Works

I.

ARIEL.

When in spring the gentle rain

Breathes into the flower new birth,
When the green and happy plain

Smiles upon the sons of earth,
Haste to give what help we may,...

A REQUIEM FOR ONE ALIVE.


From fleeting pleasures and abiding cares,
From sin's seductions and from Satan's snares,
From woes and wrath to penitence and prayers,
Veni in pace!
...

He left us; we, the hour of parting come,
To Prasidamus' hospitable home,
Myself and Eucritus, together wend,
With young Amynticus, our blooming friend:
There, all delighted, through the summer day,...

When the famed Argo now secure had passed
The crushing rocks,[1] and that terrific strait
That guards the wintry Pontic, the tall ship
Reached wild Bebrycia's shores; bearing like gods...

Evening is coming, the sun waxes red,
Radiant colors from heaven are beaming
Life's lustrous longings in infinite streaming; -
Glory in death o'er the mountains is spread....

Her neck did she CRANE,
As she looked up the LANE
To see the Three Bears pass by.
They all went in, oddly,
At the head of the Bodley
An A.B.C. for to buy.


She went rather nearer...

From Paumanock starting, I fly like a bird,
Around and around to soar, to sing the idea of all;
To the north betaking myself, to sing there arctic songs,...

From pent-up, aching rivers;
From that of myself, without which I were nothing;
From what I am determin'd to make illustrious, even if I stand sole among men;
From my own voice resonant--singing the phallus,...

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Letters from Italy.

The tall, sallow guardsmen their horsetails have spread,
Flaming out in their violet, yellow, and red;
And behind go the lackeys in crimson and buff,...

Now the trees rest: the moon has taught them sleep,
Like drowsy wings of bats are all their leaves,
Clinging together. Girls at ease who fold
Fair hands upon white necks and through dusk fields...

My thoughts impelled me to the resting-place
Where sleep my parents, many a friend and brother.
I asked them (no one heard and none replied):
"Do ye forsake me, too, oh father, mother?"...

A troth, and a grief, and a blessing,
Disguised them and came this way,
And one was a promise, and one was a doubt,
And one was a rainy day.

And they met betimes with this maiden,...

Cum digno digna.....
SULPICIA.


"Who is the maid, with golden hair,
"With eye of fire, and foot of air,
"Whose harp around my altar swells,
"The sweetest of a thousand shells?"...

We, William, Kaiser, planted on Our throne
By heaven's grace, but chiefly by Our own,
Do deign to speak. Then let the earth be dumb,
And other nations cease their senseless hum!...

1.
The world is now our dwelling-place;
Where'er the earth one fading trace
Of what was great and free does keep,
That is our home!...
Mild thoughts of man's ungentle race...

I

In politics and politicians' lies
The modern farmer waxes wondrous wise;
Opinionates with wisdom all compact,
And een could tell a nation how to act;...

Ill fits the abstemious Muse a crown to weave
For living brows; ill fits them to receive:
And yet, if virtue abrogate the law,
One portrait--fact or fancy--we may draw;...

I stand above the city's rush and din,
And gaze far down with calm and undimmed eyes,
To where the misty smoke wreath grey and dim
Above the myriad roofs and spires rise;
...

It is a fearful night; a feeble glare
Streams from the sick moon in the o'erclouded sky;
The ridgy billows, with a mighty cry,
Rush on the foamy beaches wild and bare;...

Mark, where the beetling precipice appears,
The toil of the old fisher, gray with years;
Mark, as to drag the laden net he strains,
The labouring muscle and the swelling veins!...