Works

She sang a song of May for me,
Wherein once more I heard
The mirth of my glad infancy -
The orchard's earliest bird -
The joyous breeze among the trees
New-clad in leaf and bloom,...

Barefooted boys scud up the street
Or skurry under sheltering sheds;
And schoolgirl faces, pale and sweet,
Gleam from the shawls about their heads.

Doors bang; and mother-voices call...

A languid atmosphere, a lazy breeze,
With labored respiration, moves the wheat
From distant reaches, till the golden seas
Break in crisp whispers at my feet.

My book, neglected of an idle mind,...

AFTER LEE O. HARRIS

The master-hand whose pencils trace
This wondrous landscape of the morn,
Is but the sun, whose glowing face
Reflects the rapture and the grace
Of inspiration Heaven-born.
...

Oh! tell me a tale of the airly days -
Of the times as they ust to be;
"Piller of Fi-er" and "Shakespeare's Plays"
Is a' most too deep fer me!
I want plane facts, and I want plane words,...

One time, when we'z at Aunty's house -
'Way in the country! - where
They's ist but woods - an' pigs, an' cows -
An' all's out-doors an' air! -
An' orchurd-swing; an' churry-trees -...

Ah, Luxury! Beyond the heat
And dust of town, with dangling feet,
Astride the rock below the dam,
In the cool shadows where the calm
Rests on the stream again, and all
Is silent save the waterfall, -...

"Now who shall say he loves me not."

He wooed her first in an atmosphere
Of tender and low-breathed sighs;
But the pang of her laugh went cutting clear
To the soul of the enterprise;...

A dark, tempestuous night; the stars shut in
With shrouds of fog; an inky, jet-black blot
The firmament; and where the moon has been
An hour agone seems like the darkest spot....

At Noey's house - when they arrived with him -
How snug seemed everything, and neat and trim:
The little picket-fence, and little gate -
It's little pulley, and its little weight, -...

Far in the night, and yet no rest for him! The pillow next his own
The wife's sweet face in slumber pressed - yet he awake - alone! alone!
In vain he courted sleep; - one thought would ever in his heart arise, -...

O we go down to sea in ships -
But Hope remains behind,
And Love, with laughter on his lips,
And Peace, of passive mind;
While out across the deeps of night,
With lifted sails of prayer,...

I.

An afternoon as ripe with heat
As might the golden pippin be
With mellowness if at my feet
It dropped now from the apple-tree
My hammock swings in lazily.


II.
...

The little town, as I recall it, was of just enough dignity and dearth of the same to be an ordinary county seat in Indiana - "The Grand Old Hoosier State," as it was used to being howlingly referred to by the forensic stump or...

A day of torpor in the sullen heat
Of Summer's passion: In the sluggish stream
The panting cattle lave their lazy feet,
With drowsy eyes, and dream.

Long since the winds have died, and in the sky...

As a harvester, at dusk,
Faring down some woody trail
Leading homeward through the musk
Of may-apple and pawpaw,
Hazel-bush, and spice and haw, -
So comes Autumn, swart and hale,...

I am tired of this!
Nothing else but loving!
Nothing else but kiss and kiss,
Coo, and turtle-doving!
Can't you change the order some?
Hate me just a little - come!

Lay aside your "dears,"...

I'm bin a-visitun 'bout a week
To my little Cousin's at Nameless Creek,
An' I'm got the hives an' a new straw hat,
An' I'm come back home where my beau lives at.

It is my dream to have you here with me,
Out of the heated city's dust and din -
Here where the colts have room to gambol in,
And kine to graze, in clover to the knee.
I want to see your wan face happily...

Low hidden in among the forest trees
An artist's tilted easel, ankle-deep
In tousled ferns and mosses, and in these
A fluffy water-spaniel, half asleep
Beside a sketch-book and a fallen hat -...