Fare thee well, thou lovely one!
    Lovely still, but dear no more;
Once his soul of truth is gone,
    Love's sweet life is o'er.
Thy words, what e'er their flattering spell,
    Could scarce have thus deceived;
But eyes that acted truth so well
    Were sure to be believed.
Then, fare thee well, thou lovely one!
    Lovely still, but dear no more;
Once his soul of truth is gone,
    Love's sweet life is o'er.

Yet those eyes look constant still,
    True as stars they keep their light;
Still those cheeks their pledge fulfil
    Of blushing always bright.
'Tis only on thy changeful heart
    The blame of falsehood lies;
Love lives in every other part,
    But there, alas! he dies.
Then, fare thee well, thou lovely one!
    Lovel...

The summer day is closed, the sun is set:
Well they have done their office, those bright hours,
The latest of whose train goes softly out
In the red West. The green blade of the ground
Has risen, and herds have cropped it; the young twig
Has spread its plaited tissues to the sun;
Flowers of the garden and the waste have blown
And withered; seeds have fallen upon the soil,
From bursting cells, and in their graves await
Their resurrection. Insects from the pools
Have filled the air awhile with humming wings,
That now are still for ever; painted moths
Have wandered the blue sky, and died again;
The mother-bird hath broken for her brood
Their prison shell, or shoved them from the nest,
Plumed for their earliest flight. In bright alcoves,
In woodland cottages with ...

Whene'er a noble deed is wrought,
Whene'er is spoken a noble thought,
    Our hearts, in glad surprise,
    To higher levels rise.

The tidal wave of deeper souls
Into our inmost being rolls,
    And lifts us unawares
    Out of all meaner cares.

Honor to those whose words or deeds
Thus help us in our daily needs,
    And by their overflow
    Raise us from what is low!

Thus thought I, as by night I read
Of the great army of the dead,
    The trenches cold and damp,
    The starved and frozen camp,--

The wounded from the battle-plain,
In dreary hospitals of pain,
    The cheerless corridors,
    The cold and stony floors.

Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
    Pass through the glimmer...

This ugly old crone -
Every beauty she had
When a maid, when a maid.
Her beautiful eyes,
Too youthful, too wise,
Seemed ever to come
To so lightless a home,
Cold and dull as a stone.
And her cheeks - who would guess
Cheeks cadaverous as this
Once with colours were gay
As the flower on its spray?
Who would ever believe
Aught could bring one to grieve
So much as to make
Lips bent for love's sake
So thin and so grey?
O Youth, come away!
As she asks in her lone,
This old, desolate crone.
She loves us no more;
She is too old to care
For the charms that of yore
Made her body so fair.
Past repining, past care,
She lives but to bear
One or two fleeting years
Earth's indifference: her tears
Have lost now their...

In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.


In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.


Ah! would 'twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writhed not at passed joy?
The feel of not to feel it,
When there is none to heal it
Nor numbed sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.

I.
If It be pleasant to look on, stalled in the packed serai,
Does not the Young Man try Its temper and pace ere he buy?
If She be pleasant to look on, what does the Young Man say?
"Lo! She is pleasant to look on, give Her to me to-day!"

II.
Yea, though a Kafir die, to him is remitted Jehannum
If he borrowed in life from a native at sixty per cent. per anuum.

III.
Blister we not for bursati? So when the heart is vext,
The pain of one maiden's refusal is drowned in the pain of the next.

IV.
The temper of chums, the love of your wife, and a new piano's tune
Which of the three will you trust at the end of an Indian June?

V.
Who are the rulers of Ind to whom shall we bow the knee?
Make your peace with the women, and men will make you L. G.<...

Widow of the late ANSON G. PHELPS, Esq., died at New York, April 24th, 1859, aged 74.


When the good mother dieth, and the home
So long made happy by her boundless love
Is desolate and empty, there are tears
Of filial anguish, not to be represt;
And when the many friends who at her side
Sought social sympathy and counsel sweet,
Or the sad poor, who, for their Saviour's sake,
Found bountiful relief, and kind regard,
Stand at that altered threshold, and perceive
Faces of strangers from her casement look,
There is a pang not to be told in words.

Yet, when the christian, having well discharged
A life-long duty, riseth where no sin
Or possibility of pain or death
May follow, should there not be praise to Him
Who gives such victory?
    ...

Alien blossoms! tell me why
    Seek ye such a lonely place,
Thus to bloom, and droop, and die
    Far away from all your race?

Wherefore, from the sunny bowers
    Where your beauteous kindred bloom,
Have ye come, O banished flowers!
    Thus to decorate a tomb?

"Mortal, dost thou question why
    Thus beside the grave we bloom?
Why we hither come to die,
    Aliens from our garden-home?

"'Twas Affection's gentle hand
    Placed us thus her dead so near; -
Tis at weeping Love's command
    That we breathe our fragrance here.

"Ask not why we wither here,
    Thou who ne'er hast tasted woe,
Who hast never felt the tear
    Of bereaved affection flow, -

"Ask not, till thy household band
    By death's cruel ...

1.

It was too sweet--such dreams do ever fade
    When Sorrow shakes the sleeper from his rest--
Life still to me hath been a masquerade,
    Woe in Mirth's wildest, gayest mantle drest,
With the heart hidden--but the face display'd.

But now the vizard droppeth, crush'd and torn,
    And there is nought left but some tinsell'd rags,
To mock the wearer in the face of morn,
    As through the gaping world she feebly drags
Her day-born measure of reproach and scorn.

But that _his_ hand should pluck the dream away--
    And thus--and thus--O Heaven! it strikes too deep!
The knife that wounds me, if not meant to slay,
    Stumbles upon my heart the while I weep:
So be it; no hand of mine its course shall stay.

False? false to him? Release me...

White rose-leaves in my hands,
I toss you all away;
The winds shall blow you through the world
To seek my wedding day.
Or East you go, or West you go
And fall on land or sea,
Find the one that I love best
And bring him here to me.
And if he finds me spinning
'Tis short I'll break my thread;
And if he finds me dancing
I'll dance with him instead;
If he finds me at the Mass--
(Ah, let this not be,
Lest I forget my sweetest saint
The while he kneels by me!)

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, -
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

Queen of my tub, I merrily sing,
    While the white foam rises high,
    And sturdily wash and rinse and wring,
    And fasten the clothes to dry.
    Then out in the free fresh air they swing,
    Under the sunny sky.

    I wish we could wash from our hearts and souls
    The stains of the week away,
    And let water and air by their magic make
    Ourselves as pure as they.
    Then on the earth there would be indeed,
    A glorious washing day!

    Along the path of a useful life,
    Will heartsease ever bloom.
    The busy mind has no time to think
    Of sorrow or care or gloom.
    And anxious thoughts may be swept away,
    As we bravely wield a broom.

    I am glad a task to me is given,
    To labor at day by day,

Hail! voyagers, hail!
Whence e'er ye come, where'er ye rove,
    No calmer strand,
    No sweeter land,
Will e'er ye view, than the Land of Love!

    Hail! voyagers, hail!
To these, our shores, soft gales invite:
    The palm plumes wave,
    The billows lave,
And hither point fix'd stars of light!

    Hail! voyagers, hail!
Think not our groves wide brood with gloom;
    In this, our isle,
    Bright flowers smile:
Full urns, rose-heaped, these valleys bloom.

    Hail! voyagers, hail!
Be not deceived; renounce vain things;
    Ye may not find
    A tranquil mind,
Though hence ye sail with swiftest wings.

    Hail! voyagers, hail!
Time flies full fast; life soon is o'er;
    And ye may mourn,
    That h...

Waileth a woman, "O my God!"
A breaking heart in a broken breath,
A hopeless cry o'er her heart-hope's death!
Can words catch the chords of the winds that wail,
When love's last lily lies dead in the vale!
    Let her alone,
        Under the rod
    With the infinite moan
        Of her soul for God.
Ah! song! you may echo the sound of pain,
    But you never may shrine,
    In verse or line,
The pang of the heart that breaks in twain.

Waileth a woman, "O my God!"
Wind-driven waves with no hearts that ache,
Why do your passionate pulses throb?
No lips that speak -- have ye souls that sob?
We carry the cross -- ye wear the crest,
We have our God -- and ye, your shore,
Whither ye rush in the storm to rest;
We have the havens of holy pr...

What saw I yesterday walking apart
In a leafy place where the cattle wait?
Something to keep for a charm in my heart -
A little sweet girl in a garden gate.
Laughing she lay in the gold sun's might,
And held for a target to shelter her,
In her little soft fingers, round and white,
The gold-rimmed face of a sunflower.

Laughing she lay on the stone that stands
For a rough-hewn step in that sunny place,
And her yellow hair hung down to her hands,
Shadowing over her dimpled face.
Her eyes like the blue of the sky, made dim
With the might of the sun that looked at her,
Shone laughing over the serried rim,
Golden set, of the sunflower.

Laughing, for token she gave to me
Three petals out of the sunflower; -
When the petals are withered and gone,...

I.
Here was I with my arm and heart
And brain, all yours for a word, a want
Put into a look, just a look, your part,
While mine, to repay it . . . vainest vaunt,
Were the woman, that’s dead, alive to hear,
Had her lover, that’s lost, love’s proof to show!
But I cannot show it; you cannot speak
From the churchyard neither, miles removed,
Though I feel by a pulse within my cheek,
Which stabs and stops, that the woman I loved
Needs help in her grave and finds none near,
Wants warmth from the heart which sends it so!

II.
Did I speak once angrily, all the drear days
You lived, you woman I loved so well,
Who married the other? Blame or praise,
Where was the use then? Time would tell,
And the end declare what man for you,
What woman for me, was t...

Whene'er I try to read a book,
Across the page your face will look,
And then I neither know nor care
What sense the printed words may bear.

At night when I would go to sleep,
Thinking of you, awake I keep,
And still repeat the words you said,
Like sick men murmuring prayers in bed.

And when, with weariness oppressed,
I sink in spite of you to rest,
Your image, like a lovely sprite,
Haunts me in dreams through half the night.

I wake upon the autumn morn
To find the sunrise hardly born,
And in the sky a soft pale blue,
And in my heart your image true.

When out I walk to take the air,
Your image is for ever there,
Among the woods that lose their leaves,
Or where the North Sea sadly heaves.

By what enchantment shal...

Who is it, when one starts for th' day
A cheerin word is apt to say,
At sends yo leeter on yor way?
A wife.

An who, when th' wark is done at neet,
Sits harknin for yor clogs i'th' street,
An sets warm slippers for yor feet?
A wife.

An who, when yo goa weary in,
Bids th' childer mak a little din,
An smiles throo th' top o'th' heead to th' chin?
A wife.

An who, when troubled, vext an tried,
Comes creepin softly to yor side,
An soothes a grief 'at's hard to bide?
A wife.

An when yor ommost driven mad,
Who quiets yo daan, an calls yo "lad,"
An shows yo things are nooan soa bad?
A wife.

Who nivver once forgets that day,
When yo've to draw yor bit o' pay,
But comes to meet yo hawf o'th' way?
A wife.