Wot’s that you’re readin’? a novel? A novel! well, darn my skin!
You a man grown and bearded and histin’ such stuff ez that in
Stuff about gals and their sweethearts! No wonder you’re thin ez a knife.
Look at me clar two hundred and never read one in my life!

That’s my opinion o’ novels. And ez to their lyin’ round here,
They belong to the Jedge’s daughter the Jedge who came up last year
On account of his lungs and the mountains and the balsam o’ pine and fir;
And his daughter well, she read novels, and that’s what’s the matter with her.

Yet she was sweet on the Jedge, and stuck by him day and night,
Alone in the cabin up ‘yer till she grew like a ghost, all white.
She wus only a slip of a thing, ez light and ez up and away
Ez rifle smoke blown through the woods, but she w...

Therefore I dare reveal my private woe,
The secret blots of my imperfect heart,
Nor strive to shrink or swell mine own desert,
Nor beautify nor hide.    For this I know,
That even as I am, thou also art.
Thou past heroic forms unmoved shalt go,
To pause and bide with me, to whisper low:
"Not I alone am weak, not I apart
Must suffer, struggle, conquer day by day.
Here is my very cross by strangers borne,
Here is my bosom-sun wherefrom I pray
Hourly deliverance - this my rose, my thorn.
This woman my soul's need can understand,
Stretching o'er silent gulfs her sister hand."

This statue of Liberty, busy man,
Here erect in the city square,
I have watched while your scrubbings, this early morning,
Strangely wistful,
And half tristful,
Have turned her from foul to fair;

With your bucket of water, and mop, and brush,
Bringing her out of the grime
That has smeared her during the smokes of winter
With such glumness
In her dumbness,
And aged her before her time.

You have washed her down with motherly care -
Head, shoulders, arm, and foot,
To the very hem of the robes that drape her -
All expertly
And alertly,
Till a long stream, black with soot,

Flows over the pavement to the road,
And her shape looms pure as snow:
I read you are hired by the City guardians -
May be yearly,
Or once merely -...

I am the only being whose doom
No tongue would ask no eye would mourn
I never caused a thought of gloom
A smile of joy since I was born

In secret pleasure, secret tears
This changeful life has slipped away
As friendless after eighteen years
As lone as on my natal day

There have been times I cannot hide
There have been times when this was drear
When my sad soul forgot its pride
And longed for one to love me here

But those were in the early glow
Of feelings since subdued by care
And they have died so long ago
I hardly now believe they were

First melted off the hope of youth
Then Fancy's rainbow fast withdrew
And then experience told me truth
In mortal bosoms never grew

'Twas grief enough to think mankind
All...

Qual più diversa e nova.

HE COMPARES HIMSELF TO ALL THAT IS MOST STRANGE IN CREATION.


    Whate'er most wild and new
Was ever found in any foreign land,
If viewed and valued true,
Most likens me 'neath Love's transforming hand.
Whence the bright day breaks through,
Alone and consortless, a bird there flies,
Who voluntary dies,
To live again regenerate and entire:
So ever my desire,
Alone, itself repairs, and on the crest
Of its own lofty thoughts turns to our sun,
There melts and is undone,
And sinking to its first state of unrest,
So burns and dies, yet still its strength resumes,
And, Phoenix-like, afresh in force and beauty blooms.

Where Indian billows sweep,
A wondrous stone there is, before whose strength
Stou...

Bonny little Blue-bells
Mid young brackens green,
'Neath the hedgerows peeping
Modestly between;
Telling us that Summer
Is not far away,
When your beauties blend with
Blossoms of the May.

Sturdy, tangled hawthorns,
Fleck'd with white or red,
Whilst their nutty incense,
All around is shed.
Bonny drooping Blue-bells,
Happy you must be
With your beauties sheltered
'Neath such fragrant tree.

You need fear no rival, -
Other blossoms blown,
With their varied beauties
But enhance your own.
Steals the soft wind gently,
'Round th' enchanted spot,
Sets your bells a-ringing
Though we hear them not.

Idle Fancy wanders
As you shake and swing,
Our hearts shape the message
We would have you bring.
...

A languid atmosphere, a lazy breeze,
    With labored respiration, moves the wheat
From distant reaches, till the golden seas
    Break in crisp whispers at my feet.

My book, neglected of an idle mind,
    Hides for a moment from the eyes of men;
Or lightly opened by a critic wind,
    Affrightedly reviews itself again.

Off through the haze that dances in the shine
    The warm sun showers in the open glade,
The forest lies, a silhouette design
    Dimmed through and through with shade.

A dreamy day; and tranquilly I lie
    At anchor from all storms of mental strain;
With absent vision, gazing at the sky,
    "Like one that hears it rain."

The Katydid, so boisterous last night,
    Clinging, inverted, in uneasy poise,
Beneath...

The skies are strown with stars,
The streets are fresh with dew
A thin moon drifts to westward,
The night is hushed and cheerful.
My thought is quick with you.

Near windows gleam and laugh,
And far away a train
Clanks glowing through the stillness:
A great content's in all things,
And life is not in vain.

1877

A child,
Curious and innocent,
Slips from his Nurse, and rejoicing
Loses himself in the Fair.

Thro' the jostle and din
Wandering, he revels,
Dreaming, desiring, possessing;
Till, of a sudden
Tired and afraid, he beholds
The sordid assemblage
Just as it is; and he runs
With a sob to his Nurse
(Lighting at last on him),
And in her motherly bosom
Cries him to sleep.

Thus thro' the World,
Seeing and feeling and knowing,
Goes Man:    till at last,
Tired of experience, he turns
To the friendly and comforting breast
Of the old nurse, Death.

1876

While the west is paling
Starshine is begun.
While the dusk is failing
Glimmers up the sun.

So, till darkness cover
Life's retreating gleam,
Lover follows lover,
Dream succeeds to dream.

Stoop to my endeavour,
O my love, and be
Only and for ever
Sun and stars to me.

1876

The winds out of the west land blow,
My friends have breathed them there;
Warm with the blood of lads I know
Comes east the sighing air.

It fanned their temples, filled their lungs,
Scattered their forelocks free;
My friends made words of it with tongues
That talk no more to me.

Their voices, dying as they fly,
Thick on the wind are sown;
The names of men blow soundless by,
My fellows' and my own.

Oh lads, at home I heard you plain,
But here your speech is still,
And down the sighing wind in vain
You hollo from the hill.

The wind and I, we both were there,
But neither long abode;
Now through the friendless world we fare
And sigh upon the road.

Young love, all rainbows in the lane,
    Brushed by the honeysuckle vines,
Scattered the wild rose in a dream:
    A sweeter thing his arm entwines.

Ah, redder lips than any rose!
    Ah, sweeter breath than any bee
Sucks from the heart of any flower;
    Ah, bosom like the Summer sea!

A fairy creature made of dew
    And moonrise and the songs of birds,
And laughter like the running brook,
    And little soft, heart-broken words.

Haunted as marble in the moon,
    Her whiteness lies on young love's breast.
And living frankincense and myrrh
    Her lips that on his lips are pressed.

Her eyes are lost within his eyes,
    His eyes in hers are fathoms deep;
Death is not stiller than these twain
    That smile as in a magic...

Green little vaulter in the sunny grass,
Catching your heart up at the feel of June,
Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon,
When even the bees lag at the summoning brass;
And you, warm little housekeeper, who class
With those who think the candles come too soon,
Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune
Nick the glad silent moments as they pass;
Oh sweet and tiny cousins, that belong
One to the fields, the other to the hearth,
Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are strong
At your clear hearts; and both were sent on earth
To sing in thoughtful ears this natural song:
Indoors and out, summer and winter,--Mirth.

"It is not death that harrows us," they lipped,
"The soundless cell is in itself relief,
For life is an unfenced flower, benumbed and nipped
At unawares, and at its best but brief."

The speakers, sundry phantoms of the gone,
Had risen like filmy flames of phosphor dye,
As if the palest of sheet lightnings shone
From the sward near me, as from a nether sky.

And much surprised was I that, spent and dead,
They should not, like the many, be at rest,
But stray as apparitions; hence I said,
"Why, having slipped life, hark you back distressed?

"We are among the few death sets not free,
The hurt, misrepresented names, who come
At each year's brink, and cry to History
To do them justice, or go past them dumb.

"We are stript of rights; our shames...

The grass of fifty Aprils hath waved green
    Above the spent heart, the Olympian head,
The hands crost idly, the shut eyes unseen,
    Unseeing, the locked lips whose song hath fled;
Yet mystic-lived, like some rich, tropic flower,
His fame puts forth fresh blossoms hour by hour;
Wide spread the laden branches dropping dew
    On the low, laureled brow misunderstood,
    That bent not, neither bowed, until subdued
By the last foe who crowned while he o'erthrew.


Fair was the Easter Sabbath morn when first
    Men heard he had not wakened to its light:
The end had come, and time had done its worst,
    For the black cloud had fallen of endless night.
Then in the town, as Greek accosted Greek,
'T was not the wonted festal words to speak,
"Christ is ...

When I was in my teens,
I loved dear Margaretta:
I know not what it means,
I can not now forget her!
That vision of the past
My head is ever crazing;
Yet, when I saw her last,
I could not speak for gazing!
Oh, lingering bud of May!
Dear as when first I met her;
Worn in my heart always,
Life-cherished Margaretta!

We parted near the stile,
As morn was faintly breaking:
For many a weary mile
Oh how my heart was aching!
But distance, time, and change,
Have lost me Margaretta;
And yet 'tis sadly strange
That I can not forget her!
O queen of rural maids--
My dark-eyed Magaretta--
The heart the mind upbraids
That struggles to forget her!

My love, I know, will seem
A wayward, boyish folly;
But, ah! it was a...

It was beneath a waning moon when all the woods were sear,
And winds made eddies of the leaves that whispered far and near,
I met her on the old mill-bridge we parted at last year.

At first I deemed it but a mist that faltered in that place,
An autumn mist beneath the trees that sentineled the race;
Until I neared and in the moon beheld her face to face.

The waver of the summer-heat upon the drouth-dry leas;
The shimmer of the thistle-drift a down the silences;
The gliding of the fairy-fire between the swamp and trees;

They qualified her presence as a sorrow may a dream
The vague suggestion of a self; the glimmer of a gleam;
The actual unreal of the things that only seem.

Where once she came with welcome and glad eyes all loving-wise,
She passed and g...

1.

Away, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses!
In you let the minions of luxury rove:
Restore me the rocks, where the snow-flake reposes,
Though still they are sacred to freedom and love:
Yet, Caledonia, belov'd are thy mountains,
Round their white summits though elements war:
Though cataracts foam 'stead of smooth-flowing fountains,
I sigh for the valley of dark Loch na Garr.


2.

Ah! there my young footsteps in infancy, wander'd:
My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid; [2]
On chieftains, long perish'd, my memory ponder'd,
As daily I strode through the pine-cover'd glade;
I sought not my home, till the day's dying glory
Gave place to the rays of the bright polar star;
For fancy was cheer'd, by traditional story,
...