Works

Only the footprints of the partridge run
Over the billowy drifts on the mountain-side;
And now on level wings the brown birds glide
Following the snowy curves, and in the sun...

Quiet, quiet dead,
Have ye aught to say
From your hidden bed
In the earthy clay?

Fathers, children, mothers,
Ye are very quiet;
Can ye shout, my brothers?
I would know you by it!
...

From the lyrical eclogue "One Day and Another"


Now rests the season in forgetfulness,
Careless in beauty of maturity;
The ripened roses round brown temples, she...

One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,
One lesson which in every wind is blown,
One lesson of two duties kept at one
Though the loud world proclaim their enmity.

Of toil unsever'd from tranquility!...

O only Source of all our light and life,
Whom as our truth, our strength, we see and feel,
But whom the hours of mortal moral strife
Alone aright reveal!

Mine inmost soul, before Thee inly brought,...

Dear Lilac, how enchanting
To hear of you this way!
The Man who comes a-mouching
To visit me each day

Says you too have a lover
Far lovelier than I.
And from his rapt description,...

The People of the Eastern Ice, they are melting like the snow,
They beg for coffee and sugar; they go where the white men go.
The People of the Western Ice, they learn to steal and fight;...

You tell me that you feel surprise
Because Quirl's paper's grown in size;
And yet they're crying through the street
That there's a rise in bread and meat.

She flung the parlour window wide
One eve of mid-July,
And he, as fate would have it tide,
That moment sauntered by.
His eyes were blue and hers were brown,
With drooping fringe of jet;...

What pain, to wake and miss you!
To wake with a tightened heart,
And mouth reaching forward to kiss you!

This then at last is the dawn, and the bell
Clanging at the farm! Such bewilderment...

Ben Unger's wife was dark and small,
With little, round, black eyes;
Ben Unger started at her call,
For Ben had been made wise.
No dirge could crush his spirit but
The one by Annie sung;...

The hero of
Affairs of love
By far too numerous to be mentioned,
And scarred as I'm,
It seemeth time
That I were mustered out and pensioned.

So on this wall
My lute and all...

"Qui vive?" The sentry's musket rings,
The channelled bayonet gleams;
High o'er him, like a raven's wings
The broad tricolored banner flings
Its shadow, rustling as it swings...

"Wrong is but falsehood put in practice."

"The Siren waits thee, singing song for song."

"Music is God's gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven."
...

"There is no easy path leading out of life, and few easy ones that lie within it."

"The flame of anger, bright and brief, sharpens the barb of love."

"Delay in justice is injustice."
...

"No ashes are lighter than those of incense, and few things burn out sooner."

"There is delight in singing, though none hear beside the singer."
...

"Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked."

"Great men lose somewhat of their greatness by being near us; ordinary men gain much."
...

"We think that we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love."

"The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander."
...

"My thoughts are my company; I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them."

"The wise become as the unwise in the enchanted chambers of Power, whose lamps make every face the same colour."
...

It is as if imperial trumpets broke
Again the silence on War's iron height;
And C'sar's armored legions marched to fight,
While Rome, blood-red upon her mountain-yoke,...