Shake out the lyrical notes

From the silvery deep of your throats.
Burst into joy-mad carols: tell again
The story and glory of heroic men.

Glad are the love-birds in the leafy tree,
But none so glad as we.

High leap the rock-flung billows to the sky,

But none leaps up so gladly and wildly high

As leap our jubilant hearts.

The Fear that croucht upon the world departs,

And Joy comes back pavilioned by the sun:

Let all the mountains clap their hands and run:

5

10

15

Let all the oceans from their throats of thunder

Shout to the streams and storms and stars the wonder!

II

O bugles, circle on from sky to sky,

Travel the roads of the world with joyous cry.

Blow, bugles, turn dead air to thrilling breath:
Cry, cry eternal victory over death-

Cry into the ear of time the shining word-
Cry solemnly yet elate—

That man is ever greater than his fate,

That at some touch of God-his soul is stirred

By swift translunar gleams

Which give him power to perish for his dreams.

Praise, praise, praise,

For the new beginning of days!

Praise for the living, honor for the dead

Praise for the wreathed and the wreathless head.

Praise and victorious peace

On hearts that beat and on the hearts that cease—

Peace on the mortal and the immortal way

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Peace on the heroes vanisht from our day,

Called back from out these bounds of fleeting breath
To join the old democracy of death.

III

Sing and be glad, O nations, in these hours:
Blow clarions from all towers!

Let bright horns revel and the joy-bells rave;

40

Yet there are lips whose smile is ever vain
And wild wet eyes behind the window pane,

For whom the whole world dwindles to one grave,

A lone grave at the mercy of the rain.

The victor's laurel wears a wintry leaf:

Sing softly, then, as tho the mouth of Grief,
Remembering all the agony and wrong,
Should stir with mighty song.

Not all the glad averment of the guns,
Not all our odes, nor all our orisons,

Can sweeten these intolerable tears,

These silences that fall between the cheers.

And yet our hearts must sing,

Carol and clamor like the tides of Spring.
For the great work is ended, and again
The world is safe for men;

The world is safe for high heroic themes;
The world is safe for dreams.

IV

But now above the thunder of the drums—

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Where, brightening on, the face of Victory comes

Are weary of shrieking shells and dying groans.
Lay the sad swords asleep:

They have their fearful memories to keep.

And fold the flags; they weary of battle days,
Weary of wild flights up the windy ways.
Quiet the restless flags,

Grown strangely old upon the smoking crags.
Look where they startle and leap-
Look where they hollow and heap—

Now greatening into glory and now thinned,
Living and dying momently on the wind.
And bugles that have cried on sea and land
The silver blazon of their high command-
Bugles that held long parley with the sky-
Bugles that shattered the nights on battle walls,
Lay them to rest in dim memorial halls;
For they are weary of that curdling cry
That tells men how to die.

And cannons worn out with their work of hell—

The brief abrupt persuasion of the shell-
Let the shrewd spider lock them, one by one,
With filmy cables glancing in the sun;
And let the bluebird in their iron throats

Build his safe nest and spill his rippling notes.
Let there be no more battles, men of earth:
The new age rises singing into birth!

SOME GREAT ODES FOR OPTIONAL READING

1. Read at least four odes outside of class. What in each case is the object of the poet's high praise? 2. Has he made you feel his mood? What kind of a mood was it? 3. Was the verse and stanza structure regular or irregular? 4. Which ode did you like best? Why?

"On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" (One

of the greatest odes in the language).... Milton

"Ode on St. Cecilia's Day".

.Dryden

"Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College".. Gray

"Princeton, May, 1917".

Alfred Noyes

"Ode on the Centenary of Abraham Lincoln".. Percy MacKaye

"Avenge, O Lord, Thy Slaughtered Saints"....Kipling

1 This is both an ode and an elegy.

CHAPTER II

THE SONNET

Characteristics of the Sonnet. The sonnet is a lyric poem exactly fourteen lines in length. It produces only one emotional effect, but the lines are arranged in two sets, because two waves of thought are expressed. The first, consisting of eight lines, is called the octave. This gives the main thought or rising emotion. The second set, consisting of six lines, is called the sestet. This gives the falling emotion. There is usually this upward and downward movement in a sonnet. In the octave the emotion, question, problem, hope, desire, or whatever it may be, rises to its climax; and in the sestet it goes down to its conclusion. There is scarcely any variation allowed in the arrangement of the rhymes in the octave. Here there should be but two different rhyming words. and these should be arranged a bb a abba. In the sestet, however, greater liberty is given. There are usually three rhyming words, but they must be different from those used in the octave. Any combination of these rhymes may be made, excepting that the last two lines of a perfect sonnet, according to the original models, do not rhyme. Many writers of sonnets, however, have modified the rhyming plan to suit themselves. The regular meter of the sonnet is iambic pentameter.

Early Sonnets in England.-The sonnet form was first used in Italy, and was introduced into English literature by Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey in the first part of the sixteenth century. This type, although quite difficult to write because of its exact rules, at once became popular. It was taken up by Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, and others of the Elizabethans. Shakespeare liked the sonnet so well that he wrote one hundred and fiftyfour of them. In structure his sonnets, however, differ in many particulars from those usually seen, although they show the two waves of feeling.2

1 The student should constantly be reminded that authors are not slaves to custom, and modifications are to be found everywhere, although, in general, a work shows the chief characteristics of the type with which it is classed.

2 The sonnets of Shakespeare differ so generally from those introduced by England from Italy, that they are commonly recognized as a distinct type of sonnet under the name of Shakespearian Sonnet.