The sun rides high in heaven, the skies are bright

And full of blessedness,

High hope and wild endeavour

Have fled or sunk for ever;

Only the swifter seasons onward press,

And every day that goes

Is a full-scented, full-blown garden rose,
Orbéd, complete.

And every hour brings its own burden sweet

Of daily duty, precious care;

Wherefrom the visible landscape calm and clear Shows finer far, and the high heaven more near, Than ever morning skies of sunrise were.

I miss the unbounded hope of old,

The freshness and the glow of youth;

I miss the fever and the fret,

The luminous haze of gold.

I see a mind clearer and calmer yet,

A more unselfish love, a more unclouded truth; Such gain I take, and this

More gracious shows and fair than that I miss.

WHO reaps the harvest of his soul,

And garners up thought's golden grain,

In vain for him life's tempests rave,

Fate's rude shocks buffet him in vain.

The Ode of Life

TOIL is the law of life, and its best fruit;

This from the uncaring brute

Divides; this and the prescient mind whose store Grows daily more and more.

Toil is the mother of wealth,

The nurse of health;

Toil 'tis that gives the zest

To well earned rest;

The law of life laid broad and deep

As are the fixed foundations of the sea,
The medicine of grief, the remedy,
Wherefrom Life giveth his beloved sleep.

Oh labour truly blest!

Thou rulest all the race;

Over all the toiling earth I see thy gracious face Stand forth confest.

Wherever thou art least,

In those fair lands beneath the tropic blaze,

The slothful savage, likened to the beast,

Drags on his soulless length of days ;

Where most thou art,

Man rises upward to a loftier height,

And views the earth and heaven with clearer sight,

And holds a cleaner heart.

But to ends nobler still

The nobler workers of the world are bent.
It is not best in an inglorious ease

To sink and dull content,

When wild revolts and hopeless miseries
The unquiet nations fill;

It is not best to rot

In dull observance, while the bitter cry

Of weak and friendless sufferers rends the sky,
Wailing their hopeless lot;

Or rest in coward fear on former gain,

Making old joys supply the present pain.

Nay, best it is indeed

To spend ourselves upon the general good;

And, oft misunderstood,

To strive to lift the knees and limbs that bleed ;

This is the best, the fullest meed.

Let ignorance assail or hatred sneer;

Who loves his race he shall not fear;

He suffers not for long,

Who doth his soul possess in loving, and grows

strong.

Oh, student! far into the night

From youth to age

Bent low upon the blinding page,

Content to catch some gleam of light;

Art thou not happy, though the world pass by?—

Happy though Honours seek thee not,—nor Fame, And no man knows thy name?

Happy in that blest company of old

Whose names are writ in characters of gold
Upon the rocks of Time, the glorious band
Who on the shining mountains stand,
Thinker and jurist, bard or seer,

Whatever name is brightest and most dear?

Or thou with docile hand,

Obedient to the visionary eye,

Who 'midst art's precious work dost choose to

stand,

Amid the great ones of the days gone by.

Oh, blest and glorious lot, alway to be

With dreamed of beauty compassed round about!
The godlike mother and the child divine,
Or land or sea or sky, in calm or storm,
Nature's sincerest verities of form-

To see from canvas or from marble shine,
Little by little orbing gradually,

Some trace of hidden Godhead gleaming out!

Or who, from heart and brain inspired, create,
Defying time, defying fate,

Some deathless theme and high,

Some verse which cannot die,

Some lesson which shall still be said

Altho' their tongue be lost and dead ;

Or who, in daily labour's trivial round,
Their fitting work have found; ·

Or who on high, guiding the car of State,
Are set, a people's envy and their pride,
Who, spurning rank and ease and wealth,
And setting pleasure aside and health,
And meeting contumely oft and hate,

Have lived laborious lives and all too early died.

Ay, labour, thou art blest,

From all the earth, thy voice, a constant prayer, Soars upward day and night;

A voice of aspiration after right;

A voice of effort yearning for its rest,

A voice of high hope conquering despair!

JOHN MASEFIELD

A Wanderer's Song

A WIND'S in the heart of me, a fire's in my

heels,

I am tired of brick and stone and rumbling wagon

wheels ;

I hunger for the sea's edge, the limits of the land, Where the wild old Atlantic is shouting on the

sand.