Yet beautiful and bright he stood,

As born to rule the storm:

A creature of heroic blood,

A proud though child-like form.

The flames rolled on-he would not go
Without his father's word;
That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.

He called aloud: Say, father! say
If yet my task is done!'

He knew not that the chieftain lay
Unconscious of his son.

'Speak, father!' once again he cried,
'If I may yet be gone!'
And but the booming shots replied,
And fast the flames rolled on.

Upon his brow he felt their breath,
And in his waving hair;

He looked from that lone post of death

In still yet brave despair,

And shouted but once more aloud,

'My father! must I stay?'

While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud,

The wreathing fires made way.

They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,

They caught the flag on high,

And streamed above the gallant child

Like banners in the sky.

There came a burst of thunder-sound

The boy-O! where was he?

Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strewed the sea:

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
That well had borne their part!
But the noblest thing which perished there
Was that young faithful heart.

LXXXII

THE PILGRIM FATHERS

THE breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky
Their giant branches tossed;

And the heavy night hung dark

The hills and waters o'er,

When a band of exiles moored their bark On the wild New England shore.

Not as the conqueror comes,

They, the true-hearted, came;
Not with the roll of the stirring drums,
And the trumpet that sings of fame;

Not as the flying come,

In silence and in fear;

They shook the depths of the desert gloom
With their hymns of lofty cheer.

Amidst the storm they sang,

And the stars heard and the sea;

And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang To the anthem of the free!

The ocean eagle soared

From his nest by the white wave's foam; And the rocking pines of the forest roaredThis was their welcome home!

There were men with hoary hair
Amidst that pilgrim band;

Why had they come to wither there,
Away from their childhood's land?

There was woman's fearless eye,
Lit by her deep love's truth;
There was manhood's brow serenely high,
And the fiery heart of youth.

What sought they thus afar?

Bright jewels of the mine?

The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?
They sought a faith's pure shrine!

Ay, call it holy ground,

The soil where first they trod.

They have left unstained what there they foundFreedom to worship God.

LXXXIII

TO THE ADVENTUROUS

MUCH have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific-and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Keats.

LXXXIV

HORATIUS

THE TRYSTING

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
East and west and south and north
To summon his array.

East and west and south and north
The messengers ride fast,

And tower and town and cottage

Have heard the trumpet's blast. Shame on the false Etruscan

Who lingers in his home, When Porsena of Clusium

Is on the march for Rome.

The horsemen and the footmen
Are pouring in amain

From many a stately market-place,

From many a fruitful plain;

From many a lonely hamlet

Which, hid by beech and pine,

Like an eagle's nest hangs on the crest Of purple Apennine;

From lordly Volaterræ,

Where scowls the far-famed hold

Piled by the hands of giants

For godlike kings of old;
From sea-girt Populonia
Whose sentinels descry
Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops
Fringing the southern sky;

From the proud mart of Pisa,
Queen of the western waves,
Where ride Massilia's triremes

Heavy with fair-haired slaves;