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Sir Walter Ralegh: The Man With A Hoe
Sir Walter Ralegh: The Man With A Hoe
But could youth last, and love still breed, What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Had joys no date, nor age no need, Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Then these delights my mind might move Are Plato and the swing of the Pleiades?
To live with thee, and be thy love. What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop;
By Christopher Marlowe Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Come live with me and be my love, Cries protest to the Powers that made the world,
And we will all the pleasures prove, A protest that is also prophecy.
That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields. O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
And we will sit upon the Rocks, This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks, How will you ever straighten up this shape;
By shallow Rivers to whose falls Touch it again with immortality;
Melodious birds sing Madrigals. Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
And I will make thee beds of Roses Make right the immemorial infamies,
And a thousand fragrant posies, Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of Myrtle;
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the future reckon with this Man?
A gown made of the finest wool
How answer his brute question in that hour
Which from our pretty Lambs we pull;
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
With buckles of the purest gold;
With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the
A belt of straw and Ivy buds,
world,
With Coral clasps and Amber studs:
After the silence of the centuries?
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd
Each like a corpse within its grave, until One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
V
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) What if my leaves are falling like its own!
With living hues and odours plain and hill: The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear! Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
II
Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion, Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, And, by the incantation of this verse,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
On the blue surface of thine aëry surge, Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
Of the horizon to the zenith's height, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams,
The Inevitable Day O soul, be chang’d into little water-drops,
And fall into the ocean, ne’er be found!
FAUSTUS: Ah, Faustus,
[Enter DEVILS.]
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
My God, my god, look not so fierce on me!
And then thou must be damn’d perpetually!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!
That time may cease, and midnight never come;
I’ll burn my books! – Ah, Mephistopheles!
Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make
(Exeunt DEVILS with FAUSTUS)
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul!
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!
By Thomas Gray
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn’d. The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
O, I’ll leap up to my God! – Who pulls me down? – The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
firmament!
One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah, my Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Christ! – Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ! And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;
Yet will I call on him: O, spare me, Lucifer! –
Where is it now? ’tis gone: and see, where God Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r
Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows! The moping owl does to the moon complain
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me, Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!
No, no! Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Then will I headlong run into the earth: Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,
Earth, gape! O, no, it will not harbour me! Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
You stars that reign’d at my nativity, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist. The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,
Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud[s],
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
That, when you vomit forth into the air, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths,
So that my soul may but ascend to heaven! For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
[The clock strikes the half-hour.] Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
Ah, half the hour is past! ’twill all be past anon No children run to lisp their sire's return,
O God, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Yet for Christ’s sake, whose blood hath ransom’d Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
me, How jocund did they drive their team afield!
Impose some end to my incessant pain; How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,
A hundred thousand, and at last be sav’d! Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
O, no end is limited to damned souls! Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
The short and simple annals of the poor.
Or why is this immortal that thou hast?
Ah, Pythagoras’ metempsychosis, were that true, The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
This soul should fly from me, and I be chang’d And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Unto some brutish beast! all beasts are happy, Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
For, when they die, The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Their souls are soon dissolv’d in elements;
Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
But mine must live still to be plagu’d in hell.
If Mem'ry o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Curs’d be the parents that engender’d me! Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
That hath depriv’d thee of the joys of heaven.
[The clock strikes twelve.] Can storied urn or animated bust
O, it strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air, Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell! Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
[Thunder and lightning.]
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd, "There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre. That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage, "Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
And froze the genial current of the soul. Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would rove,
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Full many a gem of purest ray serene, Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen, "One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Along the heath and near his fav'rite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, "The next with dirges due in sad array
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. Slow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne.
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,
Th' applause of list'ning senates to command, Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, THE EPITAPH
And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes, Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib'd alone Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd; And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind, Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heav'n did a recompense as largely send:
The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, (There they alike in trembling hope repose)
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray; The bosom of his Father and his God.
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.