The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
—The soldier's last tattoo;
No more on Life's parade shall meet
—That brave and fallen few.
On Fame's eternal camping-ground
—Their silent tents are spread,
And Glory guards, with solemn round,
—The bivouac of the dead.

No rumor of the foe's advance
—Now swells upon the wind;
No troubled thought at midnight haunts
—Of loved ones left behind;
No vision of the morrow's strife
—The warrior's dream alarms;
No braying horn nor screaming fife
—At dawn shall call to arms.

City of loveliness and light and splendour,
City of Sorrows, hearken to our cry;
O Mother tender,
O Mother marvellously fair,
And fairest now in thy despair,
Look up! O be of comfort! Do not die!
Let the black hour blow by.

Cold is the night, and colder thou art lying.
Gnawing a stone sits Famine at thy feet
Shivering and sighing;
Blacker than Famine, on thy breast,
Like a sick child that will not rest,
Moans Pestilence; and hard by, with fingers fleet,
Frost weaves his winding-sheet.

A STARLESS night, and bitter cold;
The low dun clouds all wildly roll'd
Scudding before the blast,
And cheerlessly the frozen sleet
Adown the melancholy street
Swept onward thick and fast;

When crouched at an unfriendly door
Faint, sick, and miserably poor,
A silent woman sate,
She might be young, and had been fair
But from her eye look'd out despair,
All dim and desolate.

Was I to pass her coldly by,
Leaving her there to pine and die,
The live-long freezing night?
The secret answer of my heart
Told me I had not done my part

O, SAW ye the lass wi' the bonny blue een?
Her smile is the sweetest that ever was seen;
Her cheek like the rose is, but fresher, I ween;
She's the loveliest lassie that trips on the green.
The home of my love is below in the valley,
Where wild-flowers welcome the wandering bee;
But the sweetest of flowers in that spot that is seen
Is the maid that I love wi' the bonny blue een.

When night overshadows her cot in the glen,
She'll steal out to meet her loved Donald again;
And when the moon shines on the valley so green,

In the tenth lunar month the silvergrass flowers are falling in profusion
The time for making sacrifices to the Little Souls is at hand
Don't know if the Little Souls have been informed or not
The blessings and disasters, the joy and anger of the past
All have become a whisp of smoke
The Saisiat repent everyday and have waited year after year
The Saisiat have knotted the silvergrass, inviting the Taai home for a visit
Together let us revive and old dream as we recall and ponder the past
Amid the flowering stalks of the silvergrass

I make the right,
I make the wrong,
I make the truth and error.
I am the State,
I am the Law,
I am the living terror.

I own the earth,
I own the sea,
I own the treasure hoards.
In every land,
In every clime,
I am the “Lord of Lords.”

I suck the strength
From out the veins
Of mad laborious hordes.
I rule and reign
Behind a wall
Of fifty million swords.

I have not wept when I have seen
My stricken comrades die;
I have not wept when we have made
The place where they should lie;
My heart seemed drowned in tears, but still
No tear came to my eye.

There is a time to weep, saith One,
A season to refrain;
How should it ope, this fount of tears,
While I sat in the train,
So that all blurred the landscape moved
Out with the window-pane?

But one short day since I had left
A land upheaved and rent,
Where Spring brings back no bourgeoning,
As Nature's force were spent;

He was an old prospector with a vision bleared and dim.
He asked me for a grubstake, and the same I gave to him.
He hinted of a hidden trove, and when I made so bold
To question his veracity, this is the tale he told.

“I do not seek the copper streak, nor yet the yellow dust.
I am not fain for sake of gain to irk the frozen crust;
Let fellows gross find gilded dross, far other is my mark;
Oh, gentle youth, this is the truth—I go to seek the Ark.

“I prospected the Pelly bed, I prospected the White;

I sing of a woman and summer
Of hot days within my limbs
July of months and blazing woman
Who comes before me, burning, burning
Whose eyes stir sulfer seas inside
To collide with the shores of silence.
I sing of a woman and summer
The woman loves another:
I burn as a lonely taper
In blackest night.

Mid the squander'd colour
—idling as I lay
Reading the Odyssey
—in my rock-garden
I espied the cluster'd
—tufts of Cheddar pinks
Burgeoning with promise
—of their scented bloom
All the modish motley
—of their bloom to-be
Thrust up in narrow buds
—on the slender stalks
Thronging springing urgent
—hasting (so I thought)
As if they fear'd to be
—too late for summer—
Like schoolgirls overslept
—waken'd by the bell
Leaping from bed to don
—their muslin dresses
——On a May morning:

Then felt I like to one
—indulging in sin