• Inscribed to R. Aiken, Esq.
     “Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
      Their homely joys and destiny obscure;
    Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,
      The short but simple annals of the poor.”
    —GRAY.    

      MY loved, my honored, much-respected friend,
        No mercenary bard his homage pays:
      With honest pride I scorn each...

  • To Julia
    HER eyes the glow-worme lend thee,
    The shooting-starres attend thee,
          And the elves also,
          Whose little eyes glow
    Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.

    No Will-o’-th’-wispe mislight thee,
    Nor snake nor slow-worm bite thee;
          But on thy way,
          Not making stay,
    Since ghost there ’s none...

  • Slowly England’s sun was setting o’er the hilltops far away,
    Filling all the land with beauty at the close of one sad day,
    And the last rays kissed the forehead of a man and maiden fair,—
    He with footsteps slow and weary, she with sunny floating hair;
    He with bowed head, sad and thoughtful, she with lips all cold and white,
    Struggling to keep back the...

  • From the Swedish by Théophile Julius Henry Marzials

    LAST night the nightingale waked me,
      Last night when all was still;
    It sang in the golden moonlight
      From out the woodland hill.
    I opened the window gently,
      And all was dreamy dew—
    And oh! the bird, my darling,
      Was singing, singing of you!

    I think of you in the...

  • The Gray sea, and the long black land;
    And the yellow half-moon large and low;
    And the startling little waves, that leap
    In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
    As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
    And quench its speed in the slushy sand.

    Then a mile of warm, sea-scented beach;
    Three fields to cross, till a farm appears:
    A tap at...

  •                 IF I should die to-night,
    My friends would look upon my quiet face
    Before they laid it in its resting-place,
    And deem that death had left it almost fair;
    And, laying snow-white flowers against my hair,
    Would smooth it down with tearful tenderness,
    And fold my hands with lingering caress—
    Poor hands, so empty and so cold to...

  • From the Greek by George Chapman
    From “The Iliad,” Book VIII.
        THE WINDS transferred into the friendly sky
    Their supper’s savor; to the which they sat delightfully,
    And spent all night in open field; fires round about them shined.
    As when about the silver moon, when air is free from wind,
    And stars shine clear, to whose sweet beams, high...

  • Swiftly walk over the western wave,
            Spirit of Night!
    Out of the misty eastern cave,
    Where, all the long and lone daylight,
    Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear
    Which make thee terrible and dear,—
            Swift be thy flight!

    Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,
            Star-inwrought;
    Blind with thine hair the eyes of...

  • Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
    Thee, from report divine, I heard thy name,
    Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,—
    This glorious canopy of light and blue?
    Yet ’neath a curtain of translucent dew,
    Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
    Hesperus, with the host of heaven, came,
    And lo! creation widened in man’s view...

  • From “Childe Harold,” Canto II.
      ’T IS night, when Meditation bids us feel
      We once have loved, though love is at an end:
      The heart, lone mourner of its baffled zeal,
      Though friendless now, will dream it had a friend.
      Who with the weight of years would wish to bend,
      When Youth itself survives young Love and joy?
      Alas! when...