Works

Where art thou gone, light-ankled Youth?
With wing at either shoulder,
And smile that never left thy mouth
Until the Hours grew colder:

Then somewhat seem'd to whisper near...

Drink wine, and live here blitheful while ye may;
The morrow's life too late is; Live to-day.

I know! I know!--
The ceaseless ache, the emptiness, the woe,--
The pang of loss,--
The strength that sinks beneath so sore a cross.
"--Heedless and careless, still the world wags on,...

("Enfants, on vous dira plus tard.")

[January, 1871.]


In later years, they'll tell you grandpapa
Adored his little darlings; for them did
His utmost just to pleasure them and mar...

Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers,
Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take!
How many memories of what radiant hours
At sight of thee and thine at once awake!...

Against the groaning mast I stand,
The Atlantic surges swell,
To bear me from my native land
And Zoe's wild farewell.

From billow upon billow hurl'd
I can yet hear her say,...

Where yonder ruddy-misted star
Is tumbling down the placid sky
The people's aims were not so high
As our heroic motives are;
To love and trust they set a bar,
And 'Profit' was their only cry;...

In the harbor, in the island, in the Spanish Seas,
Are the tiny white houses and the orange trees,
And day-long, night-long, the cool and pleasant breeze
Of the steady Trade Winds blowing.
...

I'm one o' these cur'ous kind o' chaps
You think you know when you don't, perhaps!
I hain't no fool - ner I don't p'tend
To be so smart I could rickommend
Myself fer a CONGERSSMAN my friend! -...

Sea, that art ours as we are thine, whose name
Is one with England's even as light with flame,
Dost thou as we, thy chosen of all men, know
This day of days when death gave life to fame?...

These verses have I pilfered like a bee
Out of a letter from my C. C. C.
In London, showing what befell him there,
With other things, of interest to me.

One page described a night in open air...

Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist,
What will result from compounding
Fluids or solids.
And who can tell
How men and women will interact
On each other, or what children will result?...

Small towns
Crawling out of their green shirts...
Tubercular towns
Coughing a little in the dawn...
And the church...
There is always a church
With its natty spire
And the vestibule -...

'I appeal to any white man if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him not to eat; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him not.'
- Speech of an Indian Chief.


...

A hungry tramp did long for dish,
And he stole a big bunch of fish,
But he full soon did come to grief,
He was quick captured as a thief.

And brought before the magistrate,...

Oh, roses, roses everywhere but only one for me!
But one wild-rose for me, my boy, your face that's like the morn's;
My rose of roses, dear my lad, my dark-eyed Romany;...

What is transcendentalism?
Merely sentimentalism
With a dash of egotism
Somewhat mixed with mysticism.
Not at all like Socialism,
Nor a bit like Atheism,
Hinges not on pessimism,...

A Poem In Twelve Books


Stop playing, poet! may a brother speak?
'Tis you speak, that's your error. Song's our art:
Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts...

It is the time when, by the forest falls,
The touch-me-nots hang fairy folly-caps;
When ferns and flowers fill the lichened laps
Of rocks with colour, rich as orient shawls:...

She waited in a rose-hued room;
A wanton-hearted creature she,
But beautiful and bright to see
As some great orchid just in bloom.

Upon wide cushions stretched at ease...