TO AN ATHLETE DYING YOUNG The time you won your town the race And home we brought you shoulder-high. Today, the road all runners come, Smart lad, to slip betimes away Eyes the shady night has shut And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears: Now you will not swell the rout And the name died before the man. So set, before its echoes fade, And round that early-laurelled head Katharine Tynan was born at Dublin in 1861, and educated at the Convent of St. Catherine at Drogheda. She married Henry Hinkson, a lawyer and author, in 1893. Her poetry is largely actuated by religious themes, and much of her verse is devotional and yet distinctive. In New Poems (1911) she is at her best; graceful, meditative and with occasional notes of deep pathos. SHEEP AND LAMBS All in the April morning, The sheep with their little lambs I thought on the Lamb of God. The lambs were weary, and crying I thought on the Lamb of God Up in the blue, blue mountains Rest for the little feet. Rest for the Lamb of God Up on the hill-top green; Only a cross of shame Two stark crosses between. All in the April evening, I saw the sheep with their lambs, And thought on the Lamb of God. 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, Slung atween the round shot in Nombre Dios Bay, An' the shore-lights flashin', an' the night-tide dashin' Drake he was a Devon man, an' ruled the Devon seas, If the Dons sight Devon, I'll quit the port o' Heaven, 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, 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. Born in Wales in 1865, Arthur Symons' first few publications revealed an intellectual rather than an emotional passion. Those volumes, Days and Nights (1889), Silhouettes (1892), London Nights (1895), were full of the artifice of the period, but Symons' technical skill and frequent analysis often saved the poems from complete decadence. The best of Symons' poems have a rare delicacy of touch; they breathe an intimacy in which the sophistication is less cynical, the sensuousness more restrained. His various collections of essays and stories reflect the same peculiar blend of intellectuality and perfumed romanticism that one finds in his poems. Most of his poetry up to 1902 was collected in two volumes, Poems. 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 between sea and sea, in the fairy wood, I have found a delicate, wave-green solitude. 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. WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 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. A definitive Collected Works in six volumes was published by The Macmillan Company in 1924. This age has produced few lyrics more haunting than Yeats', few indeed as musical as those here reprinted. THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. |