The Maid who binds her warrior’s sash
With smile that well her pain dissembles,
The while beneath her drooping lash
One starry tear-drop hangs and trembles,
Though Heaven alone records the tear,
And Fame shall never know her story,
Her heart has shed a drop as dear
As e’er bedewed the field of glory!
The wife who girds...
How little recks it where men lie,
When once the moment’s past
In which the dim and glazing eye
Has looked on earth its last,—
Whether beneath the sculptured urn
The coffined form shall rest,
Or in its nakedness return
Back to its mother’s breast!
Death is a common friend or foe,
As different men may hold,...
What man is there so bold that he should say,
“Thus, and thus only, would I have the Sea”?
For whether lying calm and beautiful,
Clasping the earth in love, and throwing back
The smile of Heaven from waves of amethyst;
Or whether, freshened by the busy winds,
It bears the trade and navies of the world
To ends of use or stern activity;...
From “Poems of Freedom”
BE patient, O be patient! Put your ear against the earth;
Listen there how noiselessly the germ o’ the seed has birth;
How noiselessly and gently it upheaves its little way
Till it parts the scarcely-broken ground, and the blade stands up in the day.
Be patient, O be patient! the germs of mighty thought
Must have their...
HERE are old trees, tall oaks and gnarled pines,
That stream with gray-green mosses; here the ground
Was never trenched by spade, and flowers spring up
Unsown, and die ungathered. It is sweet
To linger here, among the flitting birds,
And leaping squirrels, wandering brooks, and winds
That shake the leaves, and scatter, as they pass,
A...
What ’s hallowed ground? Has earth a clod
Its Maker meant not should be trod
By man, the image of his God,
Erect and free,
Unscourged by Superstition’s rod
To bow the knee?
That ’s hallowed ground where, mourned and missed,
The lips repose our love has kissed;—
But where ’s their memory’s mansion? Is ’t...
From the French by Elizur Wright
A PROWLING wolf, whose shaggy skin
(So strict the watch of dogs had been)
Hid little but his bones,
Once met a mastiff dog astray.
A prouder, fatter, sleeker Tray
No human mortal owns.
Sir Wolf, in famished plight,
Would fain have made a ration
Upon his fat relation:
...
From “Rienzi”
FRIENDS!
I come not here to talk. Ye know too well
The story of our thraldom. We are slaves!
The bright sun rises to his course, and lights
A race of slaves! he sets, and his last beam
Falls on a slave! Not such as, swept along
By the full tide of power, the conqueror leads
To crimson glory...
From “The Giaour”
CLIME of the unforgotten brave!
Whose land, from plain to mountain-cave,
Was Freedom’s home or Glory’s grave!
Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?
Approach, thou craven, crouching slave;
Say, is not this Thermopylæ?
These waters blue that round you lave,
O servile offspring...
From “Childe Harold” Canto II.
FAIR Greece! sad relic of departed worth!
Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great!
Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth,
And long-accustomed bondage uncreate?
Not such thy sons who whilom did await,
The hopeless warriors of a willing doom,
In bleak Thermopylæ’s sepulchral...
