Hail, Energeia! hail, my native tongue,
Concisely full, and musically strong!
Thou, with the pencil, hold'st a glorious strife,
And paints the passions greater than the life:
In thunders now tremendously array'd,
Now soft as murmurs of the melting maid:
Now piercing loud, and as the clarion clear,
And now resounding rough to rouse the ear:
Now quick as light'ning in its rapid flow,
Now, in its stately march, magnificently slow.
Hail, Energeia! hail, my native tongue,
Concisely full, and musically strong!

I keep a bird in my heart,
He lives on sorrow,
His name is Faith.
He is so quick a conjurer that he can borrow
Flesh from a wraith.

He swallows the harsh weeds of pain
And gives me scope,
To tend my little garden-plot again.
And wait for Hope.

It is not meet for one like me to praise
A lady, princess, goddess, artist such;
For great ones crane their foreheads to her touch,
To change their splendours into crowns of bays.
But poets never rhyme as they are bid;
Nor never see their fit goal; but aspire,
With straining eyes, to some far silvern spire;
Flowers among, sing to the gods cloud-hid
One of these, onetime, opened velvet eyes
Upon the world—the years recall the day;
Those lights still shine, conscious of power alway,
But flattering men with feigned looks of surprise.

And would'st thou reach, rash scholar mine,
Love's high unruffled state?
Awake! thy easy dreams resign,
First learn thee how to hate:—

Hatred of sin, and Zeal, and Fear,
Lead up the Holy Hill;
Track them, till Charity appear
A self-denial still.

Dim is the philosophic flame,
By thoughts severe unfed:
Book-lore ne'er served, when trial came,
Nor gifts, when faith was dead

Some say a poet's born, not made; but I
Say he's twice born that made this poesie.
Nature imparted little to his wit
'Twas grace which had the greatest hand in it;
His pen came from the wing of th' holy Dove
Dropping no gall, but innocence and love;
No scurrilous obscenity to make
It vendible, and with the rabble take;
No tenter-stretch't conceits, no puff-paste strains
Which serve not to instruct but wrack men's brains;
No such as their invention draw from wine
And reele into a verse: but all divine
Clear as the beams are of th' inlightned day

They say that man is mighty,
He governs land and sea,
He wields a mighty scepter
O'er lesser powers than he;

But mightier power and stronger
Man from his throne has hurled,
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.

Idly she yawned, and threw her heavy hair
Across her flesh-filled shoulders, called the maid,
And slipped her sweet blonde body out of bed,
Searching her slippers in the wintry air.

The fire shed over all a sullen glare,—
Then in her bath she sponged from foot to head,
Her body, arms, breasts, thighs, and things unsaid,
Powdered and dried herself with delicate care.

Then zoë entered with Figaro,
The chocolate, the letters, and the cat,
And drew the blinds to show the falling snow,
Upon the sofa still her mistress sat

The hospital is big and clean,
All filled with sun and air;
Two rows of beds—you walk between—
Our wounded men lie there.

I sat beside my hero-man
And talked about the wars:
I said “Please show me, if you can,
Your honourable scars.”

He said, “This day a week ago
I fell beside my gun;
How long I lay I hardly know,
I knew the fight was won.

I came by ship, I came by train;
Find England looks the same;
And if I never fight again,
At least I played the game.”

I thought him very brave and kind

1. Come all ye young females, I pray you'll attend To
these twa or three letters that I've newly penned, To
let you understand the hardships I undergo, When
first I fell in love wi'young Sally Monroe.

2 I wrote her a letter, a letter I did send;
I sent it with a comrade I thought to be a friend.
Instead of bein' a friend to me, he proved to be a foe,
And he never gave that letter to young Sally Monroe.

3 It was on a Sunday morning about six o'clock,
'Twas all in a sudden our ship did strike a rock.
Three hundred and fifty were all sank below,

The secrets of fine character
Are peeped into by women.