Works

In the beautiful May weather,
Lapsing soon into June;
On a golden, golden day
Of the green and golden May,
When our hearts were beating tune
To the coming feet of June,...

The rowan tree grows by the tower foot,
(Flotsam and jetsam from over the sea,
Can the dead feel joy or pain?)
And the owls in the ivy blink and hoot,
And the sea-waves bubble around its root,...

Where shall we write your names, ye brave!
Where build for you a monument,
Who lie in many a sylvan grave,
Stretched half across the continent!
Young, bright and brave, the very flower...

Under the orchard boughs,
That drop red leaves like coals into the grass.
The golden arrows of the sunset fall;
And on the vine-hung wall
Great purple clusters in delicious drowse,...

O not with arms reversed,
And the slow beating of the muffled drum,
And funeral marches, bring our hero home
These stormy woods where his young heart was nursed
Ring with a trumpet burst...

Out of the west a voice--a shudder of horror and pity;
Quivers along the pulses of all the winds that blow;--
Woe for the fallen queen, for the proud and beautiful city....

"O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy atones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy...

I.


Break dull November skies, and make
Sunshine over wood and lake,
And fill your cells of frosty air
With thousand, thousand welcomes to the Princely pair!...

Discrowned and desolate,
And wandering with dim eyes and faded hair,
Singing sad songs to comfort her despair,
Grey Autumn meets her fate.

Forsaken and alone...

In those dark mornings, deep in June,
When brooding birds stir in the nest,
And heavy dews slip down the leaves,
And drop into the rose's breast,
I woke and looked into the east,...

I dreamed, and lo, I saw in my dream a beautiful gateway,
Arched at the top, and crowned with turrets lance-windowed and olden,
And sculptured in arabesque, all knotted and woven and spangled;...

From out the dark of death, before the gates
Flung wide, that open into paradise--
More radiant than the white gates of the morn--
A human soul, new-born,
Stood with glad wonder in its luminous eyes,...

Under the bare brown rafters,
In his garret bed he lay,
And dreamed of the bright hereafters.
And the merry morns of May.

The snow-flakes slowly sifted
In through each cranny and seam,...

Moss-grown, and venerable it stands,
From the way-side dust and noise aloof,
And the great elms stretch their sheltering hands
To bless its grey old roof.

About it summer's greenery waves;...

Sundown--and silence--and deep peace,--
Night's benediction and release;--
The tints of day die out and cease.

This morn I heard the Sabbath bells
Across the breezy upland swells;--...

Oh Sea, that with infinite sadness, and infinite yearning
Liftest thy crystal forehead toward the unpitying stars,--
Evermore ebbing and flowing, and evermore returning...

I never looked upon thy face;
I never saw thy dwelling-place;
My home is by Lake Erie's shore,
Beyond Niagara's distant roar;
And thine where ships at anchor ride,
By fair St. Lawrence's rolling tide,...

It is the hither side, O Hope,
And afternoon; our shadows slope
Backward along the mountain cope.

The early morning was so sweet,
We seemed to climb with winged feet,...

The moon went under a ragged cloud,
The owl cried out of the ruined wall,
Slow and solemn, distinct and loud,
His melancholy call:
Tu-whit, tu-whit, tu-whoo!
Like a creature in a shroud.
...

(In an Album.)


In the spring-time, out of the dew,
From my garden, sweet friend, I gather,
A garland of verses, or rather
A poem of blossoms for you.
...