The Garden beds I wandered by
One bright and cheerful morn,
When I found a new-fledged butterfly,
A-sitting on a thorn,
A black and crimson butterfly,
All doleful and forlorn.
I thought that life could have no sting,
To infant butterflies,
So I gazed on this unhappy thing
With wonder and surprise,
While...
Forever! ’t is a single word!
Our rude forefathers deemed it two;
Can you imagine so absurd
A view?
Forever! What abysms of woe
The word reveals, what frenzy, what
Despair! For ever (printed so)
Did not.
It looks, ah me! how trite and tame;
It fails to sadden or appall
Or solace—it is...
An Austrian army, awfully arrayed,
Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade.
Cossack commanders cannonading come,
Dealing destruction’s devastating doom.
Every endeavor engineers essay,
For fame, for fortune fighting,—furious fray!
Generals ’gainst generals grapple—gracious God!
How honors Heaven heroic hardihood!
Infuriate,...
I Only knew she came and went Lowell.
Like troutlets in a pool; Hood.
She was a phantom of delight, Wordsworth.
And I was like a fool. Eastman.
One kiss, dear maid, I said, and sighed, Coleridge.
Out of those lips unshorn: Longfellow.
She shook her ringlets round her head, Stoddard.
And laughed in merry scorn. Tennyson...
Blind Thamyris, and Blind Mæonides, Milton.
Pursue the triumph and partake the gale! Pope.
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees, Shakespeare.
To point a moral or adorn a tale. Johnson.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene, Gray.
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears, Tennyson.
Like angels’ visits, few and far between, ...
Trochee trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks; strong foot! yet ill able
Ever to come up with dactyl trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long;—
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapæsts throng;
One syllable long, with one short at each side,
Amphibrachys hastes with a stately stride;—...
Blank Verse in Rhyme
EVEN is come; and from the dark Park, hark,
The signal of the setting sun—one gun!
And six is sounding from the chime, prime time
To go and see the Drury-Lane Dane slain,—
Or hear Othello’s jealous doubt spout out,—
Or Macbeth raving at that shade-made blade,
Denying to his frantic clutch much touch;
Or else to...
Singing through the forests,
Rattling over ridges;
Shooting under arches,
Rumbling over bridges;
Whizzing through the mountains,
Buzzing o’er the vale,—
Bless me! this is pleasant,
Riding on the rail!
Men of different “stations”
In the eye of fame,
Here are very quickly
Coming to the same;...
(The Unconscious Poetizing on a Philosopher)
THERE is no force however great
Can stretch a cord however fine
Into a horizontal line
That shall be accurately straight.
From Punch
Being a Mathematical Madrigal in the Simplest Form
CHARMER, on a given straight line,
And which we will call B C,
Meeting at a common point A,
Draw the lines A C, A B.
But, my sweetest, so arrange it
That they ’re equal, all the three;
Then you ’ll find that, in the sequel,
All their angles, too are equal....
