As a fond mother, when the day is o’er,
Leads by the hand her little child to bed,
Half willing, half reluctant to be led,
And leave his broken playthings on the floor,
Still gazing at them through the open door,
Nor wholly reassured and comforted
...
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The waking YEAR
A LADY red upon the hill
Her annual secret keeps;
A lady white within the field
In placid lily sleeps!
The tidy breezes with their brooms
Sweep vail, and hill, and tree!
Prithee, my pretty housewives!
Who...
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O steadfast trees that know
Rain, hail, and sleet, and snow,
And all the winds that blow;
But when spring comes, can then
So freshly bud again
Forgetful of the wrong!
Waters that deep below
The stubborn ice can go
With quiet...
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Climbing up the hillside beneath the summer stars
I listen to the murmur of the drowsy ebbing sea;
The newly-risen moon has loosed her silver zone
On the undulating waters where the ships are sailing free.
O moon, and O stars, and O drowsy summer sea....
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The gray waves rock against the gray skyline,
And break complaining on the long gray sand,
Here where I sit, who cannot understand
Their voice of pain, nor this dumb pain of mine;
For I, who thought to fare till my days end,
Armed sorrow-proof in...
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Such hints as untaught Nature yields!
The calm disorder of the sea,
The straggling splendor of the fields,
The wind’s gay incivility.
O workman with your conscious plan,
Compass and square are little worth;
Copy (nay, only poets can)...
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From “Festus”
HE had no times of study, and no place;
All places and all times to him were one.
His soul was like the wind-harp, which he loved,
And sounded only when the spirit blew,
Sometime in feasts and follies, for he went
Lifelike through all...
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From “Susan: A Poem of Degrees”
HER Master gave the signal, with a look:
Then, timidly as if afraid, she took
In her rough hands the Laureate’s dainty book,
And straight began. But when she did begin,
Her own mute sense of poesy within
Broke forth...
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From “Paracelsus”
I KNEW, I felt, (perception unexpressed,
Uncomprehended by our narrow thought,
But somehow felt and known in every shift
And change in the spirit,—nay, in every pore
Of the body, even,)—what God is, what we are,
What life is—how...
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Great Nature is an army gay,
Resistless marching on its way;
I hear the bugles clear and sweet,
I hear the tread of million feet.
Across the plain I see it pour;
It tramples down the waving grass;
Within the echoing mountain-...
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