By copse and hedgerow, waste and wall, He thrusts his cushions red;

O'er burdock rank, o'er thistles tall,

He rears his hardy head :

Within, without, the strong leaves press,
He screens the mossy stone,
Lord of a narrow wilderness,
Self-centred and alone.

He numbers no observant friends,
He soothes no childish woes,
Yet nature nurtures him, and tends
As duly as the rose ;

He drinks the blessed dew of heaven,
The wind is in his ears,

To guard his growth the planets seven
Swing in their airy spheres.

The spirits of the fields and woods
Throb in his sturdy veins :

He drinks the secret, stealing floods,

And swills the volleying rains:

And when the birds' note showers and

breaks

The wood's green heart within,

He stirs his plumy brow and wakes To draw the sunlight in.

Mute sheep that pull the grasses soft
Crop close and pass him by,
Until he stands alone, aloft,

In surly majesty.

No fly so keen, no bee so bold,
To pierce that knotted zone,

He frowns as though he guarded gold,
And yet he garners none.

And so when autumn winds blow late, And whirl the chilly wave,

He bows before the common fate,

And drops beside his grave.
None ever owed him thanks or said
"A gift of gracious heaven.”
Down in the mire he droops his head
Forgotten, not forgiven.

Smile on, brave weed! let none inquire
What made or bade thee rise:
Toss thy tough fingers high and higher
To flout the drenching skies.

Let others toil for others' good,

And miss or mar their own;

Thou hast brave health, and fortitude To live and die alone!

REALISM

AND truth, you say, is all divine;
'Tis truth we live by ; let her drench
The shuddering heart like potent wine
No matter how she wreck or wrench

The gracious instincts from their throne,
Or steep the virgin soul in tears;
No matter; let her learn her own

Enormities, her vilest fears,

And sound the sickliest depths of crime, And creep through roaring drains of woe, To soar at last, unstained, sublime, Knowing the worst that man can know;

And having won the firmer ground,

When loathing quickens pity's eyes, Still lean and beckon underground,

And tempt a struggling foot to rise.

Well, well, it is the stronger way!
Heroic stuff is hardly made ;
But one, who dallies with dismay,

Admires your boldness, half-afraid.

He deems that knowledge, bitter-sweet, Can rust and rot the bars of right, Till weakness sets her trembling feet Across the threshold of the night.

She peers, she ventures; growing bold,
She breathes the enervating air,
And shuns the aspiring summits, cold
And silent, where the dawn is fair.

She wonders, aching to be free,

Too soft to burst the uncertain band, Till chains of drear fatality

Arrest the feeble willing hand.

Nay, let the stainless eye of youth
Be blind to that bewildering light!
When faith and virtue falter, truth
Is handmaid to the hags of night.

AN ENGLISH SHELL

I was an English shell,
Cunningly made and well,

With a heart of fire in an iron frame,

Ready to break in fury and flame,
Slice through the ranks my raging way,
Dying myself, to slay.

Out from the heart of the battle-ship,
Yelling a song of death, I rose,
Brake from the cannon's smoky lip
Into a land of foes :

How was I baffled ? I soared and sank
Over the bastion, across the hill,
Into the lap of a grassy bank,
Impotent there to kill.

Slowly the thunder died away;
My merry comrades, how you roared,
Loud and jubilant, while I lay

Sunk in the slothful sward !

Peace came back with her corn and wine, Smiling faint with a bleeding breast, While in the offing, over the brine

My battle-ship steered to the West.

Then were the long slopes crowned again
With clustering vines and waving grain,
Winter by winter the stealing rain

Fretted me rotting there.
Suddenly once as I sadly slept,
Tinkling, the slow team over me stept,
Jarring the ploughshare, I was swept
Into the breezy air.

Why did he tempt me? I had lain
Year by year in the peaceful rain,
Till my lionlike heart had grown
Dull and motionless, heavy as stone;
Mocking, he smote me :

Then I leapt
Out in my anger, and screamed and swept
Him as he laughed in a storm of blood,
Shattered sinew and flying brain,
Brake the cottage and scarred the wood,
Roaring across the plain.

How should you blame me? Ay, 't was peace!

War was the word I had learned to know ;-
Think you, I was an English shell,
Trained one lesson alone to spell -
I had vowed as I lay below,
Vowed to perish and find release
Slaying an English foe.

AFTER CONSTRUING LORD CESAR, when you sternly wrote The story of your grim campaigns, And watched the ragged smoke-wreath float Above the burning plains,