Thou half-unfolded flower
With fragrance-laden heart,
What is the secret power
That doth thy petals part?
What gave thee most thy hue—
The sunshine or the dew?
Thou wonder-wakened soul!
As Dawn doth steal on Night,
On thee soft Love hath stole.
Thine eye, that blooms with light,
What makes its charm so...
A pale Italian peasant,
Beside the dusty way,
Upon this morning pleasant
Kneels in the sun to pray.
Silent in her devotion,
With fervent glance she pleads;
Her fingers’ only motion,
Telling her amber beads.
Dreaming of ilex bowers
Beyond the purple brine,
Once more she sees the flowers...
Out in the misty moonlight
The first snowflakes I see,
As they frolic among the leafless
Limbs of the apple-tree.
Faintly they seem to whisper,
As round the boughs they wing:
“We are the ghosts of the blossoms
That died in the early spring.”
Misshapen, black, unlovely to the sight,
O mute companion of the murky mole,
You must feel overjoyed to have a white,
Imperious, dainty lily for a soul.
A bluebird lives in yonder tree,
Likewise a little chickadee,
In two woodpeckers’ nests—rent free!
There, where the weeping willow weeps,
A dainty housewren sweetly cheeps—
From an old oriole’s nest she peeps.
I see the English sparrow tilt
Upon the limb with sun begilt,—
His nest an ancient swallow built.
So it was...
Some space beyond the garden close
I sauntered down the shadowed lawn;
It was the hour when sluggards doze,
The cheerful, zephyr-breathing dawn.
The sun had not yet bathed his face,
Dark reddened from the night’s carouse,
When, lo! in festive gypsy grace
The hollyhocks stood nodding brows.
They shone full bold and...
Gaunt, rueful knight, on raw-boned, shambling hack,
Thy battered morion, shield and rusty spear,
Jog ever down the road in strange career,
Both tears and laughter following on thy track,
Stout Sancho hard behind, whose leathern back
Is curved in clownish sufferance, mutual cheer
The quest beguiling as devoid of fear,
Thou spurrest to rid...
Pale, climbing disk, who dost lone vigil keep
When all the flower-heads droop in drowsy swoon;
When lily bells fold to the zephyr’s tune,
And wearied bees are lapped in sugared sleep;
What secret hope is thine? What purpose deep?
Art thou enamored of the siren moon
That thus thy white face from the god of noon
Thou coverest, while his...
what dost thou here,
Thou dusky courtier,
Within the pinky palace of the rose?
Here is no bed for thee,
No honeyed spicery,—
But for the golden bee,
And the gay wind, and me,
Its sweetness grows.
Rover, thou dost forget;—
Seek thou the passion-flower
Bloom of one twilight hour....
Autumn was cold in Plymouth town;
The wind ran round the shore,
Now softly passing up and down,
Now wild and fierce and fleet,
Wavering overhead,
Moaning in the narrow street
As one beside the dead.
The leaves of wrinkled gold and brown
Fluttered here and there,
But not quite heedless where;...
