Fiction Books

THE FEAR OF DEATH. Thou! whose superior, and aspiring mindCan leave the weakness of thy sex behind;Above its follies, and its fears can rise,Quit the low earth, and gain the distant skies:Whom strength of soul and innocence have taughtTo think of death, nor shudder at the thought;Say! whence the dread, that can alike engageVain thoughtless youth, and deep-reflecting age;Can shake the feeble, and appal... more...

FOR ***   NO eyes shall see the poems that I write  For you; not even yours; but after long  Forgetful years have passed on our delight  Some hand may chance upon a dusty song   Of those fond days when every spoken word  Was sweet, and all the fleeting things unspoken  Yet sweeter, and the music half unheard  Murmured through forests as a charm unbroken.   It is the plain and ordinary... more...

YES, THE WEARY EARTH SHALL BRIGHTEN. Yes, the weary earth shall brighten—  Brighten in the perfect day,And the fields that now but whiten,  Golden glow beneath the ray!Slowly swelling in her bosom,  Long the precious seed has lain,—Soon shall come the perfect blossom,  Soon, the rich, abundant grain! Long has been the night of weeping,  But the morning dawns at length,And, the misty... more...

CHAPTER I MATERIAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION § 1. Politico-economic problems. § 2. American economic problems in the past. § 3. Present-day problems: main subjects. § 4. Attempts to summarize the nation's wealth. § 5. Average wealth and the problem of distribution. § 6. Changes in the price-standard. § 7. A sum of capital, not of wealth. § 8. Sources of food supply. § 9. The sources of... more...

THE FROST SPIRIT He comes,—he comes,—the Frost Spirit comesYou may trace his footsteps nowOn the naked woods and the blasted fields and thebrown hill's withered brow.He has smitten the leaves of the gray old treeswhere their pleasant green came forth,And the winds, which follow wherever he goes,have shaken them down to earth. He comes,—he comes,—the Frost Spirit comes!from the frozen... more...

IN WHICH A MIRROR IS HELD UP Spring came to Highlawns, Eden tinted with myriad tender greens. Yellow-greens, like the beech boughs over the old wall, and gentle blue-greens, like the turf; and the waters of the lake were blue and white in imitation of the cloud-flecked sky. It seemed to Honora, as she sat on the garden bench, that the yellow and crimson tulips could not open wide enough their cups to... more...

CHAPTER I ASCENDI Honora did not go back to Quicksands. Neither, in this modern chronicle, shall we. The sphere we have left, which we know is sordid, sometimes shines in the retrospect. And there came a time, after the excitement of furnishing the new house was over, when our heroine, as it were, swung for a time in space: not for a very long time; that month, perhaps, between autumn and winter. We... more...

CLIO, OR THALIA? According to the ordinary and inaccurate method of measuring time, a fortnight may have gone by since the event last narrated, and Honora had tasted at last the joys of authorship. Her name was not to appear, to be sure, on the cover of the Life and Letters of General Angus Chiltern; nor indeed, so far, had she written so much as a chapter or a page of a work intended to inspire young... more...

IN WHICH IT IS ALL DONE OVER AGAIN All morning she had gazed on the shining reaches of the Hudson, their colour deepening to blue as she neared the sea. A gold-bound volume of Shelley, with his name on the fly-leaf, lay in her lap. And two lines she repeated softly to herself—two lines that held a vision:        "He was as the sun in his fierce youth,        As terrible and lovely... more...

INTRODUCTORY NOTE. Emile Verhaeren, remarkable among of the brilliant group of writers representing "Young Belgium," and one who has been recognized by the literary world of France as holding a foremost place among the lyric poets of the day was born at St. Amand, near Antwerp, in 1855. His childhood was passed on the banks of the Scheldt, in the midst of the wide-spreading Flemish plains, a... more...