The skies that arched his land were blue,

His bush-born winds were warm and sweet,

And yet from earliest hours he knew

The tides of victory and defeat;

From fierce floods thundering at his birth,

From red droughts ravening while he played,

He learned to fear no foes on earth –

“The bravest thing God ever made!”



The bugles of the motherland

Rang ceaselessly across the sea,

To call him and his lean brown band

To shape imperial destiny;

The Narrow, thorny path he trod.
“Enter into My joy,” said God.
The sad ascetic shook his head;
“I’ve lost all taste for joy,” he said.

The Artist and his Luckless Wife
They lead a horrid haunted life,
Surrounded by the things he's made
That are not wanted by the trade.

The world is very fair to see;
The Artist will not let it be;
He fiddles with the works of God,
And makes them look uncommon odd.

The Artist is an awful man,
He does not do the things he can;
He does the things he cannot do,
And we attend the private view.

The Artist uses honest paint
To represent things as they ain't,

All day with brow of anxious thought
The dictionary through,
Amid a million words he sought
The sole one that would do.
He wandered on from pub to pub
Yet never ceased to seek
With burning brain and pencil stub
The Word Unique.

Said he: 'I'll nail it down or die.
Oh Heaven help me, pray!'
And then a heavy car dashed by,
And he was in the way.
They rushed him to the hospital,
And though his chance was bleak,
He cried: 'I'll croak, but find I shall

The Devil is a gentleman, and asks you down to stay
At his little place at What'sitsname (it isn't far away).
They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,
And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;
He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,
Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids for a bait;
He scaled amid the staggering stars that precipice, the sky,
And blew his trumpet above heaven, and got by mastery
The starry crown of God Himself, and shoved it on the shelf;

GOD gives not Kings the style of Gods in vain,
For on his Throne his Scepter do they sway:
And as their subjects ought them to obey,
So Kings should fear and serve their God again
If then ye would enioy a happy reign,
Observe the Statutes of your heavenly King,
And from his Law, make all your Laws to spring:
Since his Lieutenant here ye should remain,
Reward the just, be stedfast, true, and plain,
Repress the proud, maintaining aye the right,
Walk always so, as ever in his sight,
Who guards the godly, plaguing the profane:

Shall I desist, twice baffled? Once by land,
And once by sea, I fought and strove with storms,
All shades of danger, tides, and weary calms;
Head-currents, cold and famine, savage beasts,
And men more savage; all the while my face
Looked northward toward the pole; if mortal strength
Could have sustained me, I had never turned
Till I had seen the star which never sets
Freeze in the Arctic zenith. That I failed
To solve the mysteries of the ice-bound world,
Was not because I faltered in the quest.
Witness those pathless forests which conceal

Old John had an apple-tree, healthy and green,
Which bore the best codlins that ever were seen,
So juicy, so mellow, and red;
And when they were ripe, he disposed of his store,
To children or any who pass'd by his door,
To buy him a morsel of bread.

Little Dick, his next neighbour, one often might see,
With longing eye viewing this fine apple-tree,
And wishing a codlin might fall:
One day as he stood in the heat of the sun,
He began thinking whether he might not take one,
And then he look'd over the wall.

One star
Is better far
Than many precious stones;
One sun, which is by its own luster seen,
Is worth ten thousand golden thrones;
A juicy herb, or spire of grass,
In useful virtue, native green,
An em'rald doth surpass,
Hath in 't more value, though less seen.

No wars,
Nor mortal jars,
Nor bloody feuds, nor coin,
Nor griefs which those occasions, saw I then;
Nor wicked thieves which this purloin;
I had not thoughts that were impure;
Esteeming both women and men
God's work, I was secure,

Think me not unkind and rude
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood
To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band,
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery
But 'tis figured in the flowers;
Was never secret history
But birds tell it in the bowers.