When first that smile, like sunshine, blest my sight, Oh what a vision then came o'er me! Long years of love, of calm and pure delight, Seemed in that smile to pass before me....
When fortunes frown, the woes, bedight With brooding shadows, bring the night, While dismal sorrows darkness dole, And disappointments rise and roll Above the longings for the light. ...
Cards, and swords, and a lady's love, That is a tale worth reading, An insult veiled, a downcast glove, And rapiers leap unheeding. And 'tis O! for the brawl, The thrust, the fall,...
We have cried in our despair That men desert, For some trivial affair Or noisy, insolent, sport, Beauty that we have won From bitterest hours; Yet we, had we walked within Those topless towers...
As gold is tried in the furnace, So He tries the hearts of men; And the dwale and the dross shall suffer loss, When He tries the hearts of men. And the wood, and the hay, and the stubble...
When he, who adores thee, has left but the name Of his fault and his sorrows behind, Oh! say wilt thou weep, when they darken the fame Of a life that for thee was resigned?...
In sober mornings do thou not rehearse The holy incantation of a verse; But when that men have both well drunk, and fed, Let my enchantments then be sung, or read....
When hopes ran high the world was young, We thought that we would never die, And glorious were the songs we sung In those grand days when hopes ran high.
When I first put this uniform on, I said as I looked in the glass. "It's one to a million That any civilian My figure and form will surpass. Gold lace has a charm for the fair,...
When I go home, green, green will glow the grass, Whereon the flight of sun and cloud will pass; Long lines of wood-ducks through the deepening gloam Will hold above the west, as wrought on brass,...
When I have borne in memory what has tamed Great Nations, how ennobling thoughts depart When men change swords for ledgers, and desert The student's bower for gold, some fears unnamed...
When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv'd with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow'd;...
When I heard the learn'd astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;...
When I hoped I feared, Since I hoped I dared; Everywhere alone As a church remain; Spectre cannot harm, Serpent cannot charm; He deposes doom, Who hath suffered him.
When I love you A new language springs up, New cities, new countries discovered. The hours breathe like puppies, Wheat grows between the pages of books, Birds fly from your eyes with tiding of honey,...
When I'm among a blaze of lights, With tawdry music and cigars And women dawdling through delights, And officers at cocktail bars, - Sometimes I think of garden nights...