Works

Oft when pacing thro' the long and dim
Dark gallery of the Past, I pause before
A picture of which this is a copy -
Wretched at best.

How fair she look'd, standing a-tiptoe there,...

Achilles came from Homer's Jove-like brain,
Pavilioned 'mid his ships where Thetis trod;
But he whose image dominates this plain
Came from the hand of God!

Yet, of his life, which shall all time adorn...

Full-burnished through the long-revolving years
The ploughshare of a Century to-day
Runs peaceful furrows where a crop of Spears
Once stood in War's array.

And we, like those who on the Trojan plain...

At last our Fathers saw the Treaty sealed,
Victory unhelmed her broad, majestic brow,
The Sword became a Sickle in the field,
The war horse drew the plough.
...

Her story, sure, was fashioned out above,
Ere 't was enacted on the scene below!
For 't was a very miracle of love
When from the savage hawk's nest came the dove...

Oh the women of Old Portsmouth in their patience were sublime,
As in working and in praying they abided GOD's own time!
Marble saints in a stately Minster, in some land across the sea,...

Himself I read beneath the words he writes ...
I may come back and sing again. - RYAN.


I.

This Bard's to me a whole-souled man
In honesty and might,
For when he sees Wrong in the van...