Works

O her beautiful eyes! they are as blue as the dew
On the violet's bloom when the morning is new,
And the light of their love is the gleam of the sun
O'er the meadows of Spring where the quick shadows run:...

O your hands - they are strangely fair!
Fair - for the jewels that sparkle there, -
Fair - for the witchery of the spell
That ivory keys alone can tell;
But when their delicate touches rest...

Ah, help me! but her face and brow
Are lovelier than lilies are
Beneath the light of moon and star
That smile as they are smiling now -
White lilies in a pallid swoon...

The beauty of her hair bewilders me -
Pouring adown the brow, its cloven tide
Swirling about the ears on either side
And storming round the neck tumultuously:
Or like the lights of old antiquity...

Herr Weiser! Three-score-years-and-ten,
A hale white rose of his country-men,
Transplanted here in the Hoosier loam,
And blossomy as his German home -
As blossomy and as pure and sweet...

Somebody's sent a funny little valentine to me.
It's a bunch of baby-roses in a vase of filigree,
And hovering above them - just as cute as he can be -
Is a fairy Cupid tangled in a scarf of poetry.
...

In some strange place
Of long-lost lands he finds her waiting face -
Comes marveling upon it, unaware,
Set moonwise in the midnight of her hair.

When two little boys - renowned but for noise -
Hik-tee-dik! Billy and Buddy! -
May hurt a whole school, and the head it employs,
Hik-tee-dik! Billy and Buddy!
Such loud and hilarious pupils indeed...

DEAD! my wayward boy - my own -
Not the Law's! but mine - the good
God's free gift to me alone,
Sanctified by motherhood.

"Bad," you say: Well, who is not?
"Brutal" - "with a heart of stone" -...

Tomps 'ud allus haf to say
Somepin' 'bout "his mother's way." -
He lived hard-like - never jined
Any church of any kind. -
"It was Mother's way," says he,
"To be good enough fer me...

"I'm home again, my dear old Room,
I'm home again, and happy, too,
As, peering through the brightening gloom,
I find myself alone with you:
Though brief my stay, nor far away,...

Close the book and dim the light,
I shall read no more to-night.
No - I am not sleepy, dear -
Do not go: sit by me here
In the darkness and the deep
Silence of the watch I keep....

When chirping crickets fainter cry,
And pale stars blossom in the sky,
And twilight's gloom has dimmed the bloom
And blurred the butterfly:

When locust-blossoms fleck the walk,...

How slight a thing may set one's fancy drifting
Upon the dead sea of the Past! - A view -
Sometimes an odor - or a rooster lifting
A far-off "Ooh! ooh-ooh!"

And suddenly we find ourselves astray...

"How did you rest, last night?" -
I've heard my gran'pap say
Them words a thousand times - that's right -
Jes them words thataway!
As punctchul-like as morning dast
To ever heave in sight...

I got to thinkin' of her - both her parents dead and gone -
And all her sisters married off, and none but her and John
A-livin' all alone there in that lonesome sort o' way,...

Nobody on the old farm here but Mother, me and John,
Except, of course, the extry he'p when harvest-time come on -
And then, I want to say to you, we needed he'p about,...

If I knew what poets know,
Would I write a rhyme
Of the buds that never blow
In the summer-time?
Would I sing of golden seeds
Springing up in ironweeds?
And of raindrops turned to snow,...

We're The Twins from Aunt Marinn's,
Igo and Ago.
When Dad comes, the show begins! -
Iram, coram, dago.

Dad he says he named us two
Igo and Ago
For a poem he always knew,...

I crave, dear Lord,
No boundless hoard
Of gold and gear,
Nor jewels fine,
Nor lands, nor kine,
Nor treasure-heaps of anything.
Let but a little hut be mine
Where at the hearthstone I may hear...