• So that soldierly legend is still on its journey,—
      That story of Kearny who knew not to yield!
    ’T was the day when with Jameson, fierce Berry, and Birney,
      Against twenty thousand he rallied the field.
    Where the red volleys poured, where the clamor rose highest,
      Where the dead lay in clumps through the dwarf oak and pine,
    Where the aim from...

  • Maternity
    HEIGH-HO! daisies and buttercups,
      Fair yellow daffodils, stately and tall!
    When the wind wakes, how they rock in the grasses,
      And dance with the cuckoo-buds slender and small!
    Here ’s two bonny boys, and here ’s mother’s own lasses,
            Eager to gather them all.

    Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups!
      Mother shall...

  • There’s no dew left on the daisies and clover,
        There’s no rain left in heaven.
    I ’ve said my “seven times” over and over,—
        Seven times one are seven.

    I am old,—so old I can write a letter;
        My birthday lessons are done.
    The lambs play always,—they know no better;
        They are only one times one.

    O Moon! in the night...

  •             A Simple child,
      That lightly draws its breath,
    And feels its life in every limb,
      What should it know of death?

    I met a little cottage girl:
      She was eight years old, she said;
    Her hair was thick with many a curl
      That clustered round her head.

    She had a rustic, woodland air,
      And she was wildly clad...

  • Romance
    YOU bells in the steeple, ring out your changes,
      How many soever they be,
    And let the brown meadow-lark’s note as he ranges
      Come over, come over to me.

    Yet birds’ clearest carol by fall or by swelling
      No magical sense conveys,
    And bells have forgotten their old art of telling
      The fortune of future days.

    ...
  • Giving in Marriage
    TO bear, to nurse, to rear,
      To watch, and then to lose:
    To see my bright ones disappear,
      Drawn up like morning dews;—
    To bear, to nurse, to rear,
      To watch, and then to lose:
    This have I done when God drew near
      Among his own to choose.

    To hear, to heed, to wed,
      And with thy lord depart...

  • Love
    I Leaned out of window, I smelt the white clover,
      Dark, dark was the garden, I saw not the gate;
    “Now, if there be footsteps, he comes, my one lover—
      Hush, nightingale, hush! O sweet nightingale, wait
            Till I listen and hear
            If a step draweth near,
            For my love he is late!

    “The skies in the darkness...

  • From “As You Like It,” Act II. Sc. 7.
                        ALL the world ’s a stage,
    And all the men and women merely players:
    They have their exits and their entrances;
    And one man in his time plays many parts,
    His Acts being seven ages. At first the Infant,
    Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
    Then the whining School-boy, with his...

  • SO 1 that soldierly legend is still on its journey,—
      That story of Kearny who knew not to yield!
    ’T was the day when with Jameson, fierce Berry, and Birney,
      Against twenty thousand he rallied the field.
    Where the red volleys poured, where the clamor rose highest,
      Where the dead lay in clumps through the dwarf oak and pine,
    Where the aim...