A Song For Soldiers
WHAT song is best for the soldiers?
Take no heed of the words, nor choose yon the style of the story;
Let it burst out from the heart like a spring from the womb of a mountain,
Natural, clear, resistless, leaping its way to the levels;
Whether of love or hate or war or the pathos and pain of affliction;
Whether of manly pluck in the perilous hour, or that which is higher,
And highest of all, the slowly bleeding sacrifice,
The giving of life and its joys for the sake of men and freedom;—
Any song for the soldier that will harmonize with the life-throbs;
For he has laved in the mystical sea by which men are one;
His pulse has thrilled into blinding tune with the vaster anthems
Which God plays on the battle-fields when he sweeps the strings of nations,
And the song of the earth-planet bursts on the silent spheres.
Shot through like the cloud of Etna with flames of heroic devotion,
And shaded with quivering lines from the mourning of women and children!
Here is a song for the soldiers—a song of the Cheyenne Indians,
Of men with soldierly hearts who walked with Death as a comrade.
Hush! Let the present fade; let the distance die; let the last year stand:
We are far to the West, in Montana, on the desolate plains of Montana;
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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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The Exile of the Gael
IT is sweet to rejoice for a day,—
For a day that is reached at last!
It is well for wanderers in new lands,
Slow climbers toward a lofty mountain pass,
Yearning with hearts and eyes strained ever upward,
To pause, and rest, on the summit,—
To stand between two limitless outlooks,—
Behind them, a winding path through familiar pains and ventures;
Before them, the streams unbridged and the vales untraveled.
What shall they do nobler than mark their passage,
With kindly hearts, mayhap for kindred to follow?
What shall they do wiser than pile a cairn
With stones from the wayside, that their tracks and names
Be not blown from the hills like sand, and their story be lost forever?
'Hither,' the cairn shall tell, 'Hither they came and rested!'
'Whither?' the searcher shall ask, with questioning eyes on their future.
Hither and Whither! O Maker of Nations! Hither and Whither the sea speaks,
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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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The Three Queens
IN the far time of Earth's sweet maiden beauty,
When Morning hung with rapture on her breast;
When every sentient life paid love for duty,
And every law was Nature's own behest;
When reason ruled as subtle instinct taught her;
When joys were pure and sin and shame unseen;
Then God sent down His messenger and daughter,
His kiss upon her lips, to reign as Queen!
Her name was Liberty! Earth lay before her,
And throbbed unconscious fealty and truth;
Morning and night men hastened to adore her,
And from her eyes Peace drew perennial youth.
Her hair was golden as the stars of heaven;
Her face was radiant with the kiss of Jove;
Her form was lovelier than the sun at even;
Death paled before her: Life was one with Love.
O time traditioned! ere thy dismal sequel,
Men owned the world, and every man was free;
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The City Streets
A CITY of Palaces! Yes, that's true: a city of palaces built for trade;
Look down this street—what a splendid view of the temples where fabulous gains are made.
Just glance at the wealth of a single pile, the marble pillars, the miles of glass,
The carving and cornice in gaudy style, the massive show of the polished brass;
And think of the acres of inner floors, where the wealth of the world is spread for sale;
Why, the treasures inclosed by those ponderous doors are richer than ever a fairy tale.
Pass on the next, it is still the same, another Aladdin the scene repeats;
The silks are unrolled and the jewels flame for leagues and leagues of the city streets!
Now turn away from the teeming town, and pass to the homes of the merchant kings,
Wide squares where the stately porches frown, where the flowers are bright and the fountain sings;
Look up at the lights in that brilliant room, with its chandelier of a hundred flames!
See the carpeted street where the ladies come whose husbands have millions or famous names;
For whom are the jewels and silks, behold: on those exquisite bosoms and throats they burn;
Art challenges Nature in color and gold and the gracious presence of every turn.
So the winters fly past in a joyous rout, and the summers bring marvelous cool retreats;
These are civilized wonders we're finding out as we walk through the beautiful city streets.
A City of Palaces!—Hush! not quite: a, city where palaces are, is best;
No need to speak of what's out of sight: let us take what is pleasant, and leave the rest:
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The Last of the Narwhale
THE STORY OF AN ARCTIC NIP.
AY, ay, I'll tell you, shipmates,
If you care to hear the tale,
How myself and the royal yard alone
Were left of the old Narwhale.
'A stouter ship was never launched
Of all the Clyde-built whalers;
And forty years of a life at sea
Haven't matched her crowd of sailors.
Picked men they were, all young and strong,
And used to the wildest seas,
From Donegal and the Scottish coast,
And the rugged Hebrides.
Such men as women cling to, mates,
Like ivy round their lives:
And the day we sailed, the quays were lined
With weeping mothers and wives.
They cried and prayed, and we gave 'em a cheer,
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A Nation's Test
I.
A NATION'S greatness lies in men, not acres;
One master-mind is worth a million hands.
No royal robes have marked the planet-shakers,
But Samson-strength to burst the ages' bands.
The might of empire gives no crown supernal—
Athens is here—but where is Macedon?
A dozen lives make Greece and Rome eternal,
And England's fame might safely rest on one.
Here test and text are drawn from Nature's preaching:
Afric and Asia—half the rounded earth—
In teeming lives the solemn truth are teaching,
That insect-millions may have human birth.
Sun-kissed and fruitful, every clod is breeding
A petty life, too small to reach the eye:
So must it be, with no man thinking, leading,
The generations creep their course and die.
Hapless the lands, and doomed amid the races,
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Crispus Attucks
WHERE shall we seek for a hero, and where shall we find a story?
Our laurels are wreathed for conquest, our songs for completed glory.
But we honor a shrine unfinished, a column uncapped with pride,
If we sing the deed that was sown like seed when Crispus Attucks died.
Shall we take for a sign this Negro-slave with unfamiliar name—
With his poor companions, nameless too, till their lives leaped forth in flame?
Yea, sorely, the verdict is not for us, to render or deny;
We can only interpret the symbol; God chose these men to die—
As teachers and types, that to humble lives may chief award be made;
That from lowly ones, and rejected stones, the temple's base is laid!
When the bullets leaped from the British guns, no chance decreed their aim:
Men see what the royal hirelings saw—a multitude and a flame;
But beyond the flame, a mystery; five dying men in the street,
While the streams of severed races in the well of a nation meet!
O, blood of the people! changeless tide, through century, creed and race!
Still one as the sweet salt sea is one, though tempered by sun and place;
The same in the ocean currents, and the same in the sheltered seas;
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The Flying Dutchman
LONG time ago, from Amsterdam a vessel sailed away,—
As fair a ship as ever flung aside the laughing spray.
Upon the shore were tearful eyes, and scarfs were in the air,
As to her, o'er the Zuyder Zee, went fond adieu and prayer;
And brave hearts, yearning shoreward from the outwardgoing ship,
Felt lingering kisses clinging still to tear-wet cheek and lip.
She steered for some far eastern clime, and, as she skimmed the seas,
Each taper mast was bending like a rod before the breeze.
Her captain was a stalwart man,—an iron heart had he,—
From childhood's days he sailed upon the rolling Zuyder Zee:
He nothing feared upon the earth, and scarcely heaven feared,
He would have dared and done whatever mortal man had dared!
He looked aloft, where high in air the pennant cut the blue,
And every rope and spar and sail was firm and strong and true.
He turned him from the swelling sail to gaze upon the shore,—
Ah! little thought the skipper then 'twould meet his eye no more:
He dreamt not that an awful doom was hanging o'er his ship,
That Vanderdecken's name would yet make pale the speaker's lip.
The vessel bounded on her way, and spire and dome went down,—
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The Monster Diamond
A TALE OF THE PENAL COLONY OF WEST AUSTRALIA.
'I’LL have it, I tell you! Curse you!—there!'
The long knife glittered, was sheathed, and was bare.
The sawyer staggered and tripped and fell,
And falling he uttered a frightened yell:
His face to the sky, he shuddered and gasped,
And tried to put from him the man he had grasped
A moment before in the terrible strife.
'I'll have it, I tell you, or have your life!
Where is it?' The sawyer grew weak, but still
His brown face gleamed with a desperate will.
'Where is it?' he heard, and the red knife's drip
In his slayer's hand fell down on his lip.
'Will you give it?' 'Never!' A curse, the knife
Was raised and buried.
Thus closed the life
Of Samuel Jones, known as 'Number Ten'
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The Dog Guard: An Australian Story
There are lonesome places upon the earth
That have never re-echoed a sound of mirth,
Where the spirits abide that feast and quaff
On the shuddering soul of a murdered laugh,
And take grim delight in the fearful start,
As their unseen fingers clutch the heart,
And the blood flies out from the griping pain,
To carry the chill through every vein;
And the staring eyes and the whitened faces
Are a joy to these ghosts of the lonesome places.
But of all the spots on this earthly sphere
Where these dismal spirits are strong and near,
There is one more dreary than all the rest,—
'Tis the barren island of Rottenest.
On Australia's western coast, you may—
On a seaman's chart of Fremantle Bay—
Find a tiny speck, some ten miles from shore:
If the chart be good, there is something more,—
For a shoal runs in on the landward side,
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