The Choir And Music Of Solitude And Silence

Silence is a great blue bell
Swinging and ringing, tinkling and singing,
In measure’s pleasure, and in the supple symmetry
of the soaring of the immense intense wings
glinting against
All the blue radiance above us and within us, hidden
Save for the stars sparking, distant and unheard in their
singing.
And this is the first meaning of the famous saying,
The stars sang. They are the white birds of silence
And the meaning of the difficult famous saying that the


The Castaway

Obscurest night involv'd the sky,
Th' Atlantic billows roar'd,
When such a destin'd wretch as I,
Wash'd headlong from on board,
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating home for ever left.

No braver chief could Albion boast
Than he with whom he went,
Nor ever ship left Albion's coast,
With warmer wishes sent.
He lov'd them both, but both in vain,
Nor him beheld, nor her again.

Not long beneath the whelming brine,


The Bush Girl

So you rode from the range where your brothers “select,”

Through the ghostly grey bush in the dawn---

You rode slowly at first, lest her heart should suspect

That you were glad to be gone;

You had scarcely the courage to glance back at her

By the homestead receding from view,

And you breathed with relief as you rounded the spur,

For the world was a wide world to you.



Grey eyes that grow sadder than sunset or rain,

Fond heart that is ever more true


The cattle thief

They were coming across the prairie, they were
galloping hard and fast;
For the eyes of those desperate riders had sighted
their man at last--
Sighted him off to Eastward, where the Cree
encampment lay,
Where the cotton woods fringed the river, miles and
miles away.
Mistake him? Never! Mistake him? the famous
Eagle Chief!
That terror to all the settlers, that desperate Cattle
Thief--
That monstrous, fearless Indian, who lorded it over
the plain,


The Campaign, A Poem, To His Grace The Duke Of Marlborough

While crowds of princes your deserts proclaim,
Proud in their number to enrol your name;
While emperors to you commit their cause,
And Anna's praises crown the vast applause;
Accept, great leader, what the Muse recites,
That in ambitious verse attempts your fights.
Fir'd and transported with a theme so new,
Ten thousand wonders opening to my view
Shine forth at once; sieges and storms appear,
And wars and conquests fill the' important year:

Rivers of blood I see, and hills of slain,


The Bullfinch

Why do you strike up songs military
Fife-like, o, bullfinch, my friend?
Who'll take the lead in our fight with Hell's forces?
Who will command us? What Hercules?
Where is Suvorov, strong, swift and fearless?
Now Northern thunder lies dead in the grave.

Who will ride fiery, ahead of the legions,
Nag for a steed, and crusts for meal,
Temper his sword in the heat and in ice storms,
Sleep on straw pallets, labor 'til dawn,
Bring down the armies, the walls and the forts
With but a handful of stout Russian men?


The Bucking-Tub

IF once in love, you'll soon invention find
And not to cunning tricks and freaks be blind;
The youngest 'prentice, when he feels the dart,
Grows wondrous shrewd, and studies wily art.
This passion never, we perceive, remains
In want from paucity of scheming brains.
The god of hearts so well exerts his force,
That he receives his dues as things of course.
A bucking-tub, of which a tale is told,
Will prove the case, and this I'll now unfold;
Particulars I heard some days ago,
From one who seemed each circumstance to know.


The Broken Balance

I. Reference to a Passage in Plutarch's Life of Sulla

The people buying and selling, consuming pleasures, talking in the archways,
Were all suddenly struck quiet
And ran from under stone to look up at the sky: so shrill and mournful,
So fierce and final, a brazen
Pealing of trumpets high up in the air, in the summer blue over Tuscany.
They marvelled; the soothsayers answered:
'Although the Gods are little troubled toward men, at the end of each period
A sign is declared in heaven


The Boundary Rider

THE BRIDLE reins hang loose in the hold of his lean left hand;
As the tether gives, the horse bends browsing down to the sand,
On the pommel the right hand rests with a smoking briar black,
Whose thin rings rise and break as he gazes from the track.

Already the sun is aslope, high still in a pale hot sky,
And the afternoon is fierce, in its glare the wide plains lie
Empty as heaven and silent, smit with a vast despair,
The face of a Titan bound, for whom is no hope nor care.


The Ballad Of Hard-Luck Henry

Now wouldn't you expect to find a man an awful crank
That's staked out nigh three hundred claims, and every one a blank;
That's followed every fool stampede, and seen the rise and fall
Of camps where men got gold in chunks and he got none at all;
That's prospected a bit of ground and sold it for a song
To see it yield a fortune to some fool that came along;
That's sunk a dozen bed-rock holes, and not a speck in sight,
Yet sees them take a million from the claims to left and right?


Pages

Subscribe to RSS - courage