When Thames, in plaintive murmurs, lav'd the grott
Where once his darling Pope each care forgot;
Where, with the Muse, he pass'd the smiling day,
Whose strains celestial crown'd the moral lay;
Each drooping Swan with sorrow view'd the shore,
And mourn'd, in melting dirge, their Bard no more:
Ah! flown, O Thames! thy fairest Swan (they sung)
Whose warbling lyre immortal Genius strung,
Truth, Nature, Virtue, touch'd the trembling chord,
While mute Attention caught the Poet's word.
And must thy beauteous stream incessant mourn?

Here by Fuji—
never a moonlit night
without snow.

When love is bright and whole again,
I'll sing like the bee's weather,
I'll set my colours up again
Like the cock-pheasant's feather,
I'll find a note to make me one
With lyric birds that sing the sun.

I'll fill my songs with palmer's buds
And sprigs of thorn for Whitsunday,
And they shall dance as willow rods,
And shine with garlands of the may,
I'll be a theme that takes the spring
From bushes where the blackbirds sing.

I'll walk among my sheep again
And turn my steps to numbers,
When love is bright and whole again

Round the band of warriors weary,
Night's star-spangled curtains close;
And, while evening zephyrs whisper,
Seek the Grecians their repose:
But the sweet, restoring angel,
Twin to one we surname “Death,”
Will not near them fold his pinions,
Woo them with his balmly breath.

Deep within each warrior's bosom
Was a fount of sacred love,
Welling up for far-off dear ones,
Faithful as the tender dove.
Longed they for their native country,
As chained eagles to be free;
And they sighed for home's rich blessings,

With what a fine unyielding wish to bless,
Does Nature, Horace, manage to oppose
The town's encroachments! Vulgar he, who goes
By suburb gardens which she deigns to dress,
And does not recognize her green caress
Reaching back to us in those genial shows
Of box-encircled flowers and poplar rows,
Or other nests for evening weariness.

Then come the squares, with noon-day nymphs about;
Then vines, and ivy; tree tops that look out
Over back walls; green in the windows too;—
And even where gain huddles its noisiest rout,

Like some lone miser, dear, behold me stand,
To count my treasures, and their worth extol:—
A last word penciled by that poor left hand;
Two kindred names on the same gentle scroll,
(I found it near your pillow,) traced below;
This little scarf you made, our latest pride;
The violet I digged so long ago,
That nestled in your bosom till you died;
But dearest to my heart, whereon it lies,
Is one warm tress of your luxuriant hair,
Still present to my touch, my lips, my eyes,
Forever changeless, and forever fair,
—And even in your grave, beauteous and free

Yes , in that dainty ivory shrine,
With those three pallid buds, I twine
And fold away a dream divine!

One night they lay upon a breast
Where Love hath made his fragrant nest,
And throned me as a life-long guest.

Near that chaste heart they seemed to me
Types of far fairer flowers to be—
The rosebuds of a human tree!

Buds that shall bloom beside my hearth,
And there be held of richer worth
Than all the kingliest gems of earth.

Ah me! the pathos of the thought!
I had not deemed she wanted aught;
Yet what a tenderer charm it wrought!

Oh man! whose felon hand, hath shaken,
The last sands in this glass of life,
In thy domomac fury taken
Pure, precious blood, with the red knife;
If e'er remorse for wicked deed
Can make thy wolfish nature bleed,
If guilt hath power to appal,
And turn thy coward heart to gall;
Then Conscience shall avenge the guilt,
Avenge the blood, like water, spilt.
That awful stain, upon thy hand,
Upon thy soul that crimson blot,
Shall make this world, to thee, a land
Without one pleasant spot!
And fearfully this deed shall make
Thy parting spirit quake.

I've seen one flying saucer. Only when
It flew across our sight in 1910
We little thought about the little men.

But let's suppose the little men were there
To cozy such a disk through foreign air:
Connecticut was dark, but didn't scare.

I wonder what they thought of us, and why
They chose the lesser part of Halley's sky,
And went away and let the years go by

Without return? Or did they not get back
To Mars or Venus through the cosmic flak?
At least they vanished, every spaceman Jack.

Last night I lost a word, the one
Just wanted for my madrigal:
Then went to bed disconsolate,
Groping through a web half spun,
Listening for sounds beyond recall:
Unrhymed my ruined verses hung,
Till I was lost myself—had won
Within the silence-hingéd gate,
The gate of horn:
And lo, at morn
I found the word upon my tongue.

It was so in my school-boy year,
When the lesson would not lie
Within the jaded memory,
With day-light it would reappear,
Unravelled, clear.
Perhaps 'twill be so that dread morn