Works

Dawn has flashed up the startled skies,
Night has gone out beneath the hill
Many sweet times; before our eyes
Dawn makes and unmakes about us still
The magic that we call the rose....

There is a splendid tropic flower which flings
Its fiery disc wide open to the core--
One pulse of subtlest fragrance--once a life
That rounds a century of blossoming things...

Storm and shame and fraud and darkness fill the nations full with night:
Hope and fear whose eyes yearn eastward have but fire and sword in sight:
One alone, whose name is one with glory, sees and seeks the light....

They cheered him from the wharf, it was a glorious day:
His hand went to his scarf, his thoughts were far away.
Oh, he was 'Jolly Good', they sang it long and loud,...

They were a couple well content
With what they earned and what they spent,
Cared not a whit for style's decree -
For he was Scotch, and so was she.

And oh, they loved to talk of Burns -...

For him I sing,
I raise the Present on the Past,
(As some perennial tree, out of its roots, the present on the past:)
With time and space I him dilate--and fuse the immortal laws,...

Work with might and main,
Or with hand and heart,
Work with soul and brain,
Or with holy art,
Thread, or genius' fire--
Make a vest, or verse--
If 'tis done for hire,
It is done the worse.

For I must sing of all I feel and know,
Waiting with Memnon passive near the palms,
Until the heavenly light doth dawn and grow
And thrill my silence into mystic psalms;...

If fate had held a careless knife
And clipped one line that drew,
Of all the myriad lines of life,
From Eden up to you;
If, in the wars and wastes of time,
One sire had met the sword,...

For Life I had never cared greatly,
As worth a man's while;
Peradventures unsought,
Peradventures that finished in nought,
Had kept me from youth and through manhood till lately
Unwon by its style....

I.
'He is fled'I wish him dead'
He that wrought my ruin'
O the flattery and the craft
Which were my undoing . . .
In the night, in the night,
When the storms are blowing.

II....

Tune - "Let me in this ae night."



I.

Forlorn, my love, no comfort near,
Far, far from thee, I wander here;
Far, far from thee, the fate severe
At which I most repine, love....

These market-dames, mid-aged, with lips thin-drawn,
And tissues sere,
Are they the ones we loved in years agone,
And courted here?

Are these the muslined pink young things to whom...

An idealized Portrait, by E. Vedder, in the Spring Exhibition of the National Academy, 1865

The sufferance of her race is shown,
And retrospect of life,
Which now too late deliverance dawns upon;...

Up to the Hall, my lady there'll wear her satin gown,
For little Miss and Master'll be coming down from town.
Oh ay, the childern's coming! The CHILDERN did I say?...

Death in the cold grey morning
Came to the man where he lay;
And the wind shivered, and the tree shuddered
And the dawn was grey.

And the face of the man was grey in the dawn,...

When writing to you, friend, a subject I'd find
In which there's both pleasure and profit combined,
And though what I've chosen may pain in review,
Yet still there's strange mingling of pleasure there too....

Mary and Lily - how sweet are those names,
Allied as they are to my heart and my home;
Recalling with freshness the days that are past,
Yielding buds of sweet promise for days yet to come.
...

I here engage
Upon this page
A picture to portray,
Of two of an age
Yet neither a sage,
But right honest hearts have they.
Each loves to play
And have his own way,
Yet I'm happy to say...

In the morning of life, when all things appear bright,
And far in the distance the shadows of night,
With kind parents still spared thee, and health to enjoy,
What period more fitting thy powers to employ...