Each guest he greets, nor ever lacks to say,‘How have ye fared?’ They answer him, the most,‘This lodging place is other than we sought;We had intended farther, but the gloomCame on apace, and found us ere we thought:Yet will we lodge. Thou hast abundant room.’Within sit haggard men that speak no word,No fire gleams their…
‘What I spent I had; what I saved, I lost; what I gave, I have.’But yesterday the tourney, all the eager joy of life,The waving of the banners, and the rattle of the spears,The clash of sword and harness, and the madness of the strife;To-night begin the silence and the peace of endless years.( One…
Unsatisfied until he should achieveThe grand ideal that his manhood sought;Yet as he saw the end within his reach,Death took the sceptre from his failing hand,And all men said, ‘He gave his life to teachThe task of honour to a sordid land!’Within his gates I saw, through all those years,One at his humble toil with…
Since I looked up to see her chamber-light,Or catch, perchance, her slender shadow thrownUpon the casement; but the nodding leavesSweep lazily across the unlit pane,And to and fro beneath the shadowy eaves,Like restless birds, the breath of coming rainCreeps, lilac-laden, up the village streetWhen all is still, as if the very treesWere listening for the…
That brim with childish tears amid thy play,Be comforted! No grief of night can weighAgainst the joys that throng thy coming day.Sleep, little heart!There is no place in Slumberland for tears:Life soon enough will bring its chilling fearsAnd sorrows that will dim the after years.Sleep, little heart!IIAh, little eyesDead blossoms of a springtime long ago,That…
Of them that flee, of them that basely yield;Nor ours the shout of victory, the fameOf them that vanquish in a stricken field.That day of battle in the dusty heatWe lay and heard the bullets swish and singLike scythes amid the over-ripened wheat,And we the harvest of their garnering.Some yielded, No, not we! Not we,…
And shallow furrows, cleft in stony soilWere all my labour: Shall I count it naughtIf only one poor gleaner, weak of hand,Shall pick a scanty sheaf where I have sown?‘Nay, for of thee the Master doth demandThy work: the harvest rests with Him alone.’
Was bright with battle flame, or through a hazeOf smoke that stung his eyes he heard the boomOf Bluecher’s guns; he shared Almeida’s scars,And from the close-packed deck, about to die,Looked up and saw the ‘Birkenhead”s tall sparsWeave wavering lines across the Southern sky:Or in the stifling ‘tween decks, row on row,At Aboukir, saw how…
‘Is it for labour that a man is born?Lo: I am Ease. Come ye and eat my bread!’Then gladly one forsook his task undoneAnd with the Tempter went his slothful way,The other toiled until the setting sunWith stealing shadows blurred the dusty day.Ere harvest time, upon earth’s peaceful breastEach laid him down among the unreaping…
Alike to me were human smiles and tears,I cared not whither Earth’s great life-stream ran,Till as I knelt before my mouldered shrine,God made me look into a woman’s eyes;And I, who thought all earthly wisdom mine,Knew in a moment that the eternal skiesWere measured but in inches, to the questThat lay before me in that…
