Works

Stay awhile, thou blessed band, be entreated, daughters of heaven!
While the chance-met scholar of Wisdom learneth your sacred names:
He is resting a little from his toil, yet a little on the borders of earth,...

Amid the flowers of a garden glade
A lovely rose tree smiled,
And the sunbeams shone, the zephyrs played,
'Round the gardens favorite child;
And the diamond dew-drops glistening fell...

They say when the Great Prompter's hand shall ring
Down the last curtain upon earth and sea,
All the Good Mimes will have eternity
To praise their Author, worship love and sing;...

I was playing with my hoop along the road
Just where the bushes are, when, suddenly,
There came a shout., I ran away and stowed
Myself beneath a bush, and watched to see...

The Rabbi Nathan two-score years and ten
Walked blameless through the evil world, and then,
Just as the almond blossomed in his hair,
Met a temptation all too strong to bear,...

Address to Madame de la Sabli're.[1]

You, Iris, 'twere an easy task to praise;
But you refuse the incense of my lays.
In this you are unlike all other mortals,...

Do not take it ill if, in these fables, I mingle a little of the bold, daring, and fine-spun philosophy that is called new.
...

I

Slowly the hour-hand of the clock moves round;
So slowly that no human eye hath power
To see it move! Slowly in shine or shower
The painted ship above it, homeward bound,...

I

The dubious daylight ended,
And I walked the Town alone, unminding whither bound and why,
As from each gaunt street and gaping square a mist of light ascended
And dispersed upon the sky.
...

The Youths.

O Winter, O white winter, wert thou gone
No more within the wilds were I alone
Leaping with bent bow over stock and stone!

No more alone my love the lamp should burn,...

Fight through ignorance, want, and care,
Through the griefs that crush the spirit;
Push your way to a fortune fair,
And the smiles of the world you'll merit.
Long, as a boy, for the chance to learn,...

("Temps futurs.")

[Part "Lux," Jersey, Dec. 16-20, 1853.]


O vision of the coming time!
When man has 'scaped the trackless slime
And reached the desert spring;...

As we journey along, with a laugh and a song,
We see, on youth's flower-decked slope,
Like a beacon of light, shining fair on the sight,
The beautiful Station of Hope.
...

A metropolitan rat invited
His country cousin in town to dine:
The country cousin replied, "Delighted."
And signed himself, "Sincerely thine."
The town rat treated the country cousin
To half a dozen...

He is said to have been the last Red man
In Action. And the Miller is said to have laughed
If you like to call such a sound a laugh.
But he gave no one else a laugher's license....

The rod was but a harmless wand,
While Moses held it in his hand;
But, soon as e'er he laid it down,
Twas a devouring serpent grown.
Our great magician, Hamet Sid,
Reverses what the prophet did:...

Introduction.


I.
Lives there a strain, whose sounds of mounting fire
May rise distinguished o'er the din of war;
Or died it with yon Master of the Lyre...

Far back within an age remote,
Which common history fails to note,
When dogs could talk, and pigs could sing,
And frogs obeyed a wooden king,
There lived a tribe of rats so mean,...

[The French is by Bosquillon, which I translated as under, in a beautiful Swedish island in the Baltic, as I sat by the side of a fine clear stream of rock-water.]


ORIGINAL.
...

The way I read a letter's this:
'T is first I lock the door,
And push it with my fingers next,
For transport it be sure.

And then I go the furthest off
To counteract a knock;...