Works

I was a lawyer like Harmon Whitney
Or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard,
For I tried the rights of property,
Although by lamp-light, for thirty years,
In that poker room in the opera house....

There's a little girl I know
And we call her So-and-So.
She is neither good nor bad
Good enough for me although!
Never saw a girl that had
More real life in her, or more
Of what people christen go;...

M'cenas, thou of royalty's descent,
Both my protector and dear ornament,
Among humanity's conditions are
Those who take pleasure in the flying car,
Whirling Olympian dust, as on they roll,...

Thou hast no wealth, nor any pride of power,
Thy life is offered on affection's altar.
Small sacrifices claim thee, hour by hour,
Yet on the tedious path thou dost not falter.
...

Who never drinks and never bets,
But loves his wife and pays his debts
And feels content with what he gets?
Tom Collins.

Who has the utmost confidence
That all the banks now in suspense...

During a tempest encountered homeward-bound from the Mediterranean, a grizzled petty-officer, one of the two captains of the forecastle, dying at night in his hammock, swung in the sick-bay under the tiered gun-decks of the Bri...

Or look'd I back unto the times hence flown
To praise those Muses and dislike our own--
Or did I walk those P'an-gardens through,
To kick the flowers and scorn their odours too--...

We keep in step as years roll by;
You march behind and I before: -
The path is new to you; but I
Have passed the ground you're walking o'er.
Yet I march on with measured tread,...

Ye have been fresh and green,
Ye have been fill'd with flowers;
And ye the walks have been
Where maids have spent their hours.

You have beheld how they
With wicker arks did come,...

To me at my fifth-floor window
The chimney-pots in rows
Are sets of pipes pandean
For every wind that blows;

And the smoke that whirls and eddies
In a thousand times and keys...

Whether to sally and see thee, girl of my dreams,
Or whether to stay
And see thee not! How vast the difference seems
Of Yea from Nay
Just now. Yet this same sun will slant its beams
At no far day...

Lofty and enduring is the monument I've reared:
Come, tempests, with your bitterness assailing;
And thou, corrosive blasts of time, by all things mortal feared,
Thy buffets and thy rage are unavailing!
...

Oh, him whom at birth you with favor regarded
Melpomene! never an Isthmian game
Shall render renowned, though he's skilled as a boxer,
Nor shall a swift horse lead him onward to fame....

A flight of doves, with wanton wings,
Flash white against the sky.
In the leafy copse an oriole sings,
And a robin sings hard by.
Sun and shadow are out on the hills;...

Speechless to thousands of others, who with deaf hearts would consult him,
Talketh the spirit to thee, who art his kinsman and friend.

He'd a breet ruddy face an a laffin e'e,
An his shoolders wer brooad as brooad need be;
For each one he met he'd a sally o' wit,
For a jovjal soul wor this same Tom Grit....

Touch but thy lyre, my Harry, and I hear
From thee some raptures of the rare Gotiere;
Then if thy voice commingle with the string,
I hear in thee rare Laniere to sing;...

Over vale and torrent far
Rolls along the sun's bright car.
Ah! he wakens in his course

Mine, as thy deep-seated smart

In the heart.
Ev'ry morning with new force.
...

Always thy book, too late acknowledged thine,
Now when thine eyes no earthly page may read;
Blinded with death, or blinded with the shine
Of love's own lore celestial. Small need,...

Milton! I think thy spirit hath passed away
From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers;
This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours
Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey,...