(from Henry V, spoken by King Henry) Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility:
(from As You Like It, spoken by Jaques)
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms; And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
‘Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:Σίβυλλα τίθέλεις; respondebat illa:άποθανεîνθέλω.’ For Ezra Pound il miglior fabbro. I. The Burial of the Dead
Lying asleep walking Last night I met my father Who seemed pleased to see me. He wanted to speak. I saw His mouth saying something But the dream had no sound.
* In the shape of a submarine frost lengthens on a window. Outside, winter sparrows perch in rhinoceros-colored trees. Mare's tails chase whitely past brick chimneys. I have seen those lights before,
Sung on the occasion of decorating the graves of the Confederate dead, at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S. C., 1866 Sleep sweetly in your humble graves, Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause!—
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon’s roar;— The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more!
Man’s Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense, that tho’ she guide his highest flight heav’nward, and teach him dignity morals manners and human comfort, she can delicatly and dangerously bedizen the rioting joys that fringe the sad pathways of Hell. Not without alliance of the animal senses hath she any miracle: Lov’st thou in the blithe hour
Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight? Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars? List to the yarn, as my grandmother’s father the sailor told it to me.
Our foe was no skulk in his ship I tell you, (said he,) His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be; Along the lower’d eve he came horribly raking us.
We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touch’d, My captain lash’d fast with his own hands.
Act 2, Scene 2 Clindor, a young picaresque hero, has been living by his wits in Paris, but has now drifted to Bordeaux, to become the valet of a braggart bravo named Matamore. He is chiefly employed as a go-between, carrying Matamore's amorous messages to the beautiful Isabelle—who only suffers the master because she is in love with the messenger. clindor Sir, why so restless? Is there any need, With all your fame, for one more glorious deed? Have you not slain enough bold foes by now,
There’s a barrel-organ carolling across a golden street In the City as the sun sinks low; And the music's not immortal; but the world has made it sweet And fulfilled it with the sunset glow; And it pulses through the pleasures of the City and the pain That surround the singing organ like a large eternal light; And they’ve given it a glory and a part to play again In the Symphony that rules the day and night.
We are circling, glad of the battle: we joy in the smell of the smoke. Fight on in the hell of the trenches: we publish your names with a croak! Ye will lie in dim heaps when the sunset blows cold on the reddening sand; Yet fight, for the dead will have wages—a death-clutch of dust in the hand.
White founts falling in the courts of the sun, And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared, It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard, It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips, For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships. They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy, They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
All winter long you listened for the boom Of distant cannon wheeled into their place. Sometimes outside beneath a bombers’ moon You stood alone to watch the searchlights trace
Their careful webs against the boding sky, While miles away on Munich’s vacant square The bombs lunged down with an unruly cry Whose blast you saw yet could but faintly hear.
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