THE CHRYSALIS OF A BOOKWORM
I
READ, O friend, no pages of old lore,
Which I loved well — and yet the flying days,
That softly passed as wind through green spring ways
And left a perfume, swift fly as of yore;
Though in clear Plato's stream I look no more,
Neither with Moschus sing Sicilian lays,
Nor with bold Dante wander in amaze,
Nor see our Will the Golden Age restore.
I
READ, O friend, no pages of old lore,
Which I loved well — and yet the flying days,
That softly passed as wind through green spring ways
And left a perfume, swift fly as of yore;
Though in clear Plato's stream I look no more,
Neither with Moschus sing Sicilian lays,
Nor with bold Dante wander in amaze,
Nor see our Will the Golden Age restore.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v28 - Songs, Hymns, Lyrics
Start, you villain!
Stand straight! 'Bout face! Salute your officer!
Put up that paw! Dress! Take your rifle!
(Some dogs have arms, you see! ) Now hold your
Cap while the gentlemen give a trifle,
To aid a poor old patriot soldier!
March! Halt! Now show how the rebel shakes
When he stands up to hear his sentence.
Now tell us how many drams it takes
To honor a jolly new acquaintance.
Five yelps, - that's five; he's mighty knowing !
The night's before us, fill the glasses !
Quick, sir! I'm ill — my brain is going!
Some brandy - thank you - there, it passes!
Why not reform ? That's easily said;
But I've gone through such wretched treatment,
Sometimes forgetting the taste of bread,
And scarce remembering what meat meant,
That my poor stomach's past reform;
And there are times when, mad with thinking,
I'd sell out heaven for something warm
To prop a horrible inward sinking.
Is there a way to forget to think ?
At your age, sir, home, fortune, friends,
A dear girl's love — but I took to drink -
The same old story: you know how it ends.
If you could have seen these classic features,
You needn't laugh, sir: they were not then
Such a burning libel on God's creatures;
I was one of your handsome men !
If you had seen her, so fair and young,
Whose head was happy on this breast!
If you could have heard the songs I sung
When the wine went round, you wouldn't have guessed
That ever I, sir, should be straying
From door to door, with fiddle and dog,
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SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
Ragged and penniless, and playing
To you to-night for a glass of grog!
She's married since,- a parson's wife:
'Twas better for her that we should part, -
Better the soberest, prosiest life
Than a blasted home and a broken heart.
I have seen her ? Once: I was weak and spent
On the dusty road; a carriage stopped:
But little she dreamed, as on she went,
Who kissed the coin that her fingers dropped!
You've set me talking. sir; I'm sorry:
It makes me wild to think of the change!
What do you care for a beggar's story?
Is it amusing? you find it strange ?
I had a mother so proud of me!
'Twas well she died before — Do you know
If the happy spirits in heaven can see
The ruin and wretchedness here below ?
Another glass, and strong, to deaden
This pain; then Roger and I will start.
I wonder, has he such a lumpish, leaden,
Aching thing in place of a heart ?
He is sad sometimes, and would weep, if he could,
No doubt, remembering things that were, -
A virtuous kennel, with plenty of food,
And himself a sober, respectable cur.
I'm better now: that glass was warming.
You rascal! limber your lazy feet!
We must be fiddling and performing
For supper and bed, or starve in the street.
Not a very gay life to lead, you think?
But soon we shall go where lodgings are free,
And the sleepers need neither victuals nor drink; -
The sooner the better for Roger and me!
JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE.
## p. 16765 (#465) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16765
THE PAUPER'S DRIVE
Thr
HERE's a grim one-horse hearse in a jolly round trot,-
To the church-yard a pauper is going, I wot:
The road it is rough, and the hearse has no springs;
And hark to the dirge which the mad driver sings:-
Rattle his bones over the stones!
He's only a pauper whom nobody owns!
Oh, where are the mourners ? Alas! there are none;
He has left not a gap in the world, now he's gone,-
Not a tear in the eye of child, woman, or man:
To the grave with his carcass as fast as you can.
Rattle his bones over the stones!
He's only a pauper whom nobody owns !
What a jolting, and creaking, and splashing, and din!
The whip, how it cracks! and the wheels, how they spin!
How the dirt, right and left, o'er the hedges is hurled! -
The pauper at length makes a noise in the world!
Rattle his bones over the stones!
He's only a pauper whom nobody owns!
Poor pauper defunct! he has made some approach
To gentility, now that he's stretched in a coach!
He's taking a drive in his carriage at last;
But it will not be long, if he goes on so fast.
Rattle his bones over the stones!
He's only a pauper whom nobody owns!
You bumpkins! who stare at your brother conveyed,
Behold what respect to a cloddy is paid !
And be joyful to think, when by death you're laid low,
You've a chance to the grave like a "gemman” to go!
Rattle his bones over the stones!
He's only a pauper whom nobody owns!
But a truce to this strain; for my soul it is sad,
To think that a heart in humanity clad
Should make, like the brutes, such a desolate end,
And depart from the light without leaving a friend !
Bear soft his bones over the stones!
Though a pauper, he's one whom his Maker yet owns !
THOMAS NOEL.
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16766
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
THE MASTER'S TOUCH
I
N THE still air the music lies unheard;
In the rough marble beauty hides unseen:
To make the music and the beauty, needs
The master's touch, the sculptor's chisel keen.
Great Master, touch us with thy skillful hand;
Let not the music that is in us die:
Great Sculptor, hew and polish us; not let,
Hidden and lost, thy form within us lie!
Spare not the stroke! do with us as thou wilt!
Let there be naught unfinished, broken, marred;
Complete thy purpose, that we may become
Thy perfect image, thou our God and Lord!
HORATIUS BONAR.
THE MAKING OF MEN
A
S THE insect from the rock
Takes the color of its wing;
As the bowlder from the shock
Of the ocean's rhythmic swing
Makes itself a perfect form,
Learns a calmer front to raise ;
As the shell, enameled warm
With the prism's mystic rays.
Praises wind and wave that make
All its chambers fair and strong;
As the mighty poets take
Grief and pain to build their song:
Even so for every soul,
Whatsoe'er its lot may be,-
Building, as the heavens roll,
Something large and strong and free, -
Things that hurt and things that mar
Shape the man for perfect praise;
Shock and strain and ruin are
Friendlier than the smiling days.
JOHN WHITE CHADWICK.
## p. 16767 (#467) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16767
THE LARGER PRAYER
A
T FIRST I prayed for Light:
Could I but see the way,
How gladly, swiftly would I walk
To everlasting day!
And next I prayed for Strength,
That I might tread the road
With firm, unfaltering feet, and win
The heavens' serene abode.
And then I asked for Faith:
Could I but trust my God,
I'd live enfolded in his peace,
Though foes were all abroad.
But now I pray for Love:
Deep love to God and man;
A living love that will not fail,
However dark his plan;
And Light and Strength and Faith
Are opening everywhere!
God only waited for me till
I prayed the larger prayer.
EDNAH DEAN CHENEY.
GIFTS
“Ο
WORLD-God, give me wealth! " the Egyptian cried.
His prayer was granted. High as heaven, behold
Palace and pyramid; the brimming tide
Of lavish Nile washed all his land with gold.
Armies of slaves toiled ant-wise at his feet,
World-circling traffic roared through mart and street;
His priests were gods; his spice-balmed kings enshrined
Set death at naught in rock-ribbed charnels deep.
Seek Pharaoh's race to-day, and ye shall find
Rust and the moth, silence and dusty sleep.
«O World-God, give me beauty! ) cried the Greek.
His prayer was granted. All the earth became
Plastic and vocal to his sense; each peak,
Each grove, each stream, quick with Promethean flame;
## p. 16768 (#468) ##########################################
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SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
Peopled the world with imaged grace and light.
The lyre was his, and his the breathing might
Of the immortal marble, his the play
Of diamond-pointed thought and golden tongue.
Go seek the sunshine race, ye find to-day
A broken column and a lute unstrung.
“O World-God, give me power! ” the Roman cried.
His prayer was granted. The vast world was chained
A captive to the chariot of his pride;
The blood of myriad provinces was drained
To feed that fierce, insatiable red heart.
Invulnerably bulwarked every part
With serried legions and with close-meshed code,
Within, the burrowing worm had gnawed its home;
A roofless ruin stands where once abode
The imperial race of everlasting Rome.
“O Godhead, give me truth! ” the Hebrew cried.
His prayer was granted: he became the slave
Of the Idea, a pilgrim far and wide,
Cursed, hated, spurned, and scourged with none to save.
The Pharaohs knew him; and when Greece beheld,
His wisdom wore the hoary crown of eld.
Beauty he hath forsworn, and wealth and power.
Seek him to-day, and find in every land;
No fire consumes him, neither foods devour:
Immortal through the lamp within his hand.
EMMA LAZARUS.
A POET'S HOPE
L"
ADY, there is a hope that all men have,-
Some mercy for their faults, a grassy place
To rest in, and a flower-strewn, gentle grave;
Another hope which purifies our race,–
That when that fearful bourn's forever past,
They may find rest — and rest so long to last.
I seek it not, I ask no rest forever:
My path is onward to the farthest shores.
Upbear me in your arms, unceasing river,
That from the soul's clear fountain swiftly pours,
## p. 16769 (#469) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16769
Motionless not until the end is won,
Which now I feel hath scarcely felt the sun.
To feel, to know, to soar unlimited,
'Mid throngs of light-winged angels sweeping far,
And pore upon the realms unvisited
That tessellate the unseen unthought star;
To be the thing that now I feebly dream
Flashing within my faintest, deepest gleam!
Ah, caverns of my soul! how thick your shade,
Where flows that life by which I faintly see:
Wave your bright torches, for I need your aid,
Golden-eyed dæmons of my ancestry!
Your son though blinded hath a light within,
A heavenly fire which ye from suns did win.
O Time! O Death! I clasp you in my arms,
For I can soothe an infinite cold sorrow,
And gaze contented on your icy charms,
And that wild snow-pile which we call to-morrow;
Sweep on, O soft and azure-lidded sky,
Earth's waters to your gentle gaze reply.
I am not earth-born, though I here delay:
Hope's child, I summon infiniter powers,
And laugh to see the mild and sunny day
Smile on the shrunk and thin autumnal hours;
I laugh, for hope hath happy place with me,-
If my bark sinks, 'tis to another sea.
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.
THE LAST POET
“WHEN
HEN will your bards be weary
Of rhyming on? How long
Ere it is sung and ended,
The old, eternal song ?
«Is it not long since empty,
The horn of full supply;
And all the posies gathered,
And all the fountains dry?
XXVIII-1049
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SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
As long as the sun's chariot
Yet keeps its azure track,
And but one human visage
Gives answering glances back;
As long as skies shall nourish
The thunderbolt and gale,
And frightened at their fury,
One throbbing heart shall quail;
As long as after tempests
Shall spring one showery bow,
One breast with peaceful promise
And reconcilement glow;
As long as night the concave
Sows with its starry seed,
And but one man those letters
Of golden writ can read;
Long as a moonbeam glimmers,
Or bosom sighs a vow;
Long as the wood-leaves rustle
To cool a weary brow;
As long as cypress shadows
The graves more mournful make,
Or one cheek's wet with weeping,
Or one poor heart can break;
So long on earth shall wander
The goddess Poesy,
And with her, one exulting
Her votarist to be.
And singing on, triumphing,
The old earth-mansion through,
Out marches the last minstrel;-
He is the last man too.
The Lord holds the creation
Forth in his hand meanwhile,
Like a fresh flower just opened,
And views it with a smile.
When once this Flower Giant
Begins to show decay,
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SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16771
And earths and suns are flying
Like blossom-dust away;
Then ask,- if of the question
Not weary yet, -- "How long
Ere it is sung and ended,
The old, eternal song ? ”
ANASTASIUS GRÜN.
Translation of N. L. Frothingham.
WE ARE THE MUSIC-MAKERS
W*
E ARE the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world forever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample a kingdom down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the Old of the New World's worth:
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY.
## p. 16772 (#472) ##########################################
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SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
· ACCORDANCE
H
E WHO with bold and skillful hand sweeps o'er
The organ-keys of some cathedral pile,
Flooding with music, vault and nave and aisle,
Though on his ear falls but a thundrous roar,-
In the composer's lofty motive free,
Knows well that all that temple vast and dim
Thrills to its base with anthem, psalm, and hymn
True to the changeless laws of harmony.
So he who on these changing chords of life,
With firm, sweet touch plays the Great Master's score
Of truth, and love, and duty, evermore,
Knows too that far beyond this roar and strife,
Though he may never hear, in the true time
These notes must all accord in symphonies sublime.
ANNE C. L. BOTTA.
CHOPIN
I
A
DREAM of interlinking hands, of feet
Tireless to spin the unseen, fairy woof
Of the entangling waltz. Bright eyebeams meet,
Gay laughter echoes from the vaulted roof.
Warm perfumes rise; the soft unflickering glow
Of branching lights sets off the changeful charms
Of glancing gems, rich stuffs, the dazzling snow
Of necks unkerchieft, and bare, clinging arms.
Hark to the music! How beneath the strain
Of reckless revelry, vibrates and sobs
One fundamental chord of constant pain,
The pulse-beat of the poet's heart that throbs.
So yearns, though all the dancing waves rejoice,
The troubled sea's disconsolate, deep voice.
II
Who shall proclaim the golden fable false
Of Orpheus's miracles? This subtle strain
Above our prose world's sordid loss and gain
Lightly uplifts us. With the rhythmic waltz,
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16773
The lyric prelude, the nocturnal song
Of love and languor, varied visions rise,
That melt and blend to our enchanted eyes.
The Polish poet who sleeps silenced long,
The seraph-souled musician, breathes again
Eternal eloquence, immortal pain.
Revived the exalted face we know so well,
The illuminated eyes, the fragile frame,
Slowly consuming with its inward flame -
We stir not, speak not, lest we break the spell.
III
A voice was needed, sweet and true and fine
As the sad spirit of the evening breeze,
Throbbing with human passion, yet divine
As the wild bird's untutored melodies.
A voice for him 'neath twilight heavens dim,
Who mourneth for his dead, while round him fall
The wan and noiseless leaves. A voice for him
Who sees the first green sprout, who hears the call
Of the first robin on the first spring day.
A voice for all whom Fate hath set apart,
Who, still misprized, must perish by the way,
Longing with love, for that they lack the art
Of their own soul's expression. For all these
Sing the unspoken hope, the vague, sad reveries.
IV
Then Nature shaped a poet's heart, - a lyre
From out whose chords the slightest breeze that blows
Drew trembling music, wakening sweet desire.
How shall she cherish him? Behold! she throws
This precious, fragile treasure in the whirl
Of seething passions: he is scourged and stung;
Must dive in storm-vext seas, if but one pearl
Of art or beauty therefrom may be wrung.
No pure-browed pensive nymph his Muse shall be:
An Amazon of thought with sovereign eyes,
Whose kiss was poison, man-brained, worldly-wise,
Inspired that elfin, delicate harmony.
Rich gain for us! But with him is it well ? —
The poet who must sound earth, heaven, and hell!
EMMA LAZARUS.
## p. 16774 (#474) ##########################################
16774
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
WHAT THE SONNET IS
F
OURTEEN small broidered berries on the hem
Of Circe's mantle, each of magic gold;
Fourteen of lone Calypso's tears that rolled
Into the sea, for pearls to come of them;
Fourteen clear signs of omen in the gem
With which Medea human fate foretold;
Fourteen small drops which Faustus, growing old,
Craved of the Fiend, to water life's dry stem.
It is the pure white diamond Dante brought
To Beatrice; the sapphire Laura wore
When Petrarch cut it sparkling out of thought;
The ruby Shakespeare hewed from his heart's core:
The dark, deep emerald that Rossetti wrought
For his own soul, to wear for evermore.
EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON.
THE BOOK-STALL
11
T STANDS in a winding street,
A quiet and restful nook,
Apart from the endless beat
Of the noisy heart of Trade:
There's never a spot more cool
Of a hot midsummer day
By the brink of a forest pool,
Or the bank of a crystal brook
In the maple's breezy shade,
Than the book-stall old and gray.
Here are precious gems of thought
That were quarried long ago,
Some in vellum bound, and wrought
With letters and lines of gold;
Here are curious rows of “calf,”
And perchance an Elzevir;
Here are countless (mos) of chaff,
And a parchment folio,
Like leaves that are cracked with cold,
All puckered and brown and sear.
In every age and clime
Live the monarchs of the brain:
## p. 16775 (#475) ##########################################
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16775
And the lords of prose and rhyme,
Years after the long last sleep
Has come to the kings of earth
And their names have passed away,
Rule on through death and birth;
And the thrones of their domain
Are found where the shades are deep
In the book-stall old and gray.
1
CLINTON SCOLLARD.
A BOOK-LOVER'S APOLOGIA
TEA
EMPTATIon lurks in every leaf
Of printed page or cover,
Whene'er I haunt the book-shops old,
Their treasures rare discover;
Or when, in choicest catalogues,
Among which I'm a rover,
My heart leaps up their names to see,-
For am I not their lover ?
I linger o'er each dainty page
With loving touch and tender;
But find their sweet, seductive charms
Soon call me to surrender.
Brave fight, 'twixt heart and my lean purse,
My loved books' strong defender!
More precious for the valiant strife
That love is called to render!
But when in Bibliopolis
Their dear forms round me cluster,
While rank on rank and file on file
In gathering numbers muster,
Think you I mind the sordid tongues
That soulless talk and bluster,
Or weigh, against their priceless worth,
The golden dollar's lustre?
Ah, no! since there are drink and food
For which the soul has longings,
And in its daily, upward strife,
Finds both in such belongings,-
## p. 16776 (#476) ##########################################
16776
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS*
Dear books! loved friends, full meet ye are
To greet the earliest dawnings
Of all the happiest days in life,
Of all its brightest mornings!
HARRIETTE C. S. BUCKHAM.
THE CHRYSALIS OF A BOOKWORM
I
READ, O friend, no pages of old lore,
Which I loved well — and yet the flying days,
That softly passed as wind through green spring ways
And left a perfume, swift fly as of yore;
Though in clear Plato's stream I look no more,
Neither with Moschus sing Sicilian lays,
Nor with bold Dante wander in amaze,
Nor see our Will the Golden Age restore.
I read a book to which old books are new,
And new books old. A living book is mine -
In age, three years: in it I read no lies,
In it to myriad truths I find the clue -
A tender little child; but I divine
Thoughts high as Dante's in her clear blue eyes.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN.
TO THE MEMORY OF BEN JONSON
T"
He Muse's fairest light in no dark time,
The wonder of a learned age; the line
Which none can pass! the most proportioned wit, -
To nature, the best judge of what was fit;
The deepest, plainest, highest, clearest pen;
The voice most echoed by consenting men;
The soul which answered best to all well said
By others, and which most requital made;
Tuned to the highest key of ancient Rome,
Returning all her music with his own;
In whom, with nature, study claimed a part,
And yet who to himself owed all his art:
Here lies Ben Jonson! every age will look
With sorrow here, with wonder on his book.
JOHN CLEVELAND.
## p. 16777 (#477) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16777
GIVE ME THE OLD
« Old Wine to drink, Old Wood to burn, Old Books to read, Old Friends to
converse with. ”
O
LD wine to drink!
Ay, give the slippery juice
That drippeth from the grape thrown loose
Within the tun;
Plucked from beneath the cliff
Of sunny-sided Teneriffe,
And ripened 'neath the blink
Of India's sun!
Peat whisky hot,
Tempered with well-boiled water!
These make the long night shorter :
Forgetting not
Good stout old English porter.
Old wood to burn!
Ay, bring the hillside beech
From where the owlets meet and screech,
And ravens croak;
The crackling pine, and cedar sweet:
Bring too a clump of fragrant peat,
Dug 'neath the fern;
The knotted oak,
A fagot too, perhap,
Whose bright Aame dancing, winking,
Shall light us at our drinking;
While the oozing sap
Shall make sweet music to our thinking.
Old books to read!
Ay, bring those nodes of wit,
The brazen-clasped, the vellum-writ,
Time-honored tomes !
The same my sire scanned before,
The same my grandsire thumbed o'er,
The same his sire from college bore, -
The well-earned meed
Of Oxford's domes:
Old Homer blind,
Old Horace, rake Anacreon, by
Old Tully, Plautus, Terence, lie;
Mort Arthur's olden minstrelsie,
## p. 16778 (#478) ##########################################
16778
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
Quaint Burton, quainter Spenser, ay!
And Gervase Markham's venerie:
Nor leave behind
The Holye Book by which we live and die.
Old friends to talk!
Ay, bring those chosen few,
The wise, the courtly, and the true,
So rarely found:
Him for my wine, him for my stud,
Himn for my easel, distich, bud
In mountain walk!
Bring Walter good,
With soulful Fred, and learned Will:
And thee, my alter ego (dearer still
For every mood).
ROBERT HINCKLEY MESSINGER.
MAURICE DE GUÉRIN
THE
He old wine filled him, and he saw, with eyes
Anoint of Nature, fauns and dryads fair
Unseen by others; to him maidenhair
And waxen lilacs, and those birds that rise
A-sudden from tall reeds at slight surprise,
Brought charmed thoughts; and in earth everywhere
He, like sad Jaques, found a music rare
As that of Syrinx to old Grecians wise.
A pagan heart, a Christian soul had he:
He followed Christ, yet for dead Pan he sighed,
Till earth and heaven met within his breast;
As if Theocritus in Sicily
Had come upon the Figure crucified,
And lost his gods in deep Christ-given rest.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN.
## p. 16779 (#479) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16779
THEOCRITUS
AM
H! UNTO thee belong
The pipe and song,
Theocritus, –
Loved by the satyr and the faun!
To thee the olive and the vine,
To thee the Mediterranean pine,
And the soft lapping sea!
Thine, Bacchus,
Thine the blood-red revels,
Thine the bearded goat !
Soft valleys unto thee,
And Aphrodite's shrine,
And maidens veiled in falling robes of lawn!
But unto us, to us,
The stalwart glories of the North :
Ours is the sounding main,
And ours the voices uttering forth
By midnight round these cliffs a mighty strain;
A tale of viewless islands in the deep
Washed by the waves' white fire,
Of mariners rocked asleep
In the great cradle, far from Grecian ire
Of . Neptune and his train:
To us, to us,
· The dark-leaved shadow and the shining birch,
The Alight of gold through hollow woodlands driven,
Soft dying of the year with many a sigh, –
These, all, to us are given!
And eyes that eager evermore shall search
The hidden seed, and searching find again
Unfading blossoms of a fadeless spring, -
These, these, to us!
The sacred youth and maid,
Coy and half afraid;
The sorrowful earthly pall,
Winter and wintry rain,
And Autumn's gathered grain,
With whispering music in their fall, —
These unto us!
And unto thee, Theocritus,
To thee,
## p. 16780 (#480) ##########################################
16780
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
The immortal childhood of the world,
The laughing waters of an inland sea,
And beckoning signal of a sail unfurled !
ANNIE FIELDS.
CARLYLE AND EMERSON
A
BALE-FIRE kindled in the night,
By night a blaze, by day a cloud,
With flame and smoke all England woke, -
It climbed so high, it roared so loud:
While over Massachusetts's pines
Uprose a white and steadfast star;
And many a night it hung unwatched, -
It shone so still, it seemed so far.
But Light is Fire, and Fire is Light;
And mariners are glad for these, -
The torch that flares along the coast,
The star that beams above the seas.
MONTGOMERY SCHUYLER.
THE AMERICAN PANTHEON
LINES ON GRISWOLD's POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA'
WEN
HEN Rufus Griswold built his pantheon wide,
And set a hundred poets round its walls,
Did he suppose their statues would abide
The tests of time, upon their pedestals ?
A hundred poets,- some in Parian stone
Perchance, and some in brittle plaster cast,
And some mere shades, whose names are scarcely known,
Dii minores of a voiceless past.
Time was when many there so neatly niched
Held each within his court a sovereign sway;
Each in his turn his little world enriched, -
The ephemeral poet-laureate of his day.
## p. 16781 (#481) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16781
Ah, what is fame! Star after star goes out,
Lost Pleiads in the firmament of Truth;
Our kings discrowned ere dies the distant shout
That hailed the coronation of their youth.
Few are the world's great singers. Far apart,
Thrilling with love, yet wrapped in solitude,
They sit communing with the common Heart
That binds the race in common brotherhood.
A wind of heaven o'er their musing breathes,
And wakes them into verse,- as April turns
The roadside banks to violets, and unsheaths
The forest flowers amid the leaves and ferns.
And we, who dare not wear the immortal crown
Or singing robes, at least may hear and dream
While strains from prophet lips come floating down,
Inspired by them to sing some humbler theme.
Nay, nothing can be lost whose living stems,
Rooted in truth, spring up to beauty's Aower.
The spangles of the stage may flout the gems
On queenly breasts — but only for an hour.
The fashion of the time shall stamp its own.
The heart, the radiant soul, the eternal truth
And beauty born of harmony, alone
Can claim the garlands of perennial youth.
Oh, not for fame the poet of to-day
Should hunger. Though the world his music scorn,
The after-time may hear, as mountains gray
Echo from depths unseen the Alpine horn.
So, while around this pantheon wide I stray,
Where poets from Freneau to Fay are set,
I doubt not each in turn has sung a lay
Some hearts are not quite willing to forget.
For who in barren rhyme and rhythm could spend
The costly hours the Muse alone should claim,
Did not some finer thought, some nobler end,
Breathe ardors sweeter than poetic fame?
CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH.
## p. 16782 (#482) ##########################################
16782
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
THE BOY VAN DYCK
A. D. 1608
IN
N THE gray old Flemish city
Sat a comely, fair-haired dame,
At a window's deep embrasure,
Bending o'er her broidery-frame.
Round her played her merry children,
As they wound about their heads
Fillets, pilfered in their mischief,
From her skeins of arras-threads.
Oft she turned her glance upon them,
Softly smiling at their play,
All the while her busy needle
Pricking in and out its way;
From the open casement gazing,
Where the landscape lay in view,
Striving from her silken treasures
To portray each varied hue.
(
>
“Nay, I cannot,” sighed she sadly,
As the threads dropped from her hold,
« Cannot match that steely sapphire,
Or that line of burnished gold.
How it sparkles as it stretches
Straight as any lance across !
Never hint of such a lustre
Lives within my brightest foss!
“Ah, that blaze of splendid color!
I could kneel with folded hands,
As I watch it slowly dying
Off the emerald pasture-lands.
How my crimson pales to ashen
In this flood of sunset hue,
Mocking all my poor endeavor,
Foiling all my skill can do! »
As they heard her sigh, the children
Pressed around their mother's knees:
“Nay” — they clamored — “where in Antwerp
Are there broideries such as these ?
Why, the famous master, Rubens,
Craves the piece we think so ra
e, -
## p. 16783 (#483) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16783
Asks our father's leave to paint it
Flung across the Emperor's chair!
« How ye talk! ” — she smiled. “Yet often,
As I draw my needle through,
Gloating o'er my tints, I fancy
I might be a painter too:
I, a woman, wife, and mother,
What have I to do with Art!
Are not ye my noblest pictures ?
Portraits painted from my heart!
« Yet I think, if inidst my seven
One should show the master's bent,
One should do the things I dream of, –
All my soul would rest content. ”
Straight the four-year-old Antonio
Answered, sobbing half aloud:
"I will be your painter, painting
Pictures that shall make you proud! ”
Quick she snatched this youngest darling,
Smoothing down his golden hair,
Kissing with a crazy rapture
Mouth and cheek and forehead fair
Saying mid her sobbing laughter,
“So! my baby! you would like
To be named with Flemish Masters,
Rembrandt, Rubens, and — Van Dyck ! » *
MARGARET J. PRESTON.
HELENA
I
AM Helen of Argos,
I am Helen of Sparta,
I, the daughter of Egypt,
I, the inflamer of Troy:
See me, Helen, still shining,
There where shines great Achilles :
Blossoms of summer I bring ye
Born not of shadows or dreams.
* The mother of Van Dyck was celebrated for her beautiful tapestry work.
From her, her distinguished son inherited that taste for lucid color which has
given him the name of «The Silvery Van Dyck. )
## p. 16784 (#484) ##########################################
16784
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
Early from Argos he bore me,
Theseus, inconstant of lovers:
Early in Argos he bound me,
He, Menelaus the King;
Queen of the court and of feasting,
Queen of the heart and the temple,
Goddess and priestess and mother,
Holding Hermione's hand.
There in the chambers of purple,
Fair as the statue he gathered
Worshiped by great Menelaus,
I, his Helen, remained;
Pure as when Theseus snatched me
First from the temple of Dian,
Dancing the dances of childhood,
Bare to her ivory floors.
Theseus snatched me and held me,
Hiding me far in Aphidnai;
Quickly I slipped from his covert,
I, no longer enslaved.
Ah! Menelaus the gentle,
Gently but strongly he bound me:
Lo! with the ships I departed, —
Ships that were sailing for Troy.
Paris had beckoned me hither;-
Waves were leaping around me,
Whispering of freedom and gladness,
Paris whispered of love:
Thus in the meshes entangled
Woven by hard Aphrodite,
Lost was I, slave to her service,
She, the compeller of men.
There on the turrets of Troia,
Watching the combat of heroes,
There in the eye of the noble,
Sent she a woman to me;
Calling me hence to serve Paris,
He, the lascivious, the perfumed, -
She, the compeller, she drove me
Hence in the faces of all.
Slave was I, bound was I, Helen!
Once the queen of the hearth-side;
## p. 16785 (#485) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16785
Bond was I, scorned, yet the mother,
Queen of Hermione's heart:
Gazing on Hector the princely, -
Dead, and Andromache weeping,
Tears were not mine! Alas, deeper
Lay my smart and my pain.
Hector, my brother beloved!
Dear to me, far above others,
Here on thy body lamenting
I too echo thy praise !
Listen, Andromache, listen!
Out of the deepness of silence
Calleth a voice unto thee:-
“Calm, 0 beloved, 0 dear one,
Calm are the valleys of Orcus,
Restful the streams and dim alleys
Shut from the clamor of men;
Restful to him who has labored,
Labored and loved and is waiting,-
Waiting to hold in his bosom
Child and mother again. ”
Hear me, Andromache, listen!
This is for thee; but for Helen
All is voiceless and barren,
Silent the valley of shades;
Faded her joy with the blossoms,
Dead on the heart of the summer!
Kypris, goddess, ah! free me,
Slave and child of thy will.
Long through the ages I suffered,
Suffered the calling of lovers;
Down through the ages I followed,
Won by the bidding of Faust:
Strong, unsubdued, and immortal,
I, the young mother of Sparta,
Stand here and bring ye these blossoms,
Fresh as the children of spring.
Down to the ships went the captives,
Unwilling procession of sorrow,
Cassandra behind Agamemnon,
Andromache bound with the rest:
XXVIII-1050
## p. 16786 (#486) ##########################################
16786
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
I, Helen, walked with my husband;
Level my glance of pure azure,
Rosy my cheeks, lest the Spartans
Think less well of their king.
Helen, that years could not alter,
Nor bees that deflower the lilies,-
Helen, child of immortals,
Holding the reins of his steed:
Thus through the gateway of Sparta,
When the fires of Troy were extinguished,
Proud in his gladness and glory,
Proudly I brought them their king.
One sang,
< Base was their Helen! )
I, standing far above splendor,
Calm in the circle of godhead,
Moved not by striving of men,
Heard thus Stesichorus the singer, -
Mad raver, a poet, a mortal, -
While the gods and the heroes immortal
Struck the perjurer blind with their glance.
No longer he seeth where beauty
Abideth untouched of the earth-stained;
No more shall he mark in her coming
Persephone's noiseless feet;
No more, when Helen approacheth,
Shall he know the star of her forehead,
And Helen the false shall decoy him
With wiles and tales of her own.
Lovers, ah, lovers inconstant !
Ye have slain but the form and the semblance.
Know ye your Helen has vanished
And sleeps on a hero's breast.
Hers is the fire undying,
The light and the flame of the singer,
The mariner's lamp and his beacon,
His harbor of home and his rest.
ANNIE FIELDS.
## p. 16787 (#487) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16787
AFTER CONSTRUING
L
ORD CÆSAR, when you sternly wrote
The story of your grim campaigns,
And watched the ragged smoke-wreath float
Above the burning plains,
Amid the impenetrable wood,
Amid the camp's incessant hum,
At eve, beside the tumbling flood
In high Avaricum,
You little recked, imperious head,
When shrilled your shattering trumpet's noise,
Your frigid sections would be read
By bright-eyed English boys.
Ah, me! who penetrates to-day
The secret of your deep designs,
Your sovereign visions, as you lay
Amid the sleeping lines ?
The Mantuan singer pleading stands;
From century to century
He leans and reaches wistful hands,
And cannot bear to die.
But you are silent, secret, proud,
No smile upon your haggard face;
As when you eyed the murderous crowd
Beside the statue's base.
I marvel: that Titanic heart
Beats strongly through the arid page;
And we, self-conscious sons of art,
In this bewildering age,
Like dizzy revelers stumbling out
Upon the pure and peaceful night,
Are sobered into troubled doubt,
As swims across our sight
The ray of that sequestered sun,
Far in the illimitable blue,
The dream of all you left undone,
Of all you dared to do.
ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON.
## p. 16788 (#488) ##########################################
16788
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
THE MODERN ROMANS
U?
NDER the slanting light of the yellow sun of October, (track.
A "gang of Dagos” were working close by the side of the car-
Pausing a moment to catch a note of their liquid Italian,
Faintly I heard an echo of Rome's imperial accents,--
Broken-down forms of Latin words from the Senate and Forum,
Now smoothed over by use to the musical lingua Romana.
Then came the thought, Why! these are the heirs of the conquering
Romans;
These are the sons of the men who founded the empire of Cæsar.
These are they whose fathers carried the conquering eagles
Over all Gaul and across the sea to Ultima Thule.
(ures
The race-type persists unchanged in their eyes, and profiles, and fig-
Muscular, short, and thick-set, with prominent noses, recalling
“Romanos rerum dominos, gentemque togatam. ”
See: Labienus is swinging a pick with rhythmical motion;
Yonder one pushing the shovel might be Julius Cæsar, -
Lean, deep-eyed, broad-browed, and bald, a man of a thousand;
Further along stands the jolly Horatius Flaccus;
Grim and grave, with rings in his ears, see Cato the Censor;
And the next has precisely the bust of Cneius Pompeius.
Blurred and worn the surface, I grant, and the coin is but copper;
Look more closely, you'll catch a hint of the old superscription,
Perhaps the stem of a letter, perhaps a leaf of the laurel.
On the side of the street, in proud and gloomy seclusion,
“ Bossing the job,” stood a Celt, the race enslaved by the legions,
Sold in the market of Rome to meet the expenses of Cæsar.
And as I loitered, the Celt cried out, “Worruk, ye Dagos!
Full up your shovel, Paythro', ye haythen, - I'll dock yees a quarther! ”
This he said to the one who resembled the great imperator.
Meekly the dignified Roman kept on patiently digging.
Such are the changes and chances the centuries bring to the nations.
Surely the ups and downs of this world are past calculation.
How the races troop o'er the stage in endless procession!
Persian and Arab and Greek, and Hun and Roman and Saxon,
Master the world in turn, and then disappear in the darkness,
Leaving a remnant as hewers of wood and drawers of water.
« Possibly” (this I thought to myself) “the yoke of the Irish
May in turn be lifted from us in the tenth generation.
Now the Celt is on top; but time may bring his revenges,
Turning the Fenian down once more to be (bossed by a Dago. ) »
CHARLES FREDERICK JOHNSON.
## p. 16789 (#489) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16789
ADDRESS TO THE MUMMY IN BELZONI'S EXHIBITION
AND
ND thou hast walked about (how strange a story! )
In Thebes's streets three thousand years ago,
When the Memnonium was in all its glory,
And time had not begun to overthrow
Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous,
Of which the very ruins are tremendous ?
Speak! for thou long enough hast acted dummy;
Thou hast a tongue come, let us hear its tune.
Thou'rt standing on thy legs, above ground, mummy!
Revisiting the glimpses of the moon;
Not like thin ghosts or disembodied creatures,
But with thy bones, and flesh, and limbs, and features.
Tell us
for doubtless thou canst recollect
To whom should we assign the Sphinx's fame?
Was Cheops or Cephrenes architect
Of either pyramid that bears his name?
Is Pompey's Pillar really a misnomer?
Had Thebes a hundred gates, as sung by Homer ?
Perhaps thou wert a Mason, and forbidden
By oath to tell the secrets of thy trade;
Then say what secret melody was hidden
In Memnon's statue, which at sunrise played?
Perhaps thou wert a priest;- if so, my struggles
Are vain, for priestcraft never owns its juggles.
Perhaps that very hand, now pinioned flat,
Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass;
Or dropped a halfpenny in Homer's hat;
Or doffed thine own to let Queen Dido pass;
Or held, by Solomon's own invitation,
A torch at the great Temple's dedication.
I need not ask thee if that hand, when armed,
Has any Roman soldier mauled and knuckled;
For thou wert dead, and buried, and embalmed,
Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled :
Antiquity appears to have begun
Long after thy primeval race was run.
Thou couldst develop — if that withered tongue
Might tell us what those sightless orbs have seen -
## p. 16790 (#490) ##########################################
16790
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
How the world looked when it was fresh and young,
And the great Deluge still had left it green;
Or was it then so old that history's pages
Contained no record of its early ages ?
Still silent! Incommunicative elf!
Art sworn to secrecy? then keep thy vows;
But prythee tell us something of thyself -
Reveal the secrets of thy prison-house:
Since in the world of spirits thou hast slumbered,
What hast thou seen – what strange adventures numbered ?
Since first thy form was in this box extended,
We have above ground seen some strange mutations:
The Roman empire has begun and ended -
New worlds have risen we have lost old nations;
And countless kings have into dust been humbled,
While not a fragment of thy Aesh has crumbled.
Didst thou not hear the pother o'er thy head
When the great Persian conqueror, Cambyses,
Marched armies o'er thy tomb with thundering tread —
O'erthrew Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis;
And shook the pyramids with fear and wonder,
When the gigantic Memnon fell asunder?
If the tomb's secrets may not be confessed,
The nature of thy private life unfold:
A heart has throbbed beneath that leathern breast,
And tears adown that dusty cheek have rolled;
Have children climbed those knees and kissed that face?
What was thy name and station, age and race ?
Statue of flesh - immortal of the dead!
Imperishable type of evanescence!
Posthumous man — who quitt'st thy narrow bed,
And standest undecayed within our presence!
Thou wilt hear nothing till the Judgment morning,
When the great trump shall thrill thee with its warning.
Why should this worthless tegument endure,
If its undying guest be lost forever?
Oh! let us keep the soul embalmed and pure
In living virtue - that when both must sever,
Although corruption may our frame consume,
The immortal spirit in the skies may bloom!
CE SMITH,
## p. 16791 (#491) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16791
A KING IN EGYPT
THINK I lie by the lingering Nile;
I think I am one that has lain long while,
My lips sealed up in a solemn smile,
In the lazy land of the loitering Nile.
I
I think I lie in the Pyramid,
And the darkness weighs on the closed eyelid,
And the air is heavy where I am hid,
With the stone on stone of the Pyramid.
I think there are graven godhoods grim,
That look from the walls of my chamber dim,
And the hampered hand and the muffled limb
Lie fixed in the spell of their gazes grim.
I think I lie in a languor vast,
Numb, dumb soul in a body fast,
Waiting long as the world shall last,
Lying cast in a languor vast;
Lying muffled in fold on fold,
With the gum and the gold and the spice enrolled,
And the grain of a year that is old, old, old,
Wound around in the fine-spun fold.
The sunshine of Egypt is on my tomb;
I feel it warming the still, thick gloom,
Warming and waking an old perfume,
Through the carven honors upon my tomb.
The old sunshine of Egypt is on the stone;
And the sands lie red that the wind hath sown,
And the lean, lithe lizard at play alone
Slides like a shadow across the stone.
And I lie with the Pyramid over my head,
I am lying dead, lying long, long dead,
With my days all done, and my words all said,
And the deeds of my days written over my head.
HELEN THAYER HUTCHESON.
## p. 16792 (#492) ##########################################
16792
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
THE WORLD'S JUSTICE
1
F THE sudden tidings came
That on some far, foreign coast,
Buried ages long from fame,
Had been found a remnant lost
Of that hoary race who dwelt
By the golden Nile divine,
Spake the Pharaohs' tongue, and knelt
At the moon-crowi Isis's shrine, -
How at reverend Egypt's feet
Pilgrims from all lands would meet!
If the sudden news were known,
That anigh the desert place
Where once blossomed Babylon,
Scions of a mighty race
Still survived, of giant build, -
Huntsmen, warriors, priest and sage,
Whose ancestral fame had filled,
Trumpet-tongued, the earlier age,-
How at old Assyria's feet
Pilgrims from all lands would meet!
Yet when Egypt's self was young,
And Assyria's bloom unworn,
Ere the mythic Homer sung,
Ere the gods of Greece were born,
Lived the nation of one God,
Priests of freedom, sons of Shem,
Never quelled by yoke or rod,
Founders of Jerusalem;
Is there one abides to-day?
Stand straight! 'Bout face! Salute your officer!
Put up that paw! Dress! Take your rifle!
(Some dogs have arms, you see! ) Now hold your
Cap while the gentlemen give a trifle,
To aid a poor old patriot soldier!
March! Halt! Now show how the rebel shakes
When he stands up to hear his sentence.
Now tell us how many drams it takes
To honor a jolly new acquaintance.
Five yelps, - that's five; he's mighty knowing !
The night's before us, fill the glasses !
Quick, sir! I'm ill — my brain is going!
Some brandy - thank you - there, it passes!
Why not reform ? That's easily said;
But I've gone through such wretched treatment,
Sometimes forgetting the taste of bread,
And scarce remembering what meat meant,
That my poor stomach's past reform;
And there are times when, mad with thinking,
I'd sell out heaven for something warm
To prop a horrible inward sinking.
Is there a way to forget to think ?
At your age, sir, home, fortune, friends,
A dear girl's love — but I took to drink -
The same old story: you know how it ends.
If you could have seen these classic features,
You needn't laugh, sir: they were not then
Such a burning libel on God's creatures;
I was one of your handsome men !
If you had seen her, so fair and young,
Whose head was happy on this breast!
If you could have heard the songs I sung
When the wine went round, you wouldn't have guessed
That ever I, sir, should be straying
From door to door, with fiddle and dog,
## p. 16764 (#464) ##########################################
16764
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
Ragged and penniless, and playing
To you to-night for a glass of grog!
She's married since,- a parson's wife:
'Twas better for her that we should part, -
Better the soberest, prosiest life
Than a blasted home and a broken heart.
I have seen her ? Once: I was weak and spent
On the dusty road; a carriage stopped:
But little she dreamed, as on she went,
Who kissed the coin that her fingers dropped!
You've set me talking. sir; I'm sorry:
It makes me wild to think of the change!
What do you care for a beggar's story?
Is it amusing? you find it strange ?
I had a mother so proud of me!
'Twas well she died before — Do you know
If the happy spirits in heaven can see
The ruin and wretchedness here below ?
Another glass, and strong, to deaden
This pain; then Roger and I will start.
I wonder, has he such a lumpish, leaden,
Aching thing in place of a heart ?
He is sad sometimes, and would weep, if he could,
No doubt, remembering things that were, -
A virtuous kennel, with plenty of food,
And himself a sober, respectable cur.
I'm better now: that glass was warming.
You rascal! limber your lazy feet!
We must be fiddling and performing
For supper and bed, or starve in the street.
Not a very gay life to lead, you think?
But soon we shall go where lodgings are free,
And the sleepers need neither victuals nor drink; -
The sooner the better for Roger and me!
JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE.
## p. 16765 (#465) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16765
THE PAUPER'S DRIVE
Thr
HERE's a grim one-horse hearse in a jolly round trot,-
To the church-yard a pauper is going, I wot:
The road it is rough, and the hearse has no springs;
And hark to the dirge which the mad driver sings:-
Rattle his bones over the stones!
He's only a pauper whom nobody owns!
Oh, where are the mourners ? Alas! there are none;
He has left not a gap in the world, now he's gone,-
Not a tear in the eye of child, woman, or man:
To the grave with his carcass as fast as you can.
Rattle his bones over the stones!
He's only a pauper whom nobody owns !
What a jolting, and creaking, and splashing, and din!
The whip, how it cracks! and the wheels, how they spin!
How the dirt, right and left, o'er the hedges is hurled! -
The pauper at length makes a noise in the world!
Rattle his bones over the stones!
He's only a pauper whom nobody owns!
Poor pauper defunct! he has made some approach
To gentility, now that he's stretched in a coach!
He's taking a drive in his carriage at last;
But it will not be long, if he goes on so fast.
Rattle his bones over the stones!
He's only a pauper whom nobody owns!
You bumpkins! who stare at your brother conveyed,
Behold what respect to a cloddy is paid !
And be joyful to think, when by death you're laid low,
You've a chance to the grave like a "gemman” to go!
Rattle his bones over the stones!
He's only a pauper whom nobody owns!
But a truce to this strain; for my soul it is sad,
To think that a heart in humanity clad
Should make, like the brutes, such a desolate end,
And depart from the light without leaving a friend !
Bear soft his bones over the stones!
Though a pauper, he's one whom his Maker yet owns !
THOMAS NOEL.
## p. 16766 (#466) ##########################################
16766
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
THE MASTER'S TOUCH
I
N THE still air the music lies unheard;
In the rough marble beauty hides unseen:
To make the music and the beauty, needs
The master's touch, the sculptor's chisel keen.
Great Master, touch us with thy skillful hand;
Let not the music that is in us die:
Great Sculptor, hew and polish us; not let,
Hidden and lost, thy form within us lie!
Spare not the stroke! do with us as thou wilt!
Let there be naught unfinished, broken, marred;
Complete thy purpose, that we may become
Thy perfect image, thou our God and Lord!
HORATIUS BONAR.
THE MAKING OF MEN
A
S THE insect from the rock
Takes the color of its wing;
As the bowlder from the shock
Of the ocean's rhythmic swing
Makes itself a perfect form,
Learns a calmer front to raise ;
As the shell, enameled warm
With the prism's mystic rays.
Praises wind and wave that make
All its chambers fair and strong;
As the mighty poets take
Grief and pain to build their song:
Even so for every soul,
Whatsoe'er its lot may be,-
Building, as the heavens roll,
Something large and strong and free, -
Things that hurt and things that mar
Shape the man for perfect praise;
Shock and strain and ruin are
Friendlier than the smiling days.
JOHN WHITE CHADWICK.
## p. 16767 (#467) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16767
THE LARGER PRAYER
A
T FIRST I prayed for Light:
Could I but see the way,
How gladly, swiftly would I walk
To everlasting day!
And next I prayed for Strength,
That I might tread the road
With firm, unfaltering feet, and win
The heavens' serene abode.
And then I asked for Faith:
Could I but trust my God,
I'd live enfolded in his peace,
Though foes were all abroad.
But now I pray for Love:
Deep love to God and man;
A living love that will not fail,
However dark his plan;
And Light and Strength and Faith
Are opening everywhere!
God only waited for me till
I prayed the larger prayer.
EDNAH DEAN CHENEY.
GIFTS
“Ο
WORLD-God, give me wealth! " the Egyptian cried.
His prayer was granted. High as heaven, behold
Palace and pyramid; the brimming tide
Of lavish Nile washed all his land with gold.
Armies of slaves toiled ant-wise at his feet,
World-circling traffic roared through mart and street;
His priests were gods; his spice-balmed kings enshrined
Set death at naught in rock-ribbed charnels deep.
Seek Pharaoh's race to-day, and ye shall find
Rust and the moth, silence and dusty sleep.
«O World-God, give me beauty! ) cried the Greek.
His prayer was granted. All the earth became
Plastic and vocal to his sense; each peak,
Each grove, each stream, quick with Promethean flame;
## p. 16768 (#468) ##########################################
16768
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
Peopled the world with imaged grace and light.
The lyre was his, and his the breathing might
Of the immortal marble, his the play
Of diamond-pointed thought and golden tongue.
Go seek the sunshine race, ye find to-day
A broken column and a lute unstrung.
“O World-God, give me power! ” the Roman cried.
His prayer was granted. The vast world was chained
A captive to the chariot of his pride;
The blood of myriad provinces was drained
To feed that fierce, insatiable red heart.
Invulnerably bulwarked every part
With serried legions and with close-meshed code,
Within, the burrowing worm had gnawed its home;
A roofless ruin stands where once abode
The imperial race of everlasting Rome.
“O Godhead, give me truth! ” the Hebrew cried.
His prayer was granted: he became the slave
Of the Idea, a pilgrim far and wide,
Cursed, hated, spurned, and scourged with none to save.
The Pharaohs knew him; and when Greece beheld,
His wisdom wore the hoary crown of eld.
Beauty he hath forsworn, and wealth and power.
Seek him to-day, and find in every land;
No fire consumes him, neither foods devour:
Immortal through the lamp within his hand.
EMMA LAZARUS.
A POET'S HOPE
L"
ADY, there is a hope that all men have,-
Some mercy for their faults, a grassy place
To rest in, and a flower-strewn, gentle grave;
Another hope which purifies our race,–
That when that fearful bourn's forever past,
They may find rest — and rest so long to last.
I seek it not, I ask no rest forever:
My path is onward to the farthest shores.
Upbear me in your arms, unceasing river,
That from the soul's clear fountain swiftly pours,
## p. 16769 (#469) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16769
Motionless not until the end is won,
Which now I feel hath scarcely felt the sun.
To feel, to know, to soar unlimited,
'Mid throngs of light-winged angels sweeping far,
And pore upon the realms unvisited
That tessellate the unseen unthought star;
To be the thing that now I feebly dream
Flashing within my faintest, deepest gleam!
Ah, caverns of my soul! how thick your shade,
Where flows that life by which I faintly see:
Wave your bright torches, for I need your aid,
Golden-eyed dæmons of my ancestry!
Your son though blinded hath a light within,
A heavenly fire which ye from suns did win.
O Time! O Death! I clasp you in my arms,
For I can soothe an infinite cold sorrow,
And gaze contented on your icy charms,
And that wild snow-pile which we call to-morrow;
Sweep on, O soft and azure-lidded sky,
Earth's waters to your gentle gaze reply.
I am not earth-born, though I here delay:
Hope's child, I summon infiniter powers,
And laugh to see the mild and sunny day
Smile on the shrunk and thin autumnal hours;
I laugh, for hope hath happy place with me,-
If my bark sinks, 'tis to another sea.
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.
THE LAST POET
“WHEN
HEN will your bards be weary
Of rhyming on? How long
Ere it is sung and ended,
The old, eternal song ?
«Is it not long since empty,
The horn of full supply;
And all the posies gathered,
And all the fountains dry?
XXVIII-1049
## p. 16770 (#470) ##########################################
16770
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
As long as the sun's chariot
Yet keeps its azure track,
And but one human visage
Gives answering glances back;
As long as skies shall nourish
The thunderbolt and gale,
And frightened at their fury,
One throbbing heart shall quail;
As long as after tempests
Shall spring one showery bow,
One breast with peaceful promise
And reconcilement glow;
As long as night the concave
Sows with its starry seed,
And but one man those letters
Of golden writ can read;
Long as a moonbeam glimmers,
Or bosom sighs a vow;
Long as the wood-leaves rustle
To cool a weary brow;
As long as cypress shadows
The graves more mournful make,
Or one cheek's wet with weeping,
Or one poor heart can break;
So long on earth shall wander
The goddess Poesy,
And with her, one exulting
Her votarist to be.
And singing on, triumphing,
The old earth-mansion through,
Out marches the last minstrel;-
He is the last man too.
The Lord holds the creation
Forth in his hand meanwhile,
Like a fresh flower just opened,
And views it with a smile.
When once this Flower Giant
Begins to show decay,
## p. 16771 (#471) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16771
And earths and suns are flying
Like blossom-dust away;
Then ask,- if of the question
Not weary yet, -- "How long
Ere it is sung and ended,
The old, eternal song ? ”
ANASTASIUS GRÜN.
Translation of N. L. Frothingham.
WE ARE THE MUSIC-MAKERS
W*
E ARE the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world forever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample a kingdom down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the Old of the New World's worth:
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY.
## p. 16772 (#472) ##########################################
16772
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
· ACCORDANCE
H
E WHO with bold and skillful hand sweeps o'er
The organ-keys of some cathedral pile,
Flooding with music, vault and nave and aisle,
Though on his ear falls but a thundrous roar,-
In the composer's lofty motive free,
Knows well that all that temple vast and dim
Thrills to its base with anthem, psalm, and hymn
True to the changeless laws of harmony.
So he who on these changing chords of life,
With firm, sweet touch plays the Great Master's score
Of truth, and love, and duty, evermore,
Knows too that far beyond this roar and strife,
Though he may never hear, in the true time
These notes must all accord in symphonies sublime.
ANNE C. L. BOTTA.
CHOPIN
I
A
DREAM of interlinking hands, of feet
Tireless to spin the unseen, fairy woof
Of the entangling waltz. Bright eyebeams meet,
Gay laughter echoes from the vaulted roof.
Warm perfumes rise; the soft unflickering glow
Of branching lights sets off the changeful charms
Of glancing gems, rich stuffs, the dazzling snow
Of necks unkerchieft, and bare, clinging arms.
Hark to the music! How beneath the strain
Of reckless revelry, vibrates and sobs
One fundamental chord of constant pain,
The pulse-beat of the poet's heart that throbs.
So yearns, though all the dancing waves rejoice,
The troubled sea's disconsolate, deep voice.
II
Who shall proclaim the golden fable false
Of Orpheus's miracles? This subtle strain
Above our prose world's sordid loss and gain
Lightly uplifts us. With the rhythmic waltz,
## p. 16773 (#473) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16773
The lyric prelude, the nocturnal song
Of love and languor, varied visions rise,
That melt and blend to our enchanted eyes.
The Polish poet who sleeps silenced long,
The seraph-souled musician, breathes again
Eternal eloquence, immortal pain.
Revived the exalted face we know so well,
The illuminated eyes, the fragile frame,
Slowly consuming with its inward flame -
We stir not, speak not, lest we break the spell.
III
A voice was needed, sweet and true and fine
As the sad spirit of the evening breeze,
Throbbing with human passion, yet divine
As the wild bird's untutored melodies.
A voice for him 'neath twilight heavens dim,
Who mourneth for his dead, while round him fall
The wan and noiseless leaves. A voice for him
Who sees the first green sprout, who hears the call
Of the first robin on the first spring day.
A voice for all whom Fate hath set apart,
Who, still misprized, must perish by the way,
Longing with love, for that they lack the art
Of their own soul's expression. For all these
Sing the unspoken hope, the vague, sad reveries.
IV
Then Nature shaped a poet's heart, - a lyre
From out whose chords the slightest breeze that blows
Drew trembling music, wakening sweet desire.
How shall she cherish him? Behold! she throws
This precious, fragile treasure in the whirl
Of seething passions: he is scourged and stung;
Must dive in storm-vext seas, if but one pearl
Of art or beauty therefrom may be wrung.
No pure-browed pensive nymph his Muse shall be:
An Amazon of thought with sovereign eyes,
Whose kiss was poison, man-brained, worldly-wise,
Inspired that elfin, delicate harmony.
Rich gain for us! But with him is it well ? —
The poet who must sound earth, heaven, and hell!
EMMA LAZARUS.
## p. 16774 (#474) ##########################################
16774
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
WHAT THE SONNET IS
F
OURTEEN small broidered berries on the hem
Of Circe's mantle, each of magic gold;
Fourteen of lone Calypso's tears that rolled
Into the sea, for pearls to come of them;
Fourteen clear signs of omen in the gem
With which Medea human fate foretold;
Fourteen small drops which Faustus, growing old,
Craved of the Fiend, to water life's dry stem.
It is the pure white diamond Dante brought
To Beatrice; the sapphire Laura wore
When Petrarch cut it sparkling out of thought;
The ruby Shakespeare hewed from his heart's core:
The dark, deep emerald that Rossetti wrought
For his own soul, to wear for evermore.
EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON.
THE BOOK-STALL
11
T STANDS in a winding street,
A quiet and restful nook,
Apart from the endless beat
Of the noisy heart of Trade:
There's never a spot more cool
Of a hot midsummer day
By the brink of a forest pool,
Or the bank of a crystal brook
In the maple's breezy shade,
Than the book-stall old and gray.
Here are precious gems of thought
That were quarried long ago,
Some in vellum bound, and wrought
With letters and lines of gold;
Here are curious rows of “calf,”
And perchance an Elzevir;
Here are countless (mos) of chaff,
And a parchment folio,
Like leaves that are cracked with cold,
All puckered and brown and sear.
In every age and clime
Live the monarchs of the brain:
## p. 16775 (#475) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16775
And the lords of prose and rhyme,
Years after the long last sleep
Has come to the kings of earth
And their names have passed away,
Rule on through death and birth;
And the thrones of their domain
Are found where the shades are deep
In the book-stall old and gray.
1
CLINTON SCOLLARD.
A BOOK-LOVER'S APOLOGIA
TEA
EMPTATIon lurks in every leaf
Of printed page or cover,
Whene'er I haunt the book-shops old,
Their treasures rare discover;
Or when, in choicest catalogues,
Among which I'm a rover,
My heart leaps up their names to see,-
For am I not their lover ?
I linger o'er each dainty page
With loving touch and tender;
But find their sweet, seductive charms
Soon call me to surrender.
Brave fight, 'twixt heart and my lean purse,
My loved books' strong defender!
More precious for the valiant strife
That love is called to render!
But when in Bibliopolis
Their dear forms round me cluster,
While rank on rank and file on file
In gathering numbers muster,
Think you I mind the sordid tongues
That soulless talk and bluster,
Or weigh, against their priceless worth,
The golden dollar's lustre?
Ah, no! since there are drink and food
For which the soul has longings,
And in its daily, upward strife,
Finds both in such belongings,-
## p. 16776 (#476) ##########################################
16776
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS*
Dear books! loved friends, full meet ye are
To greet the earliest dawnings
Of all the happiest days in life,
Of all its brightest mornings!
HARRIETTE C. S. BUCKHAM.
THE CHRYSALIS OF A BOOKWORM
I
READ, O friend, no pages of old lore,
Which I loved well — and yet the flying days,
That softly passed as wind through green spring ways
And left a perfume, swift fly as of yore;
Though in clear Plato's stream I look no more,
Neither with Moschus sing Sicilian lays,
Nor with bold Dante wander in amaze,
Nor see our Will the Golden Age restore.
I read a book to which old books are new,
And new books old. A living book is mine -
In age, three years: in it I read no lies,
In it to myriad truths I find the clue -
A tender little child; but I divine
Thoughts high as Dante's in her clear blue eyes.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN.
TO THE MEMORY OF BEN JONSON
T"
He Muse's fairest light in no dark time,
The wonder of a learned age; the line
Which none can pass! the most proportioned wit, -
To nature, the best judge of what was fit;
The deepest, plainest, highest, clearest pen;
The voice most echoed by consenting men;
The soul which answered best to all well said
By others, and which most requital made;
Tuned to the highest key of ancient Rome,
Returning all her music with his own;
In whom, with nature, study claimed a part,
And yet who to himself owed all his art:
Here lies Ben Jonson! every age will look
With sorrow here, with wonder on his book.
JOHN CLEVELAND.
## p. 16777 (#477) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16777
GIVE ME THE OLD
« Old Wine to drink, Old Wood to burn, Old Books to read, Old Friends to
converse with. ”
O
LD wine to drink!
Ay, give the slippery juice
That drippeth from the grape thrown loose
Within the tun;
Plucked from beneath the cliff
Of sunny-sided Teneriffe,
And ripened 'neath the blink
Of India's sun!
Peat whisky hot,
Tempered with well-boiled water!
These make the long night shorter :
Forgetting not
Good stout old English porter.
Old wood to burn!
Ay, bring the hillside beech
From where the owlets meet and screech,
And ravens croak;
The crackling pine, and cedar sweet:
Bring too a clump of fragrant peat,
Dug 'neath the fern;
The knotted oak,
A fagot too, perhap,
Whose bright Aame dancing, winking,
Shall light us at our drinking;
While the oozing sap
Shall make sweet music to our thinking.
Old books to read!
Ay, bring those nodes of wit,
The brazen-clasped, the vellum-writ,
Time-honored tomes !
The same my sire scanned before,
The same my grandsire thumbed o'er,
The same his sire from college bore, -
The well-earned meed
Of Oxford's domes:
Old Homer blind,
Old Horace, rake Anacreon, by
Old Tully, Plautus, Terence, lie;
Mort Arthur's olden minstrelsie,
## p. 16778 (#478) ##########################################
16778
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
Quaint Burton, quainter Spenser, ay!
And Gervase Markham's venerie:
Nor leave behind
The Holye Book by which we live and die.
Old friends to talk!
Ay, bring those chosen few,
The wise, the courtly, and the true,
So rarely found:
Him for my wine, him for my stud,
Himn for my easel, distich, bud
In mountain walk!
Bring Walter good,
With soulful Fred, and learned Will:
And thee, my alter ego (dearer still
For every mood).
ROBERT HINCKLEY MESSINGER.
MAURICE DE GUÉRIN
THE
He old wine filled him, and he saw, with eyes
Anoint of Nature, fauns and dryads fair
Unseen by others; to him maidenhair
And waxen lilacs, and those birds that rise
A-sudden from tall reeds at slight surprise,
Brought charmed thoughts; and in earth everywhere
He, like sad Jaques, found a music rare
As that of Syrinx to old Grecians wise.
A pagan heart, a Christian soul had he:
He followed Christ, yet for dead Pan he sighed,
Till earth and heaven met within his breast;
As if Theocritus in Sicily
Had come upon the Figure crucified,
And lost his gods in deep Christ-given rest.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN.
## p. 16779 (#479) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16779
THEOCRITUS
AM
H! UNTO thee belong
The pipe and song,
Theocritus, –
Loved by the satyr and the faun!
To thee the olive and the vine,
To thee the Mediterranean pine,
And the soft lapping sea!
Thine, Bacchus,
Thine the blood-red revels,
Thine the bearded goat !
Soft valleys unto thee,
And Aphrodite's shrine,
And maidens veiled in falling robes of lawn!
But unto us, to us,
The stalwart glories of the North :
Ours is the sounding main,
And ours the voices uttering forth
By midnight round these cliffs a mighty strain;
A tale of viewless islands in the deep
Washed by the waves' white fire,
Of mariners rocked asleep
In the great cradle, far from Grecian ire
Of . Neptune and his train:
To us, to us,
· The dark-leaved shadow and the shining birch,
The Alight of gold through hollow woodlands driven,
Soft dying of the year with many a sigh, –
These, all, to us are given!
And eyes that eager evermore shall search
The hidden seed, and searching find again
Unfading blossoms of a fadeless spring, -
These, these, to us!
The sacred youth and maid,
Coy and half afraid;
The sorrowful earthly pall,
Winter and wintry rain,
And Autumn's gathered grain,
With whispering music in their fall, —
These unto us!
And unto thee, Theocritus,
To thee,
## p. 16780 (#480) ##########################################
16780
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
The immortal childhood of the world,
The laughing waters of an inland sea,
And beckoning signal of a sail unfurled !
ANNIE FIELDS.
CARLYLE AND EMERSON
A
BALE-FIRE kindled in the night,
By night a blaze, by day a cloud,
With flame and smoke all England woke, -
It climbed so high, it roared so loud:
While over Massachusetts's pines
Uprose a white and steadfast star;
And many a night it hung unwatched, -
It shone so still, it seemed so far.
But Light is Fire, and Fire is Light;
And mariners are glad for these, -
The torch that flares along the coast,
The star that beams above the seas.
MONTGOMERY SCHUYLER.
THE AMERICAN PANTHEON
LINES ON GRISWOLD's POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA'
WEN
HEN Rufus Griswold built his pantheon wide,
And set a hundred poets round its walls,
Did he suppose their statues would abide
The tests of time, upon their pedestals ?
A hundred poets,- some in Parian stone
Perchance, and some in brittle plaster cast,
And some mere shades, whose names are scarcely known,
Dii minores of a voiceless past.
Time was when many there so neatly niched
Held each within his court a sovereign sway;
Each in his turn his little world enriched, -
The ephemeral poet-laureate of his day.
## p. 16781 (#481) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16781
Ah, what is fame! Star after star goes out,
Lost Pleiads in the firmament of Truth;
Our kings discrowned ere dies the distant shout
That hailed the coronation of their youth.
Few are the world's great singers. Far apart,
Thrilling with love, yet wrapped in solitude,
They sit communing with the common Heart
That binds the race in common brotherhood.
A wind of heaven o'er their musing breathes,
And wakes them into verse,- as April turns
The roadside banks to violets, and unsheaths
The forest flowers amid the leaves and ferns.
And we, who dare not wear the immortal crown
Or singing robes, at least may hear and dream
While strains from prophet lips come floating down,
Inspired by them to sing some humbler theme.
Nay, nothing can be lost whose living stems,
Rooted in truth, spring up to beauty's Aower.
The spangles of the stage may flout the gems
On queenly breasts — but only for an hour.
The fashion of the time shall stamp its own.
The heart, the radiant soul, the eternal truth
And beauty born of harmony, alone
Can claim the garlands of perennial youth.
Oh, not for fame the poet of to-day
Should hunger. Though the world his music scorn,
The after-time may hear, as mountains gray
Echo from depths unseen the Alpine horn.
So, while around this pantheon wide I stray,
Where poets from Freneau to Fay are set,
I doubt not each in turn has sung a lay
Some hearts are not quite willing to forget.
For who in barren rhyme and rhythm could spend
The costly hours the Muse alone should claim,
Did not some finer thought, some nobler end,
Breathe ardors sweeter than poetic fame?
CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH.
## p. 16782 (#482) ##########################################
16782
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
THE BOY VAN DYCK
A. D. 1608
IN
N THE gray old Flemish city
Sat a comely, fair-haired dame,
At a window's deep embrasure,
Bending o'er her broidery-frame.
Round her played her merry children,
As they wound about their heads
Fillets, pilfered in their mischief,
From her skeins of arras-threads.
Oft she turned her glance upon them,
Softly smiling at their play,
All the while her busy needle
Pricking in and out its way;
From the open casement gazing,
Where the landscape lay in view,
Striving from her silken treasures
To portray each varied hue.
(
>
“Nay, I cannot,” sighed she sadly,
As the threads dropped from her hold,
« Cannot match that steely sapphire,
Or that line of burnished gold.
How it sparkles as it stretches
Straight as any lance across !
Never hint of such a lustre
Lives within my brightest foss!
“Ah, that blaze of splendid color!
I could kneel with folded hands,
As I watch it slowly dying
Off the emerald pasture-lands.
How my crimson pales to ashen
In this flood of sunset hue,
Mocking all my poor endeavor,
Foiling all my skill can do! »
As they heard her sigh, the children
Pressed around their mother's knees:
“Nay” — they clamored — “where in Antwerp
Are there broideries such as these ?
Why, the famous master, Rubens,
Craves the piece we think so ra
e, -
## p. 16783 (#483) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16783
Asks our father's leave to paint it
Flung across the Emperor's chair!
« How ye talk! ” — she smiled. “Yet often,
As I draw my needle through,
Gloating o'er my tints, I fancy
I might be a painter too:
I, a woman, wife, and mother,
What have I to do with Art!
Are not ye my noblest pictures ?
Portraits painted from my heart!
« Yet I think, if inidst my seven
One should show the master's bent,
One should do the things I dream of, –
All my soul would rest content. ”
Straight the four-year-old Antonio
Answered, sobbing half aloud:
"I will be your painter, painting
Pictures that shall make you proud! ”
Quick she snatched this youngest darling,
Smoothing down his golden hair,
Kissing with a crazy rapture
Mouth and cheek and forehead fair
Saying mid her sobbing laughter,
“So! my baby! you would like
To be named with Flemish Masters,
Rembrandt, Rubens, and — Van Dyck ! » *
MARGARET J. PRESTON.
HELENA
I
AM Helen of Argos,
I am Helen of Sparta,
I, the daughter of Egypt,
I, the inflamer of Troy:
See me, Helen, still shining,
There where shines great Achilles :
Blossoms of summer I bring ye
Born not of shadows or dreams.
* The mother of Van Dyck was celebrated for her beautiful tapestry work.
From her, her distinguished son inherited that taste for lucid color which has
given him the name of «The Silvery Van Dyck. )
## p. 16784 (#484) ##########################################
16784
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
Early from Argos he bore me,
Theseus, inconstant of lovers:
Early in Argos he bound me,
He, Menelaus the King;
Queen of the court and of feasting,
Queen of the heart and the temple,
Goddess and priestess and mother,
Holding Hermione's hand.
There in the chambers of purple,
Fair as the statue he gathered
Worshiped by great Menelaus,
I, his Helen, remained;
Pure as when Theseus snatched me
First from the temple of Dian,
Dancing the dances of childhood,
Bare to her ivory floors.
Theseus snatched me and held me,
Hiding me far in Aphidnai;
Quickly I slipped from his covert,
I, no longer enslaved.
Ah! Menelaus the gentle,
Gently but strongly he bound me:
Lo! with the ships I departed, —
Ships that were sailing for Troy.
Paris had beckoned me hither;-
Waves were leaping around me,
Whispering of freedom and gladness,
Paris whispered of love:
Thus in the meshes entangled
Woven by hard Aphrodite,
Lost was I, slave to her service,
She, the compeller of men.
There on the turrets of Troia,
Watching the combat of heroes,
There in the eye of the noble,
Sent she a woman to me;
Calling me hence to serve Paris,
He, the lascivious, the perfumed, -
She, the compeller, she drove me
Hence in the faces of all.
Slave was I, bound was I, Helen!
Once the queen of the hearth-side;
## p. 16785 (#485) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16785
Bond was I, scorned, yet the mother,
Queen of Hermione's heart:
Gazing on Hector the princely, -
Dead, and Andromache weeping,
Tears were not mine! Alas, deeper
Lay my smart and my pain.
Hector, my brother beloved!
Dear to me, far above others,
Here on thy body lamenting
I too echo thy praise !
Listen, Andromache, listen!
Out of the deepness of silence
Calleth a voice unto thee:-
“Calm, 0 beloved, 0 dear one,
Calm are the valleys of Orcus,
Restful the streams and dim alleys
Shut from the clamor of men;
Restful to him who has labored,
Labored and loved and is waiting,-
Waiting to hold in his bosom
Child and mother again. ”
Hear me, Andromache, listen!
This is for thee; but for Helen
All is voiceless and barren,
Silent the valley of shades;
Faded her joy with the blossoms,
Dead on the heart of the summer!
Kypris, goddess, ah! free me,
Slave and child of thy will.
Long through the ages I suffered,
Suffered the calling of lovers;
Down through the ages I followed,
Won by the bidding of Faust:
Strong, unsubdued, and immortal,
I, the young mother of Sparta,
Stand here and bring ye these blossoms,
Fresh as the children of spring.
Down to the ships went the captives,
Unwilling procession of sorrow,
Cassandra behind Agamemnon,
Andromache bound with the rest:
XXVIII-1050
## p. 16786 (#486) ##########################################
16786
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
I, Helen, walked with my husband;
Level my glance of pure azure,
Rosy my cheeks, lest the Spartans
Think less well of their king.
Helen, that years could not alter,
Nor bees that deflower the lilies,-
Helen, child of immortals,
Holding the reins of his steed:
Thus through the gateway of Sparta,
When the fires of Troy were extinguished,
Proud in his gladness and glory,
Proudly I brought them their king.
One sang,
< Base was their Helen! )
I, standing far above splendor,
Calm in the circle of godhead,
Moved not by striving of men,
Heard thus Stesichorus the singer, -
Mad raver, a poet, a mortal, -
While the gods and the heroes immortal
Struck the perjurer blind with their glance.
No longer he seeth where beauty
Abideth untouched of the earth-stained;
No more shall he mark in her coming
Persephone's noiseless feet;
No more, when Helen approacheth,
Shall he know the star of her forehead,
And Helen the false shall decoy him
With wiles and tales of her own.
Lovers, ah, lovers inconstant !
Ye have slain but the form and the semblance.
Know ye your Helen has vanished
And sleeps on a hero's breast.
Hers is the fire undying,
The light and the flame of the singer,
The mariner's lamp and his beacon,
His harbor of home and his rest.
ANNIE FIELDS.
## p. 16787 (#487) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16787
AFTER CONSTRUING
L
ORD CÆSAR, when you sternly wrote
The story of your grim campaigns,
And watched the ragged smoke-wreath float
Above the burning plains,
Amid the impenetrable wood,
Amid the camp's incessant hum,
At eve, beside the tumbling flood
In high Avaricum,
You little recked, imperious head,
When shrilled your shattering trumpet's noise,
Your frigid sections would be read
By bright-eyed English boys.
Ah, me! who penetrates to-day
The secret of your deep designs,
Your sovereign visions, as you lay
Amid the sleeping lines ?
The Mantuan singer pleading stands;
From century to century
He leans and reaches wistful hands,
And cannot bear to die.
But you are silent, secret, proud,
No smile upon your haggard face;
As when you eyed the murderous crowd
Beside the statue's base.
I marvel: that Titanic heart
Beats strongly through the arid page;
And we, self-conscious sons of art,
In this bewildering age,
Like dizzy revelers stumbling out
Upon the pure and peaceful night,
Are sobered into troubled doubt,
As swims across our sight
The ray of that sequestered sun,
Far in the illimitable blue,
The dream of all you left undone,
Of all you dared to do.
ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON.
## p. 16788 (#488) ##########################################
16788
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
THE MODERN ROMANS
U?
NDER the slanting light of the yellow sun of October, (track.
A "gang of Dagos” were working close by the side of the car-
Pausing a moment to catch a note of their liquid Italian,
Faintly I heard an echo of Rome's imperial accents,--
Broken-down forms of Latin words from the Senate and Forum,
Now smoothed over by use to the musical lingua Romana.
Then came the thought, Why! these are the heirs of the conquering
Romans;
These are the sons of the men who founded the empire of Cæsar.
These are they whose fathers carried the conquering eagles
Over all Gaul and across the sea to Ultima Thule.
(ures
The race-type persists unchanged in their eyes, and profiles, and fig-
Muscular, short, and thick-set, with prominent noses, recalling
“Romanos rerum dominos, gentemque togatam. ”
See: Labienus is swinging a pick with rhythmical motion;
Yonder one pushing the shovel might be Julius Cæsar, -
Lean, deep-eyed, broad-browed, and bald, a man of a thousand;
Further along stands the jolly Horatius Flaccus;
Grim and grave, with rings in his ears, see Cato the Censor;
And the next has precisely the bust of Cneius Pompeius.
Blurred and worn the surface, I grant, and the coin is but copper;
Look more closely, you'll catch a hint of the old superscription,
Perhaps the stem of a letter, perhaps a leaf of the laurel.
On the side of the street, in proud and gloomy seclusion,
“ Bossing the job,” stood a Celt, the race enslaved by the legions,
Sold in the market of Rome to meet the expenses of Cæsar.
And as I loitered, the Celt cried out, “Worruk, ye Dagos!
Full up your shovel, Paythro', ye haythen, - I'll dock yees a quarther! ”
This he said to the one who resembled the great imperator.
Meekly the dignified Roman kept on patiently digging.
Such are the changes and chances the centuries bring to the nations.
Surely the ups and downs of this world are past calculation.
How the races troop o'er the stage in endless procession!
Persian and Arab and Greek, and Hun and Roman and Saxon,
Master the world in turn, and then disappear in the darkness,
Leaving a remnant as hewers of wood and drawers of water.
« Possibly” (this I thought to myself) “the yoke of the Irish
May in turn be lifted from us in the tenth generation.
Now the Celt is on top; but time may bring his revenges,
Turning the Fenian down once more to be (bossed by a Dago. ) »
CHARLES FREDERICK JOHNSON.
## p. 16789 (#489) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16789
ADDRESS TO THE MUMMY IN BELZONI'S EXHIBITION
AND
ND thou hast walked about (how strange a story! )
In Thebes's streets three thousand years ago,
When the Memnonium was in all its glory,
And time had not begun to overthrow
Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous,
Of which the very ruins are tremendous ?
Speak! for thou long enough hast acted dummy;
Thou hast a tongue come, let us hear its tune.
Thou'rt standing on thy legs, above ground, mummy!
Revisiting the glimpses of the moon;
Not like thin ghosts or disembodied creatures,
But with thy bones, and flesh, and limbs, and features.
Tell us
for doubtless thou canst recollect
To whom should we assign the Sphinx's fame?
Was Cheops or Cephrenes architect
Of either pyramid that bears his name?
Is Pompey's Pillar really a misnomer?
Had Thebes a hundred gates, as sung by Homer ?
Perhaps thou wert a Mason, and forbidden
By oath to tell the secrets of thy trade;
Then say what secret melody was hidden
In Memnon's statue, which at sunrise played?
Perhaps thou wert a priest;- if so, my struggles
Are vain, for priestcraft never owns its juggles.
Perhaps that very hand, now pinioned flat,
Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass;
Or dropped a halfpenny in Homer's hat;
Or doffed thine own to let Queen Dido pass;
Or held, by Solomon's own invitation,
A torch at the great Temple's dedication.
I need not ask thee if that hand, when armed,
Has any Roman soldier mauled and knuckled;
For thou wert dead, and buried, and embalmed,
Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled :
Antiquity appears to have begun
Long after thy primeval race was run.
Thou couldst develop — if that withered tongue
Might tell us what those sightless orbs have seen -
## p. 16790 (#490) ##########################################
16790
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
How the world looked when it was fresh and young,
And the great Deluge still had left it green;
Or was it then so old that history's pages
Contained no record of its early ages ?
Still silent! Incommunicative elf!
Art sworn to secrecy? then keep thy vows;
But prythee tell us something of thyself -
Reveal the secrets of thy prison-house:
Since in the world of spirits thou hast slumbered,
What hast thou seen – what strange adventures numbered ?
Since first thy form was in this box extended,
We have above ground seen some strange mutations:
The Roman empire has begun and ended -
New worlds have risen we have lost old nations;
And countless kings have into dust been humbled,
While not a fragment of thy Aesh has crumbled.
Didst thou not hear the pother o'er thy head
When the great Persian conqueror, Cambyses,
Marched armies o'er thy tomb with thundering tread —
O'erthrew Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis;
And shook the pyramids with fear and wonder,
When the gigantic Memnon fell asunder?
If the tomb's secrets may not be confessed,
The nature of thy private life unfold:
A heart has throbbed beneath that leathern breast,
And tears adown that dusty cheek have rolled;
Have children climbed those knees and kissed that face?
What was thy name and station, age and race ?
Statue of flesh - immortal of the dead!
Imperishable type of evanescence!
Posthumous man — who quitt'st thy narrow bed,
And standest undecayed within our presence!
Thou wilt hear nothing till the Judgment morning,
When the great trump shall thrill thee with its warning.
Why should this worthless tegument endure,
If its undying guest be lost forever?
Oh! let us keep the soul embalmed and pure
In living virtue - that when both must sever,
Although corruption may our frame consume,
The immortal spirit in the skies may bloom!
CE SMITH,
## p. 16791 (#491) ##########################################
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
16791
A KING IN EGYPT
THINK I lie by the lingering Nile;
I think I am one that has lain long while,
My lips sealed up in a solemn smile,
In the lazy land of the loitering Nile.
I
I think I lie in the Pyramid,
And the darkness weighs on the closed eyelid,
And the air is heavy where I am hid,
With the stone on stone of the Pyramid.
I think there are graven godhoods grim,
That look from the walls of my chamber dim,
And the hampered hand and the muffled limb
Lie fixed in the spell of their gazes grim.
I think I lie in a languor vast,
Numb, dumb soul in a body fast,
Waiting long as the world shall last,
Lying cast in a languor vast;
Lying muffled in fold on fold,
With the gum and the gold and the spice enrolled,
And the grain of a year that is old, old, old,
Wound around in the fine-spun fold.
The sunshine of Egypt is on my tomb;
I feel it warming the still, thick gloom,
Warming and waking an old perfume,
Through the carven honors upon my tomb.
The old sunshine of Egypt is on the stone;
And the sands lie red that the wind hath sown,
And the lean, lithe lizard at play alone
Slides like a shadow across the stone.
And I lie with the Pyramid over my head,
I am lying dead, lying long, long dead,
With my days all done, and my words all said,
And the deeds of my days written over my head.
HELEN THAYER HUTCHESON.
## p. 16792 (#492) ##########################################
16792
SONGS HYMNS AND LYRICS
THE WORLD'S JUSTICE
1
F THE sudden tidings came
That on some far, foreign coast,
Buried ages long from fame,
Had been found a remnant lost
Of that hoary race who dwelt
By the golden Nile divine,
Spake the Pharaohs' tongue, and knelt
At the moon-crowi Isis's shrine, -
How at reverend Egypt's feet
Pilgrims from all lands would meet!
If the sudden news were known,
That anigh the desert place
Where once blossomed Babylon,
Scions of a mighty race
Still survived, of giant build, -
Huntsmen, warriors, priest and sage,
Whose ancestral fame had filled,
Trumpet-tongued, the earlier age,-
How at old Assyria's feet
Pilgrims from all lands would meet!
Yet when Egypt's self was young,
And Assyria's bloom unworn,
Ere the mythic Homer sung,
Ere the gods of Greece were born,
Lived the nation of one God,
Priests of freedom, sons of Shem,
Never quelled by yoke or rod,
Founders of Jerusalem;
Is there one abides to-day?
