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Sidney Lanier

To——, With a Rose

I asked my heart to say
Some word whose worth my love’s devoir might pay
     Upon my Lady’s natal day.
 
     Then said my heart to me:
‘Learn from the rhyme that now shall come to thee
     What fits thy Love most lovingly.’
 
     This gift that learning shows;
For, as a rhyme unto its rhyme-twin goes,
     I send a rose unto a Rose.

#AmericanWriters

Other works by Sidney Lanier...
Individuality.

Sail on, sail on, fair cousin Clo… Oh loiter hither from the sea. Still-eyed and shadow-brow’d, Steal off from yon far-drifting cr… And come and brood upon the marsh…
Souls and Rain-Drops

Light rain-drops fall and wrinkle… Then vanish, and die utterly. One would not know that rain-drops… If the round sea-wrinkles did not… So souls come down and wrinkle lif…
The Power of Prayer

or, The First Steamboat up the A… You, Dinah! Come and set me whar… De Lord, HE made dese black-jack… Umph, dar! De Lord have mussy on… It 'pear to me dis mornin’ I kin…
On Violet’s Wafers, Sent Me When I Was Ill

Fine-tissued as her finger-tips, a… As all her thoughts; in shape like… As if before young Violet’s dream… Still blazed the two great Theban… That swayed the random of that fur…
Hymns of the Marshes.

I. Sunrise. In my sleep I was fain of their f… Of the live-oak, the marsh, and th… The little green leaves would not… Up-breathed from the marshes, a me…
A Ballad of the Trees and the Master

Into the woods my Master went, Clean forspent, forspent. Into the woods my Master came, Forspent with love and shame. But the olives they were not blind…
To Wilhelmina

A white face, drooping, on a bendi… A tube-rose that with heavy petal… Her stem: a foam-bell on a wave t… Back from the undulating vessel’s… From out the whitest cloud of summ…
To Our Mocking-Bird

Died of a cat, May, 1878. Trillets of humor,—shrewdest whist… Contralto cadences of grave desire Such as from off the passionate I… Drift down through sandal-odored f…
Laus Mariae

Across the brook of Time man leap… On stepping-stones of epochs, that… Fixed, memorable, midst broad shal… Of neutrals, kill-times, sleeps, i… So twixt each morn and night rise…
Resurrection

Sometimes in morning sunlights by… Where in the early fall long grass… Light winds from over the moorland… And sigh as if just blown across a… And then I pause and listen to th…
The Raven Days

Our hearths are gone out and our h… And but the ghosts of homes to us… And ghastly eyes and hollow sighs… From friend to friend of an unspok… O Raven days, dark Raven days of…
Rose-Morals

I.—Red. Would that my songs might be What roses make by day and night— Distillments of my clod of misery Into delight.
The Symphony

“O Trade! O Trade! would thou we… The Time needs heart—’tis tired o… We’re all for love,” the violins s… “Of what avail the rigorous tale Of bill for coin and box for bale?
 1
A Sunrise Song.

Young palmer sun, that to these sh… Pourest thy pilgrim’s tale, discou… Thy silver passages of sacred land… With news of Sepulchre and Doloro… Canst thou be he that, yester-suns…
The Battle of Lexington

Now haste thee while the way is cl… Paul Revere! Haste, Dawes! but haste thee not,… To Lexington. Then Devens looked and saw the li…



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