The Little Book of Modern Verse | Page 6

mounting sun.
Earth he disdained -- the
dusty ways of men
Not yet had learned. His spirit longed to run

With the bright clouds, his brothers, to answer when
The airs were
fleetest and could give him hand
Into the starry fields beyond our
plodding ken.
All wittingly that glorious way he chose,
And loved the peril when it
was most bright.
He tried anew the long-forbidden snows
And like
an eagle topped the dropping height
Of Nagenhorn, and still toward
Italy
Past peak and cliff pressed on, in glad, unerring flight.
Oh, when the bird lies low with golden wing
Bruised past healing by
some bitter chance,
Still must its tireless spirit mount and sing
Of
meadows green with morning, of the dance
On windy trees, the
darting flight away,
And of that last, most blue, triumphant
downward glance.
So murmuring of the snow: "THE SNOW, AND MORE,
O GOD,
MORE SNOW!" on that last field he lay.
Despair and wonder spent
their passionate store
In his great heart, through heaven gone astray,

And early lost. Too far the golden moon
Had swung upon that
bright, that long, untraversed way.
Now to lie ended on the murmuring plain --
Ah, this for his bold heart
was not the loss,
But that those windy fields he ne'er again
Might
try, nor fleet and shimmering mountains cross,
Unfollowed, by a path
none other knew:
His bitter woe had here its deep and piteous cause.
Dear toils of youth unfinished! And songs unwritten, left By young and
passionate hearts! O melodies
Unheard, whereof we ever stand bereft!

Clear-singing Schubert, boyish Keats -- with these
He roams
henceforth, one with the starry band,
Still paying to fairy call and far

command
His spirit heed, still winged with golden prophecies.
The Sea Gypsy. [Richard Hovey]
I am fevered with the sunset,
I am fretful with the bay,
For the
wander-thirst is on me
And my soul is in Cathay.
There's a schooner in the offing,
With her topsails shot with fire,

And my heart has gone aboard her
For the Islands of Desire.
I must forth again to-morrow!
With the sunset I must be
Hull down
on the trail of rapture
In the wonder of the sea.
At Gibraltar. [George Edward Woodberry]
I
England, I stand on thy imperial ground,
Not all a stranger; as thy
bugles blow,
I feel within my blood old battles flow --
The blood
whose ancient founts in thee are found
Still surging dark against the
Christian bound
Wide Islam presses; well its peoples know
Thy
heights that watch them wandering below;
I think how Lucknow
heard their gathering sound.
I turn, and meet the cruel, turbaned face.

England, 't is sweet to be so much thy son!
I feel the conqueror in
my blood and race;
Last night Trafalgar awed me, and to-day

Gibraltar wakened; hark, thy evening gun
Startles the desert over
Africa!
II
Thou art the rock of empire, set mid-seas
Between the East and West,
that God has built;
Advance thy Roman borders where thou wilt,

While run thy armies true with His decrees.
Law, justice, liberty --
great gifts are these;
Watch that they spread where English blood is
spilt,
Lest, mixed and sullied with his country's guilt,
The soldier's

life-stream flow, and Heaven displease!
Two swords there are: one
naked, apt to smite,
Thy blade of war; and, battle-storied, one

Rejoices in the sheath, and hides from light.
American I am; would
wars were done!
Now westward, look, my country bids good-night --

Peace to the world from ports without a gun!
Euchenor Chorus. [Arthur Upson]
(From "The City")
Of old it went forth to Euchenor, pronounced of his sire -- Reluctant,
impelled by the god's unescapable fire --
To choose for his doom or
to perish at home of disease
Or be slain of his foes, among men,
where Troy surges down to the seas.
Polyides, the soothsayer, spake it, inflamed by the god.
Of his son
whom the fates singled out did he bruit it abroad; And Euchenor went
down to the ships with his armor and men
And straightway, grown
dim on the gulf, passed the isles
he passed never again.
Why weep ye, O women of Corinth? The doom ye have heard
Is it
strange to your ears that ye make it so mournful a word? Is he who so
fair in your eyes to his manhood upgrew,
Alone in his doom of pale
death -- are of mortals the beaten so few?
O weep not, companions and lovers! Turn back to your joys: The defeat
was not his which he chose, nor the victory Troy's. Him a conqueror,
beauteous in youth, o'er the flood his fleet brought, And the swift spear
of Paris that slew completed the conquest he sought.
Not the falling proclaims the defeat, but the place of the fall; And the
fate that decrees and the god that impels through it all Regard not blind
mortals' divisions of slayer and slain,
But invisible glories dispense
wide over the war-gleaming plain.
He whom a Dream hath possessed. [Shaemas O Sheel]

He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of doubting, For
mist and the blowing of winds and the mouthing of