This verse be thine, my friend, nor thou refuse
This from no venal or ungrateful Muse.
Whether thy hand strike out some free design,
Where life awakes, and dawns at every line;
Or blend in beauteous tints the colour'd mass,
And from the canvas call the mimic face:
Read these instructive leaves, in which conspire
Fresnoy's close art, and Dryden's native fire:
And, reading, wish like theirs our fate and fame,
So mix'd our studies, and so join'd our name;
Like them to shine through long succeeding age,
So just thy skill, so regular my rage.

Smit with the love of sister-arts we came,
And met congenial, mingling flame with flame;
Like friendly colours found them both unite,
And each from each contract new strength and light.
How oft in pleasing tasks we wear ...

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and...

"A barbered woman's man,"--yes, so
He seemed to me a twelvemonth since;
And so he may be--let it go--
Admit his flaws--we need not wince
To find our noblest not all great.
What of it? He is still the prince,
And we the pages of his state.

The world applauds his words; his fame
Is noised wherever knowledge be;
Even the trader hears his name,
As one far inland hears the sea;
The lady quotes him to the beau
Across a cup of Russian tea;
They know him and they do not know.

I know him. In the nascent years
Men's eyes shall see him as one crowned;
His voice shall gather in their ears
With each new age prophetic sound;
And you and I and all the rest,
Whose brows to-day are laurel-bound,
Shall be but plumes upon his crest.

A y...

I mind it was but yesterday:
The sun was dim, the air was chill;
Below the town, below the hill,
The sails of my son’s ship did fill,
My Jacob, who was cast away.

He said, “God keep you, mother dear,”
But did not turn to kiss his wife;
They had some foolish, idle strife;
Her tongue was like a two-edged knife,
And he was proud as any peer.

Howbeit that night I took no note
Of sea nor sky, for all was drear;
I marked not that the hills looked near,
Nor that the moon, though curved and clear,
Through curd-like scud did drive and float.

For with my darling went the joy
Of autumn woods and meadows brown;
I came to hate the little town;
It seemed as if the sun went down
With him, my only darling boy.

It was the middle of t...

I.
From heavy dreams fair Helen rose,
And eyed the dawning red:
"Alas, my love, thou tarriest long!
O art thou false or dead?"

II.
With gallant Fred'rick's princely power
He sought the bold Crusade;
But not a word from Judah's wars
Told Helen how he sped.

III.
With Paynim and with Saracen
At length a truce was made,
And every knight return'd to dry
The tears his love had shed.

IV.
Our gallant host was homeward bound
With many a song of joy;
Green waved the laurel in each plume,
The badge of victory.

V.
And old and young, and sire and son,
To meet them crowd the way,
With shouts, and mirth, and melody,
The debt of love to pay.

VI.
Full many a maid her true-love met,
And sobb'd ...

Like an opera-house is the world, I ween,
Where the passionate lover of music is seen
    In the balcony near the roof:
While the very best seat in the first stage-box
Is filled by the person who laughs and talks
    Through the harmony's warp and woof.

She wrapped her soul in a lace of lies,
With a prime deceit to pin it;
And I thought I was gaining a fearsome prize,
So I staked my soul to win it.

We wed and parted on her complaint,
And both were a bit of barter,
Tho' I'll confess that I'm no saint,
I'll swear that she's no martyr.

No days such honored days as these! When yet
Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide
For some fair thing which should forever bide
On earth, her beauteous memory to set
In fitting frame that no age could forget,
Her name in lovely April's name did hide,
And leave it there, eternally allied
To all the fairest flowers Spring did beget.
And when fair Aphrodite passed from earth,
Her shrines forgotten and her feasts of mirth,
A holier symbol still in seal and sign,
Sweet April took, of kingdom most divine,
When Christ ascended, in the time of birth
Of spring anemones, in Palestine.

No eve of summer ever can attain
The gladness of that eve of late July,
When 'mid the roses, filled with musk and rain,
Against the wondrous topaz of the sky,
I met you, leaning on the pasture bars, -
While heaven and earth grew conscious of the stars.

No night of blackest winter can repeat
The bitterness of that December night,
When at your gate, gray-glittering with sleet,
Within the glimmering square of window-light,
We parted, - long you clung unto my arm, -
While heaven and earth surrendered to the storm.

Now we are tired of boisterous joy,
Have romped enough, my little Boy!
Jane hangs her head upon my breast,
And you shall bring your stool and rest;
This corner is your own.

There! take your seat, and let me see
That you can listen quietly:
And, as I promised, I will tell
That strange adventure which befell
A poor blind Highland Boy.

A 'Highland' Boy!, why call him so?
Because, my Darlings, ye must know
That, under hills which rise like towers,
Far higher hills than these of ours!
He from his birth had lived.

He ne'er had seen one earthly sight
The sun, the day; the stars, the night;
Or tree, or butterfly, or flower,
Or fish in stream, or bird in bower,
Or woman, man, or child.

And yet he neither drooped nor pined,

There is a place hung o'er of summer boughs
And dreamy skies wherein the gray hawk sleeps;
Where water flows, within whose lazy deeps,
Like silvery prisms where the sunbeams drowse,
The minnows twinkle; where the bells of cows
Tinkle the stillness; and the bobwhite keeps
Calling from meadows where the reaper reaps,
And children's laughter haunts an oldtime house:
A place where life wears ever an honest smell
Of hay and honey, sun and elder-bloom, -
Like some sweet, simple girl, - within her hair;
Where, with our love for comrade, we may dwell
Far from the city's strife, whose cares consume. -
Oh, take my hand and let me lead you there.

A common wayside flower it grew,
Unhandsome and unnoticed too,
    Except in deprecation
That such an herb unreared by toil,
Prolific cumberer of the soil,
    Defied extermination.

Its gorgeous blooms were never stirred
By honey-bee nor humming-bird
    In their corollas dipping;
But they from clover white and red
Delicious nectar drew instead
    In dainty rounds of sipping.

No place its own euphonious name
Within the catalogue might claim
    Of any flora-lover;
For, in the scores of passers-by,
As yet no true artistic eye
    Its beauty could discover.

The reaper with his sickle keen
Aimed at its crest of gold and green
    With spiteful stroke relentless,
And would have rooted from the ground
The "Solidago" ...

Oh, what a blessed interval
    A rainy day may be!
No lightning flash nor tempest roar,
But one incessant, steady pour
    Of dripping melody;
When from their sheltering retreat
Go not with voluntary feet
The storm-beleaguered family,
    Nor bird nor animal.

When business takes a little lull,
    And gives the merchantman
A chance to seek domestic scenes,
To interview the magazines,
    Convoke his growing clan,
The boys and girls almost unknown,
And get acquainted with his own;
As well the household budget scan,
    Or write a canticle.

When farmer John ransacks the barn,
    Hunts up the harness old -
Nigh twenty years since it was new -
Puts in an extra thong or two,
    And hopes the thing will hold
Without ...

Do not worry if I scurry from the grill room in a hurry,
    Dropping hastily my curry and retiring into balk;
Do not let it cause you wonder if, by some mischance or blunder,
    We encounter on the Underground and I get out and walk.

If I double as a cub'll when you meet him in the stubble,
    Do not think I am in trouble or attempt to make a fuss;
Do not judge me melancholy or attribute it to folly
    If I leave the Metropolitan and travel 'n a bus.

Do not quiet your anxiety by giving me a diet,
    Or by base resort to vi et armis fold me to your arms,
And let no suspicious tremor violate your wonted phlegm or
    Any fear that Harold's memory is faithless to your charms.

For my passion as I dash on in that disconcerting fashion
    Is as arden...

Some things are good on Autumn nights,
When with the storm the forest fights,
And in the room the heaped hearth lights
    Old-fashioned press and rafter:
Plump chestnuts hissing in the heat,
A mug of cider, sharp and sweet,
And at your side a face petite,
    With lips of laughter.

Upon the roof the rolling rain,
And tapping at the window-pane,
The wind that seems a witch's cane
    That summons spells together:
A hand within your own awhile;
A mouth reflecting back your smile;
And eyes, two stars, whose beams exile
    All thoughts of weather.

And, while the wind lulls, still to sit
And watch her fire-lit needles flit
A-knitting, and to feel her knit
    Your very heartstrings in it:
Then, when the old clock ticks 't...