DEAR common flower, that grow’st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold!
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold—
High-hearted buccaneers, o’erjoyed that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth’s ample round
May match in wealth!—thou...
-
-
DARLINGS of the forest!
Blossoming, alone,
When Earth’s grief is sorest
For her jewels gone—
Ere the last snow-drift melts, your tender buds have blown.Tinged with color faintly,
Like the morning sky,
Or, more pale and saintly,
Wrapped in leaves ye lie—
Even as... -
The Wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
I had walked on at the wind’s will,—
I sat now, for the wind was still.Between my knees my forehead was,—
My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
My hair was over in the grass,
My naked ears heard the day pass.My eyes, wide open, had the run
Of... -
Lines on Being Asked, Whence Is the Flower?
IN May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook:
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black waters with their beauty gay,—
Here might the red-bird come his... -
From “Thyrsis”
SO, some tempestuous morn in early June,
When the year’s primal burst of bloom is o’er,
Before the roses and the longest day—
When garden-walks and all the grassy floor
With blossoms red and white of fallen May
And chestnut-flowers are strewn—
So have I heard the cuckoo’s parting cry,
From the... -
Welcome, maids of honor!
You doe bring
In the Spring,
And wait upon her.She has virgins many,
Fresh and faire;
Yet you are
More sweet than any.Y’ are the maiden Posies,
And, so grac’t,
To be plac’t
’Fore damask roses.Yet though thus respected,
By and by... -
For days the peaks wore hoods of cloud,
The slopes were veiled in chilly rain;
We said: It is the Summer’s shroud,
And with the brooks we moaned aloud,—
Will sunshine never come again?At last the west wind brought us one
Serene, warm, cloudless, crystal day,
As though September, having blown
A blast of tempest, now had... -
From the Greek by William M. Hardinge
NOW will I weave white violets, daffodils
With myrtle spray,
And lily bells that trembling laughter fills,
And the sweet crocus gay:
With these blue hyacinth, and the lover’s rose
That she may wear—
My sun-maiden—each scented flower that blows,
Upon her scented hair. -
The Melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all... -
[See full text.]
IN my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain
Of the live-oak, the marsh and the main.
The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep.
Upbreathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep.* * * * *
I have waked, I have come, my belovèd! I might not abide:
I have come ere the dawn...