Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
And their warm tears; but all hath suffer’d change;
For surely now our household hearths are cold,
Our sons inherit us, our looks are strange,
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years’ war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.
The Gods are hard to reconcile;
‘T is hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labor unto aged breath,
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on ...

Phillis, give this humour over,
We too long have time abused;
I shall turn an errant rover
If the favour's still refused.

Faith 'tis nonsense out of measure,
Without ending thus to see
Women forced to taste a pleasure
Which they love as well as we.

Let not pride and folly share you,
We were made but to enjoy;
Ne'er will Age or Censure spare you
E'er the more for being coy.

Never fancy time's before you;
Youth believe me will away;
Then, alas! who will adore you,
Or to wrinkles tribute pay?

All the swains on you attending
Show how much your charms deserve;
But, miser-like, for fear of spending
You amidst your plenty starve.

While a thousand freer lasses,
Who their youth and charms employ,
Though your b...

The Sabbath-day, of every day the best,
The poor mans happiness, a poor man sings;
When labour has no claim to break his rest,
And the light hours fly swift on easy wings.
What happiness this holy morning brings,
How soft its pleasures on his senses steal;
How sweet the village-bells' first warning rings;
And O how comfortable does he feel,
When with his family at ease he takes his early meal.

The careful wife displays her frugal hoard,
And both partake in comfort though they're poor;
While love's sweet offsprings crowd the lowly board,
Their little likenesses in miniature.
Though through the week he labour does endure,
And weary limbs oft cause him to complain,
This welcome morning always brings a cure;
It teems with joys his soul to entertain,
And...

A Child-World, yet a wondrous world no less,
To those who knew its boundless happiness.
A simple old frame house - eight rooms in all -
Set just one side the center of a small
But very hopeful Indiana town, -
The upper-story looking squarely down
Upon the main street, and the main highway
From East to West, - historic in its day,
Known as The National Road - old-timers, all
Who linger yet, will happily recall
It as the scheme and handiwork, as well
As property, of "Uncle Sam," and tell
Of its importance, "long and long afore
Railroads wuz ever dreamp' of!" - Furthermore,
The reminiscent first Inhabitants
Will make that old road blossom with romance
Of snowy caravans, in long parade
Of covered vehicles, of every grade
From ox-cart of most primi...

Burly, dozing humble-bee,
Where thou art is clime for me.
Let them sail for Porto Rique,
Far-off heats through seas to seek;
I will follow thee alone,
Thou animated torrid-zone!
Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer,
Let me chase thy waving lines;
Keep me nearer, me thy hearer,
Singing over shrubs and vines.

Insect lover of the sun,
Joy of thy dominion!
Sailor of the atmosphere;
Swimmer through the waves of air;
Voyager of light and noon;
Epicurean of June;
Wait, I prithee, till I come
Within earshot of thy hum,--
All without is martyrdom.

When the south wind, in May days,
With a net of shining haze
Silvers the horizon wall,
And with softness touching all,
Tints the human countenance
With a color of romance,
An...

There came a day at summer's full
Entirely for me;
I thought that such were for the saints,
Where revelations be.

The sun, as common, went abroad,
The flowers, accustomed, blew,
As if no soul the solstice passed
That maketh all things new.

The time was scarce profaned by speech;
The symbol of a word
Was needless, as at sacrament
The wardrobe of our Lord.

Each was to each the sealed church,
Permitted to commune this time,
Lest we too awkward show
At supper of the Lamb.

The hours slid fast, as hours will,
Clutched tight by greedy hands;
So faces on two decks look back,
Bound to opposing lands.

And so, when all the time had failed,
Without external sound,
Each bound the other's crucifix,
We gave no ...

There is an artless tradition among the Indians, related by Irving, of a warrior who saw the thunderbolt lying upon the ground, with a beautifully wrought moccasin on each side of it. Thinking he had found a prize, he put on the moccasins, but they bore him away to the land of spirits, whence he never returned.


Loud pealed the thunder
From arsenal high,
Bright flashed the lightning
Athwart the broad sky;
Fast o'er the prairie,
Through torrent and shade,
Sought the red hunter
His hut in the glade.

Deep roared the cannon
Whose forge is the sun,
And red was the chain
The thunderbolt spun;
O'er the thick wild wood
There quivered a line,
Low 'mid the green leaves
Lay hunter and pine.

Clear was the sunshine,
The hurricane past,

    O the waiting in the watches of the night!
    In the darkness, desolation, and contrition and affright;
    The awful hush that holds us shut away from all delight:
    The ever weary memory that ever weary goes
    Recounting ever over every aching loss it knows -
    The ever weary eyelids gasping ever for repose -
    In the dreary, weary watches of the night!

    Dark - stifling dark - the watches of the night!
    With tingling nerves at tension, how the blackness flashes white
    With spectral visitations smitten past the inner sight! -
    What shuddering sense of wrongs we've wrought that may not be redressed -
    Of tears we did not brush away - of lips we left unpressed,
    And hands that we let fall, with all their loyalty unguessed!
    Ah! the empt...

Browning contributed the money he earned by this poem to the people of Paris suffering from the Franco-Prussian War. Hervé Riel appeared in the Cornhill Magazine for March, 1871, and the publisher, Mr. George Smith, paid one hundred pounds for the poem.


I
On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two,
Did the English fight the French, woe to France!
And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue,
Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue,
Came crowding ship on ship to Saint Malo on the Rance,
With the English fleet in view.

II
’Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase;
First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville;
Close on him fled, great and small,
Twenty-two good ships ...

With noiseless footstep, like the white-robed snow,
    The old year with closed record steals away;
Record of gladness, suffering, joy, and woe,
    Of all that goes to make life's little day.

Here, in this bright and pleasant little town,
    As everywhere, a noiseless scythe hath swept;
The bright, the green, the flow'ret all cut down,
    For heart ties severed loving hearts have wept.

And some are gone we very ill can spare,
    And some we gladly would have died to save,
And the young blossom of the hearth, so fair;
    But all alike have passed thy gates, oh, grave!

We see so many sable signs of woe,
    Each, with mute voice, memento mori saith;
As if our town that erst has sparkled so
    Were passing through the vale and shade of ...

1. Through cycles of darkness the diamond sleeps in its coal-black prison.

2. Purely incrusted in its scaly casket, the breath-tarnished pearl slumbers in mud and ooze.

3. Buried in the bowels of earth, rugged and obscure, lies the ingot of gold.

4. Long hast thou been buried, O Israel, in the bowels of earth; long hast thou slumbered beneath the overwhelming waves; long hast thou slept in the rayless house of darkness.

5. Rejoice and sing, for only thus couldst thou rightly guard the golden knowledge, Truth, the delicate pearl and the adamantine jewel of the Law.

Ellisland, 21st Oct. 1789.

    Wow, but your letter made me vauntie!
    And are ye hale, and weel, and cantie?
    I kenn'd it still your wee bit jauntie
        Wad bring ye to:
    Lord send you ay as weel's I want ye,
        And then ye'll do.

    The ill-thief blaw the heron south!
    And never drink be near his drouth!
    He tauld mysel' by word o' mouth,
        He'd tak my letter:
    I lippen'd to the chief in trouth,
        And bade nae better.

    But aiblins honest Master Heron,
    Had at the time some dainty fair one,
    To ware his theologic care on,
        And holy study;
    And tir'd o' sauls to waste his lear on
        E'en tried the body.

    But what dy'e think, my trusty fier,
    ...

There's a class of men (and women) who are always on their guard,
Cunning, treacherous, suspicious, feeling softly, grasping hard,
Brainy, yet without the courage to forsake the beaten track,
Cautiously they feel their way behind a bolder spirit’s back.

If you save a bit of money, and you start a little store,
Say, an oyster-shop, for instance, where there wasn’t one before,
When the shop begins to pay you, and the rent is off your mind,
You will see another started by a chap that comes behind.

So it is, and so it might have been, my friend, with me and you,
When a friend of both and neither interferes between the two;
They will fight like fiends, forgetting in their passion mad and blind,
That the row is mostly started by the folk who come behind.

They will sti...

Our Lord Who did the Ox command
To kneel to Judah's King,
He binds His frost upon the land
To ripen it for Spring,
To ripen it for Spring, good sirs,
According to His Word.
Which well must be as ye can see,
And who shall judge the Lord?

When we poor fenmen skate the ice
Or shiver on the wold,
We hear the cry of a single tree
That breaks her heart in the cold,
That breaks her heart in the cold, good sirs,
And rendeth by the board.
Which well must be as ye can see,
And who shall judge the Lord?

Her wood is crazed and little worth
Excepting as to burn,
That we may warm and make our mirth
Until the Spring return,
Until the Spring return, good sirs,
When Christians walk abroad;
When well must be as ye can see,
And who ...

Inscribed to the Memory of John Keats.



Dear uplands, Chester's favorable fields,
My large unjealous Loves, many yet one -
A grave good-morrow to your Graces, all,
Fair tilth and fruitful seasons!
        Lo, how still!
The midmorn empties you of men, save me;
Speak to your lover, meadows! None can hear.
I lie as lies yon placid Brandywine,
Holding the hills and heavens in my heart
For contemplation.
        'Tis a perfect hour.
From founts of dawn the fluent autumn day
Has rippled as a brook right pleasantly
Half-way to noon; but now with widening turn
Makes pause, in lucent meditation locked,
And rounds into a silver pool of morn,
Bottom'd with clover-fields. My heart just hears
Eight lingering strokes of some far village-bell,

I

A mile of moonlight and the whispering wood:
A mile of shadow and the odorous lane:
One large, white star above the solitude,
Like one sweet wish: and, laughter after pain,
Wild-roses wistful in a web of rain.

II

No star, no rose, to lesson him and lead;
No woodsman compass of the skies and rocks, -
Tattooed of stars and lichens, - doth love need
To guide him where, among the hollyhocks,
A blur of moonlight, gleam his sweetheart's locks.

III

We name it beauty - that permitted part,
The love-elected apotheosis
Of Nature, which the god within the heart,
Just touching, makes immortal, but by this -
A star, a rose, the memory of a kiss.

White rose-leaves in my hands,
I toss you all away;
The winds shall blow you through the world
To seek my wedding day.
Or East you go, or West you go
And fall on land or sea,
Find the one that I love best
And bring him here to me.
And if he finds me spinning
'Tis short I'll break my thread;
And if he finds me dancing
I'll dance with him instead;
If he finds me at the Mass--
(Ah, let this not be,
Lest I forget my sweetest saint
The while he kneels by me!)

Come, listen O love, to the voice of the dove,
Come, hearken and hear him say,
"There are many Tomorrows, my love, my love,
There is only one Today."

And all day long you can hear him say,
This day in purple is rolled,
And the baby stars of the milky way
They are cradled in cradles of gold.

Now what is thy secret, serene gray dove,
Of singing so sweetly alway?
"There are many Tomorrows, my love, my love,
There is only one Today."