And they heard the tent-poles clatter,
And the fly in twain was torn,
'Tis the soiled rag of a tatter
Of the tent where I was born.
And what matters it, I wonder?
Brick or stone or calico?,
Or a bush you were born under,
When it happened long ago?

And my beds were camp beds and tramp beds and damp beds,
And my beds were dry beds on drought-stricken ground,
Hard beds and soft beds, and wide beds and narrow,
For my beds were strange beds the wide world round.

And the old hag seemed to ponder
('Twas my mother told me so),
And she said that I would wander
Where but few would think to go.
"He will fly the haunts of tailors,
He will cross the ocean wide,
For his fathers, they were sailors
All on his good father's side."

Behind m...

Fairest! put on awhile
    These pinions of light I bring thee,
And o'er thy own green isle
    In fancy let me wing thee.
Never did Ariel's plume,
    At golden sunset hover
O'er scenes so full of bloom,
    As I shall waft thee over.

Fields, where the Spring delays
    And fearlessly meets the ardor
Of the warm Summer's gaze,
    With only her tears to guard her.
Rocks, thro' myrtle boughs
    In grace majestic frowning;
Like some bold warrior's brows
    That Love hath just been crowning.

Islets, so freshly fair,
    That never hath bird come nigh them,
But from his course thro' air
    He hath been won down by them;--[1]
Types, sweet maid, of thee,
    Whose look, whose blush inviting,
Never did Love yet...

Give way, give way! now, now my Charles shines here
A public light, in this immensive sphere;
Some stars were fix'd before, but these are dim
Compar'd, in this my ample orb, to him.
Draw in your feeble fires, while that he
Appears but in his meaner majesty.
Where, if such glory flashes from his name,
Which is his shade, who can abide his flame!
Princes, and such like public lights as these,
Must not be look'd on but at distances:
For, if we gaze on these brave lamps too near,
Our eyes they'll blind, or if not blind, they'll blear.

Ask me why I do not sing
To the tension of the string
As I did not long ago,
When my numbers full did flow?
Grief, ay, me! hath struck my lute
And my tongue, at one time, mute.

For ever, since my childish looks
Could rest on Nature's pictured books;
For ever, since my childish tongue
Could name the themes our bards have sung;
So long, the sweetness of their singing
Hath been to me a rapture bringing!
Yet ask me not the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.

I know that much whereof I sing,
Is shapen but for vanishing;
I know that summer's flower and leaf
And shine and shade are very brief,
And that the heart they brighten, may,
Before them all, be sheathed in clay!
I do not know the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.

A few there are, whose smile and praise
My minstrel hope, would kindly raise:
But, of those few, Death may impress
The lips of some with silentness;
While some may friendship's fai...

Birds' love and birds' song
Flying here and there,
Birds' songand birds' love
And you with gold for hair!
Birds' songand birds' love
Passing with the weather,
Men's song and men's love,
To love once and forever.

Men's love and birds' love,
And women's love and men's!
And you my wren with a crown of gold,
You my queen of the wrens!
You the queen of the wrens --
We'll be birds of a feather,
I'll be King of the Queen of the wrens,
And all in a nest together.

Far hence, amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
Crouching over a grave, an ancient, sorrowful mother,
Once a queen - now lean and tatter'd, seated on the ground,
Her old white hair drooping dishevel'd round her shoulders;
At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,
Long silent - she too long silent - mourning her shrouded hope and heir;
Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow, because most full of love.

Yet a word, ancient mother;
You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground, with forehead between your knees;
O you need not sit there, veil'd in your old white hair, so dishevel'd;
For know you, the one you mourn is not in that grave;
It was an illusion - the heir, the son you love, was not really dead;
The Lord is not dead - he is risen again, young and strong, in anot...

’Tis midnight o’er the dim mere’s lonely bosom,
Dark, dusky, windy midnight: swift are driven
The swelling vapours onward: every blossom
Bathes its bright petals in the tears of heaven.
Imperfect, half-seen objects meet the sight,
The other half our fancy must pourtray;
A wan, dull, lengthen’d sheet of swimming light
Lies the broad lake: the moon conceals her ray,
Sketch’d faintly by a pale and lurid gleam
Shot thro’ the glimmering clouds: the lovely planet
Is shrouded in obscurity; the scream
Of owl is silenc’d; and the rocks of granite
Rise tall and drearily, while damp and dank
Hang the thick willows on the reedy bank.
Beneath, the gurgling eddies slowly creep,
Blacken’d by foliage; and the glutting wave,
That saps eternally the cold grey steep,
Sounds...

I.

Fallen with autumn's falling leaf
Ere yet his summer's noon was past,
Our friend, our guide, our trusted chief, -
What words can match a woe so vast!

And whose the chartered claim to speak
The sacred grief where all have part,
Where sorrow saddens every cheek
And broods in every aching heart?

Yet Nature prompts the burning phrase
That thrills the hushed and shrouded hall,
The loud lament, the sorrowing praise,
The silent tear that love lets fall.

In loftiest verse, in lowliest rhyme,
Shall strive unblamed the minstrel choir, - -
The singers of the new-born time,
And trembling age with outworn lyre.

No room for pride, no place for blame, -
We fling our blossoms on the grave,
Pale, - scentless, - faded, - all we cl...

    I

    Watermelon,
    ears of skeleton
    wet nose with marshmallow
    I saw the Bear leaning on
    Santa for a favor.

    II
    Here's Bear, week's growth of beard,
    long bushy eyebrows
    still reeking of gin
    apparently wanted the penny-strapped Claus'
    to dump Rudolph,
    spray-paint his coat white
    use Bear's fleshy drinker's nose
    to lead the sleigh
    that crazy night.

    III
    A tiff erupted
    Rudolph almost lost it
    santa ended paying Hibernation fees
    though Bear grumbled he wasn't
    bedding Next to no knot of worms garter snakes.

I' b'en a-kindo' "musin'," as the feller says, and I'm
About o' the conclusion that they hain't no better time,
When you come to cipher on it, than the times we ust to know
When we swore our first "dog-gone-it" sorto' solum-like and low!

You git my idy, do you? - LITTLE tads, you understand -
Jest a-wishin' thue and thue you that you on'y wuz a MAN. -
Yit here I am, this minit, even sixty, to a day,
And fergittin' all that's in it, wishm' jest the other way!

I hain't no hand to lectur' on the times, er dimonstrate
Whare the trouble is, er hector and domineer with Fate, -
But when I git so flurried, and so pestered-like and blue,
And so rail owdacious worried, let me tell you what I do! -

I jest gee-haw the hosses, and onhook the swingle-tree,
Whare the haze...

Our Poet, who has taught the Western breeze
To waft his songs before him o'er the seas,
Will find them wheresoe'er his wanderings reach
Borne on the spreading tide of English speech
Twin with the rhythmic waves that kiss the farthest beach.

Where shall the singing bird a stranger be
That finds a nest for him in every tree?
How shall he travel who can never go
Where his own voice the echoes do not know,
Where his own garden flowers no longer learn to grow?

Ah! gentlest soul! how gracious, how benign
Breathes through our troubled life that voice of thine,
Filled with a sweetness born of happier spheres,
That wins and warms, that kindles, softens, cheers,
That calms the wildest woe and stays the bitterest tears!

Forgive the simple words that sound li...

'Tis done! - I saw it in my dreams:
No more with Hope the future beams;
My days of happiness are few:
Chill'd by Misfortune's wintry blast,
My dawn of Life is overcast;
Love, Hope, and Joy, alike adieu!
Would I could add Remembrance too!

Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill’d with your most high deserts?
Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say ‘This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne’er touch’d earthly faces.’
So should my papers, yellow’d with their age,
Be scorn’d, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term’d a poet’s rage
And stretched metre of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice, in it, and in my rhyme.

O word and thing most beautiful!
Our yesterday was cold and dull,
Gray mists obscured the setting sun,
Its evening wept with sobbing rain;
But to and fro, mid shrouding night,
Some healing angel swift has run,
And all is fresh and fair again.

O, word and thing most beautiful!
The hearts, which were of cares so full,
The tired hands, the tired feet,
So glad of night, are glad of morn,--
Where are the clouds of yesterday?
The world is good, the world is sweet,
And life is new and hope re-born.

O, word and thing most beautiful!
O coward soul and sorrowful,
Which sighs to note the ebbing light
Give place to evening's shadowy gray!
What are these things but parables,--
That darkness heals the wrongs of day,
And dawning clears all mis...

A still, sweet, placid, moonlight face,
And slightly nonchalant,
Which seems to claim a middle place
Between one's love and aunt,
Where childhood's star has left a ray
In woman's sunniest sky,
As morning dew and blushing day
On fruit and blossom lie.

And yet, - and yet I cannot love
Those lovely lines on steel;
They beam too much of heaven above,
Earth's darker shades to feel;
Perchance some early weeds of care
Around my heart have grown,
And brows unfurrowed seem not fair,
Because they mock my own.

Alas! when Eden's gates were sealed,
How oft some sheltered flower
Breathed o'er the wanderers of the field,
Like their own bridal bower;
Yet, saddened by its loveliness,
And humbled by its pride,
Earth's fairest child they...

Always suddenly they are gone -
    The friends we trusted and held secure -
Suddenly we are gazing on,
    Not a smiling face, but the marble-pure
Dead mask of a face that nevermore
    To a smile of ours will make reply -
    The lips close-locked as the eyelids are -
Gone - swift as the flash of the molten ore
    A meteor pours through a midnight sky,
    Leaving it blind of a single star.

Tell us, O Death, Remorseless Might!
    What is this old, unescapable ire
You wreak on us? - from the birth of light
    Till the world be charred to a core of fire!
We do no evil thing to you -
    We seek to evade you - that is all -
    That is your will - you will not be known
Of men. What, then, would you have us do? -
    Cringe, and wait ti...

    I.


Over the lamp-lit street,
Trodden by hurrying feet,
Where mostly pulse and beat
    Life's throbbing veins,
See where the April star,
Blue-bright as sapphires are,
Hangs in deep heavens far,
    Waxes and wanes.


Strangely alive it seems,
Darting keen, dazzling gleams,
Veiling anon its beams,
    Large, clear, and pure.
In the broad western sky
No orb may shine anigh,
No lesser radiancy
    May there endure.


Spring airs are blowing sweet:
Low in the dusky street
Star-beams and eye-beams meet.
    Rapt in his dreams,
All through the crowded mart
Poet with swift-stirred heart,
Passing beneath, must start,
    Thrilled by those gleams.


Naught doth he note anear,