Works

Out of the past the dim leaves spoke to me
The thoughts of Pindar with a voice so sweet
Hybl'an bees seemed swarming my retreat
Around the reedy well of Poesy.
I closed the book. Then, knee to neighbor knee,...

Summer met Sleep at sunset,
Dreaming within the south,
Drugged with his soul's deep slumber,
Red with her heart's hot drouth,
These are the drowsy kisses
She pressed upon his mouth.

Let us go far from here!
Here there is sadness in the early year:
Here sorrow waits where joy went laughing late:
The sicklied face of heaven hangs like hate
Above the woodland and the meadowland;...

Above the world a glare
Of sunset guns and spears;
An army, no one hears,
Of mist and air:
Long lines of bronze and gold,
Huge helmets, each a cloud;
And then a fortress old...

I

There is no rhyme that is half so sweet
As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat;
There is no metre that's half so fine
As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine;...

I saw the Summer through her garden go,
A marigold hung in her auburn hair,
Her brown arms heaped with harvest, and the lair
Of poppied plenty, like the peach aglow:
Among the pepper-pods, in scarlet row,...

She bewitched me in my childhood,
And the witch's charm is hidden -
Far beyond the wicked wildwood
I shall find it, I am bidden.

She commands me, she who bound me
With soft sorcery to follow;...

How often hope's fair flower blooms richest where
The soul was fertilized with black despair.

Man's are the learnings of his books -
What is all knowledge that he knows
Beside the wit of winding brooks,
The wisdom of the summer rose!

How soil distills the scent in flowers...

Universes are the pages
Of that book whose words are ages;
Of that book which destiny
Opens in eternity.

There each syllable expresses
Silence; there each thought a guess is;...

Oh, for a soul that fulfills
music like that of a bird!
thrilling with rapture the hills,
heedless if any one heard.

Or, like the flower that blooms
lone in the midst of the trees,...

There is no rhyme that is half so sweet
As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat;
There is no metre that's half so fine
As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine;
And the loveliest lyric I ever heard...

There is a poetry that speaks
Through common things: the grasshopper,
That in the hot weeds creaks and creaks,
Says all of summer to my ear:
And in the cricket's cry I hear...

There is a poetry that speaks
Through common things: the grasshopper,
That in the hot weeds creaks and creaks,
Says all of summer to my ear:
And in the cricket's cry I hear...

Whether it be that we in letters trace
The pure exactness of a wood bird's strain,
And name it song; or with the brush attain
The high perfection of a wildflower's face;...

Low belts of rushes ragged with the blast;
Lagoons of marish reddening with the west;
And o'er the marsh the water-fowl's unrest
While daylight dwindles and the dusk falls fast....

Now when wan winter sunsets be
Canary-colored down the sky;
When nights are starless utterly,
And sleeted winds cut moaning by,
One's memory keeps one company,
And conscience puts his "when" and "why."...

A Log-Hut in the solitude,
A clapboard roof to rest beneath!
This side, the shadow-haunted wood;
That side, the sunlight-haunted heath.

At daybreak Morn shall come to me...

From the lyrical eclogue "One Day and Another"


Now rests the season in forgetfulness,
Careless in beauty of maturity;
The ripened roses round brown temples, she...

It is as if imperial trumpets broke
Again the silence on War's iron height;
And C'sar's armored legions marched to fight,
While Rome, blood-red upon her mountain-yoke,...