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Poems

Год написания книги
2017
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I, too, when death is past, one day shall grasp
That end I know not now;
And over you will bend me down, all filled
With dawn's mysterious glow.

I'll learn what means this exile, what this shroud
Enveloping your prime;
And why the truth and sweetness of one man
Seem to all others crime.

I'll hear – though midst these dismal boughs you sang —
How came it, that for me,
Who every pity feel for every woe,
So vast a gloom could be.

I'll know why night relentless holds me, why
So great a pile of doom:
Why endless frost enfolds me, and methinks
My nightly bed's a tomb:

Why all these battles, all these tears, regrets,
And sorrows were my share;
And why God's will of me a cypress made,
When roses bright ye were.

    MARWOOD TUCKER.

TO THE CANNON "VICTOR HUGO."

{Bought with the proceeds of Readings of "Les Châtiments" during

the Siege of Paris.}

{1872.}

Thou deadly crater, moulded by my muse,
Cast thou thy bronze into my bowed and wounded heart,
And let my soul its vengeance to thy bronze impart!

L'ART D'ÊTRE GRANDPÊRE.

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

("Prenez garde à ce petit être.")

{LAUS PUER: POEM V.}

Take heed of this small child of earth;
He is great: in him is God most high.
Children before their fleshly birth
Are lights in the blue sky.

In our brief bitter world of wrong
They come; God gives us them awhile.
His speech is in their stammering tongue,
And His forgiveness in their smile.

Their sweet light rests upon our eyes:
Alas! their right to joy is plain.
If they are hungry, Paradise
Weeps, and if cold, Heaven thrills with pain.

The want that saps their sinless flower
Speaks judgment on Sin's ministers.
Man holds an angel in his power.
Ah! deep in Heaven what thunder stirs.

When God seeks out these tender things,
Whom in the shadow where we keep,
He sends them clothed about with wings,
And finds them ragged babes that weep!

    Dublin University Magazine.

THE EPIC OF THE LION

("Un lion avait pris un enfant.")

{XIII.}

A Lion in his jaws caught up a child —
Not harming it – and to the woodland, wild
With secret streams and lairs, bore off his prey —
The beast, as one might cull a bud in May.
It was a rosy boy, a king's own pride,
A ten-year lad, with bright eyes shining wide,
And save this son his majesty beside
Had but one girl, two years of age, and so
The monarch suffered, being old, much woe;
His heir the monster's prey, while the whole land
In dread both of the beast and king did stand;
Sore terrified were all.

By came a knight
That road, who halted, asking, "What's the fright?"
They told him, and he spurred straight for the site!
The beast was seen to smile ere joined they fight,
The man and monster, in most desperate duel,
Like warring giants, angry, huge, and cruel.
Stout though the knight, the lion stronger was,
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