Ilion falling, Rome arising, wars, and filial fa ofth, and Dido's

pyre;

Landscape-lover, lord of language, more than he tha sang the "Works and Days,"

All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a gol phrase;

Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd;

All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely

word;

Poet of the happy Tityrus piping underneath his beechen

bowers;

Poet of the poet-satyr whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers;

Chanter of the Pollio, glorying in the blissful years again

to be,

Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and oarless sea;

Thou that seest Universal Nature moved by Universal Mind; Thou majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind;

Light among the vanish'd ages; star that gildest yet this phantom shore;

Golden branch amid the shadows, kings and realms that pass to rise no more;

Now thy Forum roars no longer, fallen every purple Cæsar's dome

Tho' thine ocean-roll of rhythm sound forever of Imperial

Rome

Now the Rome of slaves hath perish'd, and the Rome of freemen holds her place,

I, from out the Northern Island sunder'd once from all the human race,

I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day

began,

Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

The next three poems are alike in their reflection of the spirit of America, and alike in the use of iambic tetrameter a line as characteristic of the English lyric as iambic pentameter is of longer poems. An excellent composition may be very short. "The Ballot" is by a nearly forgotten poet of the early national period of American literature and history.

A

THE BALLOT

weapon that comes down as still
As snowflakes fall upon the sod;

But executes a freeman's will,

As lightning does the will of God.

John Pierpont (1785-1866)

"Westward Ho!" commemorates an epic phase of American civilization, a phase neglected by the New England poets. Its author was a native Westerner whose name is often associated with that of Bret Harte.

WESTWARD HO!

What strength! what strife! what rude unrest!
What shocks! what half-shaped armies met!
A mighty nation moving west,
With all its steely sinews set
Against the living forests. Hear
The shouts, the shots of pioneer,
The rended forests, rolling wheels,
As if some half-check'd army reels,
Recoils, redoubles, comes again,
Loud sounding like a hurricane.

O bearded, stalwart, westmost men,
So tower-like, so Gothic built!
A kingdom won without the guilt
Of studied battle, that hath been

Your blood's inheritance . . . Your heirs
Know not your tombs: the great plowshares
Cleave softly through the mellow loam
Where you have made eternal home,
And set no sign. Your epitaphs
Are writ in furrows. Beauty laughs
While through the green ways wandering
Beside her love, slow gathering
White, starry-hearted May-time blooms
Above your lowly leveled tombs;
And then below the spotted sky

She stops, she leans, she wonders why
The ground is heaved and broken so,
And why the grasses darker grow
And droop and trail like wounded wing.

Yea, Time, the grand old harvester,
Has gather'd you from wood and plain.
We call to you again, again;

The rush and rumble of the car

Comes back in answer. Deep and wide
The wheels of progress have passed on;
The silent pioneer is gone.

His ghost is moving down the trees,
And now we push the memories

Of bluff, bold men who dared and died
In foremost battle, quite aside.

Cincinnatus Heine ("Joaquin") Miller (1841-1913)

Though less imaginative than "Westward Ho!", "Unmanifest Destiny" is more vigorous, and its phrasing harmonizes more effectively with its metrical structure. Hovey-poet, translator, collaborator with Bliss Carman -belongs with Miller, Aldrich, Cawein, and a few others in a rather distinguished group of American poets whose careers fell in the fallow period about the close of the last century.

UNMANIFEST DESTINY

To what new fates, my country, far
And unforeseen of foe or friend,
Beneath what unexpected star,

Compelled to what unchosen end,

Across the sea that knows no beach
The Admiral of Nations guides
Thy blind obedient keels to reach
The harbor where thy future rides!

The guns that spoke at Lexington

Knew not that God was planning then

The trumpet word of Jefferson

To bugle forth the rights of men.

To them that wept and cursed Bull Run,
What was it but despair and shame?
Who saw behind the cloud and sun?
Who knew that God was in the flame?

Had not defeat upon defeat,
Disaster on disaster come,
The slave's emancipated feet

Had never marched behind the drum.

There is a Hand that bends our deeds
To mightier issues than we planned;
Each son that triumphs, each that bleeds,
My country, serves Its dark command.

I do not know beneath what sky
Nor on what seas shall be thy fate;

I only know it shall be high,

I only know it shall be great.

Richard Hovey (1864-1900)

During the World War a pamphlet by Kipling entitled Twenty Poems had an enormous sale in England. The timely "For All We Have and Are" sounded a clarion call to what was, for England, a modern crusade. Kipling is said to have been the first to apply the epithet Hun to the German. "For All We Have and Are," although not intended for singing, has a chorus—a characteristic of many of its author's poems.

FOR ALL WE HAVE AND ARE

1914

For all we have and are,
For all our children's fate,
Stand up and take the war.
The Hun is at the gate!