Meet the sun's smile with your own. Nothing ever makes you less
Gracious to ungraciousness.
March may bluster up and down,
Pettish April sulk and frown; Closer to their skirts you cling,
Coaxing Winter to be Spring.
Then when your sweet task is done, And the wild flowers, one by one, Here, there, everywhere do blow, Primroses, you haste to go, Satisfied with what you bring, Fading morning-stars of Spring. You have brightened doubtful days, You have sweetened long delays, Fooling our enchanted reason To miscalculate the season. But when doubt and fear are fled, When the kine leave wintry shed, And 'mid grasses green and tall Find their fodder, make their stall; When the wintering swallow flies Homeward back from southern skies, To the dear old cottage thatch Where it loves to build and hatch,
That its young may understand, Nor forget, this English land; When the cuckoo, mocking rover, Laughs that April loves are over; When the hawthorn, all ablow, Mimics the defeated snow;
Then you give one last look round; Stir the sleepers under ground, Call the campion to awake, Tell the speedwell courage take, Bid the eyebright have no fear, Whisper in the bluebell's ear Time has come for it to flood With its blue waves all the wood, Mind the stichwort of its pledge To replace you in the hedge, Bid the ladysmocks good-bye, Close your bonnie lids and die; And, without one look of blame, Go as gently as you came.
Men deemed thee fallen, did they? fallen like Rome Coiled into self to foil a Vandal throng:
Not wholly shorn of strength, but vainly strong; Weaned from thy fame by a too happy home, Scanning the ridges of thy teeming loam, Counting thy flocks, humming thy harvest song, Callous, because thyself secure, 'gainst wrong, Behind the impassable fences of the foam! The dupes! Thou dost but stand erect, and lo! The nations cluster round; and while the horde Of wolfish backs slouch homeward to their snow, Thou, 'mid thy sheaves in peaceful seasons stored, Towerest supreme, victor without a blow, Smilingly leaning on thy undrawn sword!
A RAJPOOT CHIEF OF THE OLD SCHOOL
MORIBUNDUS LOQUITUR
And why say ye that I must leave This pleasure-garden, where the sun Is baffled by the boughs that weave Their shade o'er my pavilion ? The trees I planted with my hands, This house I built among the sands, Within a lofty wall which rounds
This green oasis, kept with care; With room for my horses, hawks and hounds, And the cool arcade for my ladies fair.
How often, while the landscape flames
With heat, within the marble court
I lie, and laugh to see my dames
About the shimmering fountain sport: Or after the long scorching days,
When the hot wind hushes, and falling, stays The clouds of dust, and stars are bright,
I've spread my carpets in the grove,
And talked and loitered the live-long night With some foreign leman light o'love.
My wives-I married, as was fit,
Some thirteen of the purest blood- And two or three have germs of wit, And almost all are chaste and good; But all their womanhood has been Hencooped behind a marble screen;
They count their pearls and doze-while she, The courtezan, had travelled far,
songs were fresh, her talk was free Of the Delhi Court, or the Kábul War.
Those days are gone, I am old and ill,
Why should I move? I love the place; The dawn is fresh, the nights are still; Ah yes! I see it in your face, My latest dawn and night are nigh, And of my clan a chief must die Within the ancestral rampart's fold Paced by the listening sentinel,
Where ancient cannon, and beldames old As the guns, peer down from the citadel.
Once more, once only, they shall bear My litter up the steep ascent
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