Works

My thoughts are like fire-flies, pulsing in moonlight;
My heart like a silver cup, filled with red wine;
My soul a pale gleaming horizon, whence soon light
Will flood the gold earth with a torrent divine.

A blight, a gloom, I know not what, has crept upon my gladness--
Some vague, remote ancestral touch of sorrow, or of madness;
A fear that is not fear, a pain that has not pain's insistence;...

Bowed hearts that hold the saddest memories
Are the most beautiful; and such make sweet
Light happy moods of alien natures which
Their sadness contacts, and so sanctifies.
...

Above her veil a shrouded Moorish maid
Showed melting eyes, as limpid as a lake;
A brow untouched by care; a band of jetty hair,
And nothing more. The all-concealing haik...

If Mr. Jones, Lycurgus B.,
Had one peculiar quality,
'Twas his severe advocacy
Of conjugal fidelity.

His views of heaven were very free;
His views of life were painfully...

The swarthy bee is a buccaneer,
A burly velveted rover,
Who loves the booming wind in his ear
As he sails the seas of clover.

A waif of the goblin pirate crew,
With not a soul to deplore him,...

(The Shilling Magazine, 1865.)


'Oh, where are you going with your love-locks flowing
On the west wind blowing along this valley track?'
'The downhill path is easy, come with me an' it please ye,...

Let them say to my Lover
That here I lie!
The thing of His pleasure,
His slave am I.

Say that I seek Him
Only for love,
And welcome are tortures
My passion to prove.
...

Fancy, who leads the pastimes of the glad,
Full oft is pleased a wayward dart to throw;
Sending sad shadows after things not sad,
Peopling the harmless fields with signs of woe:...

Awake my soul! in cheerful mood,
Thy matin thanks to pay!
The God, who gives thee rest, and food,
Directs thee to be gay.

The Jewish world was dark, and cold,
There doubts and fears annoy:...

"Lie there," I said, "my Sorrow! lie thou there!
And I will drink the lissome air,
And see if yet the heavens have gained their blue."
Then rose my Sorrow as an aged man,...

"There was darkness."

A Morn of guilt, an hour of doom -
Shocks and tremblings dread;
All the city sunk in gloom -
Thick darkness overhead.
An awful Sufferer straight and stark;...

If the rose of all flowers be the rarest
That heaven may adore from above,
And the fervent moss-rose be the fairest
That sweetens the summer with love,
Can it be that a fairer than any...

I.

The years have passed in ceaseless round
Since first they laid her here to rest
In dreamless sleep beneath the silent mound,
With folded hands upon her gentle breast.


II.
...

(F.M.L.)


Living child or pictured cherub,
Ne'er o'ermatched its baby grace;
And the mother, moving nearer,
Looked it calmly in the face;
Then with slight and quiet gesture,...

(CLARISSA HARLOW)


Seek not to calm my grief,
To stay the falling tear;
Have pity on me, ye my friends,
The hand of God is here.

She was my only one,
Oh, then my love how great!...

Fate gave the word, the arrow sped,
And pierc'd my darling's heart;
And with him all the joys are fled
Life can to me impart.
By cruel hands the sapling drops,
In dust dishonour'd laid:...

A Mother's Name.


I.

I love the sound! The sweetest under Heaven,
That name of mother, - and the proudest, too.
As babes we breathe it, and with seven times seven...

Mother, O mother! forever I cry for you,
Sing the old song I may never forget;
Even in slumber I murmur and sigh for you. -
Mother, O mother,
Sing low, "Little brother,...

I knelt beside a little bed,
The curtains drew away,
And, 'mid the soft, white folds beheld,
Two rosy sleepers lay;
The one had seen three summers smile
And lisped her evening prayer;...