Works

Fancy, who leads the pastimes of the glad,
Full oft is pleased a wayward dart to throw;
Sending sad shadows after things not sad,
Peopling the harmless fields with signs of woe:...

Awake my soul! in cheerful mood,
Thy matin thanks to pay!
The God, who gives thee rest, and food,
Directs thee to be gay.

The Jewish world was dark, and cold,
There doubts and fears annoy:...

"Lie there," I said, "my Sorrow! lie thou there!
And I will drink the lissome air,
And see if yet the heavens have gained their blue."
Then rose my Sorrow as an aged man,...

"There was darkness."

A Morn of guilt, an hour of doom -
Shocks and tremblings dread;
All the city sunk in gloom -
Thick darkness overhead.
An awful Sufferer straight and stark;...

Beyond the pale of memory,
In some mysterious dusky grove;
A place of shadows utterly,
Where never coos the turtle-dove,
A world forgotten of the sun:
I dreamed we met when day was done,...

A gift of Silence, sweet!
Who may not ever hear:
To lay down at your unobservant feet,
Is all the gift I bear.

I have no songs to sing,
That you should heed or know:...

I love the warm bare earth and all
That works and dreams thereon:
I love the seasons yet to fall:
I love the ages gone,

The valleys with the sheeted grain,
The river's smiling might,...

If the rose of all flowers be the rarest
That heaven may adore from above,
And the fervent moss-rose be the fairest
That sweetens the summer with love,
Can it be that a fairer than any...

I.

The years have passed in ceaseless round
Since first they laid her here to rest
In dreamless sleep beneath the silent mound,
With folded hands upon her gentle breast.


II.
...

(F.M.L.)


Living child or pictured cherub,
Ne'er o'ermatched its baby grace;
And the mother, moving nearer,
Looked it calmly in the face;
Then with slight and quiet gesture,...

(CLARISSA HARLOW)


Seek not to calm my grief,
To stay the falling tear;
Have pity on me, ye my friends,
The hand of God is here.

She was my only one,
Oh, then my love how great!...

Fate gave the word, the arrow sped,
And pierc'd my darling's heart;
And with him all the joys are fled
Life can to me impart.
By cruel hands the sapling drops,
In dust dishonour'd laid:...

A Mother's Name.


I.

I love the sound! The sweetest under Heaven,
That name of mother, - and the proudest, too.
As babes we breathe it, and with seven times seven...

Mother, O mother! forever I cry for you,
Sing the old song I may never forget;
Even in slumber I murmur and sigh for you. -
Mother, O mother,
Sing low, "Little brother,...

I knelt beside a little bed,
The curtains drew away,
And, 'mid the soft, white folds beheld,
Two rosy sleepers lay;
The one had seen three summers smile
And lisped her evening prayer;...

You are blue, you are blue like the sky,
Cruel and cold and blue,
And I turn from you, voiceless sea,
To a sky that is voiceless, too.

Upward the vast blue arch,
Downward the blue abyss,...

I.

To-night he sees their star burn, dewy-bright,
Deep in the pansy, eve hath made for it,
Low in the west; a placid purple lit
At its far edge with warm auroral light:...

Into her presence he gaily pranced,
A very fat spark, and a bit advanced.

With a Samson tread on the earth he trod,
He was stayed and gaitered, and fifty odd.

And she was a tulip just unfurled,...

WOOLLEN-DRAPER IN DUBLIN, WHOSE SIGN WAS THE GOLDEN FLEECE

Jason, the valiant prince of Greece,
From Colchis brought the Golden Fleece;
We comb the wool, refine the stuff,...

Why fear to die
And let thy body lie
Under the flowers of June,
Thy body food
For the ground-worms' brood
And thy grave smiled on by the visiting moon.

Amid great Nature's halls...