| |
JOHN OF LAUNOY
I NEVER look’d that he should live so long. | |
| He was a man of that unsleeping spirit, | |
| He seem’d to live by miracle: his food | |
| Was glory, which was poison to his mind | |
| And peril to his body. He was one | 5 |
| Of many thousand such that die betimes, | |
| Whose story is a fragment, known to few. | |
| Then comes the man who has the luck to live, | |
| And he ’s a prodigy. Compute the chances, | |
| And deem there ’s ne’er a one in dangerous times | 10 |
| Who wins the race of glory, but than him | |
| A thousand men more gloriously endow’d | |
| Have fallen upon the course; a thousand others | |
| Have had their fortunes founder’d by a chance, | |
| Whilst lighter barks push’d past them; to whom add | 15 |
| A smaller tally, of the singular few | |
| Who, gifted with predominating powers, | |
| Bear yet a temperate will and keep the peace. | |
| The world knows nothing of its greatest men. | |
| |
REVOLUTIONS
There was a time, so ancient records tell, | 20 |
| There were communities, scarce known by name | |
| In these degenerate days, but once far-fam’d, | |
| Where liberty and justice, hand in hand, | |
| Order’d the common weal; where great men grew | |
| Up to their natural eminence, and none, | 25 |
| Saving the wise, just, eloquent, were great; | |
| Where power was of God’s gift, to whom he gave | |
| Supremacy of merit, the sole means | |
| And broad highway to power, that ever then | |
| Was meritoriously administer’d, | 30 |
| Whilst all its instruments from first to last, | |
| The tools of state for service high or low, | |
| Were chosen for their aptness to those ends | |
| Which virtue meditates. To shake the ground | |
| Deep-founded whereupon this structure stood, | 35 |
| Was verily a crime; a treason it was, | |
| Conspiracies to hatch against this state | |
| And its free innocence. But now, I ask, | |
| Where is there on God’s earth that polity | |
| Which it is not, by consequence converse, | 40 |
| A treason against nature to uphold? | |
| Whom may we now call free? whom great? whom wise? | |
| Whom innocent? the free are only they | |
| Whom power makes free to execute all ills | |
| Their hearts imagine; they alone are great | 45 |
| Whose passions nurse them from their cradles up | |
| In luxury and lewdness,—whom to see | |
| Is to despise, whose aspects put to scorn | |
| Their station’s eminence; the wise, they only | |
| Who wait obscurely till the bolts of heaven | 50 |
| Shall break upon the land, and give them light | |
| Whereby to walk; the innocent,—alas! | |
| Poor innocency lies where four roads meet, | |
| A stone upon her head, a stake driven through her, | |
| For who is innocent that cares to live? | 55 |
| The hand of power doth press the very life | |
| Of innocency out! What then remains | |
| But in the cause of nature to stand forth, | |
| And turn this frame of things the right side up? | |
| For this the hour is come, the sword is drawn, | 60 |
| And tell your masters vainly they resist. | |
| |
SONG
Down lay in a nook my lady’s brach, | |
| And said—my feet are sore, | |
| I cannot follow with the pack | |
| A hunting of the boar. | 65 |
| |
| And though the horn sounds never so clear | |
| With the hounds in loud uproar, | |
| Yet I must stop and lie down here, | |
| Because my feet are sore. | |
| |
| The huntsman when he heard the same, | 70 |
| What answer did he give? | |
| The dog that ’s lame is much to blame, | |
| He is not fit to live. | |
| |
SONG
Quoth tongue of neither maid nor wife | |
| To heart of neither wife nor maid, | 75 |
| Lead we not here a jolly life | |
| Betwixt the shine and shade? | |
| |
| Quoth heart of neither maid nor wife | |
| To tongue of neither wife nor maid, | |
| Thou wag’st, but I am worn with strife, | 80 |
| And feel like flowers that fade. | |
| |
PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE
Dire rebel though he was, | |
| Yet with a noble nature and great gifts | |
| Was he endow’d,—courage, discretion, wit, | |
| An equal temper, and an ample soul, | 85 |
| Rock-bound and fortified against assaults | |
| Of transitory passion, but below | |
| Built on a surging subterranean fire | |
| That stirr’d and lifted him to high attempts. | |
| So prompt and capable, and yet so calm, | 90 |
| He nothing lack’d in sovereignty but the right, | |
| Nothing in soldiership except good fortune. | |
| Wherefore with honor lay him in his grave, | |
| And thereby shall increase of honor come | |
| Unto their arms who vanquish’d one so wise, | 95 |
| So valiant, so renown’d. | |
| |
