Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet:
Above her shook the starry lights:
She heard the torrents meet.

There in her place she did rejoice,
Self-gather'd in her prophet-mind,
But fragments of her mighty voice
Came rolling on the wind.

Then stept she down thro' town and field
To mingle with the human race,
And part by part to men reveal'd
The fullness of her face --

Grave mother of majestic works,
From her isle-alter gazing down,
Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks,
And, King-like, wears the crown:

Her open eyes desire the truth.
The wisdom of a thousand years
Is in them. May perpetual youth
Keep dry their light from tears;

That her fair form may stand and shine
Make bright ...

Because thou hast believ’d, the wheels of life
Stand never idle, but go always round:
Not by their hands, who vex the patient ground,
Mov’d only; but by genius, in the strife
Of all its chafing torrents after thaw,
Urg’d; and to feed whose movement, spinning sand,
The feeble sons of pleasure set their hand:
And, in this vision of the general law,
Hast labour’d with the foremost, hast become
Laborious, persevering, serious, firm;
For this, thy track, across the fretful foam
Of vehement actions without scope or term,
Call’d History, keeps a splendour: due to wit,
Which saw one clue to life, and follow’d it

Wherever is an empty chair--
Lord, be Thou there!
And fill it--like an answered prayer--
With grace of fragrant thought, and rare
Sweet memories of him whose place
Thou takest for a little space!--
--With thought of that heroical
Great heart that sprang to Duty's call;
--With thought of all the best in him,
That Time shall have no power to dim;
--With thought of Duty nobly done,
And High Eternal Welfare won.

Think!    Would you wish that he had stayed,
When all the rest The Call obeyed?
--That thought of self had held in thrall
His soul, and shrunk it mean and small?

Nay, rather thank the Lord that he
Rose to such height of chivalry;
--That, with the need, his loyal soul
Swung like a needle to its pole;
--That, setting duty firs...

The strength of twice three thousand horse
That seeks the single goal;
The line that holds the rending course,
The hate that swings the whole;
The stripped hulls, slinking through the gloom,
At gaze and gone again,
The Brides of Death that wait the groom,
The Choosers of the Slain!

Offshore where sea and skyline blend
In rain, the daylight dies;
The sullen, shouldering swells attend
Night and our sacrifice.
Adown the stricken capes no flare,
No mark on spit or bar,,
Girdled and desperate we dare
The blindfold game of war.

Nearer the up-flung beams that spell
The council of our foes;
Clearer the barking guns that tell
Their scattered flank to close.
Sheer to the trap they crowd their way
From ports for this unbarred.
Qu...

Say, ye apostate and profane,
Wretches, who blush not to disdain
Allegiance to your God,—
Did e’er your idly wasted love
Of virtue for her sake remove
And lift you from the crowd?


Would you the race of glory run ,
Know, the devout, and they alone,
Are equal to the task:
The labours of the illustrious course
Far other than the unaided force
Of human vigour ask.


To arm against reputed ill
The patient heart too brave to feel
The tortures of despair:
Nor safer yet high-crested pride,
When wealth flows in with every tide
To gain admittance there.


To rescue from the tyrant’s sword
The oppress’d; unseen and unimplored,
To cheer the face of woe;
From lawless insult to defend
An orphan’s right—a fallen f...

God knows I strive against low lust and vice,
Wound in the net of their voluptuous hair;
God knows that all their kisses are as ice
    To me who do not care.

God knows, against the front of Fate I set
Eyes still and stern, and lips as bitter prest;
Raised clenched and ineffectual palms to let
    Her rock-like pressing breast!

God knows what motive such large zeal inspires,
God knows the star for which I climb and crave,
God knows, and only God, the eating fires
    That in my bosom rave.

I will not fall! I will not; thou dost lie!
Deep Hell! that seethest in thy simmering pit;
Thy thousand throned horrors shall not vie,
    Or ever compass it!

But as thou sinkest from my soul away,
So shall I rise, rolled in the morning's rose,

Oh ye! who all life's energies combine
The fadeless laurel round your brows to twine,
Pause but one moment in your brief career,
Nor seek for glory in a mortal sphere.
Can figures traced upon the shifting sand
Washed by the mighty tide, its force withstand?
Time's stern resistless torrent onward flows,
The restless waves above your labours close,
And He who bids the bounding billows roll
Sweeps out the feeble record from the soul.

    The glorious hues that flush the evening sky
Melt into night, and on her bosom die;
Through the wide fields of heaven's immensity
The gold-tipped billows of that crimson sea
Flash on the awe-struck gazer's dazzled sight,
The rich out-gushings from the fount of light;
Yet oft, concealed beneath that splendid form,
We ha...

"Rather be dead than praised," he said,
That hero, like a hero dead,
In this slack-sinewed age endued
With more than antique fortitude!

"Rather be dead than praised!" Shall we,
Who loved thee, now that Death sets free
Thine eager soul, with word and line
Profane that empty house of thine?

Nay,--let us hold, be mute. Our pain
Will not be less that we refrain;
And this our silence shall but be
A larger monument to thee.

To stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear
This paltry age's gaudy livery,
To let each base hand filch my treasury,
To mesh my soul within a woman's hair,
And be mere Fortune's lackeyed groom, I swear
I love it not! these things are less to me
Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea,
Less than the thistledown of summer air
Which hath no seed: better to stand aloof
Far from these slanderous fools who mock my life
Knowing me not, better the lowliest roof
Fit for the meanest hind to sojourn in,
Than to go back to that hoarse cave of strife
Where my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin.

I think we are too ready with complaint
In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope
Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope
Of yon gray blank of sky, we might grow faint
To muse upon eternity's constraint
Round our aspirant souls; but since the scope
Must widen early, is it well to droop,    
For a few days consumed in loss and taint?
O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted        
And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road
Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread
Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod
To meet the flints? At least it may be said
'Because the way is short, I thank thee, God.'

"Poor lads! And you for others' wrongs and sins
Whose dead past greed and lust did never wince
    To make your fathers, mothers, and now you
Miserable fiends in hell, must expiate, since

    "We the more guilty, we the strong, the few,
    Whose triumph thrusts you down into the stew,
Fear lest our victims rise and rend us, fear
    This problem mad we will not listen to!

"Victims, with her your fellow-victim here,
Blind, deaf, dumb beasts, the hour shall yet appear
    When men, when justicers resolute-terrible, you
Shall speak and all men tremble as they hear!"

1.
Bear witness, Erin! when thine injured isle
Sees summer on its verdant pastures smile,
Its cornfields waving in the winds that sweep
The billowy surface of thy circling deep!
Thou tree whose shadow o'er the Atlantic gave
Peace, wealth and beauty, to its friendly wave, its blossoms fade,
And blighted are the leaves that cast its shade;
Whilst the cold hand gathers its scanty fruit,
Whose chillness struck a canker to its root.

2.
I could stand
Upon thy shores, O Erin, and could count
The billows that, in their unceasing swell,
Dash on thy beach, and every wave might seem
An instrument in Time the giant's grasp,
To burst the barriers of Eternity.
Proceed, thou giant, conquering and to conquer;
March on thy lonely way! The nations fall
Bene...

An Anticipation

As sure as God's in His Heaven,
As sure as He stands for Right,
As sure as the hun this wrong hath done,
So surely we win this fight!

Then!--
Then, the visioned eye shall see
The great and noble company,
That gathers there from land and sea,
From over-land and over-sea,
From under-land and under-sea,
To celebrate right royally
                The Day of Victory.

Not alone on that great day,
Will the war-worn victors come,
To meet our great glad "Welcome Home!"
And a whole world's deep "Well done!"
Not alone!    Not alone will they come,
To the sound of the pipe and the drum;
They will come to their own
With the pipe and the drum,
With the merry merry tune
Of the pipe and the drum;--
But--they...

Embalm'd in fame, and sacred from decay,
What mighty name, in arms, in arts, or verse,
From England claims this consecrated day.
Her nobles crowding round the shadowy hearse?

Hark! from yon fane, within whose hallow'd mounds,
Her bards, her warriors, and her statesmen, sleep;
The solemn, slow, funereal bell resounds,
While mournful echoes dread accordance keep.

Spirits revered! beyond that awful bourne.
Who share the dark communion of the tomb,
A kindred genius seeks your dread sojourn;
Ye heirs of glory! hail a brother home.

Obscured, as SHERIDAN to dust descends,
Recedes each ray from Wit's effulgent sphere;
Lo! every Muse in silent sorrow bends,
Her votive laurels mingling o'er his bier.

But chiefly thou, from whose polluted shrine

Here is a temple strangely wrought:
    Within it I can see
Two spirits of a diverse thought
    Contend for mastery.

One is an angel fair and bright,
    Adown the aisle comes he,
Adown the aisle in raiment white,
    A creature fair to see.

The other wears an evil mien,
    And he hath doubtless slipt,
A fearful being dark and lean,
    Up from the mouldy crypt.



Is that the roof that grows so black?
    Did some one call my name?
Was it the bursting thunder crack
    That filled this place with flame?

I move--I wake from out my sleep:
    Some one hath victor been!
I see two radiant pinions sweep,
    And I am borne between.

Beneath the clouds that under roll
    An upturned face I see--

    He bent above our darling's bed
        When her life was ebbing low,
    And in his serious look we read
        The truth we feared to know.

    We knew a slender thread was all
        That held her now; we saw
    The dark, portentous shadow fall,
        And near and nearer draw.

    Our hopes were centred all in him;
        We stood with bated breath
    As, pitiful and calm and grim,
        He fought and fought with Death.

    We hung upon the desperate fight,
        And saw in him combined
    The tiger's stealth, the lion's might,
        The man's superior mind.

    We saw the fearful hate he bore
        His old, relentless foe,
    His beautiful compassion for
        The one we cherished so.

    I.

    A death-like dew was falling
        On the herbs and the grassy ground;
    The stars to their bournes prest forward,
        Night cloaked the hills around.

    He thought of a night long past, -
        Of the ladder that reached to heaven,
    The Face that shone above it,
        The pillar, his pillows of even.


    II.

    From out of the sleeve of the darkness
        Was thrust an arm of strength, -
    Long he wrestled for mastery,
        But begged for blessing at length.

    White fear fell on him at dawn,
        As the Nameless spake with him then;
    "Prevailer and Prince," called He him,
        "A power with God and with men."

    And, alone, the lame wrestler mused:
        ...

In the good old days when the Army's ways were simple and unrefined,
With a stock to keep their chins in front, and a pigtail down behind,
When the only light in the barracks at night was a candle of grease or fat,
When they put the extinguisher on the light, they called it the Old Tin Hat.

Now, a very great man is the C. in C., for he is the whole of the show,
The reins and the whip and the driver's hand that maketh the team to go,
But the road he goes is a lonely road, with ever a choice to make,
When he comes to a place where the roads divide, which one is the road to take.
For there's one road right, and there's one road wrong, uphill, or over the flat,
And one road leads to the Temple of Fame, and one to the Old Tin Hat.

And a very great man is the man who holds an Army Co...