Works

Quite carelessly I turned the newsy sheet;
A song I sang, full many a year ago,
Smiled up at me, as in a busy street
One meets an old-time friend he used to know.
...

As evening shaped I found me on a moor
Which sight could scarce sustain:
The black lean land, of featureless contour,
Was like a tract in pain.

"This scene, like my own life," I said, "is one...

I.

There be Fairies bright of eye,
Who the wild-flowers warders are;
There be Fairies subtlely
Nourished in a blossom's star;
Fairies tripping merrily
Singing in faint echoes far,...

A SHORT STRAIN OF MUSIC FROM THE ORCHESTRA.


There breathes a language known and felt
Far as the pure air spreads its living zone;
Wherever rage can rouse, or pity melt,...

O thicker, deeper, darker growing,
The solemn vista to the tomb
Must know henceforth another shadow,
And give another cypress room.

In love surpassing that of brothers,...

(F.T.)


The cord broke, and the tent
Slipped, and the silken roof
Lay prone beneath the viewless hoof
Of the deliberate firmament.
Yet cared we not; how should we care?...

I.

Upon a rock, high on a mountain side,
Thousands of feet above the lake-sea's lip,
A rock in which old waters' rise and dip,
Plunge and recoil, and backward eddying tide...

Read At The Meeting Held At Music Hall, February 8, 1876, In Memory Of Dr. Samuel G. Howe


I.

Leader of armies, Israel's God,
Thy soldier's fight is won!
Master, whose lowly path he trod,...

One bright memory shines like a star
In the sky of my spirit forever;
And over my pathway it flashes afar
A radiance that perishes never.

One bright memory -- only one;...

Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing;
What a little thing
To remember for years
To remember with tears!

Adown the grass-grown paths we strayed,
The evening cowslips ope'd
Their yellow eyes to look at her,
The love-sick lilies moped
With envy that she rather chose
To take a creamy-petalled rose...

I remember
The crackle of the palm trees
Over the mooned white roofs of the town...
The shining town...
And the tender fumbling of the surf
On the sulphur-yellow beaches...

"Here, while the loom of Winter weaves
The shroud of flowers and fountains,
I think of thee and summer eves
Among the Northern mountains.

When thunder tolled the twilight's close,...

Amid my treasures once I found
A simple faded flower;
A flower with all its beauty fled,
The darling of an hour.

With bitterness I gazed awhile,
Then flung it from my sight;...

Somewhile before the dawn I rose, and stept
Softly along the dim way to your room,
And found you sleeping in the quiet gloom,
And holiness about you as you slept....

They mouth love's language. Gnash
The thirteen teeth
Your lean jaws grin with. Lash
Your itch and quailing, nude greed of the flesh.
Love's breath in you is stale, worded or sung,...

The moments passed as at a play;
I had the wisdom love brings forth;
I had my share of mother-wit,
And yet for all that I could say,
And though I had her praise for it,...

I know in part, but know not all,
The part I know is known;
What know I not I hope with Paul
To know before the throne.
Till then where knowledge fails I trust
The truth God has revealed,...

Brightly dawns our wedding day;
Joyous hour, we give thee greeting!
Whither, whither art thou fleeting?
Fickle moment, prithee stay!
What though mortal joys be hollow?
Pleasures come, if sorrows follow:...

"I will get a new string for my fiddle,
And call to the neighbours to come,
And partners shall dance down the middle
Until the old pewter-wares hum:
And we'll sip the mead, cyder, and rum!"
...