Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient sleepless eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors;
No—yet...
-
-
Sparkling and bright in liquid light,
Does the wine our goblets gleam in,
With hue as red as the rosy bed
Which a bee would choose to dream in.
Then fill to-night, with hearts as light,
To loves as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim on the beaker’s brim,
And break on the lips while meeting.Oh! if Mirth might...
-
I
few men of hero-mould
The Quaker counts amid his ranks to-day;
But, in the troublous times of old,
Before commodity’s loud gold
Drowned with its clank the clash of steel,
The Quaker held no devious way;
For him to see was but to feel,
To feel was but to say.II
All hail those men of yore!
Amid innumerable... -
Sparkling and bright in liquid light,
Does the wine our goblets gleam in,
With hue as red as the rosy bed
Which a bee would choose to dream in.
Then fill to-night, with hearts as light,
To loves as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim on the beaker’s brim,
And break on the lips while meeting.Oh! if Mirth might...
-
Glory is that bright tragic thing
That for an instant
Means Dominion —
Warms some poor name
That never felt the Sun,
Gently replacing
In oblivion — -
To the bright east she flies,
Brothers of Paradise
Remit her home,
Without a change of wings,
Or Love's convenient things,
Enticed to come.
Fashioning what she is,
Fathoming what she was,
We deem we dream —
And that dissolves the days
Through which...