At times, as in the wonder-
fully fine closing sentences of the prose selection herewith given, he
is a prose poet writing English of music, majesty, and imaginative
splendor.
fully fine closing sentences of the prose selection herewith given, he
is a prose poet writing English of music, majesty, and imaginative
splendor.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v12 - Gre to Hen
The following
are two episodes taken from the English version of Underdowne - "An
Ethiopian Historie written in Greeke by Heliodorus no lesse wittie
then pleasaunt Englished by Thomas Underdowne and newly cor-
rected and augmented with divers and sundry new additions by the
said authour whereunto is also annexed the argument of every booke
in the beginning of the same for the better understanding of the
storie. 1587. " The relation to the Greek original is often remote or
casual; the version is of great independent value, however, as a
monument of English prose.
THE LOVERS
From The First Booke
As
S SOONE as the day appeared and the Sunne began to shine
on the tops of the hilles, men whose custome was to live
by rapine and violence ranne to the top of a hill that
stretched towards the mouth of Nylus called Heracleot: where
standing awhile they viewed the sea underneath them, and when
they had looked a good season a far off into the same, and could
see nothing that might put them in hope of pray, they cast their
eyes somewhat neare the shoare: where a shippe, tyed with cables
to the maine land, lay at road, without sailers, and full fraughted,
which thing they who were a farre of might easily conjecture:
## p. 7224 (#626) ###########################################
HELIODORUS
7224
for the burden caused the shippe to drawe water within the
bourdes of the decke. But on the shore every place was ful of
men, some quite dead, some halfe dead, some whose bodies yet
panted, and plainly declared that there had ben a battell fought
of late.
But there could be seene no signes or tokens of any just
quarell, but there seemed to be an ill and unluckie banket, and
those that remained, obtained such ende. For the tables were
furnished with delicate dishes, some whereof laie in the handes
of those that were slaine, being in steede of weapons to some of
them in the battaile, so souddenly begunne. Others covered such
as crope under them to hide themselves, as they thought. Be-
sides, the cuppes were overthrowen, and fell out of the handes,
either of them that dranke, or those who had in steade of stones
used them. For that soudaine mischiefe wrought newe devises,
and taught them in steade of weapons to use their pottes. Of
those who lay there, one was wounded with an axe, an other was
hurte with the shelles of fishes, whereof on the shore there was
great plentie, an other was al to crushed with a lever, many
burnt with fire, and the rest by divers other meanes, but most of
all were slaine with arrowes. To be briefe, God shewed a won-
derful sight in so shorte time, bruing bloude with wine, joyning
battaile with banketting, mingling indifferently slaughters with
drinkings, and killing with quaffinges, providing such a sight for
the theeves of Egypt to gaze at.
For they, when they had given these thinges the lookinge-on
a good while from the hill, coulde not understande what that
sight meante: for asmuch as they saw some slaine there, but the
conquerors coulde they see no where; a manifest victorie but no
spoyls taken away; a shippe without mariners onely, but as con-
cerning other things untouched, as if shee had beene kept with a
garde of many men, and lay at road in a faulse harboure. But
for all that they knew not what that thing meant, yet they had
respect to their lucre and gaine.
When therefore they had determined that themselves were the
victors, they drewe neare unto the same: and not being farre
from the ship and those that were slaine, they saw a sight more
perplexed then the rest a great deale. A maid endued with
excellent beautie, which also might be supposed a goddesse, sate
uppon a rocke, who seemed not a little to bee grieved with that
present mischaunce, but for al that of excellent courage: she had
## p. 7225 (#627) ###########################################
HELIODORUS
7225
a garland of laurell on her head, a quiver on her backe, and in
her lefte hand a bowe, leaning upon her thigh with her other
hande, and looking downewarde, without moving of her head,
beholding a certaine young man a good way off, the which was
sore wounded, and seemed to lift up himselfe as if he had bin
wakened out of a deep sleepe, almost of death it selfe: yet was
he in this case of singular beautie, and for all that his cheekes
were besprinkled with bloude, his whitenes did appeare so much
the more. He was constrained for griefe to cloase his eyes,
yet caused he the maide to looke stedfastly upon him, and these
things must they needs see, because they saw her. But as soone
as he came to him selfe a little, he uttered these words very
faintly. And art thou safe in deede my sweet hart, quoth hee?
or else hast thou with thy death by any mischance augmented
this slaughter? Thou canst not, no, not by death, be separated
from me.
But of the fruition of thy sight and thy life, doeth all
mine estate depend. Yea in you (answered the maide) doeth my
whole fortune consist, whither I shall live or die; and for this
cause, you see (shewing a knife in her hande) this was hetherto
readie, but only for your recovering was restrayned. And as
soone as shee had saide thus, she leapt from the stone, and they
who were on the hill, as well for wonder as also for the feare
they had, as if they had beene stricken with lightning, ranne
everie man to hide them in the bushes there beside. For she
seemed to them a thing of greater price, and more heavenlie,
when she stoode upright, and her arrowes with the sudden mov-
ing of her bodie, gave a clashe on her shoulders, her apparrell
wrought with golde glistered against the Sunne, and her haire
under her garlande, blowen about with the winde, covered a
great part of her backe. The theeves were greatly afraide of
these thinges, the rather for that they understoode not what that
should meane which they sawe. Some of them said indeede it
was a Goddesse and Diana, other said it was Isis, which was
honoured there: but some of them said it was some Priest of the
Gods, that replenished with Divine furie had made the great
slaughter which there appeared; and thus everie man gave his
verdite, because they knewe not the trueth. But she hastilie
running to the young man embraced him, wept for sorrow,
kissed him, wiped away his bloud, and made pitiful mone, being
very carefull for his safetie.
## p. 7226 (#628) ###########################################
7226
HELIODORUS
THEAGENES AND THE BULL
From The Tenth Booke
Α
S SOONE as Hidaspes had in fewe woordes declared to the peo-
ple his victorie, and what he had done else luckily for the
common wealth, he commanded them who had to do with
the holy affaires to beginne their sacrifice. There were three
altars made: two which appertained to the Sunne and Moon were
set together; the third thus was Bacchus, was erected a good
way off; to him they sacrificed al manner of living things, because
that his power is wel knowen, as I suppose, and pleaseth all.
Uppon the other altars to the Sunne were offered young white
horses, and to the Moone a yoke of oxen, by reason that they
helpe them in their husbandrie. Not farre from thence, while
these thinges were in doing, there was a soudaine uncertain voice
heard (as is like would be among such a multitude) which cried:
Let the sacrifice which our countrie accustometh to do, be now
made for all our safeties, then let the first fruits that were got-
ten in the war be offered.
Hidaspes perceived that they called for humane sacrifices,
which are woont to be offered of those that are taken in straung
warres; and beckoned with hand, and told them that he would
by and by doo what they required; and therewith he commaunded
the prisoners appointed for the purpose to be brought foorth,
among whom came Theagenes, and Cariclia, not bound, but
garded about with men: all the other were heavie,- and good
reason why,― saving Theagenes; and Cariclia smiled, and went
with a cheerefull countenaunce.
At the altar of the
Moone stoode two bullockes; and at the altar of the Sunne foure
white horses, to be sacrificed: when the monstrous and strounge
beast came in sight, they were as sore troubled, and afraid as if
they had sene a sprite; and one of the bulles, which as might be
thought sawe the beast alone, and two horses, brake out of their
handes that helde them, and ranne about as fast as they could:
mary, they could not breake out of the compasse of the army,
because the souldiers with their shieldes had made as it were a
wall round; but they ranne here and there, and overthrewe all
that stoode in their way, were it vessel or anything els; so that
there was a great shout, as well of those to whome they came
for feare, as also for joy and pleasure that other had to see them
overrunne their mates, and tread them under their feete.
## p. 7227 (#629) ###########################################
HELIODORUS
7227
Then Theagenes, either moved with his own manly courage
or else sturred forwarde with strength sent him of God, when
he sawe his keepers that attended uppon him dispersed here and
there, with the tumulte start up soudainely (for before he kneeled.
at the altar, and looked every minute to be slaine) and tooke up
a cleft sticke, whereof there lay a great many upon the altar, and
leapt uppon one of the horses that was broken loose, and holding
him by the mane in steede of a bridle, and with his heeles and
the cleft sticke making him to go, folowed the Bull. At the first
every man thought that Theagenes would have bene gone, and
therefore incouraged one another that they would not let him goe
out of compasse of the souldiers. But by that hee did after, they
sawe he did it not for feare, not to avoid the sacrificing: for when
he had overtaken the Bull, in verie short time, he tooke him by
the taile, and drave him forward of purpose to weary him in
making him runne faster, which way so ever he went, hee fol-
lowed after him, and with great skill so tooke heede to his shorte
turnes that they hurt him not. After he had acquainted the Bull
with this, he rode at his side, so neare that their skinnes touched,
and their breathes and sweatte were mingled together, and he
made them keepe so equall a course too, that those who were a
farre off deemed that they had bene made but one, and com-
mended Theagenes to the heavens, that had so straungly yoked
a horse and a Bull together.
And upon this looked all the people; but when Cariclia saw it,
shee trembled and quaked, because she knew not what hee meant,
and was as sore afraide of his hurte, if he should by ill happe
have a fall, as if she should have bene slaine herselfe.
Theagenes, after he had let the horse runne as faste as he coulde,
so long till his breast was equall with the Bulles head, he let him
go at libertie, and fell upon the Bulles head betweene his hornes,
and cast his armes about his head like a garlande, and clasped
his fingers on his forhead before, and let the rest of his body
hang downe by the right shoulder of him. So that the Bull in
going hurt him a little. After Theagenes perceived that he was
weary with the great burthen, and his muscles were faint with
too much travell, and that hee came before the place where
Hydaspes sate, he turned himselfe before and set his feete before
the Bull, who beatte upon his hoofes stil, and so tripped him.
He being let of his course, and overcome with the strength of
the young man, fell downe upon his head and shoulders, so that
## p. 7228 (#630) ###########################################
7228
HELIODORUS
his hornes stucke so fast in the ground, that he could not move
his head, and his feete stoode upward, with which he sprawled in
vaine a great while, and by his feeblenes declared that he was
overcome. Theagenes lay uppon him, and with his left hand
held him downe, but lifted his right hand up to heaven, and
looked merrilie upon Hydaspes and all that were there els, who
laughed and were much delighted with that sight, and they heard
that the Bull with his lowing declared the famousnesse of the
victorie, as wel as if it had beene declared with a trumpet. On
the other side was a great shoute of the people, that said plainly
nothing that one could understand to his praise, but with their
wide throates and gaping mouthes (as in like assemblies doeth
oft happen) they seemed to extoll him to the heavens with one
consent.
## p. 7229 (#631) ###########################################
7229
FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS
(1793-1835)
F MRS. HEMANS, the critical Gilfillan said that she was "no
Sibyl, but the most feminine writer of the age," and that
"She sat before her lyre, not touching it with awful rever-
ence as though each string were a star, nor using it as the mere con-
ductor to her overflowing thoughts, but regarding it as the soother
and sustainer of her own high-wrought emotions - a graceful alias of
herself. "
-
It was because of this peace, sweetness, and high serenity, that for
two generations her poetry found so full a response in the minds of
all English-speaking women of taste and
refinement, who recognized in it the har-
monious expression of their own emotions
and sentiments. Thus she became a house-
hold poet not only in England but in the
United States, where she was so popular
that she was invited to conduct a magazine
in Boston, while most American visitors
to England made pilgrimages to see her.
Many of her poems, like 'Casabianca,' 'The
Graves of a Household,' 'Child amid the
Flowers at Play,' 'Bernardo del Carpio,'
FELICIA D. HEMANS
The Better Land,' and 'The Burial of Will-
iam the Conqueror,' long ago attained the
immortality of school-books, and are known
by heart among innumerable readers to whom the name of Mrs.
Hemans is a name only.
Felicia Dorothea Browne was born in Liverpool, September 25th,
1793, and brought up in Wales, whither her father shortly removed.
The little girl was early noted for her "extreme beauty and preco-
cious talents. ' She was particularly fond of Shakespeare, and read
his plays "in a secret haunt of her own-a seat among the branches
of an old apple-tree, where she reveled in the treasures of the cher-
ished volume. " At the age of fourteen she published her first poems.
At eighteen she was married to Captain Hemans, of the British army.
Six years afterwards, the marriage proving an unhappy one, they
separated, the husband going abroad and the wife devoting her life
to her five sons. Yet the busy mother and teacher found much time
for writing, won several prizes for her poems, and attained a wide
## p. 7230 (#632) ###########################################
7230
FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS
literary fame. Her drama 'The Vespers of Palermo' was represented,
unsuccessfully, at Covent Garden in 1823. Her own keen criticism of
her Storm-Painter'-"it seemed all done in pale water-colors » — is
equally true of this tragedy.
In 1825 she settled in Rhyllon, Wales, the country of her deepest
affection. There "An atmosphere of home gathered round the dwell-
ing," writes her sister; "roses were planted and honeysuckles trained,
and the rustling of the solitary poplar near her window was taken
into her heart like the voice of a friend. The dingle became a favor-
ite haunt, where she would pass many hours of dream-like enjoyment
with her books and her own sweet fancies, her children playing round
her. " Here she wrote 'Records of Women' (1828), which she said
contained most of her "heart and individual feelings"; though all her
work, of which she published eighteen separate volumes, is marked
by absolute sincerity, careful and melodious versification, and lofty
feeling. In 1829 Mrs. Hemans visited Walter Scott, a visit vividly
described in her letters. He admired her greatly, but not her verses,
for he told Joanna Baillie that she had "too many flowers and too
little fruit. " The severe Jeffrey, on the other hand, declared that
she was "beyond all comparison the most touching and accomplished
writer of occasional verses that our literature has yet to boast of";
while Alison pronounced her the equal of Coleridge, "if not in depth
of thought, at least in tenderness of feeling and beauty of expres-
sion. " He added that she "required only to have written a little less
to have been one of the greatest lyric poets that England ever pro-
duced. " Wordsworth was very fond of her, saying that "in quickness
of mind she had, within the range of his acquaintance, no equal. "
At Rydal Mount he thought her talk delightful, as they strolled
through his favorite vales or clambered along the mountain paths
above Grasmere Lake. In his 'Epitaphs' he wrote —
"Mourn rather for that holy spirit
Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep;
For her who, ere her summer faded,
Has sunk into a breathless sleep. "
Many of her shorter poems appeared in the ephemeral style of her
day, for "editors of little books in silken trimmings were always on
their knees before her. " Beautiful and winning to the end, she spent
her last years at the house of her brother in Dublin, where she
charmed a brilliant literary coterie. There at the early age of forty-
one she died.
A collective edition of Mrs. Hemans's 'Poems' in seven volumes
was published in 1839 by her sister, Mrs. Hughes, who also wrote a
'Memoir. ' Several American editions were issued from 1825 to 1850,
and a modern edition was published by W. M. Rossetti (London, 1873).
## p. 7231 (#633) ###########################################
FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS
7231
THE HOMES OF ENGLAND
HE 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
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 childhood's 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 hamlet fanes.
Through glowing orchards forth they peep,
Each from its nook of leaves;
And fearless there the lowly sleep,
As the birds 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!
## p. 7232 (#634) ###########################################
7232
FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS
THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS IN NEW ENGLAND
THE
HE 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.
Amidst 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
Amidst 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!
## p. 7233 (#635) ###########################################
FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS
L'
Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod;
They have left unstained what there they found,—
Freedom to worship God.
THE HOUR OF DEATH
EAVES have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath,
And stars to set; but all-
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!
Day is for mortal care,
Eve for glad meetings round the joyous hearth,
Night for the dreams of sleep, the voice of prayer--
But all for thee, thou mightiest of the earth!
The banquet hath its hour,
Its feverish hour of mirth, and song, and wine;
There comes a day for grief's o'erwhelming power,
A time for softer tears-but all are thine.
Youth and the opening rose
May look like things too glorious for decay,
And smile at thee-but thou art not of those
That wait the ripened bloom to seize their prey.
Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath,
And stars to set; but all—
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!
We know when moons shall wane,
When summer birds from far shall cross the sea,
When autumn's hues shall tinge the golden grain-
But who shall teach us when to look for thee?
Is it when spring's first gale
Comes forth to whisper where the violets lie?
Is it when roses in our paths grow pale?
They have one season - all are ours to die!
-
Thou art where billows foam,
Thou art where music melts upon the air;
Thou art around us in our peaceful home;
And the world calls us forth and thou art there.
XII-453
7233
-
## p. 7234 (#636) ###########################################
FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS
7234
Thou art where friend meets friend,
Beneath the shadow of the elm to rest;
Thou art where foe meets foe, and tempests rend
The skies, and swords beat down the princely crest.
Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath,
And stars to set; but all-
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!
THE LOST PLEIAD
Α
ND is there glory from the heavens departed?
O void unmarked! -thy sisters of the sky
Still hold their place on high,
Though from its rank thine orb so long hath started,-
Thou that no more art seen of mortal eye.
Hath the night lost a gem, the regal night?
She wears her crown of old magnificence,
Though thou art exiled thence;
No desert seems to part those urns of light,
Midst the far depth of purple gloom intense.
They rise in joy, the starry myriads burning:
The shepherd greets them on his mountains free;
And from the silvery sea
To them the sailor's wakeful eye is turning --
Unchanged they rise, they have not mourned for thee.
Couldst thou be shaken from thy radiant place,
E'en as a dewdrop from the myrtle spray,
Swept by the wind away?
Wert thou not peopled by some glorious race,
And was there power to smite them with decay?
Why, who shall talk of thrones, of sceptres riven?
Bowed be our hearts to think of what we are,
When from its height afar
A world sinks thus-and yon majestic heaven
Shines not the less for that one vanished star!
## p. 7235 (#637) ###########################################
FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS
THE TREASURES OF THE DEEP
'HAT hid'st thou in thy treasure-caves and cells,
WHA Thou hollow-sounding and mysterious main?
Pale glistening pearls and rainbow-colored shells,
Bright things which gleam unrecked-of and in vain!
Keep, keep thy riches, melancholy Sea!
We ask not such from thee.
Yet more - the depths have more! What wealth untold,
Far down and shining through their stillness, lies!
Thou hast the starry gems, the burning gold,
Won from ten thousand royal argosies!
Sweep o'er thy spoils, thou wild and wrathful main!
Earth claims not these again.
Yet more - the depths have more! Thy waves have rolled
Above the cities of a world gone by;
Sand hath filled up the palaces of old,
Seaweed o'ergrown the halls of revelry.
Dash o'er them, Ocean, in thy scornful play!
Man yields them to decay.
Yet more
the billows and the depths have more!
High hearts and brave are gathered to thy breast!
They hear not now the booming waters' roar,
The battle thunders will not break their rest.
Keep thy red gold and gems, thou stormy grave!
Give back the true and brave!
7235
Give back the lost and lovely! those for whom
The place was kept at board and hearth so long!
The prayer went up through midnight's breathless gloom,
And the vain yearning woke 'midst festal song.
Hold fast thy buried isles, thy towers o'erthrown -
But all is not thine own.
―
To thee the love of woman hath gone down;
Dark flow thy tides o'er manhood's noble head,
O'er youth's bright locks, and beauty's flowery crown;
Yet must thou hear a voice: Restore the dead!
Earth shall reclaim her precious things from thee-
Restore the dead, thou Sea!
## p. 7236 (#638) ###########################################
7236
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
(1849-)
OR an author of reputation so extended, Mr. Henley's work is
singularly limited in amount, consisting only of a few small
volumes of poetry and essays. These books, however, rep-
resent a wide range of study and thought. William Ernest Henley
was born in Gloucester, England, in 1849, and was educated in his
native city. In 1875 he began to write for the London magazines,
and edited for two years a short-lived journal called London, in which
many of his verses first appeared. In 1889 he became editor of the
Scots Observer (now the National Observer),
and afterwards of the New Review, pub-
lished in London, where he lives. This
monthly is representative of the younger
schools and late developments in literature.
WILLIAM E. HENLEY
His critical essays contributed to the
Saturday Review, the Athenæum, and other
journals, were published in 1890 as 'Views
and Reviews. ' In 1873 appeared 'In Hos-
pital: Rhymes and Rhythms,' and in 1888
a small 'Book of Verses,' followed by The
Song of the Sword,' published in 1892.
Two volumes, 'Lyra Heroica' and an an-
thology of English prose, were prepared by
him; and he also wrote with Robert Louis
Stevenson a volume of plays, published in 1893, of which 'Beau
Austin' was acted at the Haymarket Theatre with great success.
With Stevenson he published also 'Macaire' (1895), a melodramatic
farce, which is a new version of the famous old harlequinade.
The 'Hospital' verses are unconventional, bold to the verge of
daring, and belong perhaps rather to the field of pathology than of
poetry. Surgeon's lint and antiseptics cannot be made attractive
lyrical themes. Yet often there is vivid, if sombre, imagination in
this series. Fine is the skill with which Henley, turning from these
modern eccentricities, produces old French forms of verse, polished
with the most delicate precision, and fancifully embellished. In the
division called 'Life and Death' the poems are full of depth and
beauty, and now and again one comes on a perfect song. In 'The
## p. 7237 (#639) ###########################################
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
7237
Song of the Sword' his many-colored mind produces work of a vari-
ous character. The first part is an unrhymed rhythmical piece of
declamation, suggestive of the saga, in which the sword speaks out of
its bold heart; the second group, entitled 'London Voluntaries,' has
placed Henley's name among those poets who are pre-eminently asso-
ciated with London streets and scenes. This poem-group, describing
the city at various times of the year and day, has been compared to
Whistler's studies of the world's greatest capital. Here is the same
vivid drawing, the same impression of space and distance, and the
same emphasis of the personality of the city. Henley's word pictures
show how accurate is the comparison:
-
"See the batch of boats
Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam!
And those are barges that were goblin floats,
Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream!
And in the piles the waters frolic clear,
The ripples into loose rings wander and flee,
And we we can behold, that could but hear
The ancient River singing as he goes
New-mailed in morning to the ancient Sea. »
In the final division, called 'Rhymes and Rhythms,' are many
pieces of striking originality and lovely musical quality, our second
poetical selection affording an illustration. It is interesting to com-
pare Henley's treatment of London with that of Wordsworth's in his
great sonnet On Westminster Bridge,' in which he looks upon a city
that
"doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning. "
Mr. Henley's critical qualities have been compared by Marriott
Watson to "the flare of an electric light. " "There are queer patches
of blackness outside the path of the illumination," he says, "passages
of darkness along the angles; but within these confines the white
light cuts its way rudely, sharply, and with pitiless severity. Along
the sphere of the irradiation the white flare is merciless in its scru-
tiny; every fault and flaw is picked out as by magic, every virtue
is assigned its value. » This however gives but one side, the acid-
ulous, biting side, of Henley's genius.
At times, as in the wonder-
fully fine closing sentences of the prose selection herewith given, he
is a prose poet writing English of music, majesty, and imaginative
splendor.
## p. 7238 (#640) ###########################################
7238
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
BALLADE OF MIDSUMMER DAYS AND NIGHTS
ITH a ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams
The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise,
And the winds are one with the clouds and beams-
Midsummer days! midsummer days!
WITH
The dusk grows vast; in a purple haze,
While the west from a rapture of sunset rights,
Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise-
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
The wood's green heart is a nest of dreams,
The lush grass thickens and springs and sways,
The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams—
Midsummer days! midsummer days!
In the stilly fields, in the stilly ways,
All secret shadows and mystic lights,
Late lovers murmurous linger and gaze -
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
There's a music of bells from the trampling teams.
Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze,
The rich ripe rose as with incense steams
Midsummer days! midsummer days!
A soul from the honeysuckle strays,
And the nightingale as from prophet heights
Sings to the earth of her million Mays—
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
ENVOY
And it's oh! for my dear, and the charm that stays—
Midsummer days! midsummer days!
It's oh! for my love, and the dark that plights-
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
LONGFELLOW AND THE WATER-WORLD
From Views and Reviews ›
THE
ocean as confidant, a Laertes that can neither avoid his
Hamlets nor bid them hold their peace, is a modern inven-
tion. Byron and Shelley discovered it; Heine took it into his
confidence and told it the story of his loves; Wordsworth made
it a moral influence; Browning loved it in his way, but his way
## p. 7239 (#641) ###########################################
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
7239
was not often the poet's; to Matthew Arnold it was the voice
of destiny, and its message was a message of despair; Hugo
conferred with it as with a humble friend, and uttered such
lofty things over it as are rarely heard upon the lips of man.
And so with living lyrists, each after his kind. Lord Tenny-
son listens and looks until it strikes him out an undying note of
passion, or yearning, or regret:-
"Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me;"
Mr. Swinburne maddens with the wind and the sounds and the
scent of it, until there passes into his verse a something of its
vastness and its vehemency, the rapture of its inspiration, the
palpitating, many-twinkling miracle of its light; Mr. William Mor-
ris has been taken with the manner of its melancholy; while to
Whitman it has been "the great Camerado" indeed, for it gave
him that song of the brown bird bereft of its mate, in whose
absence the half of him had not been told to us.
་
But to Longfellow alone was it given to see that stately gal-
ley which Count Arnaldos saw; his only to hear the steersman
singing that wild and wondrous song which none that hears it
can resist, and none that has heard it may forget. Then did he
learn the old monster's secret - the word of his charm, the core
of his mystery, the human note in his music, the quality of his
influence upon the heart and the mind of man; and then did he
win himself a place apart among sea poets. With the most of
them it is a case of "Ego et rex meus": it is "I and the sea,
and my egoism is as valiant and as vocal as the other's. " But
Longfellow is the spokesman of a confraternity; what thrills
him to utterance is the spirit of that strange and beautiful free-
masonry established as long ago as when the first sailor steered
the first keel out into the unknown, irresistible water-world, and
so established the foundations of the eternal brotherhood of man
with ocean. To him the sea is a place of mariners and ships.
In his verse the rigging creaks, the white sail fills and crackles,
there are blown smells of pine and hemp and tar; you catch
the home wind on your cheeks; and old shipmen, their eyeballs
white in their bronzed faces, with silver rings and gaudy hand-
kerchiefs, come in and tell you moving stories of the immemorial,
incommunicable deep. He abides in a port; he goes down to the
docks, and loiters among the galiots and brigantines; he hears
the melancholy song of the chanty-men; he sees the chips flying
## p. 7240 (#642) ###########################################
7240
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
under the shipwright's adze; he smells the pitch that smokes and
bubbles in the caldron. And straightway he falls to singing his
variations on the ballad of Count Arnaldos; and the world listens,
for its heart beats in his song.
"OUT OF THE NIGHT THAT COVERS ME»
UT of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from Pole to Pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
O
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll:
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
"OH, TIME AND CHANGE »
From The Song of the Sword and Other Verses. Copyright 1892, by Charles
Scribner's Sons
OH,
H, TIME and Change, they range and range
From sunshine round to thunder!
They glance and go as the great winds blow,
And the best of our dreams drive under;
For Time and Change estrange, estrange –
And now they have looked and seen us,
Oh we that were dear, we are all too near
With the thick of the world between us.
Oh, Death and Time, they chime and chime
Like bells at sunset falling!
They end the song, they right the wrong,
They set the old echoes calling;
For Death and Time bring on the prime
Of God's own chosen weather,
And we lie in the peace of the Great Release
As once in the grass together.
## p. 7240 (#643) ###########################################
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## p. 7241 (#647) ###########################################
7241
PATRICK HENRY
(1736-1799)
ATRICK HENRY'S fame as an American statesman and orator
has the elements of permanency. A high-minded and broad-
minded patriot, he had rare powers of persuasion by speech,
-powers used for the welfare of his country. His forensic writing
loses something in the reading, which is true of all good oratory.
But certain of his flaming sentences still ring in the ears of Ameri-
cans, and have historical significance.
Henry was born at Studley, Virginia, May 29th, 1736. He was of
good Scotch and English blood, and was educated by his father; he
married at eighteen and went early into business. He became a
lawyer when twenty-four, and was successful from the first. When
pleading the cause of a clergyman in 1763 in the celebrated tobacco-
tax question, he showed himself to be a fine speaker; and from this
on, advanced rapidly in public life. Elected in 1765 to the Virginia
House, in a fiery speech he advocated resistance to the Stamp Act
and became the leader of his colony. He was a delegate to the
first Continental Congress, and in 1776, on the adoption of the Con-
stitution, his own State made him four times governor; he declined
re-election in 1786, to be again elected in 1796 and again to decline.
His policy throughout these public services was wise, broad, pro-
gressive. His spirit is reflected in the words of an early speech:
"I am not a Virginian, but an American. " Retiring from public life
in 1791 at the age of fifty-five, he practiced law, preferring to guard
his broken health and provide for his large family; although subse-
quently Washington offered him the post of Secretary of State and
that of Chief Justice, and President Adams named him minister to
France. In 1799, however, at Washington's appeal he allowed him-
self to be elected to the Legislature; but died, June 6th, before taking
his seat.
Henry's biography was written by William Wirt in 1817, in the
tone of uncritical panegyric which biographers so rarely escape, and
the rather tinsel brilliancy peculiar to Wirt. Good lives of Henry
have since been written by his grandson, William Wirt Henry, and
in the American Statesmen Series by Professor Moses Coit Tyler.
## p. 7242 (#648) ###########################################
7242
PATRICK HENRY
THE ALTERNATIVE
SPEECH IN THE VIRGINIA CONVENTION, 1775
From Wirt's Life of Henry'
Mr. President:
I
T is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are
apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the
song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this
the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle
for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who
having eyes see not, and having ears hear not, the things which
so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, what-
ever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the
whole truth; to know the worst and to provide for it.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that
is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the
future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know
what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for
the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen
have been pleased to solace themselves and the house? Is it
that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately
received? Trust it not, sir: it will prove a snare to your feet.
Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves
how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those
warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land.
Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconcilia-
tion? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled
that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not
deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and
subjugation—the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask
gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be
not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other
possible motive for it? Has Britain any enemy in this quarter
of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and
armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they
can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet
upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so
long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall
we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last
ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject?
## p. 7243 (#649) ###########################################
PATRICK HENRY
7243
Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which
it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to
entreaty and humble supplication? what terms shall we find
which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech
you, sir, deceive ourselves longer.
Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the
storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned, we have
remonstrated, we have supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves
before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the
tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions
have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional
violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded;
and we have been spurned with contempt from the foot of the
throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond
hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room
for hope.
If we wish to be free, if we mean to preserve inviolate
those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long con-
tending, if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in
which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged
ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our con-
test shall be obtained we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must
fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is
left us!
-
They tell us, sir, that we are weak-unable to cope with so
formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will
it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are
totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed
in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and
inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by
lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom
of hope until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?
Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means
which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three mill-
ions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such
a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force
which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not
fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over
the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight
our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it
is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no
election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late
## p. 7244 (#650) ###########################################
PATRICK HENRY
7244
to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission
and slavery! Our chains are forged; their clanking may be heard
on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable— and let it come!
I repeat it, sir, let it come!
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may
cry, Peace, peace; but there is no peace. The war is actually
begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to
our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already
in the field. Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentle-
men wish? what would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so
sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?
Forbid it, Almighty God! —I know not what course others may
take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
ON THE RETURN OF THE REFUGEES
SPEECH IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE
From Wirt's Life of Henry'
W*
E HAVE, sir, an extensive country without population: what
can be a more obvious policy than that this country ought
to be peopled? People, sir, form the strength and con-
stitute the wealth of a nation. I want to see our vast forests
filled up by some process a little more speedy than the ordinary
course of nature. I wish to see these States rapidly ascending to
that rank which their natural advantages authorize them to hold
among the nations of the earth. Cast your eyes, sir, over this
extensive country: observe the salubrity of your climate, the
variety and fertility of your soil; and see that soil intersected in
every quarter by bold navigable streams, flowing to the east and
to the west, as if the finger of Heaven were marking out the
course of your settlements, inviting you to enterprise and point-
ing the way to wealth. Sir, you are destined, at some time or
other, to become a great agricultural and commercial people; the
only question is, whether you choose to reach this point by slow
gradations and at some distant period,-lingering on through a
long and sickly minority, subjected meanwhile to the machina-
tions, insults, and oppressions of enemies foreign and domestic,
without sufficient strength to resist and chastise them, or whether
you choose rather to rush at once, as it were, to the full enjoy-
ment of those high destinies, and be able to cope single-handed
-
## p. 7245 (#651) ###########################################
PATRICK HENRY
7245
with the proudest oppressor of the Old World. If you prefer the
latter course, as I trust you do, encourage emigration; encourage
the husbandmen, the mechanics, the merchants of the Old World
to come and settle in this land of promise; make it the home of
the skillful, the industrious, the fortunate and happy, as well as
the asylum of the distressed; fill up the measure of your popu-
lation as speedily as you can, by the means which Heaven hath
placed in your power: and I venture to prophesy there are those
now living who will see this favored land amongst the most
powerful on earth-able, sir, to take care of herself, without
resorting to that policy which is always so dangerous, though
sometimes unavoidable, of calling in foreign aid. Yes, sir, they
will see her great in arts and in arms; her golden harvests
waving over fields of immeasurable extent; her commerce pene-
trating the most distant seas, and her cannon silencing the vain
boasts of those who now proudly affect to rule the waves.
But, sir, you must have men; you cannot get along without
them: those heavy forests of valuable timber under which your
lands are groaning must be cleared away; those vast riches which
cover the face of your soil, as well as those which lie hid in its
bosom, are to be developed and gathered only by the skill and
enterprise of men; your timber, sir, must be worked up into
ships, to transport the productions of the soil from which it has.
been cleared. Then you must have commercial men and com-
mercial capital, to take off your productions and find the best
markets for them abroad. Your great want, sir, is the want of
men; and these you must have, and will have speedily, if you
are wise.
Do you ask how you are to get them? Open your
doors, sir, and they will come in. The population of the Old
World is full to overflowing; that population is ground, too, by
the oppressions of the governments under which they live. Sir,
they are already standing on tiptoe upon their native shores, and
looking to your coasts with a wishful and longing eye. They see
here a land blessed with natural and political advantages which
are not equaled by those of any other country upon earth; a
land on which a gracious Providence hath emptied the horn of
abundance; a land over which Peace hath now stretched forth her
white wings, and where Content and Plenty lie down at every
door! Sir, they see something still more attractive than all this:
they see a land in which Liberty hath taken up her abode, that
Liberty whom they had considered as a fabled goddess, existing
## p. 7246 (#652) ###########################################
7246
PATRICK HENRY
only in the fancies of poets. They see her here a real divinity,
her altars rising on every hand throughout these happy States,
her glories chanted by three millions of tongues, and the whole
region smiling under her blessed influence. Sir, let but this
our celestial goddess Liberty stretch forth her fair hand toward
the people of the Old World, tell them to come, and bid them
welcome-and you will see them pouring in from the north, from
the south, from the east, and from the west; your wildernesses
will be cleared and settled, your deserts will smile, your ranks
will be filled, and you will soon be in a condition to defy the
powers of any adversary.
But gentlemen object to any accession from Great Britain, and
particularly to the return of the British refugees. Sir, I feel no
objection to the return of those deluded people. They have, to
be sure, mistaken their own interests most woefully, and most
woefully have they suffered the punishment due to their offenses.
But the relations which we bear to them and to their native
country are now changed; their King hath acknowledged our
independence, the quarrel is over, peace hath returned and found
us a free people. Let us have the magnanimity, sir, to lay
aside our antipathies and prejudices, and consider the subject in
a political light. Those are an enterprising, moneyed people;
they will be serviceable in taking off the surplus of our lands,
and supplying us with necessaries during the infant state of our
manufactures. Even if they be inimical to us in point of feel-
ing and principle, I can see no objection in a political view in
making them tributary to our advantage. And as I have no
prejudices to prevent my making this use of them, so, sir, I have
no fear of any mischief that they can do us. Afraid of them! —
what, sir, shall we, who have laid the proud British lion at our
feet, now be afraid of his whelps?
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## p.
are two episodes taken from the English version of Underdowne - "An
Ethiopian Historie written in Greeke by Heliodorus no lesse wittie
then pleasaunt Englished by Thomas Underdowne and newly cor-
rected and augmented with divers and sundry new additions by the
said authour whereunto is also annexed the argument of every booke
in the beginning of the same for the better understanding of the
storie. 1587. " The relation to the Greek original is often remote or
casual; the version is of great independent value, however, as a
monument of English prose.
THE LOVERS
From The First Booke
As
S SOONE as the day appeared and the Sunne began to shine
on the tops of the hilles, men whose custome was to live
by rapine and violence ranne to the top of a hill that
stretched towards the mouth of Nylus called Heracleot: where
standing awhile they viewed the sea underneath them, and when
they had looked a good season a far off into the same, and could
see nothing that might put them in hope of pray, they cast their
eyes somewhat neare the shoare: where a shippe, tyed with cables
to the maine land, lay at road, without sailers, and full fraughted,
which thing they who were a farre of might easily conjecture:
## p. 7224 (#626) ###########################################
HELIODORUS
7224
for the burden caused the shippe to drawe water within the
bourdes of the decke. But on the shore every place was ful of
men, some quite dead, some halfe dead, some whose bodies yet
panted, and plainly declared that there had ben a battell fought
of late.
But there could be seene no signes or tokens of any just
quarell, but there seemed to be an ill and unluckie banket, and
those that remained, obtained such ende. For the tables were
furnished with delicate dishes, some whereof laie in the handes
of those that were slaine, being in steede of weapons to some of
them in the battaile, so souddenly begunne. Others covered such
as crope under them to hide themselves, as they thought. Be-
sides, the cuppes were overthrowen, and fell out of the handes,
either of them that dranke, or those who had in steade of stones
used them. For that soudaine mischiefe wrought newe devises,
and taught them in steade of weapons to use their pottes. Of
those who lay there, one was wounded with an axe, an other was
hurte with the shelles of fishes, whereof on the shore there was
great plentie, an other was al to crushed with a lever, many
burnt with fire, and the rest by divers other meanes, but most of
all were slaine with arrowes. To be briefe, God shewed a won-
derful sight in so shorte time, bruing bloude with wine, joyning
battaile with banketting, mingling indifferently slaughters with
drinkings, and killing with quaffinges, providing such a sight for
the theeves of Egypt to gaze at.
For they, when they had given these thinges the lookinge-on
a good while from the hill, coulde not understande what that
sight meante: for asmuch as they saw some slaine there, but the
conquerors coulde they see no where; a manifest victorie but no
spoyls taken away; a shippe without mariners onely, but as con-
cerning other things untouched, as if shee had beene kept with a
garde of many men, and lay at road in a faulse harboure. But
for all that they knew not what that thing meant, yet they had
respect to their lucre and gaine.
When therefore they had determined that themselves were the
victors, they drewe neare unto the same: and not being farre
from the ship and those that were slaine, they saw a sight more
perplexed then the rest a great deale. A maid endued with
excellent beautie, which also might be supposed a goddesse, sate
uppon a rocke, who seemed not a little to bee grieved with that
present mischaunce, but for al that of excellent courage: she had
## p. 7225 (#627) ###########################################
HELIODORUS
7225
a garland of laurell on her head, a quiver on her backe, and in
her lefte hand a bowe, leaning upon her thigh with her other
hande, and looking downewarde, without moving of her head,
beholding a certaine young man a good way off, the which was
sore wounded, and seemed to lift up himselfe as if he had bin
wakened out of a deep sleepe, almost of death it selfe: yet was
he in this case of singular beautie, and for all that his cheekes
were besprinkled with bloude, his whitenes did appeare so much
the more. He was constrained for griefe to cloase his eyes,
yet caused he the maide to looke stedfastly upon him, and these
things must they needs see, because they saw her. But as soone
as he came to him selfe a little, he uttered these words very
faintly. And art thou safe in deede my sweet hart, quoth hee?
or else hast thou with thy death by any mischance augmented
this slaughter? Thou canst not, no, not by death, be separated
from me.
But of the fruition of thy sight and thy life, doeth all
mine estate depend. Yea in you (answered the maide) doeth my
whole fortune consist, whither I shall live or die; and for this
cause, you see (shewing a knife in her hande) this was hetherto
readie, but only for your recovering was restrayned. And as
soone as shee had saide thus, she leapt from the stone, and they
who were on the hill, as well for wonder as also for the feare
they had, as if they had beene stricken with lightning, ranne
everie man to hide them in the bushes there beside. For she
seemed to them a thing of greater price, and more heavenlie,
when she stoode upright, and her arrowes with the sudden mov-
ing of her bodie, gave a clashe on her shoulders, her apparrell
wrought with golde glistered against the Sunne, and her haire
under her garlande, blowen about with the winde, covered a
great part of her backe. The theeves were greatly afraide of
these thinges, the rather for that they understoode not what that
should meane which they sawe. Some of them said indeede it
was a Goddesse and Diana, other said it was Isis, which was
honoured there: but some of them said it was some Priest of the
Gods, that replenished with Divine furie had made the great
slaughter which there appeared; and thus everie man gave his
verdite, because they knewe not the trueth. But she hastilie
running to the young man embraced him, wept for sorrow,
kissed him, wiped away his bloud, and made pitiful mone, being
very carefull for his safetie.
## p. 7226 (#628) ###########################################
7226
HELIODORUS
THEAGENES AND THE BULL
From The Tenth Booke
Α
S SOONE as Hidaspes had in fewe woordes declared to the peo-
ple his victorie, and what he had done else luckily for the
common wealth, he commanded them who had to do with
the holy affaires to beginne their sacrifice. There were three
altars made: two which appertained to the Sunne and Moon were
set together; the third thus was Bacchus, was erected a good
way off; to him they sacrificed al manner of living things, because
that his power is wel knowen, as I suppose, and pleaseth all.
Uppon the other altars to the Sunne were offered young white
horses, and to the Moone a yoke of oxen, by reason that they
helpe them in their husbandrie. Not farre from thence, while
these thinges were in doing, there was a soudaine uncertain voice
heard (as is like would be among such a multitude) which cried:
Let the sacrifice which our countrie accustometh to do, be now
made for all our safeties, then let the first fruits that were got-
ten in the war be offered.
Hidaspes perceived that they called for humane sacrifices,
which are woont to be offered of those that are taken in straung
warres; and beckoned with hand, and told them that he would
by and by doo what they required; and therewith he commaunded
the prisoners appointed for the purpose to be brought foorth,
among whom came Theagenes, and Cariclia, not bound, but
garded about with men: all the other were heavie,- and good
reason why,― saving Theagenes; and Cariclia smiled, and went
with a cheerefull countenaunce.
At the altar of the
Moone stoode two bullockes; and at the altar of the Sunne foure
white horses, to be sacrificed: when the monstrous and strounge
beast came in sight, they were as sore troubled, and afraid as if
they had sene a sprite; and one of the bulles, which as might be
thought sawe the beast alone, and two horses, brake out of their
handes that helde them, and ranne about as fast as they could:
mary, they could not breake out of the compasse of the army,
because the souldiers with their shieldes had made as it were a
wall round; but they ranne here and there, and overthrewe all
that stoode in their way, were it vessel or anything els; so that
there was a great shout, as well of those to whome they came
for feare, as also for joy and pleasure that other had to see them
overrunne their mates, and tread them under their feete.
## p. 7227 (#629) ###########################################
HELIODORUS
7227
Then Theagenes, either moved with his own manly courage
or else sturred forwarde with strength sent him of God, when
he sawe his keepers that attended uppon him dispersed here and
there, with the tumulte start up soudainely (for before he kneeled.
at the altar, and looked every minute to be slaine) and tooke up
a cleft sticke, whereof there lay a great many upon the altar, and
leapt uppon one of the horses that was broken loose, and holding
him by the mane in steede of a bridle, and with his heeles and
the cleft sticke making him to go, folowed the Bull. At the first
every man thought that Theagenes would have bene gone, and
therefore incouraged one another that they would not let him goe
out of compasse of the souldiers. But by that hee did after, they
sawe he did it not for feare, not to avoid the sacrificing: for when
he had overtaken the Bull, in verie short time, he tooke him by
the taile, and drave him forward of purpose to weary him in
making him runne faster, which way so ever he went, hee fol-
lowed after him, and with great skill so tooke heede to his shorte
turnes that they hurt him not. After he had acquainted the Bull
with this, he rode at his side, so neare that their skinnes touched,
and their breathes and sweatte were mingled together, and he
made them keepe so equall a course too, that those who were a
farre off deemed that they had bene made but one, and com-
mended Theagenes to the heavens, that had so straungly yoked
a horse and a Bull together.
And upon this looked all the people; but when Cariclia saw it,
shee trembled and quaked, because she knew not what hee meant,
and was as sore afraide of his hurte, if he should by ill happe
have a fall, as if she should have bene slaine herselfe.
Theagenes, after he had let the horse runne as faste as he coulde,
so long till his breast was equall with the Bulles head, he let him
go at libertie, and fell upon the Bulles head betweene his hornes,
and cast his armes about his head like a garlande, and clasped
his fingers on his forhead before, and let the rest of his body
hang downe by the right shoulder of him. So that the Bull in
going hurt him a little. After Theagenes perceived that he was
weary with the great burthen, and his muscles were faint with
too much travell, and that hee came before the place where
Hydaspes sate, he turned himselfe before and set his feete before
the Bull, who beatte upon his hoofes stil, and so tripped him.
He being let of his course, and overcome with the strength of
the young man, fell downe upon his head and shoulders, so that
## p. 7228 (#630) ###########################################
7228
HELIODORUS
his hornes stucke so fast in the ground, that he could not move
his head, and his feete stoode upward, with which he sprawled in
vaine a great while, and by his feeblenes declared that he was
overcome. Theagenes lay uppon him, and with his left hand
held him downe, but lifted his right hand up to heaven, and
looked merrilie upon Hydaspes and all that were there els, who
laughed and were much delighted with that sight, and they heard
that the Bull with his lowing declared the famousnesse of the
victorie, as wel as if it had beene declared with a trumpet. On
the other side was a great shoute of the people, that said plainly
nothing that one could understand to his praise, but with their
wide throates and gaping mouthes (as in like assemblies doeth
oft happen) they seemed to extoll him to the heavens with one
consent.
## p. 7229 (#631) ###########################################
7229
FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS
(1793-1835)
F MRS. HEMANS, the critical Gilfillan said that she was "no
Sibyl, but the most feminine writer of the age," and that
"She sat before her lyre, not touching it with awful rever-
ence as though each string were a star, nor using it as the mere con-
ductor to her overflowing thoughts, but regarding it as the soother
and sustainer of her own high-wrought emotions - a graceful alias of
herself. "
-
It was because of this peace, sweetness, and high serenity, that for
two generations her poetry found so full a response in the minds of
all English-speaking women of taste and
refinement, who recognized in it the har-
monious expression of their own emotions
and sentiments. Thus she became a house-
hold poet not only in England but in the
United States, where she was so popular
that she was invited to conduct a magazine
in Boston, while most American visitors
to England made pilgrimages to see her.
Many of her poems, like 'Casabianca,' 'The
Graves of a Household,' 'Child amid the
Flowers at Play,' 'Bernardo del Carpio,'
FELICIA D. HEMANS
The Better Land,' and 'The Burial of Will-
iam the Conqueror,' long ago attained the
immortality of school-books, and are known
by heart among innumerable readers to whom the name of Mrs.
Hemans is a name only.
Felicia Dorothea Browne was born in Liverpool, September 25th,
1793, and brought up in Wales, whither her father shortly removed.
The little girl was early noted for her "extreme beauty and preco-
cious talents. ' She was particularly fond of Shakespeare, and read
his plays "in a secret haunt of her own-a seat among the branches
of an old apple-tree, where she reveled in the treasures of the cher-
ished volume. " At the age of fourteen she published her first poems.
At eighteen she was married to Captain Hemans, of the British army.
Six years afterwards, the marriage proving an unhappy one, they
separated, the husband going abroad and the wife devoting her life
to her five sons. Yet the busy mother and teacher found much time
for writing, won several prizes for her poems, and attained a wide
## p. 7230 (#632) ###########################################
7230
FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS
literary fame. Her drama 'The Vespers of Palermo' was represented,
unsuccessfully, at Covent Garden in 1823. Her own keen criticism of
her Storm-Painter'-"it seemed all done in pale water-colors » — is
equally true of this tragedy.
In 1825 she settled in Rhyllon, Wales, the country of her deepest
affection. There "An atmosphere of home gathered round the dwell-
ing," writes her sister; "roses were planted and honeysuckles trained,
and the rustling of the solitary poplar near her window was taken
into her heart like the voice of a friend. The dingle became a favor-
ite haunt, where she would pass many hours of dream-like enjoyment
with her books and her own sweet fancies, her children playing round
her. " Here she wrote 'Records of Women' (1828), which she said
contained most of her "heart and individual feelings"; though all her
work, of which she published eighteen separate volumes, is marked
by absolute sincerity, careful and melodious versification, and lofty
feeling. In 1829 Mrs. Hemans visited Walter Scott, a visit vividly
described in her letters. He admired her greatly, but not her verses,
for he told Joanna Baillie that she had "too many flowers and too
little fruit. " The severe Jeffrey, on the other hand, declared that
she was "beyond all comparison the most touching and accomplished
writer of occasional verses that our literature has yet to boast of";
while Alison pronounced her the equal of Coleridge, "if not in depth
of thought, at least in tenderness of feeling and beauty of expres-
sion. " He added that she "required only to have written a little less
to have been one of the greatest lyric poets that England ever pro-
duced. " Wordsworth was very fond of her, saying that "in quickness
of mind she had, within the range of his acquaintance, no equal. "
At Rydal Mount he thought her talk delightful, as they strolled
through his favorite vales or clambered along the mountain paths
above Grasmere Lake. In his 'Epitaphs' he wrote —
"Mourn rather for that holy spirit
Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep;
For her who, ere her summer faded,
Has sunk into a breathless sleep. "
Many of her shorter poems appeared in the ephemeral style of her
day, for "editors of little books in silken trimmings were always on
their knees before her. " Beautiful and winning to the end, she spent
her last years at the house of her brother in Dublin, where she
charmed a brilliant literary coterie. There at the early age of forty-
one she died.
A collective edition of Mrs. Hemans's 'Poems' in seven volumes
was published in 1839 by her sister, Mrs. Hughes, who also wrote a
'Memoir. ' Several American editions were issued from 1825 to 1850,
and a modern edition was published by W. M. Rossetti (London, 1873).
## p. 7231 (#633) ###########################################
FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS
7231
THE HOMES OF ENGLAND
HE 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
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 childhood's 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 hamlet fanes.
Through glowing orchards forth they peep,
Each from its nook of leaves;
And fearless there the lowly sleep,
As the birds 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!
## p. 7232 (#634) ###########################################
7232
FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS
THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS IN NEW ENGLAND
THE
HE 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.
Amidst 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
Amidst 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!
## p. 7233 (#635) ###########################################
FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS
L'
Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod;
They have left unstained what there they found,—
Freedom to worship God.
THE HOUR OF DEATH
EAVES have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath,
And stars to set; but all-
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!
Day is for mortal care,
Eve for glad meetings round the joyous hearth,
Night for the dreams of sleep, the voice of prayer--
But all for thee, thou mightiest of the earth!
The banquet hath its hour,
Its feverish hour of mirth, and song, and wine;
There comes a day for grief's o'erwhelming power,
A time for softer tears-but all are thine.
Youth and the opening rose
May look like things too glorious for decay,
And smile at thee-but thou art not of those
That wait the ripened bloom to seize their prey.
Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath,
And stars to set; but all—
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!
We know when moons shall wane,
When summer birds from far shall cross the sea,
When autumn's hues shall tinge the golden grain-
But who shall teach us when to look for thee?
Is it when spring's first gale
Comes forth to whisper where the violets lie?
Is it when roses in our paths grow pale?
They have one season - all are ours to die!
-
Thou art where billows foam,
Thou art where music melts upon the air;
Thou art around us in our peaceful home;
And the world calls us forth and thou art there.
XII-453
7233
-
## p. 7234 (#636) ###########################################
FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS
7234
Thou art where friend meets friend,
Beneath the shadow of the elm to rest;
Thou art where foe meets foe, and tempests rend
The skies, and swords beat down the princely crest.
Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath,
And stars to set; but all-
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!
THE LOST PLEIAD
Α
ND is there glory from the heavens departed?
O void unmarked! -thy sisters of the sky
Still hold their place on high,
Though from its rank thine orb so long hath started,-
Thou that no more art seen of mortal eye.
Hath the night lost a gem, the regal night?
She wears her crown of old magnificence,
Though thou art exiled thence;
No desert seems to part those urns of light,
Midst the far depth of purple gloom intense.
They rise in joy, the starry myriads burning:
The shepherd greets them on his mountains free;
And from the silvery sea
To them the sailor's wakeful eye is turning --
Unchanged they rise, they have not mourned for thee.
Couldst thou be shaken from thy radiant place,
E'en as a dewdrop from the myrtle spray,
Swept by the wind away?
Wert thou not peopled by some glorious race,
And was there power to smite them with decay?
Why, who shall talk of thrones, of sceptres riven?
Bowed be our hearts to think of what we are,
When from its height afar
A world sinks thus-and yon majestic heaven
Shines not the less for that one vanished star!
## p. 7235 (#637) ###########################################
FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS
THE TREASURES OF THE DEEP
'HAT hid'st thou in thy treasure-caves and cells,
WHA Thou hollow-sounding and mysterious main?
Pale glistening pearls and rainbow-colored shells,
Bright things which gleam unrecked-of and in vain!
Keep, keep thy riches, melancholy Sea!
We ask not such from thee.
Yet more - the depths have more! What wealth untold,
Far down and shining through their stillness, lies!
Thou hast the starry gems, the burning gold,
Won from ten thousand royal argosies!
Sweep o'er thy spoils, thou wild and wrathful main!
Earth claims not these again.
Yet more - the depths have more! Thy waves have rolled
Above the cities of a world gone by;
Sand hath filled up the palaces of old,
Seaweed o'ergrown the halls of revelry.
Dash o'er them, Ocean, in thy scornful play!
Man yields them to decay.
Yet more
the billows and the depths have more!
High hearts and brave are gathered to thy breast!
They hear not now the booming waters' roar,
The battle thunders will not break their rest.
Keep thy red gold and gems, thou stormy grave!
Give back the true and brave!
7235
Give back the lost and lovely! those for whom
The place was kept at board and hearth so long!
The prayer went up through midnight's breathless gloom,
And the vain yearning woke 'midst festal song.
Hold fast thy buried isles, thy towers o'erthrown -
But all is not thine own.
―
To thee the love of woman hath gone down;
Dark flow thy tides o'er manhood's noble head,
O'er youth's bright locks, and beauty's flowery crown;
Yet must thou hear a voice: Restore the dead!
Earth shall reclaim her precious things from thee-
Restore the dead, thou Sea!
## p. 7236 (#638) ###########################################
7236
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
(1849-)
OR an author of reputation so extended, Mr. Henley's work is
singularly limited in amount, consisting only of a few small
volumes of poetry and essays. These books, however, rep-
resent a wide range of study and thought. William Ernest Henley
was born in Gloucester, England, in 1849, and was educated in his
native city. In 1875 he began to write for the London magazines,
and edited for two years a short-lived journal called London, in which
many of his verses first appeared. In 1889 he became editor of the
Scots Observer (now the National Observer),
and afterwards of the New Review, pub-
lished in London, where he lives. This
monthly is representative of the younger
schools and late developments in literature.
WILLIAM E. HENLEY
His critical essays contributed to the
Saturday Review, the Athenæum, and other
journals, were published in 1890 as 'Views
and Reviews. ' In 1873 appeared 'In Hos-
pital: Rhymes and Rhythms,' and in 1888
a small 'Book of Verses,' followed by The
Song of the Sword,' published in 1892.
Two volumes, 'Lyra Heroica' and an an-
thology of English prose, were prepared by
him; and he also wrote with Robert Louis
Stevenson a volume of plays, published in 1893, of which 'Beau
Austin' was acted at the Haymarket Theatre with great success.
With Stevenson he published also 'Macaire' (1895), a melodramatic
farce, which is a new version of the famous old harlequinade.
The 'Hospital' verses are unconventional, bold to the verge of
daring, and belong perhaps rather to the field of pathology than of
poetry. Surgeon's lint and antiseptics cannot be made attractive
lyrical themes. Yet often there is vivid, if sombre, imagination in
this series. Fine is the skill with which Henley, turning from these
modern eccentricities, produces old French forms of verse, polished
with the most delicate precision, and fancifully embellished. In the
division called 'Life and Death' the poems are full of depth and
beauty, and now and again one comes on a perfect song. In 'The
## p. 7237 (#639) ###########################################
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
7237
Song of the Sword' his many-colored mind produces work of a vari-
ous character. The first part is an unrhymed rhythmical piece of
declamation, suggestive of the saga, in which the sword speaks out of
its bold heart; the second group, entitled 'London Voluntaries,' has
placed Henley's name among those poets who are pre-eminently asso-
ciated with London streets and scenes. This poem-group, describing
the city at various times of the year and day, has been compared to
Whistler's studies of the world's greatest capital. Here is the same
vivid drawing, the same impression of space and distance, and the
same emphasis of the personality of the city. Henley's word pictures
show how accurate is the comparison:
-
"See the batch of boats
Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam!
And those are barges that were goblin floats,
Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream!
And in the piles the waters frolic clear,
The ripples into loose rings wander and flee,
And we we can behold, that could but hear
The ancient River singing as he goes
New-mailed in morning to the ancient Sea. »
In the final division, called 'Rhymes and Rhythms,' are many
pieces of striking originality and lovely musical quality, our second
poetical selection affording an illustration. It is interesting to com-
pare Henley's treatment of London with that of Wordsworth's in his
great sonnet On Westminster Bridge,' in which he looks upon a city
that
"doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning. "
Mr. Henley's critical qualities have been compared by Marriott
Watson to "the flare of an electric light. " "There are queer patches
of blackness outside the path of the illumination," he says, "passages
of darkness along the angles; but within these confines the white
light cuts its way rudely, sharply, and with pitiless severity. Along
the sphere of the irradiation the white flare is merciless in its scru-
tiny; every fault and flaw is picked out as by magic, every virtue
is assigned its value. » This however gives but one side, the acid-
ulous, biting side, of Henley's genius.
At times, as in the wonder-
fully fine closing sentences of the prose selection herewith given, he
is a prose poet writing English of music, majesty, and imaginative
splendor.
## p. 7238 (#640) ###########################################
7238
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
BALLADE OF MIDSUMMER DAYS AND NIGHTS
ITH a ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams
The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise,
And the winds are one with the clouds and beams-
Midsummer days! midsummer days!
WITH
The dusk grows vast; in a purple haze,
While the west from a rapture of sunset rights,
Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise-
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
The wood's green heart is a nest of dreams,
The lush grass thickens and springs and sways,
The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams—
Midsummer days! midsummer days!
In the stilly fields, in the stilly ways,
All secret shadows and mystic lights,
Late lovers murmurous linger and gaze -
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
There's a music of bells from the trampling teams.
Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze,
The rich ripe rose as with incense steams
Midsummer days! midsummer days!
A soul from the honeysuckle strays,
And the nightingale as from prophet heights
Sings to the earth of her million Mays—
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
ENVOY
And it's oh! for my dear, and the charm that stays—
Midsummer days! midsummer days!
It's oh! for my love, and the dark that plights-
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
LONGFELLOW AND THE WATER-WORLD
From Views and Reviews ›
THE
ocean as confidant, a Laertes that can neither avoid his
Hamlets nor bid them hold their peace, is a modern inven-
tion. Byron and Shelley discovered it; Heine took it into his
confidence and told it the story of his loves; Wordsworth made
it a moral influence; Browning loved it in his way, but his way
## p. 7239 (#641) ###########################################
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
7239
was not often the poet's; to Matthew Arnold it was the voice
of destiny, and its message was a message of despair; Hugo
conferred with it as with a humble friend, and uttered such
lofty things over it as are rarely heard upon the lips of man.
And so with living lyrists, each after his kind. Lord Tenny-
son listens and looks until it strikes him out an undying note of
passion, or yearning, or regret:-
"Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me;"
Mr. Swinburne maddens with the wind and the sounds and the
scent of it, until there passes into his verse a something of its
vastness and its vehemency, the rapture of its inspiration, the
palpitating, many-twinkling miracle of its light; Mr. William Mor-
ris has been taken with the manner of its melancholy; while to
Whitman it has been "the great Camerado" indeed, for it gave
him that song of the brown bird bereft of its mate, in whose
absence the half of him had not been told to us.
་
But to Longfellow alone was it given to see that stately gal-
ley which Count Arnaldos saw; his only to hear the steersman
singing that wild and wondrous song which none that hears it
can resist, and none that has heard it may forget. Then did he
learn the old monster's secret - the word of his charm, the core
of his mystery, the human note in his music, the quality of his
influence upon the heart and the mind of man; and then did he
win himself a place apart among sea poets. With the most of
them it is a case of "Ego et rex meus": it is "I and the sea,
and my egoism is as valiant and as vocal as the other's. " But
Longfellow is the spokesman of a confraternity; what thrills
him to utterance is the spirit of that strange and beautiful free-
masonry established as long ago as when the first sailor steered
the first keel out into the unknown, irresistible water-world, and
so established the foundations of the eternal brotherhood of man
with ocean. To him the sea is a place of mariners and ships.
In his verse the rigging creaks, the white sail fills and crackles,
there are blown smells of pine and hemp and tar; you catch
the home wind on your cheeks; and old shipmen, their eyeballs
white in their bronzed faces, with silver rings and gaudy hand-
kerchiefs, come in and tell you moving stories of the immemorial,
incommunicable deep. He abides in a port; he goes down to the
docks, and loiters among the galiots and brigantines; he hears
the melancholy song of the chanty-men; he sees the chips flying
## p. 7240 (#642) ###########################################
7240
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
under the shipwright's adze; he smells the pitch that smokes and
bubbles in the caldron. And straightway he falls to singing his
variations on the ballad of Count Arnaldos; and the world listens,
for its heart beats in his song.
"OUT OF THE NIGHT THAT COVERS ME»
UT of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from Pole to Pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
O
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll:
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
"OH, TIME AND CHANGE »
From The Song of the Sword and Other Verses. Copyright 1892, by Charles
Scribner's Sons
OH,
H, TIME and Change, they range and range
From sunshine round to thunder!
They glance and go as the great winds blow,
And the best of our dreams drive under;
For Time and Change estrange, estrange –
And now they have looked and seen us,
Oh we that were dear, we are all too near
With the thick of the world between us.
Oh, Death and Time, they chime and chime
Like bells at sunset falling!
They end the song, they right the wrong,
They set the old echoes calling;
For Death and Time bring on the prime
Of God's own chosen weather,
And we lie in the peace of the Great Release
As once in the grass together.
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## p. 7241 (#647) ###########################################
7241
PATRICK HENRY
(1736-1799)
ATRICK HENRY'S fame as an American statesman and orator
has the elements of permanency. A high-minded and broad-
minded patriot, he had rare powers of persuasion by speech,
-powers used for the welfare of his country. His forensic writing
loses something in the reading, which is true of all good oratory.
But certain of his flaming sentences still ring in the ears of Ameri-
cans, and have historical significance.
Henry was born at Studley, Virginia, May 29th, 1736. He was of
good Scotch and English blood, and was educated by his father; he
married at eighteen and went early into business. He became a
lawyer when twenty-four, and was successful from the first. When
pleading the cause of a clergyman in 1763 in the celebrated tobacco-
tax question, he showed himself to be a fine speaker; and from this
on, advanced rapidly in public life. Elected in 1765 to the Virginia
House, in a fiery speech he advocated resistance to the Stamp Act
and became the leader of his colony. He was a delegate to the
first Continental Congress, and in 1776, on the adoption of the Con-
stitution, his own State made him four times governor; he declined
re-election in 1786, to be again elected in 1796 and again to decline.
His policy throughout these public services was wise, broad, pro-
gressive. His spirit is reflected in the words of an early speech:
"I am not a Virginian, but an American. " Retiring from public life
in 1791 at the age of fifty-five, he practiced law, preferring to guard
his broken health and provide for his large family; although subse-
quently Washington offered him the post of Secretary of State and
that of Chief Justice, and President Adams named him minister to
France. In 1799, however, at Washington's appeal he allowed him-
self to be elected to the Legislature; but died, June 6th, before taking
his seat.
Henry's biography was written by William Wirt in 1817, in the
tone of uncritical panegyric which biographers so rarely escape, and
the rather tinsel brilliancy peculiar to Wirt. Good lives of Henry
have since been written by his grandson, William Wirt Henry, and
in the American Statesmen Series by Professor Moses Coit Tyler.
## p. 7242 (#648) ###########################################
7242
PATRICK HENRY
THE ALTERNATIVE
SPEECH IN THE VIRGINIA CONVENTION, 1775
From Wirt's Life of Henry'
Mr. President:
I
T is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are
apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the
song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this
the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle
for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who
having eyes see not, and having ears hear not, the things which
so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, what-
ever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the
whole truth; to know the worst and to provide for it.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that
is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the
future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know
what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for
the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen
have been pleased to solace themselves and the house? Is it
that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately
received? Trust it not, sir: it will prove a snare to your feet.
Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves
how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those
warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land.
Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconcilia-
tion? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled
that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not
deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and
subjugation—the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask
gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be
not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other
possible motive for it? Has Britain any enemy in this quarter
of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and
armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they
can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet
upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so
long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall
we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last
ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject?
## p. 7243 (#649) ###########################################
PATRICK HENRY
7243
Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which
it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to
entreaty and humble supplication? what terms shall we find
which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech
you, sir, deceive ourselves longer.
Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the
storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned, we have
remonstrated, we have supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves
before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the
tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions
have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional
violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded;
and we have been spurned with contempt from the foot of the
throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond
hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room
for hope.
If we wish to be free, if we mean to preserve inviolate
those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long con-
tending, if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in
which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged
ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our con-
test shall be obtained we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must
fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is
left us!
-
They tell us, sir, that we are weak-unable to cope with so
formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will
it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are
totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed
in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and
inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by
lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom
of hope until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?
Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means
which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three mill-
ions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such
a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force
which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not
fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over
the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight
our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it
is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no
election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late
## p. 7244 (#650) ###########################################
PATRICK HENRY
7244
to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission
and slavery! Our chains are forged; their clanking may be heard
on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable— and let it come!
I repeat it, sir, let it come!
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may
cry, Peace, peace; but there is no peace. The war is actually
begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to
our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already
in the field. Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentle-
men wish? what would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so
sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?
Forbid it, Almighty God! —I know not what course others may
take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
ON THE RETURN OF THE REFUGEES
SPEECH IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE
From Wirt's Life of Henry'
W*
E HAVE, sir, an extensive country without population: what
can be a more obvious policy than that this country ought
to be peopled? People, sir, form the strength and con-
stitute the wealth of a nation. I want to see our vast forests
filled up by some process a little more speedy than the ordinary
course of nature. I wish to see these States rapidly ascending to
that rank which their natural advantages authorize them to hold
among the nations of the earth. Cast your eyes, sir, over this
extensive country: observe the salubrity of your climate, the
variety and fertility of your soil; and see that soil intersected in
every quarter by bold navigable streams, flowing to the east and
to the west, as if the finger of Heaven were marking out the
course of your settlements, inviting you to enterprise and point-
ing the way to wealth. Sir, you are destined, at some time or
other, to become a great agricultural and commercial people; the
only question is, whether you choose to reach this point by slow
gradations and at some distant period,-lingering on through a
long and sickly minority, subjected meanwhile to the machina-
tions, insults, and oppressions of enemies foreign and domestic,
without sufficient strength to resist and chastise them, or whether
you choose rather to rush at once, as it were, to the full enjoy-
ment of those high destinies, and be able to cope single-handed
-
## p. 7245 (#651) ###########################################
PATRICK HENRY
7245
with the proudest oppressor of the Old World. If you prefer the
latter course, as I trust you do, encourage emigration; encourage
the husbandmen, the mechanics, the merchants of the Old World
to come and settle in this land of promise; make it the home of
the skillful, the industrious, the fortunate and happy, as well as
the asylum of the distressed; fill up the measure of your popu-
lation as speedily as you can, by the means which Heaven hath
placed in your power: and I venture to prophesy there are those
now living who will see this favored land amongst the most
powerful on earth-able, sir, to take care of herself, without
resorting to that policy which is always so dangerous, though
sometimes unavoidable, of calling in foreign aid. Yes, sir, they
will see her great in arts and in arms; her golden harvests
waving over fields of immeasurable extent; her commerce pene-
trating the most distant seas, and her cannon silencing the vain
boasts of those who now proudly affect to rule the waves.
But, sir, you must have men; you cannot get along without
them: those heavy forests of valuable timber under which your
lands are groaning must be cleared away; those vast riches which
cover the face of your soil, as well as those which lie hid in its
bosom, are to be developed and gathered only by the skill and
enterprise of men; your timber, sir, must be worked up into
ships, to transport the productions of the soil from which it has.
been cleared. Then you must have commercial men and com-
mercial capital, to take off your productions and find the best
markets for them abroad. Your great want, sir, is the want of
men; and these you must have, and will have speedily, if you
are wise.
Do you ask how you are to get them? Open your
doors, sir, and they will come in. The population of the Old
World is full to overflowing; that population is ground, too, by
the oppressions of the governments under which they live. Sir,
they are already standing on tiptoe upon their native shores, and
looking to your coasts with a wishful and longing eye. They see
here a land blessed with natural and political advantages which
are not equaled by those of any other country upon earth; a
land on which a gracious Providence hath emptied the horn of
abundance; a land over which Peace hath now stretched forth her
white wings, and where Content and Plenty lie down at every
door! Sir, they see something still more attractive than all this:
they see a land in which Liberty hath taken up her abode, that
Liberty whom they had considered as a fabled goddess, existing
## p. 7246 (#652) ###########################################
7246
PATRICK HENRY
only in the fancies of poets. They see her here a real divinity,
her altars rising on every hand throughout these happy States,
her glories chanted by three millions of tongues, and the whole
region smiling under her blessed influence. Sir, let but this
our celestial goddess Liberty stretch forth her fair hand toward
the people of the Old World, tell them to come, and bid them
welcome-and you will see them pouring in from the north, from
the south, from the east, and from the west; your wildernesses
will be cleared and settled, your deserts will smile, your ranks
will be filled, and you will soon be in a condition to defy the
powers of any adversary.
But gentlemen object to any accession from Great Britain, and
particularly to the return of the British refugees. Sir, I feel no
objection to the return of those deluded people. They have, to
be sure, mistaken their own interests most woefully, and most
woefully have they suffered the punishment due to their offenses.
But the relations which we bear to them and to their native
country are now changed; their King hath acknowledged our
independence, the quarrel is over, peace hath returned and found
us a free people. Let us have the magnanimity, sir, to lay
aside our antipathies and prejudices, and consider the subject in
a political light. Those are an enterprising, moneyed people;
they will be serviceable in taking off the surplus of our lands,
and supplying us with necessaries during the infant state of our
manufactures. Even if they be inimical to us in point of feel-
ing and principle, I can see no objection in a political view in
making them tributary to our advantage. And as I have no
prejudices to prevent my making this use of them, so, sir, I have
no fear of any mischief that they can do us. Afraid of them! —
what, sir, shall we, who have laid the proud British lion at our
feet, now be afraid of his whelps?
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