Nurse not your grief, nor make obsequious moan When I have shed this flesh I love so well, Nor slowly toll the dull heart-bruising knell, Nor carve my name in customary stone;...
Up the hillside, down the glen, Rouse the sleeping citizen; Summon out the might of men! Like a lion growling low, Like a night-storm rising slow, Like the tread of unseen foe;...
I heard the ancient forest talk, (Its voice was like a wandering breeze): It said, "Who is it comes to walk Along my paths when, white as chalk, The moon hangs o'er my sleeping trees?...
Who is it calling by the darkened river Where the moss lies smooth and deep, And the dark trees lean unmoving arms, Silent and vague in sleep, And the bright-heeled constellations pass...
I am a memory of cosmogony, That first great hour of travail when the voice Of God called suns and systems from the void; I am the dream He dreams of that last day...
When blood-root blooms and trillium flowers Unclasp their stars to sun and rain, My heart strikes hands with winds and showers And wanders in the woods again.
These flowers are I, poor Fanny Hurd, Sir or Madam, A little girl here sepultured. Once I flit-fluttered like a bird Above the grass, as now I wave In daisy shapes above my grave, All day cheerily,...
We have not heard the music of the spheres, The song of star to star, but there are sounds More deep than human joy and human tears, That Nature uses in her common rounds;...
Pleasant it was, when woods were green, And winds were soft and low, To lie amid some sylvan scene, Where, the long drooping boughs between, Shadows dark and sunlight sheen Alternate come and go; ...
Low and mournful be the strain, Haughty thought be far from me; Tones of penitence and pain, Meanings of the tropic sea; Low and tender in the cell Where a captive sits in chains....