English

III. THE COUNCIL ON THE POWDER

. . . Then Sitting Bull arose;
And through the stirring crowd a murmur 'woke
As of a river yielding to the stroke
Of some deft swimmer. No heroic height
Proclaimed him peer among the men of might,
Nor was his bearing such as makes men serve.
Bull-torsed, squat-necked, with legs that kept a curve
To fit the many ponies he had backed,
He scarcely pleased the eyes. But what he lacked
Of visible authority to mould
Men's lives, was compensated manifold

Tell me, what is a poet's thought?
Is it on the sudden born?
Is it from the starlight caught?
Is it by the tempest taught?
Or by whispering morn?

Was it cradled in the brain?
Chained awhile, or nursed in night?
Was it wrought with toil and pain?
Did it bloom and fade again,
Ere it burst to light?

No more question of its birth,
Rather love its better part!
'Tis a thing of sky and earth,
Gathering all its golden worth
From the poet's heart.

WE are the sweet Flowers,
Born of sunny showers,
Think, whene'er you see us, what our beauty saith:
Utterance mute and bright
Of some unknown delight,
We fill the air with pleasure, by our simple breath:
All who see us, love us;
We befit all places;
Unto sorrow we give smiles; and unto graces, graces.

Mark our ways, how noiseless
All, and sweetly voiceless,
Though the March winds pipe to make our passage clear;
Not a whisper tells

ROSES

W E are blushing Roses,
Bending with our fulness,
'Midst our close-capped sister buds,
Warming the green coolness.

Whatsoe'er of beauty
Yearns and yet reposes,
Blush, and bosom, and sweet breath,
Took a shape in roses.

Hold one of us lightly, —
See from what a slender
Stalk we bow'r in heavy blooms,

And so I come back to this funny old town
Where professors argue each other down
And every one is in seven movements
For every kind of Modern Improvements;
And there isn't a moment of real ease,
But students come from the seven seas
And we boast a professor of Neo-Chinese —
A thing to astonish the upland heather —
And more than the universities
Of all High Germany put together
Can show the like of.
The upland heather
It stretches for miles and miles and miles
Wine-purple and brooding and ancient and blasted,

CANTO II

Of the supper that Apollo gave his visitors, and with what sort of spectacle and of after-course he amazed them.

Y OU remember those supper-room walls, made of flowers,
Which beat whatsoever for dead paramours
The lords of the east in white temples have done,
Where in emeralds and rubies fond epitaphs run?
Well, — a gallery lurked sweetly behind them; and there
We spectators, scarcely knowing what took us, or where,
Got somehow, as soon as the guests had down sat 'em,

CANTO II

How the Visitors were presented to Apollo, and what sort of a Ball he gave them.

Now as to the names (how much less than the natures,
And writings, and beauties!) of all the dear creatures,
I boast not to mention the whole of them; — nay,
I live so sequestered, so out of the way,
That perhaps I don't know them, — perhaps shall omit
Some bud of such promise, such sweet virgin wit,
Or for want of due reading, shall fail in due notice

Showing what sort of rebuke Apollo gave his nymphs, and how gods furnish houses.

L O ! I, who in verse flowing smooth as the wine
( " Modest youth!") once recorded a dinner divine,
And showed the great god of the sun entertaining
With wit and cracked walnuts the poets then reigning;
Now sing, in a dance fitter still for the crupper
Whose wings bore me thither, a more divine supper;
For that was of man, though of Phoebus; but this is
Of Phoebus, and woman, and blue-stocking blisses.

ROBIN Hood is an outlaw bold,
Under the greenwood tree;
Bird, nor stag, nor morning air,
Is more at large than he

They sent against him twenty men,
Who joined him laughing-eyed;
They sent against him thirty more,
And they remained beside.

All the stoutest of the train
That grew in Gamelyn wood,
Whether they came with these or not,
Are now with Robin Hood.

It was the pleasant season yet,
When the stones at cottage doors
Dry quickly while the roads are wet,
After the silver showers.

The green leaves they looked greener still,
And the thrush, renewing his tune,
Shook a loud note from his gladsome bill
Into the bright blue noon.

Robin Hood's mother looked out, and said,
" It were a shame and a sin,
For fear of getting a wet head,