Down, down, Ellen, my little one,
Climbing so tenderly up to my knee;
Why should you add to the thoughts that are taunting me,
Dreams of your mother’s arms clinging to me?
Cease, cease, Ellen, my little one,
Warbling so fairily close to my ear;
Why should you choose, of all songs that are haunting me,
This that I made for your mother to...
From the French by Henry Francis Cary
Addressed to his deceased wife, who died in childbed at the age of twenty-two
TO make my lady’s obsequies
My love a minster wrought,
And, in the chantry, service there
Was sung by doleful thought;
The tapers were of burning sighs,
That light and odor gave:
And sorrows, painted o’er with...
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman’s boy
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on,
To the haven under the...
How prone we are to hide and hoard
Each little treasure time has stored,
To tell of happy hours!
We lay aside with tender care
A tattered book, a lock of hair,
A bunch of faded flowers.
When death has led with silent hand
Our darlings to the “Silent Land,”
Awhile we sit bereft;
But time goes on; anon we rise...
To the Happy Dead People
WHAT of the darkness? Is it very fair?
Are there great calms? and find we silence there?
Like soft-shut lilies, all your faces glow
With some strange peace our faces never know,
With some strange faith our faces never dare,—
Dwells it in Darkness? Do you find it there?
Is it a Bosom where tired heads may lie?...
God spake three times and saved Van Elsen’s soul;
He spake by sickness first and made him whole;
Van Elsen heard him not,
Or soon forgot.
God spake to him by wealth, the world outpoured
Its treasures at his feet, and called him Lord;
Van Elsen’s heart grew fat
And proud thereat.
God spake the third time when...
[The Death of Lincoln.]
1.
WHEN lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed,
And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night,
I mourned and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilacs blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.
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...
Down to the borders of the silent land
He goes with halting feet;
He dares not trust; he cannot understand
The blessedness complete
That waits for God’s beloved at his right hand.
He dreads to see God’s face, for though the pure
Beholding him are blest,
Yet in his sight no evil can endure;
And still with...
Beyond the smiling and the weeping
I shall be soon;
Beyond the waking and the sleeping,
Beyond the sowing and the reaping,
I shall be soon.
Love, rest, and home!
Sweet hope!
Lord, tarry not, but come.
Beyond the blooming and the fading
I shall be soon;
Beyond the shining and...
