Courage

        A sailor he was swept from deck,
        In minute he seem'd as a speck,
        Tossing on each briny wave,
        They feared the sea would be his grave.

        Though they full quickly launched the boat,
        They could not see where he did float,
        He now was a long ways astern,
        His whereabouts they could not learn.

        But while he on the waves did toss,
        He was seized by great Albatross,
        Who had been looking round in quest
        Of something whereon it could rest.[I]

        It hover'd o'er him with its wings,
        And its great webb feet on him clings,
        And it tore him with its sharp beak,
        For it was longing for some steak.

        But sailor seized it by the throa...

They sing the race, the song is wildly sweet;
But thou, my harp, oh thou shalt sing the goal!
The distant goal, that draws the bleeding feet
And lights the brow and lifts the fainting soul!
(And yet, I know not!, Is the goal the place
I dream it is the while I run the race?)

They sing the fight, the list'ners come in bands;
But tune thy chords, my harp, to sing the prize,
That noble prize for which the fighter stands.
And bids his body strain and agonize!
(Yet, if I knew! O, is the prize so bright
As I have thought it, all this bitter fight?)

They sing the work; the song makes labor fair;
But thou, my harp, shalt sing the labor's aim.
The gleaming light, the beauty throned there
That calls the worker onward more than fame!
(But oh, I pray the aim b...

    My soul spoke low to Discontent:
    Long hast thou lodged with me,
    Now, ere the strength of me is spent,
    I would be quit of thee.

    Thy presence means revolt, unrest,
    Means labor, longing, pain;
    Go, leave me, thou unwelcome guest,
    Nor trouble me again.

    I longed for peace - for peace I cried;
    You would not let her in;
    No room was there for aught beside
    The turmoil and the din.

    I longed for rest, prayed life might yield
    Soft joy and dear delight;
    You urged me to the battlefield,
    And flung me in the fight.

    We two part company to-day.
    Now, ere my strength be spent,
    I open wide my doors and say:
    "Begone, thou Discontent!"

    Then something s...

The aloes grow upon the sand,
The aloes thirst with parching heat;
Year after year they waiting stand,
Lonely and calm, and front the beat
Of desert winds; and still a sweet
And subtle voice thrills all their veins:
"Great patience wins; it still remains,
After a century of pains,
To you to bloom and be complete."

I grow upon a thorny waste;
Hot noontide lies on all the way,
And with its scorching breath makes haste
Each freshening dawn to burn and slay,
Yet patiently I bide and stay:
Knowing the secret of my fate,
The hour of bloom, dear Lord, I wait,
Come when it will, or soon or late,
A hundred years are but a day.

Little by little and one by one,
    Out of the ether, were worlds created;
Star and planet and sea and sun,
    All in the nebulous Nothing waited
Till the Nameless One Who has many a name
Called them to being and forth they came.

All things mighty and all things small,
    Stone and flower and sentient being,
Each is an answer to that one call,
    A part of Himself that His will is freeing -
Freeing to go on the long, long way
That winds back home at the end of the day.

Little by little does mortal man
    Build his castles for joy and glory,
And one by one time shatters each plan
    And lowers his palaces, story by story-
Story by story, till earth is just
A row of graves in the lowly dust.

One by one, whatever was called,

The sun sets out the autumn crocuses
    And fills them up a pouring measure
    Of death-producing wine, till treasure
Runs waste down their chalices.

All, all Persephone's pale cups of mould
    Are on the board, are over-filled;
    The portion to the gods is spilled;
Now, mortals all, take hold!

The time is now, the wine-cup full and full
    Of lambent heaven, a pledging-cup;
    Let now all mortal men take up
The drink, and a long, strong pull.

Out of the hell-queen's cup, the heaven's pale wine -
    Drink then, invisible heroes, drink.
    Lips to the vessels, never shrink,
Throats to the heavens incline.

And take within the wine the god's great oath
    By heaven and earth and hellish stream
    To break this sick and...

I Thought of the road through the glen,
With its hawk's nest high in the pine;
With its rock, where the fox had his den,
'Mid tangles of sumach and vine,
Where she swore to be mine.

I thought of the creek and its banks,
Now glooming, now gleaming with sun;
The rustic bridge builded of planks,
The bridge over Chenoweth's Run,
Where I wooed her and won.

I thought of the house in the lane,
With its pinks and its sweet mignonette;
Its fence and the gate with the chain,
Its porch where the roses hung wet,
Where I kissed her and met.

Then I thought of the family graves,
Walled rudely with stone, in the West,
Where the sorrowful cedar-tree waves,
And the wind is a spirit distressed,
Where they laid her to rest.

And my soul,...

An Ant who in a brook would drink
Fell off the bank. He tried
To swim, and felt his courage sink -
This ocean seemed so wide.
But for a dove who flew above
He would have drowned and died.

The friendly Dove within her beak
A bridge of grass-stem bore:
On this the Ant, though worn and weak.
Contrived to reach the shore
Said he: "The tact of this kind act
I'll cherish evermore."

Behold! A barefoot wretch went by
With slingshot in his hand.
Said he: "You'll make a pigeon pie
That will be kind of grand."
He meant to murder the gentle bird -
Who did not understand.

The Ant then stung him on the heel
(So quick to see the sling).
He turned his head, and missed a meal:
The pigeon pie took wing.
And so the Dove lived on to...

I.

Between the rose's and the canna's crimson,
Beneath her window in the night I stand;
The jeweled dew hangs little stars, in rims, on
The white moonflowers each a spirit hand
That points the path to mystic shadowland.

Awaken, sweet and fair!
And add to night try grace!
Suffer its loveliness to share
The white moon of thy face,
The darkness of thy hair.
Awaken, sweet and fair!

II.

A moth, like down, swings on th' althæa's pistil,
Ghost of a tone that haunts its bell's deep dome;
And in the August-lily's cone of crystal
A firefly blurs, the lantern of a gnome,
Green as a gem that gleams through hollow foam.

Approach! the moment flies!
Thou sweetheart of the South!
Come! mingle with night's mysteries
The re...

Why do they prate of the blessings of peace? we have made them a curse,
Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own;
And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse
Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own heath-stone?

But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind,
When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman’s ware or his word?
Is it peace or war? Civil war, as I think, and that of a kind
The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing the sword.

Sooner or later I too may passively take the print
Of the golden age, why not? I have neither hope nor thurst;
May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint,
Cheat and be cheated, and die, who knows? We are ashes and dust.

Peace singing under ...

Though sorrow long has worn my heart;
    Though every day I've, counted o'er
Hath brought a new and, quickening smart
    To wounds that rankled fresh before;

Though in my earliest life bereft
    Of tender links by nature tied;
Though hope deceived, and pleasure left;
    Though friends betrayed and foes belied;

I still had hopes--for hope will stay
    After the sunset of delight;
So like the star which ushers day,
    We scarce can think it heralds night!--

I hoped that, after all its strife,
    My weary heart at length should rest.
And, feinting from the waves of life,
    Find harbor in a brother's breast.

That brother's breast was warm with truth,
    Was bright with honor's purest ray;
He was the dearest, gentlest you...

Cool shades and dews are round my way,
And silence of the early day;
Mid the dark rocks that watch his bed,
Glitters the mighty Hudson spread,
Unrippled, save by drops that fall
From shrubs that fringe his mountain wall;
And o'er the clear still water swells
The music of the Sabbath bells.

All, save this little nook of land
Circled with trees, on which I stand;
All, save that line of hills which lie
Suspended in the mimic sky,
Seems a blue void, above, below,
Through which the white clouds come and go,
And from the green world's farthest steep
I gaze into the airy deep.

Loveliest of lovely things are they,
On earth, that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
Even love, lon...

The smallest flower beside my path,
    In loveliness of bloom,
Some element of comfort hath
    To rid my heart of gloom;
But these, of spotless purity,
    And fragrant as the rose,
As sad a sight recall to me
    As time shall e'er disclose.

Oh, there are pictures on the brain
    Sometimes by shadows made,
Till dust is blent with dust again,
    That never, never fade;
And things supremely bright and fair
    As ever known in life
Suggest the darkness of despair,
    And sanguinary strife.

I shut my eyes; 'tis all in vain -
    The battle-field appears,
And one among the thousands slain
    In manhood's brilliant years;
An elbow pillowing his head,
    And on the crimson sand
Syringa-blooms, distained and dead,

        qua via difficilis, quaque est via nulla
        OVID Metam. lib iii. v. 227.


Now the vapor, hot and damp,
Shed by day's expiring lamp,
Through the misty ether spreads
Every ill the white man dreads;
Fiery fever's thirsty thrill,
Fitful ague's shivering chill!

Hark! I hear the traveller's song,
As he winds the woods along;--
Christian, 'tis the song of fear;
Wolves are round thee, night is near,
And the wild thou dar'st to roam--
Think, 'twas once the Indian's home![2]

Hither, sprites, who love to harm,
Wheresoe'er you work your charm,
By the creeks, or by the brakes,
Where the pale witch feeds her snakes,
And the cayman[3] loves to creep,
Torpid, to his wintry sleep:
Where...

As a quiet little seedling
Lay within its darksome bed,
To itself it fell a-talking,
And this is what it said:

"I am not so very robust,
But I 'll do the best I can;"
And the seedling from that moment
Its work of life began.

So it pushed a little leaflet
Up into the light of day,
To examine the surroundings
And show the rest the way.

The leaflet liked the prospect,
So it called its brother, Stem;
Then two other leaflets heard it,
And quickly followed them.

To be sure, the haste and hurry
Made the seedling sweat and pant;
But almost before it knew it
It found itself a plant.

The sunshine poured upon it,
And the clouds they gave a shower;
And the little plant kept growing
Till it found itself a flo...

A Rose, in tatters on the garden path,
Cried out to God and murmured 'gainst His Wrath,
Because a sudden wind at twilight's hush
Had snapped her stem alone of all the bush.
And God, Who hears both sun-dried dust and sun,
Had pity, whispering to that luckless one,
"Sister, in that thou sayest We did not well,
What voices heardst thou when thy petals fell?"
And the Rose answered, "In that evil hour
A voice said, `Father, wherefore falls the flower?
For lo, the very gossamers are still.'
And a voice answered, `Son, by Allah's will!'"

Then softly as a rain-mist on the sward,
Came to the Rose the Answer of the Lord:
"Sister, before We smote the Dark in twain,
Ere yet the stars saw one another plain,
Time, Tide, and Space, We bound unto the task
That thou...

Oh, thou surpassing beauty! that dost live
Shrined in yon silent stream of glorious light!
Spirit of harmony! that through the vast
And cloud-embroidered canopy art spreading
Thy wings, that o'er our shadowy earth hang brooding,
Like a pale silver haze, betwixt the moon
And the world's darker orb: beautiful, hail!
Hail to thee! from her midnight throne of ether,
Night looks upon the slumbering universe.
There is no breeze on silver-crowned tree,
There is no breath on dew-bespangled flower,
There is no wind sighs on the sleepy wave,
There is no sound hangs in the solemn air.
All, all are silent, all are dreaming, all,
Save those eternal eyes, that now shine forth
Winking the slumberer's destinies.    The moon
Sails on the horizon's verge, a moving glory,
P...

It is easy to sit in the sunshine
    And talk to the man in the shade;
It is easy to float in a well-trimmed boat,
    And point out the places to wade.

But once we pass into the shadows,
    We murmur and fret and frown,
And, our length from the bank, we shout for a plank,
    Or throw up our hands and go down.

It is easy to sit in your carriage,
    And counsel the man on foot,
But get down and walk, and you'll change your talk,
    As you feel the peg in your boot.

It is easy to tell the toiler
    How best he can carry his pack,
But no one can rate a burden's weight
    Until it has been on his back.

The up-curled mouth of pleasure,
    Can prate of sorrow's worth,
But give it a sip, and a wryer lip,
    Was never ma...