O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought

is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up for you the

trills,

For you bouquets and shores acrowding,

flag is flung - for you the bugle

ribboned wreaths for you the

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object

won;

Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

But I, with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Walt Whitman

A WEARY LOT IS THINE

A weary lot is thine, fair maid,
A weary lot is thine!

To pull the thorn thy brow to braid,
And press the rue for wine.
A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien,
A feather of the blue,

A doublet of the Lincoln green
No more of me you knew
My Love!

No more of me you knew.

-

"This morn is merry June, I trow,
The rose is budding fain;

But she shall bloom in winter snow
Ere we two meet again."

He turn'd his charger as he spake
Upon the river shore,

He gave the bridle-reins a shake,

Said "Adieu for evermore

My Love!

And adieu for evermore."

Sir Walter Scott

THE FLIGHT OF YOUTH

There are gains for all our losses,

There are balms for all our pain:
But when youth, the dream, departs,
It takes something from our hearts,
And it never comes again.

We are stronger, and are better,

Under manhood's sterner reign:
Still we feel that something sweet
Followed youth, with flying feet,
And will never come again.

Something beautiful is vanished,
And we sigh for it in vain:
We behold it everywhere,
On the earth, and in the air,

But it never comes again.

Richard Henry Stoddard

THE FLIGHT

Upon a cloud among the stars we stood. The angel raised his hand and looked and said, "Which world, of all yon starry myriad,

Shall we make wing to?" The still solitude Became a harp whereon his voice and mood Made spheral music round his haloed head. I spake for then I had not long been dead "Let me look round upon the vasts, and brood A moment on these orbs ere I decide . . . What is yon lower star that beauteous shines And with soft splendour now incarnadines Our wings? There would I go and there abide." He smiled as one who some child's thought divines: "That is the world where yesternight you died." Lloyd Mifflin

THE GLIMPSE

Just for a day you crossed my life's dull track,
Put my ignobler dreams to sudden shame,
Went your bright way, and left me to fall back
On my own world of poorer deed and aim;

To fall back on my meaner world, and feel Like one who, dwelling 'mid some smoke-dimmed town,

In a brief pause of labour's sullen wheel,

'Scaped from the street's dead dust and factory's frown,

In stainless daylight saw the pure seas roll,
Saw mountains pillaring the perfect sky:
Then journeyed home, to carry in his soul
The torment of the difference till he die.

William Watson

TO STELLA

Stella, think not that I by verse seek fame,
Who seek, who hope, who love, who live but thee;
Thine eyes my pride, thy lips mine history:
If thou praise not, all other praise is shame.
Nor so ambitious am I as to frame

A nest for my young praise in laurel tree:
In truth, I swear, I wish not there should be
Graved in my epitaph a poet's name.
Nor, if I would, could I just title make,
That any laud thereof to me should grow,
Without my plumes from others' wings I take:
For nothing from my wit or will doth flow,
Since all my words thy beauty doth endite,

And Love doth hold my hand and makes me write.

Sir Philip Sidney

June the Twelfth

William Cullen Bryant, Died 1878
Charles Kingsley, Born 1819

HEAR, YE LADIES

Hear, ye ladies that despise
What the mighty Love has done;
Fear examples, and be wise:

Fair Calisto was a nun;

Leda, sailing on the stream

To deceive the hopes of man,
Love accounting but a dream,
Doted on a silver swan;

Danaë, in a brazen tower,

Where no love was, loved a shower.

Hear, ye ladies that are coy,

What the mighty Love can do ;

Fear the fierceness of the boy:

The chaste Moon he makes to woo;

Vesta, kindling holy fires,

Circled round about with spies,
Never dreaming loose desires,

Doting at the altar dies;

Illion, in a short hour, higher

He can build, and once more fire.

John Fletcher.

LIFE

Like to the falling of the star,
Or as the flights of eagles are,
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue,
Or silver drops of morning dew,

Or, like the wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood
E'en such is man, whose borrowed light
Is straight called in, and paid to-night.
The wind blows out, the bubble dies,
The spring entombed in autumn lies,
The dew dries up, the star is shot,
The flight is past — and man forgot!
Henry King

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