Milton, our noblest poet, in the grace
Of youth, in those fair eyes and clustering hair,
That brow untouched by one faint line of care,
To mar its openness, we seem to trace
The front of the first lord of human race,
'Mid thine own Paradise portrayed so fair,
Ere Sin or Sorrow scathed it: such the air
That characters thy youth. Shall time efface
These lineaments as crowding cares assail!
It is the lot of fall'n humanity.
What boots it! armed in adamantine mail,
The unconquerable mind, and genius high,
Right onward hold their way through weal and woe,
Or whether life's brief lot be high or low!

The foamy waves are swishing
As patiently we thud,
But O the wave of wishing
That surges in my blood!

Along the ocean’s rim, now,
With never-ceasing song,
I wish that I could swim now
And shove the boat along.

My heart is crying, tireless,
The word it has to say.
What need have we of wireless
Who know a better way?

The slow craft plunges nor’ward
And welters on the blue:
My thoughts are floating forward
And swooping home to you.

Your magic love is tingling
In every vein of me,
And you and I are mingling
In spite of rolling sea.

Yet O that I could borrow
That albatross’s flight!
To-morrow, Love, to-morrow
Is our supreme delight.

Thro' grief and thro' danger thy smile hath cheered my way,
Till hope seemed to bud from each thorn that round me lay;
The darker our fortune, the brighter our pure love burned,
Till shame into glory, till fear into zeal was turned;
Yes, slave as I was, in thy arms my spirit felt free,
And blest even the sorrows that made me more dear to thee.

Thy rival was honored, while thou wert wronged and scorned,
Thy crown was of briers, while gold her brows adorned;
She wooed me to temples, while thou lay'st hid in caves,
Her friends were all masters, while thine, alas! were slaves;
Yet cold in the earth, at thy feet, I would rather be,
Than wed what I loved not, or turn one thought from thee.

They slander thee sorely, who say thy vows are frail--
Hadst thou been a false o...

He rose at dawn and, fired with hope,
Shot o’er the seething harbor-bar,
And reach’d the ship and caught the rope,
And whistled to the morning star.

And while he whistled long and loud
He heard a fierce mermaiden cry,
‘O boy, tho’ thou art young and proud,
I see the place where thou wilt lie.

‘The sands and yeasty surges mix
In caves about the dreary bay,
And on thy ribs the limpet sticks,
And in thy heart the scrawl shall play.’

‘Fool,’ he answer’d, ‘death is sure
To those that stay and those that roam,
But I will nevermore endure
To sit with empty hands at home.

‘My mother clings about my neck,
My sisters crying, “Stay for shame;”
My father raves of death and wreck,–
They are all to blame, they are all to blame.

I trust the happy hour will come,
That shall to peace thy breast restore;
And that we two, beloved friend,
Shall one day meet to part no more.

It grieves me most, that parting thus,
All my soul feels I dare not speak;
And when I turn me from thy sight,
The tears in silence wet my cheek.

Yet I look forward to the time,
That shall each wound of sorrow heal;
When I may press thee to my heart,
And tell thee all that now I feel.

Always the same, when on a fated night
At last the gathered snow lets down as white
As may be in dark woods, and with a song
It shall not make again all winter long
Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground,
I almost stumble looking up and round,
As one who overtaken by the end
Gives up his errand, and lets death descend
Upon him where he is, with nothing done
To evil, no important triumph won,
More than if life had never been begun.

Yet all the precedent is on my side:
I know that winter death has never tried
The earth but it has failed: the snow may heap
In long storms an undrifted four feet deep
As measured again maple, birch, and oak,
It cannot check the peeper's silver croak;
And I shall see the snow all go down hill
In water of a slender Apr...

We cross the prairie as of old
The pilgrims crossed the sea,
To make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!

We go to rear a wall of men
On Freedom’s southern line,
And plant beside the cotton-tree
The rugged Northern pine!

We’re flowing from our native hills
As our free rivers flow;
The blessing of our Mother-land
Is on us as we go.

We go to plant her common schools,
On distant prairie swells,
And give the Sabbaths of the wild
The music of her bells.

Upbearing, like the Ark of old,
The Bible in our van,
We go to test the truth of God
Against the fraud of man.

No pause, nor rest, save where the streams
That feed the Kansas run,
Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon
Shall flout the settin...

They died that we might live,--
Hail!--And Farewell!
--All honour give
To those who, nobly striving, nobly fell,
That we might live!

That we might live they died,--
Hail!--And Farewell!
--Their courage tried,
By every mean device of treacherous hate,
Like Kings they died.

Eternal honour give,--
Hail!--And Farewell!--
--To those who died,
In that full splendour of heroic pride,
That we might live!

Her heart she locked fast in her breast,
    Away from molestation;
The lock was warranted the best,
    A patent combination.
She knew no simple lock and key
Would serve to keep out Love and me.

But Love a clever cracksman is,
    And cannot be resisted;
He likes such stubborn jobs as this,
    Complex and hard and twisted,
And though we worked a many day,
At last we bore her heart away.

For Love has learned full many tricks
    In his strange avocation;
He knew the figures were but six
    In this, her combination;
Nor did we for a minute rest
Until we had unlocked her breast.

First, then, we turned the knob to “Sighs,”
    Then back to “Words Sincerest,”
Then “Gazing Fondly in Her Eyes,”
    Then “Softly Murmured ‘...

The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke
Up through the green wood curled;
"Bring honey from the hollow oak,
Bring milky sap," the brewers spoke,
In the childhood of the world.

And brewed they well or brewed they ill,
The priests thrust in their rods,
First tasted, and then drank their fill,
And shouted, with one voice and will,
"Behold the drink of gods!"

They drank, and to! in heart and brain
A new, glad life began;
The gray of hair grew young again,
The sick man laughed away his pain,
The cripple leaped and ran.

"Drink, mortals, what the gods have sent,
Forget your long annoy."
So sang the priests. From tent to tent
The Soma's sacred madness went,
A storm of drunken joy.

Then knew each rapt inebriate
A winged a...

1.

When I hear you express an affection so warm,
Ne'er think, my belov'd, that I do not believe;
For your lip would the soul of suspicion disarm,
And your eye beams a ray which can never deceive.


2.

Yet still, this fond bosom regrets, while adoring,
That love, like the leaf, must fall into the sear,
That Age will come on, when Remembrance, deploring,
Contemplates the scenes of her youth, with a tear;


3.

That the time must arrive, when, no longer retaining
Their auburn, those locks must wave thin to the breeze,
When a few silver hairs of those tresses remaining,
Prove nature a prey to decay and disease.


4.

Tis this, my belov'd, which spreads gloom o'er my features,
Though I ne'er shall presume to ...

One morn I looked across the way,
    And saw you fling your window wide
To welcome in the breath of May
    In breezes from the mountain-side,
And greet the sunlight's earliest ray
    With happy look and satisfied.

The pansies on your window-sill
    In terra cotta flowerpot,
Like royal gold and purple frill
    Upon the stony casement wrought,
Adorned your tasteful domicile
    And claimed your time and care and thought.

In cherry trees the robins sang
    Their sweetest carol to your ear,
And shouts of merry children rang
    Out on the dewy atmosphere,
But to my heart there came a pang
    That my salute you did not hear.

I envied then the favored breeze
    That dallied with your flowing hair,
Begrudged the songsters...

One summer morn, while yet the thrilling lay,
Of the dew-loving lark was full and strong,
Trampling the wild flowers in my careless way,
Up the steep mountain-side I strode along
My only guide, a brook whose joyous song,
Seemed like a boy's light-hearted roundelay,
As down it rushed, the leafy bowers among,
Scattering o'er bud and bloom its pearly spray
A beauteous semblance of life's opening day.

And looking back to that all-gladdening morn,
When I was free and sportive as the stream
When roses blushed with no suspected thorn,
And fancy's sunlight gilded every dream
While hope yet shed its sweet delusive beam,
And disappointment still delayed to warn
With fond regret, I still pursued the theme
With clambering step still up the steep was borne,
Too ...

A midnight black with clouds is in the sky;
I seem to feel, upon my limbs, the weight
Of its vast brooding shadow. All in vain
Turns the tired eye in search of form; no star
Pierces the pitchy veil; no ruddy blaze,
From dwellings lighted by the cheerful hearth,
Tinges the flowering summits of the grass.
No sound of life is heard, no village hum,
Nor measured tramp of footstep in the path,
Nor rush of wing, while, on the breast of Earth,
I lie and listen to her mighty voice:
A voice of many tones, sent up from streams
That wander through the gloom, from woods unseen,
Swayed by the sweeping of the tides of air,
From rocky chasms where darkness dwells all day,
And hollows of the great invisible hills,
And sands that edge the ocean, stretching far
Into the ni...

"What hast thou seen in the olden time,
    Dark ruin, lone and gray?"
"Full many a race from thy native clime,
    And the bright earth, pass away.
The organ has pealed in these roofless aisles,
    And priests have knelt to pray
At the altar, where now the daisy smiles
    O'er their silent beds of clay.

"I've seen the strong man a wailing child,
    By his mother offered here;
I've seen him a warrior fierce and wild;
    I've seen him on his bier,
His warlike harness beside him laid
    In the silent earth to rust;
His plumed helm and trusty blade
    To moulder into dust!

"I've seen the stern reformer scorn
    The things once deemed divine,
And the bigot's zeal with gems adorn
    The altar's sacred shrine.
I've seen the si...

How am I bound to Two! God, who doth give
The mind; the king, the means whereby I live.

Er-Heb beyond the Hills of Ao-Safai
Bears witness to the truth, and Ao-Safai
Hath told the men of Gorukh. Thence the tale
Comes westward o'er the peaks to India.

The story of Bisesa, Armod's child,
A maiden plighted to the Chief in War,
The Man of Sixty Spears, who held the Pass
That leads to Thibet, but to-day is gone
To seek his comfort of the God called Budh
The Silent showing how the Sickness ceased
Because of her who died to save the tribe.

Taman is One and greater than us all,
Taman is One and greater than all Gods:
Taman is Two in One and rides the sky,
Curved like a stallion's croup, from dusk to dawn,
And drums upon it with his heels, whereby
Is bred the neighing thunder in the hills.

This is Taman, the God of all Er-Heb,
W...

I.

    What shall be done? I cannot pray;
    And none shall know the pangs I feel.
    If prayers could alter night to day, -
    Or black to white, - I might appeal;
    I might attempt to sway thy heart,
    And prove it mine, or claim a part.


II.

    I might attempt to urge on thee
    At least the chance of some redress: -
    An hour's revoke, - a moment's plea, -
    A smile to make my sorrows less.
    I might indeed be taught in time
    To blush for hope, as for a crime!


III.

    But thou art stone, though soft and fleet, -
    A statue, not a maiden, thou!
    A man may hear thy bosom beat
    When thou hast sworn some idle vow.
    But not for love, no! not for this;
    For thou wilt se...