hero

ARGUMENT.

English Teeth, English Teeth!
Shining in the sun
A part of British heritage
Aye, each and every one.
English Teeth, Happy Teeth!
Always having fun
Clamping down on bits of fish
And sausages half done.
English Teeth! HEROES' Teeth!
Hear them click! and clack!
Let's sing a song of praise to them -
Three Cheers for the Brown Grey and Black.

Sun, sun,
divine Ra-Helios,
you delight
the hearts of kings and heroes,
sacred horses neigh to you,
in Heliopolis they sing hymns to you;
when you shine,
lizards crawl out onto rocks
and boys go laughing
to swim in the Nile.
Sun, sun,
I am a pale scribbler,
a library recluse,
but I love you, sun, no less
than a tanned sailor
smelling of fish and salt water,
and no less
than his accustomed heart
rejoices
at your royal rising
from the ocean,
my heart trembles,

Flaubert wanted to write a novel
About nothing. It was to have no subject
And be sustained upon the style alone,
Like the Holy Ghost cruising above
The abyss, or like the little animals
In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch
That breaks, but do not fall
Till they look down. He never wrote that novel,
And neither did he write another one
That would have been called La Spirale,
Wherein the hero's fortunes were to rise
In dreams, while his walking life disintegrated.

Even so, for these two books

O Music hast thou only heard
The laughing river, the singing bird,
The murmuring wind in the poplar-trees,--
Nothing but Nature's melodies?
Nay, thou hearest all her tones,
As a Queen must hear!
Sounds of wrath and fear,
Mutterings, shouts, and moans,
Madness, tumult, and despair,
All she has that shakes the air
With voices fierce and wild!
Thou art a Queen and not a dreaming child,--
Put on thy crown and let us hear thee reign
Triumphant in a world of storm and strain!

The world's a room of sickness, where each heart
Knows its own anguish and unrest;
The truest wisdom there, and noblest art,
Is his, who skills of comfort best;
Whom by the softest step and gentlest tone
Enfeebled spirits own,
And love to raise the languid eye,
When, like an angel's wing, they feel him fleeting by:-

FEEL only--for in silence gently gliding
Fain would he shun both ear and sight,
'Twixt Prayer and watchful Love his heart dividing,

Oh, my beloved, have you thought of this:
How in the years to come unscrupulous Time,
More cruel than Death, will tear you from my kiss,
And make you old, and leave me in my prime?
How you and I, who scale together yet
A little while the sweet, immortal height
No pilgrim may remember or forget,
As sure as the world turns, some granite night
Shall lie awake and know the gracious flame
Gone out forever on the mutual stone;
And call to mind that on the day you came
I was a child, and you a hero grown?—

My mother loved her horses and
Her hounds of pedigree;
She did not kiss the baby hand
I held to her in glee.
Of course I had a sweet nou-nou
Who tended me with care,
And mother reined her nag to view
Me with a critic air.

So I went to a famous school,
But holidays were short;
My mother thought me just a fool,
Unfit for games and sport.
For I was fond of books and art,
And hated hound and steed:

O had he first been swept away,
Through air by wild winds tossed,
Or sunk from Heaven's ethereal ray,
To Pluto's dreary coast.
Who trained the Grecians to the field,
Taught them the sword, the spear to wield,
And steeled the gentle mind!
Hence toil gives birth to toil again,
Hence carnage stains the ensanguined plain,
For he destroyed mankind.

Nor the brow with chaplets bound,
Breathing balmy odours round,
Nor the social glow of soul,
Kindling o’er the generous bowl,

CLOUD-MAIDENS that float on forever,
Dew-sprinkled, fleet bodies, and fair,
Let us rise from our Sire's loud river,
Great Ocean, and soar through the air
To the peaks of the pine-covered mountains where the pines hang as tressed of hair.
Let us seek the watch towers undaunted,
Where the well-watered cornfields abound,
And through murmurs of rivers nymph-haunted,
The songs of the sea-waves resound;
And the sun in the sky never wearies of spreading his radiance around.

Let us cast off the haze