Canto 7.
Sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
Happy he
With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall,
He shall not blind his soul with clay.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere.
From yon blue heaven above us bent,
The grand old gardener and his wife
Smile at the claims of loner descent.
HENRY TAYLOR
Philip Van Artevelde.
Part i. Act i. Sc. 5.
The world knows nothing of its greatest men.
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON.
Richelieu. Act ii. Sc. 2.
Beneath the rule of men entirely great
The pen is mightier than the sword.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY.
Festus.
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
THOMAS K. HERVEY.
The Devil's Progress.
The tomb of him who would have made
The world too glad and free.
He stood beside a cottage lone,
And listened to a lute,
One summer's eve, when the breeze was gone,
And the nightingale was mute!
Like ships, that sailed for sunny isles,
But never came to shore!
JAMES ALDRICH.
A Death-Bed.
Her suffering ended with the day,
Yet lived she at its close,
And breathed the long, long night away,
In statue-like repose!
But when the sun, in all his state,
Illumined the eastern skies,
She passed through Glory's morning gate,
And walked in Paradise.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
Thanatopsis.
To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language.
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings.
Sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch.
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
March.
The stormy March has come at last,
With wind and clouds and changing skies;
I hear the rushing of the blast
That through the snowy valley flies.
Autumn Woods.
But 'neath yon crimson tree,
Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame,
Nor mark, within its roseate canopy,
Her blush of maiden shame.
Forest Hymn.
The groves were God's first temples.
The Death of the Flowers.
The melancholy days are come,
The saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods,
And meadows brown and sear.
The Battlefield.
Truth crushed to earth shall rise again:
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,
And dies among his worshippers.
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.
Marco Bozzaris.
Strike—for your altars and your fires;
Strike—for the green graves of y our sires;
God, and your native land!
One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die.
On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake.
Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days;
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise.
Burns.
Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined—
The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
The Meccas of the mind.
CHARLES SPRAGUE.
Curiosity.
Lo, where the stage, the poor, degraded stage,
Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age.
Through life's dark road his sordid way he wends,
An incarnation of fat dividends.
Centennial Ode.
Stanza 22.
Behold! in Liberty's unclouded blaze
We lift our heads, a race of other days.
To my Cigar.
Yes, social friend, I love thee well,
In learned doctor's spite;
Thy clouds all other clouds dispel,
And lap me in delight.
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
A Psalm of Life.
Tell me not, in mournful numbers, "Life is but an empty dream!" For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting.
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
The Light of Stars.
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.
It is not always May.
For Time will teach thee soon the truth,
There are no birds in last year's nest!
Maidenhood.
Standing, with reluctant feet,
Where the brook and river meet,
Womanhood and childhood fleet!
The Goblet of Life.
O suffering, sad humanity!
O ye afflicted ones, who lie
Steeped to the lips in misery,
Longing, and yet afraid to die,
Patient, though sorely tried!
Resignation.
There is no flock, however watched and tended,
But one dear lamb is there!
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,
But has one vacant chair.
The air is full of farewells to the dying,
And mournings for the dead.
The Golden Legend.
Time has laid his hand
Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it,
But as a harper lays his open palm
Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
A Metrical Essay.
The freeman casting with unpurchased hand
The vote that shakes the turrets of the land.
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky.
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale.
Urania.
Yes, child of suffering, thou mayst well be sure,
He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor!—
And, when you stick on conversation's burrs,
Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.
The Music-Grinders.
You think they are crusaders, sent
From some infernal clime,
To pluck the eyes of Sentiment,
And dock the tail of Rhyme,
To crack the voice of Melody,
And break the legs of Time.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
The Vision of Sir Launfal.
And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays.
The Changeling.
This child is not mine as the first was,
I cannot sing it to rest,
I cannot lift it up fatherly
And bless it upon my breast;
Yet it lies in my little one's cradle
And sits in my little one's chair,
And the light of the heaven she's gone to
Transfigures its golden hair.