Chapter IV: Part II (1)

Cambridge:
at the University Press
1916

NOTE

The Editor has to express his thanks for permission to use copyright matter to the Editor of _A Sailor’s Garland_ and its publishers, Messrs Methuen, to Mr Elkin Mathews for the poem by Richard Hovey, to Messrs G. Routledge & Sons for a poem by Joaquin Miller.

CONTENTS

PAGE

NATURE, COUNTRY AND THE OPEN AIR

To Meadows _R. Herrick_ 1
The Brook _A. Tennyson_ 2
Recollections of Early Childhood _W. Wordsworth_ 4
To Autumn J. _Keats_ 7
Ode to the West Wind _P. B. Shelley_ 9
To a Skylark ” 13
The Moon-Goddess _Ben Jonson_ 18
Home-Thoughts from Abroad _R. Browning_ 19
Home-Thoughts from the Sea ” 20

GREEN SEAS AND SAILOR MEN

1. _The Call of the Sea_
Ye Mariners of England _T. Campbell_ 21
The Secret of the Sea _H. W. Longfellow_ 22
A Dutch Picture ” 24
Sea Memories ” 26
The Sea Gypsy _Richard Hovey_ 27
The Greenwich Pensioner 28
The Press-Gang 30
A Sea Dirge _W. Shakespeare_ 30

2. _Its Lawless Joys_
The Old Buccaneer _C. Kingsley_ 31
The Salcombe Seaman’s Flaunt to the
Proud Pirate 34
The Smuggler 36

ARMS AND THE MAN

The Maid _Theodore Roberts_ 37
The Eve of Waterloo _Lord Byron_ 39
The Glory that was Greece ” 43
Battle Hymn of the American Republic _Julia Ward Howe_ 47
To Lucasta, on going to the Wars _Richard Lovelace_ 48
The Black Prince _Sir Walter Scott_ 49
The Burial of Sir John Moore _Charles Wolfe_ 50
How Sleep the Brave _William Collins_ 52
Soldier, Rest! _Sir Walter Scott_ 53

THE OTHER SIDE OF IT

1. The Patriot _Robert Browning_ 54
2. For those who fail _Joaquin Miller_ 56
3. Keeping On _A. H. Clough_ 57

STORY-POEMS

The Lady of Shalott _Alfred Tennyson_ 58
The Forsaken Merman _Matthew Arnold_ 65
The Legend Beautiful _H. W. Longfellow_ 72
Abou Ben Adhem _Leigh Hunt_ 77
The Sands of Dee _Charles Kingsley_ 78
Lochinvar _Sir Walter Scott_ 79

DAY-DREAMS

Dreams to Sell _T. L. Beddoes_ 83
The Lost Bower _E. B. Browning_ 84
Echo and the Ferry _Jean Ingelow_ 92
Poor Susan’s Dream _W. Wordsworth_ 100
Fancy W. _Shakespeare_ 101

TWO HOME-COMINGS

1. The Good Woman Made Welcome in
Heaven _R. Crashaw_ 102
2. The Soldier Relieved _R. Browning_ 103

WHEN KNIGHTS WERE BOLD

Hunting Song _Sir Walter Scott_ 104
The Riding to the Tournament _G. W. Thornbury_ 105

VARIOUS

A Red, Red Rose _Robert Burns_ 113
Blow, Bugle, Blow _Alfred Tennyson_ 114
West and East _Matthew Arnold_ 115
Genseric _Owen Meredith_ 116
Kubla Khan _S. T. Coleridge_ 118
Something to Remember _R. Browning_ 120
Ring Out, Wild Bells _A. Tennyson_ 121

NATURE, COUNTRY, AND THE OPEN AIR

TO MEADOWS

Ye have been fresh and green,
Ye have been fill’d with flowers;
And ye the walks have been
Where maids have spent their hours.

You have beheld how they
With wicker arks did come
To kiss and bear away
The richer cowslips home.

You’ve heard them sweetly sing,
And seen them in a round:
Each virgin like a spring,
With honeysuckles crown’d.

But now we see none here
Whose silv’ry feet did tread
And with dishevelled hair
Adorn’d this smoother mead.

Like unthrifts, having spent
Your stock, and needy grown,
You’re left here to lament
Your poor estates, alone.

ROBERT HERRICK.

THE BROOK

I come from haunts of coot and hern[26],
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps[27], a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

I chatter over stony ways
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I wind about and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling.

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.

[26] _hern_: heron.

[27] _thorps_: villages.

RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell’d in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong.
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;--
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy!

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel--I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May morning,
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,

Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother’s arm:--
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
--But there’s a tree, of many one,
A single field which I have look’d upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily further from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

* * * * *

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

(_This is only a portion of the poem, which later you should take an opportunity of reading as a whole._)

TO AUTUMN

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen Thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows[28], borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn[29];
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft[30];
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

JOHN KEATS.

[28] _sallows_: willows.

[29] _bourn_: stream, water-course.

[30] _croft_: enclosure.

ODE TO THE WEST WIND

I.

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!

II.

Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad[31], even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!

III.

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull’d by the coil[32] of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice[33] isle in Baiae’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

IV.

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem’d a vision--I would ne’er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of years has chain’d and bow’d
One too like thee--tameless, and swift, and proud.

V.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither’d leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

[31] _Maenad_: a priestess of Bacchus, the wine-god.

[32] _coil_: confused noise, murmur.

[33] _pumice_: formed of volcanic lava.

TO A SKYLARK

Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert--
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O’er which clouds are bright’ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven,
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow’d.

What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see,
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:--

Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aërial hue
Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embower’d
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflower’d,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingèd thieves:

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awaken’d flowers--
All that ever was
Joyous and clear and fresh--thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal
Or triumphal chant,
Match’d with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt--
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn
Hate and pride and fear,
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

THE MOON-GODDESS

Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep:
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright.

Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia’s shining orb was made
Heaven to clear when day did close:
Bless us then with wishèd sight,
Goddess excellently bright.

Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy crystal-shining quiver;
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe, how short soever:
Thou that mak’st a day of night--
Goddess excellently bright.

BEN JONSON.

HOME-THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD

O, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England--now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the white throat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom’d pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray’s edge--
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower
--Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

ROBERT BROWNING.

HOME-THOUGHTS FROM THE SEA

Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish ’mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
In the dimmest North-east distance dawn’d Gibraltar grand and gray;
“Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?”--say,
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,
While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.

ROBERT BROWNING.

GREEN SEAS AND SAILOR MEN

1. _The Call of the Sea_

YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND

Ye Mariners of England!
That guard our native seas;
Whose flag has braved a thousand years
The battle and the breeze!
Your glorious standard launch again
To match another foe;
And sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow!
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.

The spirits of your fathers
Shall start from every wave;
For the deck it was their field of fame,
And Ocean was their grave:
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell
Your manly hearts shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow!
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.

Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o’er the mountain-waves,
Her home is on the deep.
With thunders from her native oak
She quells the floods below,
As they roar on the shore,
When the stormy winds do blow!
When the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.

The meteor flag of England
Shall yet terrific burn;
Till danger’s troubled night depart
And the star of peace return.
Then, then, ye ocean-warriors!
Our song and feast shall flow
To the fame of your name,
When the storm has ceased to blow!
When the fiery fight is heard no more,
And the storm has ceased to blow.

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

THE SECRET OF THE SEA

Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me
As I gaze upon the sea!
All the old romantic legends,
All my dreams come back to me.

Sails of silk and ropes of sendal[34],
Such as gleam in ancient lore;
And the singing of the sailors,
And the answer from the shore!

Most of all, the Spanish ballad
Haunts me oft, and tarries long,
Of the noble Count Arnaldos
And the sailor’s mystic song.

Telling how the Count Arnaldos,
With his hawk upon his hand,
Saw a fair and stately galley,
Steering onward to the land;--

How he heard the ancient helmsman
Chant a song so wild and clear,
That the sailing sea-bird slowly
Poised upon the mast to hear,

Till his soul was full of longing,
And he cried, with impulse strong,--
“Helmsman! for the love of heaven,
Teach me, too, that wondrous song!”

“Wouldst thou,”--so the helmsman answered,
“Learn the secret of the sea?
Only those who brave its dangers
Comprehend its mystery!”

In each sail that skims the horizon,
In each landward-blowing breeze,
I behold that stately galley,
Hear those mournful melodies.

Till my soul is full of longing
For the secret of the sea,
And the heart of the great ocean
Sends a thrilling pulse through me.

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

[34] _sendal_: coarse narrow silken material.

A DUTCH PICTURE

Simon Danz has come home again,
From cruising about with his buccaneers[35];
He has singed the beard of the King of Spain,
And carried away the Dean of Jaen,
And sold him in Algiers.

In his house by the Maese, with its roof of tiles,
And weathercocks flying aloft in air,
There are silver tankards in antique styles,
Plunder of convent and castle, and piles
Of carpets rich and rare.

In his tulip-garden there by the town,
Overlooking the sluggish stream,
With his Moorish cap and dressing-gown,
The old sea-captain, hale and brown,
Walks in a waking dream.

A smile in his gray mustachio lurks
Whenever he thinks of the King of Spain,
And the listed[36] tulips look like Turks,
And the silent gardener as he works
Is changed to the Dean of Jaen[37].

The windmills on the outermost
Verge of the landscape in the haze,
To him are towers on the Spanish coast,
With whiskered sentinels at their post,
Though this is the river Maese.

But when the winter rains begin,
He sits and smokes by the blazing brands,
And old seafaring men come in,
Goat-bearded, gray, and with double chin,
And rings upon their hands.

They sit there in the shadow and shine
Of the flickering fire of the winter night;
Figures in colour and design
Like those by Rembrandt of the Rhine,
Half darkness and half light.

And they talk of ventures lost or won,
And their talk is ever and ever the same,
While they drink the red wine of Tarragon,
From the cellars of some Spanish Don,
Or convent set on flame.

Restless at times, with heavy strides
He paces his parlour to and fro;
He is like a ship that at anchor rides,
And swings with the rising and falling tides,
And tugs at her anchor-tow.

Voices mysterious far and near,
Sound of the wind and sound of the sea,
Are calling and whispering in his ear,
“Simon Danz! Why stayest thou here?
Come forth and follow me!”

So he thinks he shall take to the sea again
For one more cruise with his buccaneers,
To singe the beard of the King of Spain,
And capture another Dean of Jaen,
And sell him in Algiers.

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

[35] _buccaneers_: sea rovers, pirates.

[36] _listed_: striped.

[37] _Jaen_: a town in Spain.

SEA MEMORIES

Often I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me.
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I can see the shadowy lines of its trees,
And catch, in sudden gleams,
The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,
And islands that were the Hesperides[38]
Of all my boyish dreams.
And the burden of that old song,
It murmurs and whispers still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I remember the black wharves and the slips,
And the sea-tides tossing free;
And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea.
And the voice of that wayward song
Is singing and saying still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

[38] _Hesperides_: the fabulous “Isles of the Blest” in far western seas.

THE SEA GYPSY

I am fever’d with the sunset,
I am fretful with the bay,
For the wander-thirst is on me
And my soul is in Cathay.

There’s a schooner in the offing,
With her topsails shot with fire,
And my heart has gone aboard her
For the Islands of Desire.

I must forth again to-morrow!
With the sunset I must be
Hull down on the trail of rapture
In the wonder of the Sea.

RICHARD HOVEY.

THE GREENWICH PENSIONER

’Twas in the good ship _Rover_,
I sailed the world all round,
And for three years and over
I ne’er touched British ground;
At length in England landed,
I left the roaring main,
Found all relations stranded,
And went to sea again,
And went to sea again.

That time bound straight for Portugal,
Right fore and aft we bore,
But when we made Cape Ortegal,
A gale blew off the shore;
She lay, so did it shock her,
A log upon the main,
Till, saved from Davy’s locker,
We put to sea again,
We put to sea again.

Next sailing in a frigate
I got my timber toe.
I never more shall jig it
As once I used to do;
My leg was shot off fairly,
All by a ship of Spain;
But I could swab the galley,
I went to sea again,
I went to sea again.

And still I am enabled
To bring up in the rear,
Although I’m quite disabled
And lie in Greenwich tier.
There’s schooners in the river
A riding to the chain,
But I shall never, ever
Put out to sea again,
Put out to sea again.

From _A Sailor’s Garland_.

THE PRESS-GANG

Here’s the tender[39] coming,
Pressing all the men;
O, dear honey,
What shall we do then?
Here’s the tender coming,
Off at Shields Bar.
Here’s the tender coming,
Full of men of war.

Here’s the tender coming,
Stealing of my dear;
O, dear honey,
They’ll ship you out of here,
They’ll ship you foreign,
For that is what it means.
Here’s the tender coming,
Full of red marines.

From _A Sailor’s Garland_.

[39] _tender_: a boat or other small vessel, that ‘attends’ a ship with men, stores, etc.

A SEA DIRGE

Full fathom five thy father lies:
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Hark! now I hear them,
Ding, dong, bell.

SHAKESPEARE.

2. _Its Lawless Joys_

THE OLD BUCCANEER

Oh England is a pleasant place for them that’s rich and high,
But England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I;
And such a port for mariners I ne’er shall see again
As the pleasant Isle of Avès, beside the Spanish main.

There were forty craft in Avès that were both swift and stout,
All furnished well with small arms and cannons round about;
And a thousand men in Avès made laws so fair and free
To choose their valiant captains and obey them loyally.

Thence we sailed against the Spaniard with his hoards of plate
and gold,
Which he wrung with cruel tortures from Indian folk of old;
Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone,
Who flog men, and keel-haul them, and starve them to the bone.

O the palms grew high in Avès, and fruits that shone like gold,
And the colibris[40] and parrots they were gorgeous to behold;
And the negro maids to Avès from bondage fast did flee,
To welcome gallant sailors, a-sweeping in from sea.

O sweet it was in Avès to hear the landward breeze,
A-swing with good tobacco in a net between the trees,
With a negro lass to fan you, while you listened to the roar
Of the breakers on the reef outside, that never touched the shore.

But Scripture saith, an ending to all fine things must be;
So the King’s ships sailed on Avès, and quite put down were we.
All day we fought like bulldogs, but they burst the booms at night;
And I fled in a piragua[41], sore wounded, from the fight.

Nine days I floated starving, and a negro lass beside,
Till, for all I tried to cheer her, the poor young thing she died;
But as I lay a-gasping, a Bristol sail came by,
And brought me home to England here, to beg until I die.

And now I’m old and going--I’m sure I can’t tell where;
One comfort is, this world’s so hard, I can’t be worse off there:
If I might but be a sea-dove, I’d fly across the main,
To the pleasant Isle of Avès, to look at it once again.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

[40] _colibris_: humming-birds.

[41] _piragua_: a “dug-out” canoe.

THE SALCOMBE SEAMAN’S FLAUNT TO THE PROUD PIRATE

A lofty ship from Salcombe came,
_Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;_
She had golden trucks[42] that shone like flame,
_On the bonny coasts of Barbary_.

“Masthead, masthead,” the captains hail,
_Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;_
“Look out and round, d’ye see a sail?”
_On the bonny coasts of Barbary_.

“There’s a ship that looms like Beachy Head,”
_Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;_
“Her banner aloft it blows out red,”
_On the bonny coasts of Barbary_.

“Oh, ship ahoy, where do you steer?”
_Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;_
“Are you man-of-war, or privateer?”
_On the bonny coasts of Barbary_.

“I am neither one of the two,” said she,
_Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;_
“I’m a pirate, looking for my fee,”
_On the bonny coasts of Barbary_.

“I’m a jolly pirate, out for gold:”
_Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;_
“I will rummage through your after hold,”
_On the bonny coasts of Barbary_.

The grumbling guns they flashed and roared,
_Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;_
Till the pirate’s masts went overboard,
_On the bonny coasts of Barbary_.

They fired shots till the pirate’s deck,
_Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;_
Was blood and spars and broken wreck,
_On the bonny coasts of Barbary_.

“O do not haul the red flag down,”
_Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;_
“O keep all fast until we drown,”
_On the bonny coasts of Barbary_.

They called for cans of wine, and drank,
_Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;_
They sang their songs until she sank,
_On the bonny coasts of Barbary_.

Now let us brew good cans of flip,
_Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;_
And drink a bowl to the Salcombe ship,
_On the bonny coasts of Barbary_.

And drink a bowl to the lad of fame,
_Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we;_
Who put the pirate ship to shame,
_On the bonny coasts of Barbary_.

From _A Sailor’s Garland_.

[42] _trucks_: mast-head caps.

THE SMUGGLER

O my true love’s a smuggler and sails upon the sea,
And I would I were a seaman to go along with he;
To go along with he for the satins and the wine,
And run the tubs at Slapton when the stars do shine.

O Hollands is a good drink when the nights are cold,
And Brandy is a good drink for them as grows old.
There is lights in the cliff-top when the boats are home-bound,
And we run the tubs at Slapton when the word goes round.

The King he is a proud man in his grand red coat,
But I do love a smuggler in a little fishing-boat;
For he runs the Mallins lace and he spends his money free,
And I would I were a seaman to go along with he.

From _A Sailor’s Garland_.

ARMS AND THE MAN

_The generations pass, each in its turn wondering whether it is to be the one to see the ending of War and the awakening of the common sense of nations. But the Poetry of the glory of Battle, the hymning of high heroisms, the dirges for those who nobly died--these will remain, to gild its memory, long after the last echo of the last war-drum has faded out of the world._

THE MAID

Thunder of riotous hoofs over the quaking sod;
Clash of reeking squadrons, steel-capped, iron-shod;
The White Maid and the white horse, and the flapping banner of God.

Black hearts riding for money; red hearts riding for fame;
The Maid who rides for France and the King who rides for shame--
Gentlemen, fools, and a saint riding in Christ’s high name!

“Dust to dust!” it is written. Wind-scattered are lance and bow.
Dust, the Cross of Saint George; dust, the banner of snow.
The bones of the King are crumbled, and rotted the shafts of the foe.

Forgotten, the young knight’s valour; forgotten, the captain’s skill;
Forgotten, the fear and the hate and the mailed hands raised to kill;
Forgotten, the shields that clashed and the arrows that cried
so shrill.

Like a story from some old book, that battle of long ago:
Shadows, the poor French King and the might of his English foe;
Shadows, the charging nobles and the archers kneeling a-row--
But a flame in my heart and my eyes, the Maid with her banner of snow!

THEODORE ROBERTS.

THE EVE OF WATERLOO

There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium’s capital had gather’d then
Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men.
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes look’d love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage-bell;
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!

Did ye not hear it?--No; ’twas but the wind,
Or the car rattling o’er the stony street;
On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
But hark!--that heavy sound breaks in once more,
As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before!
Arm! Arm! it is--it is--the cannon’s opening roar!

Within a window’d niche of that high hall
Sate Brunswick’s fated chieftain; he did hear
That sound, the first amidst the festival,
And caught its tone with Death’s prophetic ear;
And when they smiled because he deem’d it near,
His heart more truly knew that peal too well
Which stretch’d his father on a bloody bier,
And rous’d the vengeance blood alone could quell:
He rush’d into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell.

Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro,
And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress,
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago
Blush’d at the praise of their own loveliness;
And there were sudden partings, such as press
The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs
Which ne’er might be repeated: who would guess
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise!

And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed,
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;
And the deep thunder peal on peal afar;
And near, the beat of the alarming drum
Rous’d up the soldier ere the morning star;
While throng’d the citizens with terror dumb,
Or whispering with white lips--“The foe! they come! they come!”

And wild and high the “Camerons’ gathering” rose,
The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn’s hills
Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes:
How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills
Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills
Their mountain-pipe, so fill the mountaineers
With the fierce native daring which instils
The stirring memory of a thousand years,
And Evan’s, Donald’s fame rings in each clansman’s ears!

And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,
Dewy with Nature’s tear-drops, as they pass,
Grieving, if aught inanimate e’er grieves,
Over the unreturning brave,--alas!
Ere evening to be trodden like the grass
Which now beneath them, but above shall grow
In its next verdure, when this fiery mass
Of living valour, rolling on the foe,
And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low.

Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,
Last eve in Beauty’s circle proudly gay,
The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife,
The morn the marshalling in arms,--the day
Battle’s magnificently stern array!
The thunder-clouds close o’er it, which when rent
The earth is cover’d thick with other clay,
Which her own clay shall cover, heap’d and pent,
Rider and horse,--friend, foe,--in one red burial blent!

LORD BYRON.

THE GLORY THAT WAS GREECE

_I include this among the War Poems, because it is a call to a conquered nation to rise in arms against their oppressors--a call that was in due course answered._

The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all except their sun is set.

The Scian and the Teian[43] muse,
The hero’s harp, the lover’s lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse:
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires’ “Islands of the Blest.”

The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And, musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
For, standing on the Persian’s grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.

A king sate on the rocky brow
Which looks o’er sea-born Salamis;
And ships by thousands lay below,
And men in nations;--all were his!
He counted them at break of day,
And when the sun set, where were they?

And where are they? and where art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now,
The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?

’Tis something in the dearth of fame,
Though linked among the fettered race,
To feel at least a patriot’s shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush--for Greece a tear!

Must _we_ but weep o’er days more blest?
Must _we_ but blush? Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopylæ!

What, silent still? and silent all?
Ah! no: the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent’s fall,
And answer, “Let one living head,
But one arise,--we come, we come!”
’Tis but the living who are dumb.

In vain--in vain; strike other chords;
Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,
And shed the blood of Scio’s vine!
Hark! rising to the ignoble call,
How answers each bold Bacchanal!

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet;
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave;
Think ye he meant them for a slave?

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
We will not think of themes like these!
It made Anacreon’s song divine:
He served--but served Polycrates:
A tyrant; but our masters then
Were still, at least, our countrymen.

The tyrant of the Chersonese
Was freedom’s best and bravest friend;
_That_ tyrant was Miltiades!
Oh that the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind!
Such chains as his were sure to bind.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
On Suli’s rock and Parga’s shore
Exists the remnant of a line
Such as the Doric mothers bore;
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown
The Heracleidan blood might own.

Trust not for freedom to the Franks--
They have a king who buys and sells;
In native swords and native ranks
The only hope of courage dwells:
But Turkish force and Latin fraud
Would break your shield, however broad.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade--
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But, gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

Place me on Sunium’s marbled steep,
Where nothing save the waves and I
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swan-like, let me sing and die:
A land of slaves shall ne’er be mine--
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

LORD BYRON.

[43] _Scian_ and _Teian_: i.e. Homer and Anacreon.

BATTLE HYMN OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fatal lightning of his terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his Judgment Seat;
O, be swift, my soul to answer Him, be jubilant my feet!
Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born, across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

JULIA WARD HOWE.

TO LUCASTA, ON GOING TO THE WARS

Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

RICHARD LOVELACE.

THE BLACK PRINCE

O for the voice of that wild horn,
On Fontarabian echoes borne,
The dying hero’s call,
That told imperial Charlemagne
How Paynim sons of swarthy Spain
Had wrought his champion’s fall.

Sad over earth and ocean sounding,
And England’s distant cliffs astounding,
Such are the notes should say
How Britain’s hope, and France’s fear,
Victor of Cressy and Poitier,
In Bordeaux dying lay.

“Raise my faint head, my squires,” he said,
“And let the casement be displayed,
That I may see once more
The splendour of the setting sun
Gleam on thy mirrored wave, Garonne,
And Blay’s empurpled shore.

“Like me, he sinks to Glory’s sleep,
His fall the dews of evening steep,
As if in sorrow shed.
So soft shall fall the trickling tear,
When England’s maids and matrons hear
Of their Black Edward dead.

“And though my sun of glory set,
Nor France nor England shall forget
The terror of my name;
And oft shall Britain’s heroes rise,
New planets in these southern skies,
Through clouds of blood and flame.”

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O’er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the struggling moonbeam’s misty light
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest
With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollow’d his narrow bed
And smooth’d down his lonely pillow,
That the foe and the stranger would tread o’er his head,
And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they’ll talk of the spirit that’s gone,
And o’er his cold ashes upbraid him--
But little he’ll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done
When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.

CHARLES WOLFE.

HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE

How sleep the brave, who sink to rest
By all their country’s wishes blest!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallowed mould,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy’s feet have ever trod.

By fairy hands their knell is rung;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
There Honour comes, a pilgrim grey,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair
To dwell, a weeping hermit, there!

WILLIAM COLLINS.

SOLDIER, REST!

Soldier, rest! thy warfare o’er,
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking!
Dream of battled fields no more,
Days of danger, nights of waking.
In our isle’s enchanted hall,
Hands unseen thy couch are strewing,
Fairy strains of music fall,
Every sense in slumber dewing.
Soldier, rest! thy warfare o’er,
Dream of fighting fields no more;
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Morn of toil, nor night of waking.

No rude sound shall reach thine ear,
Armour’s clang, or war-steed champing
Trump nor pibroch summon here
Mustering clan, or squadron tramping.
Yet the lark’s shrill fife may come
At the daybreak from the fallow,
And the bittern sound his drum,
Booming from the sedgy shallow.
Ruder sounds shall none be near,
Guards nor warders challenge here,
Here’s no war-steed’s neigh and champing,
Shouting clans, or squadrons stamping.

Huntsman, rest! thy chase is done;
While our slumbrous spells assail ye,
Dream not, with the rising sun,
Bugles here shall sound reveillé.
Sleep! the deer is in his den;
Sleep! thy hounds are by thee lying;
Sleep! nor dream in yonder glen,
How thy gallant steed lay dying.
Huntsman, rest! thy chase is done,
Think not of the rising sun,
For at dawning to assail ye,
Here no bugles sound reveillé.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

THE OTHER SIDE OF IT

1. THE PATRIOT

It was roses, roses, all the way,
With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:
The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
A year ago on this very day.

The air broke into a mist with bells,
The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.
Had I said, “Good folk, mere noise repels--
But give me your sun from yonder skies!”
They had answered, “And afterward, what else?”

Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun
To give it my loving friends to keep!
Nought man could do, have I left undone:
And you see my harvest, what I reap
This very day, now a year is run.

There’s nobody on the house-tops now--
Just a palsied few at the windows set;
For the best of the sight is, all allow,
At the Shambles’ Gate--or, better yet,
By the very scaffold’s foot, I trow.

I go in the rain, and, more than needs,
A rope cuts both my wrists behind;
And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,
For they fling, whoever has a mind,
Stones at me for my year’s misdeeds.

Thus I entered, and thus I go!
In triumphs, people have dropped down dead,
“Paid by the world, what dost thou owe
Me?”--God might question; now instead,
’Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.

ROBERT BROWNING.

2. FOR THOSE WHO FAIL

“All honour to him who shall win the prize,”
The world has cried for a thousand years;
But to him who tries and who fails and dies,
I give great honour and glory and tears.

O great is the hero who wins a name,
But greater many and many a time
Some pale-faced fellow who dies in shame,
And lets God finish the thought sublime.

And great is the man with a sword undrawn,
And good is the man who refrains from wine;
But the man who fails and yet fights on,
Lo he is the twin-born brother of mine!

JOAQUIN MILLER.

3. KEEPING ON

Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!

A. H. CLOUGH.

STORY-POEMS

THE LADY OF SHALOTT

I.

On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road runs by
To many-towered Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle embowers
The Lady of Shalott.

By the margin, willow-veil’d,
Slide the heavy barges trail’d
By slow horses; and unhail’d
The shallop flitteth silken-sail’d
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who has seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?

Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to towered Camelot:
And by moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in upland airy,
Listening, whispers, “’Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott.”

II.

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.

And moving thro’ a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot:
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
Or long-hair’d page in crimson clad,
Goes by to tower’d Camelot:
And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror’s magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot:
Or, when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed;
“I am half sick of shadows,” said
The Lady of Shalott.

III.

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves[44]
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel’d
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field
Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter’d free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy[45].
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazon’d baldric[46] slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung,
Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell’d shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn’d like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro’ the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d;
On burnish’d hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow’d
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flash’d into the crystal mirror,
“Tirra lirra,” by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.