A yacht from its harbor ropes pulled free, And leaped like a steed o'er the race track blue, Then up behind her, the dust of the sea, A gray fog drifted, and hid her from view.
Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: the seed, The little seed they laugh'd at in the dark, Has risen and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk Of spanless girth, that lays on every side...
Who would trust England, let him lift his eyes To Nelson, columned o'er Trafalgar Square, Her hieroglyph of duty, written where The roar of traffic hushes to the skies;...
Fancy, who leads the pastimes of the glad, Full oft is pleased a wayward dart to throw; Sending sad shadows after things not sad, Peopling the harmless fields with signs of woe:...
Long had our dull forefathers slept supine, Nor felt the raptures of the tuneful Nine; Till Chaucer first, the merry bard, arose, And many a story told in rhyme and prose....
This sentence have I left behind: An aching body, and a mind Not wholly clear, nor wholly blind, Too keen to rest, too weak to find, That travails sore, and brings forth wind,...
With a sweeter voice than birds Dare to twitter in their sleep, Pipe for me a tune of words, Till my dancing fancies leap Into freedom vaster far Than the realms of Reason are!...
Darkly falls the autumn twilight, rustles by the crisp leaf sere, Sadly wail the lonely night-winds, sweeping sea-ward, chill and drear, Sullen dash the restless waters 'gainst a bleak and rock-bound shore,...
And Pushkin's exile had begun right here, And Lermontov's expulsion had been "canceled." There is the easy grasses' scent on highland. And only once it chanced to me to see it --...
It was many and many a year ago, In a city by the sea, That a man there lived whom I happened to know By the name of Andrew M'Crie; And this man he slept in another room,...
And we shall not get excited. Because a translator May not get excited. Calmly, we shall pass on Words from man to son, from one tongue To others' lips, un- Knowingly, like a father who passes on...
And when I am entombed in my place, Be it remembered of a single man, He never, though he dearly loved his race, For fear of human eyes swerved from his plan.