great sovereign of the earth and sea,
Whose sceptre shall forever be
The reign supreme of Liberty,
Draw thou the veil that dims our sight, light thou our eyes,
That we may see!
Beyond the waters, east and west,
Six giant legions ominous rest,
Equipped and armed from sole to crest;
The burdened nations groan...
Oh, be not ether-borne, poet of earth;
Stretch not thy wings to such a cloudless height
As ne’er to know the darkness of the night,
As ne’er to feel the touch of grief or mirth
That lives in human sympathy, whose birth
Is longed for in this world of love and blight;
Thou, too, must drink of sorrow and delight,
Must taste the joy of hope,...
Heedless she strayed from note to note,
A maid, scarce knowing that she sang;
The dainty accents from her throat
In undulations lightly rang.
She sang in laughing rhythms sweet;
A bird of spring was in her voice;
Till, on through measures deft and fleet,
She caught the ditty of her choice.
A song of love, in words of...
if i could know
That here about the place where last you played,—
Within this room, and yonder in the shade
Of branches low,—
Your spirit lingered, I would never go,
But evermore a hermit pace the round
Of sunny paths across this garden ground,
And o’er the fleckered lawn
Whereon your baby chariot was drawn,...
Where swell the songs thou shouldst have sung
By peaceful rivers yet to flow?
Where bloom the smiles thy ready tongue
Would call to lips that loved thee so?
On what far shore of being tossed,
Dost thou resume the genial stave,
And strike again the lyre we lost
By Rappahannock’s troubled wave?
If that new world hath hill...
It ’s only we, Grimalkin, both fond and fancy free,
So do your best, my beauty, for a home for you and me;
For you the oats and leisure, for me the pipe and book,
With sometimes, just at sunset, the long gray eastward look.
For once there was another: ah, Kathrine! who shall say
What wilful fancy seized you that sunny summer day;
You turned and...
A silver birch-tree like a sacred maid
Set with a guard of stalwart hemlocks round,
Whose low-toned airs stole by with sighing sound,
Stirred, shivering slightly, as if half afraid
Where the black shadow crept along the ground.
Breathless she stood,—as one whose work is stayed,
But threads her shuttle while her thought has strayed
To...
A long, rich breadth of Holland lace,
A window by a Flemish sea;
Huge men go by with mighty pace,—
Great Anne was Queen these days, may be,
And strange ships prowled for spoil the sea—
For you—old lace!
Stitch after stitch enwrought with grace,
The mist falls cold on Zuyder-Zee;
The silver tankards hang in place...
What can console for a dead world?
We tread on dust which once was life;
To nothingness all things are hurled:
What meaning in a hopeless strife?
Time’s awful storm
Breaks but the form.
Whatever comes, whatever goes,
Still throbs the heart whereby we live;
The primal joys still lighten woes,
And time...
The countless stars, which to our human eye
Are fixed and steadfast, each in proper place,
Forever bound to changeless points in space,
Rush with our sun and planets through the sky,
And like a flock of birds still onward fly;
Returning never whence began their race,
They speed their ceaseless way with gleaming face
As though God bade...
