Death

Oh bud and leaf and blossom,
    How beautiful they are!
Than last year's vernal season
    'Tis lovelier by far;
This earth was never so enchanting
    Nor half so bright before -
But so I've rhapsodized, in springtime,
    For forty years or more.

What luxury of color
    On shrub and plant and vine,
From pansies' richest purple
    To pink of eglantine;
From buttercups to "johnny-jump-ups,"
    With deep cerulean eyes,
Responding to their modest surname
    In violet surprise.

Sometimes I think the sunlight
    That gilds the emerald hills,
And makes Aladdin dwellings
    Of dingy domiciles,
Is surplus beauty overflowing
    That Heaven cannot hold -
The topaz glitter, or the jacinth,
    The glare of streets o...

Of A Virginia Slave Mother To Her Daughters Sold Into Southern Bondage.


Gone, gone, sold and gone
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings
Where the noisome insect stings
Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air;
Gone, gone, sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters;
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone, sold and gone
To the rice-swamp dank and lone
There no mother's eye is near them,
There no mother's ear can hear them;
Never, when the torturing lash
Seams their back with many a gash
Shall a mother's kindness bless them
Or a mother's arms caress them.
Gone, g...

Like drifts of balm from cedared glens, those darling memories come,
With soft low songs, and dear old tales, familiar to our home.
Then breathe again that faint refrain, so tender, sad, and true,
My soul turns round with listening eyes unto the harp and you!
The fragments of a broken Past are floating down the tide,
And she comes gleaming through the dark, my love, my life, my bride!
Oh! sit and sing I know her well, that phantom deadly fair
With large surprise, and sudden sighs, and streaming midnight hair!
I know her well, for face to face we stood amongst the sheaves,
Our voices mingling with a mist of music in the leaves!
I know her well, for hand in hand we walked beside the sea,
And heard the huddling waters boom beneath this old Figtree.

God help the man that goes a...

I'll tell thee everything I can;
There's little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
"Who are you, aged man?" I said,
"And how is it you live?"
And his answer trickled through my head
Like water through a sieve.

He said, "I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.
I sell them unto men," he said,
"Who sail on stormy seas;
And that's the way I get my bread,
A trifle; if you please."

But I was thinking of a plan
To dye one's whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
That they could not be seen.
So, having no reply to give
To what the old man said,
I cried, "Come, tell me how you live!"
And thumped him on the head.

His...

Rhyme, the rack of finest wits,
That expresseth but by fits
True conceit,
Spoiling senses of their treasure,
Cozening judgment with a measure,
But false weight;
Wresting words from their true calling,
Propping verse for fear of falling
To the ground;
Jointing syllabes, drowning letters,
Fast'ning vowels as with fetters
They were bound!
Soon as lazy thou wert known,
All good poetry hence was flown,
And art banish'd.
For a thousand years together
All Parnassus' green did wither,
And wit vanish'd.
Pegasus did fly away,
At the wells no Muse did stay,
But bewail'd
So to see the fountain dry,
And Apollo's music die,
All light failed!
Starveling rhymes did fill the stage;
Not a poet in an age
Worth crowning;
Not ...

    O you who lose the art of hope,
    Whose temples seem to shrine a lie,
    Whose sidewalks are but stones of fear,
    Who weep that Liberty must die,
    Turn to the little prairie towns,
    Your higher hope shall yet begin.
    On every side awaits you there
    Some gate where glory enters in.

    Yet when I see the flocks of girls,
    Watching the Sunday train go thro'
    (As tho' the whole wide world went by)
    With eyes that long to travel too,
    I sigh, despite my soul made glad
    By cloudy dresses and brown hair,
    Sigh for the sweet life wrenched and torn
    By thundering commerce, fierce and bare.
    Nymphs of the wheat these girls should be:
    Kings of the grove, their lovers strong.
    Why are they not inspired,...

    By her white bed I muse a little space:
    She fell asleep - not very long ago, -
    And yet the grass was here and not the snow -
    The leaf, the bud, the blossom, and - her face! -
    Midsummer's heaven above us, and the grace
    Of Lovers own day, from dawn to afterglow;
    The fireflies' glimmering, and the sweet and low
    Plaint of the whip-poor-wills, and every place
    In thicker twilight for the roses' scent.
    Then night. - She slept - in such tranquility,
    I walk atiptoe still, nor dare to weep,
    Feeling, in all this hush, she rests content -
    That though God stood to wake her for me, she
    Would mutely plead: "Nay, Lord!    Let him so sleep."

Brief while they last,
Long when they are gone;
They catch from the past
A light to still live on.

Brief! yet I ween
A day may be an age,
The poet's pen may screen
Heart-stories on one page.

Brief! but in them,
From eve back to morn,
Some find the gem,
Many find the thorn.

Brief! minutes pass
Soft as flakes of snow,
Shadows o'er the grass
Could not swifter go.

Brief! but along
All the after-years
To-day will be a song
Of smiles or of tears.

I pray you, pardon me, Elsie,
    And smile that frown away
That dims the light of your lovely face
    As a thunder-cloud the day.
I really could not help it, -
    Before I thought, 'twas done, -
And those great grey eyes flashed bright and cold,
    Like an icicle in the sun.

I was thinking of the summers
    When we were boys and girls,
And wandered in the blossoming woods,
    And the gay winds romped with your curls.
And you seemed to me the same little girl
    I kissed in the alder-path,
I kissed the little girl's lips, and, alas!
    I have roused a woman's wrath.

There is not so much to pardon, -
    For why were your lips so red?
The blond hair fell in a shower of gold
    From the proud, provoking head.
And the beaut...

The voices of the city - merged and swelled
Into a mighty dissonance of sound,
And from the medley rose these broken strains
In changing time and ever-changing keys.

I

Pleasure seekers, silken clad,
    Led by cherub Day,
Ours the duty to be glad,
    Ours the toil of play.

Sleep has bound the commonplace,
    Pleasure rules the dawn.
Small hours set the merry pace
    And we follow on.

We must use the joys of earth,
    All its cares we'll keep;
Night was made for youth and mirth,
    Day was made for sleep.

Time has cut his beard, and lo!
    He is but a boy,
Singing, on with him we go,
    Ah! but life is joy.

II

We are the vendors of beauty,
    We the purveyors for hell;
The...

These are the gardens of the Desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name,
The Prairies. I behold them for the first,
And my heart swells, while the dilated sight
Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they stretch
In airy undulations, far away,
As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell,
Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed,
And motionless for ever. Motionless?
No, they are all unchained again. The clouds
Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath,
The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;
Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase
The sunny ridges. Breezes of the South!
Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,
And pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on high,
Flaps his broad wings,...

We nailed the hands long ago,
Wove the thorns, took up the scourge and shouted
For excitement's sake, we stood at the dusty edge
Of the pebbled path and watched the extreme of pain.

But one or two prayed, one or two
Were silent, shocked, stood back
And remembered remnants of words, a new vision,
The cross is up with its crying victim, the clouds
Cover the sun, we learn a new way to lose
What we did not know we had
Until this bleak and sacrificial day,
Until we turned from our bad
Past and knelt and cried out our dismay,
The dice still clicking, the voices dying away.

Beside a monstrous Jewish whore I lay
One night, we were two corpses side by side,
And came to dream beside this hired bride
Of beauty my desire had turned away.

I saw again her native majesty,
Her gaze empowered with a strength and grace,
Her hair a perfumed casque around her face,
An image that revived the love in me.

For I would fervently have kissed your flesh,
From your sweet feet up to your sable hair
Unrolled the treasure of a deep caress,

If on some evening, with a simple tear,
o queen of cruelty! you had devised
To dim the brilliance of those soulless eyes.

Thy tones are silver melted into sound,
And as I dream
I see no walls around,
But seem to hear
A gondolier
Sing sweetly down some slow Venetian stream.

Italian skies--that I have never seen--
I see above.
(Ah, play again, my queen;
Thy fingers white
Fly swift and light
And weave for me the golden mesh of love.)

Oh, thou dusk sorceress of the dusky eyes
And soft dark hair,
'T is thou that mak'st my skies
So swift to change
To far and strange:
But far and strange, thou still dost make them fair.

Now thou dost sing, and I am lost in thee
As one who drowns
In floods of melody.
Still in thy art
Give me this part,
Till perfect love, the love of loving crowns.

    As I watch the clouds assemble, steam-ship fashion, with funnels to
    alert passersby, I realize the Romanovs tore silk & riches from
    every bazaar leaving the bright spot of this evening studded with emerald marks.
    A dot in the ocean is a spark upon which minnows play, their silver
    bellies upturned to imitate the moon's white shawl.

    I am wanting in the delights of the reef narrowly hauled from
    rambunctious depths, the tiniest splashes of green, yellow, blue darting in an upturned fish's tail.
    An octopus rock commands squadrons of fingerlings while the eisel
    fish decorates a steeper, coral garden.

    Jet black sand crowns the lagoon volcanic ages' past the innocence
    of this spurting palm while mounds of pitch dark ants deposit slivers o...

Rare-sweet the air in that unimagined country -
    My spirit had wandered far
From its weary body close-enwrapt in slumber
    Where its home and earth-friends are;
A milk-like air - and of light all abundance;
    And there a river clear
Painting the scene like a picture on its bosom,
    Green foliage drifting near.

No sign of life I saw, as I pressed onward,
    Fish, nor beast, nor bird,
Till I came to a hill clothed in flowers to its summit,
    Then shrill small voices I heard.

And I saw from concealment a company of elf-folk
    With faces strangely fair,
Talking their unearthly scattered talk together,
    A bind of green-grasses in their hair,

Marvellously gentle, feater far than children,
    In gesture, mien and speech,
...

A vision beauteous as the morn,
    With heavenly eyes and tresses streaming,
Slow glided o'er a field late shorn
    Where walked a poet idly dreaming.
He saw her, and joy lit his face,
    "Oh, vanish not at human speaking,"
He cried, "thou form of magic grace,
    Thou art the poem I am seeking.

"I've sought thee long! I claim thee now -
    My thought embodied, living, real."
She shook the tresses from her brow.
    "Nay, nay!" she said, "I am ideal.
I am the phantom of desire -
    The spirit of all great endeavor,
I am the voice that says, 'Come higher,'
    That calls men up and up forever.

"'Tis not alone thy thought supreme
    That here upon thy path has risen;
I am the artist's highest dream,
    The ray of light he cannot...

Dear Boy, throw that Icicle down,
And sweep this deep Snow from the door:
Old Winter comes on with a frown;
A terrible frown for the poor.
In a Season so rude and forlorn
How can age, how can infancy bear
The silent neglect and the scorn
Of those who have plenty to spare?

Fresh broach'd is my Cask of old Ale,
Well-tim'd now the frost is set in;
Here's Job come to tell us a tale,
We'll make him at home to a pin.
While my Wife and I bask o'er the fire,
The roll of the Seasons will prove,
That Time may diminish desire,
But cannot extinguish true love.

O the pleasures of neighbourly chat,
If you can but keep scandal away,
To learn what the world has been at,
And what the great Orators say;
Though the Wind through the crevices sing,<...