There is an air for which I would disown
— — Mozart's, Rossini's, Weber's melodies, —
A sweet sad air that languishes and sighs,
— — And keeps its secret charm for me alone.

Whene'er I hear that music vague and old,
— — Two hundred years are mist that rolls away;
The thirteenth Louis reigns, and I behold
— — A green land golden in the dying day.

An old red castle, strong with stony towers,
— — And windows gay with many-colored glass;
Wide plains, and rivers flowing among flowers,

There is a Young Lady, whose nose,
Continually prospers and grows;
When it grew out of sight, she exclaimed in a fright,
" Oh! Farewell to the end of my nose! "

There is a woman like a seed,
There is a man in embryo,
Whose spirits, faces, sex indeed
Their very mothers do not know.

Only their being is revealed,
They are: all else is hid in gloom,
Fixed by authority, but sealed
Deep in the future and the womb.

Yet they are foreordained to be
One female, and the other male,
And they will come the light to see,
And suck, and bite their fists, and wail,

And grow through childhood wondering still
At all the beauties of the earth,
And learn the exercise of will,

There is a tree, by day,
That, at night,
Has a shadow,
A hand huge and black,
With fingers long and black.
All through the dark,
Against the white man's house,
In the little wind,
The black hand plucks and plucks
At the bricks.
The bricks are the color of blood and very small.
Is it a black hand,
Or is it a shadow?

There is a thing which in the light
Is seldom used, but in the night
It serves the maiden female crew,
The ladies, and the good-wives too.
They use to take it in their hand,
And then it will uprightly stand;
And to a hole they it apply,
Where by its goodwill it would die;
It spends, goes out, and still within
It leaves its moisture thick and thin.

FEAR

There is a sound I would not hear,
Although it music's self might be;
Lest in my breast a crystal sphere
Might burst, might break for melody.

There is a face I would not see
Tho' like the springtime it were fair;
Lest love that was a barren tree
Should burst in bloom — should blossoms bear.

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words

There is a sheeling hidden in the wood
Unknown to all save God;
An ancient ash-tree and a hazel-bush
Their sheltering shade afford.

Around the doorway's heather-laden porch
Wild honeysuckles twine;
Prolific oaks, within the forest's gloom,
Shed mast upon fat swine.

Many a sweet familiar woodland path
Comes winding to my door;
Lowly and humble is my hermitage,
Poor, and yet not too poor.

There was an Old Person of Pinner,
As thin as a lath, if not thinner;
They dressed him in white, and roll'd him up tight,
That elastic Old Person of Pinner.

Father, Thou wilt accept the pure in heart,
And risest early that Thou mayest them see;
And will not from them e'en at night depart,
But in thy Presence bidst them always be;
I would be holy, for 'tis written so —
The pure in heart shall see their Father's face —
So would I journeying through trial go,
And run with patience here the godly race;
That I may see at last thy children pure,
In that blest home where all is peace and love;
Where Thou wilt make thy promise to me sure,
That I may dwell with Christ and Thee above;