Short Poems

Still is the earth. If my heart were as still
As the slow-breathing earth to the wide clear sky,
If I were as free of my labouring will
As the deep-growing earth and the calm-giving sky,
My heart I should fill at the lift of a sigh
With the love and the wisdom the earth lives by.

WHEREIN WRONG-DOERS SUFFER

And is it true? It is not true!
And if it was it wouldn't do
For people such as me and you,
Who very nearly all day long
Are doing something rather wrong.

Reader farewell
Hark my note of
triumph swell
my labour finished
my trouble diminished
though twas tedious & long
Heres my last

I obey your gentle call ye
pearly threads of light & Oh!
like g[u]ardian spirits
watch by my couch this night

Sure P[ope] like Orph[eus] was alike inspir'd,
The Blocks and Beasts flock'd round them and admir'd.

A house is a house of brick and stone,
If once from its threshold love has flown;
But a house is a home, — oh precious word,
If love nests there like a singing bird!

Oh worthy endless Fame! (if True Desert
Can seek Applause but from the conscious Heart)
Who makest the Savage Social Tyes approve,
And bid'st divided Faiths consent to Love!
While different Worlds consent to one great End,
Nor take a Master, but embrace a Freind.
The only Spot, where Nature's Sons yet claim
Their Rights, and Christian is no dreadfull Name!

Of two things one: with Chaucer let me ride,
And hear the Pilgrims' tales; or, that denied,
Let me with Petrarch in a dew-sprent grove
Ring endless changes on the bells of love.

A sprig of mint by the wayward brook,
A nibble of birch in the wood,
A summer day and love and a book,
And I would n't be king if I could.

Fearest the shadow? Keep thy trust;
Still the star-worlds roll.
Fearest death? sayest, " Dust to dust? "
No; say, " Soul to soul! "