"Lord and master, look up!" I cried;

"I wreathe your brow with a laurel! Gloom and wisdom and right and pride Cast them aside,

And kiss, and cure our quarrel.

Never mind the moral! "

Alas! with strange and saddened eyes

He looked on me; and my mirth grew dafter,

To feel the flush of his dark surprise;

For the zest of love is laughter.

Long ago, in the old moonlight,
I lost my hero and lover;

Strong and tender and stern and right,

Never shall night

Nor day his brow uncover.
Ah, my heart, that is over!

Yet still, for joy of the fellowship

That bound us both through the years long after,

I laugh to think how he bit his lip;

For the test of love

And the best of love-is laughter.

Frederic Manning

SACRIFICE

Love suffereth all things.

And we,

Out of the travail and pain of our striving,

Bring unto Thee the perfect prayer:

For the heart of no man uttereth love,

Suffering even for love's sake.

For us no splendid apparel of pageantry

Burnished breast-plates, scarlet banners, and trumpets Sounding exultantly.

But the mean things of the earth hast Thou chosen, Decked them with suffering;

Made them beautiful with the passion for rightness, Strong with the pride of love.

Yea, though our praise of Thee slayeth us,
Yet love shall exalt us beside Thee triumphant,
Dying, that these live;

And the earth again be beautiful with orchards,

Yellow with wheatfields;

And the lips of others praise Thee, though our lips

Be stopped with earth, and songless.

But we shall have brought Thee their praises,
Brought unto Thee the perfect prayer:

For the lips of no man utter love,

Suffering even for love's sake.

O God of sorrows,

Whose feet come softly through the dews,

Stoop Thou unto us,

For we die so Thou livest,

Our hearts the cups of Thy vintage:

And the lips of no man utter love,

Suffering even for love's sake.

AT EVEN

Hush ye! Hush ye! My babe is sleeping.
Hush, ye winds, that are full of sorrow!
Hush, ye rains, from your weary weeping!
Give him slumber until to-morrow.

Hush ye, yet! In the years hereafter,
Surely sorrow is all his reaping;

Tears shall be in the place of laughter,

Give him peace for a while in sleeping.

Hush ye, hush! he is weak and ailing:
Send his mother his share of weeping.
Hush ye, winds, from your endless wailing;
Hush ye, hush ye, my babe is sleeping!

THE SIGN

From the trenches

We are here in a wood of little beeches;

And the leaves are like black lace
Against a sky of nacre.

One bough of clear promise

Across the moon.

It is in this wise that God speaketh unto me.
He layeth hands of healing upon my flesh,

Stilling it in an eternal peace;

Until my soul reaches out myriad and infinite hands Toward him,

And is eased of its hunger.

And I know that this passes—

This implacable fury and torment of men—

As a thing insensate and vain.

And the stillness hath said unto me,

Over the tumult of sounds and shaken flame,

Out of the terrible beauty of wrath,

I alone am eternal.

One bough of clear promise

Across the moon.

John Masefield

SHIPS

I cannot tell their wonder nor make known
Magic that once thrilled through me to the bone;
But all men praise some beauty, tell some tale,
Vent a high mood which makes the rest seem pale,
Pour their heart's blood to flourish one green leaf,
Follow some Helen for her gift of grief,

And fail in what they mean, whate'er they do:
You should have seen, man cannot tell to you
The beauty of the ships of that my city.
That beauty now is spoiled by the sea's pity;
For one may haunt the pier a score of times,
Hearing St. Nicholas bells ring out the chimes,
Yet never see those proud ones swaying home
With mainyards backed and bows a cream of foam,
Those bows so lovely-curving, cut so fine,

Those coulters of the many-bubbled brine-
As once, long since, when all the docks were filled
With that sea-beauty man has ceased to build.

Yet, though their splendor may have ceased to be,
Each played her sovereign part in making me;
Now I return my thanks with heart and lips
For the great queenliness of all those ships.

And first the first bright memory, still so clear,
An autumn evening in a golden year,
When in the last lit moments before dark
The Chepica, a steel-gray lovely barque,
Came to an anchor near us on the flood,
Her trucks aloft in sun-glow red as blood.

Then come so many ships that I could fill
Three docks with their fair hulls remembered still,
Each with her special memory's special grace,

Riding the sea, making the waves give place
To delicate high beauty; man's best strength,
Noble in every line in all their length.

Ailsa, Genista, ships with long jibbooms,

The Wanderer with great beauty and strange dooms,
Liverpool (mightiest then) superb, sublime,
The California huge, as slow as time.
The Copley swift, the perfect J. T. North,
The loveliest barque my city has sent forth,
Dainty John Lockett well remembered yet,
The splendid Argus with her skysail set,
Stalwart Drumcliff, white-blocked, majestic Sierras,
Divine bright ships, the water's standard-bearers;
Melpomene, Euphrosyne, and their sweet
Sea-troubling sisters of the Fernie fleet;
Corunna (in whom my friend died) and the old
Long since loved Esmeralda long since sold.
Centurion passed in Rio, Glaucus spoken,
Aladdin burnt, the Bidston water-broken,
Yola, in whom my friend sailed, Dawpool trim,
Fierce-bowed Egeria plunging to the swim,
Stanmore wide-sterned, sweet Cupica, tall Bard,
Queen in all harbors with her moon-sail yard.

Though I tell many, there must still be others,
McVickar Marshall's ships and Fernie Brothers',
Lochs, Counties, Shires, Drums, the countless lines
Whose house-flags all were once familiar signs
At high main-trucks on Mersey's windy ways
When sunlight made the wind-white water blaze.
Their names bring back old mornings, when the docks
Shone with their house-flags and their painted blocks,
Their raking masts below the Custom House
And all the marvellous beauty of their bows.

Familiar steamers, too, majestic steamers,
Shearing Atlantic roller-tops to streamers,
Umbria, Etruria, noble, still at sea,

The grandest, then, that man had brought to be.