What virtue, or what mental grace But men unqualified and base Will boast it their possession? Profusion apes the noble part Of liberality of heart, And dulness of discretion.
After the fierce midsummer all ablaze Has burned itself to ashes, and expires In the intensity of its own fires, There come the mellow, mild, St. Martin days,...
When I was a boy there was a friend of mine: We thought ourselves warriors and grown folk swine, Stupid old animals who never understood And never had an impulse and said "you must be good." ...
Friends . . . old friends . . . One sees how it ends. A woman looks Or a man tells lies, And the pleasant brooks And the quiet skies, Ruined with brawling And caterwauling,...
Today I had the awfulest time, Dear mother, in the wood. That hill out there we were to climb, And we'd been very good. But nurse was walking up the hill, When little Anne and I,...
God made a little gentian; It tried to be a rose And failed, and all the summer laughed. But just before the snows There came a purple creature That ravished all the hill;...
I heard the toads and frogs last night When snug in bed, and all was still; I lay and listened there until It seemed a church where one, with might, Was preaching high and very shrill: "The will of God!...
The chorus frogs in the big lagoon Would sing their songs to the silvery moon. Tenor singers were out of place, For every frog was a double bass. But never a human chorus yet...
You have come your way, I have come my way; You have stepped across your people, carelessly, hurting them all; I have stepped across my people, and hurt them in spite of my care. ...
The glimmer of the limes, sun-heavy, sleeping, Goes trembling past me up the College wall. Below, the lawn, in soft blue shade is keeping, The daisy-froth quiescent, softly in thrall. ...
In days of peace my fellow-men Rightly regarded me as more like A Bishop than a Major-Gen., And nothing since has made me warlike; But when this age-long struggle ends And I have seen the Allies dish up...
Under the Great Comedian's tomb the crowd. A bundle of tempestuous cloud is blown About the sky; where that is clear of cloud Brightness remains; a brighter star shoots down;...
While on the cliff with calm delight she kneels, And the blue vales a thousand joys recall, See, to the last, last verge her infant steals! O fly--yet stir not, speak not, lest it fall....
Says the pipe to the snuff-box, I can't understand What the ladies and gentlemen see in your face, That you are in fashion all over the land, And I am so much fallen into disgrace.