i cannot make him dead!
His fair sunshiny head
Is ever bounding round my study-chair;
Yet, when my eyes, now dim
With tears, I turn to him,
The vision vanishes—he is not there!
I walk my parlor floor,
And through the open door
I hear a footfall on the chamber stair;
I ’m stepping toward the...
At midnight, in his guarded tent,
The Turk was dreaming of the hour
When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power:
In dreams, through camp and court, he bore
The trophies of a conqueror;
In dreams his song of triumph heard;
Then wore his monarch’s signet ring:
Then pressed that monarch’s throne—a king...
Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise.
Tears fell when thou wert dying,
From eyes unused to weep,
And long, where thou art lying,
Will tears the cold turf steep.
When hearts, whose truth was proven,
Like thine, are laid in earth,...
Home of the Percys’ high-born race,
Home of their beautiful and brave,
Alike their birth and burial-place,
Their cradle and their grave!
Still sternly o’er the castle gate
Their house’s Lion stands in state,
As in his proud departed hours;
And warriors frown in stone on high,
And feudal banners flout the sky
Above...
Wild rose of Alloway! my thanks;
Thou ’mindst me of that autumn noon
When first we met upon “the banks
And braes of bonny Doon.”
Like thine, beneath the thorn-tree’s bough,
My sunny hour was glad and brief;
We ’ve crossed the winter sea, and thou
Art withered—flower and leaf.
And will not thy death-doom be mine—...
Cooper, whose name is with his country’s woven,
First in her files, her PIONEER of mind—
A wanderer now in other climes, has proven
His love for the young land he left behind;
And throned her in the senate-hall of nations,
Robed like the deluge rainbow, heaven-wrought;
Magnificent as his own mind’s creations,
And beautiful as...
The fay’s SENTENCE
THE MONARCH sat on his judgment-seat
On his brow the crown imperial shone,
The prisoner Fay was at his feet,
And his peers were ranged around the throne.
He waved his sceptre in the air;
He looked around and calmly spoke;
His brow was grave and his eye severe,
But his voice in a softened accent broke:...
When freedom from her mountain height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure celestial white
With streakings of the morning light;
Then from his mansion in the sun
She...
Awake, ye forms of verse divine!
Painting! descend on canvas wing,—
And hover o’er my head, Design!
Your son, your glorious son, I sing;
At Trumbull’s name I break my sloth,
To load him with poetic riches:
The Titian of a table-cloth!
The Guido of a pair of breeches!
Come, star-eyed maid, Equality!
In thine...
The man who frets at worldly strife
Grows sallow, sour, and thin;
Give us the lad whose happy life
Is one perpetual grin:
He, Midas-like, turns all to gold,—
He smiles when others sigh,
Enjoys alike the hot and cold,
And laughs through wet and dry.
There ’s fun in everything we meet,—
The greatest, worst, and...
