O little feet! that such long years
Must wander on through hopes and fears,
    Must ache and bleed beneath your load;
I, nearer to the wayside inn
Where toil shall cease and rest begin,
    Am weary, thinking of your road!

O little hands! that, weak or strong,
Have still to serve or rule so long,
    Have still so long to give or ask;
I, who so much with book and pen
Have toiled among my fellow-men,
    Am weary, thinking of your task.

O little hearts! that throb and beat
With such impatient, feverish heat,
    Such limitless and strong desires;
Mine that so long has glowed and burned,
With passions into ashes turned
    Now covers and conceals its fires.

O little souls! as pure and white
And crystalline as rays of light
...

"Though I take the wings of the morning."

Sweet are His ways who rules above,
    He gives from wrath a sheltering place;
    But covert none is found from grace,
Man shall not hide himself from love.

What though I take to me the wide
    Wings of the morning and forth fly,
    Faster He goes, whoso care on high
Shepherds the stars and doth them guide.

What though the tents foregone, I roam
    Till day wax dim lamenting me;
    He wills that I shall sleep to see
The great gold stairs to His sweet home.

What though the press I pass before,
    And climb the branch, He lifts his face;
    I am not secret from His grace
Lost in the leafy sycamore.

What though denied with murmuring deep
    I shame my Lord, - it shal...

The memory of what we've lost
Is with us more than what we've won;
Perhaps because we count the cost
By what we could, yet have not done.

'Twixt act and purpose fate hath drawn
Invisible threads we can not break,
And puppet-like these move us on
The stage of life, and break or make.

Less than the dust from which we're wrought,
We come and go, and still are hurled
From change to change, from naught to naught,
Heirs of oblivion and the world.

Here, take my heart--'twill be safe in thy keeping,
    While I go wandering o'er land and o'er sea;
Smiling or sorrowing, waking or sleeping,
    What need I care, so my heart is with thee?

If in the race we are destined to run, love,
    They who have light hearts the happiest be,
Then happier still must be they who have none, love.
    And that will be my case when mine is with thee.

It matters not where I may now be a rover,
    I care not how many bright eyes I may see;
Should Venus herself come and ask me to love her,
    I'd tell her I couldn't--my heart is with thee.

And there let it lie, growing fonder and, fonder--
    For, even should Fortune turn truant to me,
Why, let her go--I've a treasure beyond her,
    As long as my heart'...

'Where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.'


The time-gun rolls his nerve-destroying bray;
The toiling moon rides slowly o'er the trees;
The weary diners cast their cares away,
And seek the lawn for coolness and for ease.

Now spreads the gathering stillness like a pall,
And melancholy silence rules the scene,
Save where the bugler sounds his homing call,
And thirsty THOMAS leaves the wet canteen;

Save that from yonder lines in deepest gloom
Th' ambiguous mule does of the stick[1] bewail,
Whose dunder craft forbids him to consume
His proper blanket, or his neighbour's tail.

Beneath those jagged tiles, that low-built roof
(Whose inmost secret deeps let none divine!),
Each to his master's cry supremely proof,<...

Departed Child! I could forget thee once
Though at my bosom nursed; this woeful gain
Thy dissolution brings, that in my soul
Is present and perpetually abides
A shadow, never, never to be displaced
By the returning substance, seen or touched,
Seen by mine eyes, or clasped in my embrace.
Absence and death how differ they! and how
Shall I admit that nothing can restore
What one short sigh so easily removed?
Death, life, and sleep, reality and thought,
Assist me, God, their boundaries to know,
O teach me calm submission to thy Will!
The Child she mourned had overstepped the pale
Of Infancy, but still did breathe the air
That sanctifies its confines, and partook
Reflected beams of that celestial light
To all the Little-ones on sinful earth
Not unvouchsaf...

The fairest, brightest, hues of ether fade;
The sweetest notes must terminate and die;
O Friend! thy flute has breathed a harmony
Softly resounded through this rocky glade;
Such strains of rapture as the Genius played
In his still haunt on Bagdad's summit high;
He who stood visible to Mirza's eye,
Never before to human sight betrayed.
Lo, in the vale, the mists of evening spread!
The visionary Arches are not there,
Nor the green Islands, nor the shining Seas:
Yet sacred is to me this Mountain's head,
Whence I have risen, uplifted, on the breeze
Of harmony, above all earthly care.

Fuggendo la prigione ov' Amor m' ebbe.

HE LONGS TO RETURN TO THE CAPTIVITY OF LOVE.


    Fleeing the prison which had long detain'd,
Where Love dealt with me as to him seem'd well,
Ladies, the time were long indeed to tell,
How much my heart its new-found freedom pain'd.
I felt within I could not, so bereaved,
Live e'en a day: and, midway, on my eyes
That traitor rose in so complete disguise,
A wiser than myself had been deceived:
Whence oft I've said, deep sighing for the past,
Alas! the yoke and chains of old to me
Were sweeter far than thus released to be.
Me wretched! but to learn mine ill at last;
With what sore trial must I now forget
Errors that round my path myself have set.

MACGREGOR.

Why didn't you say you was promised, Rose-Ann?
Why didn't you name it to me,
Ere ever you tempted me hither, Rose-Ann,
So often, so wearifully?

O why did you let me be near 'ee, Rose-Ann,
Talking things about wedlock so free,
And never by nod or by whisper, Rose-Ann,
Give a hint that it wasn't to be?

Down home I was raising a flock of stock ewes,
Cocks and hens, and wee chickens by scores,
And lavendered linen all ready to use,
A-dreaming that they would be yours.

Mother said: "She's a sport-making maiden, my son";
And a pretty sharp quarrel had we;
O why do you prove by this wrong you have done
That I saw not what mother could see?

Never once did you say you was promised, Rose-Ann,
Never once did I dream it to be;
And it cuts...

My eyes are full of lonely mirth:
Reeling with want and worn with scars,
For pride of every stone on earth,
I shake my spear at all the stars.

A live bat beats my crest above,
Lean foxes nose where I have trod,
And on my naked face the love
Which is the loneliness of God.

Outlawed: since that great day gone by--
When before prince and pope and queen
I stood and spoke a blasphemy--
'Behold the summer leaves are green.'

They cursed me: what was that to me
Who in that summer darkness furled,
With but an owl and snail to see,
Had blessed and conquered all the world?

They bound me to the scourging-stake,
They laid their whips of thorn on me;
I wept to see the green rods break,
Though blood be beautiful to see.

Benea...

    They turned him loose; he bowed his head,
    A felon, bent and grey.
    His face was even as the Dead,
    He had no word to say.

    He sought the home of his old love,
    To look on her once more;
    And where her roses breathed above,
    He cowered beside the door.

    She sat there in the shining room;
    Her hair was silver grey.
    He stared and stared from out the gloom;
    He turned to go away.

    Her roses rustled overhead.
    She saw, with sudden start.
    "I knew that you would come," she said,
    And held him to her heart.

    Her face was rapt and angel-sweet;
    She touched his hair of grey;
    . . . . .
    BUT HE, SOB-SHAKEN, AT HER FEET,
    COULD ONLY PRAY AND PRAY.

Praise the generous gods for giving
In a world of wrath and strife
With a little time for living,
Unto all the joy of life.

At whatever source we drink it,
Art or love or faith or wine,
In whatever terms we think it,
It is common and divine.

Praise the high gods, for in giving
This to man, and this alone,
They have made his chance of living
Shine the equal of their own.

1875

Ye who know the Lone Trail fain would follow it,
Though it lead to glory or the darkness of the pit.
Ye who take the Lone Trail, bid your love good-bye;
The Lone Trail, the Lone Trail follow till you die.

The trails of the world be countless, and most of the trails be tried;
You tread on the heels of the many, till you come where the ways divide;
And one lies safe in the sunlight, and the other is dreary and wan,
Yet you look aslant at the Lone Trail, and the Lone Trail lures you on.
And somehow you're sick of the highway, with its noise and its easy needs,
And you seek the risk of the by-way, and you reck not where it leads.
And sometimes it leads to the desert, and the tongue swells out of the mouth,
And you stagger blind to the mirage, to die in the mocking drouth.

I looked upon the fair young flowers
That in our gardens bloom,
Gazed on their winning loveliness,
And then upon the tomb;
I looked upon the smiling earth,
The blue and cloudless sky,
And murmured in my spirit's depths,
"O I can never die!"

I heard my sister's joyous laugh,
As she danced lightly by,
Her heart was glad with love and hope,
Its pulse with youth beat high;
I sought my mother's quiet smile,
She fondly drew me nigh,
And still I said within my heart,
"O I can never die!"

Stern winter came, - the fairy flowers
Were swept by storms away,
And swiftly passed the verdant bloom
Of summer's lovely day;
My mother's smile grew more serene,
And brighter was her eye,
And now I know her only as
An angel in the sky.<...

Tho' right be aft put down by strength,
As mony a day we saw that,
The true and leilfu' cause at length
Shall bear the grie for a' that.
For a' that an a' that,
Guns, guillotines, and a' that,
The Fleur-de-lis, that lost her right,
Is queen again for a' that!

We'll twine her in a friendly knot
With England's rose and a' that,
The Shamrock shall not be forgot,
For Wellington made bra' that.
The Thistle, tho' her leaf be rude,
Yet faith we'll no misca' that,
She sheltered in her solitude
The Fleur-de-lis, for a' that!

The Austrian Vine, the Prussian pine.
(For Blucher's sake, hurra that,)
The Spanish olive too shall join,
And bloom in peace for a' that.
Stout Russia's hemp, so surely twin'd
Around our wreath we'll draw that,<...

Soon as the glazed and gleaming snow
Reflects the day-dawn cold and clear,
The hunter of the west must go
In depth of woods to seek the deer.

His rifle on his shoulder placed,
His stores of death arranged with skill,
His moccasins and snow-shoes laced,
Why lingers he beside the hill?

Far, in the dim and doubtful light,
Where woody slopes a valley leave,
He sees what none but lover might,
The dwelling of his Genevieve.

And oft he turns his truant eye,
And pauses oft, and lingers near;
But when he marks the reddening sky,
He bounds away to hunt the deer.

So many times the heart can break,
    So many ways,
Yet beat along and beat along
    So many days.

A fluttering thing we never see,
    And only hear
When some stern doctor to our side
    Presses his ear.

Strange hidden thing, that beats and beats
    We know not why,
And makes us live, though we indeed
    Would rather die.

Mysterious, fighting, loving thing,
    So sad, so true -
I would my laughing eyes some day
    Might look on you.

Oh, what's the way to Arcady,
    To Arcady, to Arcady;
Oh, what's the way to Arcady,
    Where all the leaves are merry?

Oh, what's the way to Arcady?
The spring is rustling in the tree,
The tree the wind is blowing through,
    It sets the blossoms flickering white.
I knew not skies could burn so blue
    Nor any breezes blow so light.
They blow an old-time way for me,
Across the world to Arcady.

Oh, what's the way to Arcady?
Sir Poet, with the rusty coat,
Quit mocking of the song-bird's note.
How have you heart for any tune,
You with the wayworn russet shoon?
Your scrip, a-swinging by your side,
Gapes with a gaunt mouth hungry-wide.
I'll brim it well with pieces red,
If you will tell the way to tread.

Oh,...