Works

I.

Beneath an old beech-tree
They sat together,
Fair as a flower was she
Of summer weather.
They spoke of life and love,
While, through the boughs above,
The sunlight, like a dove,...

Rain and wind and candlelight
And let us pray a prayer to-night:
For every soul, since life is brief,
Little of trouble and less of grief.
And set a light at the windowpane,...

I.

To-night he sees their star burn, dewy-bright,
Deep in the pansy, eve hath made for it,
Low in the west; a placid purple lit
At its far edge with warm auroral light:...

He was a boy, sun-burned and brown,
And she a girl from a neighboring town:
Dark were her eyes and dark her hair,
And her cheeks as red as the ripe peach there:
Dainty and sweet, with a far-away...

I.

White as a lily moulded of Earth's milk
That eve the moon bloomed in a hyacinth sky;
Soft in the gleaming glens the wind went by,
Faint as a phantom clothed in unseen silk:...

Here is a tale for men and women teachers:
There was a girl who'd ceased to be a maiden;
Who walked by night with heart like Lilith's laden;
A child of sin anathemaed of preachers....

I.

They who maintained their rights,
Through storm and stress,
And walked in all the ways
That God made known,
Led by no wandering lights,
And by no guess,
Through dark and desolate days...

On southern winds shot through with amber light,
Breathing soft balm and clothed in cloudy white,
The lily-fingered Spring came o'er the hills,
Waking the crocus and the daffodils....

I.

When in the wind the vane turns round,
And round, and round;
And in his kennel whines the hound;
When all the gable eaves are bound
With icicles of ragged gray,
A glinting gray;...

That day we wandered 'mid the hills,'so lone
Clouds are not lonelier,'the forest lay
In emerald darkness 'round us. Many a stone
And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way:...

Can I forget how LOVE once led the ways
Of our two lives together, joining them;
How every hour was his anadem,
And every day a tablet in his praise!
Can I forget how, in his garden place,...

The waters leap,
The waters roar;
And on the shore
One sycamore
Stands, towering hoar.

The mountains heap
Gaunt pines and crags
That hoar-frost shags;
And, pierced with snags,...

Within my veins it beats
And burns within my brain;
For when the year is sad and sear
I dream the dream again.

Ah! over young am I
God knows! yet in this sleep...

I. SPRING ON THE HILLS

Ah, shall I follow, on the hills,
The Spring, as wild wings follow?
Where wild-plum trees make wan the hills,
Crabapple trees the hollow,
Haunts of the bee and swallow?...

How shall it be with them that day
When God demands of Earth His pay?
With them who make a god of clay
And gold and put all truth away.

Shall not they see the lightning-ray...

Gnarled acorn-oaks against a west
Of copper, cavernous with fire;
A wind of frost that gives no rest
To such lean leaves as haunt the brier,
And hide the cricket's vibrant wire.
...

Three miles of trees it is: and I
Came through the woods that waited, dumb,
For the cool summer dusk to come;
And lingered there to watch the sky
Up which the gradual splendor clomb.
...

And one, perchance, will read and sigh:
"What aimless songs! Why will he sing
Of nature that drags out her woe
Through wind and rain, and sun, and snow,
From miserable spring to spring?"
Then put me by....

March set heel upon the flowers,
Trod and trampled them for hours:
But when April's bugles rang,
Up their starry legions sprang,
Radiant in the sun-shot showers.

April went her frolic ways,...

Not as the eye hath seen, shall we behold
Romance and beauty, when we've passed away;
That robed the dull facts of the intimate day
In life's wild raiment of unusual gold:...