War

Just at the corner of the wall
    We met yes, he and I -
Who had not faced in camp or hall
    Since we bade home good-bye,
And what once happened came back all -
    Out of those years gone by.

And that strange woman whom we knew
    And loved long dead and gone,
Whose poor half-perished residue,
    Tombless and trod, lay yon!
But at this moment to our view
    Rose like a phantom wan.

And in his fixed face I could see,
    Lit by a lurid shine,
The drama re-enact which she
    Had dyed incarnadine
For us, and more. And doubtless he
    Beheld it too in mine.

A start, as at one slightly known,
    And with an indifferent air
We passed, without a sign being shown
    That, as it real were,
A memory-acted scene ...

"Purpureos spargam flores."

The wreath that star-crowned Shelley gave
Is lying on thy Roman grave,
Yet on its turf young April sets
Her store of slender violets;
Though all the Gods their garlands shower,
I too may bring one purple flower.
Alas! what blossom shall I bring,
That opens in my Northern spring?
The garden beds have all run wild,
So trim when I was yet a child;
Flat plantains and unseemly stalks
Have crept across the gravel walks;
The vines are dead, long, long ago,
The almond buds no longer blow.
No more upon its mound I see
The azure, plume-bound fleur-de-lis;
Where once the tulips used to show,
In straggling tufts the pansies grow;
The grass has quenched my white-rayed gem,
The flowering "Star of Bethlehem,"
Though ...

When I have borne in memory what has tamed
Great Nations, how ennobling thoughts depart
When men change swords for ledgers, and desert
The student's bower for gold, some fears unnamed
I had, my Country! am I to be blamed?
Now, when I think of thee, and what thou art,
Verily, in the bottom of my heart,
Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed.
For dearly must we prize thee; we who find
In thee a bulwark for the cause of men:
And I by my affection was beguiled:
What wonder if a Poet now and then,
Among the many movements of his mind,
Felt for thee as a lover or a child!

Love is a kind of war: hence those who fear!
No cowards must his royal ensigns bear.

Like April morning clouds, that pass,
With varying shadow, o'er the grass,
And imitate, on field and furrow,
Life's chequered scene of joy and sorrow;
Like streamlet of the mountain North,
Now in a torrent racing forth,
Now winding slow its silver train,
And almost slumbering on the plain;
Like breezes of the Autumn day,
Whose voice inconstant dies away,
And ever swells again as fast,
When the ear deems its murmur past;
Thus various, my romantic theme
Flits, winds, or sinks, a morning dream.
Yet pleased, our eye pursues the trace
Of light and shade's inconstant race;
Pleased, views the rivulet afar,
Weaving its maze irregular;
And pleased, we listen as the breeze
Heaves its wild sigh through Autumn trees;
Then, wild as cloud, or stream, or ...

(Shortly before departing for the theater of war)

for Peter Scher

Before dying I am making my poem.
Quiet, comrades, don't disturb me.
We are going off to war.    Death is our cement.
If only my beloved did not shed these tears for me.
What am I doing.    I go gladly.
Mother is crying.    One must be made of iron.
The sun sinks to the horizon.
Soon I shall be tossed into a gentle mass grave.
In the sky the fine red of evening is burning.
Perhaps in thrirteen days I'll be dead.

To his heart it struck such terror
That he laughed a laugh of scorn, -
The man in the soldier's doublet,
With the sword so bravely worn.

It struck his heart like the frost-wind
To find his comrades fled,
While the battle-field was guarded
By the heroes who lay dead.

He drew his sword in the sunlight,
And called with a long halloo:
"Dead men, there is one living
Shall stay it out with you!"

He raised a ragged standard,
This lonely soul in war,
And called the foe to onset,
With shouts they heard afar.

They galloped swiftly toward him.
The banner floated wide;
It sank; he sank beside it
Upon his sword, and died.

So long as memory, valour, and faith endure,
Let these stones witness, through the years to come,
How once there was a people fenced secure
Behind great waters girdling a far home.

Their own and their land’s youth ran side by side
Heedless and headlong as their unyoked seas,
Lavish o’er all, and set in stubborn pride
Of judgment, nurtured by accepted peace.

Thus, suddenly, war took them, seas and skies
Joined with the earth for slaughter. In a breath
They, scoffing at all talk of sacrifice,
Gave themselves without idle words to death.

Thronging as cities throng to watch a game
Or their own herds move southward with the year,
Secretly, swiftly, from their ports they came,
So that before half earth had heard their name
Half earth had learned to...

We have cried in our despair
That men desert,
For some trivial affair
Or noisy, insolent, sport,
Beauty that we have won
From bitterest hours;
Yet we, had we walked within
Those topless towers
Where Helen walked with her boy,
Had given but as the rest
Of the men and women of Troy,
A word and a jest.

Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running,
Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,
Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,
Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,
Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering,
On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting,
Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,
Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,
(That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)
Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending,
Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,
Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,
A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,
That savage trinity wa...

    "A land without ruins is a land without memories --
    a land without memories is a land without history.
    A land that wears a laurel crown may be fair to see;
    but twine a few sad cypress leaves around the brow of any land,
    and be that land barren, beautiless and bleak, it becomes lovely
    in its consecrated coronet of sorrow, and it wins the sympathy of the heart
    and of history.    Crowns of roses fade -- crowns of thorns endure.
    Calvaries and crucifixions take deepest hold of humanity --
    the triumphs of might are transient -- they pass and are forgotten --
    the sufferings of right are graven deepest on the chronicle of nations."



Yes give me the land where the ruins are spread,
And the living tread light on the hearts of the dead;

The shadow of Dawn;
Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreams
Of Life and Death and Sleep;
Heard over gleaming flats, the old, unchanging sound
Of the old, unchanging Sea.

My soul and yours -
O, hand in hand let us fare forth, two ghosts,
Into the ghostliness,
The infinite and abounding solitudes,
Beyond - O, beyond! - beyond . . .

Here in the porch
Upon the multitudinous silences
Of the kingdoms of the grave,
We twain are you and I - two ghosts Omnipotence
Can touch no more . . . no more!

By the hope within us springing,
    Herald of to-morrow's strife;
By that sun, whose light is bringing
    Chains or freedom, death or life--
    Oh! remember life can be
No charm for him, who lives not free!
    Like the day-star in the wave,
    Sinks a hero in his grave,
Midst the dew-fall of a nation's tears.

    Happy is he o'er whose decline
    The smiles of home may soothing shine
And light him down the steep of years:--
    But oh, how blest they sink to rest,
    Who close their eyes on victory's breast!

O'er his watch-fire's fading embers
    Now the foeman's cheek turns white,
When his heart that field remembers,
    Where we tamed his tyrant might.
Never let him bind again
A chain; like that we broke from then.
   ...

Turned back my gaze, on Spain's romantic shore
I see Gaul bending by the grave of Moore,
And later, when the page of Fame I scan
I see brave France at deadly Inkerman,
While on red Balaklava's field I hear
Gallia's applause swell Albion's ringing cheer,
England and France, as Allies, side by side
Fought on the Pieho's melancholy tide,
And there, brave Tattnall, ere the fight was done,
Stirred English hearts as far as shone the sun,
Or tides and billows in their courses run.
That day, 'mid the dark Pieho's slaughter
He said: "Blood is thicker than water!"
And your true man though "brayed in a mortar"
At feast, or at fray
Will still feel it and say
As he said: "Blood is thicker than water!"

And full homely is the saying but this story always st...

IN MEMORY OF EVA GORE-BOOTH AND CON MARKIEWICZ

The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
But a raving autumn shears
Blossom from the summer's wreath;
The older is condemned to death,
Pardoned, drags out lonely years
Conspiring among the ignorant.
I know not what the younger dreams --
Some vague Utopia -- and she seems,
When withered old and skeleton-gaunt,
An image of such politics.
Many a time I think to seek
One or the other out and speak
Of that old Georgian mansion, mix
pictures of the mind, recall
That table and the talk of youth,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
Dear shadows, now you know it all,
All the folly of ...

Glowing with love, on fire for fame
A Troubadour that hated sorrow
Beneath his lady's window came,
And thus he sung his last good-morrow:
"My arm it is my country's right,
My heart is in my true-love's bower;
Gaily for love and fame to fight
Befits the gallant Troubadour."

And while he marched with helm on head
And harp in hand, the descant rung,
As faithful to his favourite maid,
The minstrel-burden still he sung:
"My arm it is my country's right,
My heart is in my lady's bower;
Resolved for love and fame to fight
I come, a gallant Troubadour."

Even when the battle-roar was deep,
With dauntless heart he hewed his way,
'Mid splintering lance and falchion-sweep,
And still was heard his warrior-lay:
"My life it is my country's rig...

Intrepid sons of Albion! not by you
Is life despised; ah no, the spacious earth
Ne'er saw a race who held, by right of birth,
So many objects to which love is due:
Ye slight not life, to God and Nature true;
But death, becoming death, is dearer far,
When duty bids you bleed in open war:
Hence hath your prowess quelled that impious crew.
Heroes! for instant sacrifice prepared;
Yet filled with ardour and on triumph bent
'Mid direst shocks of mortal accident
To you who fell, and you whom slaughter spared
To guard the fallen, and consummate the event,
Your Country rears this sacred Monument!

O noble youth that held our honour in keeping,
And bore it sacred through the battle flame,
How shall we give full measure of acclaim
To thy sharp labour, thy immortal reaping?
For though we sowed with doubtful hands, half sleeping,
Thou in thy vivid pride hast reaped a nation,
And brought it in with shouts and exultation,
With drums and trumpets, with flags flashing and leaping.

Let us bring pungent wreaths of balsam, and tender
Tendrils of wild-flowers, lovelier for thy daring,
And deck a sylvan shrine, where the maple parts
The moonlight, with lilac bloom, and the splendour
Of suns unwearied; all unwithered, wearing
Thy valor stainless in our heart of hearts.