Works

Your chosen grasp the torch of faith--the key
Of very certainty is theirs to hold.
They read Your word in messages of gold.
Lord, what of us who have no light to see...

Unbind thee, love, unbind thee, love,
From those dark ties unbind thee;
Tho' fairest hand the chain hath wove,
Too long its links have twined thee.
Away from earth!--thy wings were made...

O wistful eyes that haunt the gloom of sleep,
Are you my own, remembered from the night
I sat before my glass in dumb affright
And saw my cowering soul afraid to weep?...

As one, who, journeying westward with the sun,
Beholds at length from the up-towering hills,
Far-off, a land unspeakable beauty fills,
Circean peaks and vales of Avalon:...

"'He cometh not,' she said."
- MARIANA

It will not be to-day and yet
I think and dream it will; and let
The slow uncertainty devise
So many sweet excuses, met...

Oh dread uncertainty!
Life-wasting agony!
How dost thou pain the heart,
Causing such tears to start,
As sorrow never shed
O'er hopes for ever fled.
For memory hoards up joy...

A gradely chap wor uncle Ben
As ivver lived i'th' fowd:
He made a fortun for hissen,
An lived on't when he'r owd.
His yed wor like a snow drift,
An his face wor red an breet,...

My Uncle Bill! My Uncle Bill!
How doth my heart with anguish thrill!
For he, our chief, our Robin Hood,
Has gone to jail for stealing wood!
With tears and sobs my voice I raise...

Oh, never let on to your own true love
That ever you drank a drop;
That ever you played in a two-up school
Or slept in a sly-grog shop;
That ever a bad girl nursed you round,
That ever you sank so low....

By Sidney and Clifford Lanier.
...

My dear old Uncle Jogalong
Was very slow, was very slow,
And said he thought that folks were wrong
To hurry so, to hurry so.

When he walked out upon the street
To take the air, to take the air,...

Ho! the old Snow-Man
That Noey Bixler made!
He looked as fierce and sassy
As a soldier on parade! -
'Cause Noey, when he made him,
While we all wuz gone, you see,
He made him, jist a-purpose,...

Some men were born for great things,
Some were born for small;
Some--it is not recorded
Why they were born at all;
But Uncle Sammy was certain he had a legitimate call.
...

Marcellus, won't you tell us -
Truly tell us, if you can, -
What will you be, Marcellus,
When you get to be a man?

You turn, with never answer
But to the band that plays. -...

However skilled and strong art thou, my foe,
However fierce is thy relentless hate
Though firm thy hand, and strong thy aim, and straight
Thy poisoned arrow leaves the bended bow,...

The mighty forces of mysterious space
Are one by one subdued by lordly man.
The awful lightning that for eons ran
Their devastating and untrammeled race,
Now bear his messages from place to place...

Doomed to decay are all things here;
Whate'er their form or worth,
Color and beauty disappear,
Or turn to mother earth.

The luscious fruits which please the taste
And please the eye as well,...

In this house, she said, in this high second storey,
In this room where we sit, above the midnight street,
There runs a rivulet, narrow but very rapid,
Under the still floor and your unconscious feet.
...

I.

"I belt the morn with ribboned mist;
With baldricked blue I gird the noon,
And dusk with purple, crimson-kissed,
White-buckled with the hunter's moon.

"These follow me," the season says:...

To James McNeill Whistler


Under a stagnant sky,
Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom,
The River, jaded and forlorn,
Welters and wanders wearily - wretchedly - on;...