Songs Of The Road, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [graded readers .txt] 📗

they suck
This honey that they stored? Can you
recite
The vantages which each of these has had
And I had not? Or is the argument
[104] That my Lord Verulam hath written all,
And covers in his wide-embracing self
The stolen fame of twenty smaller men?
You prate about my learning. I
would urge
My want of learning rather as a proof
That I am still myself. Have I not traced
A seaboard to Bohemia, and made
The cannons roar a whole wide century
Before the first was forged? Think you,
then,
That he, the ever-learned Verulam,
Would have erred thus? So may my very
faults
In their gross falseness prove that I am true,
And by that falseness gender truth in you.
And what is left? They say that they
have found
[105] A script, wherein the writer tells my Lord
He is a secret poet. True enough!
But surely now that secret is o'er past.
Have you not read his poems? Know
you not
That in our day a learned chancellor
Might better far dispense unjustest law
Than be suspect of such frivolity
As lies in verse? Therefore his poetry
Was secret. Now that he is gone
'Tis so no longer. You may read his verse,
And judge if mine be better or be worse:
Read and pronounce! The meed of
praise is thine;
But still let his be his and mine be mine.
I say no more; but how can you for-
swear
Outspoken Jonson, he who knew me well;
[106] So, too, the epitaph which still you read?
Think you they faced my sepulchre with
lies —
Gross lies, so evident and palpable
That every townsman must have wot of it,
And not a worshipper within the church
But must have smiled to see the marbled
fraud?
Surely this touches you? But if by chance
My reasoning still leaves you obdurate,
I'll lay one final plea. I pray you look
On my presentment, as it reaches you.
My features shall be sponsors for my fame;
My brow shall speak when Shakespeare's
voice is dumb,
And be his warrant in an age to come.


THE EMPIRE
[107]

1902

They said that it had feet of clay,
That its fall was sure and quick.
In the flames of yesterday
All the clay was burned to brick.

When they carved our epitaph
And marked us doomed beyond recall,
"We are," we answered, with a laugh,
"The Empire that declines to fall."


A VOYAGE
[108]

1909

Breathing the stale and stuffy air
Of office or consulting room,
Our thoughts will wander back to where
We heard the low Atlantic boom,

And, creaming underneath our screw,
We watched the swirling waters break,
Silver filagrees on blue
Spreading fan-wise in our wake.

Cribbed within the city's fold,
Fettered to our daily round,
We'll conjure up the haze of gold
Which ringed the wide horizon round.

[109] And still we'll break the sordid day
By fleeting visions far and fair,
The silver shield of Vigo Bay,
The long brown cliff of Finisterre.

Where once the Roman galley sped,
Or Moorish corsair spread his sail,
By wooded shore, or sunlit head,
By barren hill or sea-washed vale

We took our way. But we can swear,
That many countries we have scanned,
But never one that could compare
With our own island mother-land.

The dream is o'er. No more we view
The shores of Christian or of Turk,
But turning to our tasks anew,
We bend us to our wonted work.

[110] But there will come to you and me
Some glimpse of spacious days gone
by,
The wide, wide stretches of the sea,
The mighty curtain of the sky,


THE ORPHANAGE
[111]

When, ere the tangled web is reft,
The kid-gloved villain scowls and
sneers,
And hapless innocence is left
With no assets save sighs and tears,

'Tis then, just then, that in there stalks
The hero, watchful of her needs;
He talks, Great heavens how he talks!
But we forgive him, for his deeds.

Life is the drama here to-day
And Death the villain of the plot.
It is a realistic play.
Shall it end well or shall it not?

[112] The hero? Oh, the hero's part
Is vacant to be played by you.
Then act it well! An orphan's heart
May beat the lighter if you do.


SEXAGENARIUS LOQUITUR
[113]

From our youth to our age
We have passed each stage
In old immemorial order,
From primitive days
Through flowery ways
With love like a hedge as their border.
Ah, youth was a kingdom of joy,
And we were the king and the queen,
When I was a year
Short of thirty, my dear,
And you were just nearing nineteen.
But dark follows light
And day follows night
As the old planet circles the sun;
[114] And nature still traces
Her score on our faces
And tallies the years as they run.
Have they chilled the old warmth in your
heart?
I swear that they have not in mine,
Though I am a year
Short of sixty, my dear,
And you are well, say thirty-nine.


NIGHT VOICES
[115]

Father, father, who is that a-whispering?
Who is it who whispers in the wood?
You say it is the breeze
As it sighs among the trees,
But there's some one who whispers in the