Paul Hamilton Hayne

  • Beyond the sunset and the amber sea
      To the lone depths of ether, cold and bare,
    Thy influence, soul of all tranquillity,
      Hallows the earth and awes the reverent air;
    Yon laughing rivulet quells its silvery tune;
      The pines, like priestly watchers tall...

  • While sauntering through the crowded street,
    Some half-remembered face I meet,

    Albeit upon no mortal shore
    That face, methinks, has smiled before.

    Lost in a gay and festal throng,
    I tremble at some tender song,—

    Set to an air whose golden...

  • I See the cloud-born squadrons of the gale,
      Their lines of rain like glittering spears deprest,
    While all the affrighted land grows darkly pale
      In flashing charge on earth’s half-shielded breast.

    Sounds like the rush of trampling columns float
      From...

  • She hath no beauty in her face
      Unless the chastened sweetness there,
    And meek long-suffering, yield a grace
      To make her mournful features fair:—

    Shunned by the gay, the proud, the young,
      She roams through dim, unsheltered ways;
    Nor lover’s...

  • I Think it is over, over,
      I think it is over at last:
    Voices of foemen and lover,
    The sweet and the bitter, have passed:
    Life, like a tempest of ocean
    Hath outblown its ultimate blast:
    There ’s but a faint sobbing seaward
    While the calm...

  • From “The Mountain of the Lovers”
    LOVE scorns degrees; the low he lifteth high,
    The high he draweth down to that fair plain
    Whereon, in his divine equality,
    Two loving hearts may meet, nor meet in vain;
    ’Gainst such sweet levelling Custom cries amain,...

  • I think it is over, over,
      I think it is over at last:
    Voices of foemen and lover,
    The sweet and the bitter have passed:
    Life, like a tempest of ocean
    Hath outblown its ultimate blast:
    There ’s but a faint sobbing seaward
    While the calm of...

  • A little while (my life is almost set!)
      I fain would pause along the downward way,
      Musing an hour in this sad sunset-ray,
    While, Sweet! our eyes with tender tears are wet:
    A little hour I fain would linger yet.

    A little while I fain would linger yet...

  • She ’s loveliest of the festal throng
      In delicate form and Grecian face,—
    A beautiful, incarnate song,
      A marvel of harmonious grace,
    And yet I know the truth I speak:
      From those gay groups she stands apart,
    A rose upon her tender cheek,...

  • I see the cloud-born squadrons of the gale,
      Their lines of rain like glittering spears deprest,
    While all the affrighted land grows darkly pale
      In flashing charge on earth’s half-shielded breast.

    Sounds like the rush of trampling columns float
      From...