Wondrous and awful are thy silent halls, O kingdom of the past! There lie the bygone ages in their palls, Guarded by shadows vast; There all is hushed and breathless, Save when some image of old error falls Earth worshipped once as deathless. There sits drear Egypt, mid beleaguering sands, Half woman and half beast, […]

O Land of Promise! from what Pisgah’s height Can I behold thy stretch of peaceful bowers, Thy golden harvests flowing out of sight, Thy nestled homes and sun-illumined towers? Gazing upon the sunset’s high-heaped gold, Its crags of opal and of chrysolite, Its deeps on deeps of glory, that unfold Still brightening abysses, And blazing […]

I saw the twinkle of white feet, I saw the flush of robes descending; Before her ran an influence fleet, That bowed my heart like barley bending. As, in bare fields, the searching bees Pilot to blooms beyond our finding, It led me on, by sweet degrees Joy’s simple honey-cells unbinding. Those Graces were that […]

I went to seek for Christ, And Nature seemed so fair That first the woods and fields my youth enticed, And I was sure to find him there: The temple I forsook, And to the solitude Allegiance paid; but winter came and shook The crown and purple from my wood; His snows, like desert sands, […]

When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth’s aching breast Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west, And the slave, where’er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny […]

The cordage creaks and rattles in the wind, With whims of sudden hush; the reeling sea Now thumps like solid rock beneath the stern, Now leaps with clumsy wrath, strikes short, and, falling Crumbled to whispery foam, slips rustling down The broad backs of the waves, which jostle and crowd To fling themselves upon that […]

I know a falcon swift and peerless As e’er was cradled In the pine; No bird had ever eye so fearless, Or wing so strong as this of mine. The winds not better love to pilot A cloud with molten gold o’er run, Than him, a little burning islet, A star above the coming sun. […]

The rich man’s son inherits lands, And piles of brick and stone, and gold, And he inherits soft white hands, And tender flesh that fears the cold, Nor dares to wear a garment old; A heritage, it seems to me, One scarce would wish to hold in fee. The rich man’s son inherits cares; The […]

I In the old days of awe and keen-eyed wonder, The Poet’s song with blood-warm truth was rife; He saw the mysteries which circle under The outward shell and skin of daily life. Nothing to him were fleeting time and fashion, His soul was led by the eternal law; There was in him no hope […]

True Love is but a humble, low-born thing, And hath its food served up in earthen ware; It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand, Through the everydayness of this workday world, Baring its tender feet to every flint, Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray From Beauty’s law of plainness and content; […]

From the close-shut windows gleams no spark, The night is chilly, the night is dark, The poplars shiver, the pine-trees moan, My hair by the autumn breeze is blown, Under thy window I sing alone, Alone, alone, ah woe! alone! The darkness is pressing coldly around, The windows shake with a lonely sound, The stars […]

An ass munched thistles, while a nightingale From passion’s fountain flooded all the vale. ‘Hee-haw!’ cried he, ‘I hearken,’ as who knew For such ear-largess humble thanks were due. ‘Friend,’ said the winged pain, ‘in vain you bray, Who tunnels bring, not cisterns, for my lay; None but his peers the poet rightly hear, Nor […]

1. In life’s small things be resolute and great To keep thy muscle trained: know’st thou when Fate Thy measure takes, or when she’ll say to thee, ‘I find thee worthy; do this deed for me’? 2. A camel-driver, angry with his drudge, Beating him, called him hunchback; to the hind Thus spake a dervish: […]

FOR A BELL AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY I call as fly the irrevocable hours, Futile as air or strong as fate to make Your lives of sand or granite; awful powers, Even as men choose, they either give or take.

FOR A MEMORIAL WINDOW TO SIR WALTER RALEIGH, SET UP IN ST. MARGARET’S, WESTMINSTER, BY AMERICAN CONTRIBUTORS The New World’s sons, from England’s breasts we drew Such milk as bids remember whence we came; Proud of her Past, wherefrom our Present grew, This window we inscribe with Raleigh’s name.

To those who died for her on land and sea, That she might have a country great and free, Boston builds this: build ye her monument In lives like theirs, at duty’s summons spent.

B, taught by Pope to do his good by stealth, ‘Twixt participle and noun no difference feeling, In office placed to serve the Commonwealth, Does himself all the good he can by stealing.

Full oft the pathway to her door I’ve measured by the selfsame track, Yet doubt the distance more and more, ‘Tis so much longer coming back!

If I were the rose at your window, Happiest rose of its crew, Every blossom I bore would bend inward, They’d know where the sunshine grew.

Skilled to pull wires, he baffles Nature’s hope, Who sure intended him to stretch a rope.