She was a beauty in the days
When Madison was President,
And quite coquettish in her ways,—
On conquests of the heart intent.
Grandpapa, on his right knee bent,
Wooed her in stiff, old-fashioned phrase,—
She was a beauty in the days
When Madison was President.
And when your roses where hers went
Shall go, my...
A pitcher of mignonette
In a tenement’s highest casement,—
Queer sort of flower-pot—yet
That pitcher of mignonette
Is a garden in heaven set,
To the little sick child in the basement—
The pitcher of mignonette,
In the tenement’s highest casement.
As to a bird’s song she were listening,
Her beautiful head is ever sidewise bent;
Her questioning eyes lift up their depths intent—
She, who will never hear the wild-birds sing.
My words within her ears’ cold chambers ring
Faint, with the city’s murmurous sub-tones blent;
Though with such sounds as suppliants may have sent
To high-throned...
Les morts vont vite! Ay, for a little space
We miss and mourn them fallen from their place;
To take our portion in their rest are fain;
But by-and-by, having wept, press on again,
Perchance to win their laurels in the race.
What man would find the old in the new love’s face?
Seek on the fresher lips the old kisses’ trace?
For...
Haro! haro!
Judge now betwixt this woman and me,
Haro
She leaves me bond, who found me free.
Of love and hope she hath drained me dry—
Yea, barren as a drought-struck sky;
She hath not left me tears for weeping,
Nor will my eyelids close in sleeping.
I have gathered all my life’s-blood up—
Haro!...
This is a breath of summer wind
That comes—we know not how—that goes
As softly,—leaving us behind,
Pleased with a smell of vine and rose.
Poet, shall this be all thy word?
Blow on us with a bolder breeze,
Until we rise, as having heard
The sob, the song of far-off seas.
Blow in thy shell until thou draw,
From...
She might have known it in the earlier Spring,—
That all my heart with vague desire was stirred;
And, ere the Summer winds had taken wing,
I told her; but she smiled and said no word.
The Autumn’s eager hand his red gold grasped,
And she was silent; till from skies grown drear
Fell soft one fine, first snow-flake, and she clasped...
The actor’s dead, and memory alone
Recalls the genial magic of his tone;
Marble nor canvas nor the printed page
Shall tell his genius to another age:
A memory, doomed to dwindle less and less,
His world-wide fame shrinks to this littleness.
Yet if, a half a century from to-day,
A tender smile about our old lips play,
And if our...
Wind of the City Streets,
Impatient to be free,
In this dull time of heats
My love takes wings to flee:
Leave thou this idle Town
And hunt Her down.
Wherever She may stay,
By Sea or Mountain-side,
Make thou thy airy Way,
If there She bide;
If sea-spray kiss Her face;...
I take my chaperon to the play—
She thinks she ’s taking me.
And the gilded youth who owns the box,
A proud young man is he;
But how would his young heart be hurt
If he could only know
That not for his sweet sake I go
Nor yet to see the trifling show;
But to see my chaperon flirt.
Her eyes beneath her...
