Like one who runs
Fearful at night, he knows not why,
Dreading the loneliness, yet shuns
The highway's casual company;

Wherefore he hastes,
The friendly gloom of ancient trees
Unheeding, and the shining wastes
Lying broad and quiet as the seas;

The beauty of night
Hating for very fear, until
Beyond the bend a lowly light
Beams single from a lowly sill;

And the poor fool,
Flying the sacred, solemn dark,
Leaves gladly the large, cool
Night for that serviceable spark;

And thankful then
To have 'scaped the peril of the way,
Turns not his timid steps again
That night, but waits the common day;--

So I, as weak,
Have fled the great hills of Thy love,
Too faint to hear what Thou dost speak,
Too feeble wi...

        When the Chinese did rebel,
        Gordon alone he could them quell,
        With justice they his name revere,
        The man who bullets did not fear.

        It seemed as if his life had charm
        That spear or lance could never harm,
        He went alone this wondrous man
        To fight false prophet of Soudan.

        Assistance it arrives too late,
        And traitors they have oped the gate,
        To meet the foe he doth advance,
        But fatal wound receives from lance.

        And Britons all they do take pride
        In Burnaby's Asiatic ride,
        Russian mysteries to discover,
        He crossed many a plain and river.

        And his brave spirit led the van
        To relieve Gordon in Souda...

The patriot from his walls of brass
Is singing loudly as I pass;
With fearless heart and open eyes,
He shouts the ancient battle cries;
And, where I pause to hear him sing,
A silent crowd is listening.

My country, God bestows by thee
The glory of the world to be
The glory thou alone canst give
To last amid things fugitive.

My country, an ideal form
I see thee splendid in the storm,
Directress of the power divine
That makes the expectant future thine.

My country, all the world shall bow
Before thy peace-conceiving brow,
And all the peoples humbly stand
Submissive to thy blessing hand.

My country, yea, the foes who raise
A tyrant flag shall learn to praise
Thy steadfast love that dares to fight
The horde of Satan ...

"A Victory! --a victory!"
Is flashed across the wires;
Speed, speed the news from State to State,
Light up the signal fires!
Let all the bells from all the towers
A joyous peal ring out;
We've gained a glorious victory,
And put the foe to rout!

A mother heard the chiming bells;
Her joy was mixed with pain.
"Pray God," she said, "my gallant boy
Be not among the slain!"
Alas for her! that very hour
Outstretched in death he lay,
The color from his fair, young face
Had scarcely passed away.

His nerveless hand still grasped the sword.
He never more might wield,
His eyes were sealed in dreamless sleep
Upon that bloody field.
The chestnut curls his mother oft
Had stroked in fondest pride,
Neglected hung ia clotted locks,

Onward he gallops through enchanted gloom.
The spectres of the forest, dark and dim,
And shadows of vast death environ him
Onward he spurs victorious over doom.
Before his eyes that love's far fires illume
Where courage sits, impregnable and grim
The form and features of her beauty swim,
Beckoning him on with looks that fears consume.
The thought of her distress, her lips to kiss,
Mails him with triple might; and so at last:
To Lust's huge keep he comes; its giant wall,
Wild-towering, frowning from the precipice;
And through its gate, borne like a bugle blast,
O'er night and hell he thunders to his all.

Since there is excitement
In suffering for a woman,
Let him burn on.
The dust in a wolf's eyes
Is balm of flowers to the wolf
When a flock of sheep has raised it.

From the Arabic.

Once more, dear friends, you meet beneath
A clouded sky
Not yet the sword has found its sheath,
And on the sweet spring airs the breath
Of war floats by.

Yet trouble springs not from the ground,
Nor pain from chance;
The Eternal order circles round,
And wave and storm find mete and bound
In Providence.

Full long our feet the flowery ways
Of peace have trod,
Content with creed and garb and phrase:
A harder path in earlier days
Led up to God.

Too cheaply truths, once purchased dear,
Are made our own;
Too long the world has smiled to hear
Our boast of full corn in the ear
By others sown;

To see us stir the martyr fires
Of long ago,
And wrap our satisfied desires
In the singed mantles that our sires
H...

We trust and fear, we question and believe,
From life's dark threads a trembling faith to weave,
Frail as the web that misty night has spun,
Whose dew-gemmed awnings glitter in the sun.
While the calm centuries spell their lessons out,
Each truth we conquer spreads the realm of doubt;
When Sinai's summit was Jehovah's throne,
The chosen Prophet knew his voice alone;
When Pilate's hall that awful question heard,
The Heavenly Captive answered not a word.

Eternal Truth! beyond our hopes and fears
Sweep the vast orbits of thy myriad spheres!
From age to age, while History carves sublime
On her waste rock the flaming curves of time,
How the wild swayings of our planet show
That worlds unseen surround the world we know.

Proud word you never spoke, but you will speak
Four not exempt from pride some future day.
Resting on one white hand a warm wet cheek,
Over my open volume you will say,
'This man loved me', then rise and trip away.

Behind thy pasteboard, on thy battered hack,
Thy lean cheek striped with plaster to and fro,
Thy long spear levelled at the unseen foe,
And doubtful Sancho trudging at thy back,
Thou wert a figure strange enough, good lack!
To make Wiseacredom, both high and low,
Rub purblind eyes, and (having watched thee go)
Dispatch its Dogberrys upon thy track:
Alas! poor Knight! Alas! poor soul possest?
Yet would to-day when Courtesy grows chill,
And life's fine loyalties are turned to jest,
Some fire of thine might burn within us still!
Ah, would but one might lay his lance in rest,
And charge in earnest--were it but a mill!

DYING THOUGHTS.


As Life's receding sunset fades
    And night descends,
I calmly watch the gathering shades,
As darkness stealthily invades
    And daylight ends.

Earth's span is drawing to its close,
    With every breath;
My pain-racked brain no respite knows,
Yet shrinks it, from the grim repose
    It feels in death.

The curtain falls on Life's last scene,
    The end is neared;
At last I face death's somber screen,
The fleeting joys which intervene
    Have disappeared.

And as a panoramic scroll
    The past unreels;
The mocking past, beyond control,
Though buried, as a parchment roll,
    Its tale reveals.

I stand before the dread, unknown,
    Yet solemn fact;
I see the seeds of foll...

Dark spirit! who through every age
    Hast cast a baleful gloom;
Stern lord of strife and civil rage,
    The dungeon and the tomb!
What homage should men pay to thee,
Spirit of woe and anarchy?

Yet there are those who in thy train
    Can feel a fierce delight;
Who rush, exulting, to the plain,
    And triumph in the fight,
Where the red banner floats afar
Along the crimson tide of war.

Who is the knight on sable steed,
    That comes with thundering tread?
Dark warrior, slack thy furious speed,
    Nor trample on the dead:
A youthful chief before thee lies,
Struggling in life's last agonies.

Oh pause one moment in thy course,
    Those lineaments to trace;
Dost thou not feel a strange remorse,
    Whilst gazing on ...

    Though fickle Fortune has deceived me,
        She promis'd fair and perform'd but ill;
    Of mistress, friends, and wealth bereav'd me,
        Yet I bear a heart shall support me still.

    I'll act with prudence as far's I'm able,
        But if success I must never find,
    Then come misfortune, I bid thee welcome,
        I'll meet thee with an undaunted mind.

    To God and man be simply true;
    Do as thou hast been wont to do;
    Bring out thy treasures, old and new--
    Mean all the same when said to you.

    I love thee: thou art calm and strong;
    Firm in the right, mild to the wrong;
    Thy heart, in every raging throng,
    A chamber shut for prayer and song.

    Defeat thou know'st not, canst not know,
    Although thy aims so lofty go
    They need as long to root and grow
    As infant hills to reach the snow.

    Press on and prosper, holy friend!
    I, weak and ignorant, would lend
    A voice, thee, strong and wise, to send
    Prospering onward without end.

Within the hollowed hand of God,
Blood-red they lie, the dice of fate,
That have no time nor period,
And know no early and no late.

Postpone you can not, nor advance
Success or failure that's to be;
All fortune, being born of chance,
Is bastard-child to destiny.

Bow down your head, or hold it high,
Consent, defy--no smallest part
Of this you change, although the die
Was fashioned from your living heart.

Clear sounds the call on high:
"To arms and victory!"
Brave hearts that win or die,
        Dying, may win;
Proudly the banners wave,
What though the goal's the grave?
Death cannot harm the brave, -
        Through death they win.

Softly the evening hush
Stilling strife's maddened rush
Cools the fierce battle flush, -
        See the day die;
A thousand faces white
Mirror the cold moonlight
And glassy eyes are bright
        With Victory.

Sooner or late, in earnest or in jest,
(But the stakes are no jest) Ithuriel's Hour
Will spring on us, for the first time, the test
Of our sole unbacked competence and power
Up to the limit of our years and dower
Of judgment, or beyond. But here we have
Prepared long since our garland or our grave.

For, at that hour, the sum of all our past,
Act, habit, thought, and passion, shall be cast
In one addition, be it more or less,
And as that reading runs so shall we do;
Meeting, astounded, victory at the last,
Or, first and last, our own unworthiness.
And none can change us though they die to save!

Among the dwellers in the silent fields
The natural heart is touched, and public way
And crowded street resound with ballad strains,
Inspired by one whose very name bespeaks
Favour divine, exalting human love;
Whom, since her birth on bleak Northumbria's coast,
Known unto few but prized as far as known,
A single Act endears to high and low
Through the whole land to Manhood, moved in spite
Of the world's freezing cares, to generous Youth,
To Infancy, that lisps her praise to Age
Whose eye reflects it, glistening through a tear
Of tremulous admiration. Such true fame
Awaits her 'now'; but, verily, good deeds
Do not imperishable record find
Save in the rolls of heaven, where hers may live
A theme for angels, when they celebrate
The high-souled virtues which ...