Her hands are cold; her face is white;
No more her pulses come and go;
Her eyes are shut to life and light;—
Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,
And lay her where the violets blow.
But not beneath a graven stone,
To plead for tears with alien eyes;
A slender cross of wood alone
Shall say, that here a maiden lies...
Under the violets, blue and sweet,
Where low the willow droops and weeps,
Where children tread with timid feet,
When twilight o’er the forest creeps,
She sleeps,—my little darling sleeps.
Breathe low and soft, O wind! breathe low
Where so much loveliness is laid!
Pour out thy heart in strains of woe,
O bird! that in...
It was Christmas Eve in the year fourteen,
And, as ancient dalesmen used to tell,
The wildest winter they ever had seen,
With the snow lying deep on moor and fell,
When Wagoner John got out his team,
Smiler and Whitefoot, Duke and Gray,
With the light in his eyes of a young man’s dream,
As he thought of his wedding on New Year’s Day...
The skies are low, the winds are slow,
The woods are filled with autumn glory;
The mists are still on field and hill,
The brooklet sings its dreamy story.
I careless rove through glen and grove;
I dream by hill and copse and river;
Or in the shade by aspen made
I watch the restless shadows quiver.
I lift my eyes to...
She came and went as comes and goes
A fragrance in the morning air,
Where lay the shadowy shapes of those
Who died in her sweet care.
Some doubted, when her face had flown,
Whether it was or only seemed,—
Whether one saw what he had known
Or something he had dreamed.
And near a trampled field at night...
Tell me what sail the seas
Under the stars?
Ships, and ships’ companies,
Off to the wars.
Steel are the ship’s great sides,
Steel are her guns,
Backward she thrusts the tides,
Swiftly she runs;
Steel is the sailor’s heart,
Stalwart his arm,
His the Republic’s part
Through cloud and storm....
Under my window, under my window,
All in the Midsummer weather,
Three little girls with fluttering curls
Flit to and fro together:—
There ’s Bell with her bonnet of satin sheen,
And Maud with her mantle of silver-green,
And Kate with her scarlet feather.
Under my window, under my window,
Leaning stealthily over,
...
The Work of the sun is slow,
But as sure as heaven, we know;
So we ’ll not forget,
When the skies are wet,
There ’s green grass under the snow.
When the winds of winter blow,
Wailing like voices of woe,
There are April showers,
And buds and flowers,
And green grass under the snow.
We find that...
Prefixed to “Paradise Lost”
THREE Poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next in majesty; in both the last.
The force of nature could no further go;
To make a third, she joined the former two.
[The last words of Stonewall Jackson 1 were: “Let us cross the river and rest under the shade of the trees.”]
WHAT are the thoughts that are stirring his breast?
What is the mystical vision he sees?
—“Let us pass over the river, and rest
Under the shade of the trees.”
Has he grown sick of his toils and his tasks?
Sighs the worn spirit...
