1. GIVE A ROUSE.King Charles, and who'll do him right now?King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,King Charles!Who gave me the goods that went since?Who raised me the house that sank once?Who helped me to gold I spent since?Who found me in wine you drank once?Cho. King Charles, and who'll do him right now?King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,King Charles!To whom used my boy George quaff else,By the old fool's side that begot him?For whom did he cheer and laugh else,While Noll's damned troopers shot him.Cho. King Charles, and who'll do him right now?King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,King Charles!II. BOOT AND SADDLE.Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!Rescue my castle before the hot dayBrightens to blue from its silvery gray.Cho. Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say;Many's the friend there, will listen and pray"God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay!"Cho. Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay,Flouts Castle Brancepeth the Roundhead's array:Who laughs, "Good fellows ere this, by my fay,Cho. Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!"Who? My wife Gertrude; that, honest and gay,Laughs when you talk of surrendering, "Nay!I've better counsellors; what counsel they?Cho. Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!"ROBERT BROWNING.
From Stratford-on-Avon a lane runs westward through the fields a mile to the little village of Shottery, in which is the cottage of Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's sweetheart and wife.
How often in the summer tide,His graver business set aside,Has stripling Will, the thoughtful-eyed,As to the pipe of PanStepped blithsomely with lover's prideAcross the fields to Anne!It must have been a merry mile,This summer-stroll by hedge and stile,With sweet foreknowledge all the whileHow sure the pathway ranTo dear delights of kiss and smile,Across the fields to Anne.The silly sheep that graze to-day,I wot, they let him go his way,Nor once looked up, as who should say:"It is a seemly man."For many lads went wooing ayeAcross the fields to Anne.The oaks, they have a wiser look;Mayhap they whispered to the brook:"The world by him shall yet be shook,It is in nature's plan;Though now he fleets like any rookAcross the fields to Anne."And I am sure, that on some hourCoquetting soft 'twixt sun and shower,He stooped and broke a daisy-flowerWith heart of tiny span,And bore it as a lover's dowerAcross the fields to Anne.While from her cottage garden-bedShe plucked a jasmine's goodlihede,To scent his jerkin's brown instead;Now since that love began,What luckier swain than he who spedAcross the fields to Anne?The winding path wheron I pace,The hedgerows green, the summer's grace,Are still before me face to face;Methinks I almost canTurn poet and join the singing raceAcross the fields to Anne!
RICHARD BURTON.
The green things growing, the green things growing,The faint sweet smell of the green things growing!I should like to live, whether I smile or grieve,Just to watch the happy life of my green things growing.Oh the fluttering and the pattering of those green things growing!How they talk each to each, when none of us are knowing;In the wonderful white of the weird moonlightOr the dim dreamy dawn when the cocks are crowing.I love, I love them so--my green things growing!And I think that they love me, without false showing;For by many a tender touch, they comfort me so much,With the soft mute comfort of green things growing.And in the rich store of their blossoms glowing,Ten for one I take they're on me bestowing:Oh, I should like to see, if God's will it may be,Many, many a summer of my green things growing!But if I must be gathered for the angels' sowing,Sleep out of sight a while like the green things growing,Though dust to dust return, I think I'll scarcely mourn,If I may change into green things growing.
DINAH MULOCK CRAIK.
1. There is a saying which is in all good men's mouths; namely, that they are stewards or ministers of whatever talents are entrusted to them. Only, is it not a strange thing that while we more or less accept the meaning of that saying, so long as it is considered metaphorical, we never accept its meaning in its own terms? You know the lesson is given us under the form of a story about money. Money was given to the servants to make use of: the unprofitable servant dug in the earth, and hid his Lord's money. Well, we in our poetical and spiritual application of this, say that of course money doesn't mean money—it means wit, it means intellect, it means influence in high quarters, it means everything in the world except itself.
2. And do you not see what a pretty and pleasant come-off there is for most of us in this spiritual application? Of course, if we had wit, we would use it for the good of our fellow-creatures; but we haven't wit. Of course, if we had influence with the bishops, we would use it for the good of the church; but we haven't any influence with the bishops. Of course, if we had political power, we would use it for the good of the nation; but we have no political power; we have no talents entrusted to us of any sort or kind. It is true, we have a little money, but the parable can't possibly mean anything so vulgar as money; our money's our own.
3. I believe, if you think seriously of this matter, you will feel that the first and most literal application is just as necessary a one as any other—that the story does very specially mean what it says—plain money; and that the reason we don't at once believe it does so, is a sort of tacit idea that while thought, wit and intellect, and all power of birth and position, are indeed given to us, and, therefore, to be laid out for the Giver,—our wealth has not been given to us; but we have worked for it, and have a right to spend it as we choose. I think you will find that is the real substance of our understanding in this matter. Beauty, we say, is given by God—it is a talent; strength is given by God—it is a talent; but money is proper wages for our day's work—it is not a talent, it is a due. We may justly spend it on ourselves, if we have worked for it.
4. And there would be some shadow of excuse for this, were it not that the very power of making the money is itself only one of the applications of that intellect or strength which we confess to be talents. Why is one man richer than another? Because he is more industrious, more persevering, and more sagacious. Well, who made him more persevering and more sagacious than others? That power of endurance, that quickness of apprehension, that calmness of judgment, which enable him to seize opportunities that others lose, and persist in the lines of conduct in which others fail—are these not talents?—are they not, in the present state of the world, among the most distinguished and influential of mental gifts?
5. And is it not wonderful, that while we should be utterly ashamed to use a superiority of body in order to thrust our weaker companions aside from some place of advantage, we unhesitatingly use our superiorities of mind to thrust them back from whatever good that strength of mind can attain? You would be indignant if you saw a strong man walk into a theatre or lecture-room, and, calmly choosing the best place, take his feeble neighbor by the shoulder, and turn him out of it into the back seats or the street. You would be equally indignant if you saw a stout fellow thrust himself up to a table where some hungry children are being fed, and reach his arm over their heads and take their bread from them.
6. But you are not the least indignant, if, when a man has stoutness of thought and swiftness of capacity, and, instead of being long-armed only, has the much greater gift of being long-headed—you think it perfectly just that he should use his intellect to take the bread out of the mouths of all the other men in the town who are in the same trade with him; or use his breadth and sweep of sight to gather some branch of the commerce of the country into one great cobweb, of which he is himself the central spider, making every thread vibrate with the points of his claws, and commanding every avenue with the facets of his eyes. You see no injustice in this.
7. But there is injustice; and, let us trust, one of which honorable men will at no very distant period disdain to be guilty. In some degree, however, it is indeed not unjust; in some degree it is necessary and intended. It is assuredly just that idleness should be surpassed by energy; that the widest influence should be possessed by those who are best able to wield it; and that a wise man at the end of his career, should be better off than a fool. But for that reason, is the fool to be wretched, utterly crashed down, and left in all the suffering which his conduct and capacity naturally inflict? Not so.
8. What do you suppose fools were made for? That you might tread upon them, and starve them, and get the better of them in every possible way? By no means. They were made that wise people might take care of them. That is the true and plain fact concerning the relations of every strong and wise man to the world about him. He has his strength given him, not that he may crush the weak, but that he may support and guide them. In his own household he is to be the guide and the support of his children; out of his household he is still to be the father, that is, the guide and support, of the weak and the poor; not merely of the meritoriously weak and the innocently poor, but of the guilty and punishably poor; of the men who ought to have known better—of the poor who ought to be ashamed of themselves.
9. It is nothing to give pension and cottage to the widow who has lost her son; it is nothing to give food and medicine to the workman who has broken his arm, or the decrepit woman wasting in sickness. But it is something to use your time and strength in war with the waywardness and thoughtlessness of mankind to keep the erring workman in your service till you have made him an unerring one; and to direct your fellow-merchant to the opportunity which his dullness would have lost.
10. This is much; but it is yet more, when you have fully achieved the superiority which is due to you, and acquired the wealth which is the fitting reward of your sagacity, if you solemnly accept the responsibility of it, as it is the helm and guide of labor far and near. For you who have it in your hands, are in reality the pilots of the power and effort of the State. It is entrusted to you as an authority to be used for good or evil, just as completely as kingly authority was ever given to a prince, or military command to a captain. And according to the quantity of it you have in your hands, you are arbiters of the will and work of the nation; and the whole issue, whether the work of the State shall suffice for the State or not, depends upon you.
11. You may stretch out your sceptre over the heads of the laborers, and say to them, as they stoop to its waving, "Subdue this obstacle that has baffled our fathers; put away this plague that consumes our children; water these dry places, plough these desert ones, carry this food to those who are in hunger; carry this light to those who are in darkness; carry this life to those who are in death;" or on the other side you may say: "Here am I; this power is in my hand; come, build a mound here for me to be throned upon, high and wide; come, make crowns for my head, that men may see them shine from far away; come, weave tapestries for my feet, that I may tread softly on the silk and purple; come, dance before me, that I may slumber; so shall I live in joy, and die in honor." And better than such an honorable death it were, that the day had perished wherein we were born.
12. I trust that in a little while there will be few of our rich men, who, through carelessness or covetousness, thus forfeit the glorious office which is intended for their hands. I said, just now, that wealth ill-used was as the net of the spider, entangling and destroying; but wealth well-used, is as the net of the sacred Fisher who gathers souls of men out of the deep. A time will come—I do not think it is far from us—when this golden net of the world's wealth will be spread abroad as the flaming meshes of morning cloud over the sky; bearing with them the joy of the light and the dew of the morning, as well as the summons to honorable and peaceful toil.
JOHN RUSKIN.
[This poem is taken from "The Poems of Sidney Lanier," copyrighted 1891, and published by Charles Scribner's Sons.]
If life were caught by a clarionet,And a wild heart, throbbing in the reed,Should thrill its joy and trill its fret,And utter its heart in every deed,"Then would this breathing clarionetType what the poet fain would be;For none o' the singers ever yetHas wholly lived his minstrelsy,"Or clearly sung his true, true thought,Or utterly bodied forth his life,Or out of life and song has wroughtThe perfect one of man and wife;"Or lived and sung, that Life and SongMight each express the other's all,Careless if life or art were longSince both were one, to stand or fall:"So that the wonder struck the crowd,Who shouted it about the land:His song was only living aloud,His work, a singing with his hand!"
SIDNEY LANIER.
1. When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech farther than as it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion.
2. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities.
3. Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object,—this, this is eloquence; or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence,—it is action, noble, sublime, god-like action.
DANIEL WEBSTER.
Does a man ever give up hope, I wonder,--Face the grim fact, seeing it clear as day?When Bennen saw the snow slip, heard its thunderLow, louder, roaring round him, felt the speedGrowing swifter as the avalanche hurled downward,Did he for just one heart-throb--did he indeedKnow with all certainty, as they swept onward,There was the end, where the crag dropped away?Or did he think, even till they plunged and fell,Some miracle would stop them? Nay, they tellThat he turned round, face forward, calm and pale,Stretching his arms out toward his native vale.As if in mute, unspeakable farewell,And so went down.--'Tis something if at last,Though only for a flash, a man may seeClear-eyed the future as he sees the past,From doubt, or fear, or hope's illusion free.
EDWARD ROWLAND SILL.
1. What is wise work, and what is foolish work? What the difference between sense and nonsense, in daily occupation? There are three tests of wise work:—that it must be honest, useful and cheerful.
It isHonest. I hardly know anything more strange than that you recognize honesty in play, and do not in work. In your lightest games, you have always some one to see what you call "fair-play." In boxing, you must hit fair; in racing, start fair. Your English watchword is "fair-play," your English hatred, "foul-play." Did it never strike you that you wanted another watchword also, "fair-work," and another and bitterer hatred,—"foul-work"?
2. Then wise work isUseful. No man minds, or ought to mind, its being hard, if only it comes to something; but when it is hard and comes to nothing, when all our bees' business turns to spiders', and for honey-comb we have only resultant cobweb, blown away by the next breeze,—that is the cruel thing for the worker. Yet do we ever ask ourselves, personally, or even nationally, whether our work is coming to anything or not?
3. Then wise work isCheerful, as a child's work is. Everybody in this room has been taught to pray daily, "Thy Kingdom come." Now if we hear a man swearing in the streets we think it very wrong, and say he "takes God's name in vain." But there's a twenty times worse way of taking His name in vain than that. It is toask God for what we don't want. If you don't want a thing don't ask for it: such asking is the worst mockery of your King you can insult Him with. If you do not wish for His kingdom, don't pray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for it; you must work for it. And, to work for it, you must know what it is.
4. Observe, it is a Kingdom that is to come to us; we are not to go to it. Also it is not to come all at once, but quietly; nobody knows how. "The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation." Also, it is not to come outside of us, but in our hearts: "The Kingdom of God is within you." Now if we want to work for this Kingdom, and to bring it, and to enter into it, there's one curious condition to be first accepted. We must enter into it as children, or not at all; "Whosoever will not receive it as a little child shall not enter therein." And again, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not,for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
5. Ofsuch, observe. Not of children themselves, but of such as children. It is thecharacterof children we want and must gain. It is modest, faithful, loving, and because of all these characters it is cheerful. Putting its trust in its father, it is careful for nothing—being full of love to every creature, it is happy always, whether in its play or in its duty. Well, that's the great worker's character also. Taking no thought for the morrow; taking thought only for the duty of the day; knowing indeed what labor is, but not what sorrow is; and always ready for play—beautiful play.
JOHN RUSKIN.
Our human speech is naught,Our human testimony false, our fameAnd human estimation words and wind.Why take the artistic way to prove so much?Because, it is the glory and good of Art,That Art remains the one way possibleOf speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least.How look a brother in the face and say"Thy right is wrong, eyes hast thou, yet art blind,Thine ears are stuffed and stopped, despite their length,And, oh, the foolishness thou countest faith!"Say this as silvery as tongue can troll--The anger of the man may be endured,The shrug, the disappointed eyes of himAre not so bad to bear--but here's the plague,That all this trouble comes of telling truth,Which truth, by when it reaches him, looks false,Seems to be just the thing it would supplant,Nor recognizable by whom it left;While falsehood would have done the work of truth.But Art,--wherein man nowise speaks to men,Only to mankind,--Art may tell a truthObliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought,Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word.So may you paint your picture, twice show truth,Beyond mere imagery on the wall,--So, note by note, bring music from your mind,Deeper than ever the Adante dived,--So write a book shall mean, beyond the facts,Suffice the eye, and save the soul besides.
1. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius.
Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they all set at naught books and tradition, and spoke not what men but whattheythought.
2. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
3. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
4. There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
5. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray.
6. We but half express ourselves, and we are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.
7. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.
8. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THIS FLOWER?
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,To please the desert and the sluggish brook.The purple petals, fallen in the pool,Made the black water with their beauty gay;Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,And court the flower that cheapens his array.Rhodora! if the sages ask thee whyThis charm is wasted on the earth and sky,Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!I never thought to ask, I never knew:But in my simple ignorance, supposeThe self-same Power that brought me there brought you.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown,Of thee from the hill-top looking down;The heifer that lows in the upland farm,Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,Deems not that great NapoleonStops his horse, and lists with delight,Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;Nor knowest thou what argumentThy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.All are needed by each one;Nothing is fair or good alone.I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,Singing at dawn on the alder bough;I brought him home, in his nest, at even;He sings the song, but it cheers not now,For I did not bring home the river and sky;--He sang to my ear,--they sang to my eye.The delicate shell lay on the shore;The bubbles of the latest waveFresh pearls to their enamel gave,And the bellowing of the savage seaGreeted their safe escape to me.I wiped away the weeds and foam,I fetched my sea-born treasures home;But the poor, unsightly, noisome thingsHad left their beauty on the shoreWith the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.The lover watched his graceful maid,As 'mid the virgin train she strayed,Nor knew her beauty's best attireWas woven still by the snow-white choir.At last she came to his hermitage,Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;--The gay enchantment was undone;A gentle wife, but fairy none.Then I said, "I covet truth;Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;I leave it behind with the games of youth:"--As I spoke, beneath my feetThe ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,Running over the club-moss burrs;I inhaled the violet's breath;Around me stood the oaks and firs;Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground;Over me soared the eternal sky,Full of light and of deity;Again I saw, again I heard,The rolling river, the morning bird;--Beauty through my senses stole;I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
[This poem is taken from the complete works of Joaquin Miller, copyrighted, published by the Whitaker Ray Company, San Francisco.]
Behind him lay the gray Azores,Behind the gates of Hercules;Before him not the ghost of shores,Before him only shoreless seas.The good mate said, "Now must we pray,For lo! the very stars are gone.Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say!""Why, say, 'Sail on! sail on! and on!'""My men grow mutinous by day,My men grow ghastly pale and weak."The stout mate thought of home; a sprayOf salt wave washed his swarthy cheek."What shall I say, brave Admiral, say,If we sight naught but seas at dawn?""Why, you shall say at break of day,'Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!'"They sailed, and sailed, as winds might blow,Until at last the blanched mate said:"Why, now, not even God would knowShould I and all my men fall dead.These very winds forget their way,For God from these dread seas has gone.Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say"--He said, "Sail on! sail on! and on!"They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate:"This mad sea shows its teeth to-night.He curls his lips, he lies in waitWith lifted teeth as if to bite!Brave Admiral, say but one good word:What shall we do when hope is gone?"The words leapt like a leaping sword,"Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!"Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,And peered through darkness. Ah, that nightOf all dark nights! And then a speck--A light! A light! A light! A light!It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!It grew to be Time's burst of dawn,He gained a world; he gave that worldIts grandest lesson: "On! sail on!"
JOAQUIN MILLER.
ERRARA.
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,Looking as if she were alive. I callThat piece a wonder, now; Frà Pandolf's handsWorked busily a day, and there she stands.Will't please you sit and look at her? I said."Frà Pandolf" by design, for never readStrangers like you that pictured countenance,The depth and passion of its earnest glance,But to myself they turned (since none puts byThe curtain I have drawn for you, but I)And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,How such a glance came there; so, not the firstAre you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas notHer husband's presence only, called that spotOf joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhapsFrà Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle lapsOver my Lady's wrist too much," or "PaintMust never hope to reproduce the faintHalf-flush that dies along her throat;" such stuffWas courtesy, she thought, and cause enoughFor calling up that spot of joy. She hadA heart--how shall I say?--too soon made glad,Too easily impressed; she liked whate'erShe looked on, and her looks went everywhereSir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,The dropping of the daylight in the West,The bough of cherries some officious foolBroke in the orchard for her, the white muleShe rode with round the terrace--all and eachWould draw from her alike the approving speech,Or blush, at least. She thanked men,--good! but thankedSomehow--I know not how--as if she rankedMy gift of a nine-hundred-years-old nameWith anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blameThis sort of trifling? Even had you skillIn speech--(which I have not)--to make your willQuite clear to such an one, and say "Just this"Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,"Or there exceed the mark"--and if she letHerself be lessoned so, nor plainly setHer wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,--E'en then would be some stooping; and I chooseNever to stoop. Oh, Sir, she smiled, no doubt,Whene'er I passed her; but who passed withoutMuch the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;Then all smiles stopped together. There she standsAs if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meetThe company below, then. I repeatThe Count your Master's known munificenceIs ample warrant that no just pretenceOf mine for dowry will be disallowed;Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowedAt starting, is my object. Nay, we'll goTogether down, Sir. Notice Neptune, though,Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
ROBERT BROWNING.
What a pretty tale you told meOnce upon a time--Said you found it somewhere (scold me!)Was it prose or rhyme,Greek or Latin? Greek, you said,While your shoulder propped my head.Anyhow there's no forgettingThis much if no more,That a poet (pray, no petting!)Yes, a bard, sir, famed of yore,Went where such like used to go,Singing for a prize, you know.Well, he had to sing, nor merelySing, but play the lyre;Playing was important clearlyQuite as singing; I desire,Sir, you keep the fact in mindFor a purpose that's behind.There stood he, while deep attentionHeld the judges round,--Judges able, I should mention,To detect the slightest soundSung or played amiss: such earsHad old judges, it appears!None the less he sang out boldly,Played in time and tuneTill the judges, weighing coldlyEach note's worth, seemed, late or soon,Sure to smile "In vain one triesPicking faults out: take the prize!"When, a mischief! Were they sevenStrings the lyre possessed?Oh, and afterwards eleven,Thank you! Well, sir--who had guessedSuch ill luck in store?--it happedOne of those same seven strings snapped.All was lost, then! No! a cricket(What "cicada"? Pooh!)--Some mad thing that left its thicketFor mere love of music--flewWith its little heart on fireLighted on the crippled lyre.So that when (Ah, joy!) our singerFor his truant stringFeels with disconcerted finger,What does cricket else but flingFiery heart forth, sound the noteWanted by the throbbing throat?Ay and, ever to the ending,Cricket chirps at need,Executes the hand's intending,Promptly, perfectly,--indeedSaves the singer from defeatWith her chirrup low and sweet.Till, at ending, all the judgesCry with one assent"Take the prize--a prize who grudgesSuch a voice and instrument?Why, we took your lyre for harp,So it shrilled us forth F sharp!"Did the conqueror spurn the creature,Once its service done?That's no such uncommon featureIn the case when Music's sonFinds his Lotte's power too spentFor aiding soul development.No! This other, on returningHomeward, prize in hand,Satisfied his bosom's yearning:(Sir! I hope you understand!)--Said "Some record there must beOf this cricket's help to me!"So he made himself a statue:Marble stood, life-size;On the lyre, he pointed at you,Perched his partner in the prize;Never more apart you foundHer, he throned, from him, she crowned.That's the tale: its application?Somebody I knowHopes one day for reputationThrough his poetry that's--Oh,All so learned and so wiseAnd deserving of a prize!If he gains one, will some ticket,When his statue's built,Tell the gazer "'Twas a cricketHelped my crippled lyre, whose liltSweet and low, when strength usurpedSoftness' place i' the scale, she chirped?"For as victory was nighest,While I sang and played,--With my lyre at lowest, highest,Right alike,--one string that made'Love' sound soft was snapt in twainNever to be heard again,--"Had not a kind cricket fluttered,Perched upon the placeVacant left, and duly uttered'Love, Love, Love,' whene'er the bassAsked the treble to atoneFor its somewhat sombre drone."But you don't know music! WhereforeKeep on casting pearlsTo a--poet? All I care forIs--to tell him a girl's"Love" comes aptly in when gruffGrows his singing. (There, enough!)
ROBERT BROWNING.
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-starIn his steep course? So long he seems to pauseOn thy bald, awful head, O sovereign Blanc!The Arvé and Arveiron at thy baseRave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form,Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,How silently! Around thee, and above,Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest itAs with a wedge. But when I look againIt is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,Thy habitation from eternity.O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon theeTill thou, still present to the bodily sense,Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayerI worshipped the Invisible alone.Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,--So sweet we know not we are listening to it,--Thou, the mean while wast blending with my thought.Yea, with my life, and life's own secret joy;Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,Into the mighty vision passing--there,As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven.Awake, my soul! not only passive praiseThou owest! not alone these swelling tears,Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy! Awake,Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!Green vales and icy cliffs! all join my hymn!Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale!O, struggling with the darkness all the night,And visited all night by troops of stars,Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink,--Companion of the morning-star at dawn,Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawnCo-herald--wake! O wake! and utter praise!Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!Who called you forth from night and utter death,From dark and icy caverns called you forth,Down those precipitous, black, jaggëd rocks,Forever shattered, and the same forever?Who gave you your invulnerable life,Your strength, your speed, your fury and your joy,Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam?And who commanded,--and the silence came,--"Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?"Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's browAdown enormous ravines slope amain--Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!Who made you glorious as the gates of heavenBeneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sunClothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowersOf loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?"God!" let the torrents, like a shout of nations,Answer! and let the ice-plain echo, "God!""God!" sing, ye meadow streams, with gladsome voiceYe pine groves, with your soft and soul-like soundsAnd they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,And in their perilous fall shall thunder, "God!"Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm!Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!Ye signs and wonders of the elements!Utter forth "God!" and fill the hills with praise!Thou too, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing peaksOft from whose feet the avalanche, unheardShoots downward, glittering through the pure sereneInto the depth of clouds that veil thy breast,--Thou too, again, stupendous mountain! thouThat, as I raise my head, awhile bowed lowIn adoration, upward from thy baseSlow traveling, with dim eyes suffused with tears,Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloudTo rise before me,--rise, oh, ever rise!Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth!Thou kingly spirit, throned among the hills,Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.
S.T. COLERIDGE.
All that I knowOf a certain starIs, it can throw(Like the angled spar)Now a dart of red,Now a dart of blue,Till my friends have saidThey would fain see, tooMy star that dartles the red and the blue!Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled;They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.What matter to me if their star is a world?Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.
ROBERT BROWNING.