English

From the bathing machine came a din
As of jollification within;
It was heard far and wide,
And the incoming tide
Had a definite flavour of gin.

From sorrow sorrow yet is born,
Hopes flow like water through a sieve,
But leave not thou thy son forlorn;
Touch me, great Nature, make me live.

As when thy sunlights, a mild heat,
Touch some dun mere that sleepeth still;
As when thy moonlights, dim and sweet,
Touch some gray ruin on the hill.

From soil somehow the poet's word
and from that word the spreading tree
where swells all fruit, sings every bird,
whose strong trunk is philosophy.
whose branches thrust in legal maze,
whose leaves are myriad windows green
sifting the one to many ways,
tinting the unseen to the seen.
Your teachers list the birds and fruit,
the trunk and branches of the tree;
but they forget about the root,
because the root they cannot see.
Yet have the roots a ray to find
their road between the stones and clay;

From Santiago, spurning the morrow,
Spain's ships come steaming, big with black sorrow:
Over the ocean, first on our roster,
Runs Richard Wainwright, glad on the Gloucester.
Boast him, and toast him!
 Wainwright! The Gloucester!

Great ships and gaunt ships, steel-clad and sable,
Roll on resplendent, monsters of fable:
Crash all our cannon, quick Maxims rattle.
Red death and ruin rush through the battle;
Red death and dread death
 Ravage and rattle.

Speed on Spain's cruisers, towers of thunder:

From prayer that asks that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,
From fearing when I should aspire,
From faltering when I should climb higher,
From silken self, O Captain free
Thy soldier who would follow Thee.

From easy choices, weakenings,
Not thus are spirits fortified,
Not this way went the Crucified,
From all that dims Thy Calvary,
O Lamb of God, deliver me.

Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay,
The hope no disappointments tire,

I

From out my deep, wide-bosomed West,
Where unnamed heroes hew the way
For worlds to follow, with stern zest, —
Where gnarled old maples make array,
Deep-scarred from red men gone to rest, —
Where pipes the quail, where squirrels play
Through tossing trees, with nuts for toy,
A boy steps forth, clear-eyed and tall,
A bashful boy, a soulful boy,

Flee fro the prees and dwell with soothfastnesse;
Suffice unto thy thing, though it be smal;
For hord hath hate, and climbing tikelnesse,
Prees hath envye, and wele blent overal;
Savour no more than thee behove shal.
Wirche wel thyself, that other folk canst rede;
And trouthe shal delivere, it is no drede.

Tempest thee not al croked to redresse,
In trust of hir that turneth as a bal —
For grete rest stant in litel bisinesse;
And eek be ware to sporne ayenst an al;
Strive not as doth the crokke with the wal.

Fond man, that canst beleeve her blood
Will from those purple chanels flow;
Or that the pure untainted flood
Can any foule distemper know;
Or that thy weake steele can incize
The Crystall case, wherein it lyes.

Know; her quick blood, proud of his seat,
Runs dauncing through her azure veines;
Whose harmony no cold, nor heat
Disturbs, whose hue no tincture staines;
And the hard rock wherein it dwells,
The keenest darts of Love repels.

But thou reply'st, behold she bleeds;

Four seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming nigh
His nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close: contented so to look
On mists in idleness--to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook:

In the cold I will rise, I will bathe
In waters of ice; myself
Will shiver, and shrive myself,
Alone in the dawn, and anoint
Forehead and feet and hands;
I will shutter the windows from light,
I will place in their sockets the four
Tall candles and set them aflame
In the grey of the dawn; and myself
Will lay myself straight in my bed,
And draw the sheet under my chin.