Works

I was in Dijon when the war's wild blast
Was at its loudest; when there was no sound
From dawn to dawn, save soldiers marching past,
Or rattle of their wagons in the street....

When the reaper's task was ended, and the summer wearing late,
Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with his wife and children eight,
Dropping down the river-harbor in the shallop "Watch and Wait."
...

Squat-nosed and broad, of big and pompous port;
A tavern visage, apoplexy haunts,
All pimple-puffed: the Falstaff-like resort
Of fat debauchery, whose veined cheek flaunts...

Through the streets of New York City,
Blithely every morn,
I carolled o'er my artless ditty,
Cheerly though forlorn!
Before the rosy light, my lay
Was to the maids begun,...

"I like to meet a sweep - such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with their little professional notes, sounding like the peep, peep, of a young sparrow."
- ESSAYS OF ELIA.
...

In his early days he was quite surprised
When she told him she was compromised
By meetings and lingerings at his whim,
And thinking not of herself but him;
While she lifted orbs aggrieved and round...

Dedicated To The Stay-At-Home Rangers

Now, while our soldiers are fighting our battles,
Each at his post to do all that he can,
Down among rebels and contraband chattels,...

It fell on a day I was happy,
And the winds, the concave sky,
The flowers and the beasts in the meadow
Seemed happy even as I;
And I stretched my hands to the meadow,
To the bird, the beast, the tree:...

I

How can I help from laughing while
The daffodilies at me smile;
The tickled dew winks tipsily
In clusters of the lilac-tree;
The crocuses and hyacinths
Storm through the grassy labyrinths...

The Text is taken from a broadside in the Pepys collection (iv. 196), which can be dated between 1682 and 1685, and is entitled Sir Walter Raleigh sailing in the Low-lands. Three other copies of the same edition of the broadsid...

With short, sharp, violent lights made vivid,
To southward far as the sight can roam,
Only the swirl of the surges livid,
The seas that climb and the surfs that comb.
Only the crag and the cliff to nor'ward,...

It was like floating in a blessed dream to roam
Across green meadows, far from home,
With only trees and quivering sky to hedge the sight,
Dazzling the eyes with strange delight....

Swing up!
Swing down!
Here goes the clown.

Swing left!
Swing right!
Mind you hold tight.

Swing low!
Swing high!
Right to the sky.

Yesterday brown was still thy head, as the locks of my loved one,

Whose sweet image so dear silently beckons afar.
Silver-grey is the early snow to-day on thy summit,
...

("Lorsque le regiment des hallebardiers.")

[Bk. XXXI.]


When the regiment of Halberdiers
Is proudly marching by,
The eagle of the mountain screams
From out his stormy sky;...

Amidst applauding cheers I won a prize.
A cynic watched me, with ironic eyes;
An open foe, in open hatred, sneered;
I cared for neither. Then my friend appeared....

The sword of the hero!
The staff of the sage!
Whose valor and wisdom
Are stamped on the age!
Time-hallowed mementos
Of those who have riven
The sceptre from tyrants,...

"How shall we honor the man who creates?"
Asked the Bedouin chief, the poet Antar; -
"Who unto the truth flings open our gates,
Or fashions new thoughts from the light of a star;...

Forth from its scabbard, pure and bright,
Flashed the sword of Lee!
Far in the front of the deadly fight,
High o'er the brave in the cause of Right,
Its stainless sheen, like a beacon light,...

Sunder me from my bones, O sword of God,
Till they stand stark and strange as do the trees;
That I whose heart goes up with the soaring woods
May marvel as much at these.
...