With wrath-flushed cheeks, and eyelids red
Where anger’s fiercest sign was spread,
And hands whose clenched nails left their print
In the brown palm’s deep, sun-warmed tint,
The chieftains sate in circle wide,
And in the centre, on his side,
Thrown like a dog, a thieving brute,
Lay Ahmed, frowning, bound and mute.
“The man who...
What! roses on thy tomb! and was there then
One who could sorrow o’er thy wretched fate?
One heart that echoed not the cry of men,—
Its joy and triumph, its contempt and hate?
One being in all the circle of the lands
Who owed a kindness to thy bloodstained hands?
What though thy wrist, adown the chariot course,
Guided thy...
The moon has left the sky,
The Pleiades are flown,
Midnight is creeping nigh,
And I am still alone.
Ah me! how long, how long
Are all these weary hours!
I hate the night-bird’s song
Among the Lesbian flowers.
I hate the soft, sweet breeze
That comes to kiss my hair
From oleander trees
And waters cool...
Fair star, new-risen to our wondering eyes
With brighter glory from thy long eclipse!
Poet, imprisoned in dead centuries!
Some god unlocks thy music now, and strips
The seal of envious silence from thy lips;
And we are fain to hear thy wakening melodies.
Thou comest from the darkness of the tomb
To sing once more the happy olden...
A bale-fire kindled in the night,
By night a blaze, by day a cloud,
With flame and smoke all England woke,—
It climbed so high, it roared so loud:
While over Massachusetts’ pines
Uprose a white and steadfast star;
And many a night it hung unwatched,—
It shone so still, it seemed so far.
But Light is Fire, and Fire is...
The town of Hay is far away,
The town of Hay is far;
Between its hills of green and gray
Its winding meadows are.
Within the quiet town of Hay
Is many a quiet glen,
And there by many a shaded way
Are homes of quiet men:
And there are many hearts alway
That turn with longing, night and day,
Back to the...
This drop of ink chance leaves upon my pen,
What might it write in Milton’s mighty hand!
What might it speak at Shakespeare’s high command!
What words to thrill the throbbing hearts of men!
Or from Beethoven’s soul a grand amen,
All life and death in one full compass spanned!
Who could its power in Goethe ’s touch withstand?
What words of...
One day I saw a ship upon the sands
Careened upon beam ends, her tilted deck
Swept clear of rubbish of her long-past wreck;
Her colors struck, but not by human hands;
Her masts the driftwood of what distant strands!
Her frowning ports, where at the Admiral’s beck
Grim-visaged cannon held the foe in check,
Gaped for the frolic of the...
It is the bittern’s solemn cry
Far out upon the lonely moors,
Where steel-gray pools reflect the sky,
And mists arise in dim contours.
Save this, no murmur on their verge
Doth stir the stillness of the reeds;
Silent the water-snakes emerge
From writhing depths of water-weeds.
Through sedge or gorse of that morass...
The play was done;
The mimic lovers of the stage
Were safe united, with their mimic battles won;
But while the prompter closed his well-scored page,
And on his bell a willing finger laid,
An old man, stately, kind, and hale,
In mould of courtly fashion made,
Set forth the moral of the tale.
Much bent with time,...
