I go through the days
Like a thief.
And no one hears
My heart lament to itself.
Please have pity.
Like me.
I hate you.
I want to embrace you.

Good-morning, Karlene. It's a very
Fine beautiful world we are in.
Well, you do look as ripe as a berry;
And, pardon me, such a real chin!

And may I--Ah, thank you; the pleasure
Is mine; just one kiss by your ear!--
May I introduce myself as your
Most dutiful godfather, dear?

I have fumed, like champagne that is fizzy,
To pay my respects at your door.
But the publishers keep one so busy.
Forgive my not calling before!

Karlene, you're a very small lady
To venture so far all alone;
Especially into so shady
A place as this planet has grown.

When I now, my dear, was at your age,
When nobody tried to be rich,
But lived on high thinking and porridge
(And didn't know t' other from which!),

...

In the South lies a lonesome, hungry Land;
He huddles his rags with a cripple's hand;
He mutters, prone on the barren sand,
What time his heart is breaking.

He lifts his bare head from the ground;
He listens through the gloom around:
The winds have brought him a strange sound
Of distant merrymaking.

Comes now the Peace so long delayed?
Is it the cheerful voice of Aid?
Begins the time his heart has prayed,
When men may reap and sow?

Ah, God! Back to the cold earth's breast!
The sages chuckle o'er their jest;
Must they, to give a people rest,
Their dainty wit forego?

The tyrants sit in a stately hall;
They jibe at a wretched people's fall;
The tyrants forget how fresh is the pall
Over their dead and ours.

Look ho...

        Changed? Yes, I will confess it - I have changed.
    I do not love in the old fond way.
        I am your friend still - time has not estranged
    One kindly feeling of that vanished day.

        But the bright glamour which made life a dream,
    The rapture of that time, its sweet content,
        Like visions of a sleeper's brain they seem -
    And yet I cannot tell you how they went.

        Why do you gaze with such accusing eyes
    Upon me, dear? Is it so very strange
        That hearts, like all things underneath God's skies
    Should sometimes feel the influence of change?

        The birds, the flowers, the foliage of the trees,
    The stars which seem so fixed and so sublime,
        Vast continents and the eternal seas -
...

DEAR COUSIN JOHN:

    I'm very glad you sent that money through,
    By Cousin Seth, an' not by mail, as I requested you!
    The fam'ly's just so much ahead: 'twere best it never came.
    If Jeroboam Jones had twined his fingers 'round the same.
    For that young man has principles fit only to abhor,
    And isn't the kind of relative that I was lookin' for!

    My sakes! Millennium's nowhere near, when men so false can be
    As to equivocate themselves into my family tree;
    An' on its honest branches graft the shoots of their design,
    An' make me think they're good because they're relatives of mine;
    While under those fraternal smiles a robber's frown is hid;
    But that's the inappropriate thing that Jeroboam did!

    When Cousin Seth the ta...

In a fair and sunny forest glade
    O'erarched with chesnuts old,
Through which the radiant sunbeams made
    A network of bright gold,
A girl smiled softly to herself,
    And dreamed the hours away;
Lulled by the sound of the murmuring brook
    With the summer winds at play.

Jewels gleamed not in the tresses fair
    That fell in shining showers,
Naught decked that brow of beauty rare
    But a wreath of forest flowers;
And the violet wore no deeper blue
    Than her own soft downcast eye,
Whilst her bright cheek with the rose's hue
    In loveliness well might vie.

But she was too fair to bloom unknown
    By forest or valley side,
And long ere two sunny years had flown,
    The girl was a wealthy bride -
Removed to so high...

"Are women fair?" Ay, wondrous fair to see, too.
"Are women sweet?" Yea, passing sweet they be, too.
Most fair and sweet to them that only love them;
Chaste and discreet to all save them that prove them.

"Are women wise?" Not wise, but they be witty;
"Are women witty?" Yea, the more the pity;
They are so witty, and in wit so wily,
Though ye be ne'er so wise, they will beguile ye.

"Are women fools?" Not fools, but fondlings many;
"Can women fond be faithful unto any?"
When snow-white swans do turn to colour sable,
Then women fond will be both firm and stable.

"Are women saints?" No saints, nor yet no devils;
"Are women good?" Not good, but needful evils.
So Angel-like, that devils I do not doubt them,
So needful evils that few can live without them...

To each progressive soul there comes a day
    When all things that have pleased and satisfied
Grow flavourless, the springs of joy seem dried.
    No more the waters of youth's fountains play;
Yet out of reach, tiptoeing as they may,
    The more mature and higher pleasures hide.
Life, like a careless nurse, fails to provide
    New toys for those the soul has cast away.

Upon a strange land's border all alone,
    Awhile it stands dismayed and desolate.
Nude too, since its old garments are outgrown;
    Till clothed with strength befitting its estate,
It grasps at length those raptures that are known
    To souls who learn to labour, and to wait.

Say thou not sadly, "never," and "no more,"
    But from thy lips banish those falsest words;
While life remains that which was thine before
Again may be thine; in Time's storehouse lie
    Days, hours, and moments, that have unknown hoards
Of joy, as well as sorrow: passing by,
Smiles, come with tears; therefore with hopeful eye
Look thou on dear things, though they turn away,
For thou and they, perchance, some future day
Shall meet again, and the gone bliss return;
For its departure then make thou no mourn,
But with stout heart bid what thou lov'st farewell;
That which the past hath given the future gives as well.

"O! charming May!"
That's what they say.
The saying is not new, -
The saying is not true; -
O! May!

Bare fields and icebound streams,
Sunshine in fitful gleams,
May smile
Beguile,
And dispel poets' dreams.

Was ever May so gay
As what the poets say?
If so,
We know,
We live not in their day.

A cosy coat and wrap,
You may not find mishap -
Propo
You know
When comes the next cold snap.

A heavy woollen scarf,
Strong boots that reach the calf, -
Away we go
Through snow and slush and wet, -
And can we once forget
'Tis May? Oh, no!

Best is the old advice
Which we so oft despise,
"Cast not a clout
Till May goes out."
May like a maiden, lies.

A Maypole dance. -...

So highest poets, painters, owe to Thee
Their being and disciples; none were there,
Hadst Thou not been; Thou art the centre where
The Truth did find an infinite form; and she
Left not the earth again, but made it be
One of her robing rooms, where she doth wear
All forms of revelation. Artists bear
Tapers in acolyte humility.
O Poet! Painter! soul of all! thy art
Went forth in making artists. Pictures? No;
But painters, who in love should ever show
To earnest men glad secrets from God's heart.
So, in the desert, grass and wild flowers start,
When through the sand the living waters go.

(NOVEMBER 4, 1864)

Norröna-race's longing,
It was the sea's free wave,
And fight of heroes thronging,
And honor that it gave;
Their thoughts and deeds upspringing
From roots in Surtr's fire,
With branches topward swinging
To Yggdrasil aspire.

His course alone each guided,
Oft brother-harm was done;
Our vict'ries were divided,
The honor gained was one.
Each heard his call time-fated,
First Norway, Denmark, came,
The Swede the longest waited,
But greatest grew his fame.

In eastern, western regions
The Danish dragons shone,
To Norway's roving legions
Jerusalem was known.
From sparks the Swedish spirit
Struck forth in Poland's night,
Through Lützen must inherit
Full half the world its light.

Firs...

When the great universe was wrought
To might and majesty from naught,
The all creative force was -
        THOUGHT.

That force is thine.    Though desolate
The way may seem, command thy fate.
Send forth thy thought -
        Create - CREATE!

Who comes (my soul no longer doubt),
Rising from earth's wormy sod,
And whilst ten thousand angels sing,
Ascends - ascends to heaven, a God?

Saviour, Lord, I know thee now!
Mighty to redeem and save,
Such glory blazes on thy brow,
Which lights the darkness of the grave.

Saviour, Lord, the human soul,
Forgotten every sorrow here,
Shall thus, aspiring to its goal,
Triumph in its native sphere.

It was deadly cold in Danbury town
    One terrible night in mid November,
    A night that the Danbury folk remember
For the sleety wind that hammered them down,
That chilled their faces and chapped their skin,
    And froze their fingers and bit their feet,
And made them ice to the heart within,
    And spattered and scattered
    And shattered and battered
Their shivering bodies about the street;
And the fact is most of them didn't roam
In the face of the storm, but stayed at home;
While here and there a policeman, stamping
To keep himself warm or sedately tramping
Hither and thither, paced his beat;
Or peered where out of the blizzard's welter
Some wretched being had crept to shelter,
And now, drenched through by the sleet, a muddled
Blur of a ma...

White-haired and hoary-bearded, who art thou
That speedest on, albeit bent with age,
Even as a youth that followeth after dreams?
Whence are thy feet, and whither trends thy way?

Stayed not his hurried steps, but as he passed
His low, hoarse answer fell upon the wind:
"Go thou and question yonder mountain-peaks;
Go thou and ask the hoary-heaving main;
Nay, if thou wilt, the great, globed, silent stars
That sail innumerable the shoreless sea,
And let the eldest answer if he may.
Lo the unnumbered myriad, myriad worlds
Rolling around innumerable suns,
Through all the boundless, bottomless abyss,
Are but as grains of sand upwhirled and flung
By roaring winds and scattered on the sea.
I have beheld them and my hand hath sown.

"Far-twinkling faint ...

Thy sooty godhead I desire
Still to be ready with thy fire;
That should my book despised be,
Acceptance it might find of thee.

The valley rings with mirth and joy;
Among the hills the echoes play
A never never ending song,
To welcome in the May.
The magpie chatters with delight;
The mountain raven's youngling brood
Have left the mother and the nest;
And they go rambling east and west
In search of their own food;
Or through the glittering vapors dart
In very wantonness of heart.

Beneath a rock, upon the grass,
Two boys are sitting in the sun;
Their work, if any work they have,
Is out of mind, or done.
On pipes of sycamore they play
The fragments of a Christmas hymn;
Or with that plant which in our dale
We call stag-horn, or fox's tail,
Their rusty hats they trim:
And thus, as happy as the day,
Those Shepherds wear the time away.

Along the river...