Hope

Dust to dust:
Fall and perish love and lust:
Life is one brief autumn day;
Sin and sorrow haunt the way
To the narrow house of clay,
Clutching at the good and just:
Dust to dust.

Dust to dust:
Still we strive and toil and trust,
From the cradle to the grave:
Vainly crying, "Jesus, save!"
Fall the coward and the brave,
Fall the felon and the just:
Dust to dust.

Dust to dust:
Hark, I hear the wintry gust;
Yet the roses bloom to-day,
Blushing to the kiss of May,
While the north winds sigh and say:
"Lo we bring the cruel frost
Dust to dust."

Dust to dust:
Yet we live and love and trust,
Lifting burning brow and eye
To the mountain peaks on high:
From the peaks the ages cry,
Strewing ashes, rime an...

My careful plans all storm-subdued,
In disappointing solitude
    The weary hours began;
And scarce I deemed when time had sped,
Marked only by the passing tread
    Of some pedestrian.

But with the morrow's tranquil dawn,
A fairy scene I looked upon
    That filled me with delight;
Far-reaching from my own abode,
The world in matchless splendor glowed,
    Arrayed in spotless white.

The surface of the hillside slope
Gleamed in my farthest vision's scope
    Like opalescent stone;
Rich jewels hung on every tree,
Whose crystalline transparency
    Golconda's gems outshone.

Beyond the line where wayside posts
Stood up, like fear-inspiring ghosts
    Of awful form and mien,
A mansion tall, my neighbor's pride,
A see...

    August is gone and now this is September,
        Softer the sun in a cloudier sky;
    Yellow the leaves grow and apples grow golden,
        Blackberries ripen and hedges undress.
    Watch and you'll see the departure of summer,
        Here is the end, this the last month of all:
    Pause and look back and remember its promise,
        All that looked open and easy in May.

    Nothing will stay them, the seasons go onward,
        Lightly the bright months fly out of my hand,
    Softly the leading note calls a new octave;
        Autumn is coming and what have I done?
    Even as summer my young days go over,
        No day to pause on and nowhere to rest:
    Slowly they go but implacably onwards,
        Ah! and my dreams, alas, still they are dre...

"Coming events cast their shadow before."


I had a vision in the summer light -
Sorrow was in it, and my inward sight
Ached with sad images. The touch of tears
Gushed down my cheeks: - the figured woes of years
Casting their shadows across sunny hours.
Oh, there was nothing sorrowful in flowers
Wooing the glances of an April sun,
Or apple blossoms opening one by one
Their crimson bosoms - or the twittered words
And warbled sentences of merry birds; -
Or the small glitter and the humming wings
Of golden flies and many colored things -
Oh, these were nothing sad - nor to see Her,
Sitting beneath the comfortable stir
Of early leaves - casting the playful grace
Of moving shadows in so fair a face -
Nor in her brow serene - nor in the love

Trust not Hope's illusive ray,
Trust not Joy's deceitful smiles;
Oft they reckless youth betray
With their bland, seductive wiles.

I have proved them all, alas!
Transient as the hues of eve;
Meteor-like, they quickly pass
Through the bosoms they deceive.

Let not Love thy prospects gild;
Soon they will be clouded o'er,
And the budding heart once chilled,
It can brightly bloom no more.

Slumber not in Pleasure's beam;
It may sparkle for a while,
But 'tis transient as a dream,
Faithless as a foeman's smile.

There's a light that's brighter far,
Soothes the soul by anguish riven,
'Tis Religion's guiding star
Glittering on the verge of Heaven.

Oh! this beam divine is worth
All the charm that life can give;
'...

Where are the Poets, unto whom belong
    The Olympian heights; whose singing shafts were sent
    Straight to the mark, and not from bows half bent,
    But with the utmost tension of the thong?
Where are the stately argosies of song,
    Whose rushing keels made music as they went
    Sailing in search of some new continent,
    With all sail set, and steady winds and strong?
Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
    In schools, some graduate of the field or street,
    Who shall become a master of the art,
An admiral sailing the high seas of thought,
    Fearless and first and steering with his fleet
    For lands not yet laid down in any chart.

"Come, sit thee by my side once more,
    'Tis long since thus we' met;
And though our dream of love is o'er,
    Its sweetness lingers yet.
Its transient day has long been past,
    Its flame has ceased to burn, -
But Memory holds its spirit fast,
    Safe in her sacred urn.

"I will not chide thy wanderings,
    Nor ask why thou couldst flee
A heart whose deep affection's springs
    Poured forth such love for thee!
We may not curb the restless mind,
    Nor teach the wayward heart
To love against its will, nor bind
    It with the chains of art.

"I would but tell thee how, in tears
    And bitterness, my soul
Has yearned with dreams, through long, long, years,
    Which it could not control.
And how the thought that clingeth t...

I'd mourn the hopes that leave me,
    If thy smiles had left me too;
I'd weep when friends deceive me,
    If thou wert, like them, untrue.
But while I've thee before me,
    With heart so warm and eyes so bright,
No clouds can linger o'er me,
    That smile turns them all to light.

'Tis not in fate to harm me,
    While fate leaves thy love to me;
'Tis not in joy to charm me,
    Unless joy be shared with thee.
One minute's dream about thee
    Were worth a long, an endless year
Of waking bliss without thee,
    My own love, my only dear!

And tho' the hope be gone, love,
    That long sparkled o'er our way,
Oh! we shall journey on, love,
    More safely, without its ray.
Far better lights shall win me
    Along the path I...

Gay visions for thee 'neath hope's pencil have glowed,
Peace dwells in thy bosom, a guileless abode;
Thou hast seen the bright side of existence alone,
And believ'st every spirit as pure as thine own.
May'st thou never awake from these rapturous dreams,
To find that the world is not fair as it seems,
To feel that the few thou hast loved have deceived,
Have forsaken the heart that confided, believed,
And left it as leafless, as bloomless, and waste
As the rose-tree that's stript by the merciless blast.

When the warm sky of childhood was beaming for me,
My days were all joyous, my heart was all glee;
Affection's best ties round my bosom were spun;
No cloud dimmed the lustre of life's morning sun.
If I watched o'er my favorite rose-bud's decay,
And mourned that ...

When low and heavy sky weighs like a lid
Upon the spirit moaning in ennui,
And when, spanning the circle of the world,
It pours a black day sadder than our nights;

When earth is changed into a sweaty cell,
In which Hope, captured, like a frantic bat,
Batters the walls with her enfeebled wing,
Striking her head against the rotting beams;

When steady rain trailing its giant train
Descends on us like heavy prison bars,
And when a silent multitude of spiders
Spins its disgusting threads deep in our brains,

Bells all at once jump out with all their force,
And hurl about a mad cacophony
As if they were those lost and homeless souls
Who send a dogged whining to the skies.

And long corteges minus drum or tone
Deploy morosely through my bei...

Our vales are sweet with fern and rose,
Our hills are maple-crowned;
But not from them our fathers chose
The village burying-ground.

The dreariest spot in all the land
To Death they set apart;
With scanty grace from Nature’s hand,
And none from that of Art.

A winding wall of mossy stone,
Frost-flung and broken, lines
A lonesome acre thinly grown
With grass and wandering vines.

Without the wall a birch-tree shows
Its drooped and tasselled head;
Within, a stag-horned sumach grows,
Fern-leafed, with spikes of red.

There, sheep that graze the neighboring plain
Like white ghosts come and go,
The farm-horse drags his fetlock chain,
The cow-bell tinkles slow.

Low moans the river from its bed,
The distant pines re...

"He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord."

The night-wind comes in sudden squalls:
The ruddy fire-light starts and falls
Fantastically on the walls.

The bare trees all their branches wave;
The frantic wind doth howl and rave,
Like prairie-wolf above a grave.

The moon looks out; but cold and pale,
And seeming scar'd at this wild gale
Draws o'er her pallid face a veil.

In vain I turn the poet's page--
In vain consult some ancient sage--
I hear alone the tempest rage.

The shutters tug at hinge and bar--
The windows clash with frosty jar--
The child creeps closer to "Papa."

And now, I almost start aghast,
The clamor rises thick and fast,
Surely a troop of fiends drove past!

That last shock shook the ...

‘BEAT, little heart—I give you this and this’
Who are you? What! the Lady Hamilton?
Good, I am never weary painting you.
To sit once more? Cassandra, Hebe, Joan,
Or spinning at your wheel beside the vine—
Bacchante, what you will; and if I fail
To conjure and concentrate into form
And colour all you are, the fault is less
In me than Art. What Artist ever yet
Could make pure light live on the canvas? Art!
Why should I so disrelish that short word?
Where am I? snow on all the hills! so hot,
So fever’d! never colt would more delight
To roll himself in meadow grass than I
To wallow in that winter of the hills.
Nurse, were you hired? or came of your own will
To wait on one so broken, so forlorn?
Have I not met you somewhere long ago?
I am all but sure I h...

Love, indeed thy strength is mighty
Thus, alone, such strife to bear,
Three 'gainst one, and never ceasing,
Death, and Madness, and Despair!

'Tis not my own strength has saved me;
Health, and hope, and fortitude,
But for love, had long since failed me;
Heart and soul had sunk subdued.

Often, in my wild impatience,
I have lost my trust in Heaven,
And my soul has tossed and struggled,
Like a vessel tempest-driven;

But the voice of my beloved
In my ear has seemed to say,
'O, be patient if thou lov'st me!'
And the storm has passed away.

When outworn with weary thinking,
Sight and thought were waxing dim,
And my mind began to wander,
And my brain began to swim,

Then those hands outstretched to save me
Seemed to...

My eyes have seen another spring
    In floral beauty rise,
And happy birds on gladsome wing
    Flit through the azure skies.
Though sickness bowed my feeble frame
    Through winter's cheerless hours,
Life's sinking torch resumes its flame
    With renovated powers.

Once more on nature's ample shrine,
    Beneath the spreading boughs,
With lifted hands and hopes divine
    I offer up my vows.
My incense is the breath of flowers,
    Perfuming all the air;
My pillared fane these woodland bowers,
    A heaven-built house of prayer;

My fellow-worshippers, the gay,
    Free songsters of the grove,
Who to the closing eye of day
    Warble their hymns of love.
The low and dulcet lyre of spring,
    Swept by the vagrant breeze,<...

    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,...

    There are ghosts in the room.
As I sit here alone, from the dark corners there
    They come out of the gloom,
And they stand at my side and they lean on my chair.

    There's the ghost of a Hope
That lighted my days with a fanciful glow.
    In her hand is the rope
That strangled her life out.    Hope was slain long ago.

    But her ghost comes to-night,
With its skeleton face and expressionless eyes,
    And it stands in the light,
And mocks me, and jeers me with sobs and with sighs.

    There's the ghost of a Joy,
A frail, fragile thing, and I prized it too much,
    And the hands that destroy
Clasped it close, and it died at the withering touch.

    There's the ghost of a Love,
Born with joy, reared with hope, died in pain ...

When I hoped I feared,
Since I hoped I dared;
Everywhere alone
As a church remain;
Spectre cannot harm,
Serpent cannot charm;
He deposes doom,
Who hath suffered him.