Works

Kinsman beloved, and as a son, by me!
When I behold the fruit of thy regard,
The sculptured form of my old favourite bard,
I reverence feel for him, and love for thee:...

John Pierpont, the eloquent preacher and poet of Boston.


Not as a poor requital of the joy
With which my childhood heard that lay of thine,
Which, like an echo of the song divine...

Thou know'st, my Julia, that it is thy turn
This morning's incense to prepare and burn.
The chaplet and Inarculum[L] here be,
With the white vestures, all attending thee....

A stream to mingle with your favorite Dee
Along the Vale of Meditation flows;
So styled by those fierce Britons, pleased to see
In Nature's face the expression of repose,...

To learn the transport by the pain,
As blind men learn the sun;
To die of thirst, suspecting
That brooks in meadows run;

To stay the homesick, homesick feet
Upon a foreign shore...

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, --
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

"Give me of your fruit, banana!
Of your yellow fruit, banana!
Growing on the tropic islands,
Fertile islands in the ocean;
I a little trick will play me,
Play it on the darkened staircase,...

1.

This faint resemblance of thy charms,
(Though strong as mortal art could give,)
My constant heart of fear disarms,
Revives my hopes, and bids me live.


2.
...

(On hearing she was leaving the moving-pictures for the stage.)



Mary Pickford, doll divine,
Year by year, and every day
At the moving-picture play,
You have been my valentine.
...

I.

O sweet are the memories when backward we gaze
Through the vista of years to our schoolboy days,
When faces now vanished to the vision appear
And the music of voices long hushed we can hear,...

Or look'd I back unto the times hence flown
To praise those Muses and dislike our own--
Or did I walk those P'an-gardens through,
To kick the flowers and scorn their odours too--...

Beauteous rose-bud, young and gay,
Blooming in thy early May,
Never may'st thou, lovely flow'r,
Chilly shrink in sleety show'r!
Never Boreas' hoary path,
Never Eurus' poisonous breath,...

Again the silent wheels of time
Their annual round have driv'n,
And you, tho' scarce in maiden prime,
Are so much nearer Heav'n.

No gifts have I from Indian coasts
The infant year to hail:...

Ay me! I love; give him your hand to kiss
Who both your wooer and your poet is.
Nature has precompos'd us both to love:
Your part's to grant; my scene must be to move....

If thou ask me, dear, wherefore
I do write of thee no more,
I must answer, sweet, thy part
Less is here than in my heart.

What perfumed, posie-dizened sirrah,
With smiles for diet,
Clasps you, O fair but faithless Pyrrha,
On the quiet?
For whom do you bind up your tresses,
As spun-gold yellow,--...

What dainty boy with sweet perfumes bedewed
Has lavished kisses, Pyrrha, in the cave?
For whom amid the roses, many-hued,
Do you bind back your tresses' yellow wave?
...

I will be short, and having quickly hurl'd
This line about, live thou throughout the world;
Who art a man for all scenes; unto whom,
What's hard to others, nothing's troublesome....

'Ah, friend! 'tis true--this truth you lovers know--
In vain my structures rise, my gardens grow,
In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes
Of hanging mountains, and of sloping greens:...

How much, egregious Moore, are we
Deceived by shows and forms!
Whate'er we think, whate'er we see,
All humankind are worms.

Man is a very worm by birth,
Vile reptile, weak and vain!...