Works

The camp of high-class spielers,
Who sneered in summer dress,
And doo-dah dilettante,
And scornful 'venuses',
House agents, and storekeepers,
All eager they to 'bleed',
The bards who tackled Manly,...

[1]

A blundering bat once stuck her head
Into a wakeful weasel's bed;
Whereat the mistress of the house,
A deadly foe of rats and mice,
Was making ready in a trice...

[1]

The weasels live, no more than cats,
On terms of friendship with the rats;
And, were it not that these
Through doors contrive to squeeze
Too narrow for their foes,...

Now are the trees all ruefully bereft
Of their brave liveries of green and gold,
No shred of all their pleasant raiment left
To shield them from the wind and nipping cold....

What's the best thing in the world?
June-rose, by May-dew impearled;
Sweet south-wind, that means no rain;
Truth, not cruel to a friend;
Pleasure, not in haste to end;
Beauty, not self-decked and curled...

The book of life to thee is given,
To warn of death, to guide to Heaven.
Wanderer on the wild astray,
Here wilt thou find the King's highway.
Has thy soul suffered, hunger, pain,...

[1]

A bird, with plum'd arrow shot,
In dying case deplored her lot:
'Alas!' she cried, 'the anguish of the thought!
This ruin partly by myself was brought!
Hard-hearted men! from us to borrow...

December 17, 1891.


Blossom and greenness, making all
The winter birthday tropical,
And the plain Quaker parlors gay,
Have gone from bracket, stand, and wall;...

Written for Lorado Taft's Statue of Black Hawk at Oregon, Illinois



To be given in the manner of the Indian Oration and the Indian War-Cry.


Hawk of the Rocks,...

There was a tracker in the force
Of wondrous sight (the story ran):,
He never failed to track a horse,
He never failed to find his man.

They brought him from a distant town...

Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed
Snowflake; that's fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife...

Tune - "Bonnie wee thing."


I.

Bonnie wee thing, cannie wee thing,
Lovely wee thing, wert thou mine,
I wad wear thee in my bosom,
Lest my jewel I should tine....

A Memorial to Booker T. Washington



I. Simon Legree

A Negro Sermon. (To be read in your own variety of negro dialect.)


Legree's big house was white and green....

Through and through the inspir'd leaves,
Ye maggots, make your windings;
But oh! respect his lordship's taste,
And spare his golden bindings.

PREFACE.

...

The Botanic Garden. Part II. Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. With Philosophical Notes: Canto II.

Again the Goddess strikes the golden lyre,
And tunes to wilder notes the warbling wire;...

And now the Goddess founds her silver shell,
And shakes with deeper tones the inchanted dell;
Pale, round her grassy throne, bedew'd with tears,
Flit the thin forms of Sorrows, and of Fears;...

The Botanic Garden. Part II. Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. With Philosophical Notes: Canto IV.

Now the broad Sun his golden orb unshrouds,
Flames in the west, and paints the parted clouds;...

The brain within its groove
Runs evenly and true;
But let a splinter swerve,
'T were easier for you
To put the water back
When floods have slit the hills,
And scooped a turnpike for themselves,...

'Tis a legend of the bushmen from the days of Cunningham,
When he opened up the country and the early squatters came.
Tis the old tale of a fortune missed by men who did seek,...