The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all...
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O thou great Wrong, that, through the slow-paced years,
Didst hold thy millions fettered, and didst wield
The scourge that drove the laborer to the field,
And turn a stony gaze on human tears,
Thy cruel reign is o’er;
Thy bondmen crouch no more
In terror at the menace of thine eye;
For He who marks the bounds of guilty power... -
“little haly! Little Haly!” cheeps the robin in the tree;
“Little Haly!” sighs the clover, “Little Haly!” moans the bee;
“Little Haly! Little Haly!” calls the kill-deer at twilight;
And the katydids and crickets hollers “Haly!” all the night.The sunflowers and the hollyhawks droops over the garden fence;
The old path down the garden-walks still holds... -
Lay me down beneaf de willers in de grass,
Whah de branch ’ll go a-singin’ as it pass.
An’ w’en I ’s a-layin’ low,
I kin hyeah it as it go
Singin’, “Sleep, my honey, tek yo’ res’ at las’.”Lay me nigh to whah hit meks a little pool,
An’ de watah stan’s so quiet lak an’ cool,
Whah de little birds in spring
Ust to come an... -
LEAVES have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north-wind’s breath,
And stars to set—but all,
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, oh! Death.Day is for mortal care,
Eve for glad meetings round the joyous hearth,
Night for the dreams of sleep, the voice of prayer—
But all for thee, thou mightiest of the... -
We watched her breathing through the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.So silently we seemed to speak,
So slowly moved about,
As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out.Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied—... -
From “The Song of Hiawatha”
ALL day long roved Hiawatha
In that melancholy forest,
Through the shadows of whose thickets,
In the pleasant days of Summer,
Of that ne’er forgotten Summer.
He had brought his young wife homeward
From the land of the Dacotahs;
When the birds sang in the thickets,
And the streamlets laughed and... -
From “Festus”
FOR to die young is youth’s divinest gift;
To pass from one world fresh into another,
Ere change hath lost the charm of soft regret,
And feel the immortal impulse from within
Which makes the coming life cry always, On!
And follow it while strong, is heaven’s last mercy.
There is a fire-fly in the south, but shines
... -
The Melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all... -
Two souls diverse out of our human sight
Pass, followed one with love and each with wonder:
The stormy sophist with his mouth of thunder,
Clothed with loud words and mantled in the might
Of darkness and magnificence of night;
And one whose eye could smite the night in sunder,
Searching if light or no light were thereunder,
And found in...