English

Before the sun all kingliest stars must fade.
When morning's light-beams flash from glade to glade
And o'er the glittering deep,
When crimson dawn leaps on from land to land,
Who shall the conquering sun-god's course withstand
Or hold Night's castle-keep?

So now to-day we hail the deathless one
Who shines alone 'mid singers as the sun,
Crowned for eternal years:
Who reached love's utmost height, thought's lordliest goal;
Who heard unmoved Fate's mightiest thunders roll
Yet wept at children's tears.

While woman deems herself so small,
So frail, so slight a thing,
There seems no hope, no hope at all:
What gifts can mankind bring?

God's sweetness through her eyes should shine,
God's lilies in her hands;
God's tenderest roses she should twine
In soft pure bright hair-bands.

Unless she bringeth heaven to man,
Man cannot reach the sky.
If woman cannot lift, who can?
This earth's last hope must die.

Beware, O earth! O man, beware!
Beware, O woman weak!

A stormy evening on far-stretched plain
Of meadow-land and corn-land, — and a host
Of stubborn red-coats holding every post
Against the interminable cannon-rain.
Oh, to live through that deathless day again!
The day when the Old Guard he trusted most,
Napoleon, — found their world-wide fierce-lipped boast,
Valid a thousand times, this one time vain.

The blue long lines in motion, and the red
Long line as steady as a wall of stone! —
The Old Guard, plunging through that long day's dead,

From all the ends of the earth the plaintiffs came. —
— I lost my three sons in a day, — one said:
The next, — My white-souled daughter wedded shame. —
Then came a flower with overburthened head
And petals filled with flush of vengeful flame;
Weeping, it plained: — My sister rose was red;
We loved each other, and we rested close
Against the quiet garden's grey old wall
Till the wind shook us roughly from repose
And lo! one day I saw my sister fall.
Now I am lonely; lonelier than those

What of the anguish and the bitter sorrow
And all the strife and tears?
Shall there be sunshine on some great to-morrow
That shall atone for gaunt War's blood-red years?

The hearts of women pierced, the children lying
Silent, in sunless sleep:
We think of these, and ask, our whole souls sighing,
" Can heaven that sees eternal silence keep?

" Is there no answer, comes no word to cheer us
Who, lifting helpless hands,
Felt grief's wild sword as keen, and death as near us

Back over twenty years we look. What blasts have sounded
From War's red trumpet! — what fierce deadly strifes abounded:
Strange is it, as back one looks!
Since the old boyish time when you and I together
Walked over purple miles of wind-tossed Cornish heather
And watched the arrowy trout in Cornish brooks.

Since the old Harrow days what bitter devastation
Has smitten low the hopes of nation after nation: —
Wide Europe's fields have bled
Since you and I as boys laughed round the merry wicket;

Beyond, — beyond the stifling inland nooks
Well loved of flowers and birds and butterflies,
And dim caerulean depths of summer skies,
And pebbly plashing meadowsweet-lined brooks,
Out to the far-off sea my spirit looks;
And seeks with fiery passionate surmise
The shore where the eternal sea-waves' eyes
Watch their sea-birds, — as these trees watch their rooks.

Beyond these valleys, — beautiful indeed, —
Beyond these haunts of heron, hawk, and jay, —
Beyond flower-sprinkled scented dappled mead, —

Before the gates of vengeful darkness close
Ponder, O England, what thou wilt have done
If thou dost hide for ever from the sun
This man, perhaps the noblest of thy foes.
What woman's heart can here in peace repose
If this most monstrous deed, condemned of none,
Makes horror's blood-stained cup at last o'er-run?
Add not another to unmeasured woes.

The world is watching. Let one pitying cry
Ring forth from England. In the name of heaven
Let mercy, not crude “justice,” win the day!

I.

Of far-off purple hills and mist-crowned mountains hoary
Wordsworth dreamed.
His soul was one with clouds and golden sunsets' glory
As they gleamed.
II.

With mystic strength of soul and prophet's exaltation
He beheld
The glittering hosts of stars take up their nightly station,
God-impelled.

III.

Fair Nature was his Queen, and on her bosom ample
He reposed.
He heard not Passion's steeds, whose fiery swift hoofs trample:

O strange sequestered sunny silent land
Where fairies exiled from man's haunts, might dwell!
Land of the great fern and the heather-bell
And larch and pine and beech-bole gnarled and grand
And trout-streams brown and lanes of rufous sand
And many a deep-green shrouded mystic dell
And silver-gleaming lake and mossy fell, —
Shall I again within thy borders stand? —

Thou hast an inland splendour all thine own.
And yet thy tenderest delight to me
Was, — not thy soft and deep streams' silver tone,