H. W. L.

Pride of the sister realm so long our own,
We claim with her that spotless fame of thine,
White as her snow and fragrant as her pine!
Ours was thy birthplace, but in every zone
Some wreath of song thy liberal hand has thrown
Breathes perfume from its blossoms, that entwine
Where'er the dewdrops fall, the sunbeams shine,
On life's long path with tangled cares o'ergrown.
Can Art thy truthful counterfeit command, -
The silver-haloed features, tranquil, mild, -
Soften the lips of bronze as when they smiled,
Give warmth and pressure to the marble hand?
Seek the lost rainbow in the sky it spanned
Farewell, sweet Singer! Heaven reclaims its child.

Carved from the block or cast in clinging mould,
Will grateful Memory fondly try her best
The m...

APPLES

Come buy my fine wares,
Plums, apples, and pears.
A hundred a penny,
In conscience too many:
Come, will you have any?
My children are seven,
I wish them in Heaven;
My husband a sot,
With his pipe and his pot,
Not a farthing will gain them,
And I must maintain them.



ASPARAGUS

    Ripe 'sparagrass
    Fit for lad or lass,
To make their water pass:
    O, 'tis pretty picking
    With a tender chicken!



ONIONS


        Come, follow me by the smell,
        Here are delicate onions to sell;
        I promise to use you well.
        They make the blood warmer,
        You'll feed like a farmer;
For this is every cook's opinion,
No savoury dish without an on...

You may rejoice to think yourselves secure;
You may be grateful for the gift divine
That grace unsought, which made your black hearts pure,
And fits your earth-born souls in Heaven to shine.

But, is it sweet to look around, and view
Thousands excluded from that happiness,
Which they deserved, at least, as much as you,
Their faults not greater, nor their virtues less?

And, wherefore should you love your God the more,
Because to you alone his smiles are given;
Because he chose to pass the many o'er,
And only bring the favoured few to Heaven?

And, wherefore should your hearts more grateful prove,
Because for ALL the Saviour did not die?
Is yours the God of justice and of love
And are your bosoms warm with charity?

Say, does your heart expa...

Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis,
Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.--OVID, Fastorum, Lib. vi.


"O Caesar, we who are about to die
Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry
In the arena, standing face to face
With death and with the Roman populace.

O ye familiar scenes,--ye groves of pine,
That once were mine and are no longer mine,--
Thou river, widening through the meadows green
To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen,--
Ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose
Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose
And vanished,--we who are about to die
Salute you; earth and air and sea and sky,
And the Imperial Sun that scatters down
His sovereign splendors upon grove and town.

Ye do not answer us! ye do not hear!
We are forgotten; an...

Tell me, strange heart, so mysteriously beating -
    Unto what end?
Body and soul so mysteriously meeting,
    Strange friend and friend;
Hand clasped in hand so mysteriously faring,
Say what and why all this dreaming and daring,
    This sowing and reaping and laughing and weeping,
    That ends but in sleeping -
    Only one meaning, only - the End.

Ah! all the love, the gold glory, the singing, -
    Unto what end?
Flowers of April immortally springing,
    Face of one's friend,
Stars of the morning and moon in her quarters,
Shining of suns and running of waters,
    Growing and blowing and snowing and flowing, -
    Ah! where are they going?
    All on one journey, all to - the End.

(Matthew 5:38-48)

Who can surrender to Christ, dividing his best with the stranger,
Giving to each what he asks, braving the uttermost danger
All for the enemy, MAN? Who can surrender till death
His words and his works, his house and his lands,
His eyes and his heart and his breath?

Who can surrender to Christ? Many have yearned toward it daily.
Yet they surrender to passion, wildly or grimly or gaily;
Yet they surrender to pride, counting her precious and queenly;
Yet they surrender to knowledge, preening their feathers serenely.

Who can surrender to Christ? Where is the man so transcendent,
So heated with love of his kind, so filled with the spirit resplendent
That all of the hours of his day his song is thrilling and tender,
And all of his thoughts to ou...

Hand me my light gloves, James;
I'm off for the waltzing world,
The kingdom of Strauss and that -
Where is my old crush-hat?
Is my hair properly curled?
Call in the daytime, James.

Think of me, won't you, James,
When I am rosily twirling
The "Rose of a garden of girls,"
The Pearl among circling pearls,
In a mesh of melodious whirling?
Envy me, won't you, James?

For a heart lost along with her fan,
For a nice sense of honor flown,
For the care of an invalid soul,
And tastes far beyond my control, -
I have for my precious own
The fame of a "waltzing man."

If I don't come, come for me, James.
Ah, the waltz is my mastering passion!
The trip-tripping airs are as sweet
As love to my turning feet,
While I clasp t...

The sunlight glitters keen and bright,
Where, miles away,
Lies stretching to my dazzled sight
A luminous belt, a misty light,
Beyond the dark pine bluffs and wastes of sandy gray.

The tremulous shadow of the Sea!
Against its ground
Of silvery light, rock, hill, and tree,
Still as a picture, clear and free,
With varying outline mark the coast for miles around.

On, on, we tread with loose-flung rein
Our seaward way,
Through dark-green fields and blossoming grain,
Where the wild brier-rose skirts the lane,
And bends above our heads the flowering locust spray.

Ha! like a kind hand on my brow
Comes this fresh breeze,
Cooling its dull and feverish glow,
While through my being seems to flow
The breath of a new life, the healing of the...

Io mi rivolgo indietro a ciascun passo.

ON QUITTING LAURA.


    With weary frame which painfully I bear,
I look behind me at each onward pace,
And then take comfort from your native air,
Which following fans my melancholy face;
The far way, my frail life, the cherish'd fair
Whom thus I leave, as then my thoughts retrace,
I fix my feet in silent pale despair,
And on the earth my tearful eyes abase.
At times a doubt, too, rises on my woes,
"How ever can this weak and wasted frame
Live from life's spirit and one source afar?"
Love's answer soon the truth forgotten shows--
"This high pure privilege true lovers claim,
Who from mere human feelings franchised are!"

MACGREGOR.


    I look behind each step I onward trace,

'Tis noon. At noon the Hebrew bowed the knee
And worshipped, while the husbandmen withdrew
From the scorched field, and the wayfaring man
Grew faint, and turned aside by bubbling fount,
Or rested in the shadow of the palm.

I, too, amid the overflow of day,
Behold the power which wields and cherishes
The frame of Nature. From this brow of rock
That overlooks the Hudson's western marge,
I gaze upon the long array of groves,
The piles and gulfs of verdure drinking in
The grateful heats. They love the fiery sun;
Their broadening leaves grow glossier, and their sprays
Climb as he looks upon them. In the midst,
The swelling river, into his green gulfs,
Unshadowed save by passing sails above,
Takes the redundant glory, and enjoys
The summer in his chilly b...

I.
Who hath known the ways of time
Or trodden behind his feet?
There is no such man among men.
For chance overcomes him, or crime
Changes; for all things sweet
In time wax bitter again.
Who shall give sorrow enough,
Or who the abundance of tears?
Mine eyes are heavy with love
And a sword gone thorough mine ears,
A sound like a sword and fire,
For pity, for great desire;
Who shall ensure me thereof,
Lest I die, being full of my fears?

Who hath known the ways and the wrath,
The sleepless spirit, the root
And blossom of evil will,
The divine device of a god?
Who shall behold it or hath?
The twice-tongued prophets are mute,
The many speakers are still;
No foot has travelled or trod,
No hand has meted, his path.
Man’s f...

It was a shady nook that I had found
Deep in the greenwood. A delicious stream
Ran softly by it on a bed of grass,
And to the border leant a sloping bank
Of moss as delicate as Tempe e'er
Spread for the sleep of Io. Overhead
The spreading larch was woven with the fir,
And as the summer wind stole listlessly,
And dallied with the tree tops, they would part
And let in sprinklings of the sunny light,
Studding the moss like silver; and again
Returning to their places, there would come
A murmur from the touched and stirring leaves,
That like a far-off instrument, beguiled
Your mood into the idleness of sleep.

Here did I win thee, Viola! We came -
Thou knowest how carelessly - and never thought
Love lived in such a wilderness; and thou -
I had a cous...

        "Sleep, weary ones, while ye may --
            Sleep, oh, sleep!"
                    Eugene Field.


        Thro' May time blossoms, with whisper low,
        The soft wind sang to the dead below:
        "Think not with regret on the Springtime's song
        And the task ye left while your hands were strong.
        The song would have ceased when the Spring was past,
        And the task that was joyous be weary at last."

        To the winter sky when the nights were long
        The tree-tops tossed with a ceaseless song:
        "Do ye think with regret on the sunny days
        And the path ye left, with its untrod ways?
        The sun might sink in a storm cloud's frown
        And the path grow rough when the night came down."...

Where ships of purple gently toss
On seas of daffodil,
Fantastic sailors mingle,
And then -- the wharf is still.

She did not know that she was dead,
But, when the pang was o'er,
Sat down to wait her Master's tread
Upon the Golden Floor,

With ears full-cock and anxious eye
Impatiently resigned;
But ignorant that Paradise
Did not admit her kind.

Persons with Haloes, Harps, and Wings
Assembled and reproved;
Or talked to her of Heavenly things,
But Dinah never moved.

There was one step along the Stair
That led to Heaven's Gate;
And, till she heard it, her affair
Was, she explained, to wait.

And she explained with flattened ear,
Bared lip and milky tooth,
Storming against Ithuriel's Spear
That only proved her truth!

Sudden, far down the Bridge of Ghosts
That anxious spirits clomb,
She caught that step in all the host...

Passing events, - tell, what are they I pray?
Are they some novelty? - Nay, nay, nay!
Ever since the world its course began,
Since the breath of life was breathed into man,
Still rolling on with the wane of time,
Through every nation, in every clime;
In every spot where man has his home,
Ever they long for events to come.

Hours or days or years it may be,
Before hopes realization they see;
And no sooner it comes than it hastes away,
And others rush after no longer to stay.
And there scarcely is time to know its in sight,
E'er its found to be leaving with marvellous flight,
And what had been longed for with eager intent,
Is chronicled but as a passing event.

Hope's joys are uncertain; - anxiety rules,
Expectancy's paradise, peopled by fools;

Murmur of living!
Stir of existence!
Soul of the world!
Make, oh make yourselves felt
To the dying spirit of Youth.
Come, like the breath of the spring.
Leave not a human soul
To grow old in darkness and pain.
Only the living can feel you
But leave us not while we live

        I

    Happy are men who yet before they are killed
    Can let their veins run cold.
    Whom no compassion fleers
    Or makes their feet
    Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
    The front line withers,
    But they are troops who fade, not flowers
    For poets' tearful fooling:
    Men, gaps for filling
    Losses who might have fought
    Longer; but no one bothers.


        II

    And some cease feeling
    Even themselves or for themselves.
    Dullness best solves
    The tease and doubt of shelling,
    And Chance's strange arithmetic
    Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.
    They keep no check on Armies' decimation.


        III

    Happy are thes...