Works

The barberry burns, the rose-hip crimsons warm,
And haw and sumach hedge the hill with fire,
Down which the road winds, worn of hoof and tire,
Only the blueberry-picker plods now from the farm....

Among the meadows of Life's sad unease
In labor still renewing her soul's youth
With trust, for patience, and with love, for peace,
Singing she goes with the calm face of Ruth.

On receiving a bottle of Sherry Wine of the same name

What "blushing Hippocrene" is here! what fire
Of the"warm South" with magic of old Spain!
Through which again I seem to view the train...

Of our own selves God makes a glass, wherein
Two shadows image them as might a breath:
And one is Life, whose other name is Sin;
And one is Love, whose other name is Death.

With shadowy immortelles of memory
About her brow, she sits with eyes that look
Upon the stream of Lethe wearily,
In hesitant hands Death's partly-opened book.

Above his misered embers, gnarled and gray,
With toil-twitched limbs he bends; around his hut,
Want, like a hobbling hag, goes night and day,
Scolding at windows and at doors tight-shut.

Now when wan winter sunsets be
Canary-colored down the sky;
When nights are starless utterly,
And sleeted winds cut moaning by,
One's memory keeps one company,
And conscience puts his "when" and "why."...

A Log-Hut in the solitude,
A clapboard roof to rest beneath!
This side, the shadow-haunted wood;
That side, the sunlight-haunted heath.

At daybreak Morn shall come to me...

From the lyrical eclogue "One Day and Another"


Now rests the season in forgetfulness,
Careless in beauty of maturity;
The ripened roses round brown temples, she...

It is as if imperial trumpets broke
Again the silence on War's iron height;
And C'sar's armored legions marched to fight,
While Rome, blood-red upon her mountain-yoke,...

Death takes her hand and leads her through the waste
Of her own soul, wherein she hears the voice
Of lost Love's tears, and, famishing, can but taste
The dead-sea fruit of Life's remembered joys.

Craft's silent sister and the daughter deep
Of Contemplation, she, who spreads below
A hostile tent soft comfort for her foe,
With eyes of Jael watching till he sleep.

With helms of lightning, glittering in the skies,
On steeds of thunder, cloudy form on form,
Terrific beauty in their hair and eyes,
Behold the wild Valkyries of the storm.

I.

January

Shaggy with skins of frost-furred gray and drab,
Harsh, hoary hair framing a bitter face,
He bends above the dead Year's fireplace
Nursing the last few embers of its slab...

The spirit Spring, in rainy raiment, met
The spirit Summer for a moonlit hour:
Sweet from their greeting kisses, warm and wet,
Earth shaped the fragrant purity of this flower.

Could I divine how her gray eyes
Gat such cold haughtiness of skies;

How, some wood-flower's shadow brown,
Dimmed her fair forehead's wrath a frown;

How, rippled sunshine blown thro' air,...

I

First I asked the honeybee,
Busy in the balmy bowers;
Saying, "Sweetheart, tell it me:
Have you seen her, honeybee?
She is cousin to the flowers -
All the sweetness of the south...