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IV. Poems of Doubtful Authorship


198

IV. Poems of Doubtful Authorship

[_]

The attribution of this poem is questionable.

[Often rebuked, yet always back returning]

Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be:
Today, I will seek not the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.
I'll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distinguished faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.
I'll walk where my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.
What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.

199

[_]

The attribution of this poem is questionable.

To the Horse Black Eagle Which I Rode at the Battle of Zamorna

Swart steed of night, thou hast charged thy last
O'er the red war-trampled plain
Now fallen asleep is the battle blast
It is stilled above the slain
Now hushed is the clang of armour bright
Thou wilt never bear me more
To the deadliest press of the gathering fight
Through seas of noble gore
And the cold eyes of midnight skies
Shall not pour their light on thee
When the wearied host of the conqueror lies
On a field of victory
Rest now in thy glory noble steed
Rest all thy wars are done
True is the love and high the meed
Thou from thy lord hast won
In daisied lawns sleep peacefully
Dwell by the quiet wave
Till death shall sound his signal cry
And call thee to thy grave.