id="id00118"> All wittingly that glorious way he chose,
  And loved the peril when it was most bright.
 He tried anew the long-forbidden snows
  And like an eagle topped the dropping height
 Of Nagenhorn, and still toward Italy
Past peak and cliff pressed on, in glad, unerring flight.

 Oh, when the bird lies low with golden wing
  Bruised past healing by some bitter chance,
 Still must its tireless spirit mount and sing
  Of meadows green with morning, of the dance
 On windy trees, the darting flight away,
And of that last, most blue, triumphant downward glance.

 So murmuring of the snow: "THE SNOW, AND MORE,
  O GOD, MORE SNOW!" on that last field he lay.
 Despair and wonder spent their passionate store
  In his great heart, through heaven gone astray,
 And early lost. Too far the golden moon
Had swung upon that bright, that long, untraversed way.

 Now to lie ended on the murmuring plain —
  Ah, this for his bold heart was not the loss,
 But that those windy fields he ne'er again
  Might try, nor fleet and shimmering mountains cross,
 Unfollowed, by a path none other knew:
His bitter woe had here its deep and piteous cause.

 Dear toils of youth unfinished! And songs unwritten, left
  By young and passionate hearts! O melodies
 Unheard, whereof we ever stand bereft!
  Clear-singing Schubert, boyish Keats — with these
 He roams henceforth, one with the starry band,
  Still paying to fairy call and far command
His spirit heed, still winged with golden prophecies.

The Sea Gypsy. [Richard Hovey]

I am fevered with the sunset,
I am fretful with the bay,
For the wander-thirst is on me
And my soul is in Cathay.

There's a schooner in the offing,
With her topsails shot with fire,
And my heart has gone aboard her
For the Islands of Desire.

I must forth again to-morrow!
With the sunset I must be
Hull down on the trail of rapture
In the wonder of the sea.

At Gibraltar. [George Edward Woodberry]

I

England, I stand on thy imperial ground,
Not all a stranger; as thy bugles blow,
I feel within my blood old battles flow —
The blood whose ancient founts in thee are found
Still surging dark against the Christian bound
Wide Islam presses; well its peoples know
Thy heights that watch them wandering below;
I think how Lucknow heard their gathering sound.
I turn, and meet the cruel, turbaned face.
England, 't is sweet to be so much thy son!
I feel the conqueror in my blood and race;
Last night Trafalgar awed me, and to-day
Gibraltar wakened; hark, thy evening gun
Startles the desert over Africa!

II

Thou art the rock of empire, set mid-seas
Between the East and West, that God has built;
Advance thy Roman borders where thou wilt,
While run thy armies true with His decrees.
Law, justice, liberty — great gifts are these;
Watch that they spread where English blood is spilt,
Lest, mixed and sullied with his country's guilt,
The soldier's life-stream flow, and Heaven displease!
Two swords there are: one naked, apt to smite,
Thy blade of war; and, battle-storied, one
Rejoices in the sheath, and hides from light.
American I am; would wars were done!
Now westward, look, my country bids good-night —
Peace to the world from ports without a gun!

Euchenor Chorus. [Arthur Upson]

(From "The City")

Of old it went forth to Euchenor, pronounced of his sire —
Reluctant, impelled by the god's unescapable fire —
To choose for his doom or to perish at home of disease
Or be slain of his foes, among men, where Troy surges down to the seas.

Polyides, the soothsayer, spake it, inflamed by the god.
Of his son whom the fates singled out did he bruit it abroad;
And Euchenor went down to the ships with his armor and men
And straightway, grown dim on the gulf, passed the isles
  he passed never again.

Why weep ye, O women of Corinth? The doom ye have heard
Is it strange to your ears that ye make it so mournful a word?
Is he who so fair in your eyes to his manhood upgrew,
Alone in his doom of pale death — are of mortals the beaten so few?

O weep not, companions and lovers! Turn back to your joys:
The defeat was not his which he chose, nor the victory Troy's.
Him a conqueror, beauteous in youth, o'er the flood his fleet brought,
And the swift spear of Paris that slew completed the conquest he sought.

Not the falling proclaims the defeat, but the place of the fall;
And the fate that decrees and the god that impels through it all
Regard not blind mortals' divisions of slayer and slain,
But invisible glories dispense wide over the war-gleaming plain.

He whom a Dream hath possessed. [Shaemas O Sheel]

He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of doubting,
For mist and the blowing of winds and the mouthing of words he scorns;
Not the sinuous speech of schools he hears, but a knightly shouting,
And never comes darkness down, yet he greeteth a million morns.

He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of roaming;
All roads and the flowing of waves and the speediest flight he knows,
But wherever his feet are set, his soul is forever homing,
And going, he comes, and coming he heareth a call and goes.

He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of sorrow,
At death and the dropping of leaves and the fading of suns he smiles,
For a dream remembers no past and scorns the desire of a morrow,
And a dream in a sea of doom sets surely the ultimate isles.

He whom a dream hath possessed treads the impalpable marches,
From the dust of the day's long road he leaps to a laughing star,
And the ruin of worlds that fall he views from eternal arches,
And rides God's battlefield in a flashing and golden car.

The Kings. [Louise Imogen Guiney]

A man said unto his Angel:
"My spirits are fallen low,
And I cannot carry this battle:
O brother! where might I go?

"The terrible Kings are on me
With spears that are deadly bright;
Against me so from the cradle
Do fate and my fathers fight."

Then said to the man his Angel:
"Thou wavering, witless soul,
Back to the ranks! What matter
To win or to lose the whole,

"As judged by the little judges
Who hearken not well, nor see?
Not thus, by the outer issue,
The Wise shall interpret thee.

"Thy will is the sovereign measure
And only events of things:
The puniest heart, defying,
Were stronger than all these Kings.

"Though out of the past they gather,
Mind's Doubt, and Bodily Pain,
And pallid Thirst of the Spirit
That is kin to the other twain,

"And Grief, in a cloud of banners,