What seek’st thou at this madman’s pace?
“I seek my love’s new dwelling place:
Her house is dark, her doors are wide,
There bat and owl and beetle bide,
And there, breast-high, the rank weeds grow,
And drowsy poppies nod and blow.
So mount I swift to ride me through
The world to find my love anew.
I have no token of the way;...
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my boy Kree?
He played wid you when you was a chile?
You an’ he
Growed up tergether? Wait! Lemme see!
Closer! so I can look in yer face!—
Mars’ George’s smile!
Lord love you, Marster!
Dar ’neaf dat cypress is whar Kree lays.Sunburnt an’ grown!
Mars’ George, I shudden ha’ knowed... -
A rose’s crimson stain,
A rose’s stainless white,
Fitly become the immortal slain
Who fell in the great fight.
When Armistead died amid his foes,
Girt by the rebel cheer,
God plucked a soul like a white rose
In June time o’ the year.The blood in Pickett’s heart
Was of a ruddier hue
Than... -
A public haunt they found her in:
She lay asleep, a lovely child;
The only thing left undefiled
Where all things else bore taint of sin.Her charming contours fixed in clay
The universal law suspend,
And turn Time’s chariot back, and blend
A thousand years with yesterday.A sinless touch, austere yet warm,...
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To put new shingles on old roofs;
To give old women wadded skirts;
To treat premonitory coughs
With seasonable flannel shirts;
To soothe the stings of poverty
And keep the jackal from the door,—
These are the works that occupy
The Little Sister of the Poor.She carries, everywhere she goes,
Kind words and... -
Without him still this whirling earth
Might spin its course around the sun,
And death still dog the heels of birth,
And life be lived, and duty done.Without him let the rapt earth dree
What doom its twin rotations earn;
Whither or whence, are naught to me,
Save as his being they concern.Comets may crash, or inner...
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Break forth, break forth, O Sudbury town,
And bid your yards be gay
Up all your gusty streets and down,
For Lydia comes to-day!I hear it on the wharves below;
And if I buy or sell,
The good folk as they churchward go
Have only this to tell.My mother, just for love of her,
Unlocks her carvëd drawers;... -
Her eyes be like the violets,
Ablow in Sudbury lane;
When she doth smile, her face is sweet
As blossoms after rain;
With grief I think of my gray hairs,
And wish me young again.In comes she through the dark old door
Upon this Sabbath day;
And she doth bring the tender wind
That sings in bush and tree;
... -
Fathered by March, the daffodils are here.
First, all the air grew keen with yesterday,
And once a thrush from out some hollow gray
On a field’s edge, where whitening stalks made cheer,
Fluted the last unto the budding year;
Now that the wind lets loose from orchard spray
Plum bloom and peach bloom down the dripping way,
Their punctual... -
When i consider Life and its few years—
A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun;
A call to battle, and the battle done
Ere the last echo dies within our ears;
A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears;
The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat;
The burst of music down an unlistening street—
I wonder at the idleness of tears.
...