I am a bubble
    Upon thy ever-moving, resting sea:
Oh, rest me now from tossing, trespass, trouble!
    Take me down into thee.

Give me thy peace.
    My heart is aching with unquietness:
Oh, make its inharmonious beating cease!
    Thy hand upon it press.

My Night! my Day!
    Swift night and day betwixt, my world doth reel:
Potter, take not thy hand from off the clay
    That whirls upon thy wheel.

O Heart, I cry
    For love and life, pardon and hope and strength!
O Father, I am thine; I shall not die,
    But I shall sleep at length!

    'Tis Friendship's pledge, my young, fair friend,
        Nor thou the gift refuse,
    Nor with unwilling ear attend
        The moralizing muse.

    Since thou in all thy youth and charms,
        Must bid the world adieu,
    (A world 'gainst peace in constant arms)
        To join the friendly few.

    Since, thy gay morn of life o'ercast,
        Chill came the tempest's lower;
    (And ne'er misfortune's eastern blast
        Did nip a fairer flower.)

    Since life's gay scenes must charm no more,
        Still much is left behind;
    Still nobler wealth hast thou in store,
        The comforts of the mind!

    Thine is the self-approving glow,
        On conscious honour's part;
    And, dearest gift of heaven belo...

Ellen, you were thoughtless once
Of beauty or of grace,
Simple and homely in attire,
Careless of form and face;
Then whence this change? and wherefore now
So often smooth your hair?
And wherefore deck your youthful form
With such unwearied care?

Tell us, and cease to tire our ears
With that familiar strain,
Why will you play those simple tunes
So often, o'er again?
'Indeed, dear friends, I can but say
That childhood's thoughts are gone;
Each year its own new feelings brings,
And years move swiftly on:

'And for these little simple airs,
I love to play them o'er
So much, I dare not promise, now,
To play them never more.'
I answered, and it was enough;
They turned them to depart;
They could not read my secret thoughts,

[1]

An iron pot proposed
To an earthen pot a journey.
The latter was opposed,
Expressing the concern he
Had felt about the danger
Of going out a ranger.
He thought the kitchen hearth
The safest place on earth
For one so very brittle.
'For thee, who art a kettle,
And hast a tougher skin,
There's nought to keep thee in.'
'I'll be thy body-guard,'
Replied the iron pot;
'If anything that's hard
Should threaten thee a jot,
Between you I will go,
And save thee from the blow.'
This offer him persuaded.
The iron pot paraded
Himself as guard and guide
Close at his cousin's side.
Now, in their tripod way,
They hobble as they may;
And eke together bolt
At every little jolt, -
Which gives the crockery...

Old it is, and worn and battered,
As I lift it from the stall;
And the leaves are frayed and tattered,
And the pendent sides are shattered,
Pierced and blackened by a ball.

'Tis the tale of grief and gladness
Told by sad St. Pierre of yore,
That in front of France's madness
Hangs a strange seductive sadness,
Grown pathetic evermore.

And a perfume round it hovers,
Which the pages half reveal,
For a folded corner covers,
Interlaced, two names of lovers,--
A "Savignac" and "Lucile."

As I read I marvel whether,
In some pleasant old château,
Once they read this book together,
In the scented summer weather,
With the shining Loire below?

Nooked--secluded from espial,
Did Love slip and snare them so,
While the hour...

Travellers in Mexico have found the form of a serpent invariably pictured over the doorways of the Indian Temples, and on the interior walls, the impression of a red hand.

The superstitions attached to the phenomena of the thunderstorm and Aurora Borealis, alluded to in the poem, are well authenticated.


I saw him in vision,--the last of that race
Who were destined to vanish before the Pale-face,
As the dews of the evening from mountain and dale,
When the thirsty young Morning withdraws her dark veil;
Alone with the Past and the Future's chill breath,
Like a soul that has entered the valley of Death.

He stood where of old from the Fane of the Sun,
While cycles unnumbered their centuries run,
Never quenched, never fading, and mocking at Time,
Blazed the fire sace...

The golden harvest-tide is here, the corn
Bows its proud tops beneath the reaper's hand.
Ripe orchards' plenteous yields enrich the land;
Bring the first fruits and offer them this morn,
With the stored sweetness of all summer hours,
The amber honey sucked from myriad flowers,
And sacrifice your best first fruits to-day,
With fainting hearts and hands forespent with toil,
Offer the mellow harvest's splendid spoil,
To Him who gives and Him who takes away.


Bring timbrels, bring the harp of sweet accord,
And in a pleasant psalm your voice attune,
And blow the cornet greeting the new moon.
Sing, holy, holy, holy, is the Lord,
Who killeth and who quickeneth again,
Who woundeth and who healeth mortal pain,
Whose hand afflicts us, and who sends us peace.<...

(For Joyce Kilmer)


When the dreamy night is on, up the Hudson river,
And the sheen of modern taste is dim and far away,
Ghostly men on phantom rafts make the waters shiver,
Laughing in the sibilance of the silver spray.
Yea, and up the woodlands, staunch in moonlit weather,
Go the ghostly horsemen, adventuresome to ride,
White as mist the doublet-braize, bandolier and feather,
Fleet as gallant Robin Hood in an eventide.

Times are gone that knew the craft in the role of rovers,
Fellows of the open, care could never load:
Unalarmed for bed or board, they were leisure's lovers,
Summer bloomed in story on the Hyde Park Road.
Summer was a blossom, but the fruit was autumn,
Fragrant haylofts for a bed, cider-cakes in store,
Warmer was a cup they know, w...

Sorrow, on wing through the world for ever,
Here and there for awhile would borrow
Rest, if rest might haply deliver
Sorrow.

One thought lies close in her heart gnawn thorough
With pain, a weed in a dried-up river,
A rust-red share in an empty furrow.

Hearts that strain at her chain would sever
The link where yesterday frets to-morrow:
All things pass in the world, but never
Sorrow.

This was the tale Sher Afzul told to me,
While the spent camels bubbled on their knees,
And ruddy camp-fires twinkled through the gloom
Sweet with the fragrance from the Sinjib trees.

I had a friend who lay, condemned to death
In gaol for murder, wholly innocent,
Yet caught in webs of luckless circumstance; -
Thou know'st how lies, of good and ill intent,

Cluster like flies around a justice-court,
Wheel within wheel, revolving screw on screw; -
But from his prison he escaped and fled,
Keeping his liberty a night or two

Among the lonely hills, where, shackled still,
He braved a village, seeking for a file
To loose his irons; alas! he lost his life
Through the base sweetness of a woman's smile.

Lovely she was, and young, who gave the yout...

Reasoning at every step he treads,
Man yet mistakes his way;
While meaner things, whom instinct leads,
Are rarely known to stray.


One silent eve I wander’d late,
And heard the voice of love;
The turtle thus address’d her mate,
And soothed the listening dove:


Our mutual bond of faith and truth
No time shall disengage,
Those blessings of our early youth
Shall cheer our latest age:


While innocence without disguise,
And constancy sincere,
Shall fill the circles of those eyes,
And mine can read them there;


Those ills, that wait on all below,
Shall ne’er be felt by me,
Or gently felt, and only so,
As being shared with thee.


When lightnings flash among the trees,
Or kites are hoverin...

Sweet, drooping, azure tinted bells,
How dear you are;
Bringing the scent of shady dells,
To me from far;
Telling of spring and gladsome sunny hours, -
Nature's bright jewels!=-heart-refreshing flowers!

Oh, for a stroll when opening day
Silvers the dew,
Kissing the buds, whilst zephyrs play
As though they knew
Their gentle breath was needed, just to shake
Your slumbering beauties, and to bid you wake.

Far from the moilding town and trade,
How sweet to spend
An hour amid the misty glade,
And find a friend
In every tiny blossom, and to lie,
And dream of Him whose love can never die.

Ye are Gael's messengers, sent here
To make us glad;
Mute, and yet eloquent, to cheer
The heart that's sad;
To turn our thoughts from ...

I.

Dead!
And the Muses cried with a stormy cry
‘Send them no more, for evermore.
Let the people die.’


II.

Dead!
‘Is it he then brought so low?’
And a careless people flock’d from the fields
With a purse to pay for the show.


III.

Dead, who had served his time,
Was one of the people’s kings,
Had labour’d in lifting them out of slime,
And showing them, souls have wings!


IV.

Dumb on the winter heath he lay.
His friends had stript him bare,
And roll’d his nakedness everyway
That all the crowd might stare.


V.

A storm-worn signpost not to be read,
And a tree with a moulder’d nest
On its barkless bones, stood stark by the dead;
And behind him, low in t...

Man, Earth's poor shadow! talks of Earth's decay:
But hath it nothing of eternal kin?
No majesty that shall not pass away?
No soul of greatness springing up within?
Thought marks without hoar shadows of sublime,
Pictures of power, which if not doomed to win
Eternity, stand laughing at old Time
For ages: in the grand ancestral line
Of things eternal, mounting to divine,
I read Magnificence where ages pay
Worship like conquered foes to the Apennine,
Because they could not conquer. There sits Day
Too high for Night to come at--mountains shine,
Outpeering Time, too lofty for decay.

Children (as such forgive them) have I known,
Ever in their own eager pastime bent
To make the incurious bystander, intent
On his own swarming thoughts, an interest own;
Too fearful or too fond to play alone.
Do thou, whom light in thine own inmost soul
(Not less thy boast) illuminates, control
Wishes unworthy of a man full-grown.
What though the holy secret which moulds thee
Moulds not the solid Earth? though never Winds
Have whisper’d it to the complaining Sea,
Nature’s great law, and law of all men’s minds
To its own impulse every creature stirs:
Live by thy light, and Earth will live by hers

Tuscan, that wanderest through the realms of gloom,
    With thoughtful pace, and sad, majestic eyes,
    Stern thoughts and awful from thy soul arise,
    Like Farinata from his fiery tomb.
Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom;
    Yet in thy heart what human sympathies,
    What soft compassion glows, as in the skies
    The tender stars their clouded lamps relume!
Methinks I see thee stand, with pallid cheeks,
    By Fra Hilario in his diocese,
    As up the convent-walls, in golden streaks,
The ascending sunbeams mark the day's decrease;
    And, as he asks what there the stranger seeks,
    Thy voice along the cloister whispers, "Peace!"

NEW CASTLE, JULY 4, 1878

For a hundred years the pulse of time
    Has throbbed for Liberty;
For a hundred years the grand old clime
    Columbia has been free;
        For a hundred years our country's love,
        The Stars and Stripes, has waved above.

Away far out on the gulf of years -
    Misty and faint and white
Through the fogs of wrong - a sail appears,
    And the Mayflower heaves in sight,
        And drifts again, with its little flock
        Of a hundred souls, on Plymouth Rock.

Do you see them there - as long, long since -
    Through the lens of History;
Do you see them there as their chieftain prints
    In the snow his bended knee,
        And lifts his voice through the wintry blast
        In thanks for a peace...

Why should I care for the Ages
Because they are old and grey?
To me, like sudden laughter,
The stars are fresh and gay;
The world is a daring fancy,
And finished yesterday.

Why should I bow to the Ages
Because they were drear and dry?
Slow trees and ripening meadows
For me go roaring by,
A living charge, a struggle
To escalade the sky.

The eternal suns and systems,
Solid and silent all,
To me are stars of an instant,
Only the fires that fall
From God's good rocket, rising
On this night of carnival.