"Fill the can, and fill the cup:
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.
Trooping from their mouldy dens The chap-fallen circle spreads: Welcome, fellow-citizens,
Hollow hearts and empty heads!
"You are bones, and what of that?
Every face, however full,
Padded round with flesh and fat,
Is but modelled on a skull.
"Death is king, and Vivat Rex!
Tread a measure on the stones,
Madam-if I know your sex,
From the fashion of your bones.
"No, I cannot praise the fire
In your eye-nor yet your lip: All the more do I admire
Joints of cunning workmanship.
"Lo! God's likeness-the ground-plan—
Neither modelled, glazed, or framed :
Buss me, thou rough sketch of man,
Far too naked to be shamed!
"Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance, While we keep a little breath! Drink to heavy Ignorance!
Hob-and-nob with brother Death!
"Thou art mazed, the night is long,
And the longer night is near:
What! I am not all as wrong
As a bitter jest is dear.
"Youthful hopes, by scores, to all,
When the locks are crisp and curled;
Unto me my maudlin gall,
And my mockeries of the world.
"Fill the cup, and fill the can!
Mingle madness, mingle scorn!
Dregs of life, and lees of man:
Yet we will not die forlorn.”
The voice grew faint: there came a further change;
Once more uprose the mystic mountain-range:
Below were men and horses pierced with worms,
And slowly quickening into lower forms;
By shards and scurf of salt, and scum of dross,
Old plash of rains, and refuse patched with moss.
Then some one spake: “Behold! it was a crime
Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time."
Another said: "The crime of sense became
The crime of malice, and is equal blame."
And one: "He had not wholly quenched his
A little grain of conscience made him sour."
At last I heard a voice upon the slope
Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?"
To which an answer pealed from that high land,
But in a tongue no man could understand:
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn
God made himself an awful rose of dawn.
SURE never yet was Antelope
Could skip so lightly by.
Stand off, or else my skipping-rope
Will hit you in the eye.
How lightly whirls the skipping-rope!
How fairy-like you fly!"
Go, get you gone, you muse and mope
I hate that silly sigh.
Nay, dearest, teach me how to hope,
Ör tell me how to die.
There, take it, take my skipping-rope
And hang yourself thereby.
MOVE EASTWARD, HAPPY EARTH, AND LEAVE.
MOVE eastward, happy earth, and leave
Yon orange sunset waning slow;
From fringes of the faded eve,
、O, happy planet, eastward go;
Till over thy dark shoulder glow
Thy silver sister-world, and rise
To glass herself in dewy eyes
That watch me from the glen below.
Ah, bear me with thee, smoothly borné,
Dip forward under starry light,
And move me to my marriage-morn,
And round again to happy night.
BREAK, BREAK, BREAK.
BREAK, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, oh Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But oh for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
At the foot of thy crags, oh Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
THE rain had fallen, the Poet arose,
He passed by the town, and out of the street, A light wind blew from the gates of the sun, And waves of shadow went over the wheat, And he sat him down in a lonely place,
And chanted a melody loud and sweet,
That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud,
And the lark drop down at his feet.
The swallow stopt as he hunted the bee,
The snake slipt under a spray,
The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak
And stared, with his foot on the prey,
And the nightingale thought, "I have sung many
But never a one so gay,
For he sings of what the world will be
When the years have died away."
SIR WALTER VIVIAN all a summer's day
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun
Up to the people: thither flocked at noon
His tenants, wife and child, and thither half
The neighboring borough with their Institute,
Of which he was the patron. I was there
From college, visiting the son,-the son
A Walter, too,-with others of our set,
Five others: we were seven at Vivian-place.
And me that morning Walter showed the house, Greek, set with busts: from vases in the hall Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names,
Grew side by side; and on the pavement lay
Carved stones of the Abbey-ruin in the park,
Huge Ammonites, and the first bones of Time;
And on the tables every clime and age
Jumbled together; celts and calumets,
Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava, fans
Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries,
Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere,
The cursed Malayan crease, and battle-clubs
From the isles of palm: and higher on the walls,
Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer,
His own forefathers' arms and armor hung.
And "this," he said, "was Hugh's at Agincourt;
And that was old Sir Ralph's at Ascalon:
A good knight he! we keep a chronicle
With all about him," which he brought, and I
Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights
Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings
Who laid about them at their wills and died;
And mixt with these, a lady, one that armed
Her own fair head, and sallying through the gate,
Had beat her foes with slaughter from her walls.
"O miracle of women," said the book, "O noble heart who, being strait-besieged By this wild king to force her to his wish,
Nor bent, nor broke, nor shunned a soldier's death,
But now when all was lost or seemed as lost-
Her stature more than mortal in the burst
Of sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire
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