Works

I

It is not early spring and yet
Of bloodroot blooms along the stream,
And blotted banks of violet,
My heart will dream.

Is it because the windflower apes...

Till death have broken
Sweet life's love-token,
Till all be spoken
That shall be said,
What dost thou praying,
O soul, and playing
With song and saying,
Things flown and fled?...

(He.) Never until this night have I been stirred.
The elaborate starlight throws a reflection
On the dark stream,
Till all the eddies gleam;
And thereupon there comes that scream...

Tho' famed was Mesmer, in his day,
Nor less so, in ours, is Dupotet,
To say nothing of all the wonders done
By that wizard, Dr. Elliotson,
When, standing as if the gods to invoke, he...

Crickets are a strange place,
cricks of dew hemmed
with hoar-frost
mushrooming by a door.

The glens are fashions of a loom
eerie pads
are nightly rooms.

The padlocks...

The little hedgerow birds,
That peck along the roads, regard him not.
He travels on, and in his face, his step,
His gait, is one expression: every limb,
His look and bending figure, all bespeak...

Let all things vanish, if but you remain;
For if you stay, beloved, what is gone?
Yet, should you go, all permanence is vain,
And all the piled abundance is as none.
...

PAINTER in Paphos and Cythera famed
Depict, I pray, the absent Iris' face.
Thou hast not seen the lovely nymph I've named;
The better for thy peace. - Then will I trace...

Golden Apollo, that thro' heaven wide
Scatter'st the rays of light, and truth's beams,
In lucent words my darkling verses dight,
And wash my earthy mind in thy clear streams,...

Life flows down to death; we cannot bind
That current that it should not flee:
Life flows down to death, as rivers find
The inevitable sea.

Men work and think, but women feel;...

They crowded weeping from the teacher's house,
Crying aloud their fear at what he taught,
Old men and young men, wives and maids unwed,
And children screaming in the crowds unsought:...

Now this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser decreed,
To ease the strong of their burden, to help the weak in their need,
He sent a word to the peoples, who struggle, and pant, and sweat,...

When little Dickie Swope's a man,
He's go' to be a Sailor;
An' little Hamey Tincher, he's
A-go' to be a Tailor:
Bud Mitchell, he's a-go' to be
A stylish Carriage-Maker;...

The floating call of the cuckoo,
Soft little globes of bosom-shaped sound,
Came and went at the window;
And, out in the great green world,
Those maidens each morn the flowers...

I heard the city time-bells call
Far off in hollow towers,
And one by one with measured fall
Count out the old dead hours;

I felt the march, the silent press
Of time, and held my breath;...

There was a day, when I, if that was I,
Surrendered lay beneath a burning sky,
Where overhead the azure ached with heat,
And many red fierce poppies splashed the wheat;...

Here in the pungent gloom
Where the tamarac roses glow
And the balsam burns its perfume,
A vireo turns his slow
Cadence, as if he gloated
Over the last phrase he floated;...

Not premeditated

1853

The clock has struck noon; ere it thrice tell the hours
We shall meet round the table that blushes with flowers,
And I shall blush deeper with shame-driven blood...

When I wuz ist a little bit
o' weenty-teenty kid
I maked up a Fairy-tale,
all by myse'f, I did: -



I

Wunst upon a time wunst
They wuz a Fairy King,...

The stars cleave the sky.
Yet for us they rest,
And their race-course high
Is a shining nest!

The hours hurry on.
But where is thy flight,
Soft pavilion
Of motionless night?
...