Dear friends, we are strangers; we never before Have suspected what love to each other we bore; But each of us all to his neighbor is dear, Whose heart has a throb for our time-honored pier. ...
Proudly, beneath her glittering dome, Our three-hilled city greets the morn; Here Freedom found her virgin home, - The Bethlehem where her babe was born.
All overgrown with bush and fern, And straggling clumps of tangled trees, With trunks that lean and boughs that turn, Bent eastward by the mastering breeze, -...
The mountains glitter in the snow A thousand leagues asunder; Yet here, amid the banquet's glow, I hear their voice of thunder; Each giant's ice-bound goblet clinks; A flowing stream is summoned;...
I believe that the copies of verses I've spun, Like Scheherezade's tales, are a thousand and one; You remember the story, - those mornings in bed, - 'T was the turn of a copper, - a tale or a head. ...
'T is like stirring living embers when, at eighty, one remembers All the achings and the quakings of "the times that tried men's souls"; When I talk of Whig and Tory, when I tell the Rebel story,...
Ere yet the warning chimes of midnight sound, Set back the flaming index of the year, Track the swift-shifting seasons in their round Through fivescore circles of the swinging sphere! ...
Oh! I did love her dearly, And gave her toys and rings, And I thought she meant sincerely, When she took my pretty things. But her heart has grown as icy As a fountain in the fall,...
Come back to your mother, ye children, for shame, Who have wandered like truants for riches or fame! With a smile on her face, and a sprig in her cap, She calls you to feast from her bountiful lap. ...
This ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good old times, Of joyous days and jolly nights, and merry Christmas times; They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true,...
Old time, in whose bank we deposit our notes, Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats; He keeps all his customers still in arrears By lending them minutes and charging them years. ...
Welcome, thrice welcome is thy silvery gleam, Thou long-imprisoned stream! Welcome the tinkle of thy crystal beads As plashing raindrops to the flowery meads, As summer's breath to Avon's whispering reeds!...
Dear friends, left darkling in the long eclipse That veils the noonday, - you whose finger-tips A meaning in these ridgy leaves can find Where ours go stumbling, senseless, helpless, blind....
The stars their early vigils keep, The silent hours are near, When drooping eyes forget to weep, - Yet still we linger here; And what - the passing churl may ask - Can claim such wondrous power,...