 What's The Use of Pertry?" by Richard LeGalien. From the World's Best Pertry, Volume 7, Descriptive Narrative, Part 1. 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 Adrian Stevens. Craig Franklin Sonia Thomas Peter And Jason in Canada. What's The Use of Pertry? And idly tuneful, the loquacious throng, flutter and twitter, prodigal of time, and little masters make a toy of song, till gravemen weary of the sound of rhyme. William Watson in Wordsworth's Grave. There is no doubt that many, one might almost say most, people are firmly convinced that they do not care for Pertry. They have no use for it, they tell you. Either it bores them as a fantastic, high-flown method of saying something that, to their way of thinking, could be better said in plain prose, or they look upon it as the sentimental nonsense of the moon-struck and lovesick young, a kind of intellectual candy, or very well for women and children, but of no value to grown men with the serious work of the world on their shoulders. It is not at all difficult to account for, and indeed to sympathise with this attitude. To begin with, of course, there is a large class outside our present considerations, which does not care for Pertry, simply because it does not care for any literature whatsoever. Serious reading of any kind does not enter into its scheme of life. Beyond the newspapers and magazines, and an occasional novel of the hour idly taken up, and indifferently put aside, it has no literary needs. With this listless multitude we have not to concern ourselves, but rather without sufficiently heterogeneous body known as the reading public, the people for whom Mr. Carnegie builds libraries, and the publishers display their wares. Of course, among these there must necessarily be considerable percentage temperamentally unappreciative of Pertry, just as there are numbers of people born with no ear for music, and numbers, again, born with no colour sense. The lover of Pertry is no less born than the Pert himself, yet, as the Pert is made as well as born, so is his reader, and there are many who really love Pertry without knowing it, but who think they do not care for it, either because they have contracted the wrong notion of what Pertry is, or because they have some time or other made a bad start with the wrong kind. I am convinced that one widespread provocative of the prevailing impression of the foolishness of Pertry is the mediocre magazine verse of the day. In an age when we go so much to the magazines for our reading, we may rely on finding there the best work being done in every branch of literature except the highest. The best novelists, the best historians, and the best essayists write for the magazines, but the best poets must be looked for in their high-priced volumes, and a magazine reader must rely for his verse on Lady Amateurs and Tuneful College Boys. Thus he too often approaches Pertry not through the great masters, but through the little misses, and he forms his naturally contemptuous notion of Pertry from feeble echoes and insipid imitations. No wonder, therefore, that he should refuse to waste his good eyesight on anything in the shape of verse, and should conceive of Pertry as a mild mental dissipation for young ladies, a sickly sweetmeat made of molasses and moonshine. If the magazine editors of the world would only bind themselves to publish no verse except the best, and failing to obtain a contemporary supply of the best would fill their spare corners of space with reprints of the old fine things and convince that they would do a great deal toward rectifying this widespread misconception of an art which, far from being trivial and superficial, is, of all the arts, the most serious and most vitally human. I am not saying that all Pertry is for all readers. There is a section of Pertry which has been called Poet's Poetry, which of necessity can appeal only to those in whom the sense of beauty and verbal exquisiteness has become specialised. Spencer and Keats, for example, are poets of the rainbow. For the average reader, their poems are the luxuries rather than the necessities of literature, though in making a distinction so rough and ready it must not be forgotten that beauty, happily, is becoming more and more a genuine necessity, nor must it be forgotten either that rainbows, refined and remote as they are, belong also to the realities. It is the reality of Pertry that I wish, if possible, to bring home to readers in this article. Some flowers, says George Meredith, have roots deep as oaks. Poetry is one of those flowers, and instead of its being a superficial decoration of life, it is, rightly understood, the organic expression of life's deepest meaning, the essence in words of human dreams and human action. It is the truth of life told beautifully and yet truthfully. There is only one basis for the longevity of human forms. That basis is reality. No other form of human expression has continued with such persistent survival from the beginning until now as poetry. From the Iliad to the absent-minded beggar, it's and the wild flowers for all their adventurous fragility are as old and no less stable than the hills and for the same reason, because they are no less real. The world is apt to credit prose with a greater reality than poetry. But the truth is that the prose of life is real only in proportion as it is vitalised by the spirit of poetry that breathes in all created things. Life exacts practical reasons for the survival of all its forms of expression, and unless poetry served some practical purpose of existence, it would long since have perished. It is because poetry has a practical work to do in the world that it continues and will continue to exist, because it is one of the motive forces of the universe. Life's motive meaning one might almost say the nerve force of existence. A great man has defined it as the finest spirit of all knowledge, and the phrase, though limited, may help us to a broader and deeper apprehension of poetry, and help us to say too that poetry is the finest spirit of all impulse, the finer meaning of all achievement. There is no human interest desiring to be displayed in all its essential vividness that does not realise the value of a poetical expression. Those who would depreciate the power of poetry in the sternest practical affairs have only to be reminded how much modern imperialism owes to Rudyard Kipling, and it is by no means trivial to remark that the most successful advertisements have been in verse. So soon as poetry so-called really is poetry, its appeal is immediately admitted and its force undeniably felt. It is the false poets who account for the false ideas of poetry. One has only to confront a practical man with the real thing to convince him that, without realising it, he has cared a great deal about poetry all his life. Probably he has imagined that this great stumbling block has been the verse. Why not say it in plain English? He has impatiently exclaimed, thinking all the time of bad verse, of lifeless, contorted rhyming, and of those metrical inanities of the magazines, and yet, when you bring him a verse that is really alive in which the meter is felt to be the very life-beat of the thought, you don't find him asking to have it turned into prose. How about Mandalay in prose, for example, or that old bugle-call of Scots, sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife, to all the sensual world proclaim, one crowded hour of glorious life, is worth an age, without a name. Or Tennyson's tears, idle tears, or call-riges. He prayeth best who loveth best, all things both great and small, for the dear God who loveth us, he made and loveth all. Or the quality of mercy is not strained. Or under the greenwood tree, or Mr. Swinburne's. Ask nothing more of me, sweet, all I can give you I give. Heart of my heart were it more, more would be laid at your feet. Love that should help you to live, song that should spur you to soar. In all these cases, the verse is immediately felt to be the very life of the expression, for the reason that it echoes in words the life rhythms to which, unconsciously, all such human emotions keep time. Say it in prose. Can you say a trumpet in prose, or a tear, or a butterfly? If you can, your prose is really poetry, and will be found to be eloquent with sunken rhythms, not immediately obvious to the ear and eye. The first thing to realize about poetry is that the meter is the meaning, even more than the words. In Tennyson's said, tears, idle tears, for example, it is not so much the words that are accountable for the wistful sorrow of the general effect, as the sad, rain-like melody mysteriously charging the words with sorrow, like some beautiful interpretative voice. And it is this subtly mimetic quality, and is the adaptable, which is the raison d'être of meter, and the secret of its power over mankind. Perhaps it may help us to attempt here a definition of poetry, though it is a bold, even foolhardy thing to do, for there has never yet been a definition of poetry that satisfied anyone but the man who made it. We may recall one fashionable in its day. Matthew Arnold's poetry is a criticism of life, that a poet should have made such a harrowing definition is amazing, though one, of course, understands it in the light of the fact that the inspiration of Matthew Arnold's muse was almost entirely that of a philosophical criticism of life. Far from being a criticism of life, poetry is much more like a recreation of it. It is life, in words. But let me timidly launch my own definition. Poetry is that impassioned arrangement of words, whether in verse or prose, which embodies the exaltation, the beauty, the rhythm, and the pathetic truth of life. There is a motive idealism behind all human action, of which most of us are unconscious, or to which we ordinarily give but little thought, a romance of impulse, which is the real significance of human effort. The walls of seeps were built to music, according to the old story, but so were the walls of every other city that has ever been built. The skyscrapers of New York are soaring to music also, a masterful music of the future, which not all can hear, and of which, perhaps, the music-makers themselves are most ignorant of all. What's more, in Emerson's immortal phrase, the builders are building better than they know, these ruthless speculators and stern businessmen, who are the last to suspect themselves of the poetry which they involuntarily serve. Human life, in the main, is thus unconsciously poetical, and moves to immortal measures of a mysterious spiritual music. It is this impassioned exaltation, this strange rhythm, this spiritual beauty, the finer spirit of life, which the poet seizes on and expresses, and therewith also that pathos which seems to in here in all created things. We read him because he gives that value of life which we feel belongs to it, but for which we are unable to find the words ourselves. How often one has heard people say on reading a poem, why, that is just what I have always felt, but could never express. And the exclamation was obviously a recognition of the truth of the poem. The poet had made a true observation, and recorded it with all the vividness of truth. It is the business of the poet to be all the time thus recording, and recreating, life in all its manifestations, not only for those who already possess something of the poetic vision, yet lack the poetic utterance, but also for those who need to be awakened to the ideal meanings and issues of life. Poetry is thus seen to be a kind of lay religion, revealing and interpreting the varied beauty and nobility of life. But a better way than theorizing to show the use, the sweet uses of poetry, is to call up the names of some of the great poets, and ponder what they have meant and still mean in the life of humanity. Dante, Milton, and Wordsworth, for example, and to them we might add Tennyson, Browning, and Matthew Arnold. How much these six poets alone have meant to the graver life of humanity, the life of religion, of thought, of conduct, particularly with regard to the four poets of the last century, we are compelled to note how, far more than any professed teachers and thinkers, they were the teachers and thinkers of their age, and did indeed mould the thought of their century. For how many have Wordsworth's prelude, Tennyson's Inmemorium, Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra, and Matthew Arnold's Impedocles been literally sacred books, books of daily exercise and meditation, to name only a few of their more typical poems. They are well-worn today, but think what forces in the world these lines of Wordsworth have been. The world is too much with us, late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers, little we see in nature that is ours, we have given our hearts away, a sordid boon. Tennyson says, are God in nature than at strife, that nature lends such evil dreams, so careful of the type she seems, so careless of the single life, that I, considering everywhere her secret meaning in her deeds, and finding that of fifty seeds she often brings but one to bear, I falter where I firmly trod, and falling with my weight of cares, upon the great world's altar stairs, that slope through darkness up to God, I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope and gather dust and chaff, and recall to what I feel is Lord of all, and faintly trust the larger hope. I quote this from Matthew Arnold. It is so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done, to have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes, that we must feign a bliss of doubtful future date, and while we dream on this, we must lose all our present state, and relegate to worlds yet distant our repose. These lines, and many more like them, that one could quote, have done definite spiritual service for mankind, have inspired countless men and women with new faith, new hope, and new fortitude, and will remain permanent springs of sustenance for the human spirit. Again the mere mention of such names as Goethe, Byron, and Shelley carries with it their tremendous significance in the practical life of the modern world. When we think of such figures as occur over and over again in the history of poetry, we realize that Tennyson's one poor poet's scroll that shook the world was no mere boyish inflation of the poet's mission. That sad musical poet, Arthur O'Shaughnessy, said no more than the truth when he sang, inverse like the motion of moonlight on water. We are the music-makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams, wandering by lone sea-breakers, and sitting by desolate streams, world-losers, and world-forsakers on whom the pale moon gleams, yet we are the movers and shakers of the world forever, it seems. To realize what a sheerly political force poetry has been in America alone, one has only to recall the poems of Whittier and Lowell, Poe and Longfellow, and Julia Ward-House, a mortal battled him of the Republic. But apart from such strenuous and stern services, how many other services no less valuable has poetry rendered to mankind, services of joy and universal sympathy. The poet, often so sad himself, sings all men's joys and sorrows as if they were his own, and there's nothing that can happen to us, nothing we can experience, no stroke of fate, and no mood of heart or mind that we cannot find expressed and interpreted for us somewhere in some poet's book. Take but one poet, Robert Burns for instance, and think of the immense addition to the sum total of human pleasure and human consolation that his handful of Scotch songs has made, who asks, what's the use of poetry when he joins an old lung zine and feels his heart stirred to his tearful deaths with the sentiment of human brotherhood and the almost tragic dearness of friends, and who that has ever been in love has not once in his life felt the brotherly hand of a fellow experience in, had we never loved say kindly, had we never loved say blindly, never met, or never parted, we had never been broken hearted, and been consoled somehow with that mysterious consolation which belongs to the perfect expression of sorrow. If the simple songs of a Scotch peasant have been of so much use to the world, what of that lordly pleasure-house of Shakespeare? Think of the boundless universe of mere delight that has written over its door the works of Shakespeare, the laughter, the wisdom, the beauty, the all comprehending humanity. If it be of no use to make men happy, to quicken in them the joy of life, to heighten their pleasures, to dry their tears, to bind up their wounds, if it be of no use to teach them wisdom, to open their eyes, to purify and direct their spirits, to gird them to fight, to brace them to endure, to teach them to be gentle, then indeed we may ask, what's the use of poetry? But, while poetry can do all these things, I think it must be allowed, by the most practical, that it has a very important part to play in the work of the world. To end, as I began, with that practical man who imagines that he does not care for poetry, I gave one or two explanations of his distaste. But there is one other important one that must not be forgotten. He begins too often with, Paradise Lost. I mean that he too often attempts some tough classic, before he is ready for it, and, because he cannot read Milton with pleasure, imagines that he does not care for poetry at all. Thus he finds himself bewildered by the insipid magazine muses on the one hand, and the unscalable immortals on the other. Too many make the famous Mr. Boffin's mistake of beginning the study of English literature with Gibbons Decline and Fall, and would wonder if a man beginning the study of English poetry with Browning's Sordello should imagine, like Douglas Gerald in the story, either that his mind was failing him, or that there was something radically wrong with the poet. Actually a man may love poetry very deeply, and care nothing at all for Paradise Lost. He may also find nothing for him in Homer, or a shellis, or Dante, or Gotha. The great architectural works of such masters may seem too godlike and grim for his gentler human need, but give him a handful of violets from Ophelia's grave, or a bunch of Herrick's daffodils, or take him out under the sky where Shelley's lark is singing, or try him with a lyric of Heinz, or some ballad of old unhappy far-off things and battles long ago, and you will see whether or not he loves poetry. The mistake is in thinking that all poetry is for all readers. On the contrary, the realm of poetry is as wide as the world, for the very reason that each man may find there just what he needs, and leave the rest. The thing is to discover that poetry that was meant for us, and perhaps the best way to do that, is to turn over the pages of some well-made selection, and see where our eyes yet caught and held. Paul Graves' golden treasury is, of course, the classical anthology, a little volume filled with the purest gold of English lyrical poetry. Footnote. The golden treasury, when it was published more than forty years ago, was certainly the finest anthology that had been made in England, and it still holds its place as a very choice collection of British poets, small and select. End of footnote. If a man should read in that for an hour, and find nothing to his taste, it is to be feared that he was born deaf to the sweet rippling of the peary in spring. But, as I have said, I believe that few have been so hardly treated by nature. A poet died young in every one of us, said someone. I think he did not so much die as fall asleep, nor is he so fast asleep but that the right song, sung right, would awaken him. What is the use of poetry? It is just the whole use of living, and let anyone who doubts it enter the garden for himself. I come ye hither to this pleasant land, for here in truth are vines of engaddy. Here golden urns of manna to thy hand, and rocks whence honey flows deliciously, others from which comes frothing copiously the milk of life, ears filled with sweetest grains, and fig trees knowing no sterility. Here paradiesel streams make rich the plains. Oh, come and bathe therein ye world-worn weary swains. Richard Lee Gallien End of What's the Use of Poetry by Richard Lee Gallien This recording is in the Public Domain To the Spring From Hymns of Astria In Acrostic Verse by Sir John Davis From the World's Best Poetry Vol. 7 Descriptive and Narrative Part 1 Read for LibriVox.org by Craig Franklin To the Spring Earth now is green and heaven is blue Lively spring which makes all new I only spring doth enter Jolly spring doth enter Sweet young sun beams do subdue Angry aged winter Blossom mild and Caesar calm Every meadow flows with balm The earth wears all her riches Harmonious bird sings such a psalm As ear and heart bewitches Reserves, sweet spring, this nymph of ours Eternal garlands of thy flowers Green garlands never wasting In her shall last our state's fair spring Now and for ever flourishing As long as heaven is lasting End of Poem This recording is in the Public Domain To Mary Stuart By Pierre de Ronsard Translated from the French By Louis Stuart Costello From the World's Best Poetry Vol. 7 Descriptive Narrative Part 1 Read for LibriVox.org by Adrien Stevens To Mary Stuart All beauty granted as a boon to earth That is, has been or ever can have birth Compared to hers is void And nature's care ne'er formed a creature So divinely fair In spring amidst the lilies she was born And purer tints her peerless face adorn And though Adonis blood the rose may paint Beside her bloom the roses' hues are faint With all his richest store love decked her eyes The graces each those daughters of the skies Strove which should make her To the world's most dear And to attend her left her native sphere The day that was to bear her far away Why was I mortal to behold that day? Oh, had I senseless grown nor heard nor seen? Or that my eyes a ceaseless fount had been That I might weep as weep amidst their bowers The nymphs when winter winds have cropped their flowers Or when rude torrents the clear streams deform Or when the trees are riven by the storm Or rather, would I some bird had been Still to be near her in each changing scene Still on the highest mast to watch all day And like a star to mark her vessel's way The dangerous billows past on shore on sea Near that dear face it still were mine to be Oh, France, where are thy ancient champions gone? Roland, Ronaldo, is there living none? Her steps to follow and her safety guard And deem her lovely looks their best reward Which might subdue the pride of mighty Jove To leave his heaven and languish for her love No fault is hers, but in her royal state For simple love dreads to approach the great He flies from regal pomp that treacherous snare Where truth unmarked may wither in despair Wherever destiny her path may lead Fresh springing flowers will bloom beneath her tread Or nature will rejoice the waves be bright The tempest check its fury at her sight The sea become a beauty to behold The sun shall crown her with his rays of gold Unless he fears Should he approach her throne her majesty Should quite eclipse his own End of poem This recording is in the public domain Who threw a cloud not of war only but detractions rude Guided by faith and matchless fortitude To peace and truth thy glorious way hast plowed And on the neck of crowned fortune proud Hast reared God's trophies and his work pursued While Darwin's stream with blood of scots imbued And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud And warsters laureate wreath Yet much remains to conquer still Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war New foes arise threatening to bind our souls with secular chains Help us to save free conscience from the paw of hireling wolves Whose gospel is their maw Milton End of poem This recording is in the public domain O'BREED NOT HIS NAME Robert Emmett By Thomas Moore From the world's best poetry volume 7 Descriptive and narrative, part 1 Read for LibriVox.org by Sonia O'BREED NOT HIS NAME Robert Emmett O'BREED NOT HIS NAME Let it sleep in the shade Where cold and unhonoured his relics are laid Said, silent and dark be the tears that we shed As the night dew that falls on the grave over his head But the night dew that falls, though in silence it weeps Shall brighten with verger to grave where he sleeps And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls Shall long keep his memory green in our souls End of poem This recording is in the public domain Charles XII From the Vanity of Human Wishes by Dr. Samuel Johnson From the world's best poetry volume 7 Descriptive and narrative, part 1 Read for LibriVox.org by Sonia Charles XII From the Vanity of Human Wishes On what foundation stands the warrior's pride? How just his hopes let Swedish Charles decide A frame of adamant, a soul of fire No dangers fright him and no labours tire Over love, over fear, extents his wide domain Unconquered lord of pleasure and of pain No joys to him Pacific Septus yield War sounds the trump, he rushes to the field Behold surrounding kings their power combine And one capitulate and one resign Peace quartz his hand, but spreads her charms in vain Think nothing gained, he cries, till north remain On Moscow's walls till gothic standards fly And all be mine beneath the polar sky The march begins in military state And nations on his eyes suspend it wait Stern famine guards the solitary coast And winter barricades the realms of frost He comes, no want nor cold his coarse delay Hide, blushing glory, hide Poltova's day The vanquished hero leaves his broken bands And shows his misery in distant lands Condemned a needy supplicant to wait While ladies interpose and slaves debate But did not chance at length her error mend Did not subverted empire mark his end Did rival monarchs give the fatal wound Or hostile millions press him to the ground His fall was destined to a barren strand A petty fortress and a dubious hand He left the name at which the world grew pale To point a moral or a dawn a tale End of poem This recording is in the public domain Napoleon by Victor Hugo Translated from the French by Fraser's magazine From the world's best poetry volume 7 Descriptive and narrative part 1 Read for LibriVox.org by Thomas Peter Napoleon To domine notre âge, enjouement, qui emporte Angel or demon, thou, weather of light, the minister, or darkness Still doth sway this age of ours, thine eagle soaring flight Bears us all breathless after it away The eye that from thy presence feign would stray Shuns thee in vain Thy mighty shadow throne rests on all pictures Of the living day and on the threshold of our time alone Dazzling yet sombre sends thy form, Napoleon Thus will the admiring stranger's steps Explore the subject lands that neath Vesuvius be Whether he wind along the enchanting shore To Portici from Fair Parthenop Or lingering long in dreamy reverie Or loveliest ischias, odorous isle, he stray Wood by whose breath the soft and amorous sea Seems like some languishing sultana's lay A voice for very sweets that scarce can win its way Him, whether piecedom, solemn feign, detain Shrouding his soul with meditation's power Or at Portsoigli, to the sprightly strain Of Tarantella dance near Tuscan tower Listening he while away the evening hour Or wake the echoes mournful, lone and deep Of that sad city and its dreaming bower By the volcano seized where mansions Keep the likeness which they wore at that last fatal sleep Or be his bark at Porcelippo lait While as the swarthy boatman at his side Chance tassoves lays to Virgil's pleas and shade Ever he sees throughout that circuit wide From shaded nook or sunny lawn aspired From rocky headland viewed or flowery shore From sea and spreading mead alike described The giant mount towering all objects oar And blackening with its breath the horizon evermore End of poem This recording is in the public domain One moment of the mightiest and again On little objects with like firmness fixed Extreme in all things hadst thou been betwixt Thy throne had still been thine or never been For daring made thy rise as fall Thou seekest even now to reassume the imperial mean And shake again the world the thunderer of the scene Conquerer and captive of the earth art thou She trembles at thee still and thy wild name Was near more brooded in men's minds than thou That thou art nothing save the gist of fame Who wooed thee once thy vassal and became The flatterer of thy fierceness till thou word A god unto thyself nor less the same To the astounded kingdoms all inert Who deemed thee for a time what ere thou didst assert O more or less the man in high or low Battling with nations flying from the field Now making monarchs next thy footstool now More than thy meanest soldiers taught to yield An empire thou couldst crush command rebuild But govern not thy pettiest passion or However deeply in men's spirits skilled Look through thine own nor curb the lust of war Nor learn that tempted fate will leave the loftier star Yet well thy soul hath brooked the turning tide With that untaught innate philosophy Which be at wisdom coldness or deep pride Is gall and wormwood to an enemy When the whole host of hatred stood hard by To watch and mock thee shrinking Thou had smiled with a sedate and all enduring eye When fortune fled her spoiled and favoured child He stood unbowed beneath the ills upon him piled Sager, then in thy fortunes, for in them Ambition steeled the on too far to show That just habitual scorn which could contend Men and their thoughts twas wise to feel not so To wear it ever on thy lip and brow And spurn the instruments thou were'd to use Till they were turning unto thine overthrow Tis but a worthless world to win or lose So hath it proved to thee an old such lot who'd choose If, like a tower upon a headlong rock, Thou hadst been made to stand or fall alone Such scorn of man had helped to brave the shock But men's thoughts were the steps which paved thy throne Their admiration thy best weapon shone The part of Philip's son was thine not then Unless aside thy purple had been thrown Like stern diogenes to mock at men For sceptrid cynics earth were far too wide a den But quiet too quick bosoms is a hell And there hath been thy bane there is a fire And motion of the soul which will not dwell In its own narrow being but aspire beyond the fitting medium of desire And but one kindled quenchless evermore Praise upon high adventure nor contire of ought but rest A fever at the core fatal to him who bears to all who ever bore This makes the madmen who have made men mad By their contagion conquerors and kings Founders of sects and systems to whom adds Sophists, bards, statesmen, all and quiet things Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs And are themselves the fools to those they fool Envied, yet how unenviable What stings are theirs One breast laid open were a school Which would untie mankind the lust to shine or rule Their breath is agitation and their life A storm whereon they ride to sink at last And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife That should their days surviving perils past Melt to calm twilight they feel overcast With sorrow and soupiness and so die Even as a flame unfed which runs to waste With its own flickering or a sword laid by Which eats into itself and rusts ingloriously He who ascends to mountaintops shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow He who surpasses or subdues mankind Must look down on the hate of those below Though high above the sun of glory glow And far beneath the earth and ocean spread Round him are icy rocks and loudly blow Contending tempests on his naked head And thus reward the toils which to those summits led End of poem This recording is in the public domain The souls of men, mother divine Of all that serve thee best with sword or pen All sons of thine Thou knowest that here the likeness of the best Before thee stands, the head most high The heart found faithfulest, the purest hands Above the fume and foam of time that flits The soul we know now sits on high Where Alighieri sits with Angelo Nor his own heavenly tongue hath heavenly speech Enough to say what this man was Whose praise no thought may reach, no words can weigh Since man's first mother brought to mortal birth Her firstborn son, such grace befell Not ever man on earth as crowns this one Of God nor man was ever this thing said That he could give life back to her who gave him That his dead mother might live But this man found his mother dead and slain With fast-sealed eyes, and bade the dead rise up And live again, and she did rise And all the world was bright with her through him But dark with strife, like heaven's own son That storming clouds be dim was all his life Life and the clouds are vanished, hate and fear Have had their span of time to herd, and are not He is here, the sun-like man City is superb, that heads Columbus first for sovereign son Be prouder that thy breast hath later nursed this mightier one Glory be his forever, while this land lives and is free As with controlling breath and sovereign hand He bade her be Earth shows to heaven the names by thousands told That crown her fame, but highest of all that heaven and earth Behold Madzini's name And the poem, this recording is in the public domain George Washington By broad Potomac silent shore, better than Trajan lowly lies Gilding her green declivities, with glory now and ever more Art to his fame, no aid hath lent His country is his monument End of poem, this recording is in the public domain World's Best Poetry Volume 7 Descriptive and Narrative Part 1 Read for LibriVox.org by Thomas Peter Washington From Under the Elm, read at Cambridge July the 3rd, 1875 On the 100th anniversary of Washington's taking command of the American Army Beneath our consecrated Elm, a century ago he stood Famed vaguely for that old fight in the wood Which readily foamed round him, but could not overwhelm The life for doomed to wield our rough hewn helm From colleges, where now the gown to arms had yielded From the town Our rude self-summoned levies flocked to see The newcomed chiefs and wonder which was he No need to question long Clothes lipped and tall, long-trained and murder-brooding Forks lone to bridle others' clamours in his own From the erect he towered above them all The incarnate discipline that was to free With iron-curb that armed democracy Haughty they said he was, at first, severe But owned, as all men owned, the steady hand upon the bridle Patient to command, prized as all prize, the justice pure from fear And learn to honour first, then love him, then revere Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint And purpose clean as light from every selfish taint Musing beneath the legendary tree, the years between furl off I seem to see the sun-flex shaken the stirred foliage through Dappel with gold his sober buff and blue And weave prophetic orioles round the head That shines our beacon now, nor darkens with the dead O man of silent mode, a stranger among strangers then How art thou since renown the great, the good, familiar as the day in all the homes of men The winged years that were no praise and blame Blow many names out, they but fan to flame The self-renewing splendours of thy fame Oh, for a drop of that terse Roman zinc Who gave Agri-Cole a date-less length of days To celebrate him fitly Now this swerve defrays unkempt Nor past discretions brink With him so statu-like and sad reserve So diffident to claim, so forward to deserve No need, I shunned, you influence of his fame Who, mortal among mortals, seemed as now the equestrian shape With unimpassioned brow that paces silent on Through vistas of acclaim What figure more immovably august than that grave strength So patient and so pure, calm and good fortune When it wavered, sure, that soul serene, impenetrably just Modelled on classic lines, so simple they endure That soul so softly radiant and so white The track it left seems less a fire than light Cold but as such as loved is temperature And if pure light, as some deem, Be the force that drives rejoicing planets on their course Why, for his power benign, seek an impure source His was the true enthusiasm that burns long, domestically bright Fed from itself and shy of human sight The hidden force that makes a lifetime strong And not the short-lived fuel of a song Passion, say you, what is passion for But to sublime our natures and control To front heroic toils with late return Or none, or such as shames the conquerer That fire was fed with substance of the soul And not with holiday stubble That could burn through seven slow years of unadvancing war Equal when fields were lost or fields were won With breath of popular applause or blame Nor fanned nor damped, unquenchably the same Too inward to be reached by flaws of idle fame Soldier and statesman, rarest unison High-poised example of great duties done Simply as breathing, the world's honors warn As life's indifferent gifts to all men born Dumb for himself, unless it were to God But for his barefoot soldiers eloquent Tramping the snow to coral where they trod Held by his awe and hollow-eyed content Modest yet firm as nature's self Unblamed, saved by the men his nobler temper shamed Not honoured then or now because he wooed the popular voice But that he still withstood, broad-minded, higher-sold There is but one who is all this and ours and all men's Washington Mind strong by fits, irregularly great That flash and darken like revolving lights Catch more the vulgar eye unschooled to wait On the long curve of patient days and nights Rounding the whole life to the circle fair of orbed completeness And this balanced soul, so simple in its grandeur Coldly bare of drapery's theatric Standing there in perfect symmetry of self-control Seems not so great at first, but greater grows still as we look And by experience learn how grand this quiet is How nobly stern the discipline that wrought through lifelong throws This energetic passion I've reposed A nature too decors and severe Too self-respectful in its griefs and joys For ardent girls and boys who find no genius in a mind so clear That its grave depths seem obvious and near Nor a soul great that made so little noise They feel no force in that calm, cadence phrase The habitual full dress of its well-bred mind That seems to pace the minuet's cordly maze And tell of ample pleasures, roomier length of days His broad-built brain, to self so little kind That no tumultuous blood could blind Form to control men, not a maze Loom was not like those that borrow height of haze It was a world of statelier movement then Then this we fretten, he a denizen of that ideal Rome That made a man for men Placid completeness, life without a fall From faith our highest aims, truth's breechless wall Surely if any fame can bear the touch His will say, here at the last trumpet's call The unexpressive man whose life expressed so much End of poem, this recording is in the public domain Daniel Webster by Oliver Wendell Holmes From the World's Best Poetry Vol. 7 Descriptive and Narrative Part 1 Read for LibriVox.org by Craig Franklin Daniel Webster When stricken by the freezing blast A nation's living pillars fall How rich the storied page, how vast A word a whisper can recall No medal lifts its fretted face Nor speaking marble cheats your eye Yet while these pictured lines eye-trace A living image passes by A roof beneath the mountain pines The cloisters of a hill-girt plain The front of life's embattled lines Amound beside the heaving mane These are the scenes A boy appears Set life's round dial in the sun Count the swift arc of seventy years His frame is dust, his task is done Yet pause upon the noontide hour Air the declining sun has laid His bleaching rays on manhood's power And look upon the mighty shade No gloom that stately shape can hide No change uncrown his brow Behold, dark, calm, large-fronted Lightning-eyed, earth has no double from its mould Air from the fields by valour won The battle-smoke had rolled away And bared the blood-red setting sun His eyes were opened on the day His land was but a shelving strip Black with the strife that made it free He lived to see its banners dip Their fringes in the western sea The boundless prairies learned his name His words the mountain echoes knew The northern breezes swept his fame From icy lake to warm bayou In toil he lived In peace he died When life's full cycle was complete Put off his robes of power and pride And laid them at his master's feet His rest is by the storm-swept waves Whom life's wild tempests roughly tried Whose heart was like the streaming caves Of ocean-throbbing at his side Death's cold white hand is like the snow Layed softly on the furrowed hill It hides the broken seams below And leaves the summit brighter still In vain the envious tongue unbraids His name a nation's heart shall keep Till morning's latest sunlight fades On the blue tablet of the deep End of poem This recording is in the public domain That they had ferreted out the paper and its editor That his office was an obscure hole His only visible auxiliary a negro boy And his supporters a few very insignificant persons of all color Letter of H. G. Otis In a small chamber, friendless and unseen Toiled over his types one poor unlearned young man The place was dark, unfurnished in mean Yet there the freedom of a race began Help came but slowly, surely no man yet Put lever to the heavy world with less What need of help? He knew how types were set, he had a dauntless spirit and a press Such earnest natures are the fiery pith The compact nucleus round which systems grow Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith And worlds impregnate with the central glow O truth, O freedom, now I is still born in the rude stable In the manger-nerced What humble hands unbar those skates of morn Through which the splendors of the new day burst What, shall one monk, scarce known beyond his cell Front Rome's far-reaching bowls and scorn her frown? Brave Luther answered, yes, that thunder's swell rocked Europe And discharmed the triple crown Whatever can be known of earth we know, sneered Europe's wise men In their snail-shells curled No, said one man in Genoa, and that no, out of the dark, created this new world Who is it will not dare himself to trust? Who is it hath not strength to stand alone? Who is it thwarts and bilks the inward must? He and his works, like sand, from earth are blown Men of a thousand shifts and wiles, look here, See one straightforward conscience put in pawn to win a world, See the obedient sphere, by bravery's simple gravitation drawn Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old, And by the present's lips repeat it still, In our own single manhood to be bold, Fortress in conscience and impregnable will We strive the river daily at its spring, Nor in our childish thoughtlessness foresee What myriad vessel-streams shall tribute bring, How like an equal it shall greet the sea O small beginnings, here great and strong, Based on a faithful heart and weary-less brain, He built a future fair, here conquer wrong, He earned a crown, and wear it not in vain. And the poem, this recording is in the public domain. His tongue was touched with sacred fire, He could not rest, he must speak out, When liberty lay stabbed and doubt Stalked through the night, investments dire, When slaves uplifted, manacled hands, Praying in agony and despair, An answer came not anywhere, But gloom threw all the stricken lands. His voice for freedom instant rang, For shame, he cried, spare thou the rod, All men are free before their god. The dragon answered with its fang. It is brave to face imbrasured death, Hot bulging from the cannon's mouth, Yet brave it is for north or south, And truth to face the mob's mad breath. So spaky then, he and the few Who prize their manhood more than praise, Their faith failed not of better days, After the nights of bloody dew. England's great heart misunderstood, She looked upon her charred escance, But heard his words and lowered her lance, Remembering her motherhood. Majestic liberty, serene, Thou frontest on the chaste white sea, Quench thou a while thy torch, For he lies dead on whom thou once did lean. Thy cause was ever his, the slave, In any fetters was his friend, His warfare never knew an end, Wherever men lay bound he clave. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. APRIL 14TH, 1865 This tribute appeared in the London Punch, Which, up to the time of the assassination Of Mr. Lincoln, had ridiculed and maligned him With all its well-known powers of pen and pencil. End footnote. You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's beer, You, who with mocking pencil want to trace, Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face, His gaunt gnarled hands, his unkempt bristling hair, His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, His lack of all-weep prize as debonair, Of power or will to shine, of art to please. You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh, Judging each step as though the way were plain, Reckless, so it could point its paragraph Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain. Beside this corpse that bears for winding sheet The stars and stripes he lived to rear anew, Between the mourners at his head and feet, Say, scurril jester, is there room for you? Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer, To lame my pencil and confute my pen, To make me own this kind of prince's pier, This rail-splitter, a true-born king of men. My shallow judgment I had learned to rue, Noting how to occasion's height he rose, How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true, How iron-like his temper grew by blows, How humble, yet how hopeful he could be, How in good fortune and in ill the same, Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he, Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame. He went about his work. Such work as few ever had laid on head and heart And hand. As one who knows, where there's a task to do, Man's honest will must heaven's good-grace command. Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow, That God makes instruments to work his will, If but that will we can arrive to know, Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill? So he went forth to battle, on the side that he felt clear was Liberties and rites, as in his peasant boyhood he had Plied his warfare with rude nature's thwarting mites. The unclear'd forest, the unbroken soil, The iron-bark that turns the lumberer's axe, The rapid that o'erbears the boatman's toil, The prairie hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks. The ambushed Indian and the prowling bear, Such were the deeds that helped his youth to train. Rough culture, but such trees, large fruit may bear, If but their stalk be of right girth and grain. So he grew up, a destined work to do, And lived to do it, four long-suffering years, Ill fate, ill feeling, ill report lived through, And then he heard the hisses change to cheers, The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, And took both with the same unwavering mood, Till, as he came on light from darkling days, And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood, A felon hand between the goal and him, Reached from behind his back, a trigger pressed, And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim. Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest. The words of mercy were upon his lips, Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen, When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse To thoughts of peace on earth, goodwill to men. The old world and the new, from sea to sea, Utter one voice of sympathy and shame, Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high, Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came, A deed accursed, strokes have been struck before By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt If more of horror or disgrace they bore, But thy foul crime, like canes, stands darkly out, Vile hand that brandished murder on a strife, Whatever its crowns, stoutly and nobly striven, And with the martyr's crown crownest a life With much to praise, little to be forgiven. Our fearful trip is done, the ship has weathered every rack, The prize we sought is won, the port is near, The bells I hear, the people all exalting, While follow eyes the steady keel, The vessel grim and daring. But oh heart, heart, heart, oh the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. Oh captain, my captain, rise up and hear the bells, Rise up, for you the flag is flung, For you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths, For you the shores are crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, Their eager faces turning. Hear, captain, dear father, This arm beneath your head, It is some dream that on the deck You've fallen cold and dead. My captain does not answer, His lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, He has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchored safe and sound, Its voyage closed and done, From fearful trip the victorship Comes in with object one, Exalto shores and ring oh bells, But I, with mournful tread, Walk the deck my captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. On the Life Mask of Lincoln, by Richard Watson Gilder, From the world's best poetry, Volume 7, Descriptive and Narrative, Part 1, Read for LibriVox.org, by Adrienne Stevens. On the Life Mask of Lincoln This bronze doth keep the very form and mould Of our great martyr's face, Yet this is he, That brow all wisdom or benignity, That human, humorous mouth, Those cheeks that hold like some harsh landscape All the summer's gold. That spirit fit for sorrow, As the sea for storms to beat on, The lone agony, those silent patient lips too well foretold. Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men, As might some prophet of the elder day, Brooding above the tempest and the fray, With deep-eyed thought, And more than mortal ken, A power was his beyond the touch of art, Of armed strength, his pure and mighty heart. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Hand of Lincoln, by Edmund Clarence Steadman, From the world's best poetry, Volume 7, Descriptive and Narrative, Part 1, Read for LibriVox.org, by Jason in Canada. The Hand of Lincoln Look on this cast, and know the hand That bore a nation in its hold. From this mute witness understand what Lincoln was, How large of mold. The man who sped the woodman's team, And deepest sunk the plowman's share, And pushed the laden raft astream Of fate before him unaware. This was the hand that knew to swing the axe, Since thus would freedom train her son, And made the forest ring, And drove the wedge, and toiled a mane. Firm hand, that loftier office took, A conscious leader's will obeyed, And when men sought his word and look, With steadfast might the gathering swayed. No courtiers toying with a sword, Nor minstrels laid across a loot, A chiefs uplifted to the Lord When all the kings of earth were mute. The hand of a knack, sinued strong, The fingers on that greatness clutch, Yet low, the marks there Lines along of one who strove and suffered much. For here in knotted cord and vein I Trace the varying chart of years. I know the troubled heart, the strain, The weight of atlas, and the tears. Again I see the patient brow, That palm air-while was want to press, And now, tis furrowed deep, And now made smooth with hope and tenderness. For something of a formless grace This molded outline plays about, A pitying flame beyond our trace, Breathes like a spirit, in and out. The love that cast an oriole round one, Who, longer to endure, Called mirth to ease his ceaseless dole, Yet kept his nobler purpose sure. Low, as I gaze, the statured man, Built up from yawn large hand appears, A type that nature wills to plan But once in all a people's years. What better than this voiceless cast To tell of such a one as he, Since through its living semblance Past the thought that bade a race be free? Edmund Clarence Steadman. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Abraham Lincoln, from the Harvard Commemoration Ode, July the 21st, 1865, By James Russell Lowell. From the World's Best Poetry, Volume 7, Descriptive Narrative, Part 1, Read for LibriVox.org by Craig Franklin. Abraham Lincoln. Life may be given in many ways, And loyalty to truth be sealed As bravely in the closet as the field, So bountiful its fate, But then to stand beside her, When craven chills deride her, To front a line in arms and not to yield, This shows me, thinks God's plan, And measure of a stalwart man, Limbed like the old heroic breeds, Who stand self-poised on manhood's solid earth, Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, Fed from within with all the strength he needs. Such was he, our martyr-chief, Whom late the nation he had led With ashes on her head, Wept with the passion of an angry grief. Forgive me, if from present things I turn, To speak what in my heart Will beat and burn, And hang my wreath on his world-honoured urn. Nature they say doth doubt, And cannot make a man, And cannot make a man, Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote. For him, her old world-mold society threw, And choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted west, With stuff untainted shaped to hero-new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of God and true, How beautiful to see! Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, Who loved his charge but never loved to lead, One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, Not lewered by any cheat of birth, But by his clear-grained human worth, And brave old wisdom of sincerity. They knew that outward grace is dust, They could not choose but trust, In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, And supple, tempered will, That vents like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, Thrusting to thin air or our cloudy bars, A sea-mark now, now lost in vapours blind, Broad prairie rather genial level-lined, Fruitful and friendly for all humankind. Yet also nigh to heaven, Unloved of loftiest stars, Nothing of Europe here, Or then of Europe fronting mornward still, Air any names of surf and pier, Could nature's equal scheme deface, Here was a type of the true elder race. And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. I praise him not, it were too late, And some initiative weakness there must be, In him who condenses to victory, Such as the present gives and cannot wait, Safe in himself as in a fate. So always firmly he, he knew to bide his time, And can his fame abide, Still patient in his simple faith sublime, Till the wise years decide. Great captains, with their guns and drums, Disturb our judgement for the hour. But at last silence comes. These all are gone and standing like a tower. Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly earnest brave foreseeing man, Sagacious patient dreading praise not blame, New birth of our new soil, The first American end of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Albert, Prince Concert of England, From Idols of the King, By Alfred Lord Tennyson, From the World's Best Poetry, Volume 7, Descriptive and Narrative, Part 1, Read for LibriVox.org by Craig Franklin. Albert, Prince Concert of England, These to his memory, Since he held them dear per chance as finding there unconsciously, Some image of himself I dedicate. I dedicate, I concentrate with tears, These ideals. And indeed he seems to me, Scarce other than my own ideal king, Whose reverence his conscience as his king, Whose glory was redressing human wrong, Whose spake no slander, No, nor listen to it, Who loved one only and who claved to her. Her, over all whose realms to their last isle, Comingled with the gloom of imminent war, The shadow of his loss moved like eclips. Darkening the world, We have lost him, he is gone. We know him now, all narrow jealousies are silent. And we see him as he moved, how modest, kindly, All accomplished wise, With what sublime repression of himself, And in what limits and how tenderly, Not swaying to this faction or to that, Not making his high place the lawless perch Of winged ambitions, Nor a vantage ground for pleasure, But through all this tract of years, Wearing the white flower of a blameless life. Before a thousand peering littlenesses. In that fierce light which beats upon a throne, And blackens every blot, For where is he who dares foreshadow for an only son, A lovelier life, a more unstained than his? Or how should England dreaming of his sons, Hope more for these than some inheritance, Of such a life for heart and mind as thine? Thou noble father of her kings to be, Laborious for her people and her poor, Voice in the rich dawn of an ample day, Far-sighted summoner of war and waste, To fruitful strife and rivalries of peace, Sweet nature gilded by the gracious gleam Of letters dear to science, dear to art, Dear to thy land and ours, a prince indeed, Beyond all titles and a household name, Hereafter, through all times, Albert the good. Break not a woman's heart, but still endure, Break not for thou art royal, but endure, Remembering all the beauty of that star, Which shone so close beside thee, That ye made one light together, But has passed and left, The crown of lonely splendour. May all love, his love unseen, But felt or shadow thee, The love of all thy sons encompass thee, The love of all thy daughters cherish thee, The love of all thy people comfort thee, Till God's love set thee at his side again. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. To Virgil, by Alfred Lord Tennyson, From the world's best poetry volume 7, Descriptive and Narrative, Part 1, Read for LibriVox.org by Sonia. To Virgil, written at the request of the Mantuans for the 19th Centenary of Virgil's death, B.C. 19. 1. Roman Virgil, thou that singest Illion's lofty temples roped in fire, Illion falling, Rome arising, Wars and filial faith, and Dido's pyre. 2. Landscape lover, Lord of language, More than he that sang the works and days, All the chosen coin of fancy, Fleshing out from many a golden phrase. 3. Thou that singest wheat and woodland, Till's and vineyard, Hive and horse and herd, All the charm of all the muses, Often flowering in a lonely word. 4. Poet of the happy Tittirus, Piping underneath his speech in bowers, Poet of the poet's setter Whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers. 5. Chanter of the polio, Glorying in the blissful years again to be, Summers of the snakeless meadow, Unlaborious earth and all a sea. 6. Thou that seeest universal nature Moved by universal mind, Thou majestic in thy sadness At the doubtful doom of humankind. 7. Light among the vanished ages, Starred at guildest yet this phantom shore, Golden branch amid the shadows, Kings and realms that pass to rise no more. 8. Now thy forum roars no longer, Fallen every purple Caesar's dome, Though thine ocean roll of rhythm Sound forever of imperial Rome. 9. Now the Rome of slaves hath perished, And the Rome of freemen holds her place, I, from out the northern island, Sun that once from all the human race. 10. I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began, Wielder of the statiest measure ever moulded by the lips of man. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. In a copy of Omar Kayam by James Russell Lowell From the World's Best Poetry, Volume 7, Descriptive and Narrative, Part 1, Read for LibriVox.org by Craig Franklin. In copy of Omar Kayam, These pearls of thought in Persian Gulfs were bred, Each softly lucent as a rounded moon, The diver Omar plucked them from their bed, Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread, Fit rosary for queen in shape and hue, When contemplation tells her pensive beads Of mortal thoughts for ever old and new, Fit for a queen, why surely then for you? The moral, When doubts eddies toss and twirl, Faith's slender shall up till her footing reel. Plunge, if you find not peace beneath the whirl, Groping, you may like Omar grasper pearl. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. To Madame de Sévigny Playing Blind Man's Buff by Monsieur de Montroy Translated anonymously from the French. From the World's Best Poetry, Volume 7, Descriptive and Narrative, Part 1, Read for LibriVox.org by Thomas Peter. To Madame de Sévigny Playing Blind Man's Buff You charm when you talk, walk, or move, Still more on this day than another, When blinded you're taken for love, When the bandage is off for his mother. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. George Sand by Elizabeth Barrett Browning From the World's Best Poetry, Volume 7, Descriptive and Narrative, Part 1, Read for LibriVox.org by Jason in Canada. George Sand True genius, but true woman, Dost deny thy woman's nature with a manly scorn, And break away the gods and armlets Worn by weaker women in captivity? Ah, vain denial, that revolted cry Is sobbed in by a woman's voice forlorn. Thy woman's hair, my sister all unshorn, Floats back to shebbled strength in agony, Disproving thy man's name, And while before the world thou burnest In a poet fire, We see thy woman heart beat evermore Through the large flame, Beat pure heart and higher, Till God unsecks thee on thy heavenly shore, Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire. Elizabeth Barrett Browning End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. To Victor Hugo by Alfred Lord Tennyson From the World's Best Poetry, Volume 7, Descriptive and Narrative, Part 1, Read for LibriVox.org by Sonia. To Victor Hugo Victor in Poesy, Victor in Romance Cloudweaver of Fantasmal Hopes and Fears French of the French and Lord of Human Tears Child lover, Barrett, Whose famed it laurels glance, Darkening the wreaths of all that would advance Beyond our strait their claim to be thy peers. We are titan, By thy wintry weight of years As yet unbroken, Stormy voice of France, Who does not love our England, so they say. I know not. England, France, all men to be, Will make one people ear man's race be wrong. And I, desiring that divine a day, Yeild thee full thanks for thy full courtesy To younger England in the boy, my son. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. On a bust of Dante by Thomas William Parsons From the world's best poetry, Volume 7, Descriptive and Narrative, Part 1, Read for LibriVox.org by Sonia. On a bust of Dante See, from this counterfeit of him, Whom Arno shall remember long, How stern of liniment, How grim the father was of Tuscan song, There but the burning sense of wrong, Perpetual care and scorn abide, Small friendship for the lordly throng, Distrust of all the world beside. Faithful if this one image be, No dream his life was, but a fight, Could any Beatrice see a lover in that anchoride? To that cold Ghibelline's gloomy sight, Who could have guessed the visions came of beauty, Veiled with heavenly light, in circles of eternal flame? The lips, as Koumai's cavern close, The cheeks with fast and sorrow thin, The rigid front, almost morose, But for the patient hope within, Declare a life whose course has been Unsullied still, though still severe, Which, through the wavering days of sin, Kept itself icy chaste and clear. Not wholly such his haggard look, When wandering once, forlorn his trade, With no companion, save his book, To Corvo's hushed monastic shade, Where, as the Benedictine laid his palm Upon the pilgrim-guest, The single boon for which he prayed, The convinced charity was rest. Peace dwells not here, this rugged face Betrays no spirit of repose, The sullen warrior soul we trace, The marble man of many woes. Such was his mean, when first arose The thought of that strange tale divine, When hell he peepled with his foes, The scourge of many a guilty lion. War to the last he waged With all the tyrant canker-worms of earth, Baron and Duke, in hold and haul, Cursed a dark hour that gave him birth. He used Rome's harlot for his mirth, Plucked bare hypocrisy and crime, But valiant souls of nightly worth Transmitted to the roles of time. O time, whose verdicts mock our own, The only righteous judge art thou, That poor old exile, sad and lone, Is Latham's other vergil now, Before his name the nations bow, His words are parcel of mankind, Deep in whose hearts As on his brow the marks have sunk Of Dante's mind. A being cleaves the moonlit air, With eyes of dew and plumes of fire, Newborn immortal, strong and fair, Glance ere he goes. His feet are shrouded like the dirty, But in his face a wild desire Breaks like the dawn that flushes red, And like a rose. The stars shine out above his path, And music wakes through all the skies, What mortal such a triumph hath By death set free. What earthly hands and heart are pure, As this man's, whose unshrinking eyes Gaze onward through the deep obscure, Nor quail to see. Ah! This was he who drank the fount Of wisdom set in speechless things, Who, patient, watched the day-star Mount while others slept. Ah! This was he whose loving soul Found heartbeats under trembling wings, And heard divinest music roll Where wild springs leapt. For poor dumb lips had song for him, And children's dreamings ran in tune, And strange old heroes weird and dim Walked by his side. The very shadows loved him well, And danced and flickered in the moon, And left him wondrous tales to tell, Men far and wide. And now no more he's smiling walks Through greenwood alleys full of sun, And as he wanders, turns and talks, Though none be there. The children watch in vain the place Where they were want, when day was done, To see their poet's sweet worn face And faded hair. Yet dream not such a spirit dies, Though all its earthly shrine decay Transfigured under clearer skies, He sings anew. The frail soul-covering wrecked with pain, And scored with vigil, fades away. The soul set free and young again, Glides upward through. Weep not, but watch the moon litter, But chance of glory, like a star, May leave what hangs about him there, And flash on us. Behold, the void is full of light, The beams pierce heaven from bar to bar, And all the hollows of the night grow luminous. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. From the World's Best Poetry, Volume 7, Descriptive and Narrative, Part 1. Read for LibriVonx.org by Craig Franklin. Within these woods of aridia, He chief delight and pleasure took, And on the mountain, parthenier, Upon the crystal-liquid brook, The muses met him every day, That taught him sing, to write and say. When he descended down the mount, His personage seemed most divine, A thousand graces one might count, Upon his lovely, cheerful iron, To hear him speak and sweetly smile, You were in paradise the while. A sweet, attractive kind of grace, A full assurance given by looks, Continual comfort in a face, The liniment of gospel books, I trove that countenance cannot lie, Whose thoughts are legible in the eye. Was never I did see that face, Was never care did hear that tongue, Was never mind did mind his grace, That ever thought the travel long, But eyes and ears and every thought Were with his sweet perfection caught. End of Poem. This recording is in the public domain. To the Memory of Ben Johnson by John Cleveland. From the World's Best Poetry Volume 7, Descriptive and Narrative Part 1, Read for LibriVox.org by Thomas Peter. To the Memory of Ben Johnson. The muse's fairest light in no dark time, The wonder of a learned age, The line which none can pass, The most proportioned wit, To nature the best judge of what was fit, The deepest, plainest, highest, clearest pen, The voice most echoed by consenting men, The soul which answered best to all well said, By others, and which most requital made. Tuned to the highest key of ancient Rome, Returning all her music with his own, In whom, with nature, study claimed a part, And yet, who to himself owed all his art? Here lies Ben Johnson. Every age will look with sorrow here, With wonder on his book. End of Poem. This recording is in the public domain. Ode to Ben Johnson by Robert Herrick. From the World's Best Poetry Volume 7, Descriptive and Narrative Part 1, Read for LibriVox.org by Thomas Peter. Ode to Ben Johnson. Ah, Ben, say how, oh when, Shall we, thy guests, meet those lyric feasts, Made at the sun, the dog, the triple ton, Where we such clusters had, as made us nobly wild, Not mad, and yet each a verse of thine Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine. My Ben, or come again, or send to us Thy wit's great over-plus, But teach us yet wisely to husband it, Lest we that talent spend, And having once brought to an end That precious stock, the store of such a wit, The world should have no more. End of Poem. This recording is in the public domain. On the Portrait of Shakespeare by Ben Johnson. From the World's Best Poetry Volume 7, Descriptive and Narrative Part 1, Read for LibriVox.org by Jason in Canada. On the Portrait of Shakespeare. This figure that thou here ceased put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut, Wherein the graver had a strife with nature To outdo the life. O could he but have drawn his wit as well in brass, As he hath hit his face. The print would then surpass all that was ever writ in brass. But since he cannot, reader, look not at his picture, But his book. Ben Johnson. End of Poem. This recording is in the public domain. To the memory of my beloved master William Shakespeare, And what he hath left us, by Ben Johnson. From the World's Best Poetry Volume 7, Descriptive and Narrative Part 1, Read for LibriVox.org by Sonia. To the memory of my beloved master William Shakespeare, And what he hath left us. To draw no envy Shakespeare on thy name, Am I thus ample to thy book and fame, While I confess thy writings to be such As neither man nor muse can praise too much. Soul of the age, the applause, delight, The wonder of our stage, my Shakespeare, rise. I will not lodge thee by Chaucer or Spencer, Or bid Boumont lie a little further off to make thee room. Thou art a monument without a tomb, And art alive still, while thy book doth live, And we have wits to read and praise to give. That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses, I mean with great but disproportioned muses, For if I thought my judgment were of years, I should commit thee surely with thy peers, And tell how far thou didst thou lily outshine, Or sporting kid, or Marlowe's mighty lion. And though thou had small Latin and less Greek, From thence to honour thee I will not seek for names. But call forth thundering ischulus, Euripides, and Sophocles to us, Pachuvius, Achius, him of cord of our dead, To live again, to hear thy boskin tread, And shake a stage, or when thy socks were on, Leave thee alone for the comparison of all That insolent Greece, or hearty Rome, Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. Triumph, my Britain, Thou hast won to show, To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not of an age, but for all time, And all the muses still were in their prime, When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm our ears, Or like a mercury to charm. Nature herself was proud of his designs, And joy to wear the dressing of his lions, Which was so richly spun, and woven so fit, As since she will vouchsafe no other wit. The merry Greek, tarred Aristophanes, Need Terence, witty plotters, now not please, But antiquated and deserted lie, As they were not of nature's family. Yet must I not give nature all, Thy art, my gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part, For though the poet's matter nature be, His art doth give the fashion, And that he, who cast to write a living lion, Must sweat, such as thine are, And strike the second heat, upon the muses anvil, Turn the same, and himself with it, that he thinks to frame, Or for the laurel gain a scorn, For a good poet's made, as well as borne, And such word thou. Look how the father's face lives in his issue, Even so the race of Shakespeare's mind and manners Brightly shines in his well-turned and true-filed lines, In each of which he seems to shake a lance, As brandished at the eyes of ignorance. Sweet swan of avan, what a sight it were To see thee in our water yet appear, And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, That so did take Eliza and our James. But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere advanced, And made a constellation there. Shine forth, thou star of poets, And with rage or influence, Child or cheer the drooping stage, Which since thy flight from hence, Hath mourned like night, and despair stay, But for thy volume slight. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. When learning's triumph or her barbarous foes First reared the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose. Each change of many-colored life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new. Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting time toiled after him in vain. His powerful strokes presiding truth impressed, And unresisted passion stormed the breast. Dr. Samuel Johnson. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. An epitaph on the admirable dramatic poet W. Shakespeare. What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones? The labour of an age in piled stones? Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a starry pointed pyramid? Dear son of memory, great air of fame, What need is thou such weak witness of thy name? Thou, in our wonder and astonishment, Has built thyself a living monument. For whilst to the shame of slow endeavouring art, Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book, Those delphic lines with deep impression took, Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, Does make us marble with too much conceiving, And so sepulchred in such pompous lie That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Great man is larger than the sky, Deeper than ocean, or the abysmal dark Of the unfathomed centre. Like that ark, which in its sacred hold Up lifted high, or the drowned hills, The human family, and stock reserved Of every living kind, so, in the compass Of the single mind, the seeds and pregnant Forms in essence lie that make all words. Great poet, twas thy art to know thyself, And in thyself to be whatever love, hate, Ambition, destiny, or the firm fatal purpose Of the heart can make of man. Yet thou works still the same, serene of thought, Unhurt by thy own flame. Hartley Coleridge. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Guilielmus Rex by Thomas Bailey Aldrich From the world's best poetry, volume seven, Descriptive and narrative, part one, Read for LibriVox.org by Sonja. Guilielmus Rex. The folk who lived in Shakespeare's day, And saw that gentle figure pass by London Bridge, His frequent way, they little knew what man he was. The pointed beard, the corches mean, The equal port to high and low, All this they saw or might have seen, But not the light behind the brow. The doublet's modest grey or brown, The slender saw-teals plain device, What sign had these for prince or clown? Few turned, or none, to scan him twice. Yet was the king of England's kings, The rest, with all their pumps and trains, Are moulded, have remembered things, This he alone that lives and reigns. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Hierarchy of Angels by Thomas Hayward From the world's best poetry, volume seven, Descriptive and narrative, part one, Read for LibriVox.org by Craig Franklin. Hierarchy of Angels Malifluous Shakespeare, whose enchanting quill Commanded mirth or passion, was but will, And famous Johnson, though his learned pen, Be dipped in Castile, is still but Ben. Fletcher and Webster of that learned pack, None of the meanest, was but Jack. Decker but Tom, nor May, nor Middleton, And he's but now Jack Ford, that once was John. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Under the portrait of John Milton, Prefixed to Paradise Lost by John Dryden. From the world's best poetry, volume seven, Descriptive and narrative, part one, Read for LibriVox.org by Sonia. Under the portrait of John Milton, Prefixed to Paradise Lost. Three poets in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed, The next in majesty, in both the last. The force of nature could no further go. To make a third, she joined the former two. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. To Milton. London, 1802, by William Wordsworth. From the world's best poetry, volume seven, Descriptive and narrative, part one, Read for LibriVox.org by Thomas Peter. To Milton. London, 1802. Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour, England hath need of thee. She is a fenn of stagnant waters, altar, sword and pen, fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and power, have forfeited their ancient English dour of inward happiness. We are selfish men. O raise us up, return to us again, and give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Freedom, power, thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart. Thou hathst a voice whose sound was like the sea, pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free. So didst thou travel on life's common way, in cheerful godliness, and yet thy heart, the lowliest duties on herself, did lay. And if poem, this recording is in the public domain. Walton's Book of Lives, from Ecclesiastical Sonnets, part three, by William Wordsworth. From the World's Best Poetry, volume seven, Descriptive and Narrative, part one, Read for LibriVox.org by Jason in Canada. Walton's Book of Lives, from Ecclesiastical Sonnets, part three. There are no colors in the fairest sky so fair as these. The feather, whence the pen was shaped that traced the lives of these good men, dropped from an angel's wing. With moistened eye we read of faith and purist charity and statesman, priest, and humble citizen. O could we copy their mild virtues? Then what joy to live, what blessedness to die. Methinks their very names shine still and bright, apart, like glowworms on a summer night, or lonely tapers when from far they fling a guiding ray, or seen, like stars on high, satellites burning in a lucid ring around Meek Walton's heavenly memory. William Wordsworth. End of Poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Sonnet by William Wordsworth. From the world's best poetry, volume seven. Descriptive and Narrative, part one. Read for LibriVox.org by Sonia. The Sonnet. Score not the Sonnet, critic. You have frowned mindless of its just honors. With this key, Shakespeare unlocked his heart. The melody of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound. A thousand times this piped-it-tesso sound. With it, Camoish soothed an exiled's grief. The Sonnet glittered a gay, mortal leaf amid the cypress, with which Dante crowned his visionary brow. A glowworm lamp, it cheered Miles Spencer, called from fairyland to struggle through dark ways. And when a damp fell round the path of Milton, in his hand the thing became a trumpet, whence he blew soul-animating strains, alas, too few. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Camp Bell, charade. By Winthrop Mackworth Prad. From the world's best poetry, volume seven. Descriptive and Narrative, part one. Read for LibriVox.org by Jason in Canada. Camp Bell, charade. Come from my first eye, come. The battle dawn is nigh. And the screaming trump and the thundering drum are calling thee to die. Fight as thy father fought. Fall as thy father fell. Thy task is taught. Thy shroud is wrought. So forward, and farewell. Toll ye my second toll. Fling high the flambo's light. And sing the hymn for a parted soul beneath the silent night. The wreath upon his head. The cross upon his breast. Let the prayer be said, and the tear be shed. So take him to his rest. Call ye my whole, I call the Lord of Lute and Lay. And let him greet the sable Paul with a noble song today. Go, call him by his name. No fitter hand may crave to light the flame of a soldier's fame on the turf of a soldier's grave. Winthrop Macworth Prayad. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.