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A Handful of Stars- Louis L'amour

The Ancient Sage (excerpt)- Alfred Tennyson

Vastness- Alfred Tennyson

How Did You Die?- Edmund Vance Cooke

Anonymous- This poem was found on the inner leaf of an international brigadier's handbook at the Geneva Convention.

Virgil's Aeneid- John Dryden translation
 

Give me, O night, a blessing,
    Of peace and a handful of stars,
Give me, O dawn, a beginning,
    New life and a healing of scars,
Give me, O day, a freshening
    Of spirit and warmth in the sun,
Give me, O earth, of thy bounty,
    Strength for the task I've begun.

Leave me, O night, of your stillness,
    A calm for my inward soul,
Leave me a breath of your darkness
    To cool me and keep me whole.
Leave me the wind in the willows,
    The roll of the surf and the sea,
Leave me, beloved, my memories,
    Of dreams you have given to me.

How far through all the bloom and brake,
     That nightingale is heard,
What power but the birds could make,
     This music in the bird.
How summer bright are yonder skies
     And Earth as fair in hue,
And yet what sign of ought that lies,
     Behind the green and blue?
But man today is fancies fool,
     As man hath ever been,
The Nameless power or powers that rule,
     Were never heard or seen.
And since from when this Earth began,
     The nameless never came,
Among us never spake with man,
     And never named the Name.
What power ought akin to mind,
     The mind in me and you,
Or power as of the gods gone blind,
     Who see not what they do;
What power but the years could make,
     And break the vase of clay,
And stir the sleeping Earth and wake
     The bloom that fades away
What rulers but the days and hours
     That cancel weal with woe,
And wind the front of youth with flowers
    And cap our age with snow.
The years that made the strippling wise
     Undo their work again,
And leave him blind of heart and eyes
     The last and least of men.
Who clings to earth and once would dare
     Hell heat or arctic cold,
And now one breath of cooler air
     Would loose him from his hold.
His winter chills him to the root,
     He withers marrow and mind,
The kernel of the shriveled fruit,
     Is jutting through the rind.
The tiger spasms tear his chest,
     The palsy wags his head,
The wife, the sons, who love him best
     Would fain the he were dead.
The griefs by which he once was wrung,
     Were never worth the while,
The shaft of scorn that once had stung
     But wakes a dotard smile.
The statesman's brain that swayed the past
     Is feebler than his knees;
The passive sailor wrecks at last
     In ever silent seas;
The warrior hath forgot his arms
     The learned all his lore;
The changing market frets or charms
     The merchants hopes no more;
The prophet's beacon burned in vain
     And now is lost in cloud;
The plowman passes bent with pain
     To mix with what he’s plowed;
The poet whom his age would quote
     As heir of endless fame-
He knows not even the book he wrote
     Not even his own name;
For man has over lived his day,
     And, darkening in the light,
Scarce feels the senses break away
     To mix with ancient night.
The years that when my youth began
     Had set the lily and rose,
By all my ways where're they ran
     Have ended mortal foes
My rose of love forever gone
     My lily of truth and trust,
They made her lily and rose in one
     And changed her into dust.
Oh, rose tree planted in my grief
     And growing on her tomb,
Her dust is greening in your leaf,
     Her blood is in your bloom,
Oh slender lily waving there
     And laughing back the light,
In vain you tell me “Earth is fair
     When all is dark as night.”
But vain the tears for darkened years,
     As laughter over wine,
And vain the laughter as the tears,
     O brother, mine or thine,
For all that laugh and all that weep
     And all that breathe are one,
Slight ripples on the boundless deep
     That moves and all is gone.
Yet wine and laughter friends! And set
     The lamps alight and call,
For golden music and forget,
     The darkness of the pall.
O worms and maggots of today
     Without their hope of wings,
Though some have gleams or so they say
     Of more than mortal things.
And idle gleams will come and go,
     But still the clouds remain.
And night and shadows rule below,
     When only day should reign.

Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs,
    After many a vanished face,
Many a planet by many a sun
    May roll with the dust of a vanished race.

Raving politics, never at rest-
    As this poor earth's pale history runs,
What is it all but a trouble of ants,
    In the gleam of a million million of suns?

Lies upon this side, lies upon that side,
    Truthless violence mourned by the wise,
Thousands of voices, drowning his own,
    In a popular torrent of lies upon lies.

Stately purposes, valor in battle,
    Glorious annals of army and fleet,
Death for the right cause, death for the wrong cause,
    Trumpets of victory, groans of defeat.

Innocence seethed in her mothers milk,
    And Charity setting the martyr aflame,
Thralldom who walks with the banner of freedom
    And wrecks not to ruin a realm in her name.

Faith at her zenith, or all but lost in the gloom
    Of doubts that darken the schools,
Craft with a bunch of all heal in her hand,
    Followed up by her vassal, legion of fools.

Trade flying over a thousand seas
    With her spice and her vintage, her silk and her corn,
Desolate offing, saliorless harbors,
    famishing populace, wharves forlorn;

Star of the morning, hope in the sunrise,
    Gloom of the evening, life at a close,
Pleasure who flaunts on her wide down-way
    With her flying robe and her poisoned rose,

Pain, that has crawled from the corpse of pleasure,
    A worm which writhes all day and at night,
Stirs up again in the heart of the sleeper,
    And stings him back to the course of the light,

Wealth with his wine and his wedded harlots,
    Honest poverty, bare to the bone,
Opulent Avarice, lean as poverty,
    Flattery gilding the rift in a throne,

Fame blowing out from her golden trumpet,
    A jubilant challenge to time and to fate,
Slander, her shadow, sowing the nettle
    On all the laurel graves of the great,

Love for the maiden, crowned with marriage,
    No regrets for ought that has been,
Household happiness, gracious children,
    Debtless competence, golden mean,

National hatreds of whole generations,
    And pigmy spites of the village spire,
Vows that will last to the last death ruckle
    And vows that are snapped in a moment of fire,

He that has lived in the lust of the minute
    And died in the doing it, flesh without mind,
He that has nailed all flesh to the cross,
    'Till self died out in the love of his kind;

Spring and Summer and Autumn and Winter,
    And all these old revolutions of earth,
All new-old revolutions of Empire-
    Change of the tide- what is all of it worth?

What the philosophies, all the sciences,
    Poesy, varying voices of prayer,
All that is noblest, all that is basest,
    All that is filthy, with all that is fair;

What is it all if we all of us end
    But being in our own corpse-coffins at last,
Swallowed in vastness, lost in silence,
    Drowned in the deeps of a meaningless past?

What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom,
    Or a moment's anger of bees in their hive,
Peace let it be! For I loved him and love him forever,
    The dead are not dead but alive.

Did you tackle that trouble that came your way,
    With a resolute heart and cheerful?
Or hide your face from the light of day,
    With a craven soul and fearful?
Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce,
    Or a trouble is what you make it.
And it isn't the fact that your hurt that counts,
    But only, how did you take it?

You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that?
    Come up with a smiling face.
Its nothing against you to fall down flat,
    But to lie there- that's disgrace.
The harder you're thrown, why the higher you bounce!
    Be proud of your blackened eye.
It isn't the fact that your licked that counts,
    But how did you fight and why?

And though you be done to death, what then?
    If you battled the best you could;
If you played your part in the world of men,
    Why, the Critic will call it good.
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
    And whether he's slow or spry,
It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts,
    But only, how did you die?

Eyes of men running, falling, screaming,
Eyes of men shouting, sweating, bleeding,
The eyes of the fearful, those of the sad,
The eyes of exhaustion, and those of the mad.

Eyes of men thinking, hoping, waiting,
Eyes of men loving, cursing, hating,
The eyes of wounded sodden in red,
The eyes of the dying, and those of the dead.