English

Be thou then my beauty named,
Since thy will is to be mine:
For by that am I enflamed,
Which on all alike doth shine.
Others may the light admire,
I onely truely feele the fire.

But, if lofty titles move thee,
Challenge then a Sov'raignes place:
Say I honour when I love thee,
Let me call thy kindnesse grace.
State and Love things divers bee,
Yet will we teach them to agree.

Or, if this be not sufficing,
Be thou stil'd my Goddesse then:
I will love thee sacrificing,

Be the new year sweet and short
As the days of girl and boy are,
Full of friendship, full of sport —
Prosit Neujahr!

Be it beautiful and great
As the days of grief and joy are,
Full of wonder and of fate —
Prosit Neujahr!

Be swift, dear heart, in saying
The kindly word;
When ears are sealed thy passionate pleading
Will not be heard.

Be swift, dear heart, in doing
The gracious deed;
Lest soon, they whom thou holdest dearest
Be past thy need.

Be strong!
We are not here to play, to dream, to drift;
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift;
Shun not the struggle--face it; 'tis God's gift.

Be strong!
Say not, "The days are evil. Who's to blame?"
And fold the hands and acquiesce--oh shame!
Stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God's name.

Be strong!
It matters not how deep intrenched the wrong,
How hard the battle goes, the day how long;
Faint not--fight on! To-morrow comes the song.

Be still, my heart, and listen,
—For sweet and yet acute
I hear the wistful music
—Of Khristna and his flute.
Across the cool, blue evenings,
—Throughout the burning days,
Persuasive and beguiling,
—He plays and plays and plays.

Ah, none may hear such music
—Resistant to its charms,
The household work grows weary,
—And cold the husband's arms.
I must arise and follow,
—To seek, in vain pursuit,
The blueness and the distance,
—The sweetness of that flute!

In linked and liquid sequence,

At the end of the row
I stepped on the toe
Of an unemployed hoe.
It rose in offense
And struck me a blow
In the seat of my sense.
It wasn't to blame
But I called it a name.
And I must say it dealt
Me a blow that I felt
Like malice prepense.
You may call me a fool,
But was there a rule
The weapon should be
Turned into a tool?
And what do we see?
The first tool I step on
Turned into a weapon.

At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountaintop,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin molders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take;
And would not, for the world, awake.

At liberty I sit and see
Them, that have erst laughed me to scorn,
Whipped with the whip that scourgid me:
And now they ban that they were born.

I see them sit full soberly
And think their earnest looks to hide;
Now, in themselves, they cannot spy
That they or this in me have spied.

I see them sitting all alone,
Marking the steps, each word and look;
And now they tread where I have gone,
The painful path that I forsook.

Now I see well I saw no whit
When they saw well, that now are blind;

Ay , this is freedom! — these pure skies
Were never stained with village smoke:
The fragrant wind, that through them flies,
Is breathed from wastes by plough unbroke.
Here, with my rifle and my steed,
And her who left the world for me,
I plant me, where the red deer feed
In the green desert — and am free.

For here the fair savannas know
No barriers in the bloomy grass;
Wherever breeze of heaven may blow,
Or beam of heaven may glance, I pass.
In pastures, measureless as air,
The bison is my noble game;

At Eutaw Springs the valiant died;
Their limbs with dust are covered o'er--
Weep on, ye springs, your tearful tide;
How many heroes are no more!

If in this wreck of ruin, they
Can yet be thought to claim a tear,
O smite your gentle breast, and say
The friends of freedom slumber here!

Thou, who shalt trace this bloody plain,
If goodness rules thy generous breast,
Sigh for the wasted rural reign;
Sigh for the shepherds, sunk to rest!

Stranger, their humble graves adorn;