WHAT IS POETRY?      If you were to ask twenty intelligent people, "What is the Thames?" the answer due to you from each would be—"a river." And yet this would hardly be matter to satisfy your enquiring mind. You would more probably say, "What do you know of the Thames?" or, "Describe the Thames to me." This would bring you a great variety of opinions, many dissertations on geological and national history, many... more...

PRELUDE Though black the night, I know upon the sky,A little paler now, if clouds were none,The stars would be. Husht now the thickets lie,And now the birds are moving one by one,—A note—and now from bush to bush it goes—A prelude—now victorious light alongThe west will come till every bramble glowsWith wash of sunlit dew shaken in song.Shaken in song; O heart, be ready now,Cold in your night, be ready now to sing.Dawn as... more...

SCENE I Cromwell's house at Ely, about the year 1639. An early summer evening. The window of the room opens on to a smooth lawn, used for bowling, and a garden full of flowers. Oliver's wife, Elizabeth Cromwell, is sitting at the table, sewing. In a chair by the open window Mrs. Cromwell, his mother, is reading. She is eighty years of age. Mrs. Cromwell: Oliver troubles me, persuading everywhere. Restless like this. Elizabeth: He says that... more...

ABRAHAM LINCOLN Two Chroniclers: The two speaking together: Kinsmen, you shall beholdOur stage, in mimic action, mould A man's character.This is the wonder, always, everywhere—Not that vast mutability which is event,The pits and pinnacles of change,But man's desire and valiance that rangeAll circumstance, and come to port unspent.Agents are these events, these ecstasies,And tribulations, to prove the puritiesOr poor oblivions that are... more...