In Flanders Field by John McCrae

by: Lord Byron (1788-1824)

HERE was a sound of revelry by night,

And Belgium’s capital had gathered then

Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright

The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men.

A thousand hearts beat happily; and when

Music arose with its voluptuous swell,

Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,

And all went merry as a marriage bell;

But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!

Or whispering, with white lips — “The foe! they come! they come!  “Did ye not hear it? — No; ’twas but the wind,

Or the car rattling o’er the stony street;

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;

No sleep till morn, when youth and pleasure meet

To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

But hark! — that heavy sound breaks in once more,

As if the clouds its echo would repeat;

And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before;

Arm! arm! it is — it is — the cannon’s opening roar!

 Within a windowed niche of that high hall

Sate Brunswick’s fated chieftain; he did hear

That sound the first amidst the festival,

And caught its tone with death’s prophetic ear;

And when they smiled because he deemed it near,

His heart more truly knew that peal too well

Which stretched his father on a bloody bier,

And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell;

He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell.

 Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro,

And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress,

And cheeks all pale, which, but an hour ago,

Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness.

And there were sudden partings, such as press

The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs

Which ne’er might be repeated; who would guess

If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,

Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise!

 And there was mounting in hot haste; the steed,

The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,

Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,

And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;

And the deep thunder, peal on peal afar;

And near, the beat of the alarming drum

Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;

While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,

Or whispering, with white lips — “The foe! they come! they come!”

  “The Eve of Waterloo” is reprinted from Historic Poems and Ballads. Ed. Rupert S. Holland. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1912.

Retrieved from the worldwide web on September 14, 2013 from www.poetry-archive.com

 

While History’s Muse by Thomas Moore

While History’s Muse the memorial was keeping
Of all that the dark hand of Destiny weaves,
Beside her the Genius of Erin stood weeping,
For hers was the story that blotted the leaves.
But oh! how the tear in her eyelids grew bright,
When, after whole pages of sorrow and shame,
She saw History write,
With a pencil of light
That illumed the whole volume, her Wellington’s name.

“Yet still the last crown of thy toils is remaining,
The grandest, the purest, even thou hast yet known;
Though proud was thy task, other nations unchaining,
Far prouder to heal the deep wounds of thy own.
At the foot of that throne, for whose weal thou hast stood,
Go, plead for the land that first cradled thy fame,
And, bright o’er the flood
Of her tears, and her blood,
Let the rainbow of Hope be her Wellington’s name.”

Retrieved from the worldwide web on September 14th, 2013 from www.famouspoetsandpoems.com

 

PADDY WACK JIG

credit: Marvin Miller

Charlene’s Source: youtube

Share This

 

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

Retrieved from the worldwide web on August 15th, 2013 from www.onlineliterature.com

 

The Wreck of The Hesperus

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-1882

 

It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sail’d in the wint’ry sea,
And the skipper had ta’en his little daughter
To bear him company.Blue were her eyes, as the fairy flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds
That open in the month of May.The skipper he stood beside the helm,
With his pipe in his mouth,
And watch’d hov, the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now west, now south.

Then up and spoke an old sailor,
Had sailed the Spanish Main,
“I pray thee, put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.

Last night the moon had a golden ring,
But tonight no moon we see.”
The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laugh’d he.

Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;
She shudder’d and paus’d like a frighted steed,
Then leap’d her cable’s length.

“Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
And do not tremble so,
For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever the wind did blow.”

“Dear father! I hear the church bell ring,
Oh say what may it be?”
” ‘Tis a fog bell on a rock-bound coast,
We must steer for the open sea.” “Dear father! I see a gleaming light
O say what may it be?”
But the father answer’d never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.Lash’d to the helm all stiff and stark,
With his pale face to the skies;
The lantern gleam’d thro’ the falling snow
On his fix’d and glassy eyes.Then the maiden clasp’d her hands, and pray’d
That saved she might be;
And she thought of Him who still’d the waves
On the lake of Galilee.

But fast thro’ the midnight dark and drear,
Thro’ the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the bark swept on
To the reef of ‘Norman’s Woe’.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheath’d in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass she stove and sank,
Ho! Ho! the breakers roar’d!

At daybreak on the bleak sea beach
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair
Float by on a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And her streaming hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the waves did fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Oh! save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of ‘Norman’s Woe’.

A few of the “actual stories” regarding the origin of this poem.

---

After the horrific wrecking of the schooner Hesperus on the reef of Norman’s Woe, off Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1839, Longfellow was inspired to write one of his best-known poems. One of the bodies washed ashore was, in fact, lashed to a spar. This gave the poet his theme.

---

The real Hesperus was docked when it was hit by such strong winds that it sailed across the street into the third story of a building. Longfellow had read about the 20 odd shipwrecks from this storm but couldn’t get the picture of a woman tied to a mast washed up on shore out of his head. This prompted him to write the poem although he changed the victim from a 45 year old woman to a young girl.

---

The actual Hesperus was a 3-mast coastal schooner docked at Boston’s Long Wharf at the time of the hurricane. The wreck from which the morbid details were obtained was actually the brig Favorite, wrecked on the Norman’s Woe rocks just outside of Gloucester Harbor, Massachusetts. The Favorite was indeed a total loss with all on board, including a female.

---

Apparently, there was a ship named “Herperus.” But that’s not the one that Longfellow immortalized. His poem is “The Wreck of the Hesperus” (note the “s” in the middle, not the “r”).

---

The Great Blizzards of 1839 inspired the great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to write The Wreck of the Hesperus

---

On December 17, 1839 a disastrous storm hit the Atlantic coast, from Boston to Gloucester harbor. Seventeen schooners were wrecked and 40 lives were lost. Unable to sleep after reading the news in the Boston Post, Longfellow sat up one night long after midnight and composed the poem effortlessly.

---

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, based his ballad, “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” on the destruction of the Helen Eliza, which crashed off Peaks Island’s shore in 1869.

credit: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Charlene’s Source: ingeb.org

_____________________________________________________________

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

 

The Landlord’s Tale; Paul Revere’s Ride

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,–
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm.”

Then he said “Good-night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street
Wanders and watches, with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,–
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell

Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,–
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now he gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,

Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, black and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadow brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

Video Credit: @Jim Clark 2012 hyperbolelad@hotmail.com

Poetry Credit: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Charlene’s Source: youtube

The Charge of the Light Brigade
by Lord Alfred Tennyson

  

Memorializing Events in the Battle of Balaclava, October 25, 1854
Written 1854

 

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
1809-1892

 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1809-1892

This poem was written to memorialize a suicidal charge by light cavalry over open terrain by British forces in the Battle of Balaclava (Ukraine) in the Crimean War (1854-56). 247 men of the 637 in the charge were killed or wounded. Britain entered the war, which was fought by Russia against Turkey, Britain and France, because Russia sought to control the Dardanelles. Russian control of the Dardanelles threatened British sea routes.Many in the west best know of this war today because of Florence Nightingale, who trained and led nurses aiding the wounded during the war in a manner innovative for those times. The War was also noteworthy as an early example of the work of modern war correspondents.

 

Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns’ he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismay’d ?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d & thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel’d from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter’d & sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

 

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

 

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder’d.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

 

 Note: This poem, including punctuation, is reproduced from a scan of the poem written out by Tennyson in his own hand in 1864. The scan was made available online by the University of Virginia

Retrieved from www.nationalcenter.org on August 6th, 2013.

 

 

Charlene’s Source: youtube