nature

In vain, poor Nymph, to please our youthful sight
You sleep in cream and frontlets all the night,
Your face with patches soil, with paint repair,
Dress with gay gowns, and shade with foreign hair.
If truth in spight of manners must be told,
Why, really fifty-five is something old.

Once you were young; or one, whose life's so long
She might have born my mother, tells me wrong.
And once (since Envy's dead before you die,)
The women own, you play'd a sparkling eye,
Taught the light foot a modish little trip,

THOUGH beauty be the mark of praise,
   And yours of whom I sing be such
   As not the world can praise too much,
Yet 'tis your Virtue now I raise.

A virtue, like allay so gone
   Throughout your form as, though that move
   And draw and conquer all men's love,
This subjects you to love of one.

Wherein you triumph yet--because
   'Tis of your flesh, and that you use
   The noblest freedom, not to choose
Against or faith or honour's laws.

But who should less expect from you?

Hither with hallowed steps as is the ground,
That must enshrine this saint with lookes profound,
And sad aspects as the dark vails you weare,
Virgins opprest, draw gently, gently neare;
Enter the dismall chancell of this rooome,
Where each pale guest stands fixt a living tombe;
With trembling hands helpe to remove this earth
To its last death and first victorious birth:
Let gums and incense fume, who are at strife
To enter th' hearse and breath in it new life;
Mingle your steppes with flowers as you goe,

LINES FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF A HARVARD UNDERGRADUATE

The bloom that lies on Fanny's cheek
Is all my Latin, all my Greek;
The only sciences I know
Are frowns that gloom and smiles that glow;
Siberia and Italy
Lie in her sweet geography;
No scolarship have I but such
As teaches me to love her much.

Why should I strive to read the skies,
Who know the midnight of her eyes?
Why should I go so very far
To learn what heavenly bodies are!
Not Berenice's starry hair

I write my name as one,
On sands by waves o'errun
Or winter's frosted pane,
Traces a record vain.

Oblivion's blankness claims
Wiser and better names,
And well my own may pass
As from the strand or glass.

Wash on, O waves of time!
Melt, noons, the frosty rime!
Welcome the shadow vast,
The silence that shall last!

When I and all who know
And love me vanish so,
What harm to them or me
Will the lost memory be?

If any words of mine,

To the Heavens above us
O look and behold
The Planets that love us
All harnessed in gold!
What chariots, what horses
Against us shall bide
While the Stars in their courses
Do fight on our side?

All thought, all desires,
That are under the sun,
Are one with their fires,
As we also are one:
All matter, all spirit,
All fashion, all frame,
Receive and inherit
Their strength from the same.

(Oh, man that deniest
All power save thine own,
Their power in the highest

Alas! Beautiful Summer now hath fled,
And the face of Nature doth seem dead,
And the leaves are withered, and falling off the trees,
By the nipping and chilling autumnal breeze.

The pleasures of the little birds are all fled,
And with the cold many of them will be found dead,
Because the leaves of the trees are scattered in the blast,
And makes the feathered creatures feel downcast.

Because there are no leaves on the trees to shield them from the storm
On a windy, and rainy, cloudy morn;

Not as the songs of other lands
   Her song shall be
Where dim Her purple shore-line stands
   Above the sea!
As erst she stood, she stands alone;
Her inspiration is her own.
From sunlit plains to mangrove strands
Not as the songs of other lands
   Her song shall be.

O Southern Singers! Rich and sweet,
   Like chimes of bells,
The cadence swings with rhythmic beat
   The music swells;
But undertones, weird, mournful, strong,
Sweep like swift currents thro' the song.

On such a day as this I think,
On such a day as this,
When earth and sky and nature's whole
Are clad in April's bliss;
And balmy zephyrs gently waft
Upon your cheek a kiss;
Sufficient is it just to live
On such a day as this.

'Tis fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down
Among the famous palaces and cities of renown,
To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings, --
But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things.

So it's home again, and home again, America for me!
My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be,
In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.

Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air;