Works

If Love were king,
That sacred Love which knows not selfish pleasure,
But for its children spends its fondest treasure,
Sad hearts would sing,
And all the hosts of misery and wrong...

If we but knew the weary way,
The poisoned paths of hostile hate,
The roughened roads of fiercest fate,
Through which our brother's journey lay,
Would we condemn, as now we do,...

If we don't or if we do.
What's the odds to me and you?
Fame is e'er a heartless jade,
And her slaves are poorly paid;
Weary hearts and soul's distress
Are the prices of success;...

When from these vales I go,
That slumber on in dreams,
O, will the summer winds dance to and fro,
And kiss the streams
That play where roses scatter fond perfume
And lilies burst with bloom?
...

Hail, glorious morning of Columbia's birth,
Celestial dawn of freedom! There shall be
In recognition of thy wondrous worth
By mighty millions this side of the sea,...

There is no soul of anguish or repining,
That doubts and trembles in the shades of gloom,
But love can lead where softest suns are shining
And fill his days with beauty and its bloom.
Live life with love!...

Lo, all the age is rank with wrong!
The nations kneel to monstrous might,
And horrid cries that haunt the night,
Have hushed the notes of happy song;
Mankind the deepest truth has missed,...

Angelic theme of ancient lays!
By Doric hills, Athenian vales,
The nations bound thy brows with bays
And fanned thy cheeks with scented gales;
While golden lamps illumed thy shrines...

Love, thou gayest fancy-weaver,
Heart-betrayer, soul-deceiver,
Come with all thy clinging kisses;
Bringing all thy beaming blisses;
It may serve the cynic's parts,
If he curse and if he scout thee,...

Make the most of this life; where the shadow reposes
The beams of the summer shall gather in glee,
And the snow on the graves of the lilies and roses
But cradles the blooms that shall whiten the lea;...

'Twas in the summer's sweet perfume,
When roses bloomed and holly, O,
That in the brightness of her bloom,
I first did meet my Mollie, O.

Although she said for lives to love...

A something, not of earth or sky,
Beside me walks the ways I go,
And I--I never truly know,
If I am it or it is I.

It soothes me with its tender speech,
It guides me with its gentle hand,...

Nature has a thousand choirs
Singing in the sylvan shadows,
And the music of her lyres
Echoes in the merry meadows;
Always glad with golden glee
Sounds her happy melody,...

O, gentle shade of quiet woods,
Where nature dwells in leafy halls,
I love the sacred voice that falls
In music o'er thy solitudes!
Within thine arms the weary heart
Is hidden from the toils of men,...

Oklahoma! Oklahoma!
Land, O, land of the Fair God,
Land where ancient, savage races
Through barbarian ages trod!
Through thy story fancy traces
Facts above what fictions say,...

Here, through the ages old, the desert slept
In solitudes unbroken, save when passed
The bison herds, and savage hunters swept
In thund'ring chaos down the valleys vast;...

O sacred souls that grandly sing
The secret songs of human hearts,
Where your wild music madly starts,
The sorrows into raptures spring!
Within the warbles of your chimes...

O weak and weary world
Forever struggling on,
When will thy toils in comfort be impearled,
When will thy sorrows and thy cares be gone?
When shall the races, all ambition dead,...

Poems are holy things. Eternal Truth,
Borrowing the robes of song and lovely grown,
In them her glory unto man proclaims
And fills his longing soul. They softly speak
Of Nature's beauty and the secrets old...

Quaff the glass, the wine is red,
And the rose of youth is glowing,
While the toils of life are fled
And the snows of age are going;
Quaff it with a hearty will,
Quaff it deep and quaff forever;...