With what a glory comes and goes the year!
The buds of spring, those beautiful harbingers
Of sunny skies and cloudless times, enjoy
Life's newness, and earth's garniture spread out;
And when the silver habit of the clouds
Comes down upon the autumn sun, and with
A sober gladness the old year takes up
His bright inheritance of golden fruits,
A pomp and pageant fill the splendid scene.

    There is a beautiful spirit breathing now
Its mellow richness on the clustered trees,
And, from a beaker full of richest dyes,
Pouring new glory on the autumn woods,
And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds.
Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird,
Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales
The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer,
Kisses the blushing lea...

I have not told my garden yet,
Lest that should conquer me;
I have not quite the strength now
To break it to the bee.

I will not name it in the street,
For shops would stare, that I,
So shy, so very ignorant,
Should have the face to die.

The hillsides must not know it,
Where I have rambled so,
Nor tell the loving forests
The day that I shall go,

Nor lisp it at the table,
Nor heedless by the way
Hint that within the riddle
One will walk to-day!

(On Certain of the Bolsheviki "Idealists.")

With half the force and thought you waste in rage
    Over your neighbor's house, or heart of stone,
You might have built your own new heritage,
    O fools, have you no hands, then, of your own?

Where is your pride? Is this your answer still,
    This the red flag that burns above our strife,
This the new cry that rings from Pisgah hill,
    "Our neighbor's money, or our neighbor's life"?

Be prouder. Let us build that nobler state
    With our own hands, with our own muscle and brain!
Your very victories die in hymns of hate;
    And your own envies are your heaviest chain.

Is there no rebel proud enough to say
    "We'll stand on our own feet, and win the day"?

    O ye whose cheek the tear of pity stains,
        Draw near with pious rev'rence and attend!
    Here lie the loving husband's dear remains,
        The tender father and the gen'rous friend.
    The pitying heart that felt for human woe;
        The dauntless heart that feared no human pride;
    The friend of man, to vice alone a foe;
        "For ev'n his failings lean'd to virtue's side."

See, the fire is sinking low,
Dusky red the embers glow,
    While above them still I cower,
While a moment more I linger,
Though the clock, with lifted finger,
    Points beyond the midnight hour.

Sings the blackened log a tune
Learned in some forgotten June
    From a school-boy at his play,
When they both were young together,
Heart of youth and summer weather
    Making all their holiday.

And the night-wind rising, hark!
How above there in the dark,
    In the midnight and the snow,
Ever wilder, fiercer, grander,
Like the trumpets of Iskander,
    All the noisy chimneys blow!

Every quivering tongue of flame
Seems to murmur some great name,
    Seems to say to me, "Aspire!"
But the night-wind answers, "Hollow
A...

More discontents I never had
Since I was born, than here;
Where I have been, and still am, sad,
In this dull Devonshire.
Yet justly too I must confess,
I ne'er invented such
Ennobled numbers for the press,
Than where I loath'd so much.

The Winter Wind, the wind of death,
Who knocked upon my door,
Now through the keyhole entereth,
Invisible and hoar:
He breathes around his icy breath
And treads the flickering floor.

I heard him, wandering in the night,
Tap at my windowpane;
With ghostly fingers, snowy white,
I heard him tug in vain,
Until the shuddering candlelight
Did cringe with fear and strain.

The fire, awakened by his voice,
Leapt up with frantic arms,
Like some wild babe that greets with noise
Its father home who storms,
With rosy gestures that rejoice,
And crimson kiss that warms.

Now in the hearth he sits and, drowned
Among the ashes, blows;
Or through the room goes stealing round
On cautious-creeping toes,
Deep-mantled in the drowsy sou...

The city once again doth wear
    Her wonted dress of winter's bride,
Her mantle woven of misty air,
    With saffron sunlight faintly dyed.
She sits above the seething tide,
    Of all her summer robes forlorn--
And dead is all her summer pride--
    The leaves are off Queen Mary's Thorn.

All round, the landscape stretches bare,
    The bleak fields lying far and wide,
Monotonous, with here and there
    A lone tree on a lone hillside.
No more the land is glorified
    With golden gleams of ripening corn,
Scarce is a cheerful hue descried--
    The leaves are off Queen Mary's Thorn.

For me, I do not greatly care
    Though leaves be dead, and mists abide.
To me the place is thrice as fair
    In winter as in summer-tide:
With k...

Said the yellow-haired Spirit of Spring
To the white-footed Spirit of Snow,
“On the wings of the tempest take wing,
And leave me the valleys, and go.”
And, straightway, the streams were unchained,
And the frost-fettered torrents broke free,
And the strength of the winter-wind waned
In the dawn of a light on the sea.

Then a morning-breeze followed and fell,
And the woods were alive and astir
With the pulse of a song in the dell,
And a whisper of day in the fir.
Swift rings of sweet water were rolled
Down the ways where the lily-leaves grew,
And the green, and the white, and the gold,
Were wedded with purple and blue.

But the lips of the flower of the rose
Said, “where is the ending hereof?
Is it sweet with you, life, at the close?
Is ...

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...

Here are the tracks upon the sand
Where stood last evening she and I -
Pressed heart to heart and hand to hand;
The morning sun has baked them dry.

I kissed her wet face - wet with rain,
For arid grief had burnt up tears,
While reached us as in sleeping pain
The distant gurgling of the weirs.

"I have married him - yes; feel that ring;
'Tis a week ago that he put it on . . .
A dutiful daughter does this thing,
And resignation succeeds anon!

"But that I body and soul was yours
Ere he'd possession, he'll never know.
He's a confident man. 'The husband scores,'
He says, 'in the long run' . . . Now, Dear, go!"

I went. And to-day I pass the spot;
It is only a smart the more to endure;
And she whom I held is as though she were not,

After a hundred years
Nobody knows the place, --
Agony, that enacted there,
Motionless as peace.

Weeds triumphant ranged,
Strangers strolled and spelled
At the lone orthography
Of the elder dead.

Winds of summer fields
Recollect the way, --
Instinct picking up the key
Dropped by memory.

When winter chills your aged bones
As by the fire you sit and nod,
You’ll hear a passing wind that moans,
And think of one beneath the sod.

You’ll feebly sleek your hair of grey,
And mutter words that none may know,
And dream you touch the sodden clay
That laps the dream of long ago.

The shrinking ash may fall apart
And show a gleam that lingers yet.
A moment in your cooling heart
May shine a sparkle of regret.

And where the pit is chill and deep,
And bones are mouldering in the clay,
A thrill of buried love will creep
And shudder aimlessly away.

    Fair the face of orient day,
    Fair the tints of op'ning rose,
    But fairer still my Delia dawns,
    More lovely far her beauty blows.

    Sweet the lark's wild-warbled lay,
    Sweet the tinkling rill to hear;
    But, Delia, more delightful still
    Steal thine accents on mine ear.

    The flow'r-enamoured busy bee
    The rosy banquet loves to sip;
    Sweet the streamlet's limpid lapse
    To the sun-brown'd Arab's lip;

    But, Delia, on thy balmy lips
    Let me, no vagrant insect, rove!
    O, let me steal one liquid kiss!
    For, oh! my soul is parch'd with love.

The leaf is faded, and decayed the flower,
The birds have ceased to sing in wayside bower,
The babbling brook is silenced by the cold,
And hill and vale the frost and snow enfold.
The life we see seems hasting to the tomb
Nor sun, nor star, relieves the dismal gloom;
The good man suffers with the base and vile,
And honesty and truth give place to guile.


Things are not always as they seem to be;
The outer surface only man may see.
The summer sleeps beneath the quilt of snow,
Behind the clouds is hid the solar glow,
The babbling brook will burst its icy bands,
And birds will sing, and trees will clap their hands.
The fallen leaf has left a bud behind,
And flowers will bloom of brightest hue and kind;
For when we look beneath the outward crust
Wi...

The Season speaks this year of life
Confusing words of strife,
Suggesting weeds instead of fruits and flowers
In all Earth's bowers.
With heart of Jael, face of Ruth,
She goes her way uncouth
Through hills and fields, where fog and sunset seem
Wild smoke and steam.
Around her, spotted as a leopard skin,
She draws her cloak of whin,
And through the dark hills sweeps dusk's last red glare
Wild on her hair.
Her hands drip leaves, like blood, and burn
With frost; her moony urn
She lifts, where Death, 'mid driving stress and storm,
Rears his gaunt form.
And all night long she seems to say
"Come forth, my Winds, and slay!
And everywhere is heard the wailing cry
Of dreams that die.

The year has been a tedious one--
A weary round of toil and sorrow,
And, since it now at last is gone,
We say farewell and hail the morrow.

Yet o'er the wreck which time has wrought
A sweet, consoling ray is shimmered--
The one but compensating thought
That literary life has glimmered.

Struggling with hunger and with cold
The world contemptuously beheld 'er;
The little thing was one year old--
But who'd have cared had she been elder?

Ten years! and to my waking eye
Once more the roofs of Berne appear;
The rocky banks, the terrace high,
The stream, and do I linger here?

The clouds are on the Oberland,
The Jungfrau snows look faint and far;
But bright are those green fields at hand,
And through those fields comes down the Aar,

And from the blue twin lakes it comes,
Flows by the town, the church-yard fair,
And ’neath the garden-walk it hums,
The house and is my Marguerite there?

Ah, shall I see thee, while a flush
Of startled pleasure floods thy brow,
Quick through the oleanders brush,
And clap thy hands, and cry: ’Tis thou!

Or hast thou long since wander’d back,
Daughter of France! to France, thy home;
And flitted down the flowery track
Where feet like ...