The cuckoo bird has long gone home
And owls instead and flitting jars
Call out, call out for us to come,
My Love and me, to count the stars;
And into this wide orchard rove —
The whispering trees scarce give us room,
They drop their petals on my Love
And me beneath the apple bloom.

And each pale petal is alive
With dew of twilight from the sky,
Where all the stars hang in their hive —
Such scores to count, my Love and I!
The boughs below, the boughs above,
We scatter, lest their twisted gloom

— Honest abe! — What strange vexation
Thrills an office-armchaired party!
What impatience and disgust
That the people should put trust
In a name so true and hearty!
What indignant lamentation
For the unchosen — surely fitter
(Growl they) than a rough rail-splitter —
Most unheard-of nomination!

If the name you chance to mention,
Sir (they splutter) the Convention,
Sir, has acted like a babe!
You have missed it, be assured,
All your best men left to leeward;
Give us Banks, or Bates, or Seward, —

Where the Northern pine-trees sing,
And the crystal torrents spring,
In a warm and dainty nest,
Dwells the maid that I love best, —
Born, as is the Alpine rose,
Blooming in the midst of snows.
Yet, so much she seems to me
Like a dream of Italy, —
Beautiful, serene, and calm,
Opulent with bloom and balm, —
That my heart leaps up to greet her,
Vita della mia vita!

I hear the notes of the whippoorwill
As of old in the gathering shade;
I sit by the rock on the quiet hill
Where in girlhood my mother played.

With cheeks out-blooming the morning flowers,
And with heart as light as May,
It was here that she came in the golden hours,
By the lichened rock to play:

A granite waif, by glacier borne
From a far-away northern sea;
It seemed so lonely, from kindred torn,
That she kept it company.

Till all in fancy or witching dream
It shone with a glimmering light,

Down in the harbor the ships lie moored,
Weary sea-birds with folded wing,—
Anchors sunken and sails secured;
Yet on the water they rock and swing,
Rock and swing,
As though each keel were a living thing.

Silence sleeps on the earth and air,
Never a breath does the sea-breeze blow,
Yet like-living pendulums there,
Down in the harbor, to and fro,
To and fro,
Backward and forward the vessels go.

As a child on its mother's breast,
Cradled in happy slumber, lies,
Yet, half-conscious of joy and rest,

How strange it must be without any pain,
To lie upon the bed of death;
As the last pulses thrill each languid vein,
And the lip trembles yet with breath:

Whilst the clear spirit, all unchanged within,
Looks back along life's eddying stream,
And feels reality at length begin,
After a long and fevered dream.

That scene made up of darkness, and of light,
The irrecoverable past,
Like a great picture lies before our sight,
Seen all at once from first to last.

Its hopes, its passions, its events, we see,

Sleep! all who toil;
No longer creaks the harvest wain,
For sleeping lies the harvest day,
Asleep the winding leafy lane
Where none's afoot to miss his way.

Sleep! village street,
You've stared too long upon the sun;
Now turn you to the gentle moon.
Sleep! windows—for your work is done;
Tomorrow's light will come too soon!

Sleep! Sleep! The heat
Is over, in the darkened house.
A night-jar's spinning in the brake
And—hark!—the floating owls have come
To try and keep the hours awake.

Sleep! honey hives!

The children sung a song, this Christmas morning,
Mellow and clear, outside my chamber door,
Waking me softly from my pleasant dreaming
Of unforgotten Christmas-days of yore.

Sweetly they sung, my neighbor's happy children,
Two merry girls and one glad-hearted boy,
Repeating oft their song's rejoicing burden, —
" On Christmas morn the angels sing for joy! "

Sweetly they sung; but ah! their cheerful voices
Broke up my soul's deep founts of hidden woe,
And pressing down my face against the pillow,

Welcome, ye pleasant dales and hills,
Where, dreamlike, passed my early days!
Ye cliffs and glens and laughing rills
That sing unconscious hymns of praise!
Welcome, ye woods, with tranquil bowers
Embathed in autumn's mellow sheen,
Where careless childhood gathered flowers,
And slept on mossy carpets green!

The same bright sunlight gently plays
About the porch and orchard trees;
The garden sleeps in noontide haze,
Lulled by the murmuring of the bees;
The sloping meadows stretch away
To upland field and wooded hill;

The Winter gathers up the folds
Of his torn robe from hills and wolds,
New life breathes over vale and plain,
And dead hearts come to life again, —
But O, these bonds!

Wild March forbears his boisterous ways,
And whispers to the listening days
A promise of the coming June;
And life would be a precious boon, —
Except these bonds!

A robin sings on yonder limb,
Amid the buds, a triumph hymn;
And I could almost hear the bees
Busy among the apple-trees,
But for these bonds!

My soul could catch spring's vital breath,