A Fair little girl sat under a tree
Sewing as long as her eyes could see;
Then smoothed her work and folded it right,
And said, “Dear work, good night, good night!”
Such a number of rooks came over her head,
Crying, “Caw, caw!” on their way to bed,
She said, as she watched their curious flight,
“Little black things, good night, good...
I Wandered by the brookside,
I wandered by the mill;
I could not hear the brook flow,—
The noisy wheel was still;
There was no burr of grasshopper,
No chirp of any bird,
But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.
I sat beneath the elm-tree;
I watched the long, long shade,
And, as it grew still...
They seemed to those who saw them meet
The worldly friends of every day,
Her smile was undisturbed and sweet,
His courtesy was free and gay.
But yet if one the other’s name
In some unguarded moment heard,
The heart you thought so calm and tame,
Would struggle like a captured bird:
And letters of mere formal phrase
Were...
I Stood, one Sunday morning,
Before a large church door,
The congregation gathered,
And carriages a score,—
From one out stepped a lady
I oft had seen before.
Her hand was on a prayer-book,
And held a vinaigrette;
The sign of man’s redemption
Clear on the book was set,—
But above the cross there glistened...
From “Anima Mundi”
GOD is good,
And flight is destined for the callow wing,
And the high appetite implies the food,
And souls most reach the level whence they spring;
O Life of very life! set free our powers,
Hasten the travail of the yearning hours.
Thou, to whom old Philosophy bent low,
To the wise...
O Gentler Censor of our age!
Prime master of our ampler tongue!
Whose word of wit and generous page
Were never wroth except with Wrong.
Fielding—without the manner’s dross,
Scott—with a spirit’s larger room,
What Prelate deems thy grave his loss?
What Halifax erects thy tomb?
But, may be, He—who could so draw
The...
