Dear friends, we are strangers; we never before Have suspected what love to each other we bore; But each of us all to his neighbor is dear, Whose heart has a throb for our time-honored pier. ...
Four summers coined their golden light in leaves, Four wasteful autumns flung them to the gale, Four winters wore the shroud the tempest weaves, The fourth wan April weeps o'er hill and vale; ...
Proudly, beneath her glittering dome, Our three-hilled city greets the morn; Here Freedom found her virgin home, - The Bethlehem where her babe was born.
The mountains glitter in the snow A thousand leagues asunder; Yet here, amid the banquet's glow, I hear their voice of thunder; Each giant's ice-bound goblet clinks; A flowing stream is summoned;...
I Enchanter of Erin, whose magic has bound us, Thy wand for one moment we fondly would claim, Entranced while it summons the phantoms around us That blush into life at the sound of thy name. ...
And that I walk thus proudly crowned withal Is that 'tis my distinction; if I fall, I shall not weep out of the vital day, To-morrow dust, nor wear a dull decay.
1. In the cave which wild weeds cover Wait for thine aethereal lover; For the pallid moon is waning, O'er the spiral cypress hanging And the moon no cloud is staining.
I never see, after nocturnal rain, The wandering stars move through the air serene, And flame forth 'twixt the dew-fall and the rime, But I behold her radiant eyes wherein...
How wisdom and folly meet, mix, and unite; How virtue and vice blend their black and their white; How genius, th' illustrious father of fiction, Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction,...
I stood upon a heaven-cleaving turret Which overlooked a wide Metropolis - And in the temple of my heart my Spirit Lay prostrate, and with parted lips did kiss The dust of Desolations [altar] hearth -...
Methought I was a billow in the crowd Of common men, that stream without a shore, That ocean which at once is deaf and loud; That I, a man, stood amid many more By a wayside..., which the aspect bore...
This is the land! It lies outstretched a vision of delight, Bent like a shield between the silver seas It flashes back the hauteur of the sun; Yet teems with humblest beauties, still a part...
To-night I'll have my friar, let me think About my room, I'll have it in the pink; It should be rich and sombre, and the moon, Just in its mid-life in the midst of June,...