Now have five and sixty parts
Of this brief time gone by;
Thus men hasten to eternity.
My God is good, my God is true,
To offer Him alone the honor
Was I brought into the light.
If I'm to live down here much longer
'T will be through His wondrous power.

Until this day the Lord has borne me,
And to this day my God has brought me.
Through good and evil days
He covered me with His might.
War brings always want and famine,
But God gives me my daily bread.

Once again a year is gone
O Thou Rock, Eternity!
All my ardent longing
Goes far beyond this life
Towards my true fatherland,
For I'm a stranger here below.

In times like these, the Sailor of our play
Much more than common sailors has to say;
For Frenchmen now the British Tars provoke,
And doubly tough is every Heart of Oak;
Ready to die or conquer at command,
While all are soldiers who are left on land.
Each English soul's on fire to strike the blow
That curbs the French and lays a tyrant low.
Sweet wolf! how lamb-like! how, in his designs,
“The maiden modesty of Grimbald” shines!
Strifes he concludes 'twixt nations who agree;
Freedom bestows on States already free;
Forcing redress on each contented town,

I will that if I say a heavy thing
Your tongues forgive me; seeing ye know that spring
Has flecks and fits of pain to keep her sweet,
And walks somewhile with winter-bitten feet
Moreover it sounds often well to let
One string, when ye play music, keep at fret
The whole song through; one petal that is dead
Confirms the roses, be they white or red;
Dead sorrow is not sorrowful to hear
As the thick noise that breaks mid weeping were;
The sick sound aching in a lifted throat
Turns to sharp silver of a perfect note;

Ye who rend my bed of earth,
Mark me! from my lowly birth,
Ye to light in me will bring
What will rise to be your king!
I shall rule with tyrant sway,
Till ye rue my natal day
High and low my power shall own,
For I'll make the world my throne!

And my worshippers shall be
Martyrs, dupes, or slaves to me.
Love and friendship, on the way
To their idol, they will slay.
Conscience—I will still her cry;
Truth for me shall bleed and die!
I will prove a cham to bind
Down to earth the immortal mind!

Though ye try me by the fire,

Keep to the road, dear children, my brothers, my sisters:
It's hard to press on but it's harder to stop: steady! steady! my loved ones!
Keep to the road: do not turn back: no matter what happens, do not turn back:
There's poverty ahead and starvation ahead and battle ahead and death ahead: I refuse to see nothing:
Then there's something more ahead: there's truth ahead: Do you hear?—truth—divine unspeakable truth
I promise you no award: I hang no fruit on the trees for you:

The stag was gone
And the hounds that follow;
The glade was still,
Not a stir around.
Not a doe or fawn
That had failed to follow
With keenest fear
Could have sensed a sound.
And yet on the hill
There was something hid;
In the coppice near
Was a presence felt,
Of eyes and feet
That were full of thrill,
Of limbs a-quiver
To leap and bound.

Then sudden the leaves
Of a laurel stirred,
The branches parted
And eyes peered out,
With bacchic stealth
Of glance that started,
Then vanished as if
Pan-hoofs were heard.

Not that the gift, great Lord, deserves your hand,
Held ever worth the rarest works of men,
Offer I this; but since in all our land
None can more rightly claim a poet's pen:
That noble blood and virtue truly known,
Which circular in you united run,
Makes you each good, and every good your own,
If it can hold in what my Muse hath done.
But weak and lowly are these tuned lays,
Yet though but weak to win fair Memory,
You may improve them, and your gracing raise;
For things are priz'd as their possessors be.
If for such favour they have worthless striven,

As when a mariner, accounted lost,
Upon the wat'ry Desert long time tost,
In Summer's parching heat, in Winter's cold,
In tempests great, in dangers manifold,
Is by a fav'ring wind drawn up the mast,
Whence he descries his native soil at last,
For whose glad sight he gets the hatches under,
And to the ocean tells his joy in thunder,
(Shaking those barnacles into the sea,
At once that in the womb and cradle lay)
When suddenly the still inconstant wind
Masters before, that did attend behind,
And grows so violent that he is fain