When Tom and I were married, we took a little flat;I had a taste for singing and playing and all that.And Tom, who loved to hear me, said he hoped I would not stopAll practice, like so many wives who let their music drop.So I resolved to set apart an hour or two each dayTo […]

For ever stars are wingingTheir swift and endless race;For ever suns are swingingTheir mighty globes through space.Since by his law requiredTo join God’s spheres inspired,The earth has never tired,But whirled and whirled and whirled.For ever streams are flowing,For ever seeds are growing,Alway is Nature showingThat Action rules the world. And since by God requestedTo BE, […]

Be not content–contentment means inaction;The growing soul aches on its upward quest;Satiety is twin to satisfaction;All great achievements spring from life’s unrest. The tiny roots, deep in the dark mould hiding,Would never bless the earth with leaf and flowerWere not an inborn restlessness abidingIn seed and germ, to stir them with its power. Were man […]

You know that oasis, fresh and fairIn the city desert, as Greeley square? That bright triangle of scented bloomThat lies surrounded by grime and gloom? Right in the breast of the seething townLike a gleaming gem or a wanton’s gown? Ah, wonderful things that tulip bedUnto my listening soul has said. Over the rattle and […]

I was a little lad, and the older boys called to me from the pier:They called to me: ‘Be a sport: be a sport! Leap in and swim!’I leaped in and swam, though I had never been taught a stroke.Then I was made a hero, and they all shouted:‘Well done! Well done,Brave boy, you are […]

Sometimes I wish the railroads all were torn out,The ships all sunk among the coral strands.I am so very weary, yea so worn out,With tales of those who visit foreign lands. When asked to dine, to meet these traveled people,My soup seems brewed from cemetery bones.The fish grows cold on some cathedral steeple,I miss two […]

Thoughts do not need the wings of wordsTo fly to any goal.Like subtle lightnings, not like birds,They speed from soul to soul. Hide in your heart a bitter thought –Still it has power to blight;Think Love–although you speak it notIt gives the world more light.

Good-bye to the cradle, the dear wooden cradleThe rude hand of Progress has thrust it aside.No more to its motion o’er sleep’s fairy ocean,Our play-weary wayfarers peacefully glide. No more by the rhythm of slow-moving rocker,Their sweet dreamy fancies are fostered and fed;No more to low singing the cradle goes swinging–The child of this era […]

The age is too diffusive. Time and ForceAre frittered out and bring no satisfaction.The way seems lost to straight determined action.Like shooting stars that zig-zag from their courseWe wander from our orbit’s pathway; spoilThe role we’re fitted for, to fail in twenty.Bring empty measures, that were shaped for plenty,At last as guerdon for a life […]

I feel the great immensity of life.All little aims slip from me, and I reachMy yearning soul toward the Infinite. As when a mighty forest, whose green leavesHave shut it in, and made it seem a bowerFor lovers’ secrets, or for children’s sports,Casts all its clustering foliage to the winds,And lets the eye behold it, […]

New Year, I look straight in your eyes –Our ways and our interests blend;You may be a foe in disguise,But I shall believe you a friend.We get what we give in our measure,We cannot give pain and get pleasure;I give you good will and good cheer,And you must return it, New Year. We get what […]

Thanksgiving for the strong armed day,That lifted war’s red curse,When Peace, that lordly little word,Was uttered in a voice that stirred –Yea, shook the Universe. Thanksgiving for the Mighty HourThat brimmed the Victor’s cup,When England signalled to the foe,‘The German flag must be brought lowAnd not again hauled up!’ Thanksgiving for the sea and airFree […]

Like an opera-house is the world, I ween,Where the passionate lover of music is seenIn the balcony near the roof:While the very best seat in the first stage-boxIs filled by the person who laughs and talksThrough the harmony’s warp and woof.

When Venus, mother and maker of blisses,Rose out of the billows, large-limbed, and fair,She stood on the sands and blew sweet kissesTo the salt sea-wind as she dried her hair. And the salt sea-wind was the first to caress herTo praise her beauty and call her sweet,The first of the whole wide world to possess […]

As when the old moon lighted by the tenderAnd radiant crescent of the new is seen,And for a moment’s space suggests the splendorOf what in its full prime it once has been,So on my waning years you cast the gloryOf youth and pleasure, for a little hour;And life again seems like an unread story,And joy […]

(Suggested by the lives of Napoleon and Josephine.) I. One night was full of rapture and delight–Of reunited arms and swooning kisses,And all the unnamed and unnumbered blissesWhich fond souls find in love of love at night. Heart beat with heart, and each clung into eachWith twining arms that did but loose their holdTo cling […]

It is easy to sit in the sunshineAnd talk to the man in the shade;It is easy to float in a well-trimmed boat,And point out the places to wade. But once we pass into the shadows,We murmur and fret and frown,And, our length from the bank, we shout for a plank,Or throw up our hands […]

Now, dear, it isn’t the bold things,Great deeds of valour and might,That count the most in the summing up of life at the end of the day.But it is the doing of old things,Small acts that are just and right;And doing them over and over again, no matter what others say;In smiling at fate, when […]

Who thinks how desolate and strangeTo me must seem the autumn’s change,When housed in attic or in chest,A lonely and unwilling guest,I lie through nights of bleak December,And think in silence, and remember. I think of hempen fields, where IOnce played with insects floating by,And joyed alike in sun and rain,Unconscious of approaching pain.I dwell […]

There are curious isles in the River of Sleep,Curious isles without number.We’ll visit them all as we leisurely creepDown the winding stream whose current is deep,In our beautiful barge of Slumber. The very first isle in this wonderful streamQuite close to the shore is lying,And after a supper of cakes and creamWe come to the […]