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Some vast amount of years ago,
Ere all my youth had vanished from me,
A boy it was my lot to know,
Whom his familiar friends called Tommy.

I love to gaze upon a child;...

In this noble ring to-day

Let my warning shame ye!
Listen to my solemn voice,

Seldom does it name ye.
Many a thing have ye intended,

Many a thing have badly ended,...

The bravest names for fire and flames,
And all that mortal durst,
Were General John and Private James,
Of the Sixty-seventy-first.

General John was a soldier tried,
A chief of warlike dons;...

Facile Princeps.


I.

O gifted one of the Sunny South, with lips so eloquent,
In whose great heart no malice e'er was found!
And now thou art a messenger of Peace, by heaven sent...

With those that bred, with those that loosed the strife,
He had no part whose hands were clear of gain;
But subtle, strong, and stubborn, gave his life
To a lost cause, and knew the gift was vain.
...

[To be sung to the tune of 'The Blood of the Lamb' with indicated instrument]


I

[Bass drum beaten loudly.]
Booth led boldly with his big bass drum -...

I was but a half-grown boy,
You were a girl-child slight.
Ah, how weary you were!
You had led in the bullock-fight . . .
We slew the bullock at length
With knives and maces of stone....

In the outer world that was before this earth,
That was before all shape or space was born,
Before the blind first hour of time had birth,
Before night knew the moonlight or the morn;
...

Who is this man
that walketh in the field,
O Eleazar,
steward to my lord?

And Eleazar
answered her and said,
Daughter of Bethuel,
it is other none
But my lord Isaac,...

Thus roll I, never taking ease,
My tub, like Saint Diogenes,
Now serious am, now seek to please;
Now love and hate in turn one sees;
The motives now are those, now these;
Now nothings, now realities....

How does the genius make itself known? In the way that in nature
Shows the Creator himself, e'en in the infinite whole.
Clear is the ether, and yet of depth that ne'er can be fathomed;...

I turn the key in this idle hour
Of an ivory box, and looking, lo -
See only dust - the dust of a flower;
The waters will ebb, the waters will flow,
And dreams will come, and dreams will go,
Forever....

"Do I believe," sayest thou, "what the masters of wisdom would teach me,
And what their followers' band boldly and readily swear?
Cannot I ever attain to true peace, excepting through knowledge,...

There was once a young man quite erratic
Who lived all alone in an attic,
He wrote magazine verse
That made editors curse,
But his friends thought it fine and dramatic.

(DEDICATED TO CHATEAUBRIAND.)

[Bk. IV. vi., July, 1822.]


Woe unto him! the child of this sad earth,
Who, in a troubled world, unjust and blind,
Bears Genius - treasure of celestial birth,...

scripsit quidem fata, sed sequitur.
SENECA.


Of old, the Sultan Genius reigned,
As Nature meant, supreme alone;
With mind unchekt, and hands unchained,
His views, his conquests were his own....

I


What wood-god, on this water's mossy curb,
Lost in reflections of earth's loveliness,
Did I, just now, unconsciously disturb?
I, who haphazard, wandering at a guess,...

I.

What deity for dozing laziness
Devised the lounging coziness of this
Enchanted nook? - and how! - did I distress
His musing ease that fled but now, or his...

A long farewell to Genoa
That rises to the skies,
Where the barren coast of Italy
Like our own coastline lies.
A sad farewell to Genoa,
And long my heart shall grieve,
The only city in the world...

(March, 1887)



O epic-famed, god-haunted Central Sea,
Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee
When from Torino's track I saw thy face first flash on me.
...