A pitcher of mignonette In a tenement’s highest casement,— Queer sort of flower-pot—yet That pitcher of mignonette Is a garden in heaven set, To the little sick child in the basement— The pitcher of mignonette, In the tenement’s highest casement.
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I take my chaperon to the play— She thinks she ’s taking me. And the gilded youth who owns the box, A proud young man is he; But how would his young heart be hurt If he could only know That not for his sweet sake I go Nor yet to see the trifling show; But to see my chaperon... |
Wind of the City Streets, Impatient to be free, In this dull time of heats My love takes wings to flee: Leave thou this idle Town And hunt Her down. Wherever She may stay, By Sea or Mountain-side, Make thou thy airy Way, If there She bide; If sea-spray kiss... |
She might have known it in the earlier Spring,— That all my heart with vague desire was stirred; And, ere the Summer winds had taken wing, I told her; but she smiled and said no word. The Autumn’s eager hand his red gold grasped, And she was silent; till from skies grown drear Fell soft... |
This is a breath of summer wind That comes—we know not how—that goes As softly,—leaving us behind, Pleased with a smell of vine and rose. Poet, shall this be all thy word? Blow on us with a bolder breeze, Until we rise, as having heard The sob, the song of far-off seas. Blow in thy shell... |
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Haro! haro! Judge now betwixt this woman and me, Haro She leaves me bond, who found me free. Of love and hope she hath drained me dry— Yea, barren as a drought-struck sky; She hath not left me tears for weeping, Nor will my eyelids close in sleeping. I have gathered all my life’s-blood... |
