[April, 1861]
men of the North and West,
Wake in your might.
Prepare, as the rebels have done,
For the fight!
You cannot shrink from the test;
Rise! Men of the North and West!
They have torn down your banner of stars;
...
Not what we would, but what we must,
Makes up the sum of living;
Heaven is both more and less than just
In taking and in giving.
Swords cleave to hands that sought the plough,
And laurels miss the soldier’s brow.
Me, whom the city holds,...
There are gains for all our losses,
There are balms for all our pain,
But when youth, the dream, departs,
It takes something from our hearts,
And it never comes again.
We are stronger, and are better,
Under manhood’s sterner reign;
...
The life of man
Is an arrow’s flight,
Out of darkness
Into light,
And out of light
Into darkness again;
Perhaps to pleasure,
Perhaps to pain!
There must be Something,
Above, or below;
Somewhere unseen...
Last night, when my tired eyes were shut with sleep,
I saw the one I love, and heard her speak,—
Heard, in the listening watches of the night,
The sweet words melting from her sweeter lips:
But what she said, or seemed to say, to me
I have forgotten,...
“under the roots of the roses,
Down in the dark, rich mould,
The dust of my dear one reposes
Like a spark which night incloses
When the ashes of day are cold.”
“Under the awful wings
Which brood over land and sea,
And whose...
“there are gains for all our losses.”
So I said when I was young.
If I sang that song again,
’T would not be with that refrain,
Which but suits an idle tongue.
Youth has gone, and hope gone with it,
Gone the strong desire for frame....
The angel came by night
(Such angels still come down),
And like a winter cloud
Passed over London town;
Along its lonesome streets,
Where Want had ceased to weep,
Until it reached a house
Where a great man lay asleep;
The...
Not as when some great Captain falls
In battle, where his Country calls,
Beyond the struggling lines
That push his dread designs
To doom, by some stray ball struck dead:
Or, in the last charge, at the head
Of his determined men,...
It is dark and lonesome here,
Beneath the windy eaves:—
The cold, cold ground my bed,
My coverlet dead leaves,
My only bedfellow
The rain that wets my sleeves!
If it be day, or night,
I know not, cannot say,
For I am like...
