• The vicomte is wearing a brow of gloom
    As he mounts the stair to his favorite room.
    “Breakfast for two!” the garçons say,
    “Then the pretty young lady is coming to-day!”
    But the patron mutters, A Dieu ne plaise!
    I want no clients from Père la Chaise.
    Silver and crystal—a splendid show!
    And a damask cloth white as driven snow.
    The...

  • Gather all kindreds of this boundless realm
      To speak a common tongue in thee! Be thou—
    Heart, pulse, and voice, whether pent hate o’erwhelm
      The stormy speech or young love whisper low.
    Cheer them, immitigable battle-drum!
      Forth, truth-mailed, to the old unconquered field,
    And lure them gently to a laurelled home,
      In notes more...

  • Hear now this fairy legend of old Greece,
    As full of gracious youth and beauty still
    As the immortal freshness of that grace
    Carved for all ages on some Attic Frieze.

      A youth named Rhœcus, wandering in the wood,
    Saw an old oak just trembling to its fall,
    And, feeling pity of so fair a tree,
    He propped its gray trunk with admiring care...

  • They are slaves who fear to speak
    For the fallen and the weak;
    They are slaves who will not choose
    Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
    Rather than in silence shrink
    From the truth they needs must think;
    They are slaves who dare not be
    In the right with two or three.

  •   i saw the twinkle of white feet,
    I saw the flash of robes descending;
      Before her ran an influence fleet,
    That bowed my heart like barely bending.

      As, in bare fields, the searching bees
    Pilot to blooms beyond our finding,
      It led me on, by sweet degrees
    Joy’s simple honey-cells unbinding.

      Those Graces were that seemed...

  • As a twig trembles, which a bird
      Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent,
    So is my memory thrilled and stirred;—
      I only know she came and went.

    As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven,
      The blue dome’s measureless content,
    So my soul held that moment’s heaven;—
      I only know she came and went.

    As, at one bound, our swift...

  •   for a cap and bells our lives we pay,
    Bubbles we buy with a whole soul’s tasking;
      ’T is heaven alone that is given away,
    ’T is only God may be had for the asking;
    No price is set on the lavish summer;
    June may be had by the poorest comer.

    And what is so rare as a day in June?
      Then, if ever, come perfect days;
    Then Heaven...

  • To his COUNTRYMEN
    THERE are one or two things I should just like to hint,
    For you don’t often get the truth told you in print;
    The most of you (this is what strikes all beholders)
    Have a mental and physical stoop in the shoulders;
    Though you ought to be free as the winds and the waves,
    You’ve the gait and the manners of runaway slaves;
    ...

  • What mr. ROBINSON THINKS
    GUVENER B. is a sensible man;
      He stays to his home an’ looks arter his folks;
    He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can,
      An’ into nobody’s tater-patch pokes;
              But John P.
              Robinson he
        Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.

    My! aint it terrible? Wut shall we du?
      We can’t never...

  • I
        weak-winged is song,
    Nor aims at that clear-ethered height
    Whither the brave deed climbs for light:
        We seem to do them wrong,
    Bringing our robin’s-leaf to deck their hearse
    Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse,
    Our trivial song to honor those who come
    With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum,
    And...