Ye have ploughed the field like cattle,
Ye have sown the dragon-seed,
Are ye ready now for battle?
For fighters are what we need.

Have ye done with taking and giving?
The old gods, Give and Take?
Then into the ranks of the living,
And fight for the fighting's sake.

Let who will thrive by cunning,
And lies be another's cure;
But girdle your loins for running,
And the goal of Never Sure.

Enough of idle shirking!
Though you hate like death your part
There is nothing helps like working
When you work with all your heart.

For the world is fact, not fiction,
And its battle is not with words;
And what helps is not men's diction,
But the temper of their swords.

For what each does is measure
Of that he is, I say:

        On the shores of the northern lakes
        An infant giant now awakes,
        He has long time been in a dream,
        But now is roused by engine's scream.

        For mighty spirits are abroad
        Traversing of each great railroad,
        For it is a glorious theme
        The peaceful conquest made by steam.

        But should the foot of invader vile
        Ever desecrate his soil,
        He firm will meet him bold and brave
        And give him soil Canadian grave.

The American Spirit speaks:

If the Led Striker call it a strike,
Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
Nor what he is, My Avatar.

Through many roads, by me possessed,
He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
And he the Text himself applies.

The Celt is in his heart and hand,
The Gaul is in his brain and nerve;
Where, cosmopolitanly planned,
He guards the Redskin's dry reserve

His easy unswept hearth he lends
From Labrador to Guadeloupe;
Till, elbowed out by sloven friends,
He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.

Calm-eyed he scoffs at Sword and Crown,
Or, panic-blinded, stabs and slays:
Blatant he bids the world bow down,
Or cringing begs a crust of praise;

We live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave
Of text and legend. Reason's voice and God's,
Nature's and Duty's, never are at odds.
What asks our Father of His children, save
Justice and mercy and humility,
A reasonable service of good deeds,
Pure living, tenderness to human needs,
Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see
The Master's footprints in our daily ways?
No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife,
But the calm beauty of an ordered life
Whose very breathing is unworded praise!
A life that stands as all true lives have stood,
Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good

Not with an outcry to Allah nor any complaining
He answered his name at the muster and stood to the chaining.
When the twin anklets were nipped on the leg-bars that held them,
He brotherly greeted the armourers stooping to weld them.
Ere the sad dust of the marshalled feet of the chain-gang swallowed him,
Observing him nobly at ease, I alighted and followed him.
Thus we had speech by the way, but not touching his sorrow,
Rather his red Yesterday and his regal To-morrow,
Wherein he statelily moved to the clink of his chains unregarded,
Nowise abashed but contented to drink of the potion awarded.
Saluting aloofly his Fate, he made haste with his story,
And the words of his mouth were as slaves spreading carpets of glory
Embroidered with names of the Djinns, a miraculous weaving,

Like an old battle, youth is wild
With bugle and spear, and counter cry,
Fanfare and drummery, yet a child
Dreaming of that sweet chivalry,
The piercing terror cannot see.

He, with a mild and serious eye
Along the azure of the years,
Sees the sweet pomp sweep hurtling by;
But he sees not death's blood and tears,
Sees not the plunging of the spears.

And all the strident horror of
Horse and rider, in red defeat,
Is only music fine enough
To lull him into slumber sweet
In fields where ewe and lambkin bleat.

O, if with such simplicity
Himself take arms and suffer war;
With beams his targe shall gilded be,
Though in the thickening gloom be far
The steadfast light of any star!

Though hoarse War's eagle on him perch,
Q...

"With a cold and wintry noon-light.
On its roofs and steeples shed,
Shadows weaving with t e sunlight
From the gray sky overhead,
Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies the half-built town outspread.
Through this broad street, restless ever,
Ebbs and flows a human tide,
Wave on wave a living river;
Wealth and fashion side by side;
Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide.
Underneath yon dome, whose coping
Springs above them, vast and tall,
Grave men in the dust are groping.
For the largess, base and small,
Which the hand of Power is scattering, crumbs which from its table fall.
Base of heart! They vilely barter
Honor's wealth for party's place;
Step by step on Freedom's charter
Leaving footprints of disgrace;
For to-day's ...

What of the faith and fire within us
    Men who march away
    Ere the barn-cocks say
    Night is growing gray,
To hazards whence no tears can win us;
What of the faith and fire within us
    Men who march away?

Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
    Friend with the musing eye,
    Who watch us stepping by
    With doubt and dolorous sigh?
Can much pondering so hoodwink you!
Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
    Friend with the musing eye?

Nay. We well see what we are doing,
    Though some may not see -
    Dalliers as they be -
    England's need are we;
Her distress would leave us rueing:
Nay. We well see what we are doing,
    Though some may not see!

In our heart of hearts believing
    Victory crowns...

Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.

Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.

Air--Stephenos



Lo, a knight in armour standing,
    Ready for the foe;
Thee we greet, belov'd Companion,
    Thee we know.

Keep thine oath, oh new made soldier,
    Pledged in heaven's sight;
Nor forget the vow thou'st taken,
    Malta's knight.

By the banner, o'er us waving,
    By thy lance at rest,
Chiefly by that Cross emblazoned
    On thy breast.

In the heat of danger's trial,
    Dare the fiercest fight;
No desertion, no denial,
    Right or life!

See thou turn not from the conflict,
    On the battle field,
Though men bear a dying soldier
    On thy shield.

Let thy strong arm shield the helpless,
    And the feeble save;
Mercy's voice the true knight knoweth,

They sat in silent watchfulness
The sacred cypress-tree about,
And, from beneath old wrinkled brows,
Their failing eyes looked out.

Gray Age and Sickness waiting there
Through weary night and lingering day,
Grim as the idols at their side,
And motionless as they.

Unheeded in the boughs above
The song of Ceylon's birds was sweet;
Unseen of them the island flowers
Bloomed brightly at their feet.

O'er them the tropic night-storm swept,
The thunder crashed on rock and hill;
The cloud-fire on their eyeballs blazed,
Yet there they waited still!

What was the world without to them?
The Moslem's sunset-call, the dance
Of Ceylon's maids, the passing gleam
Of battle-flag and lance?

They waited for that falling leaf
O...

Oh, I am weak to serve thee as I ought;
My shroud of flesh obscures thy deity,
So thy sweet Spirit that should embolden me
To shake my wings out wide, serves me for nought,
But receives tarnish, vile dishonour, wrought
By that thou earnest to bless--O agony
And unendurable shame! that, loving thee,
I dare not love, fearing my poisonous thought!

Man is too vile for any such high grace,
For that he seeks to honour he can but mar;
So had I rather shun thy starry face
And fly the exultation to know thee near--
For if one glance from me wrought thee a scar
'Twould not be death, but life that I should fear.

Among a race high-handed, strong of heart,
Sea-rovers, conquerors, builders in the waste,
He had his birth; a nature too complete,
Eager and doubtful, no man's soldier sworn
And no man's chosen captain; born to fail,
A name without an echo: yet he too
Within the cloister of his narrow days
Fulfilled the ancestral rites, and kept alive
The eternal fire; it may be, not in vain;
For out of those who dropped a downward glance
Upon the weakling huddled at his prayers,
Perchance some looked beyond him, and then first
Beheld the glory, and what shrine it filled,
And to what Spirit sacred: or perchance
Some heard him chanting, though but to himself,
The old heroic names: and went their way:
And hummed his music on the march to death.

Whose Timidity frequently agitated her, when pressed to gratify her Friends by her Musical Talents.


'Tis said (and I believe it too)
That genuine merit seeks the shade;
Blushing to think what is her due,
As of her own sweet pow'rs afraid: -

Thus, lovely maid! on fluttering wings,
Thy pow'rs a thousand fears pursue,
Which, like thy own harmonious strings,
When press'd enchant, and tremble too!

The pity, which we give, you owe,
For mutual fears on both attend;
While anxious thus you joy bestow,
We fear too soon that joy will end!

Wouldst thou, my friend, mount up to the highest summit of wisdom,
Be not deterred by the fear, prudence thy course may deride
That shortsighted one sees but the bank that from thee is flying,
Not the one which ere long thou wilt attain with bold flight.

It is easy enough to be pleasant
    When life flows by like a song,
But the man worth while is the one who will smile
    When everything goes dead wrong.
For the test of the heart is trouble,
    And it always comes with the years,
And the smile that is worth the praises of earth
    Is the smile that shines through tears.

It is easy enough to be prudent
    When nothing tempts you to stray,
When without or within no voice of sin
    Is luring your soul away;
But it's only a negative virtue
    Until it is tried by fire,
And the life that is worth the honour on earth
    Is the one that resists desire.

By the cynic, the sad, the fallen,
    Who had no strength for the strife,
The world's highway is cumbered to-day -
    They make u...

Hope is the shadowy essence of a wish,
    A fond desire which floats before our eyes;
With lurid aberration, feverish,--
    We clutch the shadow which elusive, flies;
Though at our grasp the mocking fancy flees,
Hope still pursues and soothes realities.

Hope, as a mirage on the desert waste,
    Lures the lost traveler, by a vision fair
Of gushing fountains which he may not taste,
    Of streamlets cool depicted on the air;
With tongue outstretched and parched he onward speeds,
But as he moves the phantom scene recedes.

In the foul dungeon or the narrow cell,
    The prisoner doth pace his lonely beat,
And as he treads, his shackles clank a knell
    Responsive to each movement of his feet;
Yet through his grated window, he discerns
The star...

Though love repine, and reason chafe,
There came a voice without reply,--
''T is man's perdition to be safe,
When for the truth he ought to die.'