in the gloomy ocean bed
Dwelt a formless thing, and said,
In the dim and countless eons long ago,
“I will build a stronghold high,
Ocean’s power to defy,
And the pride of haughty man to lay low.”
Crept the minutes for the sad,
Sped the cycles for the glad,
But the march of time was neither less nor more;...
They chained her fair young body to the cold and cruel stone;
The beast begot of sea and slime had marked her for his own;
The callous world beheld the wrong, and left her there alone.
Base caitiffs who belied her, false kinsmen who denied her,
Ye left her there alone!
My Beautiful, they left thee in thy peril and thy pain;
The night...
The love of man and woman is as fire,
To warm, to light, but surely to consume
And self-consuming die. There is no room
For constancy and passionate desire.
We stand at last beside a wasted pyre,
Touch its dead embers, groping in the gloom;
And where an altar stood, erect a tomb,
And sing a requiem to a broken lyre.
But comrade-...
We summoned not the Silent Guest,
And no man spake his name;
By lips unseen our Cup was pressed,
And mid the merry song and jest,
The Uninvited came.
Wise were they in the days of old,
Who gave the Stranger place;
And when the joyous catch was trolled,
And toasts were quaffed and tales were told,
They looked him...
IN the gloomy ocean bed
Dwelt a formless thing, and said,
In the dim and countless eons long ago,
“I will build a stronghold high,
Ocean’s power to defy,
And the pride of haughty man to lay low.”
Crept the minutes for the sad,
Sped the cycles for the glad,
But the march of time was neither less nor more;...
TELL the story to your sons
Of the gallant days of yore,
When the brig of seven guns
Fought the fleet of seven score,
From the set of sun till morn, through the long September night—
Ninety men against two thousand, and the ninety won the fight
In the harbor of Fayal the Azore.
Three...
From the maddening crowd they stand apart,
The maidens four and the Work of Art;
And none might tell from sight alone
In which had culture ripest grown,—
The Gotham Millions fair to see,
The Philadelphia Pedigree,
The Boston Mind of azure hue,
Or the soulful Soul from Kalamazoo,—
For all loved Art in a seemly way,
...
