 Dedication and Introduction of Verses. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Larry Wilson. Verses by L.A. Bellock. Dedication. To John Swinerton Fillmore. A dedication with this book of verse. When you and I were little tiny boys, we took a most impertinent delight in foolish painted and misshapen toys that hidden mothers brought to us at night. Do you have that child's diviner part? The dear content a love familiar brings. Take these imperfect toys till in your heart they too attain the form of perfect things. Introduction by Joyce Kilmer. Far from the poets being astray in prose writing, said Francis Thompson, it might plausibly be contended that English prose as an art is but a secondary stream of the Purian fount and owes its very origin to the poets. The first writer, one remembers with whom prose became an art, was Sir Philip Sidney, as Sidney was a poet. This quotation is relevant to a consideration of Illaire Bellock, because Bellock is a poet who happens to be known chiefly for his prose. His Danton and Robespierre have been read by every intelligent student of French history. His path to Rome, the most high-spirited and engaging of travel books, has passed through many editions. His political writings are known to all lovers and many foes of democracy. His whimsically imaginative novels have their large and appreciative audience, and his exquisite brief essays are contemporary classics. And since the unforgettable month of August of the unforgettable year 1914, Illaire Bellock has added to the number of his friends many thousands who cared little for Bellotta. And less for the French Revolution. He has become certainly the most popular and by general opinion the shrewdest and best informed of all chroniclers and critics of the Great War. There is nothing that may be said about these achievements to indicate the poet. How can this most public of publicists woo the shy in exacting news? His superabundant energy may now and again overflow in little lyrical rivulets, but how can he find time to turn it into the deep channels of song? Well, what is the difference between a poet who writes prose and a prose writer who writes verse? The difference is easy to see, but hard to describe. Mr. Thomas Hardy is a prose writer. He has forsaken the novel of which he was so distinguished a master to make cynical little sonnet portraits and to pour the acid wine of his philosophy, a sort of perverted Presbyterianism, into the graceful emphora of poetic drama, but he is not a poet. Thackeray was a prose writer in spite of his delicious light verse. Every novelist writes or has written verse, but not all of them are poets. Of course Sir Walther Scott was, first of all, a poet, the greatest poet who ever wrote a novel, and no one who has read Love in the Valley can hesitate to give Meredith his proper title. Was Macaulay a poet? I think so, but perhaps I am in a hopeless minority in my belief that the author of the Battle of Nasby and the Lays of Ancient Rome was the last of the great English ballad-makers. But this general truth cannot, I think, honestly be denied. There have been many great poets who have devoted most of their lives to writing prose. Some of them have died without discovering their neglected talent. I think that Walter Pater was one of these. Much that is annoyingly subtle or annoyingly elaborate in his essays needs only rhyme and rhythm, the lovely accidents of poetry, to become graceful and appropriate. His famous description of the Mona Lisa is worthless if considered as a piece of Sirius' aesthetic criticism. But it would make an admirable sonnet, and it is significant that Walter Pater's two greatest pupils, Lionel Johnson and Father Gerard Hopkins, S.J., found expression for their genius not in prose, the chosen medium of their unforgivably most gracious friend, but in verse. From Walter Pater that exquisite of letters to the robust ill-air bellock may seem a long journey, but there is, I insist, this similarity between these contrasting writers. Both are poets, and both are known to fame by their prose. For proof that Walter Pater was a poet, it is necessary only to read his renaissance studies, or his interpretations, unsound but fascinating, of the soul of ancient Greece. Often his essays, too delicately accurate in phrasing, or too heavily laden with golden rhetoric, seem almost to cry out loud for the relief of rhyme and rhythm. Now Heller Bellock suggests in many of his prose sketches that he is not using his true medium. I remember a brief essay on sleep which appeared in the new witness, or as it was then called, the eyewitness, several years ago, which was not so much a complete work in itself as it was a draft for a poem. It had the economy a phrase, the concentration of idea, which is proper to poetry. But it is necessary, in the case of Iller Bellock, as it is in that of Walter Pater, to search pages of prose for proof that their author is a poet. Now and then, all too seldom, the idea in this man's brain has insisted on its right, has scorned the proper dress of prose, however find the warp and woof, however stiff with rich verbal embroidery, and has demanded its rhymed and rhythm wedding garments. Therefore for proof that Iller Bellock is a poet, it is necessary only to read his poetry. Iller Bellock is a poet. He is also a Frenchman, an Englishman, an Oxford man, a Roman Catholic, a country gentleman, a soldier, a Democrat, and a practical journalist. He is always all of these things. One sign that he is naturally a poet is that he is never deliberately a poet. No one can imagine him writing a poem to order, even to his own order. The poems knock at the door of his brain and demand to be let out, and he lets them out, carelessly enough, setting them comfortably down on paper simply because that is the treatment they desire. And this happens to be the way all real poetry is made. Not that all verse-makers work that way. They are men who come upon a waterfall or mountain or an emotion and say, ah-ha, here is something out of which I can extract a poem. They sit down in front of the waterfall or mountain or emotion and think up clever things to say about it. These things they put into metrical form and the result they fondly call a poem. There is no harm in that. It's good exercise for the mind, and of it comes much interesting verse, but it is not the way in which the sum of the world's literature is increased. Could anything, for example, be less studied, be more clearly marked with the stigmata of that noble spontaneity we call inspiration, than the passionate rushing irresistible lines to the Baleol men still in Africa? Like Gilbert K. Chesterton and many other English-Democrat, Illaire Bellach deeply resented his country's war upon the wars. Yet his heart went out to the friends of his university days who were fighting in Africa. They were fighting, he thought, in an unjust cause, but they were his friends, and they were at any rate fighting. And so he made something that seems, like all great writing, an utterance rather than a composition. He put his love of war in general and his hatred of this war in particular. His devotion to Baleol and to his friends of his youth into one of the very few pieces of genuine poetry which the war-war produced, nor has any Oxford's much-sung colleges known praise more fit than this. House that armours a man with the eyes of a boy and the heart of a ranger, and a laughing way in the teeth of the world, and a holy hunger and thirst for danger. But perhaps a more typical example of Hella Bellach's wanton genius is to be found not among those poems which are throughout the beautiful expressions of beautiful impressions, but among those which are careless, whimsical colloquial. There is that delightful but somewhat exasperating, dedicatory ode. Hella Bellach is talking, charmingly, as is his custom, to some of his friends who had belonged in their university days to a youthful revolutionary organisation called the Republican Club. He happens to be talking in verse for no particular reason except that it amuses him to talk in verse. He makes a number of excellent jokes and enjoys them very much. His pegasus is cantering down the road at a jolly gate when suddenly, to the amazement of the spectators, it spreads out great golden wings and flashes like a meteor across the vault of heaven. We have been laughing at the droll tragedy of the opium-smoking Uncle Paul. We have been enjoying the humorous spectacle of the contemplative freshman, and suddenly we come upon a bit of astonishingly fine poetry. Who would expect in all this whimsical and jovial writing to find this really great stanza? From quiet homes and first beginning out to the undiscovered ends there's nothing worth the wear of winning but laughter and the love of friends. Who, having read these four lines, can forget them? And who but a poet could write them? But Hillar Bellach has not forced himself into this high mood, nor does he bother to maintain it. He gaily passes on to another verse of droll worry, and then not because he wishes to bring the poem to an effective climax, but merely because it happens to be his mood. He ends the escapade he calls an ode with eight or ten stanzas of nobly beautiful poetry. There is something almost uncanny about the flashes of inspiration which dart out at the astonished reader of Hillar Bellach's most frivolous verse. Let me alter a famous epigram and call his light verse Circus Eliminated by Lighting. There is that monumental burlesque, the Nudigate poem, a prize poem submitted by Mr. Lampkin of Burford to the examiners of the University of Oxford on the prescribed poetic theme set by them in 1893, the benefits of the electric light. It is a tremendous joke. With every line the reader echoes the author's laughter, but without the slightest warning Hillar Bellach passes from the rollicking burlesque to shrewd satire. He has been merely jesting with a bladder on a stick. He suddenly draws a gleaming rapier and thrusts it into the heart of error. He makes Mr. Lampkin say, Life is a veil, its paths are dark and rough, only because we do not know enough. When science has discovered something more, we shall be happier than we were before. Here we find the directness and restraint which belong to really great satire. This is the materialistic theory, the religion of science, not burlesque, not parodied, but merely stated nakedly, without the verbal frills and fervolos with which our forward looking leaders of popular thought are accustomed to cover its obscene absurdity. Almost these very words have been uttered in a dozen rationalistic pulpits, I could mention. Pulpits occupied by robusteous practical gentlemen with very large eyes, great favorites with the women's clubs. Their pet doctrines, their only and most offensive dogma, is not attacked, it is not ridiculed. It is merely stated for them in all kindness and simplicity. They cannot answer it, they cannot deny that it is a mercilessly fair statement of the philosophy that is their stock in trade. I hope that many of them will read it. L. R. Bellock was born July 27, 1870. He was educated at the Oratory School at Buston and at Belial College, Oxford. After leaving school he served as a driver in the Eighth Regiment of French Artillery at Toulmoute Edmoselle, being at that time a French citizen. Later he was naturalized as a British subject and entered the House of Commons in 1906, as liberal member for South Salford. British politicians will not soon forget the motion which L. R. Bellock introduced one day in the early spring of 1908, the motion that the party funds hitherto secretly administered the publicly audited. His vigorous and persistent campaign against the party system has placed him with Cecil Chesterton in the very front ranks of those to whom the Democrats of Great Britain must look for leadership and inspiration. He was always a keen student of military affairs. He prophesied long before the event the present international conflict describing with astonishing accuracy the details of the German invasion of Belgium and the resistance of Liege. Now he occupies a unique position among the journalists who comment upon the war, having tremendously increased the circulation of land and water, the periodical for which he writes regularly, and lecturing to a large audience once a week on the events of the war in one of the largest of London's concert halls, Queens Hall. There the same vast crowds that listen to the war lectures used to gather to hear the works of the foremost German composers. L. R. Bellock, as I have said, is a Frenchman, an Englishman, an Oxford man, a country gentleman, a soldier, a Democrat, and a practical journalist. In all these characters he utters his poetry. As a Frenchman he is vivacious and gallant and quick. He has the noble English frankness and the broad irresistible English mirthfulness which is so much more inclusive than that narrow possession, a sense of humor. Democrat, though he is, there is about him something of the atmosphere of the country's choir of some generations ago. It is in his heartiness, his jovial dignity, his deep love of the land. The author of The South Country in Courtesy has made Sussex his inalienable possession. He owns Sussex as Dickens owns London, and Blackmore owns Devonshire. And he is thoroughly a soldier, a happy warrior, as brave and dexterous no one can doubt with a sort of steel as with a sort of words. He has taken the most severe risk which a poet can take. He has written poems about childhood. What happened when the late Algernon Charles Swinburne bent his energies to the task of celebrating this theme? As the result of his solemn meditation on the mystery of childhood he arrived at two conclusions which he melodiously announced to the world. They were first that the face of a baby wearing a plush cap looks like a moss rosebud in its soft sheath, and second that Astrolabe rhymes with babe. Very charming, of course, but certainly unworthy of a great poet. And upon this the obvious comment is that Swinburne was not a great poet. He took a theme terribly great and terribly simple, and about it he wrote, something rather pretty. Now, when a really great poet, Francis Thompson, for example, as before him such a theme as childhood, he does not spend his time making far-fetched comparisons with moss rose buds or hunting for words that rhyme with babe. Childhood suggests him who made childhood sacred, so the poet writes Exora infantium, or such a poem as that which ends with the line, look for me in the nurseries of heaven. A poet may write pleasingly about mountains and cyclones and battles and the love of women, but if he is at all timid about the verdict of posterity he should avoid the theme of childhood as he would avoid the plain, for only great poets can write about childhood poems worthy to be printed. Elebeloch has written poems about children, and they are worthy to be printed. He is never ironic when he thinks about childhood. He is gay, whimsical with a slight suggestion of elfin cynicism, but he is direct as a child is direct. He has written two dedicatory poems for books to be given to children. They are slight things, but they are a revelation of their author's power to do what only a very few poets can do, that is, to enter into the heart and mind of the child, following that advice which has its literary as well as a moral significance to become as a little child. And in many of Elebeloch's poems, by no means intended for Childe's audiences, there is an appealing simplicity that is genuinely and beautifully Childe's, something quite different from the adult and highly artificial simplicity of Professor A. E. Hausmann's A Shropshire Lad. Take that quatrain, the early morning. It is as clear and cool as the time it celebrates. It is absolutely destitute of rhetorical indulgence, poetical inversions, or literary phrasing. It is, in fact, conversation, inspired conversation which is poetry. It might have been written by a Wordsworth, not painfully self-conscious, or by a Blake whose brain was not yet muddled with impressionistic metaphysics. And his Christmas carols. They are fit to be sung by a chorus of children. Can any songs of the sort receive higher praise than that? Children, too, appreciate the birds and our Lord and our Lady. Nor is that wonderful prayer rather flatly called, in a boat, beyond the reach of their intelligence. Naturally enough, Elebeloch is strongly drawn to the almost violent simplicity of the ballad. Bishop Percy would not have enjoyed the theological and political atmosphere of the little serving maid, but he would have acknowledged its irresistible charm. There is that wholly delightful poem, The Death and Last Confession, of wandering Peter, a most balookian vacabond. He wandered everywhere he would, and all that he approved was sung, and most of what he saw was good, says Peter. If all that I have loved and seen be with me on the judgment day, I shall be saved the crowd between from Satan and his foul array. Elebeloch has seen much and loved much. He has sung lustily the things he approved, with what hearty hatred he has sung the things he disapproved. Elebeloch is not the man to spend much time in analyzing his own emotions. He is not, thank God, a poetical psychologist. Love songs, drinking songs, battle songs, it is with these primitive and democratic things that he is chiefly concerned. But there's something more dramatic than wine or love or war. That thing is faith. An Elebeloch's part in increasing the sum of the world's beauty would not be the considerable thing that it is, were it not for his faith. It is not, like Dante Gabriel Rosetti, that he is attracted by the church's pageantry and wealth of legend. To Elebeloch the pageantry is only incidental. The essential thing is his Catholic faith. He writes convincingly about Our Lady and St. Joseph and the Child Jesus because he himself is convinced. He does not delve into medieval tradition in quest of picturesque incidents. He merely writes what he knows to be true. His faith furnishes him with the theme of those of his poems which are more likely to endure. His faith gives him the rapture of inspiration. His faith enables him, as it has enabled many another poet, to see in the lamp that is beauty the light that is God. And therein is Elebeloch most thoroughly and consistently a Democrat, for in this twentieth century it happens that there is on earth only one genuine democratic institution, and that institution is the Catholic Church. End of introduction. As we go down to hell, where scribblers end and millionaires as well, we shall be carrying on our separate backs two very large but very different packs. And as you stagger under yours, my friend, down the dull shore where all our journeys end, and go before me, as your rank demands, towards the infinite flat underlands, and that dear river of forgetfulness, chair on a man of exquisite address, for as your wife's progenitors could tell, they're very strict on etiquette and hell. Well, since you are a lord, observe, my lord, we cannot take these weighty things aboard. Then down they go, my wretched dewest, down, the fifteen sorts of boots you kept for town, the hat to meet the devil in, the plain but costly ties, the cases of champagne, the solid watch and seal and chain and charm, the working model of a burning farm, to give the little bell yells, all the three biscuits for Cerberus, the guarantee from Lambeth that the rich can never burn, and even promising a safe return, the admirable overcoat designed to cross Cicitas, very warmly lined. Sweet dewest, you will leave them all behind, and enter hell as tattered and as bare as was your father when he took the air behind a barrow load in Leicester Square. Then turn to me and noting one that brings with careless step a mist of shadowy things, laughter and memories, and a few regrets, some honor and a quantity of debts, a doubt or two of sorts, a trust in God, and what will seem to you extremely odd, his father's grandfather's father's father's name, unspoilt, untitled, even spelt the same. Charon, who twenty thousand times before has ferried poets to the ulterior shore, will estimate the wait I bear and cry, comrade, he has himself been known to try his hand at Latin and Italian verse, much in the style of Virgil, only worse. We let such vain imaginaries pass, then tell me dewest which will look the ass, you or myself, or Charon, who can tell, they order things so damnably in hell. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Stanzas Written on Battersea Bridge during the Southwestern Leagueale by Hilier Bellick. Read for LibriVox.org by Aaron Stone. The Southwest wind that was my elder brother has come to me in town. The wind is shouting from the hills of mourning, I do remember and I will not stay, I'll take the Hampton Road without warning and get me clean away. The channel is up, the little seas are leaping, the tide is making over Aaron Bar, and there's my boat, where all the rest are sleeping and my companions are. I'll board her and apparel her and I'll mount her, my boat, that was the strongest friend to me, that brought my boyhood to its first encounter and taught me the wide sea. Now shall I drive her, roaring hard a weather, right for the salt and leave them all behind, we'll quite forget the treacherous streets together and find, or shall we find? There is no pilletry my soul relies on, whereby to catch beneath my bended hand, faint and beloved along the extreme horizon, that unforgotten land. We shall not round with granite piers and paven to lie to wharves we know with canvas furled. My little boat, we shall not make the haven, it is not of the world. Somewhere of English borelands, grandly guarded it stands, but not for exiles, marked and clean. Oh, not for us, a mist has risen and marred it, my youth lies in between. So in this snare that holds me and appalls me, where honour hardly lives nor loves remain, the seas compel me and my country calls me, but stronger things restrain. England, to me that never have malingered, nor have spoken falsely, nor your flattery used, nor even in my rightful garden lingered, what have you not refused? End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The South Country by Hilaire Bellick. Read for LibriVox.org by Sarah Brown. When I am living in the midlands that are sodden and unkind, I light my lamp in the evening, my work is left behind, and the great hills of the South Country come back into my mind. The great hills of the South Country they stand along the sea, and it's there walking in the high woods that I could wish to be, and the men that were boys when I was a boy walking along with me. The men that live in North England, I saw them for a day, their hearts are set upon the wastefells, their skies are fast and gray. From their castle walls a man may see the mountains far away. The men that live in West England, they see the Severn Strong. A rolling on rough water brown, light aspen leaves along. They have the secret of the rocks and the oldest kind of song. But the men that live in the South Country are the kindest and most wise. They get their laughter from the loud surf, and the faith in their happy eyes. Come surely from our sister the spring, when over the sea she flies. The violet suddenly bloom at her feet, she blesses us with surprise. I never get between the pines, but I smell the Sussex air, nor I never come on a belt of sand, but my home is there, and along the sky the line of the downs so noble and so bare. A lost thing could I never find, nor a broken thing mend, and I fear I shall be all alone when I get towards the end. Who will be there to comfort me, or who will be my friend? I will gather and carefully make my friends of the men of the Sussex wheeled. They watched the stars from silent folds, they stiffly plow the field. By them and the God of the South Country, my poor soul shall be healed. If I ever become a rich man, or if ever I grow to be old, I will build a house with deep thatch to shelter me from the cold. And there shall the Sussex songs be sung, and the story of Sussex told. I will hold my house in the high wood, within a walk of the sea, and the men that were boys when I was a boy shall sit and drink with me. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Fanatic by Hilier Bellick. Read for Librebox.org by Aaron Stone. Last night in Compton Street, Soho, a man whom many of you know gave up the ghost at half past nine. That evening he had been to Dine at Gressington's, an act unwise, but not the cause of his demise. The doctors all agree that he was touched with cardiac atrophy, accelerated, more or less, by lack of proper food, distress, uncleanliness, and loss of sleep. He was a man that could not keep his money, when he had the same, because of creditors who came and took it from him, and he gave so freely that he could not save. But all the while a sort of whim persistently remained with him, half admirable, half absurd, to keep his word, to keep his word, by which he did not mean what you and I mean. Of payments due, or punctual rental of the flat, he was a deal too mad for that. But as he put it with a fine, abandoned, foolish, or divine, but that great word which every man gave God before his life began. It was a sacred word, he said, which comforted the pathless dead, and made God smile when it was shown, unforefitted, before the throne. And this, he said, he meant to hold, in spite of debt and hate and cold. And this, he said, he meant to show, as passport to the wards below. He boasted it and gave praise to his own self through all his days. He wrote a record to preserve how steadfastly he did not swerve, from keeping it how stiff he stood, its guardian, and maintained it good. He had two witnesses to swear, he kept it once in Berkeley Square, where hardly anything survives. And, though the loneliest of lives he kept it clean, he kept it still, down to the last extremes of ill. So when he died, of many friends who came in crowds from all the ends, of London, that it might be known, they knew the man who died alone. Some, who had thought his mood sublime, and sent him soup from time to time, said, Well, you cannot make them fit the world, and there is an end of it. But others, wondering it, him said, the man that kept his word is dead. Then angrily, a certain third cried, Gentlemen, he kept his word. And as a man whom beasts surround tumultuous, on a little mound, stands archer, for one dreadful hour, because a man is born to power. And still, to daunt the pack below, twanks the clear purpose of his bow, till overwhelmed he dares to fall. So stood his bulwark of a saw. He kept his word as none but he could keep it, and as did not we. And round him, as he kept his word, today's diseased and faithless heard, a moment's loud, a moment's strong, but foul forever, rolled along. End of poem. This poem is in the public domain. Noel by Hiller Bellock Read for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson On a winter's night, long time ago, the bells ring loud and the bells ring low, when high held wind and down fell snow. Carolon, Carola, St. Joseph, he and Notre Dame, riding on an asphalt where he came, from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and the small child Jesus, smile on you. And Bethlehem in they stood before, the bells ring less and the bells ring more. The landlord made them be gone from his door, Carolon, Carola. Poor folk says he, best life where they may, for the Duke of Jewry comes this way, with all his train on a Christmas day, and the small child Jesus, smile on you. Poor folk that may Carol hear, the bells ring single, the bells ring clear. See, God's one child had hardest cheer, Carolon, Carola. Men grown hard on a Christmas morn, the dumb beast by and a babe forlorn. It was very, very cold when our Lord was born, and the small child Jesus, smile on you. Now these were the Jews, as Jews must be. The bells ring merry, the bells ring free. The Christian men in a band are we, Carolon, Carola. Empty we go and ill bedight, singing no well on a winter's night, give us to sup by the warm fire-light, and the small child Jesus, smile on you. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Early Morning by L. A. Bellock. Read for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson. The moon on one hand, the dawn on the other. The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother. The moon on my left, and the dawn on my right. My brother good morning, my sister good night. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Birds by Hill Air Bellock. Read for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson. When Jesus Christ was four years old, the angels brought him toys of gold, which no man ever had bought or sold. And yet with these he would not play. He made him small fowl out of clay, and blessed them till they flew away. Tu creasti domine. Jesus Christ, thou child so wise, bless mine hands and fill mine eyes, and bring my soul to paradise. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. To Our Lord and Our Lady by Hill Air Bellock. Read for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson. They warned Our Lady for the child that was Our Blessed Lord, and she took him into the desert wild over the camel's ford. And a long song she sang to him, and a short story told. And she wrapped him in a woolen cloak to keep him from the cold. But when Our Lord was grown a man, the rich they dragged him down, and they crucified him in Golgotha, out and beyond the town. They crucified him on Calvary upon an April day, and because he had been her little son, she followed him all the way. Our Lady stood beside the cross, a little space apart, and when she heard Our Lord cry out, a sword went through her heart. They laid Our Lord in a marble tomb, dead in a winding sheet. But Our Lady stands above the world with the white moon at her feet. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Above the spin drift and above the snow, where no seas tumble and no winds blow. The twisting tides and the perilous sands, upon all sides, are in your holy hands. The wind harries and the cold kills, but I see your chapel over far hills. My body is frozen, my soul is afraid. Stretch out your hands to me, mother and maid. Mother of Christ and mother of me save me alive from the howl of the sea. If you will mother me till I grow old, I will hang in your chapel a ship of pure gold. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Courtesy by Hilier Bellick. Red for LibriVox.org by Aaron Stone. Of courtesy it is much less than courage of heart or holiness, yet in my walks it seems to me that the grace of God is in courtesy. On monks I did in Storington Fall they took me straight into their hall. I saw three pictures on a wall and courtesy was in them all. The first of the annunciation, the second of the visitation, the third of the consolation, of God that was our Lady's son. The first was of St. Gabriel on wings of flame from heaven he fell, and as he went upon one knee he shone with heavenly courtesy. Our Lady out of Nazareth Road, it was her month of heavy load. Yet was her face both great and kind, for courtesy was in her mind. The third it was our little Lord whom all the kings in arms adored. He was so small you could not see his large intent of courtesy. Our Lord that was our Lady's son, go bless you people one by one. My rhyme is written, my work is done. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Night by Hilier Bellick. Read for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson. Most holy night, the stillest keep the keys of all the doors of sleep. To me, when my tired eyelids close, give thou repose, and let the far lament of them that chant the dead day's requiem make in my ears, who wakeful lie, soft lullaby. Let them that guard the horned moon by my bedside their memories croon, so shall I have new dreams and blessed in my brief rest. Fold your great wings about my face, hide dawning from my resting place, and cheat me with your false delight, most holy night. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Leader by Hilier Bellick. Read for LibriVox.org by Marcia Epic Harris. October 30th, 2019. The sword fell down. I heard an L. I thought that ease was best, and some men that buy and sell were host, and I was guessed. All unashamed, I sat with swine. We shook the dice for war. The night was drunk with an evil wine, but she went on before. She rode a steed of the sea foam breed. All fairy was her blade, and the armor on her tender limbs was of the moonshine maid. By God that sends the master maids, I know not when she came, but the sword she bore to save the soul went up like an altar flame where a broken race in a desert place call on the holy name. We strained our eyes in the dim day rise. We could not see them plain, but two dead men from Valmi Fen rode at her bridal reign. I hear them all, my father's call. I see them how they ride, and where had been that route of scene was an army straight with pride. A hundred thousand marching men of squadrons, twenty scores, and after them all the guns, the guns, but she went on before. Her face was like a king's command when all the swords are drawn. She stretched her arms and smiled at us. Her head was higher than the hills. She led us to the endless plains. We lost her in the dawn. End of poem. This recording is in the middle of the night. This recording is in the public domain. A Bivouac by Hilaire Bellock read4libbervox.org You came without a human sound. You came and brought my soul to me. I only woke and all around they slumbered on the firelit ground beside the guns in Burgundy. I felt the gesture of your hands. You signed my forehead with the cross. The gesture of your holy hands was bounteous like the misty lands along the hills in Calvados. But when I slept I saw your eyes hungry as death and very far. I saw demand in your dim eyes mysterious as the moons that rise at midnight in the pines of Var. End of poem. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. To the Baileol Men still in Africa by Hilaire Bellock read4libbervox.org by Algypug Years ago when I was at Baileol Baileol Men and I was one swam together in winter rivers wrestled together under the sun and still in the heart of us Baileol Baileol loved already but hardly known welded us each of us into the others called a levy and chose her own. Here is a house that armors a man with the eyes of a boy and the heart of a ranger and a laughing way in the teeth of the world at a holy hunger and thirst for danger. Baileol made me Baileol fed me whatever I had she gave me again and the best of Baileol loved and led me your I'd be with you Baileol Men. I have said it before and I say it again there was treason done and a false word spoken and England under the dregs of men and bribes about and a treaty broken but angry lonely hating it still I wish to be there in spite of the wrong my heart was heavy for Cumnor Hill and the hammer of galloping all day long galloping outward into the weather hands are ready and battle in all words together and wine together and song together in Baileol Hall rare and single noble and few oh they wasted you over the sea the only brothers ever I knew the men that laughed and quarrelled with me Baileol made me Baileol fed me whatever I had she gave me again and the best of Baileol loved and led me God be with you Baileol Men. End of poem this recording is in the public domain Versus to a Lord by Hilare Bellock read for LibriVox.org by LG pug Versus to a Lord who in the House of Lords said that those who opposed the South African adventure confused soldiers with money grubbers you thought because we held my Lord cause and strong that therefore we maligned the sword my Lord you did us wrong we also know the sacred height up onto Gelliside where those 300 fought with bait and fair young Werner died the day break on the failing force the final savers drawn tall Galtman silent on his horse superb against the dawn the little mound where Eckstein stood and Gallant Albu fell and Oppenheim half blind with blood went fording through the rising flood my Lord we know them well the little empty houses for lawn the ruined synagogues that mourn in Frankfurt and Berlin we knew them when the peace was torn we of a nobler lineage born now by all the gods of scorn we mean to rub them in end of poem this recording is in the public domain The Rebel by Hiliere Bellick read for LibriVox.org by Aaron Stone there is a wall of which the stones are lies and bribes and dead men's bones and wrongfully this evil wall denies what all men made for all and shamelessly this wall surrounds and our native grounds but I will gather and I will ride and I will summon a countryside and many a men shall hear my hala who never had thought the horn to follow and many a man shall ride with me who never had thought on earth to see high justice in her armory when we find them where they stand a mile of men on either hand I mean to charge from right away and force the flanks of their array and press them inward from the plains and drive them clamoring down the lanes and gallop and harry and have them down and carry the gates and hold the town then shall I rest me from my ride with great anger satisfied only before I eat and drink when I have killed them all I think that I will batter their carbon names and slit the pictures in their frames and burn for scent their cedar door and melt the gold their woman wore and hack their horses at the knees and hew to death their timber trees and plow their gardens deep and through for all these things I mean to do for fear perhaps my little son should break his hands as I have done end of poem this recording is in the public domain The Prophet Lost in the Hills at Evening by Hillary Bellock read for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson The Sun which made the Atopbo stars to circulate and keep their course Remember Me Whom all the bars of scents and dreadful fate enforce Above Me in your heights and tall impassable the summits freeze below the haunted waters call impassable beyond the trees I hunger and have no bread My gourd is empty of the wine Surely the footsteps of the dead dead are shuffling softly, close to mine. It darkens. I have lost the Ford. There is a change on all things made. The rocks have evil faces, Lord, and I am awfully afraid. Remember me. The voids of hell expand enormous all around. Strong friend of souls, Emmanuel, redeem me from a cursed ground. The long descent of wasted days to these at last have led me down. Remember that I filled with praise the meaningless and doubtful ways that lead to an eternal town. I challenged and kept the faith, the bleeding path alone I trod. It darkens. Stand about my wraith and harbour me, Almighty God. This Recording is in the Public Domain. This Recording is in the Public Domain. The Ring by Ileer Bello, read for Leapervox.org by Rachel Marie. When I was flying before the King in the wood of Elonis in my hiding, although I had not anything, I sent a woman a golden ring, a ring of the Moors beyond Leon, with emerald and with diamond stone, and a writing no man ever had known, and an opal standing all alone. The shape of the ring the heart to bind, the emerald turns from cold to kind. The writing makes her sure to find, but the evil opal changed her mind. Now when the King was dead was he, I came back hurriedly over the sea, from the long rocks in Normandy to Bosom that is by Celsius, and we clipped each other knee to knee, but what I had was lost to me. This Recording is in the Public Domain. Cuckoo by Ileer Bello, read for Leapervox.org in woods so long time bear, cuckoo, up and in the wood, I know not where. Two notes fall, yet I do not envy him at all his fantasy. Cuckoo, I too, somewhere. I have sung as merely as he who can dare. Small and careless lover, so to laugh at care, and who can call cuckoo in woods of winter weary, incented woods of winter weary, call cuckoo in woods so long time bear. End of Poem. This Recording is in the Public Domain. The Mirror by Ileer Bello, read for Leapervox.org. The Mirror held your fair, my fair, a fickle moment's space. You looked into mine eyes, and there forever fixed your face. Keep rather to your looking glass than my more faithful eyes. It told the truth, alas, my lass, my constant memory lies. End of Poem. This Recording is in the Public Domain. The Little Serving Mate by Ileer Bello, read for Leapervox.org by Rachel Marie. There was a queen of England and a good queen, too. She had a house in Powisland with a seven running through, and men folk and women folk apprenticed to a trade, but the prettiest of all was a Little Serving Mate. Oh, madam queen of England, oh, will you let me go? For there's a lad in London, and he would have it so, and I would have it too, madame, and with him would I bite, and he will be the groom, madame, and I shall be the bride. Oh, fight to you and shame to you, you Little Serving Mate. And are you not astonished, and are you not afraid? For never was it known, since Yengolond began, that a Little Serving Mate should go a meeting of a man. Then the Little Serving Mate, she went and laid her down, with her cross and her bead in her new courting-gown, and she called in Mother Mary's name and heavily she sighed, I think that I have come to shame, and after that she died. The good queen of England, her women came and ran, the Little Serving Mate is dead, from loving of a man. Set the good queen of England, that is ill-mused to hear, take her out and shroud her, and lay her on a beer. They laid her on a beer in the courtyard all, some came from foresting, and some came from hall, and great lords carried her, and proud priests prayed, and that was the end of the Little Serving Mate. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. THE END OF THE ROAD By Heller Bellach Read for Libervox.org In these boots, and with this staff, two hundred leaguers and a half, walked I, went I, paced I, tripped I, marched I, held I, scalped I, slipped I, pushed I, panted, swung and dashed I, picked I, forded, swam and splashed I, strolled I, climbed I, crawled and scrambled, dropped and dipped I, ranged and rambled, plodded I, hobbled I, trudged and tramped I, and in lonely spinny's camped I, and in haunted pinewood-slept I, lingered, loitered, limped and crept I, clambered, halted, stepped and lept I, slowly sauntered, roundly strode I, and, oh, patron saints and angels, that protect the four evangels, and you, prophets, chief of whose peculiar glories estinaula registare, acquirare et exore, et clamare et cunglamare, glamantes cunglamoribus, pronobespeca teribus, let me not conceal it, rode I, for who but critics could complain of riding in a railway train, across the valley and the high land, with all the world on either hand, drinking when I had a mind to, singing when I felt inclined to, nor ever turned my face to home, till I had slaked my heart at Rome. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Erin Grassey. There was a man was half a clown, it so my father tells of it. He saw the church in Claremont town and laughed to hear the bells of it. He laughed to hear the bells that ring in Claremont church and round of it. He heard the Verger's daughter sing and loved her for the sound of it. The Verger's daughter said him nay. She had the right of choice in it. He left the town at break of day, he hadn't had a voice in it. The road went up, the road went down. And there the matter ended it. He broke his heart in Claremont town. At Pangebou they mended it. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Drinking Song on the Excellence of Burgundy Wine by Hilaire Bellick, read for LibriVox.org by Sarah Brown. My jolly fat host with your face all agran. Come open the door to us, let us come in. A score of stout fellows who think it no sin. If they toast till their horse and they drink till they spin. Hoof did a mane, rain or no rain. To crack your old jokes and your bottles to drain. Such a warmth in the belly that nectar begets. As soon as his guts with its humor he wets. The miser his gold and the student his debts. And the beggar his rags and his hunger forgets. For there's never a wine like this tipple of thine. From the great hill of Nuites to the river of Rhine. Outside you may hear the great gusts as they go. By Foy, by Darren, and the hills of LaRoe. But the rain he may rain and the wind he may blow. If the devil's above there's good liquor below. Sew it abound, pass it around, burgundy's burgundy all year round. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Drinking Durge by Hillair Bellock, red for LibriVox.org by Alchy Pug. A thousand years ago I used to dine in houses where they gave me such regale of dear companionship and comrades fine that out I went alone beyond the pale. And riding laughed and dared the skies malign to show me all the undiscovered tale. But my philosophy's no more divine. I put my pleasure in a pint of ale. And you, my friends, oh pleasant friends of mine, who leave me now alone without a veil. On Californian hills you gave me wine. You gave me cider-drink in Longua Vale. If, after many years, you come to pine for comradeship that is an ancient tale, you'll find me drinking beer in dead man's chine. I put my pleasure in a pint of ale. In many a briny boat I've tried the brine. For many a hidden harbour I've set a sail. Steering towards the sunset where there shine the distant Amethystine island's pale. There are no ports beyond the far sea-line, nor any herlore to meet the mariner's hail. I stand at home and slip the anchor-line. I put my pleasure in a pint of ale. Envoy Prince, is it true when you go out to dine you bring your bottle in a freezing pail? Why, then, you cannot be a friend of mine. I put my pleasure in a pint of ale. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. West Sussex Drinking Song by Haller Bellock Red for LibriVox.org by Aaron Grassy They sell a good beer at Hazelmere and under Guildford Hill, at Little Crawford, as I've been told, a beggar may drink his fill. There's a good brew in Amberley, too, and by the bridge also, but the swipes they take in, at Washington Inn, is the very best beer I know. Chorus. With my hear it goes there, it goes all the funds before us, the tipples abroad, and the night is young, the doors ajar, and the barrel is sprung. I'm singing the best song ever was sung, and it has a rousing chorus. If I were what I can never be, the master or the squire, if you gave me the hundred from here to the sea, which is more than I desire, then all my crops would be barley and hops, and did my harvest fail? I'd sell every root of mine acres I would, for a bellyful of good ale. Chorus. With my hear it goes there, it goes all the funds before us, the tipples abroad, and the night is young, the doors ajar, and the barrel is sprung. I'm singing the best song ever was sung, and it has a rousing chorus. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. A Ballad on Sociological Economics by Hillier Bellick Read for Librebox.org by Aaron Stone A while ago it came to pass, there sat a man on top of an ass, and over the down they hoofed it so, the man up above and the brute below. Over the stubble and round the crop, the donkey beneath and the man on top. It happened again as it happened before, the moke in the ditch and the man on the floor. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. An Oracle That Warned the Writer Win on Pilgrimage by Eller Bellock Read for Librebox.org by Larry Wilson Translation of the above. When early morning seems bedig, and they that still refuse receive, when speech unknown men understand, and floods are crossed upon dry land, within the sacred walls beware the shaven head that boasts of hair, for when the road attains the rail the pilgrim's great attempt shall fail. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Heretics All by Eller Bellock Read for Librebox.org Heretics All, whoever you be, in tarb or neem, or over the sea, you never shall have good words from me. Caritas non contorbatemi. But catholic men that live upon wine are deep in the water, and frank and fine. Wherever I travel I find it so. Benedicam estominal. On childing women that are forlorn, and men that sweat in nothing but scorn, that is on all that ever were born. Miserere domine. To my poor self on my deathbed, and all my dear companions dead. Because of the love that I bore them. Dona ace requiem. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Death and Last Confession of Wandering Peter by Eller Bellock Read for Librebox.org by Algipug When Peter wonder-wide was young, he wandered everywhere he would, and all that he approved was sung, and most of what he saw was good. When Peter wonder-wide was thrown by death himself beyond oxea, he chanted in heroic tone to priests and people gathered there. If all that I have loved and seen be with me on the judgment day, I shall be saved the crowd between from Satan and his foul array. Almighty God will surely cry, St. Michael, who is this that stands with Ireland in his dubious eye, and Pyrrhegord between his hands, and on his arm the stirrup thongs, and in his gait the narrow seas, and in his mouth the Gundian songs, but in his heart the Pyrenees. St. Michael then will answer right, and not without angelic shame. I seem to know his face by sight. I cannot recollect his name. St. Peter will befriend me then, because my name is Peter, too. I know him for the best of men that ever walloped barley brew. And though I did not know him well, and though his soul were clogged with sin, I hold the keys of heaven and hell. Be welcome, noble Peterkin. Then shall I spread my native wings, and tread secure the heavenly floor, until the blessed, doubtful things of Val d'Arang and Pyrrhegord. This was the last and solemn jest of weary Peter wonder-wide. He spoke it with a failing zest, and having spoken it, he died. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Dedicatory Ode by Hilair Bilock. Read for Libbybox.org by Algypug. I mean to write with all my strength. It lately has been sadly waning, a ballad of enormous length, some parts of which will need explaining. Footnote. But do not think I shall explain to any great extent. Believe me, I partly write to give you pain, and if you do not like me, leave me. End footnote. Because, unlike the bulk of men who write for fame or public ends, I turn a lax and fluent pen to talking of my private friends. Footnote. At least of all can you complain, reviewers, whose unholy trade is to puff with all your might and main biographers of single ladies. End footnote. For no one, in our long decline, so dusty, spiteful, and divided, had quite such pleasant friends as mine, or loved them half as much as I did. The freshman ambles down the high, in love with everything he sees. He notes the very midland sky. He sniffs a more than midland breeze. Can this be Oxford? This is the place, he cries, at which my father said that shooting was a damned disgrace, the creed of memory, stuffed and dead. Can it be here that Uncle Paul was driven by excessive gloom, to drink and debt, and last of all, to smoking opium in his room? Is it from here that people come, who talk so loud and roll their eyes, and stammer? How extremely rum! How curious! What a great surprise! Some influence of a nobler day than theirs, I mean, than Uncle Paul's, has roused the sleep of their decay, and flecked with light their ancient walls. Oh, dear, undaunted boys of old, were that your names were carbon here, for all the world, in stamps of gold, that I might read them, and revere. Who wrought and handed down for me this Oxford of the larger air, laughing and full of faith and free, with youth resplendent everywhere? Then learn, thou ill-instructed, blind, young, callow and untutored man, their private names were Nevermind. Their club was called Republican. When on their banks of light they lie, the happy hills of heaven between, the gods that rule the morning sky, are not more young, nor more serene, than were the intrepid four that stand, the first who dared to live their dream, and on this uncongenial land, to found the abbey of Thalim. We kept the Rabbalasian plan, we dignified the Dainty Cloisters with natural law, the rites of man, song, stoicism, wine, and oysters. Footnote. The plan forgot, I know not how, perhaps the refect refilled it, to put a chapel in, and now we're mortgaging the rest to build it. End footnote. The library was most inviting. The books, upon the crowded shelves, were mainly of our private writing. We kept to school, and taught ourselves. We taught the art of writing things, on men we still should like to throttle, and where to get the blood of kings, at only half a crown a bottle. Ehü Pugakis Postume. An old quotation, out of mode. My coat of dreams is stolen away, my youth is passing down the road. The wealth of youth, we spent it well and decently, as very few can. And is it lost? I cannot tell. And what is more I doubt if you can. The question's very much too wide, and much too deep, and much too hollow, and learned men, on either side, use arguments I cannot follow. They say that in the unchanging place, where all we loved is always dear, we meet our mourning face to face, and find at last our twentieth year. They say, and I am glad they say, it is so. And it may be so. It may be just the other way. I cannot tell. But this I know, from quiet homes and first beginning, out to the undiscovered ends, there's nothing worth the wearer of winning, but laughter and the love of friends. But something dwindles, oh, my peers, and something cheats the heart and passes, and Tom, that meant to shake the years, has come to merely rattling glasses. And he, the father of the flock, is keeping Burmeseans in order and exile on a lonely rock that overlooks the Chinese border. And one, myself I mean, no less, ah, will posterity believe it, not only don't deserve success, but hasn't managed to achieve it. Not even this peculiar town has ever fixed a friendship firmer, but one is married, one's gone down, and one's a dawn, and one's in Burma. And oh, the days, the days, the days when all the four were off together, the infinite deep of summer haze, the roaring charge of autumn weather. I will not try the reach again. I will not set my sail alone to moor a boat bereft of men at Yantan's tiny docks of stone. But I will sit beside the fire and put my hand before my eyes, and trace, to fill my heart's desire, the last of all our odyssey. The quiet evening kept her trist. Beneath an open sky we rode, and passed into a wandering mist, along the perfect ebb and load. The tender ebb and load that makes her meadows hush to hear the sound of waters mingling in the brakes, and binds my heart to English ground. A lovely river, all alone, she lingers in the hills, and holds a hundred little towns of stones forgotten in the western worlds. I dare to think, though meaner powers possess our thrones, and lesser wits are drinking worse a wine than ours, in what's no longer Osterlitz, that surely a tremendous ghost, the brazen lunged, the bumper filler, still sings to an immortal toast the misadventures of the miller. The unending seas are hardly barred to men with such a prepossession. We were? Why then, by God, we are! Order! I call the club to session. You do retain the song we set, and how it rises, trips, and scans. You keep the sacred memory yet. Republicans? Republicans? You know the way the words were hurled to break the worst of fortune's rub? I give the toast across the world, and drink it. Gentlemen, the club! End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Child, do not throw this book about! Refrain from the unholy pleasure of cutting all the pictures out! Preserve it as your chiefest treasure! Child, have you never heard it said that you are heir to all the ages? Why then, your hands were never made to tear these beautiful thick pages! Your little hands were made to take the better things and leave the worse ones. They also may be used to shake the massive paws of elder persons. And when your prayers complete the day, darling, your little tiny hands, were also made, I think, to pray for men that lose their fairy lands. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Dedication of a Child's Book of Imaginary Tales by Hilaer Bellek Read for LibriVox.org by April 690, California, United States of America. Where wrongdoers suffer? And is it true? It is not true. And if it was, it wouldn't do. For people such as me and you, who very nearly all day long are doing something rather wrong. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Homage by Hilaer Bellek Read for LibriVox.org by Richmond Na Tete Verse 1 There is a light around your head, which only scenes of God may wear. And all the flowers on which you tread, in pleasant more than hours have fed. And subbed the essential air, whose summer is opposed with music everywhere. Verse 2 For you are younger than the mornings are, that in the mountains break, when upland shepherds see their only star, pale on the dawn, and making a surcease the hours, the early hours of all their happy circuit take. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Fili Lahain by Hilaer Bellek Read for LibriVox.org by Richmond Na Tete Death went into the steeple to wring, and he pulled the rope and he told a nail. Fili Lahain, how well you sink? Why are they wringing the passing bell? Death went into the steeple to wring. Fili Lahain, how well you sink? Death went down the stream in a boat. Down the river of Sain went he. Fili Lahain had a pain in her throat. Fili Lahain was nothing to me. Death went down the stream in a boat. Fili Lahain had a pain in her throat. Death went up the hill in a cut. I have forgotten her lips and her laughter. Fili Lahain was my sweetheart. And all the village was following after. Death went up the hill in a cut. Fili Lahain was my sweetheart. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Moon's Funeral by Hilaer Bellek Read for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson The moon is dead. I saw her die. She, in a drifting cloud, was dressed. She lay along the uncertain west. A dream to see. And very low she spake to me. I go where none may understand. I fade into the nameless land. And there must lie perpetually. And therefore I, and therefore loudly, loudly and high, and very piteously make cry. The moon is dead. I saw her die. And will she never rise again? The holy moon. Oh, never more! Perhaps along the inhuman shore, where pale ghosts are, beyond the low, leth and fen. She and some wide infernal star. To us who loved her never more, the moon will never rise again. Oh, never more in the nightly sky, her eyes so high shall peep and pry to see the great world rolling by. For why? The moon is dead. I saw her die. In the poem this recording is in the public domain. The Happy Journalist by Hilaire Bellick Read for LibriVox.org by April 6090, California, United States of America. I love to walk about at night by nasty lanes and corners fowl, all shielded from the unfriendly light and independent as the owl. By dirty grates I love to lurk. I often stoop to take a squint, at printers working at their work. I muse upon the rot they print. The beggars please me, and the mud, the editors beneath their lamps, as Mr. Howell demanding blood, and Lord Retender stealing stamps, and Mr. Bing instructing liars, his elder son composing trash. Beaufort, whose real name is Myers, refusing anything but cash. I like to think of Mr. Myers. I like to think of Mr. Bing. I like to think about the liars. It pleases me, that sort of thing. Policemen speak to me, but I, remembering my civic rights, neglect them and do not reply. I love to walk about at nights. At twenty-five to four I bunch. Across a cab I can't afford. I ring for breakfast after lunch. I am as happy as a lord. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Lines to a Don by Hillire Bellock. Remote an ineffectual Don that dared to attack by Chesterton, with that poor weapon half-impelled, unlearned, unsteady, hardly held, unworthy for a tilt with men. Your quavering and corroded pin. Don poor at bed and worse at table. Don pinched. Don starved. Don miserable. Don stuttering. Don with roving eyes. Don nervous. Don of crudities. Don clerical. Don ordinary. Don self-absorbed in solitary. Don here and there. Don epileptic. Don puffed and empty. Don dispeptic. Don middle-class. Don sycophantic. Don dull. Don brutish. Don pedantic. Don hypocritical. Don bad. Don furtive. Don three-quarters mad. Don since a man must make an end. Don that shall never be my friend. Don different from those regal Dons, with hearts of gold and lungs of bronze, who shout and bang and roar and brawl, they absolute across the hall. Or sell an amply bellowing gown enormous through the sacred town, bearing from college to their homes deep cargos a gigantic tomes. Don's admirable. Don's of might. Uprising on my inward sight. Compact of ancient tales. And port and sleep. And learning of a sort. Don's English worthy of the land. Don's rooted. Don's that understand. Good Don's perpetual that remain a landmark walling in the plain. The horizon of my memories. Like large and comfortable trees. Don very much apart from these. Thou scapegoat Don. Thou Don devoted. Don to thine own damnation quoted. Perplexed to find thy trivial name. Reared in my verse to lasting shame. Don dreadful. Grasping Don and wearing repulsive Don. Don passed all bearing. Don of the cold and doubtful breath. Don despicable. Don of death. Don nasty, skimpy, silent level. Don evil. Don that serves the devil. Don ugly. That makes fifty lines. There is a canon which confines a rhymed octosyllabic curse if written in iambic verse to fifty lines. I never cut. I far prefer to end it. But believe me I shall soon return. My fires are banked. Yet still they burn to write some more about the Don that dared attack my Chesterton. In the poem. This recording is in the public domain. Newtogate poem. A prize poem submitted by Mr. Lampkin of Burford to the examiners of the University of Oxford on the prescribed poetic theme set by them in 1893. The Benefits of the Electric Light by Halair Baloch. Read for LibriVox.org. Hail Happy Muse and touch the tuneful string. The benefits conferred by science I sing. Under the kind examiner's direction I only write about them in connection with benefits which the electric light confers on us especially at night. These are my theme. Of these my song shall rise. My lofty head shall swell to strike the skies. And tears of hopeless love be due the maiden's eyes. Descend, O Muse, from thy divine abode to Osny on the Seven Bridges Road. For under Osny's solitary shade the bulk of the electric light is made. Here are the works from hence the current flows which, so the company's prospectus goes, can furnish to subscribers hour by hour no less than 16,000 candle power, all at a thousand volts. It is essential to keep the current at this high potential in spite of the considerable expanse. The energy developed represents, expressed in foot-tons, the united forces of fifteen elephants and forty horses. But shall my scientific detail thus clip the dear wings of buoyant pegasus, shall pure statistics jar upon the ear that pants for lyric accents loud and clear? Shall I describe the complex dynamo or write about its commutator? No. To happier fields I lead my wanton pen. The proper study of mankind is man. Awake, my Muse, portray the pleasing sight that meets us where they make electric light. Behold the electrician where he stands. Soot, oil, and vertigree are on his hands. Large spots of grease defile his dirty clothes, the while his conversation drips with oaths. Shall such a being perish in its youth? Alas, it is indeed the fatal truth. In that dull brain beneath that hair unkempt, familiarity has bred contempt. We warn him of the gesture all too late. O heartless jove, O adamantine fate! Some random touch, a hand's imprudence slip, the terminals aflash a sound like zip. A smell of burning fills the started air, the electrician is no longer there. But let us turn with true artistic scorn from facts funereal and from views forlorn of arabes and blackest midnight borne. Arouse the Muse and chant in accents rich the interesting processes by which the electricity is passed along. These are my theme. To these I bend my song. It runs encased in wood or porous brick through copper wires two millimeters thick and insulated on their dangerous mission by India rubber, silk, or composition. Here you may put with critical felicity the following question. What is electricity? Molecular activity, say some. Others, when asked, say nothing and are dumb. Whatever be its nature, this is clear. The rapid current, checked in its career, balked in its race and halted in its course, transforms to heat and light its latent force. It needs no pedant in the lecturer's chair to prove that light and heat are present there. The pear-shaped vacuum globe, I understand, is far too hot to fondle with the hand. While, as is patent to the meanest sight, the carbon filament is very bright. As for the lights they hang about the town, some praise them highly, others run them down. This system, technically called the arc, makes some passages too light, others too dark. But in the house the soft and constant rays have always met with universal praise. For instance, if you want to breathe in bed, no candle burns beside your curtain's head. Far from some distant corner of the room, the incandescent lamp dispels the gloom. And with the largest print need hardly try the powers of any young and vigorous eye. Anoint the muse, inspired the poet sings, I cannot help observing future things. Life is a veil, its paths are dark and rough, only because we do not know enough. When science has discovered something more, we shall be happier than we were before. Hail Britain, mistress of the Azure Main, Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Hail mighty mother of the brave and free, That beat Napoleon and gave birth to me. Thou that canst, wrap in thine emblazoned robe, One quarter of the habitable globe, Thy mountains wafted by a favoring breeze, Like mighty rocks withstand the stormy seas. Thou art a Christian commonwealth, and yet, Be thou not all unthankful, nor forget, As thou exaltest in imperial might The benefits of the electric light. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. The Yellow Mustard by Hilary Belloq, read for LibriVox.org by Rich Mona Tete. O ye that pranketh to and fro, In pointed flounds and fair below, What have ye known, what can ye know, That have not seen the mustard grow? The Yellow Mustard is no less than God's gift to loneliness, And he was sent in gorgeous press To jungle keys at my distress. I heard a thruster call again, Come heather, pain, come heather, pain, Till all my shameless feats were thine To wander through the summer rain, And far apart from human place, And flaming like a vast disgrace, Thou struck me blinding in the face, The livery of the mustard race, To see the Yellow Mustard grow, beyond the town, above, below, Beyond the pebble houses, O, to see the Yellow Mustard grow. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. On Hygiene by Hilary Belloq, read for LibriVox.org by Algy Pag. Of old, when folk lay sick and sorely tried, The doctors gave them medicine, and they died. Here is an happier age, for now we know Both how to make men sick and keep them so. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. The False Heart by Hilary Belloq, read for LibriVox.org by Algy Pag. I said to Hart, How goes it? Hart replied, Right is a rib-stone pippin. But it lied. A critic said Lides' margins did not please him. I therefore printed just two lines to tease him. And if he still complains of what I've done, In my next book I'll fill a page with one. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. Sonnet Upon God by Hilary Belloq, read for LibriVox.org by Algy Pag. For Easter Sunday. Though man made wine, I think God made it too. God, making all things, made man make good wine. He taught him how the little tendrils twine About the stakes of labour, close and true. Then, next, with intimate prophetic laughter, He taught the man, in his own image, blessed, To pluck and wagon and two, all the rest, To tread the grape and work his vintage after. So did God-makers, making good wine-makers. So did he order us to rule the field, And now, by God, are we not only bakers, But winners also sacraments to yield. Yet, most of all, strong lovers, praised be God. He taught us how the wine-press should be trod. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. The Politician or the Irish Uldem by Hilary Belloq Read for Libby Rocks.org by Algypug A strong and striking personality, worth several hundred thousand pounds, Of strict political morality, was walking in his park like grounds, When, just as these began to pawl on him, I mean the trees, and things like that, A person who had come to call on him approached him, taking off his hat. He said, with singular veracity, I serve our seagirt motherland in no conspicuous capacity. I am but an attorney, and I do a little elementary negotiation, now and then, As agent for a parliamentary division of the town of Enne. Merely as one of the electorate, a member of the common will, Before completing my directorate, I want to know the way you feel On matters more or less debatable, as, whether our imperial pride Can treat as taxable or rateable, the gardens of, his host replied, The rages of inebriity, alas increasing day by day, are undermining all society. I do not hesitate to say my country squanders her abilities. Observe how Montenegro treats her educational facilities, As to the African defeats, I bitterly deplore their frequency. On Canada, we are agreed, the laws protecting public decency are very, very lax indeed. The view of most of the nobility are very much the same as mine, On Thingham Bob's eligibility. I trust that you remain to dine. His lordship pressed with importunity, as rarely he had pressed before. He gave them both an opportunity to know each other's value more. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Short Ballad and Postscript on Consoles by Hillair Bellock. Read for Libbybox.org by LG Pug. Gigantic Daughter of the West. The phrase is Tennisonian, Who, from this unconquerable breast, the vigorous milk of freedom drew, We gave it freely. Shall the crest of empire in your keeping true, Shall England? I forget the rest. But Consoles are at 82. Now, why should anyone invest, as even city people do, His lordship did among the rest, when stocks? But what is that to you? And then, whoever could have guessed about the guns, and horses too, Besides, they knew their business best, and Consoles are at 82. It serves no purpose to protest. It isn't manners to halloo, About the way the Thing was messed, or vaguely call a man a Jew. A gentleman who cannot jest remarked that we should muddle through. The continent was much impressed, and Consoles are at 82. Envoy, and both allay at Pilgrim's Rest, and Myberg in the Great Karoo, A desert to the south and west, and Consoles are at 82. Postscript, permit me, if you do not mind, to add it would be screaming fun, if, after printing this, I find them after all, at 81, or 70, or 63, or 55, or 44, or 39, and going free, or 28, or even more. No matter, take no more advice from doubtful and intriguing men. Refuse the stuff at any price, and slowly watch them fall to 10. Meanwhile, I feel a certain zest in writing once again the new refrain, That all is for the best, and Consoles are at 82.