"Put up the sword!" The voice of Christ once more
Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon's roar,
O'er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped
And left dry ashes; over trenches heaped
With nameless dead; o'er cities starving slow
Under a rain of fire; through wards of woe
Down which a groaning diapason runs
From tortured brothers, husbands, lovers, sons
Of desolate women in their far-off homes
Waiting to hear the step that never comes!
O men and brothers! let that voice be heard.
War fails, try peace; put up the useless sword!

Fear not the end. There is a story told
In Eastern tents, when autumn nights grow cold,
And round the fire the Mongol shepherds sit
With grave responses listening unto it:
Once, on the errands of his mercy bent,
Buddha, the holy an...

St. George, I learned to love thee in my youth
    When of thy deeds I read in deathless song;
    And now, when I behold the dragon Wrong
Hard by the castle-gates of Love and Truth,
I feel the world's great need of thee, forsooth,
    To strike the heavy blow delayed too long.
    Then turning from the mediæval throng,
Where thou wert bravest, yet the first in ruth,
I watch thy votaries by land and sea
    Armed with thy sacred sign go forth to fight
Anew the battle of humanity
    Beneath the flag of mercy and of right;
No holier band a holier realm e'er trod
Than this--the world's knight-errantry of God!

                    O guns, fall silent till the dead men hear
                    Above their heads the legions pressing on:
                    (These fought their fight in time of bitter fear,
                    And died not knowing how the day had gone.)

                    O flashing muzzles, pause, and let them see
                    The coming dawn that streaks the sky afar;
                    Then let your mighty chorus witness be
                    To them, and Caesar, that we still make war.

                    Tell them, O guns, that we have heard their call,
                    That we have sworn, and will not turn aside,
                    That we will onward till we win or fall,
                    That we will keep the faith for which they died.

Padre del ciel, dopo i perduti giorni.

CONSCIOUS OF HIS FOLLY, HE PRAYS GOD TO TURN HIM TO A BETTER LIFE.


    Father of heaven! after the days misspent,
After the nights of wild tumultuous thought,
In that fierce passion's strong entanglement,
One, for my peace too lovely fair, had wrought;
Vouchsafe that, by thy grace, my spirit bent
On nobler aims, to holier ways be brought;
That so my foe, spreading with dark intent
His mortal snares, be foil'd, and held at nought.
E'en now th' eleventh year its course fulfils,
That I have bow'd me to the tyranny
Relentless most to fealty most tried.
Have mercy, Lord! on my unworthy ills:
Fix all my thoughts in contemplation high;
How on the cross this day a Saviour died.

DACRE.

"To arms!" the battle bugles blew.
The daughter of their Earl was she,
Lord of a thousand swords and true;
He but a squire of low degree.

The horns of war blew up to horse:
He kissed her mouth; her face was white;
"God grant they bear thee back no corse!" -
"God give I win my spurs to-night!"

Each watch-tower's blazing beacon scarred
A blood-blot in the wounded dark:
She heard knights gallop battleward,
And from the turret leaned to mark.

"My God, deliver me and mine!
My child! my God!" all night she prayed:
She saw the battle beacons shine;
She saw the battle beacons fade.

They brought him on a bier of spears. -
For him - the death-won spurs and name;
For her - the sting of secret tears,
And convent walls to hide her sha...

Here's to the Creditor,
Long may he reign!
May his Faith never waver,
His Trust never wane.
May the Lord make him gentle
And gracious and gay,
Yet quick to resent
The least offer of pay:
May he soften his heart
As he softened, we're told,
To the Israelite's 'touch,'
The Egyptian of old;
And when on his last
Long account he shall look,
The angel will say
As he closes the book:
"The Lord gives you Credit
For Credit you gave"!
So here's to the Creditor--
Long may he waive.

I will, I will, the conflict's past,
And I'll consent to love at last.
Cupid has long, with smiling art,
Invited me to yield my heart;
And I have thought that peace of mind
Should not be for a smile resigned;
And so repelled the tender lure,
And hoped my heart would sleep secure.

But, slighted in his boasted charms,
The angry infant flew to arms;
He slung his quiver's golden frame,
He took his bow; his shafts of flame,
And proudly summoned me to yield,
Or meet him on the martial field.
And what did I unthinking do?
I took to arms, undaunted, too;
Assumed the corslet, shield, and spear,
And, like Pelides, smiled at fear.

Then (hear it, All ye powers above!)
I fought with Love! I fought with Love!
And now his arrows all were shed,...

    Stay of the church and pillar of the state!
        Who alway did'st to wrong thy voice oppose,
        And strong hast striven corruption to expose,
    And, jealous ever for thy country's fate,
    Her virtues to preserve inviolate.
        Much to thy power the platform, pulpit owes,
        Thy pen has held the Right and quelled her foes:
    A man withal thou art, and truly great.
    And, true to thy convictions, firm thou hast
        In these last troublous times maintained thy stand,
    And boldly at thy post hast faced the blast,
        That threatens still the ship of state to strand,
    And shown thy resolution to the last
        To serve thy God, thy sovereign, and thy land.

Not your martyrs anointed of heaven -
        The ages are red where they trod -
But the Hunted - the world's bitter leaven -
        Who smote at your imbecile God -

A being to pander and fawn to,
        To propitiate, flatter and dread
As a thing that your souls are in pawn to,
        A Dealer who traffics the dead;

A Trader with greed never sated,
        Who barters the souls in his snares,
That were trapped in the lusts he created,
        For incense and masses and prayers -

They are crushed in the coils of your halters;
        'Twere well - by the creeds ye have nursed -
That ye send up a cry from your altars,
        A mass for the Martyrs Accursed;

A passionate prayer from reprieval
        For the Brotherhood not under...

(With apologies to a beautiful poem.)


Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe decrease
By cautious birth-control and die in peace)
Mellow with learning lightly took the word
That marked him not with them that love the Lord,
And told the angel of the book and pen
"Write me as one that loves his fellow-men:
For them alone I labour; to reclaim
The ragged roaming Bedouin and to tame
To ordered service; to uproot their vine
Who mock the Prophet, being mad with wine,
Let daylight through their tents and through their lives,
Number their camels, even count their wives,
Plot out the desert into streets and squares;
And count it a more fruitful work than theirs
Who lift a vain and visionary love
To your vague Allah in the skies above."

Gently replie...

Hold to the rapture: let it work
Inward till founts of being fill,
And all is clear that once was murk,
And Beauty's self rise, mirrored still,
Before the mind, that shall devise
New forms of earth to realize.

Let it possess the heart and soul,
And through the two evolve the one,
And so achieve th' immortal goal
Of something great that man has done:
Pouring his thought, his dream intense,
Into the molds of permanence.

Within the compass of extremes
Science and Art their worlds have set,
Wherein the soul fulfills its dreams,
And evermore, without a let,
Swift, eagle-like, free, unconfined,
Soars to new altitudes of mind.

So far as I conceive the World’s rebuke
To him address’d who would recast her new,
Not from herself her fame of strength she took,
But from their weakness, who would work her rue.
‘Behold,’ she cries, ‘so many rages lull’d,
So many fiery spirits quite cool’d down:
Look how so many valours, long undull’d,
After short commerce with me, fear my frown.
Thou too, when thou against my crimes wouldst cry,
Let thy foreboded homage check thy tongue.’
The World speaks well: yet might her foe reply
‘Are wills so weak? then let not mine wait long.
Hast thou so rare a poison? let me be
Keener to slay thee, lest thou poison me.

I AM always inclined to suspect
The best story under the sun
As soon as by chance I detect
That teller and hero are one.

We're all of us prone to conceit,
And like to proclaim our own glory,
But our purpose we're apt to defeat
As actors in chief of our story.

To prove the truth of what I state
Let me an anecdote relate:
A Gascon with his comrade sat
At tavern drinking. This and that
He vaunted with assertion pat.
From gasconade to gasconade
Passed to the conquests he had made
In love.    A buxom country maid,
Who served the wine, with due attention
Lent patient ear to each invention,
And pressed her hands against her side
Her bursting merriment to hide.
To hear our Gascon talk, no Sue
Nor Poll in town but that he knew;

'Twas a wild and stormy sunset, changing tints of lurid red
Flooded mountain top and valley and the low clouds overhead;
And the rays streamed through the windows of a building stately, high,
Whose wealthy, high-born master had lain him down to die.

Many friends were thronging round him, breathing aching, heavy sighs -
Men with pale and awe-struck faces, women, too, with weeping eyes,
Watching breathless, silent, grieving him whose sands were nearly run,
When, with sudden start, he muttered: "God! how much I've left undone!"

Then out spoke an aged listener, with broad brow and locks of snow,
"Patriot, faithful to thy country and her welfare, say not so,
For the long years thou hast served her thou hast only honor won."
But, from side to side still tossing, still he muttere...

(Coronation Year, 1911)


God save England, blessed by Fate,
So old, yet ever young:
The acorn isle from which the great
Imperial oak has sprung!
And God guard Scotland's kindly soil,
The land of stream and glen,
The granite mother that has bred
A breed of granite men!

God save Wales, from Snowdon's vales
To Severn's silver strand!
For all the grace of that old race
Still haunts the Celtic land.
And, dear old Ireland, God save you,
And heal the wounds of old,
For every grief you ever knew
May joy come fifty-fold!

Set Thy guard over us,
May Thy shield cover us,
Enfold and uphold us
On land and on sea!
From the palm to the pine,
From the snow to the line,
Brothers together
And children of Thee.
<...

A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown;
A route through a heavy wood, with muffled steps in the darkness;
Our army foil'd with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating;
Till after midnight glimmer upon us, the lights of a dim-lighted
building;
We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted
building;
'Tis a large old church at the crossing roads--'tis now an impromptu
hospital;
--Entering but for a minute, I see a sight beyond all the pictures
and poems ever made:
Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles and
lamps,
And by one great pitchy torch, stationary, with wild red flame, and
clouds of smoke;
By these, crowds, groups of forms, vaguely I see, on the floor, some
in the pews laid down;
At my ...

When Discord blew her fell alarm
On Gallia's blood-stain'd ground,
When Usurpation's giant arm
Enslaved the nations round:
The thunders of avenging Heaven
To NELSON'S chosen hand were given!
By NELSON'S chosen hand were hurl'd,
To rescue the devoted world!

The tyrant power, his vengeance dread
To Egypt's shores pursued;
At Trafalgar its hydra-head
For ever sunk subdued.
The freedom of mankind was won!
The hero's glorious task was done!
When Heaven, Oppression's ensigns furl'd,
Recall'd him from the rescued world.

Henceforth, please God, forever I forego
The yoke of men's opinions. I will be
Light-hearted as a bird, and live with God.
I find him in the bottom of my heart,
I hear continually his voice therein.