“what is it to be dead?” O Life,
Close-held within my own,
What foul breath in the air is rife?
What voice malign, unknown,
Hath dared this whisper faint and dread,
“What is—what is it to be dead?”
Who told you that the song-bird died?
They had no right to say
This to my child—I know we cried
When Robin “went...
Whenever a little child is born,
All night a soft wind rocks the corn;
One more buttercup wakes to the morn,
Somewhere, somewhere.
One more rosebud shy will unfold,
One more grass-blade push through the mold,
One more bird-song the air will hold,
Somewhere, somewhere.
I look upon thy happy face—
Dear child with those undarkened eyes
Like glimpses of transparent skies—
And dream of things which have no place
In that small, golden head of thine;
Things that no ten-year-old has yet
Dared in his roguish wit to set
To thought, or word, or rhythmic line.
And it is better so, I think,
...
A simple-hearted child was He,
And He was nothing more;
In summer days, like you and me,
He played about the door,
Or gathered, where the father toiled.
The shavings from the floor.
Sometimes He lay upon the grass,
The same as you and I,
And saw the hawks above Him pass
Like specks against the sky;
Or,...
O child, had I thy lease of time! such unimagined things
Are waiting for that soul of thine to spread its untried wings!
Shalt thou not speak the stars, and go on journeys through the sky?
And read the soul of man as clear as now we read the eye?
Who knows if science may not find some art to make thee new,—
To mend the garments of thy flesh when thou...
“and you, Sir Poet, shall you make, I pray,
This child a poet with that insight rare
They tell me poets have, that everywhere
He sees new beauties lost to common clay?”
“Nay,” said the poet, “rather lend the boy
Your scarf of gauze, to veil his questioning eye,
Lest in his pleasure he should aught descry
But what is fair; so...
My chile? Lord, no, she ’s none o’ mine;
She ’s des one I have tried
To put in place of Anna Jane—
My little one what died.
Dat ’s long ago; no one but me
Knows even where she lies:
But in her place I ’ve always kept
A borrowed chile, her size.
As soon as it outgrows my chile,
I lets it go, right straight—...
The Wind blew wide the casement, and within—
It was the loveliest picture!—a sweet child
Lay in its mother’s arms, and drew its life,
In pauses, from the fountain,—the white round
Part shaded by loose tresses, soft and dark,
Concealing, but still showing, the fair realm
Of so much rapture, as green shadowing trees
With beauty shroud the...
From The Atlantic Magazine
WHEN to the garden of untroubled thought
I came of late, and saw the open door,
And wished again to enter, and explore
The sweet, wild ways with stainless bloom inwrought,
And bowers of innocence with beauty fraught,
It seemed some purer voice must speak before
I dared to tread that garden loved...
SLEEP breathes at last from out thee,
My little patient boy;
And balmy rest about thee
Smooths off the day’s annoy.
I sit me down, and think
Of all thy winning ways;
Yet almost wish, with sudden shrink,
That I had less to praise.
Thy sidelong pillowed meekness;
Thy thanks to all that aid;...
