It is with humility really unassumed, it is with a sentiment even of awe, that I pen the opening sentence of this work: for of all conceivable subjects I approach the reader with the most solemn, the most comprehensive, the mos...
Wreathed in myrtle, my sword I'll conceal, Like those champions devoted and brave, When they plunged in the tyrant their steel, And to Athens deliverance gave.
When from your gems of thought I turn To those pure orbs, your heart to learn, I scarce know which to prize most high, The bright i-dea, or the bright dear-eye.
I. In the greenest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted, Once fair and stately palace, Radiant palace, reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion, It stood there!...
Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?...
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!...
Thy soul shall find itself alone 'Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. Be silent in that solitude Which is not loneliness for then...
Kind solace in a dying hour! Such, father, is not (now) my theme I will not madly deem that power Of Earth may shrive me of the sin Unearthly pride hath revelled in I have no time to dote or dream:...
I have sent for thee, holy friar;1 But 'twas not with the drunken hope, Which is but agony of desire To shun the fate, with which to cope Is more than crime may dare to dream,...
Hear the sledges with the bells Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle...
The bells! ah, the bells! The little silver bells! How fairy-like a melody there floats From their throats. From their merry little throats From the silver, tinkling throats...
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest....
Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary Of lofty contemplation left to Time By buried centuries of pomp and power! At length at length after so many days Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst,...
Lo! 'tis a gala night Within the lonesome latter years! An angel throng, bewinged, bedight In veils, and drowned in tears, Sit in a theatre, to see A play of hopes and fears,...
'Tis said that when The hands of men Tamed this primeval wood, And hoary trees with groans of wo, Like warriors by an unknown foe, Were in their strength subdued, The virgin Earth...
In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace Radiant palace reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion...
In spring of youth it was my lot To haunt of the wide world a spot The which I could not love the less, So lovely was the loneliness Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,...