• Those days we spent on Lebanon,
      Held captive by the sieging snow—
    What bright things are forgot and gone,
      While these have kept their after-glow!
    It seemed but monotone, in truth,
      That morning gaze o’er mountain mass,
    Our council with the hamlet ’s youth,
      The daily sortie up the pass,—
    And, last, your father’s fire o’...

  • The half-world’s width divides us; where she sits
    Noonday has broadened o’er the prairied West;
    For me, beneath an alien sky, unblest,
    The day dies and the bird of evening flits.
    Nor do I dream that in her happier breast
    Stirs thought of me. Untroubled beams the star,
    And recks not of the drifting mariner’s quest,
    Who, for dear life, may...

  • The fifth from the north wall;
    Row innermost; and the pall
    Plain black—all black—except
    The cross on which she wept,
    Ere she lay down and slept.

    This one is hers, and this—
    The marble next it—his.
    So lie in brave accord
    The lady and her lord,
    Her cross and his red sword.

    And, now, what seekst thou here;...

  • O Love, whose patient pilgrim feet
      Life’s longest path have trod,
    Whose ministry hath symbolled sweet
      The dearer love of God,—
    The sacred myrtle wreathes again
      Thine altar, as of old;
    And what was green with summer then,
      Is mellowed, now, to gold.

    Not now, as then, the Future’s face
      Is flushed with fancy’s...

  • Die down, O dismal day, and let me live;
    And come, blue deeps, magnificently strewn
    With colored clouds,—large, light, and fugitive,—
    By upper winds through pompous motions blown.
    Now it is death in life,—a vapor dense
    Creeps round my window, till I cannot see
    The far snow-shining mountains, and the glens
    Shagging the mountain-tops. O God...

  • O Winter! wilt thou never, never go?
    O summer! but I weary for thy coming,
    Longing once more to hear the Luggie flow,
    And frugal bees, laboriously humming.
    Now the east-wind diseases the infirm,
    And they must crouch in corners from rough weather;
    Sometimes a winter sunset is a charm,—
    When the fired clouds, compacted, blaze together,...