ No worldly wave my mind can toss;
+ I brook that is another's bane.
+ I fear no foe, nor fawn on friend;
+ I loathe not life, nor dread mine end.
+
+ My wealth is health and perfect ease;
+ My conscience clear my chief defense;
+ I never seek by bribes to please
+ Nor by desert to give offense.
+ Thus do I live, thus will I die;
+ Would all did so as well as I!
+
+ EDWARD DYER.
+
+
+ THE HARP THAT ONCE THROUGH TARA'S HALLS.
+
+ The harp that once through Tara's halls
+ The soul of music shed,
+ Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls
+ As if that soul were fled.
+ So sleeps the pride of former days,
+ So glory's thrill is o'er,
+ And hearts, that once beat high for praise,
+ Now feel that pulse no more.
+
+ No more to chiefs and ladies bright
+ The harp of Tara swells;
+ The chord alone, that breaks at night,
+ Its tale of ruin tells.
+ Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes,
+ The only throb she gives
+ Is when some heart indignant breaks,
+ To show that still she lives.
+
+ THOMAS MOORE.
+
+
+ THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET
+
+"The Old Oaken Bucket," by Samuel Woodworth (1785-1848), is a poem we
+ love because it is an elegant expression of something very dear and
+ homely.
+
+ 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 wild-wood,
+ And every loved spot which my infancy knew!
+ The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that 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 that 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 hailed 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,
+ The brightest that beauty or revelry sips.
+ And now, far removed from the loved habitation,
+ The tear of regret will intrusively swell.
+ As fancy reverts to my father's plantation,
+ And sighs for the bucket that hangs in the well--
+ The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
+ The moss-covered bucket that hangs in the well!
+
+ SAMUEL WOODWORTH.
+
+
+ THE RAVEN.
+
+"The Raven," by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), is placed here because so
+ many college men speak of it at once as the great poem of their
+ boyhood. The poem caught me when a child by its refrain and weird
+ picturesqueness. It has never outgrown its mechanical charm.
+
+ Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
+ Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--
+ While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
+ As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door"
+ 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--
+ Only this, and nothing more."
+
+ Ah! distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
+ And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor;
+ Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
+ From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore--
+ For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore--
+ Nameless here for evermore.
+
+ And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
+ Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
+ So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
+ "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door--
+ Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door:
+ This it is, and nothing more."
+
+ Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
+ "Sir," said I, "or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
+ But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
+ And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
+ That I scarce was sure I heard you." Here I opened wide the door:
+ Darkness there, and nothing more.
+
+ Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering,
+ fearing,
+ Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
+ But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
+ And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!"
+ This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"
+ Merely this, and nothing more.
+
+ Back into my chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
+ Soon again I heard a rapping, something louder than before:
+ "Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;
+ Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore--
+ Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore.
+ 'Tis the wind, and nothing more."
+
+ Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
+ In there stepped a stately Raven, of the saintly days of yore;
+ Not the least obeisance made he, not a minute stopped or stayed he;
+ But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door--
+ Perched above a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door--
+ Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
+
+ Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
+ By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore;
+ "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art
+ sure, no craven;
+ Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven, wandering from the nightly shore,
+ Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's Plutonian shore?"
+ Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
+
+ Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
+ Though its answer, little meaning, little relevancy bore;
+ For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
+ Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door--
+ Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door
+ With such a name as "Nevermore."
+
+ But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only
+ That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour;
+ Nothing further then he uttered, not a feather then he fluttered,
+ Till I scarcely more than muttered--"Other friends have flown before,
+ On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
+ Then the bird said, "Nevermore."
+
+ Startled by the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
+ "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
+ Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster
+ Followed fast and followed faster, till his songs one burden bore--
+ Till the dirges of his hope this melancholy burden bore--
+ Of 'Never, nevermore,'"
+
+ But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
+ Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and
+ bust, and door;
+ Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
+ Fancy into fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore--
+ What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
+ Meant in croaking "Nevermore."
+
+ Thus I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
+ To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
+ This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
+ On the cushion's velvet lining, that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
+ But whose velvet violet lining, with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
+ She shall press, ah, nevermore!
+
+ Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
+ Swung by seraphim, whose footfalls twinkled on the tufted floor.
+ "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee--by these angels He
+ hath sent thee
+ Respite--respite and nepenthe from my memories of Lenore!
+ Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!"
+ Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
+
+ "Prophet," said I, "thing of evil--prophet still, if bird or devil!
+ Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore
+ Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted,
+ On this home by horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore,
+ Is there--_is_ there balm in Gilead?--tell me, tell me, I implore!"
+ Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
+
+ "Prophet," said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still if bird or devil!
+ By that heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore--
+ Tell this soul, with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aiden
+ It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore!
+ Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore?"
+ Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
+
+ "Be that our sign of parting, bird or fiend," I shrieked, upstarting--
+ "Get thee back into the tempest and the night's Plutonian shore;
+ Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken,
+ Leave my loneliness unbroken--quit the bust above my door,
+ Take thy beak from out my heart and take thy form from off my door!"
+ Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
+
+ And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting,
+ On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door;
+ And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
+ And the lamp-light o'er him streaming, throws his shadow on the floor;
+ And my soul from out that shadow, that lies floating on the floor,
+ Shall be lifted--nevermore!
+
+ EDGAR ALLAN POE.
+
+
+ ARNOLD VON WINKLERIED.
+
+ "Make way for liberty!" he cried,
+ Make way for liberty, and died.
+ In arms the Austrian phalanx stood,
+ A living wall, a human wood,--
+ A wall, where every conscious stone
+ Seemed to its kindred thousands grown.
+ A rampart all assaults to bear,
+ Till time to dust their frames should wear;
+ So still, so dense the Austrians stood,
+ A living wall, a human wood.
+
+ Impregnable their front appears,
+ All horrent with projected spears.
+ Whose polished points before them shine,
+ From flank to flank, one brilliant line,
+ Bright as the breakers' splendours run
+ Along the billows to the sun.
+
+ Opposed to these a hovering band
+ Contended for their fatherland;
+ Peasants, whose new-found strength had broke
+ From manly necks the ignoble yoke,
+ And beat their fetters into swords,
+ On equal terms to fight their lords;
+ And what insurgent rage had gained,
+ In many a mortal fray maintained;
+ Marshalled, once more, at Freedom's call,
+ They came to conquer or to fall,
+ Where he who conquered, he who fell,
+ Was deemed a dead or living Tell,
+ Such virtue had that patriot breathed,
+ So to the soil his soul bequeathed,
+ That wheresoe'er his arrows flew,
+ Heroes in his own likeness grew,
+ And warriors sprang from every sod,
+ Which his awakening footstep trod.
+
+ And now the work of life and death
+ Hung on the passing of a breath;
+ The fire of conflict burned within,
+ The battle trembled to begin;
+ Yet, while the Austrians held their ground,
+ Point for attack was nowhere found;
+ Where'er the impatient Switzers gazed,
+ The unbroken line of lances blazed;
+ That line 'twere suicide to meet,
+ And perish at their tyrant's feet;
+ How could they rest within their graves,
+ And leave their homes, the homes of slaves!
+ Would not they feel their children tread,
+ With clanging chains, above their head?
+
+ It must not be; this day, this hour,
+ Annihilates the invader's power;
+ All Switzerland is in the field;
+ She will not fly,--she cannot yield,--
+ She must not fall; her better fate
+ Here gives her an immortal date.
+ Few were the numbers she could boast,
+ But every freeman was a host,
+ And felt as 'twere a secret known
+ That one should turn the scale alone,
+ While each unto himself was he
+ On whose sole arm hung victory.
+
+ It did depend on one indeed;
+ Behold him,--Arnold Winkelried;
+ There sounds not to the trump of fame
+ The echo of a nobler name.
+ Unmarked he stood amid the throng,
+ In rumination deep and long,
+ Till you might see, with sudden grace,
+ The very thought come o'er his face;
+ And, by the motion of his form,
+ Anticipate the bursting storm,
+ And, by the uplifting of his brow,
+ Tell where the bolt would strike, and how.
+
+ But 'twas no sooner thought than done!
+ The field was in a moment won;
+ "Make way for liberty!" he cried,
+ Then ran, with arms extended wide,
+ As if his dearest friend to clasp;
+ Ten spears he swept within his grasp.
+ "Make way for liberty!" he cried.
+ Their keen points crossed from side to side;
+ He bowed amidst them like a tree,
+ And thus made way for liberty.
+
+ Swift to the breach his comrades fly,
+ "Make way for liberty!" they cry,
+ And through the Austrian phalanx dart,
+ As rushed the spears through Arnold's heart.
+ While instantaneous as his fall,
+ Rout, ruin, panic, seized them all;
+ An earthquake could not overthrow
+ A city with a surer blow.
+
+ Thus Switzerland again was free;
+ Thus Death made way for Liberty!
+
+ JAMES MONTGOMERY.
+
+
+ LIFE, I KNOW NOT WHAT THOU ART.
+
+ 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 'twill 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.
+
+ A.L. BARBAULD.
+
+
+ MERCY.
+
+"Mercy," an excerpt from "The Merchant of Venice," "Polonius' Advice,"
+ from "Hamlet," and "Antony's Speech," from "Julius Caesar" (all
+ fragments from Shakespeare, 1564-1616), find a place in this book
+ because a well-known New York teacher--one who is unremitting in his
+ efforts to raise the good taste and character of his pupils--says: "A
+ book of poetry could not be complete without these extracts."
+
+ The quality of mercy is not strain'd;
+ It droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven
+ Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd;
+ It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
+ 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
+ The throned monarch better than his crown:
+ His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
+ The attribute to awe and majesty,
+ Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
+ But mercy is above his sceptered sway;
+ It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
+ It is an attribute to God himself;
+ And earthly power doth then show likest God's
+ When mercy seasons justice.
+
+ SHAKESPEARE ("Merchant of Venice").
+
+
+ POLONIUS' ADVICE.
+
+ See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
+ Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
+ Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:
+ The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
+ Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
+ But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
+ Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware
+ Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,
+ Bear 't that th' opposed may beware of thee.
+ Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
+ Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
+ Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy
+ But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
+ For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
+ Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
+ For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
+ And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
+ This above all: to thine own self be true;
+ And it must follow, as the night the day,
+ Thou canst not then be false to any man.
+
+ SHAKESPEARE ("Hamlet").
+
+
+ A FRAGMENT FROM MARK ANTONY'S SPEECH.
+
+ This was the noblest Roman of them all:
+ All the conspirators, save only he,
+ Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
+ He only, in a general honest thought
+ And common good to all, made one of them.
+ His life was gentle; and the elements
+ So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up,
+ And say to all the world, "This was a man!"
+
+ SHAKESPEARE ("Julius Caesar").
+
+
+ THE SKYLARK.
+
+ Bird of the wilderness,
+ Blithesome and cumberless,
+ Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
+ Emblem of happiness,
+ Blest is thy dwelling-place--
+ Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!
+
+ Wild is thy lay and loud,
+ Far in the downy cloud,
+ Love gives it energy, love gave it birth.
+ Where, on thy dewy wing,
+ Where art thou journeying?
+ Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.
+
+ O'er fell and fountain sheen,
+ O'er moor and mountain green,
+ O'er the red streamer that heralds the day,
+ Over the cloudlet dim,
+ Over the rainbow's rim,
+ Musical cherub, soar, singing, away!
+
+ Then, when the gloaming comes,
+ Low in the heather blooms
+ Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be!
+ Emblem of happiness,
+ Blest is thy dwelling-place--
+ Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!
+
+ THOMAS HOGG.
+
+
+ THE CHOIR INVISIBLE.
+
+"The Choir Invisible" (by George Eliot, 1819-80) is a fitting
+ exposition in poetry of this "Shakespeare of prose."
+
+ O, may I join the choir invisible
+ Of those immortal dead who live again
+ In minds made better by their presence; live
+ In pulses stirred to generosity,
+ In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
+ Of miserable aims that end with self,
+ In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
+ And with their mild persistence urge men's minds
+ To vaster issues.
+ May I reach
+ That purest heaven,--be to other souls
+ The cup of strength in some great agony,
+ Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love,
+ Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
+ Be the sweet presence of good diffused,
+ And in diffusion ever more intense!
+ So shall I join the choir invisible,
+ Whose music is the gladness of the world.
+
+ GEORGE ELIOT.
+
+
+ THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US.
+
+"The World Is Too Much With Us," by Wordsworth (1770-1850), is perhaps
+ the greatest sonnet ever written. It is true that "the eyes of the
+ soul" are blinded by a surfeit of worldly "goods." "I went to the Lake
+ District" (England), said John Burroughs, "to see what kind of a
+ country could produce a Wordsworth." Of course he found simple houses,
+ simple people, barren moors, heather-clad mountains, wild flowers, calm
+ lakes, plain, rugged simplicity.
+
+ 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.
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ ON HIS BLINDNESS.
+
+"Sonnet on His Blindness" (by John Milton, 1608-74). This is the most
+ stately and pathetic sonnet in existence. The soul enduring enforced
+ idleness and loss of power without repining. Inactivity made to serve a
+ higher end.
+
+ "All service ranks the same with God!
+ There is no first or last."
+
+
+ When I consider how my light is spent
+ Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
+ And that one talent which is death to hide,
+ Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
+ To serve therewith my Maker, and present
+ My true account, lest He, returning, chide;
+ Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?
+ I fondly ask: but Patience, to prevent
+ That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
+ Either man's work, or His own gifts; who best
+ Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best; His state
+ Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed,
+ And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
+ They also serve who only stand and wait.
+
+ JOHN MILTON.
+
+
+ SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT.
+
+"She Was a Phantom of Delight" (by William Wordsworth, 1770-1850) is
+ included here because it is a picture of woman as she should be, not
+ made dainty by finery, but by fine ideals--
+
+ "And not too good
+ For human nature's daily food."
+
+
+ She was a Phantom of delight
+ When first she gleamed upon my sight;
+ A lovely Apparition, sent
+ To be a moment's ornament;
+ Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
+ Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair:
+ But all things else about her drawn
+ From May-time and the cheerful Dawn.
+ A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
+ To haunt, to startle, and waylay.
+
+ I saw her upon nearer view,
+ A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
+ Her household motions light and free,
+ And steps of virgin liberty;
+ A countenance in which did meet
+ Sweet records, promises as sweet;
+ A Creature not too bright or good
+ For human nature's daily food;
+ For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
+ Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
+
+ And now I see with eye serene
+ The very pulse of the machine;
+ A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
+ A Traveller between life and death:
+ The reason firm, the temperate will,
+ Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
+ A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
+ To warn, to comfort, and command;
+ And yet a Spirit still, and bright,
+ With something of angelic light.
+
+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+ ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD.
+
+"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (Gray, 1716-71). I once drove
+ from Windsor Castle through Eton, down the long hedge-bound road which
+ passes the estate of William Penn's descendants to Stoke Pogis, the
+ little churchyard where this poem was written. They were trimming a
+ great yew-tree under which Gray was said to have written this poem. The
+ scene is one of peace and quiet. The "elegy" was a favourite form of
+ poem with the ancients, but Gray is said to have reached the climax
+ among poets in this style of verse. The great line of the poem is:
+
+ "The path of glory leads but to the grave."
+
+ It would almost seem that poetry has for its greatest mission the
+ lesson of a proper humility.
+
+ The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
+ The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
+ The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
+ And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
+
+ Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
+ And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
+ Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
+ And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.
+
+ Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r
+ The moping owl does to the moon complain
+ Of such as, wandering near her secret bow'r,
+ Molest her ancient solitary reign.
+
+ Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
+ Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,
+ Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
+ The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
+
+ The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
+ The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,
+ The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
+ No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
+
+ For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
+ Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
+ No children run to lisp their sire's return,
+ Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
+
+ Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
+ Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
+ How jocund did they drive their team afield!
+ How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
+
+ Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
+ Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
+ Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,
+ The short and simple annals of the Poor.
+
+ The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
+ And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
+ Await alike th' inevitable hour.
+ The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
+
+ Forgive, ye Proud, th' involuntary fault
+ If Memory to these no trophies raise,
+ Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
+ The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
+
+ Can storied urn or animated bust
+ Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
+ Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
+ Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
+
+ Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
+ Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire,
+ Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
+ Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.
+
+ But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
+ Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
+ Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,
+ And froze the genial current of the soul.
+
+ Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
+ The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
+ Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
+ And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
+
+ Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
+ The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
+ Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
+ Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.
+
+ Th' applause of listening senates to command,
+ The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
+ To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
+ And read their history in a nation's eyes,
+
+ Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone
+ Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined
+ Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,
+ And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,
+
+ The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
+ To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
+ Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
+ With incense, kindled at the Muse's flame.
+
+ Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
+ Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
+ Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
+ They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.
+
+ Yet e'en those bones from insult to protect
+ Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
+ With uncouth rhimes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
+ Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
+
+ Their name, their years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse,
+ The place of fame and elegy supply.
+ And many a holy text around she strews
+ That teach the rustic moralist to die.
+
+ For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
+ This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned,
+ Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
+ Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind?
+
+ On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
+ Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
+ E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
+ E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.
+
+ For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonour'd dead,
+ Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
+ If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
+ Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,
+
+ Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
+ "Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
+ Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
+ To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
+
+ "There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
+ That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
+ His listless length at noon-tide would he stretch,
+ And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
+
+ "Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
+ Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove;
+ Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
+ Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.
+
+ "One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
+ Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;
+ Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
+ Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he.
+
+ "The next with dirges due in sad array
+ Slow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne.
+ Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,
+ Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."
+
+
+ THE EPITAPH.
+
+ Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
+ A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown;
+ Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,
+ And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.
+
+ Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
+ Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
+ He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear:
+ He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.
+
+ No farther seek his merits to disclose,
+ Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
+ (There they alike in trembling hope repose,)
+ The bosom of his Father and his God.
+
+ THOMAS GRAY.
+
+
+ RABBI BEN EZRA
+
+"Rabbi Ben Ezra" (by Robert Browning, 1812-89). Youth is for dispute
+ and age for counsel; each year, each period of a man's life is but the
+ necessary step to the next. Youth is an uncertain thing to bank on.
+
+ "Grow old along with me!
+ The best is yet to be,
+ The last of life for which the first was made."
+
+"Rabbi Ben Ezra" is a plea for each period in life. Aspiration is the
+ keynote.
+
+ " ... Trust God; see all, nor be afraid!"
+
+
+ Grow old along with me!
+ The best is yet to be,
+ The last of life, for which the first was made:
+ Our times are in His hand
+ Who saith, "A whole I plann'd,
+ Youth shows but half; trust God: see all nor be afraid!"
+
+ Not that, amassing flowers,
+ Youth sigh'd, "Which rose make ours,
+ Which lily leave and then as best recall?"
+ Not that, admiring stars,
+ It yearn'd, "Nor Jove, nor Mars;
+ Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"
+
+ Not for such hopes and fears
+ Annulling youth's brief years,
+ Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
+ Rather I prize the doubt
+ Low kinds exist without,
+ Finish'd and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
+
+ Poor vaunt of life indeed,
+ Were man but formed to feed
+ On joy, to solely seek and find and feast:
+ Such feasting ended, then
+ As sure an end to men;
+ Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-cramm'd beast?
+
+ Rejoice we are allied
+ To That which doth provide
+ And not partake, effect and not receive!
+ A spark disturbs our clod;
+ Nearer we hold of God
+ Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.
+
+ Then, welcome each rebuff
+ That turns earth's smoothness rough,
+ Each sting, that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!
+ Be our joys three parts pain!
+ Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
+ Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
+
+ For thence,--a paradox
+ Which comforts while it mocks,--
+ Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
+ What I aspired to be,
+ And was not, comforts me:
+ A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.
+
+ What is he but a brute
+ Whose flesh has soul to suit,
+ Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?
+ To man, propose this test--
+ Thy body at its best,
+ How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?
+
+ Yet gifts should prove their use:
+ I own the Past profuse
+ Of power each side, perfection every turn:
+ Eyes, ears took in their dole,
+ Brain treasured up the whole:
+ Should not the heart beat once "How good to live and learn?"
+
+ Not once beat "Praise be Thine!
+ I see the whole design,
+ I, who saw power, see now love perfect too:
+ Perfect I call Thy plan:
+ Thanks that I was a man!
+ Maker, remake, complete,--I trust what Thou shalt do!"
+
+ For pleasant is this flesh,
+ Our soul, in its rose-mesh
+ Pull'd ever to the earth, still yearns for rest;
+ Would we some prize might hold
+ To match those manifold
+ Possessions of the brute,--gain most, as we did best!
+
+ Let us not always say,
+ "Spite of this flesh to-day
+ I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!"
+ As the bird wings and sings,
+ Let us cry, "All good things
+ Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"
+
+ Therefore I summon age
+ To grant youth's heritage,
+ Life's struggle having so far reached its term:
+ Thence shall I pass, approved
+ A man, for aye removed
+ From the developed brute; a god though in the germ.
+
+ And I shall thereupon
+ Take rest, ere I be gone
+ Once more on my adventure brave and new:
+ Fearless and unperplex'd,
+ When I wage battle next,
+ What weapons to select, what armour to indue.
+
+ Youth ended, I shall try
+ My gain or loss thereby;
+ Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:
+ And I shall weigh the same,
+ Give life its praise or blame:
+ Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.
+
+ For note, when evening shuts,
+ A certain moment cuts
+ The deed off, calls the glory from the gray:
+ A whisper from the west
+ Shoots--"Add this to the rest,
+ Take it and try its worth: here dies another day."
+
+ So, still within this life,
+ Though lifted o'er its strife,
+ Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
+ "This rage was right i' the main,
+ That acquiescence vain:
+ The Future I may face now I have proved the Past"
+
+ For more is not reserved
+ To man, with soul just nerved
+ To act to-morrow what he learns to-day:
+ Here, work enough to watch
+ The Master work, and catch
+ Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.
+
+ As it was better, youth
+ Should strive, through acts uncouth,
+ Toward making, than repose on aught found made:
+ So, better, age, exempt
+ From strife, should know, than tempt
+ Further. Thou waitedest age: wait death nor be afraid!
+
+ Enough now, if the Right
+ And Good and Infinite
+ Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own,
+ With knowledge absolute,
+ Subject to no dispute
+ From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.
+
+ Be there, for once and all,
+ Sever'd great minds from small,
+ Announced to each his station in the Past!
+ Was I, the world arraigned,
+ Were they, my soul disdain'd,
+ Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
+
+ Now, who shall arbitrate?
+ Ten men love what I hate,
+ Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
+ Ten, who in ears and eyes
+ Match me: we all surmise,
+ They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?
+
+ Not on the vulgar mass
+ Call'd "work," must sentence pass,
+ Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
+ O'er which, from level stand,
+ The low world laid its hand,
+ Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:
+
+ But all, the world's coarse thumb
+ And finger fail'd to plumb,
+ So pass'd in making up the main account;
+ All instincts immature,
+ All purposes unsure,
+ That weigh'd not as his work, yet swell'd the man's amount:
+
+ Thoughts hardly to be pack'd
+ Into a narrow act,
+ Fancies that broke through language and escaped,
+ All I could never be,
+ All, men ignored in me,
+ This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
+
+ Ay, note that Potter's wheel,
+ That metaphor! and feel
+ Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,--
+ Thou, to whom fools propound,
+ When the wine makes its round,
+ "Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!"
+
+ Fool! All that is, at all,
+ Lasts ever, past recall;
+ Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure;
+ What enter'd into thee,
+ _That_ was, is, and shall be:
+ Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.
+
+ He fix'd thee 'mid this dance
+ Of plastic circumstance,
+ This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest
+ Machinery just meant
+ To give thy soul its bent,
+ Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impress'd.
+
+ What though the earlier grooves
+ Which ran the laughing loves
+ Around thy base, no longer pause and press?
+ What though, about thy rim,
+ Scull-things in order grim
+ Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?
+
+ Look not thou down but up!
+ To uses of a cup,
+ The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,
+ The new wine's foaming flow,
+ The master's lips aglow!
+ Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou with earth's wheel?
+
+ But I need, now as then,
+ Thee, God, who mouldest men;
+ And since, not even while the whirl was worst
+ Did I,--to the wheel of life
+ With shapes and colours rife,
+ Bound dizzily,--mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:
+
+ So, take and use Thy work:
+ Amend what flaws may lurk,
+ What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
+ My times be in Thy hand!
+ Perfect the cup as plann'd!
+ Lest age approve of youth, and death complete the same!
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ PROSPICE.
+
+"Prospice," by Robert Browning (1812-89), is the greatest death song
+ ever written. It is a battle-song and a paean of victory.
+
+ "The journey is done, the summit attained,
+ And the strong man must go."
+ "I would hate that Death bandaged my eyes and forebore,
+ And bade me creep past."
+ "No! let me taste the whole of it"
+ "The reward of all."
+
+ This poem is included in this book because these lines are enough to
+ reconcile any one to any fate.
+
+ Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,
+ The mist in _my_ face,
+ When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
+ I am nearing the place,
+ The power of the night, the press of the storm,
+ The post of the foe;
+ Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
+ Yet the strong man must go:
+ For the journey is done and the summit attained,
+ And the barriers fall,
+ Though a battle's to fight ere a guerdon be gained,
+ The reward of it all.
+ I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more.
+ The best and the last!
+ I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore,
+ And bade me creep past.
+ No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
+ The heroes of old,
+ Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
+ Of pain, darkness, and cold.
+ For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
+ The black minute's at end.
+ And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave
+ Shall dwindle, shall blend,
+ Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
+ Then a light, then thy breast,
+ O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
+ And with God be the rest!
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ RECESSIONAL.
+
+ The "Recessional" (by Rudyard Kipling, 1865-) is one of the most
+ popular poems of this century. It is a warning to an age and a nation
+ drunk with power, a rebuke to materialistic tendencies and
+ boastfulness, a protest against pride.
+
+ "Reverence is the master-key of knowledge."
+
+
+ God of our fathers, known of old--
+ Lord of our far-flung battle-line--
+ Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
+ Dominion over palm and pine--
+ Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
+ Lest we forget--lest we forget!
+
+ The tumult and the shouting dies--
+ The captains and the kings depart--
+ Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice,
+ An humble and a contrite heart.
+ Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
+ Lest we forget--lest we forget!
+
+ Far-called our navies melt away--
+ On dune and headland sinks the fire--
+ Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
+ Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
+ Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
+ Lest we forget--lest we forget!
+
+ If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
+ Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe--
+ Such boasting as the Gentiles use
+ Or lesser breeds without the Law--
+ Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
+ Lest we forget--lest we forget!
+
+ For heathen heart that puts her trust
+ In reeking tube and iron shard--
+ All valiant dust that builds on dust,
+ And guarding calls not Thee to guard--
+ For frantic boast and foolish word,
+ Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord! Amen.
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+
+ OZYMANDIAS OF EGYPT.
+
+"Ozymandias of Egypt," by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). This sonnet
+ is a rebuke to the insolent pride of kings and empires. It is extremely
+ picturesque. It finds a place here because more elderly scholars of
+ good judgment are pleased with it. I remember an old gray-haired
+ scholar in Chicago who often recited it to his friends merely because
+ it touched his fancy.
+
+ I met a traveller from an antique land
+ Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
+ Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
+ Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
+ And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
+ Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
+ Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
+ The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed;
+ And on the pedestal these words appear:
+ 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
+ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
+ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
+ Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
+ The lone and level sands stretch far away;"
+
+ PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
+
+
+ MORTALITY.
+
+"Mortality" (by William Knox, 1789-1825) is always quoted as Lincoln's
+ favourite poem.
+
+ O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
+ Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
+ A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
+ He passes from life to his rest in the grave.
+
+ The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
+ Be scattered around and together be laid;
+ And the young and the old, and the low and the high,
+ Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie.
+
+ The child that a mother attended and loved,
+ The mother that infant's affection that proved,
+ The husband that mother and infant that blessed,
+ Each, all, are away to their dwelling of rest.
+
+ The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,
+ Shone beauty and pleasure,--her triumphs are by;
+ And the memory of those that beloved her and praised
+ Are alike from the minds of the living erased.
+
+ The hand of the king that the scepter hath borne,
+ The brow of the priest that the miter hath worn,
+ The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave,
+ Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.
+
+ The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap,
+ The herdsman who climbed with his goats to the steep,
+ The beggar that wandered in search of his bread,
+ Have faded away like the grass that we tread.
+
+ The saint that enjoyed the communion of heaven,
+ The sinner that dared to remain unforgiven,
+ The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
+ Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.
+
+ So the multitude goes, like the flower and the weed
+ That wither away to let others succeed;
+ So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
+ To repeat every tale that hath often been told.
+
+ For we are the same that our fathers have been;
+ We see the same sights that our fathers have seen,--
+ We drink the same stream, and we feel the same sun,
+ And we run the same course that our fathers have run.
+
+ The thoughts we are thinking, our fathers would think;
+ From the death we are shrinking from, they too would shrink;
+ To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling;
+ But it speeds from the earth like a bird on the wing.
+
+ They loved, but their story we cannot unfold;
+ They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;
+ They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers may come;
+ They enjoyed, but the voice of their gladness is dumb.
+
+ They died, ay! they died! and we things that are now,
+ Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
+ Who make in their dwellings a transient abode,
+ Meet the changes they met on their pilgrimage road.
+
+ Yea! hope and despondence, and pleasure and pain,
+ Are mingled together like sunshine and rain;
+ And the smile and the tear, and the song and the dirge,
+ Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.
+
+ 'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath,
+ From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
+ From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,--
+ O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
+
+ WILLIAM KNOX.
+
+
+ ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S "HOMER."
+
+"On First Looking Into Chapman's 'Homer,'" by John Keats (1795-1821).
+ The last four lines of this sonnet form the most tremendous climax in
+ literature. The picture is as vivid as if done with a brush. Every
+ great book, every great poem is a new world, an undiscovered country.
+ Every learned person is a whole territory, a universe of new thought.
+ Every one who does anything with a heart for it, every specialist every
+ one, however simple, who is strenuous and genuine, is a "new
+ discovery." Let us give credit to the smallest planet that is true to
+ its own orbit.
+
+ Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
+ And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
+ Round many western islands have I been
+ Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
+
+ Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
+ That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:
+ Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
+ Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
+
+ Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
+ When a new planet swims into his ken;
+ Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
+
+ He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
+ Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--
+ Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
+
+ JOHN KEATS.
+
+
+ HERVE RIEL.
+
+"Herve Riel" (by Robert Browning, 1812-89) is a poem for older boys.
+ Here is a hero who does a great deed simply as a part of his day's
+ work. He puts no value on what he has done, because he could have done
+ no other way.
+
+ On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two,
+ Did the English fight the French--woe to France!
+ And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue,
+ Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue,
+ Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance,
+ With the English fleet in view.
+
+ 'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase,
+ First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville;
+ Close on him fled, great and small,
+ Twenty-two good ships in all;
+ And they signalled to the place,
+ "Help the winners of a race!
+ Get us guidance, give us harbour, take us quick--or, quicker still,
+ Here's the English can and will!"
+
+ Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leaped on board:
+ "Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to pass?"
+ laughed they;
+ "Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred
+ and scored,
+ Shall the _Formidable_ here, with her twelve and eighty guns,
+ Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way,
+ Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons.
+ And with flow at full beside?
+ Now 'tis slackest ebb of tide.
+ Reach the mooring! Rather say,
+ While rock stands or water runs,
+ Not a ship will leave the bay!"
+
+ Then was called a council straight;
+ Brief and bitter the debate:
+ "Here's the English at our heels; would you have them take in tow
+ All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern and bow,
+ For a prize to Plymouth Sound?--
+ Better run the ships aground!"
+ (Ended Damfreville his speech.)
+ "Not a minute more to wait!
+ Let the captains all and each
+ Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the beach!
+ France must undergo her fate.
+
+ "Give the word!"--But no such word
+ Was ever spoke or heard;
+ For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all these--
+ A captain? A lieutenant? A mate--first, second, third?
+ No such man of mark, and meet
+ With his betters to compete!
+ But a simple Breton sailor pressed by Tourville for the fleet--
+ A poor coasting pilot he, Herve Riel, the Croisiekese.
+
+ And "What mockery or malice have we here?" cries Herve Riel:
+ "Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, fools, or rogues?
+ Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell
+ On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell,
+ 'Twixt the offing here and Greve where the river disembogues?
+ Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying's for?
+ Morn and eve, night and day.
+ Have I piloted your bay,
+ Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor.
+ Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were worse than fifty Hogues!
+ Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me there's a way!
+ Only let me lead the line,
+ Have the biggest ship to steer,
+ Get this _Formidable_ clear,
+ Make the others follow mine,
+ And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know well,
+ Right to Solidor past Greve,
+ And there lay them safe and sound;
+ And if one ship misbehave,
+ --Keel so much as grate the ground,
+ Why, I've nothing but my life,--here's my head!" cries Herve Riel.
+
+ Not a minute more to wait
+ "Steer us in, then, small and great!
+ Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!" cried its chief.
+ Captains, give the sailor place!
+ He is Admiral, in brief.
+ Still the north wind, by God's grace!
+ See the noble fellow's face
+ As the big ship, with a bound,
+ Clears the entry like a hound,
+ Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide sea's profound!
+ See, safe through shoal and rock,
+ How they follow in a flock,
+ Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground,
+ Not a spar that comes to grief!
+ The peril, see, is past,
+ All are harboured to the last,
+ And just as Herve Riel hollas "Anchor!"--sure as fate,
+ Up the English come--too late!
+
+ So, the storm subsides to calm:
+ They see the green trees wave
+ On the heights o'erlooking Greve.
+ Hearts that bled are stanched with balm,
+ "Just our rapture to enhance,
+ Let the English rake the bay,
+ Gnash their teeth and glare askance
+ As they cannonade away!
+ 'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Rance!"
+ How hope succeeds despair on each Captain's countenance!
+ Out burst all with one accord,
+ "This is Paradise for Hell!
+ Let France, let France's King
+ Thank the man that did the thing!"
+ What a shout, and all one word,
+ "Herve Riel!"
+ As he stepped in front once more,
+ Not a symptom of surprise
+ In the frank blue Breton eyes,
+ Just the same man as before.
+
+ Then said Damfreville, "My friend,
+ I must speak out at the end,
+ Though I find the speaking hard.
+ Praise is deeper than the lips:
+ You have saved the King his ships,
+ You must name your own reward.
+ 'Faith, our sun was near eclipse!
+ Demand whate'er you will,
+ France remains your debtor still.
+ Ask to heart's content and have! or my name's not Damfreville."
+
+ Then a beam of fun outbroke
+ On the bearded mouth that spoke,
+ As the honest heart laughed through
+ Those frank eyes of Breton blue:
+ "Since I needs must say my say,
+ Since on board the duty's done,
+ And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it but a run?--
+ Since 'tis ask and have, I may--
+ Since the others go ashore--
+ Come! A good whole holiday!
+ Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!"
+ That he asked and that he got,--nothing more.
+
+ Name and deed alike are lost:
+ Not a pillar nor a post
+ In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell;
+ Not a head in white and black
+ On a single fishing smack,
+ In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack
+ All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell.
+ Go to Paris: rank on rank
+ Search the heroes flung pell-mell
+ On the Louvre, face and flank!
+ You shall look long enough ere you come to Herve Riel.
+ So, for better and for worse,
+ Herve Riel, accept my verse!
+ In my verse, Herve Riel, do thou once more
+ Save the squadron, honour France, love thy wife the Belle Aurore!
+
+ ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+ THE PROBLEM.
+
+"The Problem" (by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-80) is quoted from one end
+ of the world to the other. Emerson teaches one lesson above all others,
+ that each soul must work out for itself its latent force, its own
+ individual expression, and that with a "sad sincerity." "The bishop of
+ the soul" can do no more.
+
+ I like a church; I like a cowl;
+ I love a prophet of the soul;
+ And on my heart monastic aisles
+ Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles:
+ Yet not for all his faith can see
+ Would I that cowled churchman be.
+ Why should the vest on him allure,
+ Which I could not on me endure?
+
+ Not from a vain or shallow thought
+ His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
+ Never from lips of cunning fell
+ The thrilling Delphic oracle;
+ Out from the heart of nature rolled
+ The burdens of the Bible old;
+ The litanies of nations came,
+ Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
+ Up from the burning core below,--
+ The canticles of love and woe:
+ The hand that rounded Peter's dome
+ And groined the aisles of Christian Rome
+ Wrought in a sad sincerity;
+ Himself from God he could not free;
+ He builded better than he knew;
+ The conscious stone to beauty grew.
+
+ Knowst thou what wove yon woodbird's nest
+ Of leaves and feathers from her breast?
+ Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
+ Painting with morn each annual cell?
+ Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
+ To her old leaves new myriads?
+ Such and so grew these holy piles,
+ While love and terror laid the tiles.
+ Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,
+ As the best gem upon her zone,
+ And Morning opes with haste her lids
+ To gaze upon the Pyramids;
+ O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
+ As on its friends, with kindred eye;
+ For out of Thought's interior sphere
+ These wonders rose to upper air;
+ And Nature gladly gave them place,
+ Adopted them into her race,
+ And granted them an equal date
+ With Andes and with Ararat.
+
+ These temples grew as grows the grass;
+ Art might obey, but not surpass.
+ The passive Master lent his hand
+ To the vast soul that o'er him planned;
+ And the same power that reared the shrine
+ Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.
+ Ever the fiery Pentecost
+ Girds with one flame the countless host,
+ Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
+ And through the priest the mind inspires.
+ The word unto the prophet spoken
+ Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
+ The word by seers or sibyls told,
+ In groves of oak, or fanes of gold.
+ Still floats upon the morning wind,
+ Still whispers to the willing mind.
+ One accent of the Holy Ghost
+ The heedless world hath never lost.
+ I know what say the fathers wise,--
+ The Book itself before me lies,
+ Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
+ And he who blent both in his line,
+ The younger Golden Lips or mines,
+ Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines.
+ His words are music in my ear,
+ I see his cowled portrait dear;
+ And yet, for all his faith could see,
+ I would not the good bishop be.
+
+ RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
+
+
+ TO AMERICA.
+
+"To America," included by permission of the Poet Laureate, is a good
+ poem and a great poem. It is a keen thrust at the common practice of
+ teaching American children to hate the English of these days on account
+ of the actions of a silly old king dead a hundred years. Alfred Austin
+ deserves great credit for this poem.
+
+ What is the voice I hear
+ On the winds of the western sea?
+ Sentinel, listen from out Cape Clear
+ And say what the voice may be.
+ 'Tis a proud free people calling loud to a people proud and free.
+
+ And it says to them: "Kinsmen, hail!
+ We severed have been too long.
+ Now let us have done with a worn-out tale--
+ The tale of an ancient wrong--
+ And our friendship last long as our love doth and be stronger
+ than death is strong."
+
+ Answer them, sons of the self-same race,
+ And blood of the self-same clan;
+ Let us speak with each other face to face
+ And answer as man to man,
+ And loyally love and trust each other as none but free men can.
+
+ Now fling them out to the breeze,
+ Shamrock, Thistle, and Rose,
+ And the Star-spangled Banner unfurl with these--
+ A message to friends and foes
+ Wherever the sails of peace are seen and wherever the war-wind blows--
+
+ A message to bond and thrall to wake,
+ For wherever we come, we twain,
+ The throne of the tyrant shall rock and quake,
+ And his menace be void and vain;
+ For you are lords of a strong land and we are lords of the main.
+
+ Yes, this is the voice of the bluff March gale;
+ We severed have been too long,
+ But now we have done with a worn-out tale--
+ The tale of an ancient wrong--
+ And our friendship last long as love doth last and stronger
+ than death is strong.
+
+ ALFRED AUSTIN.
+
+
+ THE ENGLISH FLAG.
+
+ It is quite true that the English flag stands for freedom the world
+ over. Wherever it floats almost any one is safe, whether English or
+ not.
+
+ [Above the portico the Union Jack remained fluttering in the flames for
+ some time, but ultimately when it fell the crowds rent the air with
+ shouts, and seemed to see significance in the incident.--_Daily
+ Papers_.]
+
+ Winds of the World, give answer? They are whimpering to and fro--
+ And what should they know of England who only England know?--
+ The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag,
+ They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at
+ the English Flag!
+
+ Must we borrow a clout from the Boer--to plaster anew with dirt?
+ An Irish liar's bandage, or an English coward's shirt?
+ We may not speak of England; her Flag's to sell or share.
+ What is the Flag of England? Winds of the World, declare!
+
+ The North Wind blew:--"From Bergen my steel-shod van-guards go;
+ I chase your lazy whalers home from the Disko floe;
+ By the great North Lights above me I work the will of God,
+ That the liner splits on the ice-field or the Dogger fills with cod.
+
+ "I barred my gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame,
+ Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came;
+ I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast,
+ And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ere the spirit passed.
+
+ "The lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long Arctic night,
+ The musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the Northern Light:
+ What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my bergs to dare,
+ Ye have but my drifts to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!"
+
+ The South Wind sighed:--"From The Virgins my mid-sea course was ta'en
+ Over a thousand islands lost in an idle main,
+ Where the sea-egg flames on the coral and the long-backed
+ breakers croon
+ Their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon.
+
+ "Strayed amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys,
+ I waked the palms to laughter--I tossed the scud in the breeze--
+ Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone,
+ But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag was flown.
+
+ "I have wrenched it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp
+ on the Horn;
+ I have chased it north to the Lizard--ribboned and rolled and torn;
+ I have spread its fold o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea;
+ I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free.
+
+ "My basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross,
+ Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross.
+ What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare,
+ Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it is there!"
+
+ The East Wind roared:--"From the Kuriles, the Bitter Seas, I come,
+ And me men call the Home-Wind, for I bring the English home.
+ Look--look well to your shipping! By the breath of my mad typhoon
+ I swept your close-packed Praya and beached your best at Kowloon!
+
+ "The reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before,
+ I raped your richest roadstead--I plundered Singapore!
+ I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose,
+ And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows.
+
+ "Never the lotos closes, never the wild-fowl wake,
+ But a soul goes out on the East Wind that died for England's sake--
+ Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid--
+ Because on the bones of the English the English Flag is stayed.
+
+ "The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-ass knows.
+ The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows.
+ What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my sun to dare,
+ Ye have but my sands to travel. Go forth, for it is there!"
+
+ The West Wind called:--"In squadrons the thoughtless galleons fly
+ That bear the wheat and cattle lest street-bred people die.
+ They make my might their porter, they make my house their path,
+ Till I loose my neck from their rudder and whelm them all in my wrath.
+
+ "I draw the gliding fog-bank as a snake is drawn from the hole;
+ They bellow one to the other, the frightened ship-bells toll,
+ For day is a drifting terror till I raise the shroud with my breath,
+ And they see strange bows above them and the two go locked to death.
+
+ "But whether in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day,
+ I heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away,
+ First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky,
+ Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag goes by.
+
+ "The dead dumb fog hath wrapped it--the frozen dews have kissed--
+ The naked stars have seen it, a fellow-star in the mist.
+ What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my breath to dare,
+ Ye have but my waves to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!"
+
+ RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+
+ THE MAN WITH THE HOE.
+
+"The Man With the Hoe" is purely an American product, and every
+ American ought to be proud of it, for we want no such type allowed to
+ be developed in this country as the low-browed peasant of France. This
+ poem is a stroke of genius. The story goes that it so offended a modern
+ plutocrat that he offered a reward of $10,000 to any one who could
+ write an equally good poem in rebuttal. "The Man With the Hoe" has won
+ for Edwin Markham the title of "Poet Laureate of the Labouring
+ Classes."
+
+ WRITTEN AFTER SEEING THE PAINTING BY MILLET.
+
+ God made man in His own image, in the image of God made He
+ him.--GENESIS.
+
+ Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
+ Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
+ The emptiness of ages in his face,
+ And on his back the burden of the world.
+ Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
+ A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
+ Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
+ Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
+ Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
+ Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
+
+ Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
+ To have dominion over sea and land;
+ To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
+ To feel the passion of Eternity?
+ Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
+ And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
+ Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
+ There is no shape more terrible than this--
+ More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed--
+ More filled with signs and portents for the soul--
+ More fraught with menace to the universe.
+
+ What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
+ Slave of the wheel of labour, what to him
+ Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
+ What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
+ The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
+ Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
+ Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop;
+ Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
+ Plundered, profaned, and disinherited,
+ Cries protest to the Judges of the World,
+ A protest that is also prophecy.
+
+ O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands,
+ Is this the handiwork you give to God,
+ This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
+ How will you ever straighten up this shape;
+ Touch it again with immortality;
+ Give back the upward looking and the light;
+ Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
+ Make right the immemorial infamies,
+ Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
+
+ O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands,
+ How will the future reckon with this Man?
+ How answer his brute question in that hour
+ When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?
+ How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
+ With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
+ When this dumb Terror shall reply to God,
+ After the silence of the centuries?
+
+ EDWIN MARKHAM.
+
+
+ SONG OF MYSELF.
+
+"The Song of Myself" is one of Walt Whitman's (1819-92) most
+ characteristic poems. I love the swing and the stride of his great long
+ lines. I love his rough-shod way of trampling down and kicking out of
+ the way the conventionalities that spring up like poisonous mushrooms
+ to make the world a vast labyrinth of petty "proprieties" until
+ everything is nasty. I love the oxygen he pours on the world. I love
+ his genius for brotherliness, his picture of the Negro with rolling
+ eyes and the firelock in the corner. These excerpts are some of his
+ best lines.
+
+ I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
+ And what I assume you shall assume,
+ For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
+ I loafe and invite my soul,
+ I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
+ My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
+ Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
+ parents the same,
+ I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
+ Hoping to cease not till death.
+
+ I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
+ Nature without check with original energy.
+
+ Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the
+ earth much?
+ Have you practised so long to learn to read?
+ Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
+
+ Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin
+ of all poems,
+ You shall possess the good of the earth and sun (there are
+ millions of suns left),
+ You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
+ through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books,
+ You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
+ You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.
+
+ A child said, "_What is the grass?_" fetching it to me with full hands;
+ How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more
+ than he.
+ I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green
+ stuff woven.
+ Or, I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
+ A scented gift and remembrance designedly dropt,
+ Bearing the owner's name some way in the corners,
+ that we may see and remark, and say,
+ "_Whose?_"
+
+ Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
+ Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,
+ In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
+ Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill'd game,
+ Falling asleep on the gathered leaves with my dog and gun by my side.
+ The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle
+ and scud,
+ My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from
+ the deck.
+ The boatman and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,
+ I tucked my trouser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time;
+ You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.
+
+ The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,
+ I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
+ Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak,
+ And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him,
+ And brought water and fill'd a tub for his sweated body and
+ bruis'd feet,
+ And gave him a room that entered from my own, and gave him some
+ coarse clean clothes,
+ And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
+ And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
+ He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and passed north,
+ I had him sit next me at table, my firelock lean'd in the corner.
+
+ I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
+ And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
+ And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
+
+ I understand the large hearts of heroes,
+ The courage of present times and all times,
+ How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship,
+ and Death chasing it up and down the storm,
+ How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch and was faithful of
+ days and faithful of nights,
+ And chalked in large letters on a board, "_Be of good cheer, we will
+ not desert you_";
+ How he followed with them and tack'd with them three days and would
+ not give it up,
+ How he saved the drifting company at last,
+ How the lank loose-gown'd women looked when boated from the side
+ of their prepared graves,
+ How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the
+ sharp-lipp'd unshaved men;
+ All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,
+ I am the man, I suffered, I was there.
+ The disdain and calmness of martyrs,
+ The mother of old, condemned for a witch, burned with dry wood, her
+ children gazing on,
+ The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence blowing,
+ covered with sweat.
+ I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,
+ Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,
+ I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn'd with the
+ ooze of my skin,
+ I fall on the weeds and stones,
+ The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,
+ Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with
+ whip-stocks.
+
+ Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days!
+
+ See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
+ Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.
+ My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain,
+ The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms.
+ The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there.
+
+ And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own
+ funeral drest in his shroud.
+
+ And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds
+ the learning of all times,
+ And there is no trade or employment but the young man following
+ it may become a hero,
+ And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd
+ universe.
+ And I say to any man or woman, "Let your soul stand cool and composed
+ before a million universes."
+
+ I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each
+ moment then,
+ In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in
+ the glass,
+ I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is
+ sign'd by God's name,
+ And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go,
+ Others will punctually come forever and ever.
+
+ Listener up there! What have you to confide in me?
+ Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening.
+ (Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute
+ longer.)
+ Who has done his day's work? Who will soonest be through with
+ his supper?
+ Who wishes to walk with me?
+
+ I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
+ I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
+
+
+
+
+ INDEX
+
+
+ A barking sound the shepherd hears, 120
+
+ Abide with me! fast falls the eventide, 223
+
+ Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase), 89
+
+ A chieftain to the Highlands bound, 105
+
+ Across the lonely beach, 71
+
+ A life on the ocean wave, 85
+
+ Alone I walked the ocean strand, 256
+
+ A nightingale that all day long, 34
+
+ A supercilious nabob of the East, 165
+
+ At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, 246
+
+ At midnight in his guarded tent, 128
+
+ A traveller on the dusty road, 48
+
+ A well there is in the west country, 180
+
+ Ay, tear her tattered ensign down, 53
+
+
+ Behind him lay the gray Azores, 169
+
+ Beneath the low-hung night cloud, 67
+
+ Bird of the wilderness, 302
+
+ Blow, blow, thou winter wind, 58
+
+ Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans, 342
+
+ Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies, 110
+
+ Buttercups and daisies, 51
+
+ By the shores of Gitche Gumee, 79
+
+
+ Come, let us plant the apple-tree, 211
+
+ Come, dear children, let us away, 260
+
+"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land, 231
+
+ Cupid and my Campasbe played, 235
+
+ Cupid once upon a bed, 234
+
+
+ Down in a green and shady bed, 27
+
+
+ Farewell! Farewell! But this I tell, 5
+
+ Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat, 320
+
+
+"Give us a song!" the soldiers cried, 64
+
+ God of our fathers, known of old, 321
+
+ Goe, soule, the bodie's guest, 283
+
+ Grow old along with me, 312
+
+
+ Hail to thee, blithe spirit, 268
+
+ Half a league, half a league, 107
+
+ Happy the man whose wish and care, 273
+
+ Hats off! 133
+
+ Heaven is not reached at a single bound, 117
+
+ How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, 288
+
+"How I should like a birthday!" said the child, 164
+
+ How happy is he born and taught, 220
+
+ How sleep the brave, who sing to rest, 133
+
+
+ I am monarch of all I survey, 190
+
+ I celebrate myself, and sing myself, 344
+
+ I chatter, chatter, as I flow, 153
+
+ I come, I come! ye have called me long, 259
+
+ If I had but two little wings, 21
+
+ I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, 9
+
+ I heard last night a little child go singing, 222
+
+ I like a church: I like a cowl, 333
+
+"I'll tell you how the leaves came down," 12
+
+ I met a traveller from an antique land, 322
+
+ In her ear he whispers gaily, 75
+
+ In the name of the Empress of India, make way, 125
+
+ I remember, I remember, 159
+
+ I shot an arrow into the air, 3
+
+"Isn't this Joseph's son?"--ay, it is He, 114
+
+ I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he, 173
+
+ Is there, for honest poverty, 151
+
+ It is not growing like a tree, 60
+
+ It was a summer's evening, 117
+
+ It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_, 154
+
+ It was the schooner _Hesperus_, 138
+
+ It was the time when lilies blow, 72
+
+ I wandered lonely as a cloud, 82
+
+
+ John Anderson, my jo, John, 274
+
+
+ King Francis was a hearty king and loved a royal sport, 184
+
+ Krinken was a little child, 162
+
+
+ Lars Porsena of Clusium, 193
+
+ Lead kindly light, amid th' encircling gloom, 224
+
+ Let dogs delight to bark and bite, 4
+
+ Life! I know not what thou art, 299
+
+ Little drops of water, 5
+
+ Little orphant Annie's come to our house to stay, 54
+
+ Little white lily, 10
+
+
+"Make way for liberty!" he cried, 296
+
+ Maxwelton braes are bonnie, 226
+
+ Merrily swinging on brier and weed, 44
+
+ Methought I heard a butterfly, 42
+
+ 'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, 220
+
+ Mine be a cot beside the hill, 272
+
+ My country 'tis of thee, 228
+
+ My fairest child, I have no song to give you, 21
+
+ My good blade carves the casques of men, 253
+
+ My heart leaps up when I behold, 28
+
+ My little Maedchen found one day, 149
+
+ My mind to me a kingdom is, 286
+
+ My soul is sailing through the sea, 219
+
+ Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, 326
+
+
+ Nae shoon to hide her tiny taes, 4
+
+ No stir in the air, no stir in the sea, 145
+
+ Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, 176
+
+ Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are, 179
+
+
+ O, a dainty plant is the ivy green, 59
+
+ O Captain! my Captain, our fearful trip is done, 57
+
+ Of all the woodland creatures, 60
+
+ Oft in the stilly night, 266
+
+ Oh where! and oh where! is your Highland laddie gone, 20
+
+ Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the West, 103
+
+ Old Grimes is dead; that good old man, 47
+
+"O Mary, go and call the cattle home, 271
+
+ O, may I join the choir invisible, 303
+
+ Once a dream did wave a shade, 116
+
+ Once there was a little boy, 19
+
+ Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, 289
+
+ On Linden, when the sun was low, 134
+
+ On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, 326
+
+ Out of the clover and blue-eyed grass, 160
+
+ Over the hill the farm-boy goes, 90
+
+ O! say can you see, by the dawn's early light, 31
+
+ O why should the spirit of mortal be proud, 323
+
+
+ Pussy can sit by the fire and sing, 8
+
+ Pibroch of Donuil Dhu, 126
+
+
+ Said the wind to the moon, "I will blow you out," 111
+
+ Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State, 227
+
+ Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled, 142
+
+ See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, 301
+
+ Serene I fold my hands and wait, 267
+
+ Shed no tear! O shed no tear, 50
+
+ She dwelt among the untrodden ways, 272
+
+ She was a phantom of delight, 305
+
+ Speak! speak! thou fearful guest, 240
+
+ Stand! the ground's your own, my braves!, 63
+
+ Sunset and evening star, 124
+
+ Sweet and low, sweet and low, 27
+
+
+ Tell me not in mournful numbers, 218
+
+ The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, 158
+
+ The boy stood on the burning deck, 22
+
+ The breaking waves dashed high, 229
+
+ The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 306
+
+ The Frost looked forth, one still, clear night, 39
+
+ The gingham dog and the calico cat, 18
+
+ The God of Music dwelleth out of doors, 275
+
+ The harp that once through Tara's halls, 287
+
+ The nautilus and the ammonite, 188
+
+ The old mayor climb'd the belfry tower, 277
+
+ The Owl and the Pussy Cat went to sea, 15
+
+ The quality of mercy is not strained, 300
+
+ There came a youth upon the earth, 171
+
+ There came to port last Sunday night, 152
+
+ There lay upon the ocean's shore, 148
+
+ There was a sound of revelry by night, 177
+
+ There was never a Queen like Balkis, 7
+
+ There were three kings into the East, 83
+
+ There were three sailors of Bristol City, 41
+
+ The splendour falls on castle walls, 66
+
+ The stately homes of England, 192
+
+ The summer and autumn had been so wet, 166
+
+ The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home, 136
+
+ The world is too much with us; late and soon, 304
+
+ The year's at the spring, 6
+
+ Thirty days hath September, 7
+
+ This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 122
+
+ This was the noblest Roman of them all, 301
+
+ 'Tis the last rose of summer, 225
+
+ T'other day as I was twining, 234
+
+ Traveller, pluck a stem of moly, 233
+
+ Triumphal arch that fills the sky, 53
+
+ 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, 29
+
+ Twinkle, twinkle little star, 6
+
+
+ Under a spreading chestnut tree, 25
+
+ Up from the meadows rich with corn, 96
+
+ Up from the South at break of day, 68
+
+
+ Way down upon de Swanee ribber, 137
+
+ Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, 94
+
+ Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie, 92
+
+ Wee Willie Winkie rins through the town, 13
+
+ We were crowded in the cabin, 23
+
+ Whatever brawls disturb the street, 20
+
+ What is so rare as a day in June, 217
+
+ What is the voice I hear, 335
+
+ What was he doing, the great god Pan, 275
+
+ When cats run home and light is come, 40
+
+ When earth's last picture is painted, 285
+
+ When George the Third was reigning, a hundred years ago, 236
+
+ When I consider how my light is spent, 304
+
+ When Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year, 115
+
+ Where the pools are bright and deep, 50
+
+ Wild was the night, yet a wilder night, 131
+
+ Winds of the world, give answer, 337
+
+ Woodman, spare that tree, 222
+
+ Wynken, Blynken and Nod one night, 16
+
+
+ Ye banks and braes of bonnie Doon, 265
+
+"You are old, Father William," the young man said, 33
+
+ You know, we French storm'd Ratisbon, 43
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Poems Every Child Should Know, by Various
+
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