Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order,
And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border,
To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught
His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.
And Love had made him very sage, as Nature made her fair;
So Cupid and Apollo linked , per heliograph, the pair.
At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise --
At e'en, the dying sunset bore her busband's homilies.
He warned her 'gainst seductive youths in scarlet clad and gold,
As much as 'gainst the blandishments paternal of the old;
But kept his gravest warnings for (hereby the ditty hangs)
That snowy-haired Lothario, Lieutenant-General Bangs.
'Twas General Bangs, with Aide and Staff, who tittupped on the way,
When they beheld a heliograph tempestuously at play.
They thought of Border risings, and of stations sacked and burnt --
So stopped to take the message down -- and this is whay they learnt --
"Dash dot dot, dot, dot dash, dot dash dot" twice. The General swore.
"Was ever General Officer addressed as 'dear' before?
"'My Love,' i' faith! 'My Duck,' Gadzooks! 'My darling popsy-wop!'
"Spirit of great Lord Wolseley, who is on that mountaintop?"
The artless Aide-de-camp was mute; the gilded Staff were still,
As, dumb with pent-up mirth, they booked that message from the hill;
For clear as summer lightning-flare, the husband's warning ran: --
"Don't dance or ride with General Bangs -- a most immoral man."
[At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise --
But, howsoever Love be blind, the world at large hath eyes.]
With damnatory dot and dash he heliographed his wife
Some interesting details of the General's private life.
The artless Aide-de-camp was mute, the shining Staff were still,
And red and ever redder grew the General's shaven gill.
And this is what he said at last (his feelings matter not): --
"I think we've tapped a private line. Hi! Threes about there! Trot!"
All honour unto Bangs, for ne'er did Jones thereafter know
By word or act official who read off that helio.
But the tale is on the Frontier, and from Michni to Mooltan
They know the worthy General as "that most immoral man."
|
Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
(A. D. 1200)
Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.
Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs,
(All of a Midsummer morn!)
Surely we sing no little thing,
In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!
Oak of the Clay lived many a day,
Or ever AEneas began.
Ash of the Loam was a lady at home,
When Brut was an outlaw man.
Thorn of the Down saw New Troy Town
(From which was London born);
Witness hereby the ancientry
Of Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!
Yew that is old in churchyard-mould,
He breedeth a mighty bow.
Alder for shoes do wise men choose,
And beech for cups also.
But when ye have killed, and your bowl is spilled,
And your shoes are clean outworn,
Back ye must speed for all that ye need,
To Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!
Ellum she hateth mankind, and waiteth
Till every gust be laid,
To drop a limb on the head of him
That anyway trusts her shade:
But whether a lad be sober or sad,
Or mellow with ale from the horn,
He will take no wrong when he lieth along
'Neath Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!
Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,
Or he would call it a sin;
But--we have been out in the woods all night,
A-conjuring Summer in!
And we bring you news by word of mouth-
Good news for cattle and corn--
Now is the Sun come up from the South,
With Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!
Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs
(All of a Midsummer morn):
England shall bide ti11 Judgment Tide,
By Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!
|
Written by
Walt Whitman |
1
I SAY whatever tastes sweet to the most perfect person, that is finally right.
2
I say nourish a great intellect, a great brain;
If I have said anything to the contrary, I hereby retract it.
3
I say man shall not hold property in man;
I say the least developed person on earth is just as important and sacred to himself or
herself, as the most developed person is to himself or herself.
4
I say where liberty draws not the blood out of slavery, there slavery draws the blood out
of
liberty,
I say the word of the good old cause in These States, and resound it hence over the world.
5
I say the human shape or face is so great, it must never be made ridiculous;
I say for ornaments nothing outre can be allowed,
And that anything is most beautiful without ornament,
And that exaggerations will be sternly revenged in your own physiology, and in other
persons’ physiology also;
And I say that clean-shaped children can be jetted and conceived only where natural forms
prevail in public, and the human face and form are never caricatured;
And I say that genius need never more be turned to romances,
(For facts properly told, how mean appear all romances.)
6
I say the word of lands fearing nothing—I will have no other land;
I say discuss all and expose all—I am for every topic openly;
I say there can be no salvation for These States without innovators—without free
tongues,
and ears willing to hear the tongues;
And I announce as a glory of These States, that they respectfully listen to propositions,
reforms, fresh views and doctrines, from successions of men and women,
Each age with its own growth.
7
I have said many times that materials and the Soul are great, and that all depends on
physique;
Now I reverse what I said, and affirm that all depends on the æsthetic or
intellectual,
And that criticism is great—and that refinement is greatest of all;
And I affirm now that the mind governs—and that all depends on the mind.
8
With one man or woman—(no matter which one—I even pick out the lowest,)
With him or her I now illustrate the whole law;
I say that every right, in politics or what-not, shall be eligible to that one man or
woman, on
the same terms as any.
|
Written by
Carl Sandburg |
YES, the Dead speak to us.
This town belongs to the Dead, to the Dead and to the Wilderness.
Back of the clamps on a fireproof door they hold the papers of the Dead in a house here
And when two living men fall out, when one says the Dead spoke a Yes, and the other says the Dead spoke a No, they go then together to this house.
They loosen the clamps and haul at the hasps and try their keys and curse at the locks and the combination numbers.
For the teeth of the rats are barred and the tongues of the moths are outlawed and the sun and the air of wind is not wanted.
They open a box where a sheet of paper shivers, in a dusty corner shivers with the dry inkdrops of the Dead, the signed names.
Here the ink testifies, here we find the say-so, here we learn the layout, now we know where the cities and farms belong.
Dead white men and dead red men tested each other with shot and knives: they twisted each others’ necks: land was yours if you took and kept it.
How are the heads the rain seeps in, the rain-washed knuckles in sod and gumbo?
Where the sheets of paper shiver,
Back of the hasps and handles,
Back of the fireproof clamps,
They read what the fingers scribbled, who the land belongs to now—it is herein provided, it is hereby stipulated—the land and all appurtenances thereto and all deposits of oil and gold and coal and silver, and all pockets and repositories of gravel and diamonds, dung and permanganese, and all clover and bumblebees, all bluegrass, johnny-jump-ups, grassroots, springs of running water or rivers or lakes or high spreading trees or hazel bushes or sumach or thorn-apple branches or high in the air the bird nest with spotted blue eggs shaken in the roaming wind of the treetops—
So it is scrawled here,
“I direct and devise
So and so and such and such,”
And this is the last word.
There is nothing more to it.
In a shanty out in the Wilderness, ghosts of to-morrow sit, waiting to come and go, to do their job.
They will go into the house of the Dead and take the shivering sheets of paper and make a bonfire and dance a deadman’s dance over the hissing crisp.
In a slang their own the dancers out of the Wilderness will write a paper for the living to read and sign:
The dead need peace, the dead need sleep, let the dead have peace and sleep, let the papers of the Dead who fix the lives of the Living, let them be a hissing crisp and ashes, let the young men and the young women forever understand we are through and no longer take the say-so of the Dead;
Let the dead have honor from us with our thoughts of them and our thoughts of land and all appurtenances thereto and all deposits of oil and gold and coal and silver, and all pockets and repositories of gravel and diamonds, dung and permanganese, and all clover and bumblebees, all bluegrass, johnny-jump-ups, grassroots, springs of running water or rivers or lakes or high spreading trees or hazel bushes or sumach or thornapple branches or high in the air the bird nest with spotted blue eggs shaken in the roaming wind of the treetops.
|
Written by
Edmund Spenser |
One day, whiles that my daylie cares did sleepe,
My spirit, shaking off her earthly prison,
Began to enter into meditation deepe
Of things exceeding reach of common reason;
Such as this age, in which all good is geason,
And all that humble is and meane debaced,
Hath brought forth in her last declining season,
Griefe of good mindes, to see goodnesse disgraced.
On which when as my thought was throghly placed,
Vnto my eyes strange showes presented were,
Picturing that, which I in minde embraced,
That yet those sights empassion me full nere.
Such as they were (faire Ladie) take in worth,
That when time serues, may bring things better forth.
2
In Summers day, when Phoebus fairly shone,
I saw a Bull as white as driuen snowe,
With gilden hornes embowed like the Moone,
In a fresh flowring meadow lying lowe:
Vp to his eares the verdant grasse did growe,
And the gay floures did offer to be eaten;
But he with fatnes so did ouerflowe,
That he all wallowed in the weedes downe beaten,
Ne car'd with them his daintie lips to sweeten:
Till that a Brize, a scorned little creature,
Through his faire hide his angrie sting did threaten,
And vext so sore, that all his goodly feature,
And all his plenteous pasture nought him pleased:
So by the small the great is oft diseased.
3
Beside the fruitfull shore of muddie Nile,
Vpon a sunnie banke outstretched lay
In monstrous length, a mightie Crocodile,
That cram'd with guiltles blood, and greedie pray
Of wretched people trauailing that way,
Thought all things lesse than his disdainfull pride.
I saw a little Bird, cal'd Tedula,
The least of thousands which on earth abide,
That forst this hideous beast to open wide
The greisly gates of his deuouring hell,
And let him feede, as Nature doth prouide,
Vpon his iawes, that with blacke venime swell.
Why then should greatest things the least disdaine,
Sith that so small so mighty can constraine?
4
The kingly Bird, that beares Ioues thunder-clap,
One day did scorne the simple Scarabee,
Proud of his highest seruice, and good hap,
That made all other Foules his thralls to bee:
The silly Flie, that no other redresse did see,
Spide where the Eagle built his towring nest,
And kindling fire within the hollow tree,
Burnt vp his yong ones, and himselfe distrest;
Ne suffred him in anie place to rest,
But droue in Ioues owne lap his egs to lay;
Where gathering also filth him to infest,
Forst with the filth his egs to fling away:
For which when as the Foule was wroth, said Ioue,
Lo how the least the greatest may reproue.
5
Toward the sea turning my troubled eye,
I saw the fish (if fish I may it cleepe)
That makes the sea before his face to flye,
And with his flaggie finnes doth seeme to sweepe
The fomie waues out of the dreadfull deep,
The huge Leuiathan, dame Natures wonder,
Making his sport, that manie makes to weep:
A sword-fish small him from the rest did sunder,
That in his throat him pricking softly vnder,
His wide Abysse him forced forth to spewe,
That all the sea did roare like heauens thunder,
And all the waues were stain'd with filthie hewe.
Hereby I learned haue, not to despise,
What euer thing seemes small in common eyes.
6
An hideous Dragon, dreadfull to behold,
Whose backe was arm'd against the dint of speare
With shields of brasse, that shone like burnisht golde,
And forkhed sting, that death in it did beare,
Stroue with a Spider his vnequall peare:
And bad defiance to his enemie.
The subtill vermin creeping closely neare,
Did in his drinke shed poyson priuily;
Which through his entrailes spredding diuersly,
Made him to swell, that nigh his bowells brust,
And him enforst to yeeld the victorie,
That did so much in his owne greatnesse trust.
O how great vainnesse is it then to scorne
The weake, that hath the strong so oft forlorne.
7
High on a hill a goodly Cedar grewe,
Of wondrous length, and streight proportion,
That farre abroad her daintie odours threwe;
Mongst all the daughters of proud Libanon,
Her match in beautie was not anie one.
Shortly within her inmost pith there bred
A litle wicked worme, perceiue'd of none,
That on her sap and vitall moysture fed:
Thenceforth her garland so much honoured
Began to die, (O great ruth for the same)
And her faire lockes fell from her loftie head,
That shortly balde, and bared she became.
I, which this sight beheld, was much dismayed,
To see so goodly thing so soone decayed.
8
Soone after this I saw an Elephant,
Adorn'd with bells and bosses gorgeouslie,
That on his backe did beare (as batteilant)
A gilden towre, which shone exceedinglie;
That he himselfe through foolish vanitie,
Both for his rich attire, and goodly forme,
Was puffed vp with passing surquedrie,
And shortly gan all other beasts to scorne,
Till that a little Ant, a silly worme,
Into his nosthrils creeping, so him pained,
That casting downe his towres, he did deforme
Both borrowed pride, and natiue beautie stained.
Let therefore nought that great is, therein glorie,
Sith so small thing his happines may varie.
9
Looking far foorth into the Ocean wide,
A goodly ship with banners brauely dight,
And flag in her top-gallant I espide,
Through the maine sea making her merry flight:
Faire blew the winde into her bosome right;
And th' heauens looked louely all the while,
That she did seeme to daunce, as in delight,
And at her owne felicitie did smile.
All sodainely there cloue vnto her keele
A little fish, that men call Remora,
Which stopt her course, and held her by the heele,
That winde nor tide could moue her thence away.
Straunge thing me seemeth, that so small a thing
Should able be so great an one to wring.
10
A mighty Lyon, Lord of all the wood,
Hauing his hunger throughly satisfide,
With pray of beasts, and spoyle of liuing blood,
Safe in his dreadles den him thought to hide:
His sternesse was his prayse, his strength his pride,
And all his glory in his cruell clawes.
I saw a wasp, that fiecely him defide,
And bad him battaile euen to his iawes;
Sore he him stong, that it the blood forth drawes,
And his proude heart is fild with fretting ire:
In vaine he threats his teeth, his tayle, his pawes,
And from his bloodie eyes doth sparkle fire;
That dead himselfe he wisheth for despight.
So weakest may anoy the most of might.
11
What time the Romaine Empire bore the raine
Of all the world, and florisht most in might,
The nations gan their soueraigntie disdaine,
And cast to quitt them from their bondage quight:
So when all shrouded were in silent night,
The Galles were, by corrupting of a mayde,
Possest nigh of the Capitol through slight,
Had not a Goose the treachery bewrayde.
If then a Goose great Rome from ruine stayde,
And Ioue himselfe, the patron of the place,
Preserud from being to his foes betrayde,
Why do vaine men mean things so much deface,
And in their might repose their most assurance,
Sith nought on earth can chalenge long endurance?
12
When these sad sights were ouerpast and gone,
My spright was greatly moued in her rest,
With inward ruth and deare affection,
To see so great things by so small distrest:
Thenceforth I gan in my engrieued brest
To scorne all difference of great and small,
Sith that the greatest often are opprest,
And vnawares doe into daunger fall.
And ye, that read these ruines tragicall
Learne by their losse to loue the low degree,
And if that fortune chaunce you vp to call
To honours seat, forget not what you be:
For he that of himselfe is most secure,
Shall finde his state most fickle and vnsure.
|
Written by
William Strode |
What are thy gaines, O death, if one man ly
Stretch'd in a bed of clay, whose charity
Doth hereby get occasion to redeeme
Thousands out of the grave: though cold hee seeme
He keepes those warme that else would sue to thee,
Even thee, to ease them of theyr penury.
Sorrow I would, but cannot thinke him dead,
Whose parts are rather all distributed
To those that live; His pitty lendeth eyes
Unto the blind, and to the cripple thighes,
Bones to the shatter'd corps, his hand doth make
Long armes for those that begg and cannot take:
All are supply'd with limbs, and to his freind
Hee leaves his heart, the selfe-same heart behind;
Scarce man and wife so much one flesh are found
As these one soule; the mutuall ty that bound
The first prefer'd in heav'n to pay on earth
Those happy fees which made them strive for death,
Made them both doners of each others store,
And each of them his own executor:
Those hearty summes are twice confer'd by either,
And yet so given as if confer'd by neither.
Lest some incroching governour might pare
Those almes and damne himselfe with pooremens share,
Lameing once more the lame, and killing quite
Those halfe-dead carcases, by due foresight
His partner is become the hand to act
Theyr joynt decree, who else would fain have lackt
This longer date that so hee might avoyd
The praise wherewith good eares would not be cloy'd,
For praises taint our charity, and steale
From Heav'ns reward; this caus'd them to conceale
Theyr great intendment till the grave must needs
Both hide the Author and reveale the deeds.
His widdow-freind still lives to take the care
Of children left behind; Why is it rare
That they who never tied the marriage knott,
And but good deeds no issue ever gott,
Should have a troupe of children? All mankind
Beget them heyres, heyres by theyr freinds resign'd
Back into nature's keepeinge. Th' aged head
Turn'd creeping child of them is borne and bredd;
The prisons are theyr cradles where they hush
Those piercing cryes. When other parents blush
To see a crooked birth, by these the maim'd
Deform'd weake offcasts are sought out and claim'd
To rayse a Progeny: before on death
Thus they renew mens lives with double breath,
And whereas others gett but halfe a man
Theyr nobler art of generation can
Repayr the soule itselfe, and see that none
Bee cripled more in that then in a bone,
For which the Cleargy being hartned on
Weake soules are cur'd in theyr Physition,
Whose superannuat hatt or threadbare cloake
Now doth not make his words so vainly spoke
To people's laughter: this munificence
At once hath giv'n them ears, him eloquence.
Now Henryes sacriledge is found to bee
The ground that sets off Fishborne's charity,
Who from lay owners rescueing church lands,
Buys out the injury of wrongfull hands,
And shewes the blackness of the other's night
By lustre of his day that shines so bright.
Sweet bee thy rest until in heav'n thou see
Those thankefull soules on earth preserv'd by thee,
Whose russet liv'ryes shall a Robe repay
That by reflex makes white the milky way.
Then shall those feeble limbs which as thine owne
Thou here didst cherish, then indeed bee known
To bee thy fellow limbs, all joyn'd in one;
For temples here renew'd the corner stone
Shall yeild thee thanks, when thou shall wonder at
The churches glory, but so poore of late,
Glad of thy almes! Because thy tender eare
Was never stop'd at cryes, it there shall heare
The Angells quire. In all things thou shalt see
Thy gifts were but religious Usury
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