Over the hills, as the pewee flies,
Under the blue of the Southern skies;
Over the hills, where the red-bird wings
Like a scarlet blossom, or sits and sings:

Under the shadow of rock and tree,
Where the warm wind drones with the honey-bee;
And the tall wild-carrots around you sway
Their lace-like flowers of cloudy gray:

By the black-cohosh with its pearly plume
A-nod in the woodland's odorous gloom;
By the old rail-fence, in the elder's shade,
That the myriad hosts of the weeds invade:

Where the butterfly-weed, like a coal of fire,
Blurs orange-red through bush and brier;
Where the pennyroyal and mint smell sweet,
And blackberries tangle the summer heat,

The old road leads; then crosses the creek,
Where the minnow dartles, a silver...

One with the ruined sunset,
The strange forsaken sands,
What is it waits and wanders
And signs with desperate hands?

What is it calls in the twilight,
Calls as its chance were vain?
The cry of a gull sent seaward
Or the voice of an ancient pain?

The red ghost of the sunset,
It walks them as its own,
These dreary and desolate reaches . . .
But O that it walked alone!

There was a sound of music low--
    An undertone of laughter;
The song was done, and can't you guess
    The words that followed after?

Like autumn leaves sometimes they fall--
    The words that burn and falter;
And is it true they too must fade
    Upon Love's sacred alter?

From memory each one of us
    Can cull some sweetest treasure;
Yet golden days, like golden leaves,
    Give pain as well as pleasure.

There was a sound of music low--
    An undertone of laughter:
The sun was gone--yet heaven knew
    The stars that followed after.

The cold moon hangs to the sky by its horn,
And centres its gaze on me;
The stars, like eyes in reverie,
Their westering as for a while forborne,
Quiz downward curiously.

Old Robert draws the backbrand in,
The green logs steam and spit;
The half-awakened sparrows flit
From the riddled thatch; and owls begin
To whoo from the gable-slit.

Yes; far and nigh things seem to know
Sweet scenes are impending here;
That all is prepared; that the hour is near
For welcomes, fellowships, and flow
Of sally, song, and cheer;

That spigots are pulled and viols strung;
That soon will arise the sound
Of measures trod to tunes renowned;
That She will return in Love's low tongue
My vows as we wheel around.

Coward, of heroic size,
In whose lazy muscles lies
Strength we fear and yet despise;
Savage, whose relentless tusks
Are content with acorn husks;
Robber, whose exploits ne’er soared
O’er the bee’s or squirrel’s hoard;
Whiskered chin and feeble nose,
Claws of steel on baby toes,
Here, in solitude and shade,
Shambling, shuffling plantigrade,
Be thy courses undismayed!

Here, where Nature makes thy bed,
Let thy rude, half-human tread
Point to hidden Indian springs,
Lost in ferns and fragrant grasses,
Hovered o’er by timid wings,
Where the wood-duck lightly passes,
Where the wild bee holds her sweets,
Epicurean retreats,
Fit for thee, and better than
Fearful spoils of dangerous man.
In thy fat-jowled deviltry
Friar Tuck shal...

Ye nymphs! if e'er your eyes were red
With tears o'er hapless favourites shed,
O share Maria's grief!
Her favourite, even in his cage,
(What will not hunger's cruel rage?)
Assassin'd by a thief.


Where Rhenus strays his vines among,
The egg was laid from which he sprung;
And, though by nature mute,
Or only with a whistle blest,
Well taught he all the sounds express'd
Of flageolet or flute.


The honours of his ebon poll
Were brighter than the sleekest mole,
His bosom of the hue
With which Aurora decks the skies,
When piping winds shall soon arise,
To sweep away the dew.


Above, below, in all the house,
Dire foe alike of bird and mouse,
No cat had leave to dwell;
And Bully's cage supported stood
On p...

In days gone by, the poets wrote
    Sweet verses to the ladies fair;
Described the nightingale's clear note,
    Or penned an Ode to Daphne's hair.

To dare all for a woman's smile
    Or breathe one's heart out in a rose--
Such trifles now are out of style,
    The scented manuscript must close.

Yet Villon wrote his roundelays,
    And that sweet singer Horace;
But I will sing of other days
    In praise of Clara Morris.

Youth is but the joy of life,
    Not the eternal moping;
We get no happiness from strife
    Nor yet by blindly groping.

All the world's a stage you know
    The men and women actors;
A little joy, a little woe--
    These are but human factors.

The mellow days still come and go,
    The...

I

He was not learned in any art;
But Nature led him by the hand;
And spoke her language to his heart
So he could hear and understand:
He loved her simply as a child;
And in his love forgot the heat
Of conflict, and sat reconciled
In patience of defeat.

II

Before me now I see him rise -
A face, that seventy years had snowed
With winter, where the kind blue eyes
Like hospitable fires glowed:
A small gray man whose heart was large,
And big with knowledge learned of need;
A heart, the hard world made its targe,
That never ceased to bleed.

III

He knew all Nature. Yea, he knew
What virtue lay within each flower,
What tonic in the dawn and dew,
And in each root what magic power:
What in the wild witch-h...

The trees fret fitfully and twist,
Shutters rattle and carpets heave,
Slime is the dust of yestereve,
And in the streaming mist
Fishes might seem to fin a passage if they list.

But to his feet,
Drawing nigh and nigher
A hidden seat,
The fog is sweet
And the wind a lyre.

A vacant sameness grays the sky,
A moisture gathers on each knop
Of the bramble, rounding to a drop,
That greets the goer-by
With the cold listless lustre of a dead man's eye.

But to her sight,
Drawing nigh and nigher
Its deep delight,
The fog is bright
And the wind a lyre.

It sounded as if the streets were running,
And then the streets stood still.
Eclipse was all we could see at the window,
And awe was all we could feel.

By and by the boldest stole out of his covert,
To see if time was there.
Nature was in her beryl apron,
Mixing fresher air.

Flower of the mountain! by the wanderer's hand
    Robbed of thy beauty's short-lived sunny day;
    Didst thou but blow to gem the stranger's way,
And bloom, to wither in the stranger's land?
        Hueless and scentless as thou art,
        How much that stirs the memory,
        How much, much more, that thrills the heart,
        Thou faded thing, yet lives in thee!

Where is thy beauty? in the grassy blade,
    There lives more fragrance, and more freshness now;
Yet oh! not all the flowers that bloom and fade,
    Are half so dear to memory's eye as thou.
        The dew that on the mountain lies,
        The breeze that o'er the mountain sighs,
        Thy parent stem will nurse and nourish;
        But thou - not e'en those sunny eyes
        As b...

Whene'er thy wandering footstep bends
Its pathway to the Hermit tree,
Among its cordial band of friends,
Sweet Mary! wilt thou number me?

Though all too few the hours have roll'd
That saw the stranger linger here,
In memory's volume let them hold
One little spot to friendship dear.

I oft have thought how sweet 'twould be
To steal the bird of Eden's art;
And leave behind a trace of me
On every kind and friendly heart,

And like the breeze in fragrance rolled,
To gather as I wander by,
From every soul of kindred mould,
Some touch of cordial sympathy.

'Tis the best charm in life's dull dream,
To feel that yet there linger here
Bright eyes that look with fond esteem,
And feeling hearts that hold me dear.

What offspring other men have got,
The how, where, when, I question not.
These are the children I have left,
Adopted some, none got by theft;
But all are touch'd, like lawful plate,
And no verse illegitimate.

It is autumn; not without,
    But within me is the cold.
Youth and spring are all about;
    It is I that have grown old.

Birds are darting through the air,
    Singing, building without rest;
Life is stirring everywhere,
    Save within my lonely breast.

There is silence: the dead leaves
    Fall and rustle and are still;
Beats no flail upon the sheaves
    Comes no murmur from the mill.

A thousand summers ere the time of Christ
From out his ancient city came a Seer
Whom one that loved, and honour’d him, and yet
Was no disciple, richly garb’d, but worn
From wasteful living, follow’d—in his hand
A scroll of verse—till that old man before
A cavern whence an affluent fountain pour’d
From darkness into daylight, turn’d and spoke.

This wealth of waters might but seem to draw
From yon dark cave, but, son, the source is higher,
Yon summit half-a-league in air—and higher,
The cloud that hides it—higher still, the heavens
Whereby the cloud was moulded, and whereout
The cloud descended. Force is from the heights.
I am wearied of our city, son, and go
To spend my one last year among the hills.
What hast thou there? Some deathsong for the Ghouls

    I.

    The air falls chill;
    The whip-poor-will
    Pipes lonesomely behind the hill:
    The dusk grows dense,
    The silence tense;
    And lo, the katydids commence.


    II.

    Through shadowy rifts
    Of woodland, lifts
    The low, slow moon, and upward drifts,
    While left and right
    The fireflies' light
    Swirls eddying in the skirts of Night.


    III.

    O Cloudland, gray
    And level, lay
    Thy mists across the face of Day!
    At foot and head,
    Above the dead,
    O Dews, weep on uncomforted!

What joy you take in making hotness hotter,
In emphasizing dullness with your buzz,
Making monotony more monotonous!
When Summer comes, and drouth hath dried the water
In all the creeks, we hear your ragged rasp
Filing the stillness. Or, as urchins beat
A stagnant pond whereon the bubbles gasp,
Your switch-like music whips the midday heat.

O bur of sound caught in the Summer's hair,
We hear you everywhere!
We hear you in the vines and berry-brambles,
Along the unkempt lanes, among the weeds,
Amid the shadeless meadows, gray with seeds,
And by the wood 'round which the rail-fence rambles,
Sawing the sunlight with your sultry saw.

Or, like to tomboy truants, at their play
With noisy mirth among the barn's deep straw,
You sing away the careless s...

    "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
    When a new planet swims within his ken."

I who had sought afar from earth
    The faery land to greet,
Now find content within its girth,
    And wonder nigh my feet.

To-day a nearer love I choose
    And seek no distant sphere,
For aureoled by faery dews
    The dear brown breasts appear.

With rainbow radiance come and go
    The airy breaths of day,
And eve is all a pearly glow
    With moonlit winds a-play.

The lips of twilight burn my brow,
    The arms of night caress:
Glimmer her white eyes drooping now
    With grave old tenderness.

I close mine eyes from dream to be
    The diamond-rayed again,
As in the ancient hours ere we
    Forgot ourselves t...