Works

Where the rails converge to the station yard
She stands one moment, breathing hard,

And then, with a snort and a clang of steel,
She settles her strength to the stubborn wheel,
...

I pass a cobbler's shop along the street
And pause a moment at the door-step, where,
In nature's medley, piping cool and sweet,
The songs that thrill the swamps when spring is near,...

Near where the shepherds watched by night
And heard the angels o'er them,
The wise men saw the starry light
Stand still at last before them.
No armored castle there to ward...

Not long the living weep above their dead,
And you will grieve, Admetus, but not long.
The winter's silence in these desolate halls
Will break with April's laughter on your lips;...

The Sun has come again and fed
The lily's lamp with light,
And raised from dust a rose, rich red,
And a little star-flower, white;
He also guards the Pleiades
And holds his planets true:...

Upon a gnarly, knotty limb
That fought the current's crest,
Where shocks of reeds peeped o'er the brim,
Wild wasps had glued their nest.

And in a sprawling cypress' grot,...

I care not what his name for God may be,
Nor what his wisdom holds of heaven and hell,
The alphabet whereby he strives to spell
His lines of life, nor where he bends his knee,...

When in this room I turn in pondering pace
And find thine eyes upon me where I stand,
Led on, as by Enemo's silken strand,
I come and gaze and gaze upon thy face.
...

If many years should dim my inward sight,
Till, stirred with no emotion,
I might stand gazing at the fall of night
Across the gloaming ocean;

Till storm, and sun, and night, vast with her stars,...

A little baby went to sleep
One night in his white bed,
And the moon came by to take a peep
At the little baby head.

A wind, as wandering winds will do,
Brought to the baby there...

When the dim, tall sails of the ships were in motion,
Ghostly, and slow, and silent-shod,
We gazed where the dusk fled over the ocean,
A great gray hush, like the shadow of God.
...

He who wills life wills its condition sweet,
Having made love its mother, joy its quest,
That its perpetual sequence might not rest
On reason's dictum, cold and too discreet;
...

'T will not be long before they hear
The bullbat on the hill,
And in the valley through the dusk
The pastoral whippoorwill.
A few more friendly suns will call
The bluets through the loam...

The girls all like to see the bluets in the lane
And the saucy johnny-jump-ups in the meadow,
But, we boys, we want to see the dogwood blooms again,
Throwin' a sort of summer-lookin' shadow;...

The cat sleeps in a chimney jam
With ashes in her fur,
An' Tige, from on the yuther side,
He keeps his eye on her.

The jar o' curds is on the hearth,
An' I'm the one to turn it....

The hills again reach skyward with a smile.
Again, with waking life along its way,
The landscape marches westward mile on mile
And time throbs white into another day.
...

When merry milkmaids to their cattle call
At evenfall
And voices range
Loud through the gloam from grange to quiet grange,

Wild waif-songs from long distant lands and loves,
Like migrant doves,...

If fate had held a careless knife
And clipped one line that drew,
Of all the myriad lines of life,
From Eden up to you;
If, in the wars and wastes of time,
One sire had met the sword,...

A soaking sedge,
A faded field, a leafless hill and hedge,

Low clouds and rain,
And loneliness and languor worse than pain.

Mottled with moss,...

Cows in the stall and sheep in the fold;
Clouds in the west, deep crimson and gold;
A heron's far flight to a roost somewhere;
The twitter of killdees keen in the air;...