(1882)
#AmericanWriters
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;
Man was made of social earth, Child and brother from his birth; Tethered by a liquid cord Of blood through veins of kindred… Next his heart the fireside band
I hung my verses in the wind, Time and tide their faults may fin… All were winnowed through and thro… Five lines lasted sound and true; Five were smelted in a pot
Was never form and never face So sweet to SEYD as only grace Which did not slumber like a stone… But hovered gleaming and was gone. Beauty chased he everywhere,
Every day brings a ship, Every ship brings a word; Well for those who have no fear, Looking seaward well assured That the word the vessel brings
It is time to be old, To take in sail:— The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds,
Already blushes in thy cheek The bosom—thought which thou must… The bird, how far it haply roam By cloud or isle, is flying home; The maiden fears, and fearing runs
The Sphinx is drowsy, The wings are furled; Her ear is heavy, She broods on the world. “Who’ll tell me my secret,
Why should I keep holiday, When other men have none? Why but because when these are gay… I sit and mourn alone. And why when mirth unseals all ton…
And I behold once more My old familiar haunts; here the b… The same blue wonder that my infan… Admired, sage doubting whence the… Whence brought his sunny bubbles e…
The living Heaven thy prayers res… House at once and architect, Quarrying man’s rejected hours, Builds therewith eternal towers; Sole and self—commanded works,
Knows he who tills this lonely fie… To reap its scanty corn, What mystic fruit his acres yield At midnight and at morn? In the long sunny afternoon,
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;
Of Paradise, O hermit wise, Let us renounce the thought. Of old therein our names of sin Allah recorded not. Who dear to God on earthly sod
SHINES the last age, the next w… To—day slinks poorly off unmarked… Future or Past no richer secret f… O friendless Present! than thy bo…