’t was summer, and the spot a cool retreat—
Where curious eyes came not, nor footstep rude
Disturbed the lovers’ chosen solitude:
Beneath an oak there was a mossy seat,
Where we reclined, while birds above us wooed
Their mates in songs voluptuously sweet.
A limpid brook went murmuring by our feet,
And all conspired to urge the tender mood...
-
-
Even at their fairest still I love the less
The blossoms of the garden than the blooms
Won by the mountain climber: theirs the tints
And forms that most delight me,—theirs the charm
That lends an aureole to the azure heights
Whereon they flourish, children of the dews
And mountain streamlets.
But in sleep sometimes
... -
What was my dream? Though consciousness be clear,
I hold no memory of the potent thing,
Yet feel the force of it—a creeping fear,
A hope, a horror, and a sense austere
Of revelation, stayed at thought’s extreme:
As when the wind is passed, the pines still swing;
Or when the storm has blown, the waves yet fling
To shore the... -
I died; they wrapped me in a shroud,
With hollow mourning, far too loud,
And sighs that were but empty sound,
And laid me low within the ground.
I felt her tears through all the rest;
Past sheet and shroud they reached my breast;
They warmed to life the frozen clay,
And I began to smile and say:
At last thou lov’st me,... -
It is in Winter that we dream of Spring;
For all the barren bleakness and the cold,
The longing fancy sees the frozen mould
Decked with sweet blossoming.Though all the birds be silent,—though
The fettered stream’s soft voice be still,
And on the leafless bough the snow
Be rested, marble-like and chill,—
Yet will the... -
Were i transported to some distant star
With fifty little children, girls and boys,
Or to some fabled land unknown, afar,
Where never sound could come of this world’s noise;Our world begun anew, as when of yore
Sad Adam fled from Eden; I alone
The sole custodian of all human lore,—
No books to aid, all rules and records gone... -
Our bugles sang truce,—for the night-cloud had lowered,
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;
And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered,
The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.When reposing that night on my pallet of straw,
By the wolf-scaring fagot that guarded the slain;
At the dead of the night a sweet vision I... -
From “Irish Melodies”
O THE DAYS are gone when beauty bright
My heart’s chain wove!
When my dream of life, from morn till night,
Was love, still love!
New hope may bloom,
And days may come,
Of milder, calmer beam,
But there ’s nothing half so sweet in life
As love’s young dream!
O... -
Our life is twofold; sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our... -
In slumbers of midnight the sailor-boy lay;
His hammock swung loose at the sport of the wind;
But watch-worn and weary, his cares flew away,
And visions of happiness danced o’er his mind.He dreamt of his home, of his dear native bowers,
And pleasures that waited on life’s merry morn,
While Memory stood sideways, half covered with flowers...