Up in the blue, blue mountains Dewy pastures are sweet: Rest for the Lamb of God Two stark crosses between. All in the April evening, I saw the sheep with their lambs, Henry Newbolt Henry Newbolt was born at Bilston, Staffordshire, in 1862. His early work was frankly imitative of Tennyson; he even attempted to add to the Arthurian legends with a drama in blank verse entitled Mordred (1895). It was not until he wrote his sea-ballads that he struck his own note. With the publication of Admirals All (1897) his fame was widespread. The popularity of his lines was due not so much to the subject-matter of Newbolt's verse as to the breeziness of his music, the solid beat of rhythm, the vigorous swing of his stanzas. DRAKE'S DRUM Drake he's in his hammock an' a thousand mile away, (Capten, art tha sleepin' there below?) Slung atween the round shot in Nombre Dios Bay, An' dreamin' arl the time o' Plymouth Hoe. Yarnder lumes the island, yarnder lie the ships, Wi' sailor lads a-dancin' heel-an'-toe, An' the shore-lights flashin', an' the night-tide dashin' Drake he was a Devon man, an' ruled the Devon seas, (Capten, art tha sleepin' there below?), Rovin' tho' his death fell, he went wi' heart at ease, If the Dons sight Devon, I'll quit the port o' Heaven, An' drum them up the Channel as we drummed them long ago." Drake he's in his hammock till the great Armadas come, (Capten, art tha sleepin' there below?), Slung atween the round shot, listenin' for the drum, An' dreamin' arl the time o' Plymouth Hoe. Call him on the deep sea, call him up the Sound, Call him when ye sail to meet the foe; Where the old trade's plyin' an' the old flag's flyin', They shall find him, ware an' wakin', as they found him long ago. Arthur Symons Born in Wales in 1865, Arthur Symons' first few publications revealed an intellectual rather than an emotional passion. Those volumes were full of the artifice of the period, but Symons's technical skill and frequent analysis often saved the poems from complete decadence. The best of his poetry up to 1902 was collected in two volumes, Poems, published by John Lane Co. The Fool of the World appeared in 1907. IN THE WOOD OF FINVARA I have grown tired of sorrow and human tears; I have grown tired of rapture and love's desire; Till they cloud the soul in the smoke of a windy fire. I would wash the dust of the world in a soft green flood; Here, in the fairy wood, between sea and sea, THE CRYING OF WATER O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand, All night long crying with a mournful cry, As I lie and listen, and cannot understand The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea, O water crying for rest, is it I, is it I? All night long the water is crying to me. Unresting water, there shall never be rest Till the last moon drop and the last tide fail, And the fire of the end begin to burn in the west; And the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea, All life long crying without avail, As the water all night long is crying to me. Born at Sandymount, Dublin, in 1865, the son of John B. Yeats, the Irish artist, the greater part of William Butler Yeats' childhood was spent in Sligo. Here he became imbued with the power and richness of native folk-lore; he drank in the racy quality through the quaint fairy stories and old wives' tales of the Irish peasantry. (Later he published a collection of these same stories.) It was in the activities of a "Young Ireland" society that Yeats became identified with the new spirit; he dreamed of a national poetry that would be written in English and yet would be definitely Irish. In a few years he became one of the leaders in the Celtic revival. He worked incessantly for the cause, both as propagandist and playwright; and, though his mysticism at times seemed the product of a cult rather than a Celt, his symbolic dramas were acknowledged to be full of a haunting, other-world spirituality. (See Preface.) The Hour Glass (1904), his second volume of "Plays for an Irish Theatre," includes his best one-act dramas with the exception of his unforgettable The Land of Heart's Desire (1894). The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) contains several of his most beautiful and characteristic poems; a later collection, The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), displays his recent, more colloquial manner. THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHER I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow And they sigh if the wind but lift up a tress. AN OLD SONG RESUNG Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; In a field by the river my love and I did stand, |