Sensation, keep your servants out;
Let them be watchful, and alert!
We'll need a new discovery soon:
Tell them to dig about the dirt,
And tear off Keats', or Shelly's shroud,
To please and edify the crowd.
1870
[A LAWYER'S ROMANCE]
Into the mellow light of the cloudless autumn day,
Somehow, the vision slips, of a landscape, far away,
Wherever I turn my eyes, it hovers before them still,
The little, vine-wreathed cot, on the southerly slope of the hill,
The pasture at the left, the ducks a-swim in the pond,
And the straight, green rows of corn, with the wheat fields just beyond,
The sloping lawn on the right, that is always seeming to say
To the lake that lies below, "I will meet you just half way."
And over and over the cot, from th' ground to th' mossy eaves,
Cling, and twine, and clamber the vines, with their dark, green leaves;
The little mimic garden, with its simple flowers a-blow,
Larkspur, bleeding hearts, and the clumps of phlox, like snow;
Petunias, red and white, like drooping and fragile maids,
Rose trees hanging down, with roses of many shades,
Marigolds, bachelor-buttons, with clusters of evergreen,
On the two trim rows of beds, with the narrow path between,
And the setting rays of the sun, lending it all a flush,
That is given to sunset scenes, by the heavenly Artist's brush.
It is thus it rises to-day, and hovers before my eyes;
I have seen it softly lit, with the mornings' sweet surprise--
I have seen it when the dew glistened upon the grass--
In the hush of the summer noon, when the calm lake lay like glass--
In the ghostly rays o' the moon--in the quiet of the night--
But never half so fair as under that sunset light.
Ah! foolish, and weak old heart, must you live it over again?
Why reopen the book, whose final page was Pain!
But the picture rises before me, rises, and hovers there,
And the glory of the sunset falls on the maiden's hair;