Fierce burns our fire of driftwood; overhead
Gaunt maples lift arms against the night;
The stars are sobbing,—sorrow-shaken, white,
And high they hang, or show sad eyes grown red
With weeping for their queen,—the moon, just dead.
Black shadows backward...
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Like some great pearl from out the Orient,
Upheld by unseen hands,—in its rich weight
An offering to adorn a queen’s proud state
That offering to adorn a queen’s proud state
That some dependent princeling did present,—
The moon slow rises into night’s dark...
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Who will watch thee, little mound,
When a few more years are done,
And I go with them to rest
In the silence that is best?
Grave of my belovëd one,
When that I mine own have found,
Who will watch thee, little mound?
Who will...
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A Fair little girl sat under a tree
Sewing as long as her eyes could see;
Then smoothed her work and folded it right,
And said, “Dear work, good night, good night!”
Such a number of rooks came over her head,
Crying, “Caw, caw!” on their way to bed,...
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Inscribed to R. Aiken, Esq.
“Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure;
Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,
The short but simple annals of the poor.”
—GRAY.
MY loved, my honored, much-respected...
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To Julia
HER eyes the glow-worme lend thee,
The shooting-starres attend thee,
And the elves also,
Whose little eyes glow
Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.
No Will-o’-th’-wispe mislight thee,
Nor snake nor slow-worm bite...
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Slowly England’s sun was setting o’er the hilltops far away,
Filling all the land with beauty at the close of one sad day,
And the last rays kissed the forehead of a man and maiden fair,—
He with footsteps slow and weary, she with sunny floating hair;
He with...
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From the Swedish by Théophile Julius Henry Marzials
LAST night the nightingale waked me,
Last night when all was still;
It sang in the golden moonlight
From out the woodland hill.
I opened the window gently,
And all was dreamy dew—
...
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The Gray sea, and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startling little waves, that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed in the slushy sand.
Then a...
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IF I should die to-night,
My friends would look upon my quiet face
Before they laid it in its resting-place,
And deem that death had left it almost fair;
And, laying snow-white flowers against my hair,
Would smooth it down with tearful...
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