Works

Mine is a body that should die at sea!
And have for a grave, instead of a grave
Six feet deep and the length of me,
All the water that is under the wave!

And terrible fishes to seize my flesh,...

Man may want land to live in; but for all
Nature finds out some place for burial.

To the grave one day from a house they bore

A maiden;
To the window the citizens went to explore;
In splendour they lived, and with wealth as of yore

Their banquets were laden....

Bear him, comrades, to his grave;
Never over one more brave
Shall the prairie grasses weep,
In the ages yet to come,
When the millions in our room,
What we sow in tears, shall reap....

He stood before the sons of Heth,
And bowed his sorrowing head;
"I've come," he said, "to buy a place
Where I may lay my dead.

"I am a stranger in your land,
My home has lost its light;...

On sunny slope and beechen swell,
The shadowed light of evening fell;
And, where the maple's leaf was brown,
With soft and silent lapse came down,
The glory, that the wood receives,...

On sunny slope and beechen swell
The shadowed light of evening fell:
And, where the maple's leaf was brown,
With soft and silent lapse came down
The glory, that the wood receives,...

Now the last wreath of snow
That melts, in mist exhales
White aspiration, and our deep-voiced gales
In chorus chant the measured march of spring,
Whom griefs of life and death
Are burdening!...

The blue sky arches wide
From hill to hill;
The little grasses stand
Upright and still.

Only these stones to tell
The deadly strife,
The all-important schemes,
The greed for life.
...

I have come to bury Love
Beneath a tree,
In the forest tall and black
Where none can see.

I shall put no flowers at his head,
Nor stone at his feet,
For the mouth I loved so much...

When the musicians hide away their faces,
And all the petals of the rose are shed,
And snow is drifting through the happy places,
And the last cricket's heart is cold and dead;...

Inscribed to Dennis F. Burke, last Commander of the Irish Brigade, at Gettysburg.


THE SPIRIT OF THE SOUTH.

"Why come ye to this mountain, lads,
In panoply of war?...

Sweet Insect! that on two small wings doth fly,
And, flying, carry on those wings yourself;
Methinks I see you, looking from your eye,
As tho' you thought the world a wicked elf....

Blow out the light: there is no oil to feed it:
That dim blue light unworthy of the name.
Better to sit with folded hands, I say,
And wait for night to pass, and bring the day,...

From babyhood I have known the beauty of earth,
I learnt it, I think, in the strange months before birth,
I learnt it passing and passing by each moon
From the harvest month into my natal June....

Before my drift-wood fire I sit,
And see, with every waif I burn,
Old dreams and fancies coloring it,
And folly's unlaid ghosts return.
O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft...

On receiving a sprig of heather in blossom.



No more these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover;
Sown in the common soil of song,
They bloom the wide world over.
...

We read his life of poverty and bane,
From weakness, folly, error, not exempt,
And turn aside with a depressing pain -
Compassion tinged with something like contempt....

When Burns did make triumphant entry
'Mong Edina's famous gentry,
A discussion did there arise
Among those solons learned and wise,
About some lines by a new poet.
The author's name none did know it,...

A fire of fierce and laughing light
That clove the shuddering heart of night
Leapt earthward, and the thunder's might
That pants and yearns
Made fitful music round its flight:
And earth saw Burns....