Works

Born in a dark wood's lonely dell,
Where echoes roar'd, and tendrils curl'd
Round a low cot, like hermit's cell,
Old Salcey Forest was my world.
I felt no bonds, no shackles then,...

O for the strength to paint my joy once more!
That joy I feel when Winter's reign is o'er;
When the dark despot lifts his hoary brow,
And seeks his polar-realm's eternal snow....

Pink, small, and punctual,
Aromatic, low,
Covert in April,
Candid in May,

Dear to the moss,
Known by the knoll,
Next to the robin
In every human soul.

Bold little beauty,...

A shower of green gems on my apple tree
This first morning of May
Has fallen out of the night, to be
Herald of holiday -
Bright gems of green that, fallen there,
Seem fixed and glowing on the air.
...

Upon a day, a merry day,
When summer in her best,
Like Sunday belles, prepares for play,
And joins each merry guest,
A maid, as wild as is a bird
That never knew a cage,...

May is back, and You and I
Are at the stream again -
The leaves are out,
And all about
The building birds begin
To make a merry din:
May is back, and You and I
Are at the dream again.
...

May is building her house. With apple blooms
She is roofing over the glimmering rooms;
Of the oak and the beech hath she builded its beams,
And, spinning all day at her secret looms,...

(BRETON.)


'Stand up, stand up, thou May Janet,
And go to the wars with me.'
He's drawn her by both hands
With her face against the sea.

'He that strews red shall gather white,...

W'y, one time wuz a little-weenty dirl,
An' she wuz named Red Riding Hood, 'cause her -
Her Ma she maked a little red cloak fer her
'At turnt up over her head - An' it 'uz all...

The spring is fresh and fearless
And every leaf is new,
The world is brimmed with moonlight,
The lilac brimmed with dew.

Here in the moving shadows
I catch my breath and sing,...

How sweet it is, when suns get warmly high,
In the mid-noon, as May's first cowslip springs,
And the young cuckoo his soft ditty sings,
To wander out, and take a book; and lie...

[FOR A BIRTHDAY: MAY 20]


On this day to life she came -
May-Rose, my May-Rose!
With scented breeze, with flowered flame,
She touched the earth and took her name
Of May, Rose.
...

(See Note 78)

Wergeland's statue on May seventeenth
Saw the procession. And as its rear-guard,
Slow marching masses,
Strong men, and women with flower-decked presence;...

How fair doth Nature

Appear again!
How bright the sunbeams!

How smiles the plain!

The flow'rs are bursting

From ev'ry bough,
And thousand voices
...

A new year gleams on us, tearful
And troubled and smiling dim
As the smile on a lip still fearful,
As glances of eyes that swim:
But the bird of my heart makes cheerful
The days that are bright for him....

I said, "I have shut my heart
As one shuts an open door,
That Love may starve therein
And trouble me no more."

But over the roofs there came
The wet new wind of May,...

I.

"Stay, traveller, stay thy weary steed,
The sultry hour of noon is near,
Of rest thy way-worn limbs have need,
Stay, then, and, taste its sweetness here.
The mountain path which thou hast sped...

I.

He stood where the mountain moss outspread
Its smoothness beneath his dusky foot;
The chestnut boughs above his head,
Hung motionless and mute.
There came not a voice from the wooded hill,...

I.

With plumes to which the dewdrops cling,
Wide waves the morn her golden wing;
With countless variegated beams
The empurpled orient glows and gleams;
A gorgeous mass of crimson clouds...

Introduction To Mazeppa
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