Life

                I

Come, my little one, closer up against me,
Creep right up, with your round head pushed in my breast.

How I love all of you! Do you feel me wrap you
Up with myself and my warmth, like a flame round the wick?

And how I am not at all, except a flame that mounts off you.
Where I touch you, I flame into being; - but is it me, or you?

That round head pushed in my chest, like a nut in its socket,
And I the swift bracts that sheathe it: those breasts, those thighs and knees,

Those shoulders so warm and smooth: I feel that I
Am a sunlight upon them, that shines them into being.

But how lovely to be you! Creep closer in, that I am more.
I spread over you! How lovely, your round head, your arms,

Your breasts, your knees and fe...

Ladies, and youths that in their favour bask,
With mocking smiles come round me: Prithee, why,
Why dost thou with an unknown language cope,
Love-riming? Whence thy courage for the task?
Tell us--so never frustrate be thy hope,
And the best thought still to thy thinking fly!
Thus me they mock: Thee other streams, they cry,
Thee other shores, another sea demands
Upon whose verdant strands
Are budding, even this moment, for thy hair
Immortal guerdon, bays that will not die:
An over-burden on thy back why bear?--
Song, I will tell thee; thou for me reply:
My lady saith--and her word is my heart--
This is Love's mother-tongue, and fits his part.

    O Thou unknown, Almighty Cause
        Of all my hope and fear?
    In whose dread presence, ere an hour
        Perhaps I must appear!

    If I have wander'd in those paths
        Of life I ought to shun;
    As something, loudly, in my breast,
        Remonstrates I have done;

    Thou know'st that Thou hast formed me,
        With passions wild and strong;
    And list'ning to their witching voice
        Has often led me wrong.

    Where human weakness has come short,
        Or frailty stept aside,
    Do Thou, All-Good! for such thou art,
        In shades of darkness hide.

    Where with intention I have err'd,
        No other plea I have,
    But, Thou art good; and goodness still
        Delighteth to forgi...

        OH, here the air is sweet and still,
            And soft's the grass to lie on;
        And far away's the little hill
            They took for Christ to die on.

        And there's a hill across the brook,
            And down the brook's another;
        But, oh, the little hill they took,--
            I think I am its mother!

        The moon that saw Gethsemane,
            I watch it rise and set:
        It has so many things to see,
            They help it to forget.

        But little hills that sit at home
            So many hundred years,
        Remember Greece, remember Rome,
            Remember Mary's tears.

        And far away in Palestine,
            Sadder than any other,
        Grieves still t...

Only a dancing girl,
With an unromantic style,
With borrowed color and curl,
With fixed mechanical smile,
With many a hackneyed wile,
With ungrammatical lips,
And corns that mar her trips!

Hung from the "flies" in air,
She acts a palpable lie,
She's as little a fairy there
As unpoetical I!
I hear you asking, Why
Why in the world I sing
This tawdry, tinselled thing?

No airy fairy she,
As she hangs in arsenic green,
From a highly impossible tree,
In a highly impossible scene
(Herself not over clean).
For fays don't suffer, I'm told,
From bunions, coughs, or cold.

And stately dames that bring
Their daughters there to see,
Pronounce the "dancing thing"
No better than she should be.
With her skirt at he...

When thy great soul was freed from mortal chains,
Darling of England! many a bitter shower
Fell on thy tomb; but emulative power
Flowed in thy line through undegenerate veins.
The Race of Alfred covet glorious pains
When dangers threaten, dangers ever new!
Black tempests bursting, blacker still in view!
But manly sovereignty its hold retains;
The root sincere, the branches bold to strive
With the fierce tempest, while, within the round
Of their protection, gentle virtues thrive;
As oft, 'mid some green plot of open ground,
Wide as the oak extends its dewy gloom,
The fostered hyacinths spread their purple bloom.

Here by the moorway you returned,
And saw the borough lights ahead
That lit your face all undiscerned
To be in a week the face of the dead,
And you told of the charm of that haloed view
That never again would beam on you.

And on your left you passed the spot
Where eight days later you were to lie,
And be spoken of as one who was not;
Beholding it with a cursory eye
As alien from you, though under its tree
You soon would halt everlastingly.

I drove not with you . . . Yet had I sat
At your side that eve I should not have seen
That the countenance I was glancing at
Had a last-time look in the flickering sheen,
Nor have read the writing upon your face,
"I go hence soon to my resting-place;

"You may miss me then. But I shall not know

Young Philiper Flash was a promising lad,
His intentions were good - but oh, how sad
    For a person to think
    How the veriest pink
And bloom of perfection may turn out bad.
Old Flash himself was a moral man,
And prided himself on a moral plan,
    Of a maxim as old
    As the calf of gold,
Of making that boy do what he was told.

And such a good mother had Philiper Flash;
Her voice was as soft as the creamy plash
    Of the milky wave
    With its musical lave
That gushed through the holes of her patent churn-dash; -
And the excellent woman loved Philiper so,
She could cry sometimes when he stumped his toe, -
    And she stroked his hair
    With such motherly care
When the dear little angel learned to swear.

Old Flash himse...

I never loved a dear Gazelle,
Nor anything that cost me much:
High prices profit those who sell,
But why should I be fond of such?
To glad me with his soft black eye
My son comes trotting home from school;
He's had a fight but can't tell why,
He always was a little fool!

But, when he came to know me well,
He kicked me out, her testy Sire:
And when I stained my hair, that Belle
Might note the change and this admire

And love me, it was sure to dye
A muddy green, or staring blue:
Whilst one might trace, with half an eye,
The still triumphant carrot through

Day of ending for beginnings!
Ocean hath another innings,
Ocean hath another score;
And the surges sing his winnings,
And the surges shout his winnings,
And the surges shriek his winnings,
All along the sullen shore.

Sing another dirge in wailing,
For another vessel sailing
With the shadow-ships at sea;
Shadow-ships for ever sinking,
Shadow-ships whose pumps are clinking,
And whose thirsty holds are drinking
Pledges to Eternity.

Pray for souls of ghastly, sodden
Corpses, floating round untrodden
Cliffs, where nought but sea-drift strays;
Souls of dead men, in whose faces
Of humanity no trace is,
Not a mark to show their races,
Floating round for days and days.

.    .    .    .    .

Ocean's salty tongues are...

With ever some wrong to be righting,
    With self ever seeking for place,
The world has been striving and fighting
    Since man was evolved out of space.
Bold history into dark regions
    His torchlight has fearlessly cast,
He shows us tribes warring in legions,
    In jungles of ages long passed.

Religion, forgetting her station,
    Forgetting her birthright from God,
Set nation to warring with nation
    And scattered dissension abroad.
Dear creeds have made men kill each other,
    Fair faith has bred hate and despair,
And brother has battled with brother
    Because of a difference in prayer.

But earth has grown wiser and kinder,
    For man is evolving a soul:
From wars of an age that was blinder,
    We rise to a peace-gird...

MAY 30, 1878,

Dying for victory, cheer on cheer
Thundered on his eager ear.
            - CHARLES L. HOLSTEIN.

I

Deep, tender, firm and true, the Nation's heart
    Throbs for her gallant heroes passed away,
Who in grim Battle's drama played their part,
    And slumber here to-day. -

Warm hearts that beat their lives out at the shrine
    Of Freedom, while our country held its breath
As brave battalions wheeled themselves in line
    And marched upon their death:

When Freedom's Flag, its natal wounds scarce healed,
    Was torn from peaceful winds and flung again
To shudder in the storm of battle-field -
    The elements of men, -

When every star that glittered was a mark
    For Treason's ball, and every rippling ...

Ever as now with Love and Virtue's glow
May thy unwithering soul not cease to burn,
Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts o'erflow
Which force from mine such quick and warm return.

I am not wiser for my age,
Nor skilful by my grief;
Life loiters at the book's first page,--
Ah! could we turn the leaf.

Paris, half Angel, half Grisette,
I would that I were with thee yet,
Where the long boulevard at even
Stretches its starry lamps to heaven,
And whispers from a thousand trees
Vague hints of the Hesperides.

Once more, once more, my heart, to sit
With Aline's smile and Harry's wit,
To sit and sip the cloudy green,
With dreamy hints of speech between;

Or, may be, flashing all intent
At call of some stern argument,
When the New Woman fain would be,
Like the Old Male, her husband, free.
The prose-man takes his mighty lyre
And talks like music set on fire!

The while the merry crowd slips by
Glittering and glancing to the eye,
All happy lovers on their way
To make a golden end of day -
Ah! Café truly called La Paix!
<...

Let thy speech be to thee what the body is to the loving;
Beings it only can part, beings it only can join.

    After a long day of work in my hot - houses
    Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side
    Your dreams may be abruptly ended.
    I was among my flowers where some one
    Seemed to be raising them on trial,
    As if after-while to be transplanted
    To a larger garden of freer air.
    And I was disembodied vision
    Amid a light, as it were the sun
    Had floated in and touched the roof of glass
    Like a toy balloon and softly bursted,
    And etherealized in golden air.
    And all was silence, except the splendor
    Was immanent with thought as clear
    As a speaking voice, and I, as thought,
    Could hear a
    Presence think as he walked
    Between the boxes pinching off leaves,
    Looking for bugs and noting values,...

De ol' time's gone, de new time's hyeah
Wid all hits fuss an' feddahs;
I done fu'got de joy an' cheah
We knowed all kin's o' weddahs,
I done fu'got each ol'-time hymn
We ust to sing in meetin';
I 's leahned de prah's, so neat an' trim,
De preachah keeps us 'peatin'.

Hang a vine by de chimney side,
An' one by de cabin do';
An' sing a song fu' de day dat died,
De day of long ergo.

My youf, hit's gone, yes, long ergo,
An' yit I ain't a-moanin';
Hit 's fu' somet'ings I ust to know
I set to-night a-honin'.
De pallet on de ol' plank flo',
De rain bar'l und' de eaves,
De live oak 'fo' de cabin do',
Whaih de night dove comes an' grieves.

Hang a vine by de chimney side,
An' one by de cabin do';
An' sing a song fu' de day ...