Works

I heard the toads and frogs last night
When snug in bed, and all was still;
I lay and listened there until
It seemed a church where one, with might,
Was preaching high and very shrill:
"The will of God!...

The road leads up a hill through many a brake,
Blueberry and barberry, bay and sassafras,
By an abandoned quarry, where, like glass,
A round pool lies; an isolated lake,...

Why come ye here to sigh that I,
Who with crossed wrists so peaceless lie
Before ye, am at rest, at rest!
For that the pistons of my blood
No more in this machinery thud?...

Magician he, who, autumn nights,
Down from the starry heavens whirls;
A harlequin in spangled tights,
Whose wand's touch carpets earth with pearls.

Through him each pane presents a scene,...

White artist he, who, breezeless nights,
From tingling stars jocosely whirls,
A harlequin in spangled tights,
His wand a pot of pounded pearls.

The field a hasty pallet; for,...

March set heel upon the flowers,
Trod and trampled them for hours:
But when April's bugles rang,
Up their starry legions sprang,
Radiant in the sun-shot showers.

April went her frolic ways,...

Yes, there are some who may look on these
Essential peoples of the earth and air
That have the stars and flowers in their care
And all their soul-suggestive secrecies:...

I.

One night when trees were tumbled down,
And wild winds shook at sea the sail,
Old Gammer Gaffer, lean and brown,
Chuckled and whistled on her nail;
Then seized her broom and, mounting it,...

To weed the Garden of the Mind
Of all rank growths of doubt and sin,
And let faith's flowers thrive and win
To blossom; and, through faith, to find
That lilies, too, can toil and spin,...

Thin, chisel-fine a cricket chipped
The crystal silence into sound;
And where the branches dreamed and dripped
A grasshopper its dagger stripped
And on the humming darkness ground.
...

"Succinctae sacra Dianae".
- OVID

I

There the ragged sunlight lay
Tawny on thick ferns and gray
On dark waters: dimmer,
Lone and deep, the cypress grove
Bowered mystery and wove...

I


What wood-god, on this water's mossy curb,
Lost in reflections of earth's loveliness,
Did I, just now, unconsciously disturb?
I, who haphazard, wandering at a guess,...

I.

What deity for dozing laziness
Devised the lounging coziness of this
Enchanted nook? - and how! - did I distress
His musing ease that fled but now, or his...

Ah, Geraldine, lost Geraldine,
That night of love, when first we met,
You have forgotten, Geraldine -
I never dreamed you would forget.

Ah, Geraldine, sweet Geraldine,...

Geraldine, Geraldine,
Do you remember where
The willows used to screen
The water flowing fair?
The mill-stream's banks of green
Where first our love begun,
When you were seventeen,...

When first I gazed on GERTRUDE'S face,
Beheld her loveliness and grace;
Her brave gray eyes, her raven hair,
Her ways, more winsome than the kiss
Spring gives the flowers; her smile, that is...

Was it the strain of the waltz that, repeating
"Love," so bewitched me? or only the gleam
There of the lustres, that set my heart beating,
Feeling your presence as one feels a dream?
...

When the hoot of the owl comes over the hill,
At twelve o'clock when the night is still,
And pale on the pools, where the creek-frogs croon,
Glimmering gray is the light o' the moon;...

I.

There's a scent of pungent wood smoke in the chill October air,
And a jack-o'-lantern glare, a wild and dusky glare,
'Tis the brush that burns and smoulders in the woods and by the ways,...

With fall on fall, from wood to wood,
The brook pours mossy music down
Or is it, in the solitude,
The murmur of a Faery town?

A town of Elfland filled with bells
And holiday of hurrying feet:...