Some in front rank will defiant,
        Boldly place the poet Bryant.

Chameleons feed on light and air:
Poets' food is love and fame:
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,
Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a day?

Poets are on this cold earth,
As chameleons might be,
Hidden from their early birth
in a cave beneath the sea;
Where light is, chameleons change:
Where love is not, poets do:
Fame is love disguised: if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
A poet's free and heavenly mind:
If bright chameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are.
C...

My thoughts soar not as they ought to soar,
    Higher and higher on soul-lent wings;
But ever and often, and more and more
    They are dragged down earthward by little things,
By little troubles and little needs,
As a lark might be tangled among the weeds.

My purpose is not what it ought to be,
    Steady and fixed, like a star on high,
But more like a fisherman's light at sea;
    Hither and thither it seems to fly -
Sometimes feeble, and sometimes bright,
Then suddenly lost in the gloom of night.

My life is far from my dream of life -
    Calmly contented, serenely glad;
But, vexed and worried by daily strife,
    It is always troubled, and ofttimes sad -
And the heights I had thought I should reach one day
Grow dimmer and dimmer, and fart...

'Since Sinus crossed the Milky Way, sixty thousand years have gone.' - GARRETT P. SERVISS.

Since Sirius crossed the Milky Way
    Full sixty thousand years have gone,
Yet hour by hour, and day by day,
    This tireless star speeds on and on.

Methinks he must be moved to mirth
    By that droll tale of Genesis,
Which says creation had its birth
    For such a puny world as this.

To hear how One who fashioned all
    Those Solar Systems, tier on tiers,
Expressed in little Adam's fall
    The purpose of a million spheres.

And, witness of the endless plan,
    To splendid wrath he must be wrought
By pigmy creeds presumptuous man
    Sends forth as God's primeval thought.

Perchance from half a hundred stars
    He hears as ma...

Thrice welcome to thy sisters of the East,
To the strong tillers of a rugged home,
With spray-wet locks to Northern winds released,
And hardy feet o'erswept by ocean's foam;
And to the young nymphs of the golden West,
Whose harvest mantles, fringed with prairie bloom,
Trail in the sunset, O redeemed and blest,
To the warm welcome of thy sisters come!
Broad Pennsylvania, down her sail-white bay
Shall give thee joy, and Jersey from her plains,
And the great lakes, where echo, free alway,
Moaned never shoreward with the clank of chains,
Shall weave new sun-bows in their tossing spray,
And all their waves keep grateful holiday.
And, smiling on thee through her mountain rains,
Vermont shall bless thee; and the granite peaks,
And vast Katahdin o'er his woods, shall ...

Now blest be Providence divine,
    Surpassing human skill!
That often takes from things malign,
    The privilege of ill.

Good folks! who love a simple strain.
    That seems like fancy's sound;
Rejoicing, when in nature's reign,
    The marvellous is found,

As strange a tale, as history knows,
    Accept in artless rhyme:
An honest Greek relates in prose,
    This wonder of old time.

The antients gloried to describe,
    And held such wonders dear;
For of the Psylli's signal tribe,
    'Twas their delight to hear.

The Psylli were an Afric clan,
    Of wond'rous power possest;
Fierce snakes, of enmity to man,
    They could with ease divest.

This gift they boasted with delight,
    A gift to them confin'd...

        [From a MS. in the old Royal Library, in the British Museum, the exact reference to which is mislaid. It is written, if I recollect rightly, in a hand of the time of Henry VIII, in an older manuscript.]

    We make no spare
    Of John Hunkes' mare;
    And now I
    Think she will die;
    He thought it good
    To put her in the wood,
    To seek where she might ly dry;
    If the mare should chance to fale,
    Then the crownes would for her sale.

Not for the thought that burns on keen and clear,
    Heat that the heat has turned from red to white,
    The passion of the lone remembering night
One with the patience day must see and hear -
Not for the shafts the lying foemen fear,
    Shot from the soul's intense self-centring light -
    But for the heart of love divine and bright,
We praise you, worker, thinker, poet, seer!
Man of the People, - faithful in all parts,
    The veins' last drop, the brain's last flickering dole,
    You on whose forehead beams the aureole
That hope and "certain hope" alone imparts -
    Us have you given your perfect heart and soul;
Wherefore receive as yours our souls and hearts!

    All drear and barren seemed the hours,
    That passed rain-swept and tempest-blown.
    The dead leaves fell like brownish notes
    Within the rain's grey monotone.

    There came a lapse between the showers;
    The clouds grew rich with sunset gleams;
    Then o'er the sky a rainbow sprang -
    A bridge unto the Land of Dreams.

Twilight, a blossom grey in shadowy valleys dwells:
Under the radiant dark the deep blue-tinted bells
In quietness reïmage heaven within their blooms,
Sapphire and gold and mystery. What strange perfumes,
Out of what deeps arising, all the flower-bells fling,
Unknowing the enchanted odorous song they sing!
Oh, never was an eve so living yet: the wood
Stirs not but breathes enraptured quietide.
Here in these shades the Ancient knows itself, the Soul,
And out of slumber waking starts unto the goal.
What bright companions nod and go along with it!
Out of the teeming dark what dusky creatures flit,
That through the long leagues of the island night above
Come by me, wandering, whispering, beseeching love;
As in the twilight children gather close and press
Nigh and more ...

All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee:
All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem:
In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea:

Breath and bloom, shade and shine, wonder, wealth, and, how far above them,
Truth, that’s brighter than gem,
Trust, that’s purer than pearl,
Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe, all were for me
In the kiss of one girl.

Although you hide in the ebb and flow
Of the pale tide when the moon has set,
The people of coming days will know
About the casting out of my net,
And how you have leaped times out of mind
Over the little silver cords,
And think that you were hard and unkind,
And blame you with many bitter words.

When life looks drear and lonely, love,
    And pleasant fancies flee,
Then will the Muses only, love,
    Bestow a thought on me!
Mine is a harp which Pleasure, love,
    To waken strives in vain;
To Joy's entrancing measure, love,
    It ne'er can thrill again!--
            Why mock me, Bessy Bell?

Oh, do not ask me ever, love,
    For rapture-woven rhymes;
For vain is each endeavor, love,
    To sound Mirth's play-bell chimes!
Yet still believe me, dearest love,
    Though sad my song may be,
This heart still dotes sincerest, love,
    And grateful turns to thee--
            My once fond Bessy Bell!

Those eyes still rest upon me, love!
    I feel their magic spell!
With that same look you won me, love,
    Fair, gentle...

I.

Ah me! those old familiar bounds!
That classic house, those classic grounds
My pensive thought recalls!
What tender urchins now confine,
What little captives now repine,
Within yon irksome walls?


II.

Ay, that's the very house! I know
Its ugly windows, ten a-row!
Its chimneys in the rear!
And there's the iron rod so high,
That drew the thunder from the sky
And turn'd our table-beer!


III.

There I was birch'd! there I was bred!
There like a little Adam fed
From Learning's woeful tree!
The weary tasks I used to con! -
The hopeless leaves I wept upon! -
Most fruitless leaves to me! -


IV.

The summon'd class! - the awful bow! -
I wonder who is master now
And wholeso...

All seemed delighted, though the elders more,
Of course, than were the children. - Thus, before
Much interchange of mirthful compliment,
The story-teller said his stories "went"
(Like a bad candle) best when they went out, -
And that some sprightly music, dashed about,
Would wholly quench his "glimmer," and inspire
Far brighter lights.

    And, answering this desire,
The flutist opened, in a rapturous strain
Of rippling notes - a perfect April-rain
Of melody that drenched the senses through; -
Then - gentler - gentler - as the dusk sheds dew,
It fell, by velvety, staccatoed halts,
Swooning away in old "Von Weber's Waltz."
Then the young ladies sang "Isle of the Sea" -
In ebb and flow and wave so billowy, -
Only with quave...

OD. iii. 3.


The just man's single-purposed mind
Not furious mobs that prompt to ill
May move, nor kings' frowns shake his will
Which is as rock; not warrior-winds

That keep the seas in wild unrest;
Nor bolt by Jove's own finger hurled:
The fragments of a shivered world
Would crash round him still self-possest.

Jove's wandering son reached, thus endowed,
The fiery bastions of the skies;
Thus Pollux; with them Caesar lies
Beside his nectar, radiant-browed.

For this rewarded, tiger-drawn
Rode Bacchus, reining necks before
Untamed; for this War's horses bore
Quirinus up from Acheron,

When in heav'n's conclave Juno said,
Thrice welcomed: "Troy is in the dust;
Troy, by a judge accursed, unjust,
And that strange...

Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing;
Islands of opal float on silver seas;
Swift splendors kindle, barbaric, amazing;
Pale ports of amber, golden argosies.
Ringed all around us the proud peaks are glowing;
Fierce chiefs in council, their wigwam the sky;
Far, far below us the big Yukon flowing,
Like threaded quicksilver, gleams to the eye.

Men of the High North, you who have known it;
You in whose hearts its splendors have abode;
Can you renounce it, can you disown it?
Can you forget it, its glory and its goad?
Where is the hardship, where is the pain of it?
Lost in the limbo of things you've forgot;
Only remain the guerdon and gain of it;
Zest of the foray, and God, how you fought!

You who have made good, you foreign faring;
You mon...

With sanguine looks
    And rolling walk
Among the rooks
    He loved to stalk,

While on the land
    With gusty laugh
From a full hand
    He scattered chaff.

Now that within
    His spirit sleeps
A harvest thin
    The sickle reaps;

But the dumb fields
    Desire his tread,
And no earth yields
    A wheat more red.