Works

A florist - wit had run a rig -
Had set his fancy on a pig;
Which followed master like a dog,
And petted was, although a hog.

The master thus addressed the swine:...

You must mean more than just this hour,
You perfect thing so subtly fair,
Simple and complex as a flower,
Wrought with such planetary care;
How patient the eternal power...

I would not alter thy cold eyes,
Nor trouble the calm fount of speech
With aught of passion or surprise.
The heart of thee I cannot reach:
I would not alter thy cold eyes!
...

I know a maiden, scarce thirteen,
A sweet and gentle maid,
With dignified and graceful mien,
And manner calm and staid.
But I've seen her, when none but her parents are nigh,...

From Bindle's opera house in the village
To Broadway is a great step.
But I tried to take it, my ambition fired
When sixteen years of age,
Seeing "East Lynne," played here in the village...

The China Coast's a dumping ground
And the South Sea gets its share
Of the kind of men that don't make good
The kind of man that never could
The men that never care.
...

Crass rays streaming from the vestibules;
Cafes glittering like jeweled teeth;
High-flung signs
Blinking yellow phosphorescent eyes;
Girls in black
Circling monotonously
About the orange lights......

Hark, 'tis the sound that charms
The war-steed's wakening ears!--
Oh! many a mother folds her arms
Round her boy-soldier when that call she hears;
And, tho' her fond heart sink with fears,...

Beautiful lily, dwelling by still rivers,
Or solitary mere,
Or where the sluggish meadow-brook delivers
Its waters to the weir!

Thou laughest at the mill, the whir and worry...

I left you in the morning,
And in the morning glow,
You walked a way beside me
To make me sad to go.
Do you know me in the gloaming,
Gaunt and dusty gray with roaming?...

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower'but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,...

Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault
was, had I not been made of common clay
I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed
yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day.
...

Light love in a mist, by the midsummer moon misguided,
Scarce seen in the twilight garden if gloom insist,
Seems vainly to seek for a star whose gleam has derided
Light love in a mist.
...

Love lies bleeding in the bed whereover
Roses lean with smiling mouths or pleading:
Earth lies laughing where the sun's dart clove her:
Love lies bleeding.

Stately shine his purple plumes, exceeding...

Oh, why for us the blighted bloom!
The blossom that lies withering!
The Master of Life's changeless loom
Hath wrought for us no changeless thing.

Where grows the rose of fadeless Grace?...

The daisy scatter'd on each mead and down,
A golden tuft within a silver crown;
(Fair fall that dainty flower! and may there be
No shepherd grac'd that doth not honour thee!)...

I will not have the mad Clytie,
Whose head is turned by the sun;
The tulip is a courtly queen,
Whom, therefore, I will shun;
The cowslip is a country wench,
The violet is a nun; -...

Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,
One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When he called the flowers, so blue and golden,
Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine; -
...

Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,
One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When he called the flowers, so blue and golden,
Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine.
...

Thank God I love the Flowers!
Mute voices of the Spring,
That gladden all her bowers
With their varied blossoming;
They weave a charm around them
On each summer dale and bough,...