O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; trills, For you bouquets and shores acrowding, flag is flung - for you the bugle ribboned wreaths for you the For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck 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 victor ship comes in with object won; Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I, with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Walt Whitman A WEARY LOT IS THINE A weary lot is thine, fair maid, To pull the thorn thy brow to braid, A doublet of the Lincoln green No more of me you knew. - "This morn is merry June, I trow, But she shall bloom in winter snow He turn'd his charger as he spake He gave the bridle-reins a shake, Said "Adieu for evermore My Love! And adieu for evermore." Sir Walter Scott THE FLIGHT OF YOUTH There are gains for all our losses, There are balms for all our pain: We are stronger, and are better, Under manhood's sterner reign: Something beautiful is vanished, But it never comes again. Richard Henry Stoddard THE FLIGHT Upon a cloud among the stars we stood. The angel raised his hand and looked and said, "Which world, of all yon starry myriad, Shall we make wing to?" The still solitude Became a harp whereon his voice and mood Made spheral music round his haloed head. I spake for then I had not long been dead "Let me look round upon the vasts, and brood A moment on these orbs ere I decide . . . What is yon lower star that beauteous shines And with soft splendour now incarnadines Our wings? There would I go and there abide." He smiled as one who some child's thought divines: "That is the world where yesternight you died." Lloyd Mifflin THE GLIMPSE Just for a day you crossed my life's dull track, To fall back on my meaner world, and feel Like one who, dwelling 'mid some smoke-dimmed town, In a brief pause of labour's sullen wheel, 'Scaped from the street's dead dust and factory's frown, In stainless daylight saw the pure seas roll, William Watson TO STELLA Stella, think not that I by verse seek fame, A nest for my young praise in laurel tree: And Love doth hold my hand and makes me write. Sir Philip Sidney June the Twelfth William Cullen Bryant, Died 1878 HEAR, YE LADIES Hear, ye ladies that despise Fair Calisto was a nun; Leda, sailing on the stream To deceive the hopes of man, Danaë, in a brazen tower, Where no love was, loved a shower. Hear, ye ladies that are coy, What the mighty Love can do ; Fear the fierceness of the boy: The chaste Moon he makes to woo; Vesta, kindling holy fires, Circled round about with spies, Doting at the altar dies; Illion, in a short hour, higher He can build, and once more fire. John Fletcher. LIFE Like to the falling of the star, Or, like the wind that chafes the flood, -- |