A fleet with flags arrayed
Sailed from the port of Brest,
And the Admiral’s ship displayed
The signal: “Steer southwest.”
For this Admiral D’Anville
Had sworn by cross and crown
To ravage with fire and steel
Our helpless Boston Town.
There were rumors in the street,
In the houses there was fear
Of the...
O, whither sail you, Sir John Franklin?
Cried a whaler in Baffin’s Bay.
To know if between the land and the pole
I may find a broad sea-way.
I charge you back, Sir John Franklin,
As you would live and thrive;
For between the land and the frozen pole
No man may sail alive.
But lightly laughed the stout Sir John,...
Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him;
The little gray leaves were kind to Him
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.
Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content....
She leaned her cheek upon her hand,
And looked across the glooming land;
She saw the wood from farm to farm
Touched by the twilight’s ghostly charm;
And heard the owl’s cry sound forlorn
Across the fields of waving corn,
And sighed with sad voice dreamily:
Oriskany! Oriskany!
The moonlight through the open door
...
Broad bars of sunset-slanted gold
Are laid along the field, and here
The silence sings, as if some old
Refrain, that once rang long and clear,
Came softly, stealing to the ear
Without the aid of sound. The rill
Is voiceless, and the grass is sere,
But beauty’s soul abideth still.
Trance-like, the mellow air doth hold...
A Street there is in Paris famous,
For which no rhyme our language yields,
Rue Neuve des Petits Champs its name is—
The New Street of the Little Fields;
And there ’s an inn, not rich and splendid,
But still in comfortable case—
The which in youth I oft attended,
To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse.
This Bouillabaisse a noble...
Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him;
The little gray leaves were kind to Him;
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.
Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content....
’t Was the body of Judas Iscariot
Lay in the Field of Blood;
’T was the soul of Judas Iscariot
Beside the body stood.
Black was the earth by night,
And black was the sky;
Black, black were the broken clouds,
Tho’ the red Moon went by.
’T was the body of Judas Iscariot
Strangled and dead lay there;
’T...
From the French by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
TELL me now in what hidden way is
Lady Flora the lovely Roman?
Where ’s Hipparchia, and where is Thais,
Neither of them the fairer woman?
Where is Echo, beheld of no man,
Only heard on river and mere,—
She whose beauty was more than human?
But where are the snows of yester-year?...
When the ways are heavy with mire and rut,
In November fogs, in December snows,
When the North Wind howls, and the doors are shut,—
There is place and enough for the pains of prose;
But whenever a scent from the whitethorn blows,
And the jasmine-stars at the casement climb,
And a Rosalind-face at the lattice shows,
Then hey! for...
