The Little Book of Modern Verse | Page 6

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 words he scorns; Not the sinuous speech of schools he hears, but a knightly shouting, And never comes darkness down, yet he greeteth a million morns.
He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of roaming;?All roads and the flowing of waves and the speediest flight he knows, But wherever his feet are set, his soul is forever homing,?And going, he comes, and coming he heareth a call and goes.
He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of sorrow,?At death and the dropping of leaves and the fading of suns he smiles, For a dream remembers no past and scorns the desire of a morrow, And a dream in a sea of doom sets surely the ultimate isles.
He whom a dream hath possessed treads the impalpable marches, From the dust of