Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicæan barks of yore,
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur...
Answer to a Sonnet Ending Thus—
“Dark eyes are dearer far
Than those that made the hyacinthine bell.”
By T. H. Reynolds.
BLUE! ’T is the life of heaven,—the domain
Of Cynthia,—the wide palace of the sun,—
The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,—
The bosom of clouds, gold, gray, and dun.
Blue! ’T is...
O, Fairest of the rural maids!
Thy birth was in the forest shades;
Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky,
Were all that met thine infant eye.
Thy sports, thy wanderings, when a child,
Were ever in the sylvan wild,
And all the beauty of the place
Is in thy heart and on thy face.
The twilight of the trees and rocks
Is in...
The Year stood at its equinox,
And bluff the North was blowing,
A bleat of lambs came from the flocks,
Green hardy things were growing;
I met a maid with shining locks
Where milky kine were lowing.
She wore a kerchief on her neck,
Her bare arm showed its dimple,
Her apron spread without a speck,
Her air was...
O Lovely Mary Donnelly, it ’s you I love the best!
If fifty girls were round you, I ’d hardly see the rest.
Be what it may the time of day, the place be where it will,
Sweet looks of Mary Donnelly, they bloom before me still.
Her eyes like mountain water that ’s flowing on a rock,
How clear they are! how dark they are! and they give me many a shock....
The Night has a thousand eyes,
The day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When its love is done.
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pleasure or gray grief;
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf.
If I were what the words are,
And love were like the tune,
With double...
Paraphrase from the Greek
T’ OTHER day, as I was twining
Roses for a crown to dine in,
What, of all things, midst the heap,
Should I light on, fast asleep,
But the little desperate elf,
The tiny traitor,—Love himself!
By the wings I pinched him up
Like a bee, and in a cup
Of my wine I plunged and sank him;
And what...
ATHULF.— Appeared
The princess with that merry child Prince Guy:
He loves me well, and made her stop and sit,
And sat upon her knee, and it so chanced
That in his various chatter he denied
That I could hold his hand within my own
So closely as to hide it: this being tried
Was proved against him; he insisted then...
The Fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever,
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another’s being mingle:—
Why not I with thine?
See! the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;...
