What is it in old fiddle-chunes ‘at makes me ketch my breath And ripples up my backbone tel I’m tickled most to death?– Kindo’ like that sweet-sick feelin’, in the long sweep of a swing, The first you ever swung in, with yer first sweet-heart, i jing!– Yer first picnic–yer first ice-cream–yer first o’ ever’thing […]

O Touch me with your hands– For pity’s sake! My brow throbs ever on with such an ache As only your cool touch may take away; And so, I pray You, touch me with your hands! Touch–touch me with your hands.– Smooth back the hair You once caressed, and kissed, and called so fair That […]

How tired I am! I sink down all alone Here by the wayside of the Present. Lo, Even as a child I hide my face and moan– A little girl that may no farther go; The path above me only seems to grow More rugged, climbing still, and ever briered With keener thorns of pain […]

I’m bin a-visitun ’bout a week To my little Cousin’s at Nameless Creek, An’ I’m got the hives an’ a new straw hat, An’ I’m come back home where my beau lives at.

It’s the curiousest thing in creation, Whenever I hear that old song “Do They Miss Me at Home,” I’m so bothered, My life seems as short as it’s long!– Fer ev’rything ‘pears like adzackly It ‘peared in the years past and gone,– When I started out sparkin’, at twenty, And had my first neckercher on! […]

As one who cons at evening o’er an album all alone, And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known, So I turn the leaves of fancy till, in shadowy design, I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine. The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise, […]

Leonainie–Angels named her; And they took the light Of the laughing stars and framed her In a smile of white; And they made her hair of gloomy Midnight, and her eyes of bloomy Moonshine, and they brought her to me In the solemn night.— In a solemn night of summer, When my heart of gloom […]

When she comes home again! A thousand ways I fashion, to myself, the tenderness Of my glad welcome: I shall tremble–yes; And touch her, as when first in the old days I touched her girlish hand, nor dared upraise Mine eyes, such was my faint heart’s sweet distress. Then silence: And the perfume of her […]

Let us forget. What matters it that we Once reigned o’er happy realms of long-ago, And talked of love, and let our voices low, And ruled for some brief sessions royally? What if we sung, or laughed, or wept maybe? It has availed not anything, and so Let it go by that we may better […]

Ah, help me! but her face and brow Are lovelier than lilies are Beneath the light of moon and star That smile as they are smiling now– White lilies in a pallid swoon Of sweetest white beneath the moon– White lilies, in a flood of bright Pure lucidness of liquid light Cascading down some plenilune, […]

O her beautiful eyes! they are blue as the dew On the violet’s bloom when the morning is new, And the light of their love is the gleam of the sun O’er the meadows of Spring where the quick shadows run As the morn shifts the mists and the clouds from the skies– So I […]

I He called her in from me and shut the door. And she so loved the sunshine and the sky!– She loved them even better yet than I That ne’er knew dearth of them–my mother dead, Nature had nursed me in her lap instead: And I had grown a dark and eerie child That rarely […]

Because her eyes were far too deep And holy for a laugh to leap Across the brink where sorrow tried To drown within the amber tide; Because the looks, whose ripples kissed The trembling lids through tender mist, Were dazzled with a radiant gleam– Because of this I called her “Dream.” Because the roses growing […]

O soul of mine, look out and see My bride, my bride that is to be! Reach out with mad, impatient hands, And draw aside futurity As one might draw a veil aside– And so unveil her where she stands Madonna-like and glorified– The queen of undiscovered lands Of love, to where she beckons me– […]

Alone they walked–their fingers knit together, And swaying listlessly as might a swing Wherein Dan Cupid dangled in the weather Of some sun-flooded afternoon of Spring. Within the clover-fields the tickled cricket Laughed lightly as they loitered down the lane, And from the covert of the hazel-thicket The squirrel peeped and laughed at them again. […]

Just drifting on together– He and I– As through the balmy weather Of July Drift two thistle-tufts imbedded Each in each–by zephyrs wedded– Touring upward, giddy-headed, For the sky. And, veering up and onward, Do we seem Forever drifting dawnward In a dream, Where we meet song-birds that know us, And the winds their kisses […]

O her eyes are amber-fine– Dark and deep as wells of wine, While her smile is like the noon Splendor of a day of June. If she sorrow–lo! her face It is like a flowery space In bright meadows, overlaid With light clouds and lulled with shade. If she laugh–it is the trill Of the […]

They meet to say farewell: Their way Of saying this is hard to say.– He holds her hand an instant, wholly Distressed–and she unclasps it slowly. He bends his gaze evasively Over the printed page that she Recurs to, with a new-moon shoulder Glimpsed from the lace-mists that enfold her. The clock, beneath its crystal […]

I As one in sorrow looks upon The dead face of a loyal friend, By the dim light of New Year’s dawn I saw the Old Year end. Upon the pallid features lay The dear old smile–so warm and bright Ere thus its cheer had died away In ashes of delight. The hands that I […]

In some strange place Of long-lost lands he finds her waiting face– Comes marveling upon it, unaware, Set moonwise in the midnight of her hair.