Romancer, far more coy than that coy sex!
Perchance some stroke of magic thee befell,
Ere thy baronial keep the Muse did vex,
Nor grant deliverance from enchanted spell,
But tease thee all the while and sore perplex,
Till thou that wizard tale shouldst fairly tell,
Better than poets in thy own clear prose.
Painter of sin in its deep...
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Poet of the Pulpit, whose full-chorded lyre
Startles the churches from their slumbers late,
Discoursing music, mixed with lofty ire
At wrangling factions in the restless state,
Till tingles with thy note each listening ear,—
Then household charities by the friendly fire
Of home, soothe all to fellowship and good cheer!
No sin escapes thy... -
People’s attorney, servant of the Right!
Pleader for all shades of the solar ray,
Complexions dusky, yellow, red, or white;
Who, in thy country’s and thy time’s despite,
Hast only questioned, What will Duty say?
And followed swiftly in her narrow way:
Tipped is thy tongue with golden eloquence,
All honeyed accents fall from off thy lips... -
Freedom’s first champion in our fettered land!
Nor politician nor base citizen
Could gibbet thee, nor silence, nor withstand.
Thy trenchant and emancipating pen
The patriot Lincoln snatched with steady hand,
Writing his name and thine on parchment white,
’Midst war’s resistless and ensanguined flood;
Then held that proclamation high in... -
The shapes that frowned before the eyes
Of the early world have fled,
And all the life of earth and skies,
Of streams and seas, is dead.Forgotten is the Titan’s fame,
The dread Chimæra now
Is but a mild innocuous flame
Upon a mountain’s brow,
Around whose warmth its strawberry red
The arbutus hangs and goatherds... -
O’er a low couch the setting sun had thrown its latest ray,
Where in his last strong agony a dying warrior lay,
The stern old Baron Rudiger, whose frame had ne’er been bent
By wasting pain, till time and toil its iron strength had spent.“They come around me here, and say my days of life are o’er,
That I shall mount my noble steed and lead my band no... -
I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon;
To whom the better elements
And kindly stars have given
A form so fair, that, like the air,
’T is less of earth than heaven.Her every tone is music’s own,
Like those of morning birds,
And something more... -
We break the glass, whose sacred wine
To some beloved health we drain,
Lest future pledges, less divine,
Should e’er the hallowed toy profane;
And thus I broke a heart that poured
Its tide of feelings out for thee,
In draught, by after-times deplored,
Yet dear to memory.But still the old, impassioned ways
And... -
Look out upon the stars, my love,
And shame them with thine eyes,
On which, than on the lights above,
There hang more destinies.
Night’s beauty is the harmony
Of blending shades and light;
Then, lady, up,—look out, and be
A sister to the night!Sleep not! thine image wakes for aye
Within my watching breast:... -
I burn no incense, hang no wreath,
On this thine early tomb:
Such cannot cheer the place of death,
But only mock its gloom.
Here odorous smoke and breathing flower
No grateful influence shed;
They lose their perfume and their power,
When offered to the dead.And if, as is the Afghaun’s creed,
The spirit may...