Nothing remains of unrecorded agesThat lie in the silent cemetery time;Their wisdom may have shamed our wisest sages,Their glory may have been indeed sublime.How weak do seem our strivings after power,How poor the grandest efforts of our brains,If out of all we are, in one short hourNothing remains. Nothing remains but the Eternal Spaces,Time and […]

Now, while thy rounded cheek is fresh and fair,While beauty lingers, laughing, in thine eyes,Ere thy young heart shall meet the stranger, “Care,”Or thy blithe soul become the home of sighs,Were it not kindness should I give thee restBy plunging this sharp dagger in thy breast?Dying so young, with all thy wealth of youth,What part […]

Is it the world, or my eyes, that are sadder?I see not the grace that I used to seeIn the meadow-brook whose song was so glad, orIn the boughs of the willow tree.The brook runs slower–its song seems lowerAnd not the song that it sang of old;And the tree I admired looks weary and tiredOf […]

Not they who know the awful gibbet’s anguish,Not they who, while sad years go by them, inThe sunless cells of lonely prisons languish,Do suffer fullest penalty for sin. ‘Tis they who walk the highways unsuspected,Yet with grim fear for ever at their side,Who hug the corpse of some sin undetected,A corpse no grave or coffin-lid […]

The world grows green on a thousand hills –By a thousand willows the bees are humming,And a million birds by a million rills,Sing of the golden season coming.But, gazing out on the sun-kist lea,And hearing a thrush and a blue-bird singing,I feel that the summer is all for me,And all for me are the joys […]

If the sad old world should jump a cogSometime, in its dizzy spinning,And go off the track with a sudden jog,What an end would come to the sinning,What a rest from strife and the burdens of lifeFor the millions of people in it,What a way out of care, and worry and wear,All in a beautiful […]

As some dusk mother shields from all alarmsThe tired child she gathers to her breast,The brunette Night doth fold me in her arms,And hushes me to perfect peace and rest.Her eyes of stars shine on me, and I hearHer voice of winds low crooning on my ear.O Night, O Night, how beautiful thou art!Come, fold […]

I have been across the bridges of the years.Wet with tearsWere the ties on which I trod, going backDown the trackTo the valley where I left, ‘neath skies of Truth,My lost youth. As I went, I dropped my burdens, one and all –Let them fall;All my sorrows, all my wrinkles, all my care,My white hair,I […]

Life and I are lovers, strayingArm in arm along:Often like two children Maying,Full of mirth and song, Life plucks all the blooming hoursGrowing by the way;Binds them on my brow like flowers,Calls me Queen of May. Then again, in rainy weather,We sit vis-a-vis,Planning work we’ll do togetherIn the years to be. Sometimes Life denies me […]

A vision beauteous as the morn,With heavenly eyes and tresses streaming,Slow glided o’er a field late shornWhere walked a poet idly dreaming.He saw her, and joy lit his face,“Oh, vanish not at human speaking,”He cried, “thou form of magic grace,Thou art the poem I am seeking. “I’ve sought thee long! I claim thee now –My […]

How happy they are, in all seeming,How gay, or how smilingly proud,How brightly their faces are beaming,These people who make up the crowd!How they bow, how they bend, how they flutter,How they look at each other and smile,How they glow, and what bon mots they utter!But a strange thought has found me the while! It […]

I feel the stirrings in me of great things.New half-fledged thoughts rise up and beat their wings,And tremble on the margin of their nest,Then flutter back, and hide within my breast. Beholding space, they doubt their untried strength.Beholding men, they fear them. But at length,Grown all too great and active for the heartThat broods them […]

What can be said in New Year rhymes,That’s not been said a thousand times? The new years come, the old years go,We know we dream, we dream we know. We rise up laughing with the light,We lie down weeping with the night. We hug the world until it stings,We curse it then and sigh for […]