Works

Something is dead . . .
The grace of sunset solitudes, the march
Of the solitary moon, the pomp and power
Of round on round of shining soldier-stars
Patrolling space, the bounties of the sun -...

The gleaming head of one fine friend
Is bent above my little song,
So through the treasure-pits of Heaven
In fancy's shoes, I march along.

I wander, seek and peer and ponder...

I sing no idle songs of dalliance days,
No dreams Elysian inspire my rhyming;
I have no Celia to enchant my lays,
No pipes of Pan have set my heart to chiming.
I am no wordsmith dripping gems divine...

Fancy and Reality.--Rain-drops and Lakes.--Plan of a Story.--Where to place the Scene of it.--In some unknown Region.--Psalmanazar's Imposture with respect to the Island of Formosa.

...

An abstract Greek absurdity has crazed the man --
Recall that masculine Trinity. Man, woman, child (a
daughter or a son),
That's how all natural or supernatural stories run....

Old Aleck, the weaver, sat in the nook
Of his chimney, reading an ancient book,
Old, and yellow, and sadly worn,
With covers faded, and soiled, and torn; -
And the tallow candle would flicker and flare...

'Neath the radiance faint of the starlit sky
The gleaming snow-drifts lay wide and high;
O'er hill and dell stretched a mantle white,
The branches glittered with crystal bright;...

God could have made all rich, or all men poor;
But why He did not, let me tell wherefore:
Had all been rich, where then had patience been?
Had all been poor, who had His bounty seen?

'Rich man, Poor man, Beggar man, Thief, Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief.'


I

Highway, stretched along the sun,
Highway, thronged till day is done;
Where the drifting Face replaces...

A Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker


By Woden, God of Saxons,
From whence comes Wensday, that is Wodensday,
Truth is a thing that ever I will keep
Unto thylke day in which I creep into...

Running water has a charm all its own; it proffers companionship of which one never tires; it adapts itself to moods; it is the guardian of secrets. It has cool draughts for the thirsty soul as well as for drooping flowers; and...

High travelling winds by royal hill
Their awful anthem sing,
And songs exalted flow and fill
The caverns of the spring.

To-night across a wild wet plain
A shadow sobs and strays;...

The Text is modernised, as far as is possible, from a MS. of about 1500 in the University Library at Cambridge (Ee. 4, 35). The ballad was first printed therefrom by Ritson in his Robin Hood (1795), vol. i. p. 81, on the whole ...

The Squirrel, a corsair,
rides the wind black arm
of a pressing sea,

Tribal hostilities finished,
she slinks into port.

Traveling lightly across open ground,...

How profitless the relics that we cull,
Troubling the last holds of ambitious Rome,
Unless they chasten fancies that presume
Too high, or idle agitations lull!
Of the world's flatteries if the brain be full,...

Who, then, was Cestius,
And what is he to me? -
Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous
One thought alone brings he.

I can recall no word
Of anything he did;...

(April, 1887)



We walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile,
And passed to Livia's rich red mural show,
Whence, thridding cave and Criptoportico,
We gained Caligula's dissolving pile....

"Pourquoi," she breathed, then drooped her head,
(Pure snow-drifts to the sunset wed)
As all my weakness I confessed.
I shewed how I had done my best,
Though long ago I should have fled,...

In the service of mankind to be
A guardian god below; still to employ
The mind's brave ardor in heroic aims,
Such as may raise us o'er the grovelling herd,
And make us shine for ever, that is life....

She loved me.
Oh! how she loved me I never had a chance to escape
From the day she first saw me.
But then after we were married I thought
She might prove her mortality and let me out,...