Works

I

THE CHALLENGE OF THOR

I am the God Thor,
I am the War God,
I am the Thunderer!
Here in my Northland,
My fastness and fortress,
Reign I forever!

Here amid icebergs...

THE BALLAD OF CARMILHAN

I

At Stralsund, by the Baltic Sea,
Within the sandy bar,
At sunset of a summer's day,
Ready for sea, at anchor lay
The good ship Valdemar.
...

THE MOTHER'S GHOST

Svend Dyring he rideth adown the glade;
I myself was young!
There he hath wooed him so winsome a maid;
Fair words gladden so many a heart.
...

I

Why should I say I see the things I see not?
Why be and be not?
Show love for that I love not, and fear for what I fear not?
And dance about to music that I hear not?...

[17]
Suggested by the Two Days' Review at Washington
(May, 1865.)


The Abrahamic river -
Patriarch of floods,
Calls the roll of all his streams
And watery mutitudes:...

I know that all beneath the moon decays,
And what by mortals in this world is brought,
In time's great periods shall return to nought.
I know that all the muses' heavenly rays,...

The Description of Elizium


A Paradice on earth is found,
Though farre from vulgar sight,
Which with those pleasures doth abound
That it Elizium hight.
...

By the winding Wollondilly where the weeping willows weep,
And the shepherd, with his billy, half awake and half asleed,
Folds his fleecy flocks that linger homewards in the setting sun...

A chant for a children's pantomime dance, suggested by a picture painted by George Mather Richards.


I saw a proud, mysterious cat,
I saw a proud, mysterious cat
Too proud to catch a mouse or rat -...

There was a sound of hurrying feet,
A tramp on echoing stairs,
There was a rush along the aisles, -
It was the hour of prayers.

And on, like Ocean's midnight wave,
The current rolled along,...

If sunset clouds could grow on trees
It would but match the may in flower;
And skies be underneath the seas
No topsyturvier than a shower.

If mountains rose on wings to wander...

Your eyes drink of me,
Love makes them shine,
Your eyes that lean
So close to mine.

We have long been lovers,
We know the range
Of each other's moods
And how they change;
...

I was not; now I am--a few days hence
I shall not be; I fain would look before
And after, but can neither do; some Power
Or lack of power says "no" to all I would.
I stand upon a wide and sunless plain,...

My mind is like a troubled sea
O'er which the winds forever sweep;
Within its depths, eternally,
My being's pulses throb and leap;
There germs of contemplation sleep,
Like stars beyond the Milky Way, -...

This is your cup, the cup assigned to you
From the beginning. Yea, my child, I know

How much of that dark drink is your own, brew
Of fault and passion. Ages long ago,
...

A little while, a year agone,
I knew her for a romping child,
A dimple and a glance that shone
With idle mischief when she smiled.

To-day she passed me in the press,...

The darkest, strangest mystery
I ever read, or heern, or see,
Is 'long of a drink at Taggart's Hall, -
Tom Taggart's of Gilgal.

I've heern the tale a thousand ways,...

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain...

When, wild and spent, I fly before
Some steadfast Fate, serene, malign,
Let me not think, Lord, I implore
Those dark and awful eyes are thine!

Oh, when the dogs of life are loose,...

Out of the darkness, fretted sometimes in its sleeping,
Jets of sparks in fountains of blue come leaping
To sight, revealing a secret, numberless secrets keeping.
...