Works

She mutters and stoops by the lone bayou
The little green leaves are hushed on the trees
An owl in an oak cries"Who-oh-who,"
And a fox barks back where the moon slants through...

Within the world of every man's desire
Two things have power to lift the soul above:
The first is Work, who dons a mean attire;
The other, Love, whose raiment is of fire....

Hope on, dear Heart, and you will see
The walls of worry fade and flee;
And sane of soul and sound of mind,
You 'll go your way of life and find
The paths, once barren, suddenly...

During the siege of Bryan's Station, Kentucky, August 16, 1782, Nicholas Tomlinson and Thomas Bell, two inhabitants of the Fort, undertook to ride through the besieging Indian and Tory lines to Lexington, Ky., for aid. It happe...

The cuckoo-sorrel paints with pink
The green page of the meadow-land
Around a pool where thrushes drink
As from a hollowed hand.
A hill, long-haired with leathered grass...

I


Mother of visions, with lineaments dulcet as numbers
Breathed on the eyelids of love by music that slumbers,
Secretly, sweetly, O presence of fire and snow,
Thou comest mysterious,...

I

Mother of visions, with lineaments dulcet as numbers
Breathed on the eyelids of Love by music that slumbers,
Secretly, sweetly, O presence of fire and snow,
Thou comest mysterious,...

Not as the eye hath seen, shall we behold
Romance and beauty, when we've passed away;
That robed the dull facts of the intimate day
In life's wild raiment of unusual gold:...

The pink rose drops its petals on
The moonlit lawn, the moonlit lawn;
The moon, like some wide rose of white,
Drops down the summer night.
No rose there is
As sweet as this -...

I Stood upon a height and listened to
The solemn psalmody of many pines,
And with the sound I seemed to see long lines
Of mountains rise, blue peak on cloudy blue,...

Old phantoms haunt it of the long ago;
Old ghosts of old-time lovers and of dreams:
Within the quiet sunlight there, meseems,
I see them walking where those lilies blow....

The Autumn pines and fades
Upon the withered trees;
And over there, a choked despair,
You hear the moaning breeze.

The violets are dead;
Dead the tall hollyhocks,...

I remember, when a child,
How within the April wild
Once I walked with Mystery
In the groves of Arcady....
Through the boughs, before, behind,
Swept the mantle of the wind,...

I.

Sunflowers wither and lilies die,
Poppies are pods of seeds;
The first red leaves on the pathway lie,
Like blood of a heart that bleeds.

Weary alway will it be to-day,...

The hush of death is on the night. The corn,
That loves to whisper to the wind; the leaves,
That dance with it, are silent: one perceives
No motion mid the fields, as dry as horn....

Here went a horse with heavy laboring stride
Along the woodland side;
Deep in the clay his iron hoof-marks show,
Patient and slow,
Where with his human burden yesterday
He passed this way.
...

The dawn is a warp of fever,
The eve is a woof of fire;
And the month is a singing weaver
Weaving a red desire.

With stars Dawn dices with Even
For the rosy gold they heap...

She is so dear the wildflowers near
Each path she passes by,
Are over fain to kiss again
Her feet and then to die.

She is so fair the wild birds there
That sing upon the bough,...

Deep in the West a berry-coloured bar
Of sunset gleams; against which one tall fir
Is outlined dark; above which - courier
Of dew and dreams - burns dusk's appointed star....

Such days as break the wild bird's heart;
Such days as kill it and its songs;
A death which knows a sweeter part
Of days to which such death belongs.

And now old eyes are filled with tears,...