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Fate slew him, but he did not drop;
She felled -- he did not fall --
Impaled him on her fiercest stakes --
He neutralized them all.

She stung him, sapped his firm advance,...

Were I a king in very truth,
And had a son - a guileless youth -
In probable succession;
To teach him patience, teach him tact,
How promptly in a fix to act,
He should adopt, in point of fact,...

All day the nations climb and crawl and pray
In one long pilgrimage to one white shrine,
Where sleeps a saint whose pardon, like his peace,
Is wide as death, as common, as divine.
...

'Tis a poor drizzly morning, dark and sad.
The cloud has fallen, and filled with fold on fold
The chimneyed city; and the smoke is caught,
And spreads diluted in the cloud, and sinks,...

Henry got me with child,
Knowing that I could not bring forth life
Without losing my own.
In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust.
Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived...

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
...

I sat in heaven like the sun
Above a storm when winter was:
I took the snowflakes one by one
And turned their fragile shapes to glass:
I washed the rivers blue with rain...

Tune - "The King of France, he rade a race."



I.

Amang the trees, where humming bees
At buds and flowers were hinging, O,
Auld Caledon drew out her drone,...

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
...

It was a man of many parts,
Who in his coffer mind
Had stored the Classics and the Arts
And Sciences combined;
The purest gems of poesy
Came flashing from his pen -
The wholesome truths of History...

Do you think, dear, as you say
Such a light good-bye to-day,
That this parting time may be
Mayhaps less to you, than me?

What a wonder of surprise
Looks out from your sunny eyes....

A lovely little keeper of the home,
Absorbed in menu books, yet erudite
When I need counsel; quick at repartee
And slow to anger. Modest as a flower,
Yet scintillant and radiant as a star....

Like the tenth wave, that offers to the shore
Accumulated opulence and force,
So does my heart, which thought it loved of yore,
Carry increasing passion down the course
Of time to proffer thee....

(Intended for recitation at club dinners.)


To-night when I came from the club at eleven,
Under the gaslight I saw a face -
A woman's face! and I swear to heaven...

I

Love me Sweet, with all thou art,
Feeling, thinking, seeing;
Love me in the lightest part,
Love me in full being.

II

Love me with thine open youth
In its frank surrender;...

How cold the old porch seems. A dreary chill
Creeps upward from the river at twilight,
And yet, I like to linger here at night,
And dream the summer tarries with us still.
...

When this, our rose, is faded,
And these, our days, are done,
In lands profoundly shaded
From tempest and from sun:
Ah, once more come together,
Shall we forgive the past,...

See, I have bent thee by thy saffron hair
O most strange masker,
Towards my face, thy face so full of eyes
O almost legendary monster,
Thee of the saffron, circling hair I bend,...

On that gray night of mournful drone,
A part from aught to hear, to see,
I dreamt not that from shires unknown
In gloom, alone,
By Halworthy,
A man was drawing near to me.
...

A man who would woo a fair maid,
Should 'prentice himself to the trade;
And study all day,
In methodical way,
How to flatter, cajole, and persuade.
He should 'prentice himself at fourteen...