Part II

Showing the Lady's letter of a challenge to fight him upon his refusing to wed her in a mask, without knowing who she was.

Night and morning, for a season,

In her closet would she reason

With herself, and often said,

'Why has love my heart betrayed?

'I, that have so many slighted,

Am at length so well requited;

For my griefs are not a few!

Now I find what love can do.

'He that has my heart in keeping,

Though I for his sake be weeping,

Little knows what grief I feel;

But I'll try it out with steel.

'For I will a challenge send him,

And appoint where I'll attend him,

In a grove, without delay,

By the dawning of the day.

'He shall not the least discover

That I am a virgin lover,

By the challenge which I send;

But for justice I contend.

'He has caused sad distraction,

And I come for satisfaction,

Which if he denies to give,

One of us shall cease to live.'

Having thus her mind revealed,

She her letter closed and sealed;

Which, when it came to his hand,

The young man was at a stand.

In her letter she conjured him

For to meet, and well assured him,

Recompence he must afford,

Or dispute it with the sword.

Having read this strange relation,

He was in a consternation;

But, advising with his friend,

He persuades him to attend.

'Be of courage, and make ready,

Faint heart never won fair lady;

In regard it must be so,

I along with you must go.'

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Part 1

Showing Cupid's Conquest Over a Coy Lady of Five Thousand a Year.

Bachelors of every station,

Mark this strange and true relation,

Which in brief to you I bring, -

Never was a stranger thing!

You shall find it worth the hearing;

Loyal love is most endearing,

When it takes the deepest root,

Yielding charms and gold to boot.

Some will wed for love of treasure;

But the sweetest joy and pleasure

Is in faithful love, you'll find,

Graced with a noble mind.

Such a noble disposition

Had this lady, with submission,

Of whom I this sonnet write,

Store of wealth, and beauty bright.

She had left, by a good grannum,

Full five thousand pounds per annum,

Which she held without control;

Thus she did in riches roll.

Though she had vast store of riches,

Which some persons much bewitches,

Yet she bore a virtuous mind,

Not the least to pride inclined.

Many noble persons courted

This young lady, 'tis reported;

But their labour proved in vain,

They could not her favour gain.

Though she made a strong resistance,

Yet by Cupid's true assistance,

She was conquered after all;

How it was declare I shall.

Being at a noble wedding,

Near the famous town of Redding,

A young gentleman she saw,

Who belonged to the law.

As she viewed his sweet behaviour,

Every courteous carriage gave her

New addition to her grief;

Forced she was to seek relief.

Privately she then enquired

About him, so much admired;

Both his name, and where he dwelt, -

Such was the hot flame she felt.

Then, at night, this youthful lady

Called her coach, which being ready,

Homewards straight she did return;

But her heart with flames did burn.

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The Lotos-eaters

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

“Courage!” he said, and pointed toward the land,
“This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.”
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
And like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.

A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
And some thro’ wavering lights and shadows broke,
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sunset-flush’d: and, dew’d with showery drops,
Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.

The charmed sunset linger’d low adown
In the red West: thro’ mountain clefts the dale
Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
Border’d with palm, and many a winding vale
And meadow, set with slender galingale;
A land where all things always seem’d the same!
And round about the keel with faces pale,
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.

Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each, but whoso did receive of them,
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
And deep-asleep he seem’d, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.

They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, “We will return no more”;
And all at once they sang, “Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.”

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For Whom the Bell Tolls

by John Donne

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thine own

Or of thine friend's were.

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

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Fire and Ice

by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favour fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

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Faery Songs

By John Keats

I.

Shed no tear! oh, shed no tear!

The flower will bloom another year.

Weep no more! oh, weep no more!

Young buds sleep in the root's white core.

Dry your eyes! oh, dry your eyes!

For I was taught in Paradise

To ease my breast of melodies,

Shed no tear.

Overhead! look overhead!

'Mong the blossoms white and red

Look up, look up! I flutter now

On this fresh pomegranate bough.

See me! 'tis this silvery bill

Ever cures the good man's ill.

Shed no tear! oh, shed no tear!

The flower will bloom another year.

Adieu, adieu, I fly adieu!

I vanish in the heaven�s blue,

Adieu, adieu!

II.

Ah! woe is me! poor silver-wing!

That I must chant thy lady's dirge,

And death to this fair haunt of spring,

Of melody, and streams of flowery verge,

Poor silver-wing! ah! woe is me!

That I must see

These blossoms snow upon thy lady's pall!

Go, pretty page! and in her ear

Whisper that the hour is near!

Softly tell her not to fear

Such calm favonian burial!

Go, pretty page! and soothly tell,

The blossoms hang by a melting spell,

And fall they must, ere a star wink thrice

Upon her closed eyes,

That now in vain are weeping their last tears,

At sweet life leaving, and these arbours green,

Rich dowry from the Spirit of the Spheres,

Alas! poor Queen!

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When I was young and had no sense

In far-off Mandalay

I lost my heart to a Burmese girl

As lovely as the day.

Her skin was gold, her hair was jet,

Her teeth were ivory;

I said, 'for twenty silver pieces,

Maiden, sleep with me'.

She looked at me, so pure, so sad,

The loveliest thing alive,

And in her lisping, virgin voice,

Stood out for twenty-five.

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The Four Ages Of Man

By William Butler Yeats

He with body waged a fight,

But body won; it walks upright.

Then he struggled with the heart;

Innocence and peace depart.

Then he struggled with the mind;

His proud heart he left behind.

Now his wars on God begin;

At stroke of midnight God shall win.

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The Water

By Henry Lawson

Let others make the songs of love

For our young struggling nation;

But I will sing while e'er I live

The Songs of Irrigation;

For while the white man shall beget

The white man's son and daughter,

The two most precious things for us

Shall still be wheat and water.

We've been drought-ruined in the West,

And ever in my dreaming

I see wide miles of waving crops

And sheets of water gleaming,

On plains where fortune died of thirst

When my brave father sought her,

I see the painted barges pass

Along the winding water.

And now the glorious scheme's afoot,

Our country to deliver

From drought and death on blazing waste,

By long neglected river.

You'll see the boodlers of the world

Rush in from every quarter:

They want the land,, the gold-reefed sand,

And now they'll want the water.

Bright intellects will plan the dykes,

With little gold to gild them,

Bright intellects will plan the dykes,

The people pay to build them;

And when we've made our long canals,

And lakes in every quarter,

Then ours would be the 'guarantee',

The Trust would own the water.

They'd hold the bores and aqueducts,

The water-ways and barges,

And we would live, or we would starve

According to their charges;

From all the Edens in the West

They'd bar our sons and daughters,

They'd hold the land, ten leagues or so,

Each side the rippling waters.

But those who fight to hold their own,

The Lord and time delivers;

As we have held our railway lines,

So we shall hold our rivers.

We'll find the money, as was found

The money spent in slaughter,

To build our dykes and build our dams,

And we shall own the water

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The Reaper and the Flowers

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,

And, with his sickle keen,

He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,

And the flowers that grow between.

"Shall I have naught that is fair?" saith he;

"Have naught but the bearded grain?

Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me,

I will give them all back again."

He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes,

He kissed their drooping leaves;

It was for the Lord of Paradise

He bound them in his sheaves.

"My Lord has need of these flowerets gay,"

The Reaper said, and smiled;

"Dear tokens of the earth are they,

Where he was once a child.

"They shall all bloom in fields of light,

Transplanted by my care,

And saints, upon their garments white,

These sacred blossoms wear."

And the mother gave, in tears and pain,

The flowers she most did love;

She knew she should find them all again

In the fields of light above.

O, not in cruelty, not in wrath,

The Reaper came that day;

'Twas an angel visited the green earth,

And took the flowers away.

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