10 Best Famous Rarer Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Rarer poems. This is a select list of the best famous Rarer poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Rarer poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of rarer poems.

• All Famous Rarer Poems

 1
A CALIFORNIA song! 
A prophecy and indirection—a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air; 
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing—or hamadryads departing; 
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, 
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.

Farewell, my brethren, 
Farewell, O earth and sky—farewell, ye neighboring waters; 
My time has ended, my term has come. 

2
Along the northern coast, 
Just back from the rock-bound shore, and the caves,
In the saline air from the sea, in the Mendocino country, 
With the surge for bass and accompaniment low and hoarse, 
With crackling blows of axes, sounding musically, driven by strong arms, 
Riven deep by the sharp tongues of the axes—there in the Redwood forest dense, 
I heard the mighty tree its death-chant chanting.

The choppers heard not—the camp shanties echoed not; 
The quick-ear’d teamsters, and chain and jack-screw men, heard not, 
As the wood-spirits came from their haunts of a thousand years, to join the refrain; 
But in my soul I plainly heard. 

Murmuring out of its myriad leaves,
Down from its lofty top, rising two hundred feet high, 
Out of its stalwart trunk and limbs—out of its foot-thick bark, 
That chant of the seasons and time—chant, not of the past only, but the future. 

3
You untold life of me, 
And all you venerable and innocent joys,
Perennial, hardy life of me, with joys, ’mid rain, and many a summer sun, 
And the white snows, and night, and the wild winds; 
O the great patient, rugged joys! my soul’s strong joys, unreck’d by man; 
(For know I bear the soul befitting me—I too have consciousness, identity, 
And all the rocks and mountains have—and all the earth;)
Joys of the life befitting me and brothers mine, 
Our time, our term has come. 

Nor yield we mournfully, majestic brothers, 
We who have grandly fill’d our time; 
With Nature’s calm content, and tacit, huge delight,
We welcome what we wrought for through the past, 
And leave the field for them. 

For them predicted long, 
For a superber Race—they too to grandly fill their time, 
For them we abdicate—in them ourselves, ye forest kings!
In them these skies and airs—these mountain peaks—Shasta—Nevadas, 
These huge, precipitous cliffs—this amplitude—these valleys grand—Yosemite, 
To be in them absorb’d, assimilated. 

4
Then to a loftier strain, 
Still prouder, more ecstatic, rose the chant,
As if the heirs, the Deities of the West, 
Joining, with master-tongue, bore part. 

Not wan from Asia’s fetishes, 
Nor red from Europe’s old dynastic slaughter-house, 
(Area of murder-plots of thrones, with scent left yet of wars and scaffolds every
 where,)
But come from Nature’s long and harmless throes—peacefully builded thence, 
These virgin lands—Lands of the Western Shore, 
To the new Culminating Man—to you, the Empire New, 
You, promis’d long, we pledge, we dedicate. 

You occult, deep volitions,
You average Spiritual Manhood, purpose of all, pois’d on yourself—giving, not taking
 law, 
You Womanhood divine, mistress and source of all, whence life and love, and aught that
 comes
 from life and love, 
You unseen Moral Essence of all the vast materials of America, (age upon age,
 working
 in Death the same as Life,) 
You that, sometimes known, oftener unknown, really shape and mould the New World,
 adjusting
 it to Time and Space, 
You hidden National Will, lying in your abysms, conceal’d, but ever alert,
You past and present purposes, tenaciously pursued, may-be unconscious of
 yourselves, 
Unswerv’d by all the passing errors, perturbations of the surface; 
You vital, universal, deathless germs, beneath all creeds, arts, statutes,
 literatures,

Here build your homes for good—establish here—These areas entire, Lands of the Western
 Shore, 
We pledge, we dedicate to you.

For man of you—your characteristic Race, 
Here may be hardy, sweet, gigantic grow—here tower, proportionate to Nature, 
Here climb the vast, pure spaces, unconfined, uncheck’d by wall or roof, 
Here laugh with storm or sun—here joy—here patiently inure, 
Here heed himself, unfold himself (not others’ formulas heed)—here fill
 his time,
To duly fall, to aid, unreck’d at last, 
To disappear, to serve. 

Thus, on the northern coast, 
In the echo of teamsters’ calls, and the clinking chains, and the music of choppers’ axes,

The falling trunk and limbs, the crash, the muffled shriek, the groan,
Such words combined from the Redwood-tree—as of wood-spirits’ voices ecstatic, ancient and
 rustling, 
The century-lasting, unseen dryads, singing, withdrawing, 
All their recesses of forests and mountains leaving, 
From the Cascade range to the Wasatch—or Idaho far, or Utah, 
To the deities of the Modern henceforth yielding,
The chorus and indications, the vistas of coming humanity—the settlements, features all, 
In the Mendocino woods I caught. 

5
The flashing and golden pageant of California! 
The sudden and gorgeous drama—the sunny and ample lands; 
The long and varied stretch from Puget Sound to Colorado south;
Lands bathed in sweeter, rarer, healthier air—valleys and mountain cliffs; 
The fields of Nature long prepared and fallow—the silent, cyclic chemistry; 
The slow and steady ages plodding—the unoccupied surface ripening—the rich ores forming
 beneath; 
At last the New arriving, assuming, taking possession, 
A swarming and busy race settling and organizing every where;
Ships coming in from the whole round world, and going out to the whole world, 
To India and China and Australia, and the thousand island paradises of the Pacific; 
Populous cities—the latest inventions—the steamers on the rivers—the railroads—with
 many a thrifty farm, with machinery, 
And wool, and wheat, and the grape—and diggings of yellow gold. 

6
But more in you than these, Lands of the Western Shore!
(These but the means, the implements, the standing-ground,) 
I see in you, certain to come, the promise of thousands of years, till now deferr’d, 
Promis’d, to be fulfill’d, our common kind, the Race. 

The New Society at last, proportionate to Nature, 
In Man of you, more than your mountain peaks, or stalwart trees imperial,
In Woman more, far more, than all your gold, or vines, or even vital air. 

Fresh come, to a New World indeed, yet long prepared, 
I see the Genius of the Modern, child of the Real and Ideal, 
Clearing the ground for broad humanity, the true America, heir of the past so grand, 
To build a grander future.

 SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF
LEARNING IN EUROPE.

Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
Cared-for till cock-crow:
Look out if yonder be not day again
Rimming the rock-row!
That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought,
Rarer, intenser,
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
Chafes in the censer.
Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop;
Seek we sepulture
On a tall mountain, citied to the top,
Crowded with culture!
All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels;
Clouds overcome it;
No! yonder sparkle is the citadel's
Circling its summit.
Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights:
Wait ye the warning?
Our low life was the level's and the night's;
He's for the morning.
Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,
'Ware the beholders!
This is our master, famous calm and dead,
Borne on our shoulders.

Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft,
Safe from the weather!
He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft,
Singing together,
He was a man born with thy face and throat,
Lyric Apollo!
Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note
Winter would follow?
Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone!
Cramped and diminished,
Moaned he, ``New measures, other feet anon!
``My dance is finished?''
No, that's the world's way: (keep the mountain-side,
Make for the city!)
He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride
Over men's pity;
Left play for work, and grappled with the world
Bent on escaping:
``What's in the scroll,'' quoth he, ``thou keepest furled?
``Show me their shaping,
``Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage,---
``Give!''---So, he gowned him,
Straight got by heart that hook to its last page:
Learned, we found him.
Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead,
Accents uncertain:
``Time to taste life,'' another would have said,
``Up with the curtain!''
This man said rather, ``Actual life comes next?
``Patience a moment!
``Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text,
``Still there's the comment.
``Let me know all! Prate not of most or least,
``Painful or easy!
``Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast,
``Ay, nor feel queasy.''
Oh, such a life as he resolved to live,
When he had learned it,
When he had gathered all books had to give!
Sooner, he spurned it.
Image the whole, then execute the parts---
Fancy the fabric
Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz,
Ere mortar dab brick!

(Here's the town-gate reached: there's the market-place
Gaping before us.)
Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace
(Hearten our chorus!)
That before living he'd learn how to live---
No end to learning:
Earn the means first---God surely will contrive
Use for our earning.
Others mistrust and say, ``But time escapes:
``Live now or never!''
He said, ``What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes!
``Man has Forever.''
Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head
_Calculus_ racked him:
Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead:
_Tussis_ attacked him.
``Now, master, take a little rest!''---not he!
(Caution redoubled,
Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!)
Not a whit troubled
Back to his studies, fresher than at first,
Fierce as a dragon
He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst)
Sucked at the flagon.

Oh, if we draw a circle premature,
Heedless of far gain,
Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure
Bad is our bargain!
Was it not great? did not he throw on God,
(He loves the burthen)---
God's task to make the heavenly period
Perfect the earthen?
Did not he magnify the mind, show clear
Just what it all meant?
He would not discount life, as fools do here,
Paid by instalment.
He ventured neck or nothing---heaven's success
Found, or earth's failure:
``Wilt thou trust death or not?'' He answered ``Yes:
``Hence with life's pale lure!''
That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it:
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.
That low man goes on adding nine to one,
His hundred's soon hit:
This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses an unit.
That, has the world here---should he need the next,
Let the world mind him!
This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed
Seeking shall find him.
So, with the throttling hands of death at strife,
Ground he at grammar;
Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife:
While he could stammer
He settled _Hoti's_ business---let it be!---
Properly based _Oun_---
Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic _De_,
Dead from the waist down.
Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place:
Hail to your purlieus,
All ye highfliers of the feathered race,
Swallows and curlews!
Here's the top-peak; the multitude below
Live, for they can, there:
This man decided not to Live but Know---
Bury this man there?
Here---here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
Lightnings are loosened,
Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
Peace let the dew send!
Lofty designs must close in like effects
Loftily lying,
Leave him---still loftier than the world suspects,
Living and dying.

 ("Une terre au flanc maigre.") 
 
 {Bk. III. xi., October, 1840.} 


 A clod with rugged, meagre, rust-stained, weather-worried face, 
 Where care-filled creatures tug and delve to keep a worthless race; 
 And glean, begrudgedly, by all their unremitting toil, 
 Sour, scanty bread and fevered water from the ungrateful soil; 
 Made harder by their gloom than flints that gash their harried hands, 
 And harder in the things they call their hearts than wolfish bands, 
 Perpetuating faults, inventing crimes for paltry ends, 
 And yet, perversest beings! hating Death, their best of friends! 
 Pride in the powerful no more, no less than in the poor; 
 Hatred in both their bosoms; love in one, or, wondrous! two! 
 Fog in the valleys; on the mountains snowfields, ever new, 
 That only melt to send down waters for the liquid hell, 
 In which, their strongest sons and fairest daughters vilely fell! 
 No marvel, Justice, Modesty dwell far apart and high, 
 Where they can feebly hear, and, rarer, answer victims' cry. 
 At both extremes, unflinching frost, the centre scorching hot; 
 Land storms that strip the orchards nude, leave beaten grain to rot; 
 Oceans that rise with sudden force to wash the bloody land, 
 Where War, amid sob-drowning cheers, claps weapons in each hand. 
 And this to those who, luckily, abide afar— 
 This is, ha! ha! a star! 


 

 Oh, may I join the choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence; live 
In pulses stirred to generosity, 
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
For miserable aims that end with self, 
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 
And with their mild persistence urge men's search 
To vaster issues. So to live is heaven: 
To make undying music in the world, 
Breathing a beauteous order that controls 
With growing sway the growing life of man. 
So we inherit that sweet purity 
For which we struggled, failed, and agonized 
With widening retrospect that bred despair. 
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued, 
A vicious parent shaming still its child, 
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved; 
Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies, 
Die in the large and charitable air, 
And all our rarer, better, truer self 
That sobbed religiously in yearning song, 
That watched to ease the burden of the world, 
Laboriously tracing what must be, 
And what may yet be better, -- saw within 
A worthier image for the sanctuary, 
And shaped it forth before the multitude, 
Divinely human, raising worship so 
To higher reverence more mixed with love, -- 
That better self shall live till human Time 
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky 
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb 
Unread forever. This is life to come, -- 
Which martyred men have made more glorious 
For us who strive to follow. May I reach 
That purest heaven, -- be to other souls 
The cup of strength in some great agony, 
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, 
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty, 
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, 
And in diffusion ever more intense! 
So shall I join the choir invisible 
Whose music is the gladness of the world.

 Iago Prytherch his name, though, be it allowed,
Just an ordinary man of the bald Welsh hills,
Who pens a few sheep in a gap of cloud.
Docking mangels, chipping the green skin
From the yellow bones with a half-witted grin
Of satisfaction, or churning the crude earth
To a stiff sea of clods that glint in the wind—
So are his days spent, his spittled mirth
Rarer than the sun that cracks the cheeks
Of the gaunt sky perhaps once in a week.
And then at night see him fixed in his chair
Motionless, except when he leans to gob in the fire.
There is something frightening in the vacancy of his mind.
His clothes, sour with years of sweat
And animal contact, shock the refined,
But affected, sense with their stark naturalness.
Yet this is your prototype, who, season by season
Against siege of rain and the wind's attrition,
Preserves his stock, an impregnable fortress
Not to be stormed, even in death's confusion.
Remember him, then, for he, too, is a winner of wars,
Enduring like a tree under the curious stars.

LXXIX. — TO ELIZABETH, COUNTESS OF RUTLAND. That poets are far rarer births than king,     Your noblest father proved; like whom, before, Or then, or since, about our Muses' springs,     Came not that soul exhausted so their store. Hence was it, that the Destinies decreed     (Save that most masculine issue of his brain) No male unto him; who could so exceed     Nature, they thought, in all that he would feign, At which, she happily displeased, made you:     On whom, if he were living now, to look, He should those rare, and absolute numbers view,     As he would burn, or better far his book.

 The cypress stood up like a church
That night we felt our love would hold,
And saintly moonlight seemed to search
And wash the whole world clean as gold;
The olives crystallized the vales'
Broad slopes until the hills grew strong:
The fireflies and the nightingales
Throbbed each to either, flame and song.
The nightingales, the nightingales.

Upon the angle of its shade
The cypress stood, self-balanced high;
Half up, half down, as double-made,
Along the ground, against the sky.
And we, too! from such soul-height went
Such leaps of blood, so blindly driven,
We scarce knew if our nature meant
Most passionate earth or intense heaven.
The nightingales, the nightingales.

We paled with love, we shook with love,
We kissed so close we could not vow;
Till Giulio whispered, 'Sweet, above
God's Ever guarantees this Now.'
And through his words the nightingales
Drove straight and full their long clear call,
Like arrows through heroic mails,
And love was awful in it all.
The nightingales, the nightingales.

O cold white moonlight of the north,
Refresh these pulses, quench this hell!
O coverture of death drawn forth
Across this garden-chamber... well!
But what have nightingales to do
In gloomy England, called the free.
(Yes, free to die in!...) when we two
Are sundered, singing still to me?
And still they sing, the nightingales.

I think I hear him, how he cried
'My own soul's life' between their notes.
Each man has but one soul supplied,
And that's immortal. Though his throat's
On fire with passion now, to her
He can't say what to me he said!
And yet he moves her, they aver.
The nightingales sing through my head.
The nightingales, the nightingales.

He says to her what moves her most.
He would not name his soul within
Her hearing,—rather pays her cost
With praises to her lips and chin.
Man has but one soul, 'tis ordained,
And each soul but one love, I add;
Yet souls are damned and love's profaned.
These nightingales will sing me mad!
The nightingales, the nightingales.

I marvel how the birds can sing.
There's little difference, in their view,
Betwixt our Tuscan trees that spring
As vital flames into the blue,
And dull round blots of foliage meant
Like saturated sponges here
To suck the fogs up. As content
Is he too in this land, 'tis clear.
And still they sing, the nightingales.

My native Florence! dear, forgone!
I see across the Alpine ridge
How the last feast-day of Saint John
Shot rockets from Carraia bridge.
The luminous city, tall with fire,
Trod deep down in that river of ours,
While many a boat with lamp and choir
Skimmed birdlike over glittering towers.
I will not hear these nightingales.

I seem to float, we seem to float
Down Arno's stream in festive guise;
A boat strikes flame into our boat,
And up that lady seems to rise
As then she rose. The shock had flashed
A vision on us! What a head,
What leaping eyeballs!—beauty dashed
To splendour by a sudden dread.
And still they sing, the nightingales.

Too bold to sin, too weak to die;
Such women are so. As for me,
I would we had drowned there, he and I,
That moment, loving perfectly.
He had not caught her with her loosed
Gold ringlets... rarer in the south...
Nor heard the 'Grazie tanto' bruised
To sweetness by her English mouth.
And still they sing, the nightingales.

She had not reached him at my heart
With her fine tongue, as snakes indeed
Kill flies; nor had I, for my part,
Yearned after, in my desperate need,
And followed him as he did her
To coasts left bitter by the tide,
Whose very nightingales, elsewhere
Delighting, torture and deride!
For still they sing, the nightingales.

A worthless woman! mere cold clay
As all false things are! but so fair,
She takes the breath of men away
Who gaze upon her unaware.
I would not play her larcenous tricks
To have her looks! She lied and stole,
And spat into my love's pure pyx
The rank saliva of her soul.
And still they sing, the nightingales.

I would not for her white and pink,
Though such he likes—her grace of limb,
Though such he has praised—nor yet, I think,
For life itself, though spent with him,
Commit such sacrilege, affront
God's nature which is love, intrude
'Twixt two affianced souls, and hunt
Like spiders, in the altar's wood.
I cannot bear these nightingales.

If she chose sin, some gentler guise
She might have sinned in, so it seems:
She might have pricked out both my eyes,
And I still seen him in my dreams!
- Or drugged me in my soup or wine,
Nor left me angry afterward:
To die here with his hand in mine
His breath upon me, were not hard.
(Our Lady hush these nightingales!)

But set a springe for him, 'mio ben',
My only good, my first last love!— 
Though Christ knows well what sin is, when
He sees some things done they must move
Himself to wonder. Let her pass.
I think of her by night and day.
Must I too join her... out, alas!...
With Giulio, in each word I say!
And evermore the nightingales!

Giulio, my Giulio!—sing they so,
And you be silent? Do I speak,
And you not hear? An arm you throw
Round some one, and I feel so weak?
- Oh, owl-like birds! They sing for spite,
They sing for hate, they sing for doom!
They'll sing through death who sing through night,
They'll sing and stun me in the tomb— 
The nightingales, the nightingales!

 When mid-autumn's moan shook the night-time, 
 And sedges were horny, 
And summer's green wonderwork faltered 
 On leaze and in lane, 

I fared Yell'ham-Firs way, where dimly 
 Came wheeling around me 
Those phantoms obscure and insistent 
 That shadows unchain. 

Till airs from the needle-thicks brought me 
 A low lamentation, 
As 'twere of a tree-god disheartened, 
 Perplexed, or in pain. 

And, heeding, it awed me to gather 
 That Nature herself there 
Was breathing in aerie accents, 
 With dirgeful refrain, 

Weary plaint that Mankind, in these late days, 
 Had grieved her by holding 
Her ancient high fame of perfection 
 In doubt and disdain . . . 

- "I had not proposed me a Creature 
 (She soughed) so excelling 
All else of my kingdom in compass 
 And brightness of brain 

"As to read my defects with a god-glance, 
 Uncover each vestige 
Of old inadvertence, annunciate 
 Each flaw and each stain! 

"My purpose went not to develop 
 Such insight in Earthland; 
Such potent appraisements affront me, 
 And sadden my reign! 

"Why loosened I olden control here 
 To mechanize skywards, 
Undeeming great scope could outshape in 
 A globe of such grain? 

"Man's mountings of mind-sight I checked not, 
 Till range of his vision 
Has topped my intent, and found blemish 
 Throughout my domain. 

"He holds as inept his own soul-shell - 
 My deftest achievement - 
Contemns me for fitful inventions 
 Ill-timed and inane: 

"No more sees my sun as a Sanct-shape, 
 My moon as the Night-queen, 
My stars as august and sublime ones 
 That influences rain: 

"Reckons gross and ignoble my teaching, 
 Immoral my story, 
My love-lights a lure, that my species 
 May gather and gain. 

"'Give me,' he has said, 'but the matter 
 And means the gods lot her, 
My brain could evolve a creation 
 More seemly, more sane.' 

- "If ever a naughtiness seized me 
 To woo adulation 
From creatures more keen than those crude ones 
 That first formed my train - 

"If inly a moment I murmured, 
 'The simple praise sweetly, 
But sweetlier the sage'--and did rashly 
 Man's vision unrein, 

"I rue it! . . . His guileless forerunners, 
 Whose brains I could blandish, 
To measure the deeps of my mysteries 
 Applied them in vain. 

"From them my waste aimings and futile 
 I subtly could cover; 
'Every best thing,' said they, 'to best purpose 
 Her powers preordain.' - 

"No more such! . . . My species are dwindling, 
 My forests grow barren, 
My popinjays fail from their tappings, 
 My larks from their strain. 

"My leopardine beauties are rarer, 
 My tusky ones vanish, 
My children have aped mine own slaughters 
 To quicken my wane. 

"Let me grow, then, but mildews and mandrakes, 
 And slimy distortions, 
Let nevermore things good and lovely 
 To me appertain; 

"For Reason is rank in my temples, 
 And Vision unruly, 
And chivalrous laud of my cunning 
 Is heard not again!"

 MY Martial owns a garden, famed to please,
Beyond the glades of the Hesperides;
Along Janiculum lies the chosen block
Where the cool grottos trench the hanging rock.
The moderate summit, something plain and bare,
Tastes overhead of a serener air;
And while the clouds besiege the vales below,
Keeps the clear heaven and doth with sunshine glow.
To the June stars that circle in the skies
The dainty roofs of that tall villa rise.
Hence do the seven imperial hills appear;
And you may view the whole of Rome from here;
Beyond, the Alban and the Tuscan hills;
And the cool groves and the cool falling rills,
Rubre Fidenae, and with virgin blood
Anointed once Perenna's orchard wood.
Thence the Flaminian, the Salarian way,
Stretch far broad below the dome of day;
And lo! the traveller toiling towards his home;
And all unheard, the chariot speeds to Rome!
For here no whisper of the wheels; and tho'
The Mulvian Bridge, above the Tiber's flow,
Hangs all in sight, and down the sacred stream
The sliding barges vanish like a dream,
The seaman's shrilling pipe not enters here,
Nor the rude cries of porters on the pier.
And if so rare the house, how rarer far
The welcome and the weal that therein are!
So free the access, the doors so widely thrown,
You half imagine all to be your own.

 Take, since you bade it should bear,
These, of the seed of your sowing,
Blossom or berry or weed.
Sweet though they be not, or fair,
That the dew of your word kept growing,
Sweet at least was the seed.

Men bring you love-offerings of tears,
And sorrow the kiss that assuages,
And slaves the hate-offering of wrongs,
And time the thanksgiving of years,
And years the thanksgiving of ages;
I bring you my handful of songs.

If a perfume be left, if a bloom,
Let it live till Italia be risen,
To be strewn in the dust of her car
When her voice shall awake from the tomb
England, and France from her prison,
Sisters, a star by a star.

I bring you the sword of a song,
The sword of my spirit's desire,
Feeble; but laid at your feet,
That which was weak shall be strong,
That which was cold shall take fire,
That which was bitter be sweet.

It was wrought not with hands to smite,
Nor hewn after swordsmiths' fashion,
Nor tempered on anvil of steel;
But with visions and dreams of the night,
But with hope, and the patience of passion,
And the signet of love for a seal.

Be it witness, till one more strong,
Till a loftier lyre, till a rarer
Lute praise her better than I,
Be it witness before you, my song,
That I knew her, the world's banner-bearer,
Who shall cry the republican cry.

Yea, even she as at first,
Yea, she alone and none other,
Shall cast down, shall build up, shall bring home;
Slake earth's hunger and thirst,
Lighten, and lead as a mother;
First name of the world's names, Rome.