Gloria Mundi

Magician hands through long, laborious nights
Have made these princely palaces to loom
Whiter than are the city’s legion lights,
On threads unseen stretched out across the gloom.
Reared in an hour, for one brief hour to reign,
The proud pavilions watchful hold in fee
A world’s achievements, where the stately Seine
Slides slowly past her bridges to the sea.

Mute and memorial, as on either bank
She sees the marvel worked before her eyes,
Beholds as in a vision, rank on rank.
Pagoda, dome, and campanile rise,
Like to a mother scowling on a child
Sceptred and crowned to make a queen of May,
The Seine, that sorrowed not for France defiled,
Past France triumphant frowning goes her way.

Yet, dragged reluctant from these ransomed shores,
Upon her tide, that sullenly and slow

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poem by Guy Wetmore Carryl from The Garden of Years and Other Poems (1900)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Gettysburg

Though the winds be strong that lash along the steeds of the charging sea,
With lunge and urge of assaulting surge yet seeking a further goal,
God in His pleasure hath set a measure, the bound of their boast to be,
Where, pile upon pile, and mile on mile, are the cliffs of calm control.
But the Lord of Hosts who guardeth the coasts yet loveth each sieging swell,
And He who is Brother to surge and smother is Brother to cliff as well:
He giveth the word if the shore be stirred, He biddeth the sea subside,
And this is our trust, that His will is just, however He turn the tide!

As night went gray at the touch of day and the slow dawn mounted higher,
On the Federal right the third day’s fight was born in a sheet of fire:
Gun upon gun to the front was run, and each in its turn spoke forth
From fevered mouth to the waiting South the word of the watching North:
And the wraith of Death with withering breath o’er the wide arena played,
As across the large swept on the charge of the old Stonewall brigade;
But the first great wave on a sudden gave, retreating across the slain—
Gave and broke, as the rifles spoke from the long blue line of Kane!

Then silence sank on the double rank deployed on the sullen hill,
And, across the plain of the early slain, the hosts of the South were still,

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poem by Guy Wetmore Carryl from The Garden of Years and Other Poems (1898)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Tripoli

One to ten of you lesser men—these are the odds we crave:
For the ring of the sword, at the cry to board, is a song that befits the brave.
Board and burn, that ye well may learn, how American tars atone:
Borrow ye may, but there dawns a day when we come to claim our own!

Tripolitan pirate and Turkish thief, they had harried her there on the sunken reef,
Plundered, and robbed, and stripped her crew, for such was Tripoli law:
Lowered her barred and star-set flag, and run to her peak their pirate rag,
For the shaming of William Bainbridge and the fame of Jussuf Bashaw!
They had towed the wreck to the haven’s neck, and under the castle’s guns,
And bound and jailed all them that sailed as the Philadelphia’s sons:
So the frigate lay in Tripoli Bay, by the Molehead batteries pinned,
And along her flank, in a watchful rank, the guardian gunboats grinned!

Out of the Gulf of Sidra’s gales, a brig and a ketch, with flattened sails,
Slid toward Tripoli harbor as the sun ahead went down,
And, by the forts of Jussuf Bashaw pinned like prey in a panther’s paw,
The captured frigate at anchor saw, in the curve of the pirate town.
And one of the pair had the peaceful air of a merchantman landward led,
And one of the two a Maltese crew, in fezzes of flaming red;

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poem by Guy Wetmore Carryl from The Garden of Years and Other Poems (1902)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Garden of Years

I

I have shut fast the door, and am alone
With the sweet memory of this afternoon,
That saw my vague dreams on a sudden grown
Into fulfilment, as I oft have known
Stray notes upon a keyboard fall atune
When least persuaded. I besought no boon
Of Fate to-day; I that, since first Love came
Into my life, have been so importune.
To-day alone I did not press my claim,
And lo! all I have dreamed of is my own!

II

I have shut fast the door, for so I may
Relive that moment of the turn of tide—
That swift solution of the long delay
That clothed with silver splendor dying day;
And, with low-whispering memory for guide,

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poem by Guy Wetmore Carryl from The Garden of Years and Other Poems (1901)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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