English

When Aulus, the nocturnal thief, made prize
Of Hermes, swift-wing'd envoy of the skies,
Hermes, Arcadia's king, the thief divine,
Who, when an infant, stole Apollo's kine,
And whom, as arbiter and overseer
Of our gymnastic sports we planted here,
Hermes! he cried, you meet no new disaster;
Ofttimes the pupil goes beyond his master.

The world grows green on a thousand hills—
By a thousand willows the bees are humming,
And a milloin birds by a million rills,
Sing of the golden season coming.
But, gazing out on the sun-kist lea,
And hearing a thrush and a blue-bird singing,
I feel that the Summer is all for me,
And all for me are the joys it is bringing.

All for me the bumble-bee
Drones his song in the perfect weather;
And, just on purpose to sing to me,
Thrush and blue-bird came North together.
Just for me, in red and white,

She stood beside me while I gave an order for a bonnet.
She shuddered when I said, “And put a bright bird's wing upon it.”

A member of the Audubon Society was she;
And cutting were her comments made on worldly folks like me.

She spoke about the helpless birds we wickedly were harming;
She quoted the statistics, and they really were alarming;

She said God meant His little birds to sing in trees and skies;
And there was pathos in her voice, and tears were in her eyes.

What else
could have made me
loathe the world?
The one who was cruel to me
today I think of as kind

He was but a poor mechanic, and from Germany he came,
But the paragraphs in papers seem in doubt about his name;
“Frahm” or “Frank” I think they spell it, I don't know exactly how—
There's a doubt about his surname, but it doesn't matter now.

He was looking for employment, but it wasn't to be got,
And the bill for board and lodging seemed to trouble him a lot,
And in such a case, we fancy, it was neither safe nor right
To go strolling down the river with his misery at night.

A human parent chases a crow away from sparrow nestlings

No more summer for Molly and me;
There is snow on the tree,
And the blackbirds plump large as the rooks are, almost,
And the water is hard
Where they used to dip bills at the dawn ere her figure was lost
To these coasts, now my prison close-barred.

No more planting by Molly and me
Where the beds used to be
Of sweet-william; no training the clambering rose
By the framework of fir
Now bowering the pathway, whereon it swings gaily and blows
As if calling commendment from her.

Of the Lady Lu there were stories told,
For she was a woman of comely mould,
In heart-experience old.

Too many a man for her whimful sake
Had borne with patience chill and ache,
And nightly lain awake!

This epicure in pangs, in her tooth
For more of the sweet, with a calm unruth
Cast eyes on a painter-youth.

Her junior he; and the bait of bliss
Which she knew to throw—not he to miss—
She threw, till he dreamed her his.

To her arts not blind, he yet sued long,

No more! while sun and planets fly,
And wind and storm and seasons four,
And while we live and while we die,—
No more.

Nevertheless old ocean's roar,
And wide earth's multitudinous cry,
And echo's pent reverberant store

Shall hush to silence by and bye:
Ah, rosy world gone cold and hoar!
Man opes no more a mortal eye,

Woe is me! an old man said
Stretched upon his dying bed:
Woe is me! for life is short;
And one hour cannot be bought
With great treasure or long thought.
What have all my days been worth?
Weary labour without gain,
Pleasure ending in much pain,
Planting that brought forth no fruit,
Tree of life struck at the root,
Were my portion from my birth:
But my cold heart sickeneth
Shrinking from the touch of death;
And I fain would have again
Toil and weariness and pain
For a short time more on earth.