POETRY OF THE PEOPLE

COMPRISING

POEMS ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE HISTORY

AND NATIONAL SPIRIT OF ENGLAND,
SCOTLAND, IRELAND, AND AMERICA

COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY

CHARLES MILLS GAYLEY AND MARTIN C. FLAHERTY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

28.9

CYTILOKAN

The Athenæum Press

GINN & COMPANY. PRO-
PRIETORS BOSTON U.S.A.

A BALLAD OF HEROES

Because you passed, and now are not, —
Because, in some remoter day,
Your sacred dust from doubtful spot

Was blown of ancient airs away,—
Because you perished, — must men say
Your deeds were naught, and so profane

Your lives with that cold burden? Nay, The deeds you wrought are not in vain !·

Though it may be, above the plot

That hid your once imperial clay,
No greener than o'er men forgot

The unregarding grasses sway ; —
Though there no sweeter is the lay
Of careless bird, though you remain
Without distinction of decay,—
The deeds you wrought are not in vain!

No. For while yet in tower or cot

Your story stirs the pulses' play;
And men forget the sordid lot -

The sordid care, of cities gray;
While yet, be-set in homelier fray,

They learn from you the lesson plain

That Life may go, so Honor stay,— The deeds you wrought are not in vain!

ENVOY

Heroes of old! I humbly lay

The laurel on your graves again; Whatever men have done, men may, — The deeds you wrought are not in vain.

AUSTIN DOBSON

411462

PREFACE

THIS little volume has a very modest but distinct and, we think, unique purpose, to supply the reading public and the schools with a compact body not necessarily of the most highly polished or artistic poems in the English tongue, but of those which are at once most simple, most hearty, most truly characteristic of the people, their tradition, history, and spirit. By Poetry of the People we do not mean only ballads of countryside or battlefield, or of street or village, hearth or market, not only the production of the folk-improviser or his succeeding bard long ago buried behind the hills of anonymity: but poetry that the people possess and occupy (or should occupy) because it is of their blood and bone and sinew: poetry sometimes by, and sometimes not, but always for, the people; poems that were household words with our fathers and mothers, and lay close to the heart because of the heart; poems that even now beat in the bosom of the Folk and find utterance in the hour of stress; poems which more often than not are all the truer art because they are not artful.

It may have appeared to others, as it has to us, that literature in verse is not learned nor enjoyed nor even read by young or old as much as it used to be. One explanation of this neglect is very probably that in the place of unsophisticated poetry, such as generations of our forefathers