Henry Cuyler Bunner

  • 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
        ...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • Les morts vont vite! Ay, for a little space
    We miss and mourn them fallen from their place;
      To take our portion in their rest are fain;
      But by-and-by, having wept, press on again,
    Perchance to win their laurels in the race.

    What man would find the...

  • As to a bird’s song she were listening,
    Her beautiful head is ever sidewise bent;
    Her questioning eyes lift up their depths intent—
    She, who will never hear the wild-birds sing.
    My words within her ears’ cold chambers ring
    Faint, with the city’s murmurous...

  • 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...

  • She was a beauty in the days
      When Madison was President,
    And quite coquettish in her ways,—
      On conquests of the heart intent.

      Grandpapa, on his right knee bent,
    Wooed her in stiff, old-fashioned phrase,—
    She was a beauty in the days...

  • Oh, what ’s the way to Arcady,
      To Arcady, to Arcady;
    Oh, what ’s the way to Arcady,
      Where all the leaves are merry?

    Oh, what ’s the way to Arcady?
    The spring is rustling in the tree,—
    The tree the wind is blowing through,—
      It sets...