Works

I sat beside a bed of pain,
And all the muffled hours were still;
The breeze that bent the summer grain,
Scarce sighed along the pine-clad hill;
The pensive stars, the silvery moon...

The moon to-night is like the sun
Through blossomed branches seen;
Come out with me, dear silent one,
And trip it on the green.

"Nay, Lad, go you within its light,
Nor stay to urge me so--...

Weary and listless, sad and slow,
Without any conversation,
Was a man that worked on The Overflow,
The butt of the shed and the station.

The shearers christened him Noisy Ned,...

A tangled orchard round the farm-house spreads,
Wherein it stands home-like, but desolate,
'Midst crowded and uneven-statured sheds,
Alike by rain and sunshine sadly stained....

The deepest tragedies of life are not
Put into books, or acted on the stage.
Nay, they are lived in silence, by tense hearts
In homes, among dull unperceiving kin,...

MAY 30, 1878,

Dying for victory, cheer on cheer
Thundered on his eager ear.
- CHARLES L. HOLSTEIN.

I

Deep, tender, firm and true, the Nation's heart...

When the dumb Hour, clothed in black,
Brings the Dreams about my bed,
Call me not so often back,
Silent Voices of the dead,
Toward the lowland ways behind me,
And the sunlight that is gone!...

[From Arthur Selwyn's Note-book.]

Through these broad streets do I fly -
Furlongs and miles I defy,
Till the "magnificent distance"
Vanishes out of existence.
Let me with pencil prolong...

For sport my Julia threw a lace
Of silk and silver at my face:
Watchet the silk was, and did make
A show as if't had been a snake:
The suddenness did me afright,
But though it scar'd, it did not bite.

She is as in a field of silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,...

I saw him in a picture, and I felt I'd like to cry -
He stood in line,
The man "for mine,"
A tall silk-hatted "guy" -
Right on the call,
Silk hat and all,
He'd hurried to the cry -...

D' altrui pietoso.


Kind to the world, but to itself unkind,
A worm is born, that dying noiselessly
Despoils itself to clothe fair limbs, and be
In its true worth by death alone divined....

1
Though no high-hung bells or din
Of braggart bugles cry it in -
What is sound? Nature's round
Makes the Silver Jubilee.

2
Five and twenty years have run...

'Sailorman, I'll give to you
My bright silver penny,
If out to sea you'll sail me
And my dear sister Jenny.'

'Get in, young sir, I'll sail ye
And your dear sister Jenny,...

The silver Wedding! on some pensive ear
From towers remote as sound the silvery bells,
To-day from one far unforgotten year
A silvery faint memorial music swells.

And silver-pale the dim memorial light...

Clear from the deep sky pours the moon
Her silver on the heavy dark;
The small stars blink.

Against the moon the maple bough
Flutters distinct her leafy spears;
All sound falls weak....
...

MATTHEW.
Gossip, you'll like to hear, no doubt!
A learned work has just come out
Messias is the name 'twill bear;
The man has travelled through the air,
And on the sun-beplastered roads...

Brook and road
Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy Pass,
And with them did we journey several hours
At a slow step. The immeasurable height
Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,...

That haunting air had some far strain of it,
That morning rose hath flung it back to met
The wind of spring, the ancient, awful sea.
Bid me remember it.

And looking back against the look of Love,...

The singer only sang the Joy of Life,
For all too well, alas! the singer knew
How hard the daily toil, how keen the strife,
How salt the falling tear; the joys how few.
...