v.1,2
C. M.
Assistance and victory in the spiritual warfare.

For ever blessed be the Lord,
My Savior and my shield;
He sends his Spirit with his word,
To arm me for the field.

When sin and hell their force unite,
He makes my soul his care,
Instructs me to the heav'nly fight,
And guards me through the war.

A friend and helper so divine
Does my weak courage raise;
He makes the glorious vict'ry mine,
And his shall be the praise.

The heads of strong old age are beautiful
Beyond all grace of youth. They have strange quiet,
Integrity, health, soundness, to the full
They've dealt with life and been tempered by it.
A young man must not sleep; his years are war,
Civil and foreign but the former's worse;
But the old can breathe in safety now that they are
Forgetting what youth meant, the being perverse,
Running the fool's gauntlet and being cut
By the whips of the five senses. As for me,
If I should wish to live long it were but
To trade those fevers for tranquillity,

This day winding down now
At God speeded summer's end
In the torrent salmon sun,
In my seashaken house
On a breakneck of rocks
Tangled with chirrup and fruit,
Froth, flute, fin, and quill
At a wood's dancing hoof,
By scummed, starfish sands
With their fishwife cross
Gulls, pipers, cockles, and snails,
Out there, crow black, men
Tackled with clouds, who kneel
To the sunset nets,
Geese nearly in heaven, boys
Stabbing, and herons, and shells
That speak seven seas,
Eternal waters away
From the cities of nine

Here Freedom stood by slaughtered friend and foe,
And, ere the wrath paled or that sunset died,
Looked through the ages; then, with eyes aglow,
Laid them to wait that future, side by side.

(Lines for a monument to the American and British soldiers of the Revolutionary War who fell on the Princeton battlefield and were buried in one grave.)

Now lamp-lit gardens in the blue dusk shine
Through dogwood, red and white;
And round the gray quadrangles, line by line,
The windows fill with light,

This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak
of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour,
dominion or power,
except War.
Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.
The subject of it is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are not to this generation,
This is in no sense consolatory.

They may be to the next.
All the poet can do to-day is to warn.
That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
If I thought the letter of this book would last,

Pos de chantar m'es pres talentz,
Farai un vers don sui dolenz:
Mais non serai obedienz,
En Peitau ni en Lemozi. Translation:

As the desire to sing takes hold of me,
I will make a song about my sorrow;
I will no longer be a servant of love
In Poitou nor in Limousin.


Qu'era m'en irai en eisil:
En gran paor, en grand peril,
En guerra laissarai mon fil,
E faran li mal siei vezi.

For now I will go into exile:
In great fear, in great peril,
In war, I will leave my son

Courage mes gars:
La guerre est proche.

I plant my little plot of beans,
I sit beneath my cyprus tree;
I do not know what trouble means,
I cultivate tranquillity . . .
But as to-day my walk I made
In all serenity and cheer,
I saw cut in an agave blade:
"Courage, my comrades, war is near!"

Seward I went, my feet were slow,
Awhile I dowsed upon the shore;
And then I roused with fear for lo!
I saw six grisly ships of war.
A grim, grey line of might and dread
Against the skyline looming sheer:

Did you ever hear the story of the loyal cat? Meyow!
Who was faithful to the flag, and ever follow'd that? Meyow!
Oh, she had a happy home beneath a southern sky,
But she pack'd her goods and left it when our troups came nigh,
And she fell into the collumn with a low glad cry, Meyow!

Poor Kitty Popcorn!
Burried in a snow drift now
Never more shall ring the music of your charming song, Meyow!
Never more shall ring the music of your charming song, Meyow!

Round her neck she wore a ribbon -- she was black as jet -- Meyow!

[Polyhymnia: Describing, The honourable Triumph at Tylt,
before her Maiestie, on the 17. of Nouember, last past,
being the first day of the three and thirtith yeare of
her Highnesse raigne. With Sir Henrie Lea, his resignation
of honour at Tylt, to her Maiestie, and receiued by the right
honourable, the Earle of Cumberland.]

[Polyhimnia. Entituled, with all dutie to the Right
Honourable, Lord Compton of Compton.]


Therefore, when thirtie two were come and gone,
Years of her raigne, daies of her countries peace,

A gaunt built woman and her son-in-law—
A broad-faced fellow, with such flesh as shows
Nothing but easy nature—and his wife,
The woman’s daughter, who spills all her talk
Out of a wide mouth, but who has eyes as gray
As Connemara, where the mountain-ash
Shows berries red indeed: they enter now—
Our country singers!
“Sing, my good woman, sing us some romance
That has been round your chimney-nooks so long
’Tis nearly native; something blown here
And since made racy—like yon tree, I might say,