Works

Come, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below!
Now my brothers call from the bay,
Now the great winds shoreward blow,
Now the salt tides seaward flow;
Now the wild white horses play,...

Under the Disaster of the Second Manassas

They take no shame for dark defeat
While prizing yet each victory won,
Who fight for the Right through all retreat,
Nor pause until their work is done....

Ah! happy he, upon whose birth each god
Looks down in love, whose earliest sleep the bright
Idalia cradles, whose young lips the rod
Of eloquent Hermes kindles to whose eyes,...

She sat with fear in her eyes
Contemplating the upturned cup
She said "Do not be sad, my son
You are destined to fall in love"
My son, Who sacrifices himself for his beloved,
Is a martyr

...

Down in the valley come meet me to-night,
And I'll tell you your fortune truly
As ever 'twas told, by the new-moon's light,
To a young maiden, shining as newly.

But, for the world, let no one be nigh,...

'Tis oft from chance opinion takes its rise,
And into reputation multiplies.
This prologue finds pat applications
In men of all this world's vocations;
For fashion, prejudice, and party strife,...

Reputations may be made by the merest chances, and yet reputations control the fashions. That is a little prologue that would fit the case of all sorts of people. Everywhere around one sees prejudices, scheming, and obtuseness;...

Woman, never judge man by his individual actions;
But upon man as a whole, pass thy decisive decree.

A straight old fossicker was Lanky Mann,
Who clung to that in spite of friends' advising:
A grim and grizzled worshipper of 'pan,'
All other arts and industries despising.
...

Snow wraiths circle us
Like washers of the dead,
Flapping their white wet cloths
Impatiently
About the grizzled head,
Where the coarse hair mats like grass,
And the efficient wind...

Beautiful Mother, I have toiled all day;
And I am wearied. And the day is done.
Now, while the wild brooks run
Soft by the furrows--fading, gold to gray,
Their laughters turned to musing--ah, let me...

Traveller! on thy journey toiling
By the swift Powow,
With the summer sunshine falling
On thy heated brow,
Listen, while all else is still,
To the brooklet from the hill.
...

A Conversation

We talked with open heart, and tongue
Affectionate and true,
A pair of friends, though I was young,
And Matthew seventy-two.

We lay beneath a spreading oak,...

Oh in the deep blue night
The fountain sang alone;
It sang to the drowsy heart
Of a satyr carved in stone.
The fountain sang and sang
But the satyr never stirred
Only the great white moon...

Fountain, that springest on this grassy slope,
Thy quick cool murmur mingles pleasantly,
With the cool sound of breezes in the beach,
Above me in the noontide. Thou dost wear...

Sometimes it seems my blood spurts out in gobs
As if it were a fountain's pulsing sobs;
I clearly hear it mutter as it goes,
Yet cannot find the wound from which it flows.
...

The source of laughter lies so near to tears,
And pain to rapture, that one fountain flows
From forth the two Love's; in whose deeps appears
The image of the Heaven each man knows.

Trust me, 'tis not a mere tale, the fountain of youth really runneth,
Runneth forever. Thou ask'st, where? In the poet's sweet art!

I would I could weave in
The colour, the wonder,
The song I conceive in
My heart while I ponder,

And show how it came like
The magi of old
Whose chant was a flame like...

(For Osceola and Pocahontas)


Was it a hundred years ago,
Or was it but yesterday,
When we found the roads that grow
Blossom and song of May?
Maybe it was but yesterday,...