• To H


    Thy Friendship oft has made my heart to ake

    Do be my Enemy for Friendships sake

  •    THAT Varius huffs, and fights it out to-day,

    Who ran last week so cowardly away,

    In Codrus may surprise the little skill,

    Who nothing knows of humankind, but ill:

    Confining all his knowledge, and his art,

    To this, that each man is corrupt at heart.


       But thou who Nature thro...



  • Fair Julia Amanda, now since it is peace,

    Methinks your hostilities also should cease;

    The shafts from your eyes, and the snares of your smile,

    Should cease---or at least be suspended awhile:

    'Tis cruel to point your artillery of charms

    Against the poor lads who have laid down their arms.

    ...

  •           Dear Catherine, and David too,

              How very sweet it was of you

              To telegraph that you were here,

              New-lighted on this lower sphere.

              That though unlooked for, both had come,

              To bring into the earthly home

              The light and joy of Paradise
    ...

  •           A poet led me once, in chains of flowers,

                 A pilgrimage beneath the Orient skies;

              And there I dreamed I walked in Eden's bowers,


              He touched his harp, and when he sang of Love,

                 Then all my heart was to the poet given;

              For his sweet tones seemed...

  • To learn the Transport by the Pain

    As Blind Men learn the sun!

    To die of thirst — suspecting

    That Brooks in Meadows run!


    To stay the homesick — homesick feet

    Upon a foreign shore —

    Haunted by native lands, the while —

    And blue — beloved air!


    This is the Sovereign...

  • To lose one's faith — surpass

    The loss of an Estate —

    Because Estates can be

    Replenished — faith cannot —


    Inherited with Life —

    Belief — but once — can be —

    Annihilate a single clause —

    And Being's — Beggary —

  • To lose thee — sweeter than to gain

    All other hearts I knew.

    'Tis true the drought is destitute,

    But then, I had the dew!


    The Caspian has its realms of sand,

    Its other realm of sea.

    Without the sterile perquisite,

    No Caspian could be.

  • To love thee Year by Year —

    May less appear

    Than sacrifice, and cease —

    However, dear,

    Forever might be short, I thought to show —

    And so I pieced it, with a flower, now.

  • To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,

    One clover, and a bee,

    And revery.

    The revery alone will do,

    If bees are few.