The Melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all...
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IN my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain
Of the live-oak, the marsh and the main.
The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep.
Upbreathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep.* * * * *
I have waked, I have come, my belovèd! I might not abide:
I have come ere the dawn... -
Oh, the fern, the fern, the Irish hill fern,
That girds our blue lakes from Lough Ine to Lough Erne,
That waves on our crags like the plume of a king,
And bends like a nun over clear well and spring.
The fairies’ tall palm-tree, the heath-bird’s fresh nest,
And the couch the red-deer deems the sweetest and best;
With the free winds to fan it, and... -
“That precious seed into the furrow cast
Earliest in spring-time crowns the harvest last.”
—PHŒBE CARY.A SONG for the plant of my own native West,
Where nature and freedom reside,
By plenty still crowned, and by peace ever blest,
To the corn! the green corn of her pride!
In climes of the East has the olive been sung,
... -
O, Greenly and fair in the lands of the sun,
The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run,
And the rock and the tree and the cottage enfold,
With broad leaves all greenness and blossoms all gold,
Like that which o’er Nineveh’s prophet once grew,
While he waited to know that his warning was true,
And longed for the storm-cloud, and listened in... -
I.
i Dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring,
And gentle odors led my steps astray,
Mixt with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kist it and then fled, as thou... -
Insect or blossom? Fragile, fairy thing,
Poised upon slender tip, and quivering
To flight! a flower of the fields of air;
A jewelled moth; a butterfly, with rare
And tender tints upon his downy wing,
A moment resting in our happy sight;
A flower held captive by a thread so slight
Its petal-wings of broidered gossamer
Are, light as... -
(California Poppy)
THY satin vesture richer is than looms
Of Orient weave for raiment of her kings!
Not dyes of olden Tyre, not precious things
Regathered from the long-forgotten tombs
Of buried empires, not the iris plumes
That wave upon the tropics’ myriad wings,
Not all proud Sheba’s queenly offerings,
Could match the... -
I Will not have the mad Clytie,
Whose head is turned by the sun;
The tulip is a courtly quean,
Whom, therefore, I will shun:
The cowslip is a country wench,
The violet is a nun;—
But I will woo the dainty rose,
The queen of every one.The pea is but a wanton witch,
In too much haste to wed,
And clasps... -
Thou blossom, bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven’s own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night;Thou comest not when violets lean
O’er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o’er the ground-bird’s hidden nest.Thou waitest late, and com’st...