English

Your eyes—
Dark pools, so calm and deep,
A thousand ages in them sleep,
A dreaming world within them lies,
And all my hopes

The Western sky blazed through the trees,
And in the East the dove-light shone;
Low fields of clover to the breeze
Gave out a fragrant monotone;
While sharp-voiced, whirring things beyond
Sent a faint treble through the air,
And discords of the hidden pond
Pulsed like an anthem, deep and rare.
Yet all the twilight range seemed still,
The tumult was so subtle-sweet;
When forth it burst, — clear, slow, complete,
The evening call of
" Whip-poor-will! "

The yarrow, crowding by the hedge,

I 'd like to be a daisy
In the clover,
That I might look up bravely
At my lover.

I 'd bid the willing breezes
Bend me sweet,
That I might, as he passed me,
Touch his feet;

I 'd let the dew so quickly
Start and glisten,
That, thinking I had called him,
He would listen.

Yet would he listen vainly —
Happy me!
No bee could find my secret;
How could he?

If ever of the clover
Couch he made,
I 'd softly kiss his eyelids
In the shade.

Love calls me tonight
In the beat of the rain
Through the cold little drops
On my bare window-pane;
Calls and calls through the dark
Like a whispered refrain
Tapping soft on my heart
Through the bare window pane.

It was a little boy who lived in Philadelphia town,
And a very kind old gentleman, whose name was Mr. Brown.
It happened that the self-same day they visited the Fair,
And, hand in hand, they walked about, a happy, friendly pair.

The little boy looked right and left with eager, wondering eyes,
The other gazed more steadily, for he was old and wise;
But soon he caught the small boy's way of feeling glad and bright;
And the boy no longer aimlessly looked to the left and right.

I know my love is seeking me
As restless rivers seek the sea,
Across the nights, across the days
That snare the intervening ways.

I know my love is seeking me
As Time must seek Eternity,
When nights are very still I hear
His footsteps, coming, coming near!

Once on a time, where jewels flashed
And rose-hid fountains softly plashed,
And all the air was sweet and bright
With music, mirth and deft delight —
A courtly dame drew, smiling, near
A poet, greatest of his time,
And chirped a question in his ear
With voice like silver bells in chime:
" Good Master Shakespeare, I would know
The name thy lady bore, in sooth,
Ere thine? Nay, little while ago
It was, for still we see her youth.
Some high-born name, I trow, and yet
Though I have heard it, I forget. "

(GARFIELD)


The day dies softly, veiled with roseate gold;
A few white clouds, like phantom ships, float by,
And fleck the vaulted height of ether blue,
While Darkness lights the candles of the sky.

The night at Elberon falls fair and clear,
And Silence broods upon it like a dove;
A dreamy beauty rests upon the shore,
Made radiant by the beacon-lights above.

The grand old ocean, ceasing from its toils,
To-night sounds not its lash of angry strife,

After all —
mine is the joy
Which naught can lessen or destroy.
For love has led my flying feet
Where immortelles are springing sweet,
And everlasting skies of gold
Are memories, when earth is cold
And though our future paths should lie
Estranged, as star-ways, through the sky,
I shall not look reproof, nor find
Within this pass a charge unkind,
And lightly sorrow shall be met
For I can never know regret.

I

The gray war-horse, impatient, champs his bit,
His spreading nostrils sniff the coming fight,
But still as stone his rider's eagle eye
Looks on the serried lines that meet his sight.

Each feature tells a tale they may not know —
A volume may be spoken in each breath;
But grave and stern, with silence on his lips,
The gallant Cleburne waits the charge of Death.

Behind their works loom up the lines of Blue,
Before, the timber felled by cautious hands
To break the ranks of Gray; 'twixt these a floor