Days of my youth,
Ye have glided away;
Hairs of my youth,
Ye are frosted and gray;
Eyes of my youth,
Your keen sight is no more;
Cheeks of my youth,
Ye are furrowed all o’er;
Strength of my youth,
All your vigor is gone;
Thoughts of my youth,
Your gay visions are flown.
...
Good master, you and I were born
In “Teacup days” of hoop and hood,
And when the silver cue hung down,
And toasts were drunk, and wine was good;
When kin of mine (a jolly brood)
From sideboards looked, and knew full well
What courage they had given the beau,
How generous made the blushing belle.
Ah me! what gossip could I...
This was the man God gave us when the hour
Proclaimed the dawn of Liberty begun;
Who dared a deed, and died when it was done
Patient in triumph, temperate in power,—
Not striving like the Corsican to tower
To heaven, nor like great Philip’s greater son
To win the world and weep for worlds unwon,
Or lose the star to revel in the flower....
True genius, but true woman! dost deny
Thy woman’s nature with a manly scorn,
And break away the gauds and armlets worn
By weaker women in captivity?
Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry
Is sobbed in by a woman’s voice forlorn;
Thy woman’s hair, my sister, all unshorn,
Floats back dishevelled strength in agony,
Disproving thy man’s...
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...
Written When the News Arrived; 1782
TOLL for the brave,—
The brave that are no more!
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore.
Eight hundred of the brave,
Whose courage well was tried,
Had made the vessel heel,
And laid her on her side.
A land-breeze shook the shrouds,
And she was overset...
By broad Potomac’s silent shore
Better than Trajan lowly lies,
Gilding her green declivities
With glory now and evermore;
Art to his fame no aid hath lent;
His country is his monument.
'TIS strange, while all to greatness homage pay,
So few should know the goddess they obey.
That men should think a thousand things the same,
And give contending images one name.
Not Greece, in all her temples' wide abodes,
Held a more wild democracy of Gods
Than various deities we serve,...
No Eastern tale, no annals of the past,
Of Greece or Rome, deeds such as thine relate,
Deeds kings and emperors might emulate,
That o'er thy native land new luster cast;
The land that opens all her wide domain
To the oppressed of every name and...
