Art sworn to
secrecy?
Warner - World's Best Literature - v28 - Songs, Hymns, Lyrics
Rich gain for us! But with him is it well ? —
The poet who must sound earth, heaven, and hell!
EMMA LAZARUS.
## p. 16774 (#474) ##########################################
16774
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
WHAT THE SONNET IS
F
OURTEEN small broidered berries on the hem
Of Circe's mantle, each of magic gold;
Fourteen of lone Calypso's tears that rolled
Into the sea, for pearls to come of them;
Fourteen clear signs of omen in the gem
With which Medea human fate foretold;
Fourteen small drops which Faustus, growing old,
Craved of the Fiend, to water life's dry stem.
It is the pure white diamond Dante brought
To Beatrice; the sapphire Laura wore
When Petrarch cut it sparkling out of thought;
The ruby Shakespeare hewed from his heart's core:
The dark, deep emerald that Rossetti wrought
For his own soul, to wear for evermore.
EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON.
THE BOOK-STALL
11
T STANDS in a winding street,
A quiet and restful nook,
Apart from the endless beat
Of the noisy heart of Trade:
There's never a spot more cool
Of a hot midsummer day
By the brink of a forest pool,
Or the bank of a crystal brook
In the maple's breezy shade,
Than the book-stall old and gray.
Here are precious gems of thought
That were quarried long ago,
Some in vellum bound, and wrought
With letters and lines of gold;
Here are curious rows of “calf,”
And perchance an Elzevir;
Here are countless (mos) of chaff,
And a parchment folio,
Like leaves that are cracked with cold,
All puckered and brown and sear.
In every age and clime
Live the monarchs of the brain:
## p. 16775 (#475) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16775
And the lords of prose and rhyme,
Years after the long last sleep
Has come to the kings of earth
And their names have passed away,
Rule on through death and birth;
And the thrones of their domain
Are found where the shades are deep
In the book-stall old and gray.
1
CLINTON SCOLLARD.
A BOOK-LOVER'S APOLOGIA
TEA
EMPTATIon lurks in every leaf
Of printed page or cover,
Whene'er I haunt the book-shops old,
Their treasures rare discover;
Or when, in choicest catalogues,
Among which I'm a rover,
My heart leaps up their names to see,-
For am I not their lover ?
I linger o'er each dainty page
With loving touch and tender;
But find their sweet, seductive charms
Soon call me to surrender.
Brave fight, 'twixt heart and my lean purse,
My loved books' strong defender!
More precious for the valiant strife
That love is called to render!
But when in Bibliopolis
Their dear forms round me cluster,
While rank on rank and file on file
In gathering numbers muster,
Think you I mind the sordid tongues
That soulless talk and bluster,
Or weigh, against their priceless worth,
The golden dollar's lustre?
Ah, no! since there are drink and food
For which the soul has longings,
And in its daily, upward strife,
Finds both in such belongings,-
## p. 16776 (#476) ##########################################
16776
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS*
Dear books! loved friends, full meet ye are
To greet the earliest dawnings
Of all the happiest days in life,
Of all its brightest mornings!
HARRIETTE C. S. BUCKHAM.
THE CHRYSALIS OF A BOOKWORM
I
READ, O friend, no pages of old lore,
Which I loved well — and yet the flying days,
That softly passed as wind through green spring ways
And left a perfume, swift fly as of yore;
Though in clear Plato's stream I look no more,
Neither with Moschus sing Sicilian lays,
Nor with bold Dante wander in amaze,
Nor see our Will the Golden Age restore.
I read a book to which old books are new,
And new books old. A living book is mine -
In age, three years: in it I read no lies,
In it to myriad truths I find the clue -
A tender little child; but I divine
Thoughts high as Dante's in her clear blue eyes.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN.
TO THE MEMORY OF BEN JONSON
T"
He Muse's fairest light in no dark time,
The wonder of a learned age; the line
Which none can pass! the most proportioned wit, -
To nature, the best judge of what was fit;
The deepest, plainest, highest, clearest pen;
The voice most echoed by consenting men;
The soul which answered best to all well said
By others, and which most requital made;
Tuned to the highest key of ancient Rome,
Returning all her music with his own;
In whom, with nature, study claimed a part,
And yet who to himself owed all his art:
Here lies Ben Jonson! every age will look
With sorrow here, with wonder on his book.
JOHN CLEVELAND.
## p. 16777 (#477) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16777
GIVE ME THE OLD
« Old Wine to drink, Old Wood to burn, Old Books to read, Old Friends to
converse with. ”
O
LD wine to drink!
Ay, give the slippery juice
That drippeth from the grape thrown loose
Within the tun;
Plucked from beneath the cliff
Of sunny-sided Teneriffe,
And ripened 'neath the blink
Of India's sun!
Peat whisky hot,
Tempered with well-boiled water!
These make the long night shorter :
Forgetting not
Good stout old English porter.
Old wood to burn!
Ay, bring the hillside beech
From where the owlets meet and screech,
And ravens croak;
The crackling pine, and cedar sweet:
Bring too a clump of fragrant peat,
Dug 'neath the fern;
The knotted oak,
A fagot too, perhap,
Whose bright Aame dancing, winking,
Shall light us at our drinking;
While the oozing sap
Shall make sweet music to our thinking.
Old books to read!
Ay, bring those nodes of wit,
The brazen-clasped, the vellum-writ,
Time-honored tomes !
The same my sire scanned before,
The same my grandsire thumbed o'er,
The same his sire from college bore, -
The well-earned meed
Of Oxford's domes:
Old Homer blind,
Old Horace, rake Anacreon, by
Old Tully, Plautus, Terence, lie;
Mort Arthur's olden minstrelsie,
## p. 16778 (#478) ##########################################
16778
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
Quaint Burton, quainter Spenser, ay!
And Gervase Markham's venerie:
Nor leave behind
The Holye Book by which we live and die.
Old friends to talk!
Ay, bring those chosen few,
The wise, the courtly, and the true,
So rarely found:
Him for my wine, him for my stud,
Himn for my easel, distich, bud
In mountain walk!
Bring Walter good,
With soulful Fred, and learned Will:
And thee, my alter ego (dearer still
For every mood).
ROBERT HINCKLEY MESSINGER.
MAURICE DE GUÉRIN
THE
He old wine filled him, and he saw, with eyes
Anoint of Nature, fauns and dryads fair
Unseen by others; to him maidenhair
And waxen lilacs, and those birds that rise
A-sudden from tall reeds at slight surprise,
Brought charmed thoughts; and in earth everywhere
He, like sad Jaques, found a music rare
As that of Syrinx to old Grecians wise.
A pagan heart, a Christian soul had he:
He followed Christ, yet for dead Pan he sighed,
Till earth and heaven met within his breast;
As if Theocritus in Sicily
Had come upon the Figure crucified,
And lost his gods in deep Christ-given rest.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN.
## p. 16779 (#479) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16779
THEOCRITUS
AM
H! UNTO thee belong
The pipe and song,
Theocritus, –
Loved by the satyr and the faun!
To thee the olive and the vine,
To thee the Mediterranean pine,
And the soft lapping sea!
Thine, Bacchus,
Thine the blood-red revels,
Thine the bearded goat !
Soft valleys unto thee,
And Aphrodite's shrine,
And maidens veiled in falling robes of lawn!
But unto us, to us,
The stalwart glories of the North :
Ours is the sounding main,
And ours the voices uttering forth
By midnight round these cliffs a mighty strain;
A tale of viewless islands in the deep
Washed by the waves' white fire,
Of mariners rocked asleep
In the great cradle, far from Grecian ire
Of . Neptune and his train:
To us, to us,
· The dark-leaved shadow and the shining birch,
The Alight of gold through hollow woodlands driven,
Soft dying of the year with many a sigh, –
These, all, to us are given!
And eyes that eager evermore shall search
The hidden seed, and searching find again
Unfading blossoms of a fadeless spring, -
These, these, to us!
The sacred youth and maid,
Coy and half afraid;
The sorrowful earthly pall,
Winter and wintry rain,
And Autumn's gathered grain,
With whispering music in their fall, —
These unto us!
And unto thee, Theocritus,
To thee,
## p. 16780 (#480) ##########################################
16780
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
The immortal childhood of the world,
The laughing waters of an inland sea,
And beckoning signal of a sail unfurled !
ANNIE FIELDS.
CARLYLE AND EMERSON
A
BALE-FIRE kindled in the night,
By night a blaze, by day a cloud,
With flame and smoke all England woke, -
It climbed so high, it roared so loud:
While over Massachusetts's pines
Uprose a white and steadfast star;
And many a night it hung unwatched, -
It shone so still, it seemed so far.
But Light is Fire, and Fire is Light;
And mariners are glad for these, -
The torch that flares along the coast,
The star that beams above the seas.
MONTGOMERY SCHUYLER.
THE AMERICAN PANTHEON
LINES ON GRISWOLD's POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA'
WEN
HEN Rufus Griswold built his pantheon wide,
And set a hundred poets round its walls,
Did he suppose their statues would abide
The tests of time, upon their pedestals ?
A hundred poets,- some in Parian stone
Perchance, and some in brittle plaster cast,
And some mere shades, whose names are scarcely known,
Dii minores of a voiceless past.
Time was when many there so neatly niched
Held each within his court a sovereign sway;
Each in his turn his little world enriched, -
The ephemeral poet-laureate of his day.
## p. 16781 (#481) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16781
Ah, what is fame! Star after star goes out,
Lost Pleiads in the firmament of Truth;
Our kings discrowned ere dies the distant shout
That hailed the coronation of their youth.
Few are the world's great singers. Far apart,
Thrilling with love, yet wrapped in solitude,
They sit communing with the common Heart
That binds the race in common brotherhood.
A wind of heaven o'er their musing breathes,
And wakes them into verse,- as April turns
The roadside banks to violets, and unsheaths
The forest flowers amid the leaves and ferns.
And we, who dare not wear the immortal crown
Or singing robes, at least may hear and dream
While strains from prophet lips come floating down,
Inspired by them to sing some humbler theme.
Nay, nothing can be lost whose living stems,
Rooted in truth, spring up to beauty's Aower.
The spangles of the stage may flout the gems
On queenly breasts — but only for an hour.
The fashion of the time shall stamp its own.
The heart, the radiant soul, the eternal truth
And beauty born of harmony, alone
Can claim the garlands of perennial youth.
Oh, not for fame the poet of to-day
Should hunger. Though the world his music scorn,
The after-time may hear, as mountains gray
Echo from depths unseen the Alpine horn.
So, while around this pantheon wide I stray,
Where poets from Freneau to Fay are set,
I doubt not each in turn has sung a lay
Some hearts are not quite willing to forget.
For who in barren rhyme and rhythm could spend
The costly hours the Muse alone should claim,
Did not some finer thought, some nobler end,
Breathe ardors sweeter than poetic fame?
CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH.
## p. 16782 (#482) ##########################################
16782
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
THE BOY VAN DYCK
A. D. 1608
IN
N THE gray old Flemish city
Sat a comely, fair-haired dame,
At a window's deep embrasure,
Bending o'er her broidery-frame.
Round her played her merry children,
As they wound about their heads
Fillets, pilfered in their mischief,
From her skeins of arras-threads.
Oft she turned her glance upon them,
Softly smiling at their play,
All the while her busy needle
Pricking in and out its way;
From the open casement gazing,
Where the landscape lay in view,
Striving from her silken treasures
To portray each varied hue.
(
>
“Nay, I cannot,” sighed she sadly,
As the threads dropped from her hold,
« Cannot match that steely sapphire,
Or that line of burnished gold.
How it sparkles as it stretches
Straight as any lance across !
Never hint of such a lustre
Lives within my brightest foss!
“Ah, that blaze of splendid color!
I could kneel with folded hands,
As I watch it slowly dying
Off the emerald pasture-lands.
How my crimson pales to ashen
In this flood of sunset hue,
Mocking all my poor endeavor,
Foiling all my skill can do! »
As they heard her sigh, the children
Pressed around their mother's knees:
“Nay” — they clamored — “where in Antwerp
Are there broideries such as these ?
Why, the famous master, Rubens,
Craves the piece we think so ra
e, -
## p. 16783 (#483) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16783
Asks our father's leave to paint it
Flung across the Emperor's chair!
« How ye talk! ” — she smiled. “Yet often,
As I draw my needle through,
Gloating o'er my tints, I fancy
I might be a painter too:
I, a woman, wife, and mother,
What have I to do with Art!
Are not ye my noblest pictures ?
Portraits painted from my heart!
« Yet I think, if inidst my seven
One should show the master's bent,
One should do the things I dream of, –
All my soul would rest content. ”
Straight the four-year-old Antonio
Answered, sobbing half aloud:
"I will be your painter, painting
Pictures that shall make you proud! ”
Quick she snatched this youngest darling,
Smoothing down his golden hair,
Kissing with a crazy rapture
Mouth and cheek and forehead fair
Saying mid her sobbing laughter,
“So! my baby! you would like
To be named with Flemish Masters,
Rembrandt, Rubens, and — Van Dyck ! » *
MARGARET J. PRESTON.
HELENA
I
AM Helen of Argos,
I am Helen of Sparta,
I, the daughter of Egypt,
I, the inflamer of Troy:
See me, Helen, still shining,
There where shines great Achilles :
Blossoms of summer I bring ye
Born not of shadows or dreams.
* The mother of Van Dyck was celebrated for her beautiful tapestry work.
From her, her distinguished son inherited that taste for lucid color which has
given him the name of «The Silvery Van Dyck. )
## p. 16784 (#484) ##########################################
16784
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
Early from Argos he bore me,
Theseus, inconstant of lovers:
Early in Argos he bound me,
He, Menelaus the King;
Queen of the court and of feasting,
Queen of the heart and the temple,
Goddess and priestess and mother,
Holding Hermione's hand.
There in the chambers of purple,
Fair as the statue he gathered
Worshiped by great Menelaus,
I, his Helen, remained;
Pure as when Theseus snatched me
First from the temple of Dian,
Dancing the dances of childhood,
Bare to her ivory floors.
Theseus snatched me and held me,
Hiding me far in Aphidnai;
Quickly I slipped from his covert,
I, no longer enslaved.
Ah! Menelaus the gentle,
Gently but strongly he bound me:
Lo! with the ships I departed, —
Ships that were sailing for Troy.
Paris had beckoned me hither;-
Waves were leaping around me,
Whispering of freedom and gladness,
Paris whispered of love:
Thus in the meshes entangled
Woven by hard Aphrodite,
Lost was I, slave to her service,
She, the compeller of men.
There on the turrets of Troia,
Watching the combat of heroes,
There in the eye of the noble,
Sent she a woman to me;
Calling me hence to serve Paris,
He, the lascivious, the perfumed, -
She, the compeller, she drove me
Hence in the faces of all.
Slave was I, bound was I, Helen!
Once the queen of the hearth-side;
## p. 16785 (#485) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16785
Bond was I, scorned, yet the mother,
Queen of Hermione's heart:
Gazing on Hector the princely, -
Dead, and Andromache weeping,
Tears were not mine! Alas, deeper
Lay my smart and my pain.
Hector, my brother beloved!
Dear to me, far above others,
Here on thy body lamenting
I too echo thy praise !
Listen, Andromache, listen!
Out of the deepness of silence
Calleth a voice unto thee:-
“Calm, 0 beloved, 0 dear one,
Calm are the valleys of Orcus,
Restful the streams and dim alleys
Shut from the clamor of men;
Restful to him who has labored,
Labored and loved and is waiting,-
Waiting to hold in his bosom
Child and mother again. ”
Hear me, Andromache, listen!
This is for thee; but for Helen
All is voiceless and barren,
Silent the valley of shades;
Faded her joy with the blossoms,
Dead on the heart of the summer!
Kypris, goddess, ah! free me,
Slave and child of thy will.
Long through the ages I suffered,
Suffered the calling of lovers;
Down through the ages I followed,
Won by the bidding of Faust:
Strong, unsubdued, and immortal,
I, the young mother of Sparta,
Stand here and bring ye these blossoms,
Fresh as the children of spring.
Down to the ships went the captives,
Unwilling procession of sorrow,
Cassandra behind Agamemnon,
Andromache bound with the rest:
XXVIII-1050
## p. 16786 (#486) ##########################################
16786
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
I, Helen, walked with my husband;
Level my glance of pure azure,
Rosy my cheeks, lest the Spartans
Think less well of their king.
Helen, that years could not alter,
Nor bees that deflower the lilies,-
Helen, child of immortals,
Holding the reins of his steed:
Thus through the gateway of Sparta,
When the fires of Troy were extinguished,
Proud in his gladness and glory,
Proudly I brought them their king.
One sang,
< Base was their Helen! )
I, standing far above splendor,
Calm in the circle of godhead,
Moved not by striving of men,
Heard thus Stesichorus the singer, -
Mad raver, a poet, a mortal, -
While the gods and the heroes immortal
Struck the perjurer blind with their glance.
No longer he seeth where beauty
Abideth untouched of the earth-stained;
No more shall he mark in her coming
Persephone's noiseless feet;
No more, when Helen approacheth,
Shall he know the star of her forehead,
And Helen the false shall decoy him
With wiles and tales of her own.
Lovers, ah, lovers inconstant !
Ye have slain but the form and the semblance.
Know ye your Helen has vanished
And sleeps on a hero's breast.
Hers is the fire undying,
The light and the flame of the singer,
The mariner's lamp and his beacon,
His harbor of home and his rest.
ANNIE FIELDS.
## p. 16787 (#487) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16787
AFTER CONSTRUING
L
ORD CÆSAR, when you sternly wrote
The story of your grim campaigns,
And watched the ragged smoke-wreath float
Above the burning plains,
Amid the impenetrable wood,
Amid the camp's incessant hum,
At eve, beside the tumbling flood
In high Avaricum,
You little recked, imperious head,
When shrilled your shattering trumpet's noise,
Your frigid sections would be read
By bright-eyed English boys.
Ah, me! who penetrates to-day
The secret of your deep designs,
Your sovereign visions, as you lay
Amid the sleeping lines ?
The Mantuan singer pleading stands;
From century to century
He leans and reaches wistful hands,
And cannot bear to die.
But you are silent, secret, proud,
No smile upon your haggard face;
As when you eyed the murderous crowd
Beside the statue's base.
I marvel: that Titanic heart
Beats strongly through the arid page;
And we, self-conscious sons of art,
In this bewildering age,
Like dizzy revelers stumbling out
Upon the pure and peaceful night,
Are sobered into troubled doubt,
As swims across our sight
The ray of that sequestered sun,
Far in the illimitable blue,
The dream of all you left undone,
Of all you dared to do.
ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON.
## p. 16788 (#488) ##########################################
16788
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
THE MODERN ROMANS
U?
NDER the slanting light of the yellow sun of October, (track.
A "gang of Dagos” were working close by the side of the car-
Pausing a moment to catch a note of their liquid Italian,
Faintly I heard an echo of Rome's imperial accents,--
Broken-down forms of Latin words from the Senate and Forum,
Now smoothed over by use to the musical lingua Romana.
Then came the thought, Why! these are the heirs of the conquering
Romans;
These are the sons of the men who founded the empire of Cæsar.
These are they whose fathers carried the conquering eagles
Over all Gaul and across the sea to Ultima Thule.
(ures
The race-type persists unchanged in their eyes, and profiles, and fig-
Muscular, short, and thick-set, with prominent noses, recalling
“Romanos rerum dominos, gentemque togatam. ”
See: Labienus is swinging a pick with rhythmical motion;
Yonder one pushing the shovel might be Julius Cæsar, -
Lean, deep-eyed, broad-browed, and bald, a man of a thousand;
Further along stands the jolly Horatius Flaccus;
Grim and grave, with rings in his ears, see Cato the Censor;
And the next has precisely the bust of Cneius Pompeius.
Blurred and worn the surface, I grant, and the coin is but copper;
Look more closely, you'll catch a hint of the old superscription,
Perhaps the stem of a letter, perhaps a leaf of the laurel.
On the side of the street, in proud and gloomy seclusion,
“ Bossing the job,” stood a Celt, the race enslaved by the legions,
Sold in the market of Rome to meet the expenses of Cæsar.
And as I loitered, the Celt cried out, “Worruk, ye Dagos!
Full up your shovel, Paythro', ye haythen, - I'll dock yees a quarther! ”
This he said to the one who resembled the great imperator.
Meekly the dignified Roman kept on patiently digging.
Such are the changes and chances the centuries bring to the nations.
Surely the ups and downs of this world are past calculation.
How the races troop o'er the stage in endless procession!
Persian and Arab and Greek, and Hun and Roman and Saxon,
Master the world in turn, and then disappear in the darkness,
Leaving a remnant as hewers of wood and drawers of water.
« Possibly” (this I thought to myself) “the yoke of the Irish
May in turn be lifted from us in the tenth generation.
Now the Celt is on top; but time may bring his revenges,
Turning the Fenian down once more to be (bossed by a Dago. ) »
CHARLES FREDERICK JOHNSON.
## p. 16789 (#489) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16789
ADDRESS TO THE MUMMY IN BELZONI'S EXHIBITION
AND
ND thou hast walked about (how strange a story! )
In Thebes's streets three thousand years ago,
When the Memnonium was in all its glory,
And time had not begun to overthrow
Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous,
Of which the very ruins are tremendous ?
Speak! for thou long enough hast acted dummy;
Thou hast a tongue come, let us hear its tune.
Thou'rt standing on thy legs, above ground, mummy!
Revisiting the glimpses of the moon;
Not like thin ghosts or disembodied creatures,
But with thy bones, and flesh, and limbs, and features.
Tell us
for doubtless thou canst recollect
To whom should we assign the Sphinx's fame?
Was Cheops or Cephrenes architect
Of either pyramid that bears his name?
Is Pompey's Pillar really a misnomer?
Had Thebes a hundred gates, as sung by Homer ?
Perhaps thou wert a Mason, and forbidden
By oath to tell the secrets of thy trade;
Then say what secret melody was hidden
In Memnon's statue, which at sunrise played?
Perhaps thou wert a priest;- if so, my struggles
Are vain, for priestcraft never owns its juggles.
Perhaps that very hand, now pinioned flat,
Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass;
Or dropped a halfpenny in Homer's hat;
Or doffed thine own to let Queen Dido pass;
Or held, by Solomon's own invitation,
A torch at the great Temple's dedication.
I need not ask thee if that hand, when armed,
Has any Roman soldier mauled and knuckled;
For thou wert dead, and buried, and embalmed,
Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled :
Antiquity appears to have begun
Long after thy primeval race was run.
Thou couldst develop — if that withered tongue
Might tell us what those sightless orbs have seen -
## p. 16790 (#490) ##########################################
16790
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
How the world looked when it was fresh and young,
And the great Deluge still had left it green;
Or was it then so old that history's pages
Contained no record of its early ages ?
Still silent! Incommunicative elf!
Art sworn to secrecy? then keep thy vows;
But prythee tell us something of thyself -
Reveal the secrets of thy prison-house:
Since in the world of spirits thou hast slumbered,
What hast thou seen – what strange adventures numbered ?
Since first thy form was in this box extended,
We have above ground seen some strange mutations:
The Roman empire has begun and ended -
New worlds have risen we have lost old nations;
And countless kings have into dust been humbled,
While not a fragment of thy Aesh has crumbled.
Didst thou not hear the pother o'er thy head
When the great Persian conqueror, Cambyses,
Marched armies o'er thy tomb with thundering tread —
O'erthrew Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis;
And shook the pyramids with fear and wonder,
When the gigantic Memnon fell asunder?
If the tomb's secrets may not be confessed,
The nature of thy private life unfold:
A heart has throbbed beneath that leathern breast,
And tears adown that dusty cheek have rolled;
Have children climbed those knees and kissed that face?
What was thy name and station, age and race ?
Statue of flesh - immortal of the dead!
Imperishable type of evanescence!
Posthumous man — who quitt'st thy narrow bed,
And standest undecayed within our presence!
Thou wilt hear nothing till the Judgment morning,
When the great trump shall thrill thee with its warning.
Why should this worthless tegument endure,
If its undying guest be lost forever?
Oh! let us keep the soul embalmed and pure
In living virtue - that when both must sever,
Although corruption may our frame consume,
The immortal spirit in the skies may bloom!
CE SMITH,
## p. 16791 (#491) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16791
A KING IN EGYPT
THINK I lie by the lingering Nile;
I think I am one that has lain long while,
My lips sealed up in a solemn smile,
In the lazy land of the loitering Nile.
I
I think I lie in the Pyramid,
And the darkness weighs on the closed eyelid,
And the air is heavy where I am hid,
With the stone on stone of the Pyramid.
I think there are graven godhoods grim,
That look from the walls of my chamber dim,
And the hampered hand and the muffled limb
Lie fixed in the spell of their gazes grim.
I think I lie in a languor vast,
Numb, dumb soul in a body fast,
Waiting long as the world shall last,
Lying cast in a languor vast;
Lying muffled in fold on fold,
With the gum and the gold and the spice enrolled,
And the grain of a year that is old, old, old,
Wound around in the fine-spun fold.
The sunshine of Egypt is on my tomb;
I feel it warming the still, thick gloom,
Warming and waking an old perfume,
Through the carven honors upon my tomb.
The old sunshine of Egypt is on the stone;
And the sands lie red that the wind hath sown,
And the lean, lithe lizard at play alone
Slides like a shadow across the stone.
And I lie with the Pyramid over my head,
I am lying dead, lying long, long dead,
With my days all done, and my words all said,
And the deeds of my days written over my head.
HELEN THAYER HUTCHESON.
## p. 16792 (#492) ##########################################
16792
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
THE WORLD'S JUSTICE
1
F THE sudden tidings came
That on some far, foreign coast,
Buried ages long from fame,
Had been found a remnant lost
Of that hoary race who dwelt
By the golden Nile divine,
Spake the Pharaohs' tongue, and knelt
At the moon-crowi Isis's shrine, -
How at reverend Egypt's feet
Pilgrims from all lands would meet!
If the sudden news were known,
That anigh the desert place
Where once blossomed Babylon,
Scions of a mighty race
Still survived, of giant build, -
Huntsmen, warriors, priest and sage,
Whose ancestral fame had filled,
Trumpet-tongued, the earlier age,-
How at old Assyria's feet
Pilgrims from all lands would meet!
Yet when Egypt's self was young,
And Assyria's bloom unworn,
Ere the mythic Homer sung,
Ere the gods of Greece were born,
Lived the nation of one God,
Priests of freedom, sons of Shem,
Never quelled by yoke or rod,
Founders of Jerusalem;
Is there one abides to-day?
Seeker of dead cities, say!
Answer, now as then, they are :
Scattered broadcast o'er the lands,
Knit in spirit nigh and far,
With indissoluble bands.
Half the world adores their God,
They the living law proclaim,
And their guerdon is — the rod,
Stripes and scourgings, death and shame:
Still on Israel's head forlorn,
Every nation heaps its scorn.
EMMA LAZARUS.
## p. 16793 (#493) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16793
THE BURIAL OF MOSES
B'
Y NEBO's lonely mountain,
On this side Jordan's wave,
In a vale in the land of Moab,
There lies a lonely grave.
And no man knows that sepulchre,
And no man saw it e'er;
For the angels of God upturned the sod,
And laid the dead man there.
That was the grandest funeral
That ever passed on earth;
But no man heard the trampling,
Or saw the train go forth:
Noiselessly as the daylight
Comes back when the night is done,
And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek,
Grows into the great sun;-
Noiselessly as the springtime
Her crown of verdure weaves,
And all the trees on all the hills
Open their thousand leaves;-
So without sound of music
Or voice of them that wept,
Silently down from the mountain's crown
The great procession swept.
Perchance the bald old eagle
On gray Beth-Peor's height,
Out of his lonely eyrie
Looked on the wondrous sight;
Perchance the lion stalking
Still shuns that hallowed spot :
For beast and bird have seen and heard
That which man knoweth not.
But when the warrior dieth,
His comrades in the war,
With arms reversed and muffied drum,
Follow his funeral car;
They show the banners taken,
They tell his battles won,
And after him lead his masterless steed,
While peals the minute-gun.
## p. 16794 (#494) ##########################################
16794
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
Amid the noblest of the land
We lay the sage to rest,
And give the bard an honored place,
With costly marble drest;
In the great minster transept,
Where lights like glories fall,
And the organ rings and the sweet choir sings
Along the emblazoned wall.
This was the truest warrior
That ever buckled sword;
This the most gifted poet
That ever breathed a word;
And never earth's philosopher
Traced with his golden pen
On the deathless page, truths half so sage
As he wrote down for men.
And had he not high honor ? -
The hillside for a pall;
To lie in state while angels wait,
With stars for tapers tall,
And the dark rock-pines like tossing plumes
Over his bier to wave:
And God's own hand, in that lonely land,
To lay him in the grave;
In that strange grave, without a name,
Whence his uncoffined clay
Shall break again — oh, wondrous thought! -
Before the Judgment Day;
And stand with glory wrapped around
On the hills he never trod,
And speak of the strife that won our life
With th' Incarnate Son of God.
O lonely grave in Moab's land!
O dark Beth-Peor's hill!
Speak to these curious hearts of ours,
And teach them to be still.
God hath his mysteries of grace,
Ways that we cannot tell;
He hides them deep, like the hidden sleep
Of him he loved so well.
CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER.
## p. 16795 (#495) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16795
A DANISH BARROW
ON THE EAST DEVON Coast
L'
It still, old Dane, below thy heap!
A sturdy-back and sturdy-limb,
Whoe'er he was, I warrant him
Upon whose mound the single sheep
Browses and tinkles in the sun,
Within the narrow vale alone.
Lie still, old Dane! This restful scene
Suits well thy centuries of sleep:
The soft brown roots above thee creep,
The lotus flaunts his ruddy sheen,
And — vain memento of the spot-
The turquoise-eyed forget-me-not.
Lie still! Thy mother-land herself
Would know thee not again: no more
The raven from the northern shore
Hails the bold crew to push for pelf,
Through fire and blood and slaughtered kings,
’Neath the black terror of his wings.
And thou - thy very name is lost!
The peasant only knows that here
Bold Alfred scooped thy finty bier,
And prayed a foeman's prayer, and tost
His auburn head, and said, “One more
Of England's foes guards England's shore; ”
And turned and passed to other feats,
And left thee in thine iron robe,
To circle with the circling globe;
While Time's corrosive dewdrop eats
The giant warrior to a crust
Of earth in earth, and rust in rust.
So lie; and let the children play
And sit like flowers upon thy grave
And crown with Aowers, – that hardly have
A briefer blooming-tide than they,-
By hurrying years urged on to rest,
As thou within the Mother's breast.
FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE.
## p. 16796 (#496) ##########################################
16796
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
BONAVENTURA
THE OLD BURYING-PLACE OF SAVANNAH
THE
He broad white road flows by this place of tombs,
Set in the inlet's curving lines of blue.
Through the low arch, wide spreading tender glooms,
Stand the gray trees, light-veiled by those strange looms
That weave their palest thread of air and dew.
Gray moss, it seems the mist of tears once shed;
Dim ghost of prayers, whose longing once it spoke:
For still its fairy floating Aags, o'erhead,
By every wind of morning visited,
Sigh in a silence that were else unbroke.
Silence, how deep! The Southern day half done
Is pierced by sudden thrills of autumn chill;
From the tall pine-trees black against the sun
The great brown cones, slow-dropping, one by one,
Fall on dead leaves, and all again is still!
So still, you hear the rush of hurrying wings
Beyond the river, where tall grasses grow.
Far off, the blackbird eddying dips and sings,
Or on the heavy-headed rice-stalk swings,
Slow-swaying with the light weight, to and fro.
This is the temple of most deep repose —
Guardian of sleep, keeper of perfect rest!
Silently in the sun the fair stream flows;
Upon its unstirred breast a white sail goes
From the blue east into the bluer west.
Nature herself, with magic spell of power,
Stands in these aisles and says to all things “Peace! ”
Nothing she hears more harsh than growth of flower
Or climbing feet of mosses that each hour
Their delicate store of softest green increase,
Or Aying footsteps of the hurrying rain.
No need have we to pray the dead may sleep,
That in such depths of perfect calm can pain
No entrance find; nor shall they fear again
To turn and sigh, to wake again or weep.
ELLEN FRANCES TERRY JOHNSON.
## p. 16797 (#497) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16797
SLEEPY HOLLOW
N°
O Abbey's gloom, nor dark cathedral stoops,
No winding torches paint the midnight air;
Here the green pines delight, the aspen droops
Along the modest pathways, and those fair
Pale asters of the season spread their plumes
Around this field, fit garden for our tombs.
And shalt thou pause to hear some funeral bell
Slow stealing o'er thy heart in this calm place,-
Not with a throb of pain, a feverish knell,
But in its kind and supplicating grace,
It says, Go, pilgrim, on thy march, be more
Friend to the friendless than thou wast before;
Learn from the loved one's rest serenity;
To-morrow that soft bell for thee shall sound,
And thou repose beneath the whispering tree,
One tribute more to this submissive ground; –
Prison thy soul from malice, bar out pride,
Nor these pale flowers nor this still field deride.
Rather to those ascents of being turn,
Where a ne'er-setting sun illumes the year
Eternal, and the incessant watch-fires burn
Of unspent holiness and goodness clear;
Forget man's littleness, deserve the best,
God's mercy in thy thought and life confest.
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.
<HE BRINGETH THEM UNTO THEIR DESIRED HAVEN »
I
KNEW a much-loved mariner
Who lies a fathom underground;
Above him now the grasses stir,
Two rose-trees set a bound.
From a high hill his grave looks out
Through sighing larches to the sea;
Now for the ocean's raucous rout
All June the humblebee
## p. 16798 (#498) ##########################################
16798
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
Drones round him on the lonely steeps,
And shy wood-creatures come and go
Above the green mound where he keeps
His silent watch below.
An elemental man was he:
Loved God, his wife, his children dear,
And fared through dangers of the sea
Without a sense of fear.
And, loving nature, he was wise
In all the moods of wave and cloud:
Before the pageant of the skies
Nightly his spirit bowed:
Yet reckoned shrewdly with the gale,
And felt the viking's fierce delight
To face the north wind's icy hail,
Unmoved to thought of flight.
But wheresoe'er his prow was turned,
His thoughts, like homing pigeons, came
Back where his casement candle burned
Through many a league its flame.
Exiled from all he loved, at last
The summer gale has brought him home,
Where on the hillsides thickly massed
The elders break in foam.
The lonely highways that he knew
No longer hold him; nor the gale,
Sweeping the desolated blue,
Roars in his slanting sail.
For he has grown a part of all
The winter silence of the hills;
For him the stately twilights fall,
The hemlock softly shrills
In mimicry of gales that woke
His vigilance off many a shore
Whereon the vibrant billows broke.
Now he awakes no more.
He wakes no more! Ah me! his grief
Was ever that the sea had power
## p. 16799 (#499) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16799
To hold from him the budding leaf,
The opening of the flower.
And so he hungered for the spring -
The hissing, furrow-turning plow,
The first thin notes the bluebirds sing,
The reddening of the bough.
Wave-deafened, many a night he stood
Upon his watery deck, and dreamed
Of thrushes singing in the wood,
And murmurous brooks that streamed
Through silver shallows, and of bees
Lulling the summer afternoon
With mellow trumpetings of ease,
Of drowsiness the boon;
And dreamed of growing old at home,
The wise Ulysses of his crew
Of children's children, who would roam
With him the lands he knew,
And, wide-eyed, face with him the gale,
And hear the slanting billows roar
Their diapason round his rail
All safe beside his door.
Now he has come into his own,
Sunshine and bird-song round the spot,
And scents from spicy woodlands blown,-
Yet haply knows it not.
But round the grave where he doth keep,
Unsolaced by regret or woe,
His narrowed heritage in sleep,
The little children go.
They shyly go without a sound,
And read in reverent awe his name,
Until for them the very ground
Doth blossom with his fame.
L. FRANK TOOKER.
## p. 16800 (#500) ##########################################
16800
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
SLEEP ON, MY LOVE
S"
LEEP on, my love, in thy cold bed,
Never to be disquieted.
My last “good-night! ) Thou wilt not wake
Till I thy fate shall overtake:
Till age, or grief, or sickness, must
Marry my body to that dust
It so much loves; and fill the room
My heart keeps empty in the tomb.
Stay for me there: I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
And think not much of my delay:
I am already on the way,
And follow thee with all the speed
Desire can make or sorrow breed.
Each minute is a short degree,
And every hour a step towards thee;
At night, when I betake to rest,
Next morn I rise nearer my west
Of life, almost by eight hours' sail,
Than when sleep breathed his drowsy gale.
BISHOP CHICHESTER.
SMITH OF MAUDLIN
M
Y CHUMS will burn their Indian weeds
The very night I pass away,
And cloud-propelling, puff and puff
As white the thin smoke melts away;
Then Jones of Wadham, eyes half-closed,
Rubbing the ten hairs on his chin,
This very pipe I use
Was poor old Smith's of Maudlin. "
Will say,
That night in High Street there will walk
The ruffling gownsmen three abreast,
The stiff-necked proctors, wary-eyed,
The dons, the coaches, and the rest:
Sly « Cherub Sims” will then propose
Billiards, or some sweet ivory sin;
Tom cries, «He played a pretty game –
Did honest Smith of Maudlin. ”
((
»
## p. 16801 (#501) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16801
The boats are out ! - the arrowy rush,
The mad bull's jerk, the tiger's strength;
The Balliol men have wopped the Queen's-
Hurrah! — but only by a length.
Dig on, ye muffs, ye cripples, dig!
Pull blind, till crimson sweats the skin!
The man who bobs and steers cries, “Oh,
For plucky Smith of Maudlin. ”
»
Wine parties met-a noisy night;
Red sparks are breaking through the cloud;
The man who won the silver cup
Is in the chair erect and proud.
Three are asleep - one to himself
Sings, «Yellow jacket's sure to win. ”
A silence: . « Men, the memory
Of poor old Smith of Maudlin ! »
:-
The boxing rooms: With solemn air
A freshman dons the swollen glove;
With slicing strokes the lapping sticks
Work out a rubber — three and love;
With rasping jar the padded man
Whips Thompson's foil so square and thin,
And cries, “Why zur, you've not the wrist
Of Muster Smith of Maudlin. ”
(
»
But all this time beneath the sheet
I shall lie still, and free from pain,
Hearing the bed-makers sluff in
To gossip round the blinded pane;
Try on my rings, sniff up my scent,
Feel in my pockets for my tin:
While one hag says,
« We all must die,
Just like this Smith of Maudlin. ”
Ah! then a dreadful hush will come,
And all I hear will be the fly
Buzzing impatient round the wall,
And on the sheet where I must lie;
Next day a jostling of feet -
The men who bring the coffin in:
« This is the door — the third pair back-
Here's Mr. Smith of Maudlin. ”
GEORGE WALTER THORNBURY.
XXVIII-1051
## p. 16802 (#502) ##########################################
16802
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
A GREETING
O
DEAR and friendly Death!
End of my road, however long it be,
Waiting with hospitable hand stretched out,
And full of gifts for me!
Why do we call thee foe,
Clouding with darksome mists thy face divine ?
Life, she was sweet, but poor her largess seems
When matched with thine.
Thy amaranthine blooms
Are not less lovely than her rose of joy;
And the rare, subtle perfumes which they breathe
Never the senses cloy.
Thou holdest in thy store
Full satisfaction of all doubt, reply
To question, and the golden clue to dreams
Which idly passed us by;
Darkness to tired eyes
Perplexed with vision, blinded with long day,
Quiet to busy hands glad to fold up
And lay their work away;
A balm for anguish past,
Rest to the long unrest which smiles did hide,
The recognitions thirsted for in vain
And still by life denied;
A nearness all unknown
While in these stifling, prisoning bodies pent,
Unto thy soul and mine, Beloved, made one
At last, in full content.
Thou bringest me mine own:
The garnered flowers which felt thy sickle keen,
And the full vision of that face divine
Which I have loved unseen.
O dear and friendly Death!
End of my road, however long it be,
Nearing me day by day,– I still can smile
Whene'er I think of thee.
SARAH CHAUNCEY WOOLSEY (“Susan Coolidge").
## p. 16803 (#503) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16803
LAUGHTER AND DEATH
THER
WHERE is no laughter in the natural world
Of beast or fish or bird, though no sad doubt
Of their futurity to them unfurled
Has dared to check the mirth-compelling shout.
The lion roars his solemn thunder out
To the sleeping woods. The eagle screams her cry.
Even the lark must strain a serious throat
To hurl his blest defiance at the sky.
Fear, anger, jealousy, have found a voice.
Love's pain or rapture the brute bosoms swell.
Nature has symbols for her nobler joys,
Her nobler sorrows. Who had dared foretell
That only man by some sad mockery
Should learn to laugh who learns that he must die ?
WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT.
THE FOUNTAIN OF TEARS
I
F you go over desert and mountain,
Far into the country of sorrow,
To-day and to-night and to-morrow,
And maybe for months and for years,
You shall come, with a heart that is bursting
For trouble and toiling and thirsting –
You shall certainly come to the fountain
At length — to the Fountain of Tears.
Very peaceful the place is, and solely
For piteous lainenting and sighing,
And those who come living or dying
Alike from their hopes and their fears;
Full of cypress-like shadows the place is,
And statues that cover their faces :
But out of the gloom springs the holy
And beautiful Fountain of Tears.
And it flows and it flows with a motion
So gentle and lovely and listless,
And murmurs a tune so resistless
To him who hath suffered and hears -
You shall surely, without a word spoken,
Kneel down there and know your heart broken,
## p. 16804 (#504) ##########################################
16804
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
And yield to the long-curbed emotion
That day by the Fountain of Tears.
For it grows, and it grows, as though leaping
Up higher the more one is thinking;
And ever its tunes go on sinking
More poignantly into the ears:
Yea, so blessed and good seems that fountain,
Reached after dry desert and mountain,
You shall fall down at length in your weeping
And bathe your sad face in the tears.
Then, alas! while you lie there a season,
And sob between living and dying,
And give up the land you were trying
To find 'mid your hopes and your fears, –
Oh, the world shall come up and pass o'er you,
Strong men shall not stay to care for you,
Nor wonder indeed for what reason
Your way should seem harder than theirs.
But perhaps, while you lie, never lifting
Your cheek from the wet leaves it presses,
Nor caring to raise your wet tresses
And look how the cold world appears, –
Oh, perhaps the mere silences round you —
All things in that place grief hath found you —
Yea, e'en to the clouds o'er you drifting,
May soothe you somewhat through your tears.
You may feel, when a falling leaf brushes
Your face, as though some one had kissed you,
Or think at least some one who missed you
Hath sent you a thought, — if that cheers;
Or a bird's little song, faint and broken,
May pass for a tender word spoken:
Enough, while around you there rushes
That life-drowning torrent of tears.
And the tears shall flow faster and faster.
Brim over, and baffle resistance,
And roll down bleared roads to each distance
Of past desolation and years,
Till they cover the place of each sorrow,
And leave you no past and no morrow:
For what man is able to master
And stem the great Fountain of Tears ?
## p. 16805 (#505) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16805
But the floods of the tears meet and gather;
The sound of them all grows like thunder:
Oh, into what bosom, I wonder,
Is poured the whole sorrow of years?
For Eternity only seems keeping
Account of the great human weeping:
May God, then, the Maker and Father -
May He find a place for the tears !
ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY.
SONG OF THE SILENT LAND
INT
NTO the Silent Land!
Ah! who shall lead us thither ?
Clouds in the evening sky more darkly gather,
And shattered wrecks lie thicker on the strand.
Who leads us with a gentle hand
Thither, oh thither,
Into the Silent Land ?
Into the Silent Land!
To you, ye boundless regions
Of all perfection! Tender morning visions
Of beauteous souls! The Future's pledge and band!
Who in life's battle firm doth stand
Shall bear hope's tender blossoms
Into the Silent Land!
O Land! O Land!
For all the broken-hearted
The mildest herald by our fate allotted
Beckons, and with inverted torch doth stand
To lead us with a gentle hand
Into the land of the great departed,
Into the Silent Land!
JOHANN GAUDENZ VON Salis.
Longfellow's Translation.
## p. 16806 (#506) ##########################################
16806
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
MARCH
-
,
ARCH- - march - march!
Making sound as they tread,
Ho ho! how they step,
Going down to the dead!
Every stride, every tramp,
Every footfall is nearer,
And dimmer each lamp,
As darkness grows dimmer:
But ho! how they march,
Making sounds as they tread;
Ho ho! how they step,
Going down to the dead!
March — march - march!
Making sounds as they tread,
Ho ho! how they laugh,
Going down to the dead!
How they whirl — how they trip,
How they smile, how they dally,
How blithesome they skip,
Going down to the valley!
Ho ho! how they march,
Making sounds as they tiead;
Ho ho! how they skip,
Going down to the dead!
March - march - march !
Earth groans as they tread;
Each carries a skull,
Going down to the dead!
Every stride, every stamp,
Every footfall is bolder!
'Tis a skeleton's tramp,
With a skull on his shoulder!
But ho! how he steps,
With a high-tossing head,
That' clay-covered bone,
Going down to the dead!
ARTHUR CLEVELAND Coxe.
## p. 16807 (#507) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16807
EVERY YEAR
L**
IFE is a count of losses,
Every year:
For the weak are heavier crosses
Every year;
Lost Springs with sobs replying
Unto weary Autumn's sighing,
While those we love are dying,
Every year.
The days have less of gladness
Every year;
The nights more weight of sadness
Every year:
Fair Springs no longer charm us,
The winds and weather harm us,
The threats of death alarm us,
Every year.
There come new cares and sorrows
Every year;
Dark days and darker morrows,
Every year;
The ghosts of dead loves haunt us,
The ghosts of changed friends taunt us,
And disappointments daunt us,
Every year.
