Works

Preface


This tale of wonder is told for children; with which view, it has been carefully designed and very nicely printed.
...

Though the great song return no more
There's keen delight in what we have:
The rattle of pebbles on the shore
Under the receding wave.

Vague, vague 'neath darkling waves,
With emerald-curving caves
For the arched skies,
Red-walled with dark dull gold
The Nixes' city old
Deep-glimmering lies....

("Il est un peu tard.")

[Bk. III. xxx., Oct. 30, 1854.]


Late it is to look so proud,
Daisy queen! come is the gloom
Of the winter-burdened cloud! -
"But, in winter, most I bloom!"...

High-spirited friend,
I send nor balms nor cor'sives to your wound:
Your fate hath found
A gentler and more agile hand to tend
The cure of that which is but corporal;...

I

"We moved with pensive paces,
I and he,
And bent our faded faces
Wistfully,
For something troubled him, and troubled me.

"The lanthorn feebly lightened
Our grey hall,...

I once was a guest at a Nobleman's wedding;
Fair was the Bride, but she scarce had been kind,
And now in our mirth, she had tears nigh the shedding
Her former true lover still runs in her mind.
...

I.
O, will you hear a knightly tale of old Bohemian day,
It was the noble Moringer in wedlock bed he lay;
He halsed and kiss'd his dearest dame, that was as sweet as May,...

It is not growing like a tree
in bulk, doth make Man better be;
or standing long an oak three hundred year,
to fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere;

A lily of a day
is fairer in May,...

O big old tree, so tall an' fine,
Where all us childern swings an' plays,
Though neighbers says you're on the line
Between Pa's house an' Mr. Gray's, -
Us childern used to almost fuss,...

"Ce sont les amours
Qui font les beaux jours."


What is a Patron? JOHNSON knew,
And well that lifelike portrait drew.
He is a Patron who looks down
With careless eye on men who drown;...

A woman on an empire's throne
Has sat in queenly pride,
And swayed the sceptre of her power
O'er land and ocean wide:
A crown of gold adorned the head
That held a nation's fate,...

Lo the curtains of night around Palestine fall,
And Jerusalem's streets into darkness are thrown;
The late-busy hum of men's voices is hushed,
And the city is clad in dark livery alone.
...

Among a race high-handed, strong of heart,
Sea-rovers, conquerors, builders in the waste,
He had his birth; a nature too complete,
Eager and doubtful, no man's soldier sworn...

I come like an Eastern monarch dight
In my crown of beams, in my robe of light;
And nature droops at my ardent gaze,
And wraps the woods in a purple haze;
From my fiery glance the strong man shrinks,...

Dans les moments de la vie ou la reflexion devient plus calme et plus profonde, ou l'interet et l'avarice parlent moins haut que la raison, dans les instants de chagrin domestique, de maladie, et de peril de mort, les nobles se...

High on a broad unfertile tract of forest-skirted Down,
Nor kept by Nature for herself, nor made by man his own,
From home and company remote and every playful joy,...

I.
Red glows the forge in Striguil's bounds,
And hammers din, and anvil sounds,
And armourers, with iron toil,
Barb many a steed for battle's broil,
Foul fall the hand which bends the steel...

(NOVEMBER 4, 1864)

Norr'na-race's longing,
It was the sea's free wave,
And fight of heroes thronging,
And honor that it gave;
Their thoughts and deeds upspringing
From roots in Surtr's fire,...

Gift from the cold and silent Past!
A relic to the present cast,
Left on the ever-changing strand
Of shifting and unstable sand,
Which wastes beneath the steady chime
And beating of the waves of Time!...