• I read the marble-lettered name,
      And half in bitterness I said:
    “As Dante from Ravenna came,
      Our poet came from exile—dead.”
    And yet, had it been asked of him
      Where he would rather lay his head,
    This spot he would have chosen. Dim
        The city’s hum drifts o’er his grave,
        And green above the hollies wave
    Their...

  • Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,
      Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause;
    Though yet no marble column craves
      The pilgrim here to pause.

    In seeds of laurel in the earth
      The blossom of your fame is blown,
    And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
      The shaft is in the stone!

    Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years
      Which keep...

  • How calm they sleep beneath the shade
      Who once were weary of the strife,
    And bent, like us, beneath the load
          Of human life!

    The willow hangs with sheltering grace
      And benediction o’er their sod,
    And Nature, hushed, assures the soul
          They rest in God.

    O weary hearts, what rest is here,
      From all that...