• To earn it by disdaining it

    Is Fame's consummate Fee —

    He loves what spurns him —

    Look behind — He is pursuing thee.


    So let us gather — every Day —

    The Aggregate of

    Life's Bouquet

    Be Honor and not shame —

  •           I look within those deep, dark, lustrous eyes,

              And there I read thy heart's sweet mysteries;

              There, like those lakes that mirror earth and sky,

              The lights and shadows of the future lie.

              For thee ambition has no clarion call;

              Thou 'lt seek no home in court,...

  •  
    To English Connoisseurs


    You must agree that Rubens was a Fool

    And yet you make him master of Your School

    And give more money for his Slobberings

    Than you will give for Rafaels finest Things
    5 I understood...

  • To fight aloud is very brave,

    But gallanter, I know,

    Who charge within the bosom,

    The cavalry of woe.


    Who win, and nations do not see,

    Who fall, and none observe,

    Whose dying eyes no country

    Regards with...

  • To flee from memory

    Had we the Wings

    Many would fly

    Inured to slower things

    Birds with surprise

    Would scan the cowering Van

    Of men escaping

    From the mind of man


  • * * *


    To forgive Enemies H . does pretend

    Who never in his Life forgave a friend


  • To F——


    I mock thee not tho I by thee am Mocked

    Thou callst me Madman but I call thee Blockhead


  • To F——


    You call me Mad tis Folly to do so

    To seek to turn a Madman to a Foe

    If you think as you speak you are an Ass

    If you do not you are but what you was

  •           No Eastern tale, no annals of the past,

                 Of Greece or Rome, deeds such as thine relate,

                 Deeds kings and emperors might emulate,

              That o'er thy native land new luster cast;

              The land that opens all her wide domain

                 To the oppressed of every name and...

  • To hang our head — ostensibly —

    And subsequent, to find

    That such was not the posture

    Of our immortal mind —


    Affords the sly presumption

    That in so dense a fuzz —

    You — too — take Cobweb attitudes

    Upon a plane of Gauze!