Works

Spring sleeps and stirs and trembles with desire
Pure as a babe's that nestles toward the breast.
The world, as yet an all unstricken lyre,
With all its chords alive and all at rest,...

The point I advance, if it need confirmation,
I'll prove by a witness that few will dispute,
A pink of perfection and truth in the naion
Where fashion and folly are all of a suit.
...

Canto The First.

Once more in Man's frail world! which I had left
So long that 'twas forgotten; and I feel
The weight of clay again, - too soon bereft
Of the Immortal Vision which could heal...

Nos patriam fugimus.
-VIRGIL.

When Cupid first instructs his darts to fly
From the sly corner of some cook-maid's eye,
The stripling raw, just enter'd in his teens,...

Up and down the village streets
Strange are the forms my fancy meets,
For the thoughts and things of to-day are hid,
And through the veil of a closed lid
The ancient worthies I see again...

Speak, Prophet of the Lord! We may not start
To find thee with us in thine ancient dress,
Haggard and pale from some bleak wilderness,
Empty of all save God and thy loud heart,...

AH, my darling, when over the purple horizon shall loom
The shrouded mother of a new idea, men hide their faces,
Cry out and fend her off, as she seeks her procreant groom,...

All day long he kept the sheep:--
Far and early, from the crowd,
On the hills from steep to steep,
Where the silence cried aloud;
And the shadow of the cloud
Wrapt him in a noonday sleep.
...

(From 'A Faun's Holiday')

'Be warned! I feel the world grow old,
And off Olympus fades the gold
Of the simple passionate sun;
And the Gods wither one by one:
Proud-eyed Apollo's bow is broken,...

1. Moses Ben Maimon lifting his perpetual lamp over the path of the perplexed;

2. Hallevi, the honey-tongued poet, wakening amid the silent ruins of Zion the sleeping lyre of David;
...

Where the ragged, snow-capped saw tooth
Cuts the azure of the sky
And watches o'er the lonely land
As ages wander by;
Where the sentinel pines in grandeur
Murmur to the glacier stream...

I strolled up old Bonanza, where I staked in ninety-eight,
A-purpose to revisit the old claim.
I kept thinking mighty sadly of the funny ways of Fate,
And the lads who once were with me in the game....

When the white sun scorches the fair, green land in the rage of his fierce desires,
Or looms blood red on the Western hills, through the smoke of their waning fires;...

The mist is fast clearing.
And radiant is heaven,
Whilst AEolus loosens
Our anguish-fraught bond.
The zephyrs are sighing,
Alert is the sailor.
Quick! nimbly be plying!
The billows are riven,...

I say 'e isn't Remorse!
'Ow do I know?
Saw 'im on Riccarton course
Two year ago!
Think I'd forget any 'orse?
Course 'e's The Crow!

Bumper Maginnis and I
After a "go",...

"Those who there take refuge nevermore return."--Bhagavad Gita


Ere I lose myself in the vastness and drowse myself with the peace,
While I gaze on the light and beauty afar from the dim homes of men,...

[In memory of E. S. Frazee, Rush County, Indiana]


Into the acres of the newborn state
He poured his strength, and plowed his ancient name,
And, when the traders followed him, he stood...

(For Shaemas O Sheel)



One winter night a Devil came and sat upon my bed,
His eyes were full of laughter for his heart was full of crime....

I.

Threefold is the march of time
While the future slow advances,
Like a dart the present glances,
Silent stands the past sublime.

No impatience e'er can speed him...

God is a zealous pruner,
For He knows--
Who, falsely tender, spares the knife
But spoils the rose.