Who can over-ride you?
Let the horses go!
Chime, ye dappled darlings,
Down the roaring blast;
You shall see a fox die
Ere an hour be past.
Go! and rest to-morrow,
Hunting in your dreams,
While our skates are ringing
O'er the frozen streams.
Let the luscious south wind
Breathe in lovers' sighs,
While the lazy gallants
Bask in ladies' eyes.
What does he but soften
Heart alike and pen?
'Tis the hard gray weather
Breeds hard Englishmen.
What's the soft Southwester?
'Tis the ladies' breeze,
Bringing home their true-loves
Out of all the seas:
But the black Northeaster,
Through the snowstorm hurled,
Drives out English hearts of oak
Seaward round the world.
Come, as came our fathers,
Heralded by thee,
Conquering from the eastward,
Lords by land and sea.
Come; and strong within us
Stir the Viking's blood;
Bracing brain and sinew;
Blow, thou wind of God!
She was a fantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn;
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.
I saw her upon nearer view,
A spirit, yet a woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin-liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food,
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveler between life and death:
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect woman, nobly planned
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit still, and bright
With something of an angel-light.
BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
In tattered old slippers that toast at the bars,
And a ragged old jacket perfumed with cigars,
Away from the world, and its toils, and its cares,
I've a snug little kingdom up four pair of stairs.
To mount to this realm is a toil to be sure,
But the fire there is bright, and the air rather pure,
And the view I behold on a sunshiny day
Is grand-through the chimney-pots over the way.
This snug little chamber is crammed in all nooks,
With worthless old knicknacks and silly old books,
And foolish old odds, and foolish old ends,
Cracked bargains from brokers, cheap keepsakes from friends.
Old armor, prints, pictures, pipes, china (all cracked),
Old rickety tables, and chairs broken-backed;
A twopenny treasury wondrous to see!
What matter? 'tis pleasant to you, friend, and me.
No better divan need the Sultan require,
Than the creaking old sofa that basks by the fire;
And 'tis wonderful, surely, what music you get,
From the rickety, ramshackle, wheezy spinet.
That praying-rug came from a Turcoman's camp;
By Tiber once twinkled that brazen old lamp;
A Mameluke fierce yonder dagger has drawn-
'Tis a murderous knife to toast muffins upon.
Long, long, through the hours, and the night and the chimes, Here we talk of old books, and old friends, and old times; As we sit in a fog made of rich Latakie,
This chamber is pleasant to you, friend, and me.
But of all the cheap treasures that garnish my nest,
There's one that I love and I cherish the best;
For the finest of couches; that's padded with hair,
I never would change thee, my cane-bottomed chair.
'Tis a bandy-legged, high-shouldered, worm-eaten seat,
With a creaking old back, and twisted old feet;
But since the fair morning when Fanny sat there,
I bless thee and love thee, old cane-bottomed chair.
If chairs have but feeling, in folding such charms,
A thrill must have passed through your withered old arms.
I looked, and I longed, and I wished in despair;
I wished myself turned to a cane-bottomed chair.
It was but a moment she sate in this place,
She'd a scarf on her neck, and a smile on her face
A smile on her face and a rose in her hair,
And she sate there, and bloomed in my cane-bottomed chair.
And so I have valued my chair ever since,
Like the shrine of a saint, or the throne of a prince,
Saint Fanny, my patroness sweet I declare,
The queen of my heart and my cane-bottomed chair.
When the candles burn low, and the company's gone,
In the silence of night, as I sit here alone—
I sit here alone, but we yet are a pair—
My Fanny I see in my cane-bottomed chair.
She comes from the past and revisits my room;
She looks as she then did, all beauty and bloom,
So smiling and tender, so fresh and so fair,
And yonder she sits in my cane-bottomed chair.
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are drifting, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odors plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving elsewhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean.
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright air uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
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