A Lowell Alphabet.
Another star ’neath Time’s horizon dropped
To gleam o’er unknown lands and seas;
Another heart that beat for freedom stopped,—
What mournful words are these!
To the Memory of Hood.
Bowing then his head, he listened
For an answer to his prayer;
No loud burst of thunder followed,
Not a murmur stirred the air.
A Parable.
Care, not of self, but of the common weal,
Had robbed their eyes of youth, and left instead
A look of patient power and iron will.
A Glance behind the Curtain.
Dear, common flower, that grow’st beside the way
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May.
To the Dandelion.
Each man is some man’s servant; every soul
Is by some other’s presence quite discrowned;
Each owes the next through all the imperfect round.
The Pioneer.
For mankind are one in spirit,
And an instinct bears along,
Round the earth’s electric circle,
The swift flash of right or wrong.
The Present Crisis.
Glorious fountain!
Let my heart be
Fresh, changeful, constant,
Upward, like thee!
The Fountain.
He could believe the promise of to-morrow
And feel the wondrous meaning of to-day;
He had a deeper faith in holy sorrow
Than the world’s seeming loss could take away.
Ode.
It is God’s day. It is Columbus’s,
A lavish day! One day, with life and heart,
Is more than time enough to find a world.
Columbus.
Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now,
Everything is upward striving.
The Vision of Sir Launfal.
Knew you what silence was before?
Here is no startle of dreaming bird
That sings in his sleep, or strives to sing.
Pictures from Appledore.
Life may be given in many ways,
And loyalty to Truth be sealed
As bravely in the closet as the field.
Commemoration Ode.
My soul went forth, and, mingling with the tree,
Danced in the leaves; or, floating in the cloud,
Saw its white double in the stream below.
Under the Willows.
Not always unimpeded can I pray,
Nor, pitying saint, thine intercession claim.
Sea-weed.
O realm of silence and of swart eclipse,
The shapes that haunt thy gloom
Make signs to us, and move thy withered lips
Across the gulf of doom.
To the Past.
Pan leaps and pipes all summer long,
The fairies dance each full-mooned night,
Would we but doff our lenses strong,
And trust our wiser eyes’ delight.
The Foot-path.
Quite spent and out of breath he reached the tree,
And, listening fearfully, he heard once more
The low voice murmur “Rhoecus,” close at hand.
Rhoecus.
Roots, wood, bark, and leaves singly perfect may be,
But, clapt hodge-podge together, they don’t make a tree.
A Fable for Critics.
Since first I heard our North wind blow,
Since first I saw Atlantic throw
On our fierce rocks his thunderous snow,
I loved thee, Freedom!
Ode to France.
Thine is music such as yields
Feelings of old brooks and fields,
And, around this pent-up room,
Sheds a woodland, free perfume.
To Perdita, Singing.
Untremulous in the river clear,
Towards the sky’s image, hangs the imaged bridge;
So still the air that I can hear
The slender clarion of the unseen midge.
Summer Storm.
Violet! sweet violet!
Thine eyes are full of tears;
Are they wet
Even yet
With the thought of other years?
Song.
Wrong ever builds on quicksands, but the Right
To the firm center lays its moveless base.
Prometheus.
Extemp’ry mammoth turkey-chick fer a Fejee Thanksgivin’.
The Biglow Papers.
Yet sets she not her soul so steadily
Above that she forgets her ties to earth.
Irene.
Zekle crep’ up quite unbeknown
An’ peeked in thru’ the winder,
An’ there sot Huldy all alone
’Ith no one nigh to hender.
The Courtin’.