Night after night we dauntlessly embark
On slumber’s stream, in whose deep waves are drowned
Sorrow and care, and with all senses bound
Drift for a while beneath the sombre arc
Of that full circle made of light and dark
Called life, yet have no fear, and know refound
Lost consciousness shall be, even at the sound
Of the first warble of...
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About her head or floating feet
No halo’s starry gleam,
Still dark and swift uprising, like
A bubble in a stream,—A soul, from whose rejoicing heart
The bonds of earth were riven,
Sped upward through the silent night
To the closed Gates of Heaven.And waiting heard a voice,—“Who comes
To claim Eternity?... -
Soul, wherefore fret thee? Striving still to throw
Some light upon the primal mystery
Through rolling ages pondered ceaselessly,
Whence thou hast come, and whither thou shalt go!
Some deepest, secret voice gives thee to know
How, older than created earth and sea,
Thou hast been ever, shalt forever be,—
Unborn—undying! Thy own life doth... -
Out of the old house, Nancy—moved up into the new;
All the hurry and worry is just as good as through.
Only a bounden duty remains for you and I—
And that ’s to stand on the doorstep here, and bid the old house good-by.What a shell we ’ve lived in, these nineteen or twenty years!
Wonder it had n’t smashed in, and tumbled about our ears;
Wonder... -
when the grass shall cover me,
Head to foot where I am lying;
When not any wind that blows,
Summer blooms nor winter snows,
Shall awake me to your sighing:
Close above me as you pass,
You will say, “How kind she was,”
You will say, “How true she was,”
When the grass grows over me.When the grass...
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Insect or blossom? Fragile, fairy thing,
Poised upon slender tip, and quivering
To flight! a flower of the fields of air;
A jewelled moth; a butterfly, with rare
And tender tints upon his downy wing,
A moment resting in our happy sight;
A flower held captive by a thread so slight
Its petal-wings of broidered gossamer
Are, light as... -
Ah! little flower, upspringing, azure-eyed,
The meadow-brook beside,
Dropping delicious balms
Into the tender palms
Of lover-winds, that woo with light caress,
In still contentedness,
Living and blooming thy brief summer-day:—
So, wiser far than I,
That only dream and sigh,
And, sighing, dream my... -
What songs found voice upon those lips,
What magic dwelt within the pen,
Whose music into silence slips,
Whose spell lives not again!For her the clamorous to-day
The dreamful yesterday became;
The brands upon dead hearths that lay
Leaped into living flame.Clear ring the silvery Mission bells
Their calls to... -
I
the sovereigns
they who create rob death of half its stings;
They, from the dim inane and vague opaque
Of nothingness, build with their thought, and make
Enduring entities and beauteous things;
They are the Poets—they give airy wings
To shapes marmorean; or they overtake
The Ideal with the brush, or, soaring, wake
Far in... -
in the gloomy ocean bed
Dwelt a formless thing, and said,
In the dim and countless eons long ago,
“I will build a stronghold high,
Ocean’s power to defy,
And the pride of haughty man to lay low.”Crept the minutes for the sad,
Sped the cycles for the glad,
But the march of time was neither less nor more;...