Works

How hushed and still are earth and air,
How languid 'neath the sun's fierce ray -
Drooping and faint - the flowrets fair,
On this hot, sultry, summer day!
Vainly I watch the streamlet blue...

How good some years of life may be!
Ah, once it was not guessed by me,
Past years would shine, like some bright sea,
In golden dusks of memory.

Ere then the music of the dawn...

You found my life, a poor lame bird
That had no heart to sing,
You would not speak the magic word
To give it voice and wing.

Yet sometimes, dreaming of that hour,
I think, if you had known...

Vine leaves rustled, moonbeams shone,
Summer breezes softly sighed;
You and I were all alone
In a kingdom fair and wide
You, a Queen, in all your pride,
I, a vassal, by your side.
...

The fight was over, and the battle won
A soldier, who beneath his chieftain's eye
Had done a might deed and done it well,
And done it as the world will have it done,...

1.
A portal as of shadowy adamant
Stands yawning on the highway of the life
Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt;
Around it rages an unceasing strife...

"Here is a lantern, my little boy,"
Said a father to his child,
"And yonder's a wood, a lonely wood,
Tangled, and rough, and wild;
And now, this night, - this very hour,
Though gloomy and dark it be,...

This is the weird of a world-old folk,
That not till the last link breaks,
Not till the night is blackest,
The blood of Hengist wakes.
When the sun is black in heaven,
The moon as blood above,...

Well Sir, 'tis granted, I said Dryden's Rhimes,
Were stoln, unequal, nay dull many times:
What foolish Patron, is there found of his,
So blindly partial, to deny me this?...

Had you lived when a tyrant king
Strove to make all the slaves of one,
With nobles and with churchmen you
Had stood unflinching, pure and true,
To annihilate that hateful thing...

A's Albert Edward, well meaning but flighty,
Who invited King Arthur, the blameless and mighty,
To meet Alcibiades and Aphrodite.



B is for Bernhardt, who fails to awaken...

A

A carrion crow sat on an oak,
Watching a tailor shape his cloak.
"Wife, bring me my old bent bow,
That I may shoot yon carrion crow."
The tailor he shot and missed his mark,...

A

A carrion crow sat on an oak,
Watching a tailor shape his cloak.
"Wife, bring me my old bent bow,
That I may shoot yon carrion crow."
The tailor he shot and missed his mark,...

The name the Gallic exile bore,
St. Malo! from thy ancient mart,
Became upon our Western shore
Greenleaf for Feuillevert.

A name to hear in soft accord
Of leaves by light winds overrun,...

This sentence have I left behind:
An aching body, and a mind
Not wholly clear, nor wholly blind,
Too keen to rest, too weak to find,
That travails sore, and brings forth wind,...

"A soldier of the Union mustered out,"
Is the inscription on an unknown grave
At Newport News, beside the salt-sea wave,
Nameless and dateless; sentinel or scout
Shot down in skirmish, or disastrous rout...

The American Spirit speaks:

If the Led Striker call it a strike,
Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
Nor what he is, My Avatar.
...

"Ah! pity all the pangs I feel,
If pity e'er ye knew;--
An aged father's wounds to heal,
Thro' scenes of death I flew.

Perhaps my hast'ning steps are vain,
Perhaps the warrior dies!--...

Most good, most faire,
Or Thing as rare,
To call you's lost;
For all the cost
Words can bestow,
So poorely show
Vpon your prayse,
That all the wayes
Sense hath, come short:...

Haply some Rajah first in the ages gone
Amid his languid ladies fingered thee,
While a black nightingale, sun-swart as he,
Sang his one wife, love's passionate oraison;...