Thou hast brave health, and fortitude To live and die alone!

REALISM

AND truth, you say, is all divine;
'Tis truth we live by; let her drench
The shuddering heart like potent wine;
No matter how she wreck or wrench

The gracious instincts from their throne,
Or steep the virgin soul in tears ;-
No matter; let her learn her own

Enormities, her vilest fears,

And sound the sickliest depths of crime, And creep through roaring drains of woe, To soar at last, unstained, sublime, Knowing the worst that man can know ;

And having won the firmer ground, When loathing quickens pity's eyes, Still lean and beckon underground,

And tempt a struggling foot to rise.

Well, well, it is the stronger way!
Heroic stuff is hardly made;
But one, who dallies with dismay,
Admires your boldness, half-afraid.

He deems that knowledge, bitter-sweet,
Can rust and rot the bars of right,
Till weakness sets her trembling feet
Across the threshold of the night.

She peers, she ventures; growing bold,
She breathes the enervating air,
And shuns the aspiring summits, cold
And silent, where the dawn is fair.

She wonders, aching to be free,

Too soft to burst the uncertain band, Till chains of drear fatality

Arrest the feeble willing hand.

Nay, let the stainless eye of youth
Be blind to that bewildering light!
When faith and virtue falter, truth
Is handmaid to the hags of night.

AN ENGLISH SHELL

I WAS an English shell,
Cunningly made and well,

With a heart of fire in an iron frame,

Ready to break in fury and flame,
Slice through the ranks my raging way,
Dying myself, to slay.

Out from the heart of the battle-ship,
Yelling a song of death, I rose,
Brake from the cannon's smoky lip

Into a land of foes:

How was I baffled? I soared and sank
Over the bastion, across the hill,
Into the lap of a grassy bank,
Impotent there to kill.

Slowly the thunder died away;
My merry comrades, how you roared,
Loud and jubilant, while I lay

Sunk in the slothful sward!

She breathed divinity into his heart,
That rare divinity of watching those
Slow growths that make a nettle learn to
dart

The puny poison of its little throes.

Her miracles of motion, butterflies,
Rubies and sapphires skimming lily-crests,
Carved on a yellow petal with their eyes
Tranced by the beauty of their powdered
breasts,

Seen in the mirror of a drop of dew,

He loved as friends and as a friend he knew. The dust of gold and scarlet underwings More precious was to him than nuggets torn From all invaded treasure-crypts of time, And every floating, painted, silver beam Drew him to roses where it stayed to dream,

Or down sweet avenues of scented lime.

And Nature trained him tenderly to know
The rain of melodies in coverts heard.
Let him but catch the cadences that flow
From hollybush or lilac, elm or sloe,
And he would mate the music with the bird.
The faintest song a redstart ever sang
Was redstart's piping, and the whitethroat

knew

No cunning trill, no mazy shake that rang
Doubtful on ears unaided by the view.

But in his glory, as a young pure priest
In that great temple, only roofed by stars,
An angel hastened from the sacred East
Το reap the wisest and to leave the least.
And as he moaned upon the couch of death,
Breathing away his little share of breath,
All suddenly he sprang upright in bed!
Life, like a ray, poured fresh into his face,
Flooding the hollow cheeks with passing
grace.

He listened long, then pointed up above;
Laughed a low laugh of boundless joy and

love

That was a plover called, he softly said, And on his wife's breast fell, serenely dead!

THE COUNTRY FAITH

HERE in the country's heart Where the grass is green, Life is the same sweet life As it e'er hath been.

And twice and thrice there buffeted
On the black pane a white-winged moth:
'T was Annie's soul that beat outside
And "Open, open, open!" cried :

"I could not find the way to God;

There were too many flaming suns
For signposts, and the fearful road
Led over wastes where millions
Of tangled comets hissed and burned-
I was bewildered and I turned.

"O, it was easy then! I knew

Your window and no star beside. Look up, and take me back to you!"

- He rose and thrust the window wide. 'T was but because his brain was hot With rhyming; for he heard her not.

But poets polishing a phrase

Show anger over trivial things; And as she blundered in the blaze

Towards him, on ecstatic wings, He raised a hand and smote her dead; Then wrote "That I had died instead!"

Εκλυον ἂν ἐγὼ οὐδ ̓ ἂν ἤλπισ ̓ αὐδάν. WHETHEN is it yourself, Mister Hagan? an' lookin' right hearty you are; 'Tis a thrate to behold you agin. You'll be waitin' to take the long car For Kilmoyna, the same as meself, sir? They 're late at the cross-roads tonight,

For I mind when the days 'ud be long, they'd be here ere the droop of the light,

Yet out yonder far over the bog there's the sunset beginnin' to burn

Like the red of a camp-fire raked low, and no sign of thim roundin' the turn.

So the dark 'll git ahead of us home on this jaunt; we 've good ten mile to go, And thin afther the rain-pours this mornin',

we 're apt to be draggin' an' slowAy, you're right, sir: alongside the road I've been thravellin' you'd scarce count that far;

You'll cross dark an' light times and agin between Creggan and Kandahar.

And is Norah along wid you? Well, Norah

jewel, how 's yourself all this year? Sure she's thin grown and white, sir, to what I remember her last time we were here.

Took could in the spring? Ah, begorrah,

the March win's as bad as a blight; But the weather we git in Afghanistan, troth, 't would destroy her outright. For in summer Ould Horny seems houldin' the earth in the heat of his hand, And in winther the snow 's the great ghost of a world settled down on the land, Wid a blast keenin' over it fit to be freezin' the sun where he shone ; If they'd lease you that counthry rint-free, you'd do righter to let it alone.

Glad enough to be ought of it? Well, in a way, but I've this on me mind, That I'm come like the winther's worst day, after lavin' me betthers behind;