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CLOSE OF THE CENTURY

(TYPICAL POETS AND POETRY OF THE FINAL YEARS)

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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:
That, namely, for rebellions, which are so
Until they have succeeded, when they go
By quite another name. Forget not, too,
That every English poet known to you,
That is to say all of them, rhymed just as
The spirit took them and their pleasure

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
And languor of yourself: it is too deep,
And 't is too long!

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!

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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

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Steel are the ship's great sides,

Steel are her guns,
Backward she thrusts the tides,
Swiftly she runs;

Steel is the sailor's heart,
Stalwart his arm,
His the Republic's part
Through cloud and storm.

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
With liberty,

White for the peace they earn
Making men free,

Stars for the Heaven above,-
Blue for the deep,
Where, in their country's love,
Heroes shall sleep.

Tell me why on the breeze
These banners blow?
Ships, and ships' companies,
Eagerly go

Warring, like all our line,
Freedom to friend
Under this starry sign,
True to the end.

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
Liveth in dread lest there be no atone
In time to come for yesterday's warm
breath,

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
Had, in his pride,

Woman and steed and slave
Heaped at his grave;
Given this sudden end
Their souls to send,

Still serving, whitherward
Their lord had fared.

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