A little way below her chin,
Caught in her bosom’s snowy hem,
Some buttercups are fastened in,—
Ah, how I envy them!
They do not miss their meadow place,
Nor are they conscious that their skies
Are not the heavens, but her face,
Her hair, and mild blue eyes.
There, in the downy meshes pinned,
Such sweet...
Give me the room whose every nook
Is dedicated to a book:
Two windows will suffice for air
And grant the light admission there,—
One looking to the south, and one
To speed the red, departing sun.
The eastern wall from frieze to plinth
Shall be the Poet’s labyrinth,
Where one may find the lords of rhyme
From Homer’s down to...
A quatrain
hark at the lips of this pink whorl of shell
And you shall hear the ocean’s surge and roar:
So in the quatrain’s measure, written well,
A thousand lines shall all be sung in four!
A HOLLYHOCK
SERAGLIO of the Sultan Bee!
I listen at the waxen door,
And hear the zithern’s melody
And sound...
Down in a garden olden,—
Just where, I do not know,—
A buttercup all golden
Chanced near a rose to grow;
And every morning early,
Before the birds were up,
A tiny dewdrop pearly
Fell in this little cup.
This was the drink of water
The rose had every day;
But no one yet has caught her
While...
All up and down in shadow-town
The shadow children go;
In every street you ’re sure to meet
Them running to and fro.
They move around without a sound,
They play at hide-and-seek,
But no one yet that I have met
Has ever heard them speak.
Beneath the tree you often see
Them dancing in and out,
And in...
See, yonder, the belfry tower
That gleams in the moon’s pale light;
Or is it a ghostly flower
That dreams in the silent night?
I listen and hear the chime
Go quavering o’er the town,
And out of this flower of Time
Twelve petals are wafted down.
This was the man God gave us when the hour
Proclaimed the dawn of Liberty begun;
Who dared a deed, and died when it was done
Patient in triumph, temperate in power,—
Not striving like the Corsican to tower
To heaven, nor like great Philip’s greater son
To win the world and weep for worlds unwon,
Or lose the star to revel in the flower....
Did chaos form,—and water, air, and fire,
Rocks, trees, the worm, work toward Humanity,—
That Man at last, beneath the churchyard spire,
Might be once more the worm, the rock, the tree?
I found a yellow flower in the grass,
A tiny flower with petals like a bell,
And yet, methought, more than a flower it was,—
More like a miracle.
Above, the sky was clear, save where at times
Soft-tinted fleeces drifted dreamily,
Bearing a benison to sunny climes
From altars of the sea.
In vestments green the pines...
Our mother, loved of all thy sons
So dear, they die, not dying for thee;
Yet are thy fondest, tenderest ones
Thy wanderers far at sea.
Life-long the bitter blue they stem,
Till custom makes it almost fair;
Sweet grow the splintering gales to them,
The icy gloom, the scorching glare.
But thy dear eyes, which shine for...
