George Henry Boker

  • [May 27, 1863]
    DARK as the clouds of even,
    Ranked in the western heaven,
    Waiting the breath that lifts
    All the dead mass, and drifts
    Tempest and falling brand
    Over a ruined land,—
    So still and orderly,
    Arm to arm, knee to knee,...

  • Close his 1 eyes; his work is done!
      What to him is friend or foeman,
    Rise of moon or set of sun,
      Hand of man or kiss of woman?
        Lay him low, lay him low,
        In the clover or the snow!
        What cares he? he cannot know;
            Lay...

  • In Sana, O, in Sana, God, the Lord,
    Was very kind and merciful to me!
    Forth from the Desert in my rags I came,
    Weary and sore of foot. I saw the spires
    And swelling bubbles of the golden domes
    Rise through the trees of Sana, and my heart
    Grew great...

  • Close his eyes; his work is done!
      What to him is friend or foeman,
    Rise of moon, or set of sun,
      Hand of man, or kiss of woman?
        Lay him low, lay him low,
        In the clover or the snow!
        What cares he? he cannot know:
              Lay...

  • I
    i ’ll call thy frown a headsman, passing grim,
    Walking before some wretch foredoomed to death,
    Who counts the pantings of his own hard breath,
    Wondering how heart can beat, or stead-fast limb
    Bear its sad burden to life’s awful brim.
    I ’ll call...

  • Lear and Cordelia! ’t was an ancient tale
    Before thy Shakespeare gave it deathless fame:
    The times have changed, the moral is the same.
    So like an outcast, dowerless, and pale,
    Thy daughter went; and in a foreign gale
    Spread her young banner, till its sway...

  • There was a gay maiden lived down by the mill,—
      Ferry me over the ferry,—
    Her hair was as bright as the waves of a rill,
    When the sun on the brink of his setting stands still,
      Her lips were as full as a cherry.

    A stranger came galloping over the hill...

  • O, whither sail you, Sir John Franklin?
      Cried a whaler in Baffin’s Bay.
    To know if between the land and the pole
      I may find a broad sea-way.

    I charge you back, Sir John Franklin,
      As you would live and thrive;
    For between the land and the...