We are the Ancient People;
Our father is the Sun;
Our mother, the Earth, where the mountains tower
And the rivers seaward run;
The stars are the children of the sky,
The red men of the plain;
And ages over us both had rolled
Before you crossed the main;—
For we are the Ancient People,
Born with the wind and rain...
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Ancient of days, Who sittest, throned in glory;
To Thee all knees are bent, all voices pray;
Thy love has blest the wide world’s wondrous story,
With light and life since Eden’s dawning day.O Holy Father, Who hast led Thy children
In all the ages, with the Fire and Cloud,
Through seas dry-shod; through weary wastes bewildering;... -
The Swarthy bee is a buccaneer,
A burly velveted rover,
Who loves the booming wind in his ear
As he sails the seas of clover.A waif of the goblin pirate crew,
With not a soul to deplore him,
He steers for the open verge of blue
With the filmy world before him.His flimsy sails abroad on the wind
Are shivered with... -
The Monument outlasting bronze
Was promised well by bards of old;
The lucid outline of their lay
Its sweet precision keeps for aye,
Fixed in the ductile language-gold.But we who work with smaller skill,
And less refined material mould,—
This close conglomerate English speech,
Bequest of many tribes, that each
... -
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I
Lars Porsena of Clusium
By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin
Should suffer wrong no more.
By the Nine Gods he swore it,
And named a trysting day,
And bade his messengers ride forth,
...A Lay Sung at the Feast of Castor and Pollux on the Ides of
Quintilis in the year of the City CCCCLI.
I
Ho, trumpets, sound a war-note!
Ho, lictors, clear the way!
The Knights will ride, in all their pride,
Along the streets to-day.
...A Lay Sung at the Banquet in the Capitol, on the Day Whereon
Manius Curius Dentatus, a Second Time Consul, Triumphed Over King
Pyrrhus and the Tarentines, in the Year of the City CCCCLXXIX.
I
Now slain is King Amulius,
Of the great Sylvian line,
...Straightway Virginius led the maid a little space aside,
To where the reeking shambles stood, piled up with horn and hide,
Close to yon low dark archway, where, in a crimson flood,
Leaps down to the great sewer the gurgling stream of blood.
Hard by, a flesher on a block had laid his whittle down:
...The Lilac is an ancient shrub
But ancienter than that
The Firmamental Lilac
Upon the Hill tonight —
The Sun subsiding on his Course
Bequeaths this final Plant
To Contemplation — not to Touch —
The Flower of Occident.
Of one Corolla is the West —
The Calyx is the Earth...