For all these shall be ours and all men's; nor shall any lack a share

Of the toil and the gain of living in the days when the world grows fair.

Ah! such are the days that shall be! But what are the deeds of to-day,

In the days of the years we dwell in, that wear our lives away?

Why, then, and for what are we waiting? There are three words to speak;

WE WILL IT, and what is the foeman but the dream-strong wakened and weak?

O why and for what are we waiting? while our brothers droop and die,

And on every wind of the heavens a wasted life goes by.

How long shall they reproach us where crowd on crowd they dwell,

Poor ghosts of the wicked city, the gold-crushed, hungry hell?

Through squalid life they labored, in sordid grief they died,

Those sons of a mighty mother, those props of England's pride.

They are gone; there is none can undo it, nor save our souls from the curse;

But many a million cometh, and shall they be better or worse?

It is we must answer and hasten, and open wide the door

For the rich man's hurrying terror, and the slow-foot hope

of the poor.

Yea, the voiceless wrath of the wretched, and their un

learned discontent,

We must give it voice and wisdom till the waiting-tide be spent.

Come, then, since all things call us, the living and the dead,

And o'er the weltering tangle a glimmering light is shed.

Come, then, let us cast off fooling, and put by ease and rest, For the Cause alone is worthy till the good days bring the best.

Come, join in the only battle wherein no man can fail, Where whoso fadeth and dieth, yet his deed shall still prevail.

Ah! come, cast off all fooling, for this, at least, we know: That the Dawn and the Day is coming, and forth the Banners go.

731

THE DAYS THAT WERE

WHILES in the early winter eve
We pass amid the gathering night
Some homestead that we had to leave
Years past; and see its candles bright
Shine in the room beside the door
Where we were merry years agone,
But now must never enter more,
As still the dark road drives us on.
E'en so the world of men may turn
At even of some hurried day
And see the ancient glimmer burn
Across the waste that hath no way;
Then, with that faint light in its eyes,
Awhile I bid it linger near
And nurse in waving memories
The bitter sweet of days that were.

732

JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
[1844-1890]

A WHITE ROSE

THE red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,

And the white rose is a dove.

But I send you a cream-white rosebud
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips.

ARTHUR WILLIAM EDGAR O'SHAUGHNESSY

733

[1844-1881]
ODE

WE are the music-makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

734

We, in the ages lying

In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,

And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN

[1841-1901]

Liz

THE crimson light of sunset falls

Through the grey glamour of the murmuring rain, And creeping o'er the housetops crawls

Through the black smoke upon the broken pane,

Steals to the straw on which she lies,

And tints her thin black hair and hollow cheeks,
Her sun-tanned neck, her glistening eyes,-
While faintly, sadly, fitfully she speaks.
But when it is no longer light,

The pale girl smiles, with only One to mark,

And dies upon the breast of Night,

Like trodden snowdrift melting in the dark.

735

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

[1837-1909]

CHORUS FROM 'ATALANTA'

WHEN the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain

Fills the shadows and windy places

With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;

And the brown bright nightingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,

For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil, and all the pair

Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
Maiden most perfect, lady of light,

With a noise of winds and many rivers,

With a clamour of waters, and with might; Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,

Over the splendour and speed of thy feet;

For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers, Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.

Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her,
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!
For the stars and the winds are unto her

As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,

And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.

For winter's rains and ruins are over,

And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover,

The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remember'd is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover

Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,
And the oat is heard above the lyre,
And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushes

The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.