Works

The brazen bells of laughing lands
In swelling echoes wildly ring,
And over seas and hoary strands
This Christmas carol sing.


"Awaken, O, heart of the race,...

We gentler grow by sorrow; not the breast
That never crouches in the nights of tears,
That never bends beneath the loads of years,
Has sympathies that are the kindliest....

At eventide, when glories lie
In crimson curtains hung on high,
And all the breast of heaven glows
With mingled wreaths of flowers and snows,
The dearest dreams of life draw nigh.
...

Crowds! Crowds! Crowds!
Suddenly here as if come from the clouds
That faded away as they came;
Mad acres of people aflame
With thirst for a morsel of land;
Wild hunters of fortune, whose game...

The water-wheel goes 'round and 'round
With heavy sighs of mournful sound,
While dismal cries and weary moans
Unite with sad and tearful groans,
And weeping waves of water throw...

Away, away, from the sultry ways
Where the pleasures fall and fade,
To the bannered corn and the meadowed bloom
And the forest's cooling shade!

Afar, afar, from the rooms of care...

The gloomy hours of silence wake
Remembrance and her train,
And phantoms through the fancies chase
The mem'ries that remain;
And hidden in the dark embrace
Of days that now are gone,...

'Tis not by selfish miser's greed
The great rewards of love are given;
'Tis not the cynic's haughty creed
Which gladly makes this world a heaven;
But tender word and loving deed...

Great natures live apart; the mountain gray
May call no comrade to his lonely side;
The giant ocean, wrapped in storm and spray,
Has no companion for her endless tide;...

He sleeps at last! The vales of rest
Are waiting for the war-worn breast,
And glorious angels fondly spread
The sweetest roses for his bed.
While countless millions call him blest.
...

Lo, all the age is rank with wrong!
The nations kneel to monstrous might,
And horrid cries that haunt the night,
Have hushed the notes of happy song;
Mankind the deepest truth has missed,...

A something, not of earth or sky,
Beside me walks the ways I go,
And I--I never truly know,
If I am it or it is I.

It soothes me with its tender speech,
It guides me with its gentle hand,...

Nature has a thousand choirs
Singing in the sylvan shadows,
And the music of her lyres
Echoes in the merry meadows;
Always glad with golden glee
Sounds her happy melody,...

Here, through the ages old, the desert slept
In solitudes unbroken, save when passed
The bison herds, and savage hunters swept
In thund'ring chaos down the valleys vast;...

O weak and weary world
Forever struggling on,
When will thy toils in comfort be impearled,
When will thy sorrows and thy cares be gone?
When shall the races, all ambition dead,...

They will find in this life who are grieved with its gladness
No songs for the heart and no hopes for the soul,
But will faint in the glooms where the dirges of sadness
In tremulous murmurs of wretchedness roll;...

A singer sang in sorrow long
And breathed his life into his song.

Unknown, unheard, the song went wide,
Until the singer, starving, died.

Now in their hearts the nations write...

Sing me a song, O, Wind,
Of musical cadence sweet,
Which in the wood around
Shall often and oft repeat;
Soft as an angel's song
That never can give annoy,
Which in the balmy notes...

Spring, among her sylvan shades,
And the gladness of her glades,
Once in dreamy hours was straying,
Where sweet Music with her throngs
Of glad melodies and songs
In the happy vales was playing.
...

Our dearest joys forever flow
From fountains of the Long Ago,
That from the heights of pleasures past
Flood all the present valleys vast,
And with eternal glees provide
The future's endless ocean tide....