IN TIME OF "THE BREAKING OF NATIONS" Only a man harrowing clods In a slow silent walk, With an old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as they stalk. Only thin smoke without flame Yonder a maid and her wight War's annals will fade into night Ere their story die. THE DARKLING THRUSH I leaned upon a coppice gate The land's sharp features seemed to be His crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth At once a voice burst forth among The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong Of joy unlimited; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Has chosen thus to fling his soul So little cause for carollings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through Andrew Lang Andrew Lang, critic and essayist, was born in 1844 and educated at Balliol College, Oxford. Besides his many wellknown translations of Homer, Theocritus and the Greek Anthology, he has published numerous biographical works. As a poet, his chief claim rests on his delicate light verse. Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872), Ballades in Blue China (1880), and Rhymes à la Mode (1884) disclose Lang as a lesser Austin Dobson. SCYTHE SONG Mowers, weary and brown and blithe, Sings to the blades of the grass below? Hush, ah, hush, the Scythes are saying, Hush and heed not for all things pass; Robert Bridges Robert (Seymour) Bridges was born in 1844 and educated at Eton and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. After traveling extensively, he studied medicine in London and practiced until 1882. Most of his poems, like his occasional plays, are classical in tone as well as treatment. He was appointed poet laureate in 1913, following Alfred Austin. His command of the secrets of rhythm, especially exemplified in Shorter Poems (1894), through a subtle versification give his lines a firm delicacy and beauty of pattern. WINTER NIGHTFALL The day begins to droop,- Of the setting sun. The hazy darkness deepens, And up the lane You may hear, but cannot see, The homing wain. An engine pants and hums The soaking branches drip, In the avenue. A tall man there in the house Must keep his chair: He knows he will never again Breathe the spring air: His heart is worn with work; He is giddy and sick If he rise to go as far As the nearest rick: He thinks of his morn of life, His hale, strong years; And braves as he may the night Of darkness and tears. The Irish-English singer, Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy, was born in London in 1844. He was connected, for a while, with the British Museum, and was transferred later to the Department of Natural History. His first literary success, Epic of Women (1870), promised a brilliant future for the young poet, a promise strengthened by his Music and Moonlight (1874). Always delicate in health, his hopes were dashed by periods of illness and an early death in London in 1881. The poem here reprinted is not only O'Shaughnessy's best but is, because of its perfect blending of music and message, one of the immortal classics of our verse. ODE We are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, On whom the pale moon gleams: With wonderful deathless ditties We fashion an empire's glory: |