When foes upon me press, let me not quail
    Nor think to turn me into coward flight. 
  I only ask, to make mine arms prevail,
      Strength for the fight!

  Still let mine eyes look ever on the foe,
    Still let mine armor case me strong and bright;
  And grant me, as I deal each righteous blow,
      Strength for the fight!

  And when, at eventide, the fray is done,
    My soul to Death’s bedchamber do thou light,
  And give me, be the field or lost or won,
      Rest from the fight!

FAREWELL TO ARCADY

  With sombre mien, the Evening gray
  Comes nagging at the heels of Day,
  And driven faster and still faster
  Before the dusky-mantled Master,
  The light fades from her fearful eyes,
  She hastens, stumbles, falls, and dies.

  Beside me Amaryllis weeps;
  The swelling tears obscure the deeps
  Of her dark eyes, as, mistily,
  The rushing rain conceals the sea. 
  Here, lay my tuneless reed away,—­
  I have no heart to tempt a lay.

  I scent the perfume of the rose
  Which by my crystal fountain grows. 
  In this sad time, are roses blowing? 
  And thou, my fountain, art thou flowing,

  While I who watched thy waters spring
  Am all too sad to smile or sing? 
  Nay, give me back my pipe again,
  It yet shall breathe this single strain: 
        Farewell to Arcady!

THE VOICE OF THE BANJO

  In a small and lonely cabin out of noisy traffic’s way,
  Sat an old man, bent and feeble, dusk of face, and hair of gray,
  And beside him on the table, battered, old, and worn as he,
  Lay a banjo, droning forth this reminiscent melody: 

  “Night is closing in upon us, friend of mine, but don’t be sad;
  Let us think of all the pleasures and the joys that we have had. 
  Let us keep a merry visage, and be happy till the last,
  Let the future still be sweetened with the honey of the past.

  “For I speak to you of summer nights upon the yellow sand,
  When the Southern moon was sailing high and silvering all the land;
  And if love tales were not sacred, there’s a tale that I could tell
  Of your many nightly wanderings with a dusk and lovely belle.

  “And I speak to you of care-free songs when labour’s hour was o’er,
  And a woman waiting for your step outside the cabin door,
  And of something roly-poly that you took upon your lap,
  While you listened for the stumbling, hesitating words, ‘Pap, pap.’

  “I could tell you of a ’possum hunt across the wooded grounds,
  I could call to mind the sweetness of the baying of the hounds,
  You could lift me up and smelling of the timber that ’s in me,
  Build again a whole green forest with the mem’ry of a tree.

  “So the future cannot hurt us while we keep the past in mind,
  What care I for trembling fingers,—­what care you that you are blind? 
  Time may leave us poor and stranded, circumstance may make us bend;
  But they ’ll only find us mellower, won’t they, comrade?—­in the end.”