The puritan Spring Beauties stood freshly clad for church;
A Thrush, white-breasted, o’er them sat singing on his perch.
“Happy be! for fair are ye!” the gentle singer told them,
But presently a buff-coat Bee came booming up to scold them.
“Vanity, oh, vanity!
Young maids, beware of vanity!”
Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee,...
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White england shouldering from the sea,
Green England in thy rainy veil,
Old island-nest of Liberty
And loveliest Song, all hail!God guard thee long from scath and grief!
Not any wish of ours would mar
One richly glooming ivy-leaf,
One rosy daisy-star.What! phantoms are we, spectre-thin,
Unfathered, out of... -
A poet writ a song of May
That checked his breath awhile;
He kept it for a summer day,
Then spake with half a smile:“Oh, little song of purity,
Of mystic to-and-fro,
You are so much a part of me
I dare not let you go.”And so he made a sister-song
With more of cunning art;
But held the first his... -
The river widens to a pathless sea
Beneath the rain and mist and sullen skies.
Look out the window; ’t is a gray emprise,
This piloting of massed humanity
On such a day, from shore to busy shore,
And breeds the thought that beauty is no more.But see yon woman in the cabin seat,
The Southland in her face and foreign dress;... -
From their folded mates they wander far,
Their ways seem harsh and wild:
They follow the beck of a baleful star,
Their paths are dream-beguiled.Yet haply they sought but a wider range,
Some loftier mountain slope,
And little recked of the country strange
Beyond the gates of hope.And haply a bell with a luring call...
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Here at the country inn,
I lie in my quiet bed,
And the ardent onrush of armies
Throbs and throbs in my head.Why, in this calm, sweet place,
Where only silence is heard,
Am I ware of the crash of conflict,—
Is my blood to battle stirred?Without, the night is blessed
With the smell of pines, with stars;... -
The crocuses in the Square
Lend a winsome touch to the May;
The clouds are vanished away,
The weather is bland and fair;
Now peace seems everywhere.
Hark to the raucous, sullen cries:
“Extra! extra!”—tersely flies
The news, and a great hope mounts, or dies.About the bulletin-boards
Dark knots of people surge... -
A viewless thing is the wind,
But its strength is mightier far
Than a phalanxed host in battle line,
Than the limbs of a Samson are.And a viewless thing is Love,
And a name that vanisheth;
But her strength is the wind’s wild strength above,
For she conquers shame and Death. -
I saw a picture once by Angelo.
“Unfinished,” said the critic; “done in youth;”
And that was all, no thought of praise, forsooth!
He was informed, and doubtless it was so.
And yet, I let an hour of dreaming go
The way of all time, touched to tears and ruth,
Passion and joy, the prick of conscience’ tooth,
Before that careworn Christ’s... -
Unconquerably, men venture on the quest
And seek an ocean amplitude unsailed,
Cold, virgin, awful. Scorning ease and rest,
And heedless of the heroes who have failed,
They face the ice floes with a dauntless zest.The polar quest! Life’s offer to the strong!
To pass beyond the pale, to do and dare,
Leaving a name that stirs us...