Works

To the Heavens above us
O look and behold
The Planets that love us
All harnessed in gold!
What chariots, what horses
Against us shall bide
While the Stars in their courses...

How the returning days, one after one,
Come ever in their rhythmic round, unchanged,
Yet from each loop'd robe for every man
Some new thing falls. Happy is he
Who fronts them without fear, and like the gods...

From our Dominion never
Take Thy protecting hand,
United, Lord, for ever
Keep Thou our fathers' land!
From where Atlantic terrors
Our hardy seamen train,
To where the salt sea mirrors...

Dark over the face of Nature sublime!
Reign'd tyranny, warfare, and every crime;
The world a desert'no oasis green
A man-loving soul on its surface had seen;
Then mercy above a mandate sent forth...

I.

When boyhood's fire was in my blood
I read of ancient freemen
For Greece and Rome who bravely stood,
THREE HUNDRED MEN AND THREE MEN.[1]
And then I prayed I yet might see...

The Babe was laid in the Manger
Between the gentle kine,
All safe from cold and danger,
"But it was not so with mine,
(With mine! With mine!)
"Is it well with the child, is it well?"...

What woman hugs her infant there?
Another star has shot an ear.

What made the drapery glisten so?
Not a man but Delacroix.

What made the ceiling waterproof?
Landor's tarpaulin on the roof...

By chance my fingers, resting on my face,
Stayed suddenly where in its orbit shone
The lamp of all things beautiful; then on,
Following more heedfully, did softly trace...

(WITH MANY APOLOGIES TO THE LAUREATE.)

And Willie, my eldest born, is gone, you say, little Anne,
Ruddy and white, and strong on his legs, he looks like a man;...

There was once a little comet who lived near the Milky Way!
She loved to wander out at night and jump about and play.
The mother of the comet was a very good old star -...

I

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:
On this scene enter - winged, horned, and spined -
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;...

I write my name as one,
On sands by waves o'errun
Or winter's frosted pane,
Traces a record vain.

Oblivion's blankness claims
Wiser and better names,
And well my own may pass...

With a sweeter voice than birds
Dare to twitter in their sleep,
Pipe for me a tune of words,
Till my dancing fancies leap
Into freedom vaster far
Than the realms of Reason are!...

("Les feuilles qui gisaient.")


The leaves that in the lonely walks were spread,
Starting from off the ground beneath the tread,
Coursed o'er the garden-plain;...

Leaden skies and a lonesome shadow
Where summer has passed with her gorgeous train;
Snow on the mountain, and frost on the meadow -
A white face pressed to the window pane;...

Darkly falls the autumn twilight, rustles by the crisp leaf sere,
Sadly wail the lonely night-winds, sweeping sea-ward, chill and drear,
Sullen dash the restless waters 'gainst a bleak and rock-bound shore,...

No wind there is that either pipes or moans;
The fields are cold and still; the sky
Is covered with a blue-gray sheet
Of motionless cloud; and at my feet
The river, curling softly by,...

Some things are good on Autumn nights,
When with the storm the forest fights,
And in the room the heaped hearth lights
Old-fashioned press and rafter:
Plump chestnuts hissing in the heat,...

There trudges one to a merry-making
With a sturdy swing,
On whom the rain comes down.

To fetch the saving medicament
Is another bent,
On whom the rain comes down.
...

Are the leaves falling round about
The churchyard on the hill?
Is the glow of autumn going out?
Is that the winter chill?
And yet through winter's noise, no doubt
The graves are very still!
...