TO OUR SERVICE FLAG

You youthful flag with stars of deepest blue,
You seem to breathe of youthful heroes' deeds
In France-there where the poppy blows its seeds.
You seem to tell us of devotion true.

Oh see that star of shining golden hue!

It speaks of death-death for all nations' needs.
It shows a soul of fearless youth which leads
And cries, "I leave my half-done task to you!"
Oh flag, tell them who in the years will come,
That they whose names are represented here
Went forth to war with willing hearts and hands,
E'en though they knew of those, the fated some,
Who, having not a single trace of fear,
Soon after were as dust in foreign lands!

(C. K. 20.)

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SOME SONNETS FOR OPTIONAL READING

Note.-Read at least eight sonnets.

For each give the two waves of

thought and the rhyming scheme. Is it .a perfect sonnet? If not, why? Which ones did you like best?

Sonnets XII, XVIII, XXXIII, CXVI.....

"On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty

Three"

"On the Late Massacre in Piedmont".

"To Cyriac Skinner".

"The World Is Too Much With Us".

.Shakespeare

Milton

Milton

"Scorn Not the Sonnet" (Notice in what three

Milton
.Wordsworth

"Sonnets from the Portuguese," I, XIV, XX..Mrs. Browning

''Patria"

'Love's Reason".

"The Child in the Garden".

"On the Life Mask of Abraham Lincoln". "What is a Sonnet?"....

"Sonnets Written in the Fall of 1914".

. Henry Van Dyke

. Henry Van Dyke

Henry Van Dyke

.R. W. Gilder
..R. W. Gilder

George Edward Woodberry

CHAPTER III

THE ELEGY

Characteristics of the Elegy.-The elegy is a lyric poem which expresses grief for a personal or public loss, or gives reflections on death in general. Although it is a poem of lamentation, there usually are suggestions of hope and faith which tend to allay and soothe the sorrow.

The Great English Elegies.—The greatest elegies in the English language are Milton's "Lycidas," in memory of his college friend, Edward King; Shelley's "Adonaïs,' a tribute to Keats; Matthew Arnold's "Thyrsis," a lament on the death of his friend Clough; and “In Memoriam," Tennyson's expression of grief for his dearest friend, Arthur Hallam. Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is also one of the great English elegies, although here there is no expression of personal grief, but solemn reflections called forth by the turf-covered graves in the lonely churchyard. The "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" is both an elegy and an ode. Milton's "Lycidas," and "Uriel," by Percy MacKaye, may also be classed as odes.

LYCIDAS

John Milton

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compel me to disturb your season due;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,

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ΙΟ

Without the meed of some melodious tear.

Begin, then, Sisters of the sacred well

That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse!

So may some gentle Muse

With lucky words favour my destined urn,
And, as he passes, turn,

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud!

For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock, by fountains, shade, and rill;
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the Morn,
We drove a-field, and both together heard

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What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn,

Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,

Oft till the star that rose, at evening bright

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Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute;

Tempered to the oaten flute,

Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel

From the glad sound would not be absent long;

And old Damætas loved to hear our song.

But, oh! the heavy change, now thou art gone,

Now thou art gone, and never must return!
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves,
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown,
And all their echoes, mourn.

The willows, and the hazel copses green,
Shall now no more be seen

Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.

As killing as the canker to the rose,

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,

Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear

When first the white-thorn blows;

Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep

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"Had ye been there," for what could that have done? What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,

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The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,

When, by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?

Alas! what boots it with uncessant care

To tend the homely, slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Musc?
Were it not better done, as others use,

To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,

Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)

To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorrèd shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise,"
Phœbus replied, and touched my trembling ears:
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil

Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies;
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on cach deed,

Of so much fame in Heaven expect thy meed."

O fountain Arethuse, and thou honour'd flood, Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds, That strain I heard was of a higher mood.

But now my oat proceeds,

And listens to the Herald of the Sea

That came in Neptune's plea ;

He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,

What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain?
And questioned every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beakèd promontory.

They knew not of his story;

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And sage Hippotades their answer brings

That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed:

The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,

Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

Next, Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,

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His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,

Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge

Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.

"Ah! Who hath reft," quoth he, "my dearest pledge?"

Last came, and last did go,

The Pilot of the Galilean lake;

Two massy keys he bore of metals twain

(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).

He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:

"How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,

Enow of such as, for their bellies' sake,

Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold!

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Of other care they little reckoning make,

Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast,

And shove away the worthy bidden guest;

Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold

A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least
That to the faithful herdman's art belongs!

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What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;

And when they list, their lean and flashy songs

Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,

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But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.
But that two-handed engine at the door

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Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more."
Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past
That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use

Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,

The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,

The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears;

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