EN GARDE, MESSIEURS

EN GARDE, Messieurs, too long have I endured,

Too long with patience borne the world's rebuff;

Now he who shoulders ine shall find me rough;

The weakness of an easy soul is cured.

I've shouted, leathern-lunged, when fame or gold

Were won by others, turned to aid my friend;

Dull-pated ever, but such follies end;
Only a fool's content, and in the cold.

My doublet is in tatters, and my purse
Waves in the wind, light as my lady's fan;
Only my sword is bright; with it I plan
To win success, or put my sword to nurse.

I wait no longer for the primal blow;
Henceforth my stroke is first, I give offense;
I claim no more an over-dainty sense,
I brook no blocking where I plan to go.

En garde, Messieurs! and if my hand is hard,

Remember I've been buffeted at will;

I SERVED IN A GREAT CAUSE

I SERVED in a great cause: Long had I doubted the call I heard, wantoning the seasons dead;

The opportune days were deserts, the sunlight fell on a waste,

But the dawn brought me face to face with itself, with the opening flowers: I looked upon my sea casting its wrecks down the shore in the storm, The wrecks, my useless volitions, disor dered, missent, ill-protected, to the deep, The resurrected programme of self veined red with the blood of my birth,

Drawing thy tide from the city up the bay,

Lake,

--

A blue eye in the wood, -
And on its brink a moment's space
All motionless they stood:
When, suddenly, the silence broke
With fifty bowstrings' twang,
And hurtling through the drowsy air
Full fifty arrows sang.

Ah, better for those gentlemen,
Than horn and slender spear,
Were morion and buckler true,
A-hunting of the deer.

Not one of that brave company
Shall hunt the deer again;
Some fell beside the Brownies' Pool,
Some dropt in dell or glen;
An arrow pierced Sir Morven's brenst,
His horse plunged in the lake,
And swimming to the farther bank
He left a bloody wake.

Ah, what avails the silver horn,
And what the slender spear?
There's other quarry in the wood
Beside the fallow deer!

O'er ridge and hollow sped the horse

Besprent with blood and foam, Nor slackened pace until at eve He brought his master home.

bounds must be,

When we and our sons have forever

passed away.

You shall not change, but a nobler race of

men

Shall walk beneath the stars and wander by the shore;

I cannot guess their glory, but I think the sky and sea

Will bring to them more gladness than they brought to us of yore.

THE VIOLIN'S COMPLAINT

HONEST Stradivari made me:
With the gift of love he blest me;
Once, delight, a master played me,
Love awoke when he caressed me !

Oh the deep, ecstatic burning!
Oh the secrets low and tender!
Oh the passion and the yearning
At our love's complete surrender!

Heartless men, so long to hide me
With the costly toys you cherish;
I'm a soul-again confide me
To a lover, ere I perish!