Oh the
troubadours
of old!
Warner - World's Best Literature - v28 - Songs, Hymns, Lyrics
Beside a northern pine a boy
Is leaning fancy-bound,
Nor listens where with noisy joy
Awaits the impatient hound.
Cool grows the sick and feverish calm,
Relaxed the frosty twine,-
The pine-tree dreameth of the palm,
The palm-tree of the pine.
As soon shall nature interlace
Those dimly-visioned boughs,
As these young lovers face to face
Renew their early vows.
HEINRICH HEINE.
Translation of Richard Monckton Milnes.
## p. 17007 (#707) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
17007
THE BROOKSIDE
I
WANDERED by the brookside,
I wandered by the mill, -
I could not hear the brook flow,
The noisy wheel was still;
There was no burr of grasshopper,
No chirp of any bird,
But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.
I sat beneath the elm-tree,
I watched the long, long shade,
And as it grew still longer,
I did not feel afraid;
For I listened for a footfall,
I listened for a word -
But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.
He came not, - no, he came not, -
The night came on alone;
The little stars sat one by one,
Each on his golden throne:
The evening air passed by my cheek,
The leaves above were stirred -
But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.
Fast silent tears were flowing,
When something stood behind, -
A hand was on my shoulder,
I knew its touch was kind;
It drew me nearer - nearer
We did not speak one word,
For the beating of our own hearts
Was all the sound we heard.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES (Lord Houghton).
## p. 17008 (#708) ##########################################
17008
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
HIS WAY
L
OVE came to the door of the palace,
And the door was opened wide;
There wasn't a thing to hinder,
And they needed him much inside:
But he rattled his quiver and said with a sigh, -
“Can I enter an open door ? Not I!
Not I! Not I! »
Love came to the castle window,
And he found a great broad stair;
There wasn't a thing to hinder,
And he might have mounted there:
But he fluttered his wings, and said with a sigh,-
«Can I plod up a staircase ? No, not I!
Not I! Not I! »
Love came to the shore of the ocean,
And saw far over the strand
An inaccessible fortress
On a seagirt island stand.
“Who cares for an ocean? ” he gayly cried,
And his rainbow wings were quickly plied:
«Not I! Not I! »
Love came to a lonely dungeon,
Where window and door were barred;
There was none who would give him entrance,
Though he knocked there long and hard.
Then, “Who cares for a bolt ? » said the saucy elf;
And straightway the warder was Love himself!
« Not I! Not I!
EVA L. OGDEN.
## p. 17009 (#709) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
17009
DOWN THE BAYOU
W*
E DRIFTED down the long lagoon,
My Love, my Summer Love, and I,
Far out of sight of all the town;
The old cathedral sinking down,
With spire and cross, from view, below
The borders of St. John's Bayou,
As toward the ancient Spanish Fort,
With steady prow and helm a-port,
We drifted down, my Love and I,
Beneath an azure April sky,
My Love and I, my Love and I,
Just at the hour of noon.
We drifted down, and drifted down,
My Love, my Summer Love, and I,
Beyond the Creole part of town,
Its red-tiled roofs, its stucco walls,
Its belfries with their sweet bell-calls;
The Bishop's Palace, which enshrines
Such memories of the Ursulines;
Past balconies where maidens dreamed
Behind the shelter of cool vines;
Past open doors where parrots screamed;
Past courts where mingled shade and glare
Fell through pomegranate boughs, to where
The turbaned negress, drowsy grown,
Sat nodding in her ample chair;
Beyond the joyance and the stress,
Beyond the greater and the less,
Beyond the tiresome noonday town,
The parish prison's cupolas,
The bridges with their creaking draws,
And many a convent's frown,-
We drifted on, my Love and I,
Beneath the semi-tropic sky,
While from the clock-towers in the town
Spake the meridian bells that said -
'Twas morn 'tis noon
Time flies - and soon
Night follows noon.
XXVIII-1064
## p. 17010 (#710) ##########################################
17010
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
Prepare! Beware!
Take care! Take care!
For soon
So soon -
Night follows noon, -
Dark night the noon,-
Noon! noon! noon! noon!
With scarce the lifting of an oar,
We lightly swept from shore to shore, —
The hither and the thither shore,-
With scarce the lifting of an oar;
While far beyond, in distance wrapped,
The city's lines lay faintly mapped:
Its antique courts, its levee's throngs,
Its rattling floats, its boatmen's songs,
Its lowly and its lofty roofs,
Its tramp of men, its beat of hoofs,
Its scenes of peace, its brief alarms,
Its narrow streets, its old Place d'Armes,
Whose tragic soil of long ago
Now sees the modern roses blow,-
All these in one vast cloud were wound,
Of blurred and fainting sight and sound,
As on we swept, my Love and I,
Beneath the April sky together,
In all the bloomy April weather, -
My Love, my Summer Love, and I,
In all the blue and amber weather.
We passed the marsh where pewits sung,
My Love, my Summer Love, and I;
We passed the reeds and brakes among,
Beneath the smilax vines we swung;
We grasped at lilies whitely drooping
Mid the rank growth of grass and sedge,
Or bending toward the water's edge,
As for their own reflection tooping
Then talked we of the legend old
Wherein Narcissus's fate is told;
And turned from that to grander story
Of heroed past or modern glory,
Till the quaint town of New Orleans,
Its Spanish and its French demesnes,
Like some vague mirage of the mind,
In Memory's cloudlands lay defined;
## p. 17011 (#711) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
17011
And back and backward seemed to creep
Commerce, with all her tangled tongues,
Till Silence smote her lusty lungs,
And Distance lulled Discord to sleep.
Slowly along the old shell road
Some aged negro, 'neath his load
Of gathered moss and latanier,
Went shuffling on his homeward way;
While purple, cool, beneath the blue
Of that hot noontide, bravely smiled,
With bright and iridescent hue,
Whole acres of the blue-flag flower,
The breathy Iris, sweet and wild,
That floral savage unsubdued,
The gipsy April's gipsy child.
Now from some point of weedy shore
An Indian woman darts before
The light bow of our idle boat,
In which, like figures in a dream,
My Love — my Summer Love — and I
Adown the sluggish bayou float;
While she, in whose still face we see
Traits of a chieftain ancestry,
Paddles her pirogue down the stream
Swiftly, and with the flexile grace
Of some dusk Dian in the chase.
As nears our boat the tangled shore,
Where the wild mango weaves its boughs,
And early willows stoop their hair
To meet the sullen bayou's kiss;
Where the luxuriant "creeper” throws
Its eager clasp round rough and fair
To climb toward the coming June;
Where the sly serpent's sudden hiss
Startles sometimes the drowsy noon,-
There the rude hut, banana-thatched,
Stands with its ever open door;
Its yellow gourd hung up beside
The crippled crone who, half asleep,
In garments most grotesquely patched,
Grim watch and ward pretends to keep
Where there is naught to be denied.
## p. 17012 (#712) ##########################################
17012
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
Still darkly winding on before,
For half a dozen miles or more,
Past leagues and leagues of lilied marsh,
The murky bayou swerved and slid,
Was lost, and found itself again,
And yet again was quickly hid
Among the grasses of the plain.
As gazed we o'er the sedgy swerves,
The wild and weedy water curves
Toward sheets of shining canvas spread
High o'er the lilies blue and red.
So low the shores on either hand,
The sloops seemed sailing on the land.
Now here, now there, among the sedge,
As drifted on my Love and I,
Were groups of idling negro girls,
Half hid behind the swaying hedge
Of wild rice nodding in the breeze,
Barefooted by the bayou's edge,
Just where the water swells and swirls,
They watched the passing of our boat.
Some stood like caryatides
With arms upraised to burdened heads;
Some, idly grouped among the weeds,
With arms about their naked knees,
Or full length on the grasses cast,
Grew into pictures as we passed.
Our aimless course they idly noted;
Then out across the lowlands floated
Rude snatches of plantation songs,
In that sweet cadence which belongs
To their full-lipped, full-lungèd race.
We heard the rustle of the grass
They parted wide to see us pass:
Our boat so neared their resting-place,
We heard their murmurs of surprise,
And glanced into their shining eyes;
Then caught the rich, mellifluous strain
That fell and rose, and fell again;
And listened, listened, till the last
Clear note was mingled with the past.
.
Aloft, on horizontal wing,
We saw the buzzard rock and swing;
## p. 17013 (#713) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
17013
That sturdy sailor of the air,
Whose agile pinions have a grace
That prouder plumes might proudly wear,
And claim it for a kinglier race.
From distant oak-groves, sweet and strong,
The voicy mocking-bird gave song, -
That plagiarist whose note is known
As every bird's, yet all his own.
As shuttles of the Persian looms
Catch all of Nature's subtlest blooms,
Alike her bounty and her dole,
To weave in one bewildering whole,
So has this subtile singer caught
All sweetest songs, and deftly wrought
Them into one entrancing score
From his rejoicing heart to pour.
The wind was blowing from the south
When we had reached the bayou's mouth,
My Love - my Summer Love — and I.
Laden it came with rare perfumes, —
With spice of bays, and orange blooms,
And mossy odors from the glooms
Of cypress swamps. Now and again,
Upon the fair Lake Pontchartrain,
White sails went nodding to the main;
And round about the painted hulls
Darted the sailing, swooping gulls,
Wailing and shrieking, as they flew
Unrestingly 'twixt blue and blue,
Like ghosts of drowned mariners
Rising from deep-sea sepulchres,
To warn, with weird and woeful lips,
Who go down to the sea in ships.
And now, whene'er an April sky
Bends o'er me like some vast blue bell;
When piping birds are in the reeds,
And earth is fed on last year's seeds;
When newly the live-oak's tent
With tender green and gray besprent;
When wailing gulls are on the lake,
And woods are fair for April's sake;
When grassy plains their secrets tell,
And lilies with white wonder look
## p. 17014 (#714) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
17014
At other lilies by the brook;
When thrills the wild rice in the wind,
And cries the heron shrill and harsh
Along the lush and lonely marsh;
When in the grove the mocker sings,
And earth seems full of new-made things,
And Nature to all youth is kind, -
Once more, as in a vision, seem
To rise before me lake and stream:
Once more a semi-tropic noon,
A boat upon a long lagoon;
Two figures there, as in a dream,
Come, strangely dear and strangely nigh,
To touch me, and to pass me by;
And as they pass, once more I seem
To see, beneath the April sky,
In all the blue and silver weather,
My Love — my Summer Love — and I
Drift down the long lagoon together!
MARY ASHLEY TOWNSEND.
WATCHING
SLE
.
LEEP, love, sleep!
The dusty day is done.
Lo! from afar the freshening breezes sweep
Wide over groves of balm;
Down from the towering palm,
In at the open casement cooling run:
And round thy lowly bed,
Thy bed of pain,
Bathing thy patient head,
Like grateful showers of rain,
They come;
While the white curtains, waving to and fro,
Fan the sick air;
And pityingly the shadows come and go,
With gentle human care,
Compassionate and dumb.
The dusty day is done,
The night begun.
While prayerful watch I keep,
Sleep, love, sleep!
## p. 17015 (#715) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
17015
Is there no magic in the touch
Of fingers thou dost love so much ?
Fain would they scatter poppies o'er thee now,
Or, with a soft caress,
The tremulous lip its own nepenthe press
Upon the weary lid and aching brow.
While prayerful watch I keep,
Sleep, love, sleep!
On the pagoda spire
The bells are swinging,
Their little golden circles in a flutter
With tales the wooing winds have dared to utter,
Till all are ringing
As if a choir
Of golden-nested birds in heaven were singing.
And with a loving sound
The music floats around,
And drops like balm into the drowsy ear,
Commingling with the hum
Of the Sepoy's distant drum,
And lazy beetle ever droning near.
Sounds these of deepest silence born,
Like night made visible by morn;
So silent, that I sometimes start
To hear the throbbing of my heart,
And watch, with shivering sense of pain,
To see thy pale lids lift again.
The lizard, with his mouse-like eyes,
Peeps from the mortise in surprise
At such strange quiet after day's harsh din;
Then ventures boldly out,
And looks about,
And with his hollow feet
Treads his small evening beat,
Darting upon his prey
In such a tricksy, winsome sort of way,
His delicate marauding seems no sin.
And still the curtains swing.
But noiselessly:
The bells a melancholy murmur ring,
As tears were in the sky;
## p. 17016 (#716) ##########################################
17016
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
More heavily the shadows fall,
Like the black foldings of a pall,
Where juts the rough beam from the wall;
The candles flare
With fresher gusts of air;
The beetle's drone
Turns to a dirge-like, solitary moan:
Night deepens, and I sit, in cheerless doubt, alone.
EMILY CHUBBUCK JUDSON (“Fanny Forrester”).
CLYTIA
the
T" Through the thickness of darkness light comes,
A gleam where no starlight can be,
A glance where no meteor roams:
When the feet of the morning are dark,
And the lamp of her eye is but dim,
And the flower of the field a dark spark,
The old glint of the wavelet a whim;
When a mist hides the earth from the sky,
When a sound of bells tolling is heard, —
A warning to ships that are nigh,
A silence of beast and of bird;
When the sad waves lament on the shore,
Or hurry and rush to the sand,
In wild waste, and tumult, and roar,
A purposeless, riotous band, -
Then over the night of my soul,
And over the tolling of death,
New fires of ecstasy roll
With the coming of Love, which is breath;
The green hollows whisper of birds,
The silences break into song,
And my spirit pours out into words
That to gladness and morning belong.
But alas for the glory of Dawn,
For his coming in fragrance and might,
Red roses and billowy lawn,
With the full patient moon in his sight,
If in vain do we wait for Love's feet,
And listen while the hours long delay,
## p. 17017 (#717) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
17017
And know that the lilies are sweet,
And the month is the month of May!
In vain would my spirit be glad,
If Love hath forgotten his way;
Or if slow he linger and sad,
In vain is the gladness of day.
ANNIE FIELDS.
TWO GUESTS
L
OVE was erewhile my guest, but did outstay
His welcome in my breast. Be it confessed
I wearied of his raptures, his unrest,
His smiles, his tears, his too capricious sway.
At last, with show of grief, Love went his way,
Leaving me free to bid a nobler guest.
Now is my dwelling garnished, swept, and dressed
With rarest bloom, for him who comes to-day.
Ah, what new worlds of joy we two shall trace!
What clear, calm realms of thought we shall explore!
Yet do I thrill beneath this first embrace
With the old bliss and pain I knew of yore.
Can this be he whose presence I forswore?
Can this be Love with a new voice and face?
SUSAN MARR SPALDING.
TAKE HEART!
M
ARSH rosemary in Union Square !
How did it ever happen there?
A seaside flower that children pull,
Sold by the bunch and basketful!
Marsh rosemary! that grows by acres
Within a stone's-throw of the breakers!
The life of our Atlantic coast,
I know not when I love it most:
When it has caught those very hues
The sunset was so loth to lose;
## p. 17018 (#718) ##########################################
17018
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
When lying like a purple haze
It neither undulates nor sways;
When by the scythe its ranks are thinned,
Or only furrowed by the wind.
O you whose wistful eyes are wet,
You who are rooted in regret,
Who rarely have within your reach
The ravishment of sky and beach,
Who think the joys of life forsake us
Never again to overtake us,-
Mark how these sprays of rosemary
Dipped in the crimson of the sky,
Steeped in the violet of the sea,
To Union Square have followed me!
LUCY C. BULL.
AN EAST-INDIAN SONG
O
WANDERER in the southern weather,
Our isle awaits us: on each lea
The pea-hens dance; in crimson feather
A parrot swaying on a tree
Rages at his own image in the enameled sea.
There dreamy Time lets fall his sickle
And Life the sandals of her fleetness,
And sleek young Joy is no more fickle,
And Love is kindly and deceitless,
And all is over save the murmur and the sweetness.
There we will moor our lonely ship,
And wander ever with woven hands,
Murmuring softly, lip to lip,
Along the grass, along the sands -
Murmuring how far away are all earth's feverish lands:
How we alone of mortals are
Hid in the earth's most hidden part,
While grows our love an Indian star,
A meteor of the burning heart,
One with the waves that softly round us laugh and dart;
## p. 17019 (#719) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
17019
One with the leaves; one with the dove
That moans and sighs a hundred days:
How when we die our shades will rove,
Dropping at eve in coral bays
A vapory footfall on the ocean's sleepy blaze.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS.
INDIAN MAID'S WAR SONG
ARK! the war song — the shouting – I hear the shrill sound;
They raise the red tomahawk out of the ground:
In the van of the battle my warrior must go;
Like the bloodthirsty panther he'll steal on his foe.
H
Yet with love his bold heart is still beating for me,
With a feeling like mine which death only can sever;
In kindness it flows as the sweet sugar-tree,
And akin to the aspen it trembles forever.
Nada-Wossi (Canada) Poem.
Translation in Dublin University Magazine.
BRANT TO THE INDIANS
Y"
E BRAVES of the Ancient League — the people's defenders!
Here, in the gates of the South, the white foe comes,
Daring his doom, yet marching with banners and splendors,
With empty roar of cannon and rattle of drums.
These are the hungry eaters of land — the greedy
Devourers of forest and lake and meadow and swamp;
Gorged with the soil they have robbed from the helpless and needy,
The tribes that trembled before their martial pomp.
These are the rich who covet the humble goods of the poor;
The wise, who with their cunning the simple ensnare;
The strong, who trample the weak as weeds on the moor;
The great, who grudge with the small the earth to share.
But you are the valiant braves of Ho-den-a-sau-nee;
The tribes of the East were weaklings, with hearts of the deer;
Unconquered in war you are, and ever shall be,
For your limbs are mighty — your hearts are void of fear.
## p. 17020 (#720) ##########################################
17020
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
Continue to listen! These white men are liars who say
That red men are faithless to treaty, and heed not their pledge,
That they love but to ravage and burn, to torture and slay,
And to ruin the towns with torch, and the hatchet's edge!
The Spirit above gave his red children these lands,
The deer on the hills, the beaver and fowls in the ponds;
The bow and the hatchet and knife he placed in your hands,
And bound your tribes together in mighty bonds.
Who are these farm-house curs that foolishly rant
At you, the untamable cubs of the mountain-cat ?
Who is this lawyer that seeks on the war-path for Brant,
And struts with a new-bought sword and general's hat ?
Why do these choppers of wood, these ox-driving toilers,
Lust for the ancient homes of Ho-den-a-sau-nee?
Why from their barnyards came these rustic despoilers ?
Shall the sweet wilderness like their vile farms e'er be?
Can the warrior become a farmer's hired clown ?
Shall he hoe like the squaw, or toss up grass on a fork ?
Will the panther churn milk in the pen of the treadmill hound ?
Or the bear wear an apron and do a scullion's work?
Continue to listen! Ye are not fashioned for slaves!
And that these blue-eyed robbers at once shall know:
Want they your lands? — they shall not even have graves,
Until their bodies are buried by winter's snow!
GUY HUMPHREY MCMASTER.
THE RACE OF THE “BOOMERS »
TH?
He bleak o' the dawn, and the plain is asmoke with the breath of
the frost,
And the murmur of bearded men is an ominous sound in the
ear;
The white tents liken the ground to a flower-meadow embossed
By the bloom of the daisy sweet, for a sign that the June is here.
They are faring from countless camps, afoot or ahorse may be;
The blood of many a folk may flow in their bounding veins,
But, stung by the age-old lust for land and for liberty,
They have ridden or run or rolled in the mile-engulfing trains.
## p. 17021 (#721) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
17021
More than the love of loot, mightier than woman's lure,
The passion that speeds them on, the hope that is in their breast:
They think to possess the soil, to have and to hold it sure,
To make it give forth of fruit in this garden wide of the West.
But see! It is sun-up now, and six hours hence is noon;
The crowd grows thick as the dust that muffles the roads this
way;
The blackleg stays from his cards, the song-man ceases his tune,
And the gray-haired parson deems it is idle to preach and pray.
And over the mete away the prairie is parched and dry,
A creature of mighty moods, an ocean of moveless waves;
Clean of a single soul, silent beneath the sky,
Waiting its peopled towns, with room for a host of graves.
The hours reel on, and tense as a bow-cord drawn full taut
Is the thought of the Boomers all: a sight that is touched with
awe;
A huddle of men and horse to the frenzy pitch upwrought,
A welter of human-kind in the viewless grip of Law.
High noon: with a fusillade of guns and a deep, hoarse roar,
With a panting of short, sharp breaths in the mad desire to win,
Over the mystic mark the seething thousands pour,
As the zenith sun glares down on the rush and the demon's din.
God! what a race, all life merged in the arrowy flight:
Trample the brother down, murder if need be so,
Ride like the wind and reach the Promised Land ere night, -
The Strip is open, is ours, to build on, to harrow and sow.
So, spent and bruised and scorched, down trails thick-strewn with
hopes
A-wreck did the Boomers race to the place they would attain;
Seizing it, scot and lot, ringing it round with ropes,
The homes they had straitly won through fire and blood and pain.
While ever up from the earth, or fallen far through the air,
Goes a shuddering ethnic moan, the saddest of all sad sounds;
The cry of an outraged race that is driven otherwhere,
The Indian's heart-wrung wail for his hapless Hunting Grounds.
RICHARD BURTON.
## p. 17022 (#722) ##########################################
17022
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
A WET SHEET AND A FLOWING SEA
A
WET sheet and a flowing sea,
And a wind that follows fast,
And fills the white and rustling sail,
And bends the gallant mast;
And bends the gallant mast, my boys,
While, like the eagle free,
Away the good ship flies and leaves
Old England on the lee.
“Oh for a soft and gentle wind! ”
I heard a fair one cry;
But give to me the snorting breeze
And white waves heaving high;
And white waves heaving high, my boys,
The good ship tight and free:
The world of waters is our home,
And merry men are we.
There's tempest in yon hornèd moon,
And lightning in yon cloud;
And hark the music, mariners, –
The wind is piping loud!
The wind is piping loud, my boys,
The lightning flashes free,
While the hollow oak our palace is,
Our heritage the sea.
ALLAN CUNNINGHAM,
HAIL, COLUMBIA!
H
All, Columbia, happy land!
Hail, ye heroes, heaven-born band,
Who fought and bled in freedom's cause,
Who fought and bled in freedom's cause,
And when the storm of war was gone,
Enjoyed the peace your valor won;
Let Independence be your boast,
Ever mindful what it cost,
Ever grateful for the prize,
Let its altar reach the skies.
## p. 17023 (#723) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
17023
Firm, united, let us be,
Rallying round our liberty,
As a band of brothers join'd
Peace and safety we shall find.
Immortal Patriots! rise once more!
Defend your rights, defend your shore;
Let no rude foe, with impious hand,
Let no rude foe, with impious hand,
Invade the shrine where sacred lies,
Of toil and blood the well-earned prize;
While off'ring peace, sincere and just,
In heav'n we place a manly trust,
That truth and justice may prevail,
And ev'ry scheme of bondage fail!
Firm, united, etc.
Sound, sound the trump of fame!
Let Washington's great name
Ring through the world with loud applause!
Ring through the world with loud applause!
Let every clime, to freedom dear,
Listen with a joyful ear;
With equal skill, with steady power,
He governs in the fearful hour
Of horrid war, or guides with ease
The happier time of honest peace.
Firm, united, etc.
Behold the chief, who now commands,
Once more to serve his country stands,
The rock on which the storm will beat!
The rock on which the storm will beat!
But armed in virtue, firm and true,
His hopes are fixed on Heaven and you;
When hope was sinking in dismay,
When gloom obscured Columbia's day
His steady mind, from changes free,
Resolved on death or Liberty.
Firm, united, etc.
JOSEPH HOPKINSON.
## p. 17024 (#724) ##########################################
17024
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
OH THE PLEASANT DAYS OF OLD!
O"
H THE pleasant days of old, which so often people praise!
True, they wanted all the luxuries that grace our modern
days;
Bare floors were strewed with rushes, the walls let in the cold:
Oh, how they must have shivered in those pleasant days of old!
Oh those ancient lords of old, how magnificent they were!
They threw down and imprisoned kings; - to thwart them who
might dare?
They ruled their serfs right sternly; they took from Jews their
gold:
Above both law and equity were those great lords of old!
Oh the gallant knights of old, for their valor so renowned !
With sword and lance and armor strong they scoured the country
round;
And whenever aught to tempt them they met by wood or wold,
By right of sword they seized the prize, – those gallant knights of
old!
Oh the gentle dames of old! who, quite free from fear or pain,
Could gaze on joust and tournament, and see their champions slain;
They lived on good beefsteaks and ale, which made them strong
and bold, -
Oh, more like men than women were those gentle dames of old!
Oh those mighty towers of old! with their turrets, moat, and keep,
Their battlements and bastions, their dungeons dark and deep:
Full many a baron held his court within the castle hold;
And many a captive languished there, in those strong towers of
old.
Oh the troubadours of old! with the gentle minstrelsie
Of hope and joy, or deep despair, whiche'er their lot might be;
For years they served their ladye-love ere they their passions
told:
Oh, wondrous patience must have had those troubadours of old!
Oh those blessed times of old, with their chivalry and state !
I love to read their chronicles, which such brave deeds relate;
I love to sing their ancient rhymes, to hear their legends told;-
But Heaven be thanked I live not in those blessed times of old!
FRANCES BROWN.
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SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
17025
BUSY, CURIOUS, THIRSTY FLY
B
USY, curious, thirsty fly,
Drink with me, and drink as I;
Freely welcome to my cup,
Coulds't thou sip and sip it up.
Make the most of life you may:
Life is short, and wears away.
Both alike are mine and thine,
Hastening quick to their decline;
Thine's a summer, mine no more,
Though repeated to threescore.
Threescore summers, when they're gone,
Will appear as short as one.
VINCENT BOURNE.
DRAKE'S DRUM
D' :)
RAKE he was a Devon'man, an' ruled the Devon seas;
(Capten, art tha sleepin' there below ? )
Rovin' tho' his death fell, he went wi' heart at ease,
And dreamin' arl the time o' Plymouth Hoe.
« Take my drum to England, hang et by the shore,
Strike et when your powder's runnin' low:
If the Dons sight Devon, I'll quit the port o' Heaven,
An' drum them up the Channel as we drummed them long
ago. ”
Drake he's in his hammock an' a thousand miles away,
(Capten, art tha sleepin' there below ? )
Slung atween the round shot in Nombre Dios Bay,
An' dreamin' arl the time o' Plymouth Hoe.
Yarnder lumes the island, yarnder lie the ships,
Wi’ sailor lads a-dancin' heel-an'-toe,
An' the shore-lights flashin', an' the night-tide dashin',-
He sees et arl so plainly as he saw et long ago.
Drake lies in his hammock till the great Armadas come,
(Capten, art tha sleepin' there below ? )
Slung atween the round shot, listenin' for the drum,
An' dreamin' arl the time o’ Plymouth Hoe.
Call him on the deep sea, call him up the Sound,
Call him when ye sail to meet the foe;
Where the old trade's plyin' an' the old flag flyin',
They shall find him ware an' wakin', as they found him
long ago.
HENRY NEWBOLT.
XXVIII-1065
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