Works

In that building, long and low,
With its windows all a-row,
Like the port-holes of a hulk,
Human spiders spin and spin,
Backward down their threads so thin
Dropping, each a hempen bulk.
...

One asked me where the roses grew:
I bade him not go seek,
But forwith bade my Julia show
A bud in either cheek.

Not on the lute, nor harp of many strings
Shall all men praise the Master of all song.
Our life is brief, one saith, and art is long;
And skilled must be the laureates of kings....

Some reckon their age by years,
Some measure their life by art;
But some tell their days by the flow of their tears,
And their lives by the moans of their heart.

The dials of earth may show...

Unknowing and unknown, the hardy Muse
Boldly defies all mean and partial views;
With honest freedom plays the critic's part,
And praises, as she censures, from the heart.
...

The last days of August.... Autumn was already at hand.

The sun was setting. A sudden downpour of rain, without thunder or lightning, had just passed rapidly over our wide plain.
...

You have forgot: it once was red
With life, this rose, to which you said,--
When, there in happy days gone by,
You plucked it, on my breast to lie,--
"Sleep there, O rose! how sweet a bed...

I took the love you gave, Ah, carelessly,
Counting it only as a rose to wear
A little moment on my heart no more,
So many roses had I worn before,
So lightly that I scarce believed them there.
...

We love the land when the world goes round,
And deep, deep down in her thorny ground,
Where nobody comes, and nobody knows,
We love the Rose. Oh! we love the Rose.
...

Beneath my chamber window
Pierrot was singing, singing;
I heard his lute the whole night thru
Until the east was red.
Alas, alas Pierrot,
I had no rose for flinging...

Before man's fall the rose was born,
St. Ambrose says, without the thorn;
But for man's fault then was the thorn
Without the fragrant rose-bud born;
But ne'er the rose without the thorn.

The rose had been wash'd, just wash'd in a shower,
Which Mary to Anna convey'd,
The plentiful moisture encumber'd the flower,
And weigh'd down its beautiful head.

...

It tossed its head at the wooing breeze;
And the sun, like a bashful swain,
Beamed on it through the waving frees
With a passion all in vain, -
For my rose laughed in a crimson glee,...

Betwene the Cytee and the Chirche of Bethlehem, is the felde Floridus, that is to seyne, the feld florisched. For als moche as a fayre Mayden was blamed with wrong and sclaundred, that sche hadde don fornicacioun, for whi...

If I were a bee and you were a rose,
Would you let me in when the gray wind blows?
Would you hold your petals wide apart,
Would you let me in to find your heart,
If you were a rose?
...

Lady, life's sweetest lesson wouldst thou learn,
Come thou with me to Love's enchanted bower
High overhead the trellised roses burn;
Beneath thy feet behold the feathery fern, -
A leaf without a flower....

("La tombe dit ' la rose.")

[XXXI., June 3, 1837]


The Grave said to the rose
"What of the dews of dawn,
Love's flower, what end is theirs?"
"And what of spirits flown,...

In June I brought her roses, and she cupt
One slim bud in her hand and cherisht it,
And put it to her mouth. Rose and she supt
Each other's sweetness; but the flower was lit...

You can sew heem up in a canvas sack,
An' t'row heem over boar'
You can wait till de ship she 's comin' back
Den bury heem on de shore
For dead man w'en he 's dead for sure,...

The rose is a rose,
And was always a rose.
But now the theory goes
That the apple's a rose,
And the pear is, and so's
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only knows
What will next prove a rose....