Silver key of the fountain of tears, Where the spirit drinks till the brain is wild; Softest grave of a thousand fears, Where their mother, Care, like a drowsy child, Is laid asleep in flowers.
1. She was an aged woman; and the years Which she had numbered on her toilsome way Had bowed her natural powers to decay. She was an aged woman; yet the ray...
1. Orphan Hours, the Year is dead, Come and sigh, come and weep! Merry Hours, smile instead, For the Year is but asleep. See, it smiles as it is sleeping, Mocking your untimely weeping. ...
How eloquent are eyes! Not the rapt poet's frenzied lay When the soul's wildest feelings stray Can speak so well as they. How eloquent are eyes! Not music's most impassioned note...
I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan To think that a most unambitious slave, Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne...
The season was the childhood of sweet June, Whose sunny hours from morning until noon Went creeping through the day with silent feet, Each with its load of pleasure; slow yet sweet;...
A gentle story of two lovers young, Who met in innocence and died in sorrow, And of one selfish heart, whose rancour clung Like curses on them; are ye slow to borrow The lore of truth from such a tale?...
Alas! this is not what I thought life was. I knew that there were crimes and evil men, Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass Untouched by suffering, through the rugged glen....
Wealth and dominion fade into the mass Of the great sea of human right and wrong, When once from our possession they must pass; But love, though misdirected, is among...
And that I walk thus proudly crowned withal Is that 'tis my distinction; if I fall, I shall not weep out of the vital day, To-morrow dust, nor wear a dull decay.
Silence! Oh, well are Death and Sleep and Thou Three brethren named, the guardians gloomy-winged Of one abyss, where life, and truth, and joy Are swallowed up - yet spare me, Spirit, pity me,...
1. In the cave which wild weeds cover Wait for thine aethereal lover; For the pallid moon is waning, O'er the spiral cypress hanging And the moon no cloud is staining.
One sung of thee who left the tale untold, Like the false dawns which perish in the bursting; Like empty cups of wrought and daedal gold, Which mock the lips with air, when they are thirsting.
He wanders, like a day-appearing dream, Through the dim wildernesses of the mind; Through desert woods and tracts, which seem Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined.