Works

Most delicate Ariel! submissive thing,
Won by the mind's high magic to its hest -
Invisible embassy, or secret guest, -
Weighing the light air on a lighter wing; -
Whether into the midnight moon, to bring...

Men! if manhood still ye claim,
If the Northern pulse can thrill,
Roused by wrong or stung by shame,
Freely, strongly still;
Let the sounds of traffic die:
Shut the mill-gate, leave the stall,...

I cry your mercy, pity, love! aye, love!
Merciful love that tantalizes not,
One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmasked, and being seen, without a blot!...

Fashion! Lovely Dame!
Pledge in sparkling wine!
Let us add her name
To the Muses' nine!

Though the lovely Nin
All should pass away
Why should Woman pine,
If but Fashion stay?
...

Hasten thee, Kronos!
On with clattering trot
Downhill goeth thy path;
Loathsome dizziness ever,
When thou delayest, assails me.
Quick, rattle along,
Over stock and stone let thy trot...

Joy comes and goes: hope ebbs and flows,
Like the wave.
Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men.
Love lends life a little grace,
A few sad smiles: and then.
Both are laid in one cold place,...

Do you remember one immortal
Lost moment out of time and space,
What time we thought, who passed the portal
Of that divine disastrous place
Where Life was slain and Truth was slandered...

To fight aloud is very brave,
But gallanter, I know,
Who charge within the bosom,
The cavalry of woe.

Who win, and nations do not see,
Who fall, and none observe,
Whose dying eyes no country...

Weigh me the fire; or canst thou find
A way to measure out the wind;
Distinguish all those floods that are
Mix'd in that watery theatre;
And taste thou them as saltless there...

Six of us once, my darlings, played together
Beneath green boughs, which faded long ago,
Made merry in the golden summer weather,
Pelted each other with new-fallen snow.
...

You with the hawk's eyes and the nerves of steel,
How was it with you when the hurried word
Roused you and sent you swiftly forth to deal
A blow for justice? Sure your pulses stirred,...

When April woke the drowsy flowers,
And vagrant odours thronged the breeze,
And bluebirds wrangled in the bowers,
And daisies flashed along the leas,
And faint arbutus strove among...

In time of life I graced ye with my verse;
Do now your flowery honours to my hearse.
You shall not languish, trust me; virgins here
Weeping shall make ye flourish all the year.

Sunned in the South, and here to-day;
- If all organic things
Be sentient, Flowers, as some men say,
What are your ponderings?

How can you stay, nor vanish quite
From this bleak spot of thorn,...

Loving friend, the gift of one,
Who, her own true faith, hath run,
Through thy lower nature;
Be my benediction said
With my hand upon thy head,
Gentle fellow-creature!
...

I heard that you ask'd for something to prove this puzzle, the New World,
And to define America, her athletic Democracy;
Therefore I send you my poems, that you behold in them what you wanted.

Whilst I in prison or in court look down,
Nor beg thy favour nor deserve thy frown,
In vain malicious Fortune hast thou tried
By taking from my state to quell my pride:...

Tumble me down, and I will sit
Upon my ruins, smiling yet;
Tear me to tatters, yet I'll be
Patient in my necessity.
Laugh at my scraps of clothes, and shun
Me, as a fear'd infection;...

Dear love, life has dewy mornings,
And the shadeless blaze of noon,
Flowers, that we stop to gather,
That fade from our hands so soon

Dear love, there are meetings, partings,...

Thou wouldst be loved? then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not;
Being everything which now thou art,
Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways,...