1941 195 O FRIEND! I know not which way I must look To think that now our life is only drest HE world is too much with us; late and soon, We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The winds that will be howling at all hours Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. William Wordsworth 1 Dated London, 1802. 196 J THE LOST LEADER UST for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a ribband to stick in his coat Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, Lost all the others she lets us devote; They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, How all our copper had gone for his service! Rags were they purple, his heart had been proud! Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, Burns, Shelley, were with us,-they watch from their graves! He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves! We shall march prospering, not thro' his presence; Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire: One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, One wrong more to man, one more insult to God! Best fight on well, for we taught him,-strike gallantly, Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us, Robert Browning 197 HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA TOBLY, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the Northwest died NOBLY, away; Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay; and gray; "Here and here did England help me: 1 how can I help Eng land?"—say, Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray, While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa. Robert Browning 198 SONG OF A GREEK POET (Greece being still under tURKISH DOMINATION) HE isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! THE Where burning Sappho loved and sung, Where grew the arts of war and peace,— Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung! Eternal summer gilds them yet; But all, except their sun, is set. 1 The Battle of Trafalgar, won by the British fleet under Lord Nelson, secured England against invasion by Napoleon. The rock of Gibraltar, since it became an English possession, has defied several sieges, notably that of 1779-1783. The Scian and the Teian muse, The hero's harp, the lover's lute, To sounds which echo farther west The mountains look on Marathon, And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free; For, standing on the Persians' grave, I could not deem myself a slave. A king sat on the rocky brow Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis; And ships by thousands lay below, And men in nations, all were his! He counted them at break of day,— And when the sun set, where were they? And where are they? and where art thou, My country? On thy voiceless shore The heroic lay is tuneless now, The heroic bosom beats no more! And must thy lyre, so long divine, Degenerate into hands like mine? 'Tis something, in the dearth of fame, To feel at least a patriot's shame, Must we but weep o'er days more blest? Earth! render back from out thy breast What, silent still? and silent all? And answer, "Let one living head, In vain,-in vain; strike other chords; And shed the blood of Scio's vine! You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet, The nobler and the manlier one? Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! He served, but served Polycrates,— A tyrant; but our masters then |