Works

You cannot put a fire out;
A thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a fan
Upon the slowest night.

You cannot fold a flood
And put it in a drawer, --...

Power that is not of God, however great,
Is but the downward rushing and the glare
Of a swift meteor that hath lost its share
In the one impulse which doth animate
The parent mass: emblem to me of fate!...

[Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1864.]


Where spells were wrought he sat alone,
The wizard touching minds of men
Through far-swung avenues of power,
And proudly held the magic pen.
...

'Tis never, or but seldom known,
Power and peace to keep one throne.

Love, indeed thy strength is mighty
Thus, alone, such strife to bear,
Three 'gainst one, and never ceasing,
Death, and Madness, and Despair!

'Tis not my own strength has saved me;...

Love it is the precious loom,
Whose shuttle weaves each tangled thread,
And works flowers of exquisite bloom,
Shedding their perfume where we tread.

An Orpheus! an Orpheus! yes, Faith may grow bold,
And take to herself all the wonders of old;
Near the stately Pantheon you'll meet with the same
In the street that from Oxford hath borrowed its name.
...

And they remember
With piercing untold anguish
The proud boasting of their youth.
And they feel how Nature was fair.
And the mists of delusion,
And the scales of habit,
Fall away from their eyes

Do you remember that June day among
The hills, the high, far-reaching Sussex hills?
Above, the straggling flocks of fleecy clouds
That skipped and chased each other merrily...

Where yesterday rolled long waves of gold
Beneath the burnished blue of the sky,
A silver-white sea lies still and cold,
And a bitter wind blows by.

But nothing passes the door all day,...

C.P.R. "NO. 1," WESTBOUND

I swing to the sunset land -
The world of prairie, the world of plain,
The world of promise and hope and gain,
The world of gold, and the world of grain,...

Let us halt now for a space in our hurrying;
Let us take time to look up and look out;
Let us refuse for a spell to be worrying;
Let us decline to both question and doubt.
If one goes cavilling,...

Of all the gifts thine hand bestows,
Thou Giver of all good!
Not heaven itself a richer knows
Than my Redeemer's blood.


Faith too, the blood-receiving grace,
From the same hand we gain;...

There is a fountain fill'd with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel's veins;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.


The dying thief rejoiced to see...

My lady seems of ivory
Forehead, straight nose, and cheeks that be
Hollow'd a little mournfully.
Beata mea Domina!

Her forehead, overshadow'd much
By bows of hair, has a wave such...

With new chords I'll sing your praises,
Little shoot, because you dally
In the heart's sweet solitude.

Be into a garland woven,
o my captivating woman
Through whom sins are all absolved!
...

Praise the generous gods for giving
In a world of wrath and strife
With a little time for living,
Unto all the joy of life.

At whatever source we drink it,
Art or love or faith or wine,...

First offer incense; then, thy field and meads
Shall smile and smell the better by thy beads.
The spangling dew dredged o'er the grass shall be
Turn'd all to mell and manna there for thee....

First offer incense, then thy field and meads
Shall smile and smell the better by thy beads.
The spangling dew, dredg'd o'er the grass, shall be
Turn'd all to mell and manna there for thee....

We doubt the word that tells us: Ask,
And ye shall have your prayer;
We turn our thoughts as to a task,
With will constrained and rare.

And yet we have; these scanty prayers...