English

The whelp that nipped its mother's dug in turning from her breast,
And smacked its lusty lips and built its own lair in the West,
Has stretched its limbs and looked about and roared across the sea:
“Oh, mother, I did bite thee hard, but still thou lovest me!”

She lifts her head and listens, as waking from a dream,
Her great jaw set, her claws outspread, her lion eyes agleam;
The voice is deep as thunder on the far horizon rim,
And up the mother spoke and said: “It can be none but him!”

Cried England to America: “My ancient love abides,

Here I sit with my belly full
And he who might have been my brother
Walks hungry in the rain.

Here I sit with my belly full
And she I might have loved
Seeks someone in the shadows
To whom she may sell her body.

Here I sit with my belly full,
No longer in the rain,
No longer the shadows for the
Woman I love,
No longer hunger.

Success is a great big beefsteak
With onions on it,

“What tidings bringest thou, messenger,
Of Christës birth this jolly day?”

A Babe is born of high nature,
The Prince of peace that ever shall be;
Of heaven and earth He hath the cure,
His lordship is eternity.
Such wondrous tidings you may hear,
That man is made now Godës peer,
Whom sin had made but fiendës prey.

A wondrous thing doth now befall,
That King that formëd star and sun,
Heaven and earth and angels all,
Now in mankind is new begun.
Such wondrous tidings you may hear,

Oh, rescue her! I am her brother now,
And you her father. Every gentle maid
Should have a guardian in each gentleman.

My lady's tongue is like the meadow blades,
That cut you stroking them with idle hand.
Nice cutting is her function: she divides
With spiritual edge the millet-seed,
And makes intangible savings.

“Make way for liberty!” he cried,
Made way for liberty, and died.

In arms the Austrian phalanx stood,
A living wall, a human wood;
A wall,—where every conscious stone
Seem'd to its kindred thousands grown,
A rampart all assaults to bear,
Till time to dust their frames should wear:
A wood,—like that enchanted grove
In which with fiends Rinaldo strove,
Where every silent tree possess'd
A spirit imprison'd in its breast,
Which the first stroke of coming strife
Might startle into hideous life:

Across the Prairie's silent waste I stray,
A fertile, verdant, woodless, boundless plain;
Shadeless it lies beneath the glare of day,
But gentle breezes sweep the grassy main,
Over whose surface, as they rest or play,
The waving billows sink or rise again;
While some far distant lonely hut or tree
Looms like a solitary sail at sea!

What is yon rude and overhanging steep
That frowns on Illinois' unmurmuring tide,—
Fortress, or cliff, or Pharos of the deep?
Stern Nature's monument of savage pride,

If the romantic land whose soil I tread
Could give back all its passions—first and last—
Awaking from their dust her fiery dead,
And with them all the history of the past,
No light upon my visions could they shed,
No balm upon my wounded spirit cast:
For me there is no help, no hope, no cure,
I have but to dissemble and endure.

Those very dead—with whom I 've lived so long
That I might lose the living—all combined—
Told or untold their fate, in tale or song,
Could bring no new emotion to my mind;

Mount Auburn! loveliest city of the dead,
No cemetery on earth with thee may vie
In native beauty. Wheresoe'er we tread,
Wood, water, rocks, turf, flowers, salute the eye:
Afar the ocean's bosom is outspread,
And naught distracts our meditations high
And holy reveries. Earth and air and wave
Are tranquil all, as man's best home, the Grave!
What obelisk arises on yon hill,
That overlooks a stately town and bay?
It is a scene to gaze on! Look thy fill!
Yet temples, islands, shipping, what are they?

What could be nicer than the spring,
When little birds begin to sing?
When for my daily walk I go
Through fields that once were white with snow?
When in the green and open spaces
Lie baby lambs with sweet black faces?
What could be finer than to shout
That all the buds are bursting out—
And oh, at last beneath the hill,
To pick a yellow daffodil?