song

Of Cora, once so dearly ours,
Would mournful memory sing;
Of how she came when came the flowers,
To leave us with the spring.
That day (returned) which gave her breath
Was that whereon she died,
And o’er the pangs of birth and death
Passed blooming as a bride.

The spring it came, with never a storm,
And nine times came and went,
Till its whole spirit with her form
In budding beauty blent.

Yea, till its sentiment was wreathed
About her eye it came,

Leave we the pedants to quarrel and strive,

Rigid and cautious the teachers to be!
All of the wisest men e'er seen alive

Smile, nod, and join in the chorus with me:
"Vain 'tis to wait till the dolt grows less silly!
Play then the fool with the fool, willy-nilly,--

Children of wisdom,--remember the word!"

Merlin the old, from his glittering grave,
When I, a stripling, once spoke to him,--gave

Just the same answer as that I've preferr'd;
"Vain 'tis to wait till the dolt grows less silly!

How shall I wail, that wasn't meant for weeping?
Love has run and left me, oh, what then?
Dream, then, I must, who never can be sleeping;
What if I should meet Love, once again?

What if I met him, walking on the highway?
Let him see how lightly I should care.
He'd travel his way, I would follow my way;
Hum a little song, and pass him there.

What if at night, beneath a sky of ashes,
He should seek my doorstep, pale with need?
There could he lie, and dry would be my lashes;

I like to hear of wealth and gold,
And El Doradoes in their glory;
I like for silks and satins bold
To sweep and rustle through a story.

The nightingale is sweet of song;
The rare exotic smells divinely;
And knightly men who stride along,
The role heroic carry finely.

But then, upon the other hand,
Our minds have got a way of running
To things that aren't quite so grand,
Which, maybe, we are best in shunning.

For some of us still like to see
The poor man in his dwelling narrow,

THOUGH singing but the shy and sweet
Untrod by multitudes of feet,
Songs bounded by the brook and wheat,
I have not failed in this,
The only lure my woodland note,
To win all England’s whitest throat!
O bards in gold and fire who wrote,
Be yours all other bliss!

Conscience is instinct bred in the house,
Feeling and Thinking propagate the sin
By an unnatural breeding in and in.
I say, Turn it out doors,
Into the moors.
I love a life whose plot is simple,
And does not thicken with every pimple,
A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it,
That makes the universe no worse than 't finds it.
I love an earnest soul,
Whose mighty joy and sorrow
Are not drowned in a bowl,
And brought to life to-morrow;
That lives one tragedy,
And not seventy;

(EGYPTIAN BASE CAMP)


They are gathering round....
Out of the twilight; over the grey-blue sand,
Shoals of low-jargoning men drift inward to the sound—
The jangle and throb of a piano ... tum-ti-tum...
Drawn by a lamp, they come
Out of the glimmering lines of their tents, over the shuffling sand.

O sing us the songs, the songs of our own land,
You warbling ladies in white.
Dimness conceals the hunger in our faces,
This wall of faces risen out of the night,

SONG1-
Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph that liv'st unseen
-
Within thy airy shell
-
By slow Meander's margent green,
-
And in the violet-imbroider'd vale
-
Where the love-lorn nightingale
-
Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well:
-
Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair
-
That likest thy Narcissus are?
-
O if thou have
-

Hid them in some flow'ry cave,
-

Tell me but where
-

In that new world toward which our feet are set,
Shall we find aught to make our hearts forget
Earth's homely joys and her bright hours of bliss?
Has heaven a spell divine enough for this?
For who the pleasure of the spring shall tell
When on the leafless stalk the brown buds swell,
When the grass brightens and the days grow long,
And little birds break out in rippling song?

O sweet the dropping eve, the blush of morn,
The starlit sky, the rustling fields of corn,
The soft airs blowing from the freshening seas,

I plucked a rose from out a bower fair,
That overhung my garden seat;
And wondered I if, e'er before, bloomed there
A rose so sweet.

Enwrapt in beauty I scarce felt the thorn
That pricked me as I pulled the bud;
Till I beheld the rose that summer morn,
Stained with my blood.

I sang a song that thrilled the evening air
With beauty somewhat kin to love,
And all men know that lyric song so rare
Came from above.

And men rejoice to hear the golden strain;