(1882)
#AmericanWriters
Mortal mixed of middle clay, Attempered to the night and day, Interchangeable with things, Needs no amulets nor rings. Guy possessed the talisman
Give to barrows, trays, and pans Grace and glimmer of romance; Bring the moonlight into noon Hid in gleaming piles of stone; On the city’s paved street
Announced by all the trumpets of t… Arrives the snow, and, driving o’e… Seems nowhere to alight: the white… Hides hills and woods, the river,… And veils the farm—house at the ga…
The rhyme of the poet Modulates the king’s affairs, Balance—loving nature Made all things in pairs. To every foot its antipode,
The sinful painter drapes his godd… Because she still is naked, being… The godlike sculptor will not so d… Beauty, which bones and flesh enou…
I SEE all human wits Are measured but a few; Unmeasured still my Shakespeare s… Lone as the blessed Jew.
ALL day the waves assailed the ro… I heard no church—bell chime; The sea—beat scorns the minster cl… And breaks the glass of Time.
Once I wished I might rehearse Freedom’s paean in my verse, That the slave who caught the stra… Should throb until he snapped his… But the Spirit said, 'Not so;
Winters know Easily to shed the snow, And the untaught Spring is wise In cowslips and anemones. Nature, hating art and pains,
Though loth to grieve The evil time’s sole patriot, I cannot leave My buried thought For the priest’s cant,
What boots it, thy virtue, What profit thy parts, While one thing thou lackest, The art of all arts! The only credentials,
What care I, so they stand the sa… Things of the heavenly mind,— How long the power to give them fa… Tarries yet behind? Thus far to—day your favors reach,
Roving, roving, as it seems, Una lights my clouded dreams; Still for journeys she is dressed; We wander far by east and west. In the homestead, homely thought;
Higher far, Upward, into the pure realm, Over sun or star, Over the flickering Dæmon film, Thou must mount for love,—
The water understands Civilization well; It wets my foot, but prettily, It chills my life, but wittily, It is not disconcerted,