Edmund Clarence Stedman

  • World’s Fair, St. Louis
    O THOU, 1 whose glorious orbs on high
      Engird the earth with splendor round,
    From out Thy secret place draw nigh
      The courts and temples of this ground;
            Eternal Light,
            Fill with Thy might
      These...

  • SO 1 that soldierly legend is still on its journey,—
      That story of Kearny who knew not to yield!
    ’T was the day when with Jameson, fierce Berry, and Birney,
      Against twenty thousand he rallied the field.
    Where the red volleys poured, where the clamor rose...

  • From “Alice of Monmouth”
    OUR good steeds snuff the evening air,
      Our pulses with their purpose tingle;
    The foeman’s fires are twinkling there;
      He leaps to hear our sabres jingle!
            HALT!
    Each carbine send its whizzing ball:
    Now,...

  • Here where the curfew
        Still, they say, rings,
    Time rested long ago,
        Folding his wings;
    Here, on old Norwich’s
        Out-along road,
    Cousin Lucretia
        Had her abode.

    Norridge, not Nor-wich
        (See Mother Goose),...

  •                 HARP of New England Song,
    That even in slumber trembled with the touch
      Of poets who like the four winds from thee waken
    All harmonies that to thy strings belong,—
    Say, wilt thou blame the younger hands too much
      Which from thy laurelled...

  • Look on this cast, and know the hand
      That bore a nation in its hold:
    From this mute witness understand
      What Lincoln was,—how large of mould

    The man who sped the woodman’s team,
      And deepest sunk the ploughman’s share,
    And pushed the laden...

  • Just where the Treasury’s marble front
      Looks over Wall Street’s mingled nations;
    Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont
      To throng for trade and last quotations;
    Where, hour by hour, the rates of gold
      Outrival, in the ears of people,
    The...

  • The Sunlight fills the trembling air,
      And balmy days their guerdons bring;
    The Earth again is young and fair,
      And amorous with musky Spring.

    The golden nurslings of the May
      In splendor strew the spangled green,
    And hues of tender beauty...

  •             COULD we but know
    The land that ends our dark, uncertain travel,
      Where lie those happier hills and meadows low;
    Ah! if beyond the spirit’s inmost cavil
      Aught of that country could we surely know,
                Who would not go?

    ...
  • When the veil from the eyes is lifted
      The seer’s head is gray;
    When the sailor to shore has drifted
      The sirens are far away.
    Why must the clearer vision,
      The wisdom of Life’s late hour,
    Come, as in Fate’s derision,
      When the hand has...