Poems Every Child Should Know Part 19

Pibroch of Donuil Dhu, Pibroch of Donuil, Wake thy wild voice anew, Summon Clan Conuil.

Come away, come away, Hark to the summons!

Come in your war-array, Gentles and commons.

Come from deep glen, and From mountain so rocky, The war-pipe and pennon Are at Inverlochy.

Come every hill-plaid, and True heart that wears one, Come every steel blade, and Strong hand that bears one.

Leave untended the herd, The flock without shelter; Leave the corpse uninterr'd, The bride at the altar; Leave the deer, leave the steer, Leave nets and barges: Come with your fighting gear, Broadswords and targes.

Come as the winds come, when Forests are rended; Come as the waves come, when Navies are stranded: Faster come, faster come, Faster and faster, Chief, va.s.sal, page, and groom, Tenant and master.

Fast they come, fast they come; See how they gather!

Wide waves the eagle plume Blended with heather, Cast your plaids, draw your blades, Forward each man set!

Pibroch of Donuil Dhu Knell for the onset!

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

MARCO BOZZARIS.

"Marco Bozzaris," by Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867), was in my old school-reader. Boys and girls liked it then and they like it now. This is another of the poems that was not born to die.

At midnight, in his guarded tent, The Turk was dreaming of the hour When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, Should tremble at his power: In dreams, through camp and court, he bore The trophies of a conqueror; In dreams his song of triumph heard; Then wore his monarch's signet ring: Then pressed that monarch's throne--a king; As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing, As Eden's garden bird.

At midnight, in the forest shades, Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band, True as the steel of their tried blades, Heroes in heart and hand.

There had the Persian's thousands stood, There had the glad earth drunk their blood On old Plataea's day; And now there breathed that haunted air The sons of sires who conquered there, With arm to strike and soul to dare, As quick, as far as they.

An hour pa.s.sed on--the Turk awoke; That bright dream was his last; He woke--to hear his sentries shriek, "To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!"

He woke--to die midst flame, and smoke, And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke, And death-shots falling thick and fast As lightnings from the mountain-cloud; And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, Bozzaris cheer his band: "Strike--till the last armed foe expires; Strike--for your altars and your fires; Strike--for the green graves of your sires; G.o.d--and your native land!"

They fought--like brave men, long and well; They piled that ground with Moslem slain, They conquered--but Bozzaris fell, Bleeding at every vein.

His few surviving comrades saw His smile when rang their proud hurrah, And the red field was won; Then saw in death his eyelids close Calmly, as to a night's repose, Like flowers at set of sun.

Come to the bridal-chamber, Death!

Come to the mother's, when she feels, For the first time, her first-born's breath; Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet-song, and dance, and wine; And thou art terrible--the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know, or dream, or fear Of agony, are thine.

But to the hero, when his sword Has won the battle for the free, Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word; And in its hollow tones are heard The thanks of millions yet to be.

Come, when his task of fame is wrought-- Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought-- Come in her crowning hour--and then Thy sunken eye's unearthly light To him is welcome as the sight Of sky and stars to prisoned men; Thy grasp is welcome as the hand Of brother in a foreign land; Thy summons welcome as the cry That told the Indian isles were nigh To the world-seeking Genoese, When the land wind, from woods of palm, And orange-groves, and fields of balm, Blew o'er the Haytian seas.

Bozzaris! with the storied brave Greece nurtured in her glory's time, Rest thee--there is no prouder grave, Even in her own proud clime.

She wore no funeral-weeds for thee, Nor bade the dark hea.r.s.e wave its plume Like torn branch from death's leafless tree In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, The heartless luxury of the tomb; But she remembers thee as one Long loved and for a season gone; For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babe's first lisping tells; For thine her evening prayer is said At palace-couch and cottage-bed; Her soldier, closing with the foe, Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow, His plighted maiden, when she fears For him the joy of her young years, Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears; And she, the mother of thy boys, Though in her eye and faded cheek Is read the grief she will not speak, The memory of her buried joys, And even she who gave thee birth, Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth, Talk of thy doom without a sigh; For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's: One of the few, the immortal names, That were not born to die.

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.

THE DEATH OF NAPOLEON.

"The Death of Napoleon," by Isaac McClellan (1806-99), was yet another of the good old reader songs taught us by a teacher of good taste. We love those teachers more the older we grow.

Wild was the night, yet a wilder night Hung round the soldier's pillow; In his bosom there waged a fiercer fight Than the fight on the wrathful billow.

A few fond mourners were kneeling by, The few that his stern heart cherished; They knew, by his glazed and unearthly eye, That life had nearly perished.

They knew by his awful and kingly look, By the order hastily spoken, That he dreamed of days when the nations shook, And the nations' hosts were broken.

He dreamed that the Frenchman's sword still slew, And triumphed the Frenchman's eagle, And the struggling Austrian fled anew, Like the hare before the beagle.

The bearded Russian he scourged again, The Prussian's camp was routed, And again on the hills of haughty Spain His mighty armies shouted.

Over Egypt's sands, over Alpine snows, At the pyramids, at the mountain, Where the wave of the lordly Danube flows, And by the Italian fountain,

On the snowy cliffs where mountain streams Dash by the Switzer's dwelling, He led again, in his dying dreams, His hosts, the proud earth quelling.

Again Marengo's field was won, And Jena's b.l.o.o.d.y battle; Again the world was overrun, Made pale at his cannon's rattle.

He died at the close of that darksome day, A day that shall live in story; In the rocky land they placed his clay, "And left him alone with his glory."

ISAAC MCCLELLAN.

HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE.

How sleep the brave, who sink to rest By all their country's wishes blest!

When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, Returns to deck their hallow'd mould, She there shall dress a sweeter sod Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.

By fairy hands their knell is rung, By forms unseen their dirge is sung: There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall a while repair To dwell a weeping hermit there!

WILLIAM COLLINS.

THE FLAG GOES BY.

"The Flag Goes By" is included out of regard to a boy of eleven years who pleased me by his great appreciation of it. It teaches the lesson of reverence to our great national symbol. It is published by permission of the author, Henry Holcomb Bennett, of Ohio. (1863-.)

Hats off!

Along the street there comes A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums, A flash of colour beneath the sky: Hats off!

The flag is pa.s.sing by!

Blue and crimson and white it s.h.i.+nes Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines.

Hats off!

The colours before us fly; But more than the flag is pa.s.sing by.

Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great, Fought to make and to save the State: Weary marches and sinking s.h.i.+ps; Cheers of victory on dying lips;

Days of plenty and years of peace; March of a strong land's swift increase; Equal justice, right, and law, Stately honour and reverend awe;

Sign of a nation, great and strong Toward her people from foreign wrong: Pride and glory and honour,--all Live in the colours to stand or fall.

Hats off!