Works

Almighty GOD! when round thy shrine
The Palm-tree's heavenly branch we twine,[1]
(Emblem of Life's eternal ray,
And Love that "fadeth not away,")
We bless the flowers, expanded all,[2]...

Ah, Almon Keefer! what a boy you were,
With your back-tilted hat and careless hair,
And open, honest, fresh, fair face and eyes
With their all-varying looks of pleased surprise...

Within my reach!
I could have touched!
I might have chanced that way!
Soft sauntered through the village,
Sauntered as soft away!
So unsuspected violets
Within the fields lie low,...

Near a large town, along the broad highroad walked an old sick man.
...

My heart is what it was before,
A house where people come and go;
But it is winter with your love,
The sashes are beset with snow.

I light the lamp and lay the cloth,...

Give, if thou canst, an alms; if not, afford,
Instead of that, a sweet and gentle word:
God crowns our goodness wheresoe'er He sees,
On our part, wanting all abilities.

At Quincey's moat the squandering village ends,
And there in the almshouse dwell the dearest friends
Of all the village, two old dames that cling
As close as any trueloves in the spring....

Here's yer toy balloons! All sizes!
Twenty cents for that. It rises
Jest as quick as that 'ere, Miss,
Twice as big. Ye see it is
Some more fancy. Make it square
Fifty for 'em both. That's fair.
...

There's a pasture in a valley where the hanging woods divide,
And a Herd lies down and ruminates in peace;
Where the pheasant rules the nooning, and the owl the twilight tide,...

On grass, on gravel, in the sun,
Or now beneath the shade,
They went, in pleasant Kensington,
A prentice and a maid.

That Sunday morning's April glow,
How should it not impart...

Alone, alone! - the night is very silent,
Voiceless the stars are, and the pallid moon
Through the unknown sends down no tone, no utt'rance
To break the hush of midnight's solemn noon!...

In contact, lo! the flint and steel,
By sharp and flame, the thought reveal
That he the metal, she the stone,
Had cherished secretly alone.

Booley Fito.

Blessings there are of cradle and of clan,
Blessings that fall of priests' and princes' hands;
But never blessing full of lives and lands,
Broad as the blessing of a lonely man.
...

A very old woman
Lives in yon house -
The squeak of the cricket,
The stir of the mouse,
Are all she knows
Of the earth and us.

Once she was young,
Would dance and play,...

The noon's greygolden meshes make
All night a veil,
The shorelamps in the sleeping lake
Laburnum tendrils trail.

The sly reeds whisper to the night
A name, her name,...

Genesis 28:10-22.


The sun had set. He was alone;
Mid twilight shadows he would rest.
He laid his head upon a stone
To woo sweet slumber for his guest.
...

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were, I have not seen
As others saw, I could not bring
My passions from a common spring,
From the same source I have not taken...

I am alone, in spite of love,
In spite of all I take and give,
In spite of all your tenderness,
Sometimes I am not glad to live.

I am alone, as though I stood...

Alone in my chamber, forsaken, unsought,
My spirit's enveloped in shadows of night,
Is there no one to give me a smile or a thought?
Is there none to restore to me faded delight?
...

Do not, O do not use me
As you have used others.
Better you did refuse me:
You have refused others.
Better, far better hope to banish
A small child than, grown old,...