Oh, I am the siren, the siren of the sea,The sea, the wondrous sea, that lies forevermore before;I stand a fairy shape upon the shadow of a cliffWhere the water’s drowsy ripple laps the phantom of a shore,And, oh, so fair, so fair am I, I draw all hearts to me,For I am the siren, […]

Come, gentle sleep, with the holy night,Come with the stars and the white moonbeams,Come with your train of handmaids bright,Blessed and beautiful dreams. Bring the exile to his home again,Let him catch the gleam of its low white wall;Let his wife cling to his neck and weep,And his children come at their father’s call. Give […]

‘Twas a bleak dull moor that stretched beforeThe low stone porch of the cottage door,And standing there was youth and maid,He for long journeying seemed arrayed,And the sunset flamed in the burnished west,And a proud throb beat in the young man’s breast,As he whispered, “Sweet, will you come to meIn that fairer land beyond the […]

“My house is thatched with violet leavesAnd paved with daisies fine,Scarlet berries droop over its eaves,Tall grasses round it shine;With softest down I have lined my nest,Securely now will I sit and rest. “When their wings break from their silvery shell,Touched by my tender care,Here shall my little ones safely dwell,Little ones soft and fair;Some […]

The clouds that vex the upper deepStay not the white sail of the moon;And lips may moan, and hearts may weep,The sad old earth goes rolling on. O’er smiling vale, and sighing lake,One shadow cold is overthrown;And souls may faint, and hearts may break,The sad old earth goes rolling on.

When enwrapped in rosy pleasure,Our careless pulses beat,With a rhythm sweet, sweet,To the music’s merry measure. When world waves rise around us,With soft transparent weight,Light in seeming, yet so great,The liquid chains have bound us. Then softly downward falling,If we listen, we can hear,From a purer atmosphere,A warning and a calling. ‘Tis not uttered to […]

My heart sings like a bird to-nightThat flies to its nest in the soft twilight,And sings in its brooding bliss;Ah! I so low, and he so high,What could he find to love? I cry,Did ever love stoop so low as this? As a miser jealously counts his gold,I sit and dream of my wealth untold,From […]

Smooth the hair;Silken waves of sunny brownLay upon the white brow down,Crowned with the blossoms rare;Lilies on a golden stream,Ne’er to float in summer airWreathed with meadow daisies fair.Lay away the broken crownAnd your broken dream,With one shining tress of hair,Nevermore to need your care.

As on a waveless sea, a vessel strikesUpon a treacherous rock;Waking the sailors from their happy dreamsBy the swift, terrible shock. Dreaming of shaded village streets, and home,Forgetting the cruel seaTill the shock came–so woke I, yet I know‘Twas Love, I loved, not he. ‘Tis not the star the wave so wildly clasps,Only its form […]

In his arm-chair, warmly cushioned,In the quiet earned by labor,Life’s reposeful Indian summer,Grandpa sits; and lets the paperLie upon his knee unheeded.Shine his cheeks like winter apples,Gleams his smile like autumn sunshine,As he looks on little Harry,First-born of the house of Graham,Bravely cutting teeth in silence,Cutting teeth with looks heroic.Some deep thought seems moving Grandpa,Ponders […]

I am thinking of fern forests that once did towering stand,Crowning all the barren mountains, shading all the dreary land. Oh, the dreadful, quiet brooding, the solitude sublime,That reigned like shadowy spectres o’er the third great day of time. In long, low lines the tideless seas on dull gray shores did break,No song of bird, […]

She lay asleep, and her face shone whiteAs under a snowy veil,And the waxen hands clasped on her breastWere full of snowdrops pale;But a holy calm touched the baby lips,The brow, and the sleeping eyes,The look of an angel pitying usFrom the peace of Paradise. And now though she lies ‘neath the coffin-lid,We cannot think […]

I turn the key in this idle hourOf an ivory box, and looking, lo–See only dust–the dust of a flower;The waters will ebb, the waters will flow,And dreams will come, and dreams will go,Forever. Oh, friend, if you and I should meetBeneath the boughs of the bending lime,Should you in the same low voice repeatThe […]

I suppose we are about as happy as the most of folks, but as I was sayin’ a few days ago to Betsey Bobbet, a neighborin’ female of ours–“Every station-house in life has its various skeletons. But we ort to try to be contented with that spear of life we are called on to handle.” […]