Poetry Books

MORNING IN KANSAS There are lands beyond the ocean which are gray beneath their years, where a hundred generations learned to sow and reap and spin; where the sons of Shem and Japhet wet the furrow with their tears—and the noontide is departed, and the night is closing in. Long ago the shadows lengthened in the lands across the sea, and the dusk is now enshrouding regions nearer home, alas! There are... more...

CANTO I. I. LETTER FROM THE COMTESSE DE NEVERS TO LORD ALFRED VARGRAVE. "I hear from Bigorre you are there. I am toldYou are going to marry Miss Darcy. Of old,So long since you may have forgotten it now(When we parted as friends, soon mere strangers to grow),Your last words recorded a pledge—what you will—A promise—the time is now come to fulfil.The letters I ask you, my lord, to return,I... more...

Barter   Life has loveliness to sell,   All beautiful and splendid things,  Blue waves whitened on a cliff,   Soaring fire that sways and sings,  And children's faces looking up  Holding wonder like a cup.   Life has loveliness to sell,   Music like a curve of gold,  Scent of pine trees in the rain,   Eyes that love you, arms that hold,  And for your spirit's still... more...

The Grand Old Man of Oakworth. Come, hand me down that rustic harp,   From off that rugged wall,For I must sing another song   To suit the Muse’s call,For she is bent to sing a pœan,   On this eventful year,In praise of the philanthropist   Whom all his friends hold dear—      The Grand Old Man of Oakworth,      Beyond his eightieth year! No flattery!  My honest Muse,   Nor... more...

TO MY MOTHERMother, to whose valiant will,Battling long ago,What the heaping years fulfil,Light and song, I owe;Send my little book a-field,Fronting praise or blameWith the shining flag and shieldOf your name.It fell on a day I was happy,And the winds, the concave sky,The flowers and the beasts in the meadowSeemed happy even as I;And I stretched my hands to the meadow,To the bird, the beast, the... more...

INTRODUCTION. There is scarcely an UN-DRAMATIC writer of the Seventeenth Century, whose poems exhibit so many and such gross corruptions as those of the author of LUCASTA. In the present edition, which is the first attempt to present the productions of a celebrated and elegant poet to the admirers of this class of literature in a readable shape, both the text and the pointing have been amended... more...

i.Othou refulgent essence of all grace!O thou that with the witchery of thy faceHast made of me thy servant unto death,I pray thee pause, ere, musical of breath,And rapt of utterance, thou condemn indeedMy venturous wooing, and the wanton speedWith which I greet thee, dear and tender soul!From out the fullness of my passion-creed. ii. Iam so truly thine that nevermoreShall man be found, this side the... more...

Stars (At Locheven)Have you walked in the woodsWhen twilight wraps a veil of mistAround the gray-green treesIn early spring?It is then the snow-white trilliumGleam like stars from the carpetOf last year’s leaves:And tall white violets glowLike clouds of nebulæ along the path.And flecked, like points of lightIn the quiet pools of waterAmong the gray-green boles,Are the stars of heaven. Curling and... more...

THE RAVEN.Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door."'T is some visiter," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door—Only this, and nothing more."Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the... more...

SANGUINE "The clock indicates the hour but what does enternity indicate?"Whitman Imagine, being told cubism isn't painting. ThatBeardsley didn't die at 26, unheralded as a boy geniusor Corot didn't come to Paris after all. Imagine, The Louvre without a rooftop, theintelligentsia sitting down to a ragged tablesurrounded by sawdust intellects, Proust not beingable to write his... more...