CLOSE OF THE CENTURY (TYPICAL POETS AND POETRY OF THE FINAL YEARS) And if you'll write a poem, there's no way But first to think it clearly; pin your mind Upon your thought; fasten it there, and bind The thought into your heart: when your veins burn and flow With love or hate, the thoughts to music go, Melt into music, and pour fully out In a rich flood;- but to take thought about The "music" of your words, 't is matter quite Beyond your conscious power! For rhymes, they're right Or wrong according as they hear, not look When printed by a printer in a book! And their "correctness" may be measured best, And indeed only, by a certain test: was, And, masters that they were, rhymed "falsely," so As now no poetaster dares to do! PURPOSE So then, at last, let me awake this sleep Oh, I would have you look With judgment on your life, and not to brook The less in art, as not in truth; - forgive Much in you now I can, never that you less live! Now grown a Commonwealth, whose strength and state And health are dangerous to all that hate Freedom, and fatal to all those who'd be Sunk in the dark of Time's abysmal sea, Safe anchored in the past — safe dead !— that none Might longer make them fear a change beneath the sun, To fright them with new good. But oh, to those Whose blood within them leaps and laughs and flows; To all who proudly hope; to all who fain With their right hands and with their heart and brain Would throne the right, and make the good to reign; To all who'd lift man up, and who, heartfree, Haste toward the light, this Land and State should be Dear as their life! - And to her sons should she Steel are the ship's great sides, Steel are her guns, Steel is the sailor's heart, Tell me what standard rare Streams from the spars? Red stripes and white they bear, Blue, with bright stars: Red for brave hearts that burn White for the peace they earn Stars for the Heaven above,- Tell me why on the breeze Warring, like all our line, Fair is the Flag's renown, Sacred her scars, Sweet the death she shall crown Under the stars. THE END No freeman, saith the wise, thinks much on death: No man with soul he dareth call his own No more than he for such end hungereth As falls to those who speed their souls a-groan; Death may be King, to sit a tottering throne And hale men hence-let cowards cringe to Death! Who giveth, taketh; and the days go by: No seed sowed we; let him who did come reap: Sweet peace is ours - and everlastingly,A little sleep, a little slumber! Ay, This much is known: there is for thee and me A little folding of the hands to sleep IMMORTAL FLOWERS Or old, a man who died Woman and steed and slave Still serving, whitherward |