Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

Oh the long and dreary Winter!

Oh the cold and cruel Winter!

The Song of Hiawatha. Part xx.

God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting.1 The Courtship of Miles Standish.

[blocks in formation]

Part iv.

the corner-stone of a nation.2

It is the fate of a woman

Part v.

Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is

speechless,

Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence.

He is a little chimney and heated hot in a moment.

A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

Part vi.

Part vi.

[blocks in formation]

His form was ponderous and his step was slow;

There never was so wise a man before;

He seemed the incarnate "I told you so."

Ibid.

Moons waxed and waned, the lilacs bloomed and died,
In the broad river ebbed and flowed the tide,
Ships went to sea, and ships came home from sea,
And the slow years sailed by and ceased to be.

Lady Wentworth.

Build on, and make thy castles high and fair,
Rising and reaching upward to the skies;

1 See Stoughton, page 266.

Plymouth Rock.

Listen to voices in the upper air,

Nor lose thy simple faith in mysteries.

The Castle-builder.

Much must he toil who serves the Immortal Gods.

Every guilty deed

Holds in itself the seed

The Masque of Pandora. ii.

Of retribution and undying pain.

He speaketh not; and yet there lies

viii.

A conversation in his eyes. The Hanging of the Crane.

Nothing that is can pause or stay;

The moon will wax, the moon will wane,

The mist and cloud will turn to rain,

The rain to mist and cloud again,
To-morrow be to-day.

Thine was the prophet's vision, thine
The exaltation, the divine

Insanity of noble minds,

That never falters nor abates,

But labors and endures and waits,

Till all that it foresees it finds

Or what it can not find creates.

All are architects of Fate,

Working in these walls of Time.

God sent his singers upon earth
With songs of sadness and of mirth.

The long mysterious exodus of death.

Keramos.

Ibid.

The Builders.

The Singers.

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport.

Ye are better than all the ballads

That ever were sung or said;

For ye are living poems

And all the rest are dead.

Children.

I know a maiden fair to see,

Take care!

She can both false and friendly be,
Beware! Beware!

Trust her not,

She is fooling thee. From the German (In Hyperion).

She knew the life-long martyrdom,

The weariness, the endless pain

Of waiting for some one to come

Who nevermore would come again. Vittoria Colonna.

Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number. Hyperion. Book iv. Chap. viii.

Hold the fleet angel fast until he bless thee.1

There is no greater sorrow

Than to be mindful of the happy time

Kavanagh.

In misery.2

Inferno. Canto v. Line 121.

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 1807–1886.

It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war.

Despatch to Earl Russell. Sept. 5, 1863.

1 Quoted from Cotton's "To-morrow." See Genesis xxx. 3.
2 Nessun maggior dolore

Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria.

See Chaucer, page 5.

In omni adversitate fortunæ, infelicissimum genus est infortunii fuisse felicem (In every adversity of fortune, to have been happy is the most unhappy kind of misfortune). - - BOETHIUS: De Consolatione Philosophia, liber ii.

[ocr errors]

This is truth the poet sings,

That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.
TENNYSON: Locksley Hall, line 75.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 1807-1892.

So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn

Which once he wore;

The glory from his gray hairs gone

[blocks in formation]

To A. K. On receiving a Basket of Sea- Mosses.

Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,

So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry; Blot out the epic's stately rhyme, But spare his "Highland Mary!"

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,

Lines on Burns.

The saddest are these: "It might have been!" 1

Maud Muller.

Perish with him the folly that seeks through evil good.

The hope of all who suffer,
The dread of all who wrong.

Brown of Ossawatomie.

The Mantle of St. John de Matha.

I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care.
Again the shadow moveth o'er
The dial-plate of time.

The eternal Goodness.

Yet sometimes glimpses on my sight,
Through present wrong the eternal right;

1 FRANCIS BRET HARTE: Mrs. Judge Jenkins.
More sad are these we daily see:

It is, but had n't ought to be.

The New Year.

And, step by step, since time began,

I see the steady gain of man;

We lack but open eye and ear

To find the Orient's marvels here;

The Chapel of the Hermits.

The still small voice in autumn's hush,
Yon maple wood the burning bush.1

Ibid.

Better heresy of doctrine than heresy of heart.

Mary Garvin.

Tradition wears a snowy beard, romance is always young.

The Night is Mother of the Day,

The Winter of the Spring,

And ever upon old Decay

The greenest mosses cling.

Beauty seen is never lost.

Ibid.

A Dream of Summer.

Sunset on the Bearcamp.

God blesses still the generous thought,
And still the fitting word He speeds,
And Truth, at His requiring taught,
He quickens into deeds.

Each crisis brings its word and deed.

The Beauty which old Greece or Rome
Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at home.

We seemed to see our flag unfurled,
Our champion waiting in his place

For the last battle of the world,

The Armageddon of the race.

Nature speaks in symbols and in signs.

Who never wins can rarely lose,
Who never climbs as rarely falls.

Channing.

The lost Occasion.

To

Rantoul.

To Charles Sumner.

To James T. Fields.

1 MRS. BROWNING: Aurora Leigh. Book vii. See page 659.

« ElőzőTovább »