ADDITIONAL SELECTIONS FROM BROWN-.

ING'S LATEST WORKS, 1880-1889.

ECHETLOS.

Hwho breasted, beat Barbarians, stemmed Persia rolling on,

ERE is a story shall stir you! Stand up, Greeks dead and gone,

Did the deed and saved the world, for the day was Marathon!

No man but did his manliest, kept rank and fought away
In his tribe and file: up, back, out, down — was the spear-arm play:
Like a wind-whipt branchy wood, all spear-arms a-swing that day!

But one man kept no rank, and his sole arm plied no spear,
As a flashing came and went, and a form i' the van, the rear,
Brightened the battle up, for he blazed now there, now here.

Nor helmed nor shielded he! but, a goat-skin all his wear,
Like a tiller of the soil, with a clown's limbs broad and bare,
Went he ploughing on and on: he pushed with a ploughman's share.

Did the weak mid-line give way, as tunnies on whom the shark
Precipitates his bulk? Did the right-wing halt when, stark
On his heap of slain lay stretched Kallimachos Polemarch?

Did the steady phalanx falter? To the rescue, at the need,
The clown was ploughing Persia, clearing Greek earth of weed,
As he routed thro' the Sakian and rooted up the Mede.

10

But the deed done, battle won, nowhere to be descried
On the meadow, by the stream, at the marsh,—look far and wide
From the foot of the mountain, no, to the last blood-plashed sea-side,—

Nota

20

here on view blazed the large limbs thonged and brown,
nd clearing still with the share before which - down
Tent Persia's pomp, as he ploughed for Greece, that clown!

How spake the Oracle? "Care for no name at all!

Say but just this: We praise one helpful whom we call

The Holder of the Ploughshare.' The great deed ne'er grows small."

Not the great name! Sing-woe for the great name Miltiadés

And its end at Paros isle!

Woe for Themistokles

—Satrap in Sardis court! Name not the clown like these!

3с

TOUCH HIM NE'ER SO LIGHTLY.

SONG.

"Tsoil so quick receptive, not one feather-seed,
OUCH him ne'er so lightly, into song he broke:

-

Not one flower-dust fell but straight its fall awoke
Vitalizing virtue: song would song succeed
Sudden as spontaneous - prove a poet-soul!"

Indeed?

Rock's the song-soil rather, surface hard and bare:
Sun and dew their mildness, storm and frost their rage
Vainly both expend, — few flowers awaken there:
Quiet in its cleft broods- what the after-age
Knows and names a pine, a nation's heritage.

Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same,

- Framework which waits for a picture to frame:
What of the leafage, what of the flower?
Roses embowering with naught they embower!
Come then, complete incompletion, O comer,
Pant thro' the blueness, perfect the summer!
Breathe but one breath
Rose-beauty above,

And all that was death
Grows life, grows love,
Grows love!

NEVER THE TIME AND THE PLACE.

NEVE

TEVER the time and the place
And the loved one all together!
This path-how soft to pace!

This May what magic weather!
Where is the loved one's face?

In a dream that loved one's face meets mine,
But the house is narrow, the place is bleak
Where, outside, rain and wind combine
With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak,
With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek,

With a malice that marks each word, each sign!
O enemy sly and serpentine,

Uncoil thee from the waking man!

Do I hold the Past

Thus firm and fast

Yet doubt if the Future hold I can?
This path so soft to pace shall lead

Thro' the magic of May to herself indeed!
Or narrow if needs the house must be,

Outside are the storms and strangers: we-
Oh, close, safe, warm sleep I and she,
I and she!

ΙΟ

20

ROUND US THE WILD CREATURES.

ROUND us the wild creatures, overhead the trees,

Underfoot the moss-tracks,-life and love with these!

I to wear a fawn-skin, thou to dress in flowers:

All the long lone summer-day that greenwood life of ours!

Rich-pavilioned, rather, — still the world without, —

Inside — gold-roofed silk-walled silence round about!
Queen it thou on purple,

- I, at watch and ward

Couched beneath the columns, gaze, thy slave, love's guard!

So, for us no world? Let throngs press thee to me!
Up and down amid men, heart by heart fare we!

Welcome squalid vesture, harsh voice, hateful face!

God is soul, souls I and thou: with souls should souls have place.

ASK NOT ONE LEAST WORD OF PRAISE.

ASK NOT ONE LEAST WORD OF PRAISE.

SK not one least word of praise!

A Words declare your eyes are bright?

What then meant that summer day's
Silence spent in one long gaze?

Was my silence wrong or right?

Words of praise were all to seek!
Face of and form of you,

you

Did they find the praise so weak

When my lips just touched your cheek

Touch which let my soul come through?

45I

ΙΟ

EPILOGUE TO "FERISHTAH'S FANCIES."

H, Love-no, Love! All the noise below, Love,
none of Life I lose!

Groanings all and moanings

All of Life 's a cry just of weariness and woe, Love

"Hear at least, thou happy one!" How can I, Love, but choose?

Only, when I do hear, sudden circle round me

Much as when the moon's might frees a space from cloud

Iridescent splendours: gloom-would else confound me

Barriered off and banished far — bright-edged the blackest shroud!

Thronging through the cloud-rift, whose are they, the faces
Faint revealed yet sure divined, the famous ones of old?
"What"- they smile- "our names, our deeds so soon erases
Time upon his tablet where Life's glory lies enrolled?

"Was it for mere fool's-play, make-believe, and mumming,
So we battled it like men, not boy-like sulked or whined?
Each of us heard clang God's 'Come!' and each was coming:
Soldiers all, to forward-face, not sneaks to lag behind!

"How of the field's fortune? That concerned our Leader!
Led, we struck our stroke nor cared for doings left and right:
Each as on his sole head, failer or succeeder,

IO

Lay the blame or lit the praise: no care for cowards: fight!" 20

Then the cloud-rift broadens, spanning earth that 's under,
Wide our world displays its worth, man's strife, and strife's success: