Poetry Books

INTRODUCTION. Few poems have been more variously designated than Comus. Milton himself describes it simply as “A Mask”; by others it has been criticised and estimated as a lyrical drama, a drama in the epic style, a lyric poem in the form of a play, a phantasy, an allegory, a philosophical poem, a suite of speeches or majestic soliloquies, and even a didactic poem. Such variety in the description... more...

THE MAN OF UZ. A joyous festival.— The gathering back Of scattered flowrets to the household wreath. Brothers and sisters from their sever'd homes Meeting with ardent smile, to renovate The love that sprang from cradle memories And childhood's sports, and whose perennial stream Still threw fresh crystals o'er the sands of life. —Each bore some treasured picture of the past, Some... more...

CHAPTER I. Mistress O’Hara lives down by the sea, A skittish and beautiful widow is she; She has black shiny tresses, and curly buff toes, And a heavenly tilt to the tip of her nose! She has three little children, the eldest is four (Nurse says he is naughty enough to be more); The Twins are dear dumplings, and they and their brother Are always in scrapes—Of one kind, or another.   This morning... more...

MY "PROMENADE SOLITAIRE" Up and down in my garden fair,Under the trellis where grapes will bloom,With the breath of violets in the air,As pallid Winter for Spring makes room,I walk and ponder, free from care,In my beautiful Promenade Solitaire. Back and forth in the checkered shadeTraced by the lattice that holds the vine,With the glory of snow-capped crests displayedOn the sapphire sky in a... more...

SPRING NIGHT   THE park is filled with night and fog,     The veils are drawn about the world,  The drowsy lights along the paths     Are dim and pearled.   Gold and gleaming the empty streets,     Gold and gleaming the misty lake,  The mirrored lights like sunken swords,     Glimmer and shake.   Oh, is it not enough to be  Here with this beauty over me?  My throat... more...

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. HE success of the first edition of this little work, compels its author to say a few words on the issue of a second. "Expressive silence" would now be in him the excessive impudence of not acknowledging, as he respectfully does acknowledge, that success to be greatly ascribable to the eminent artists who have drawn and engraved the illustrations. "A man's... more...

Old Ragnor's Cliffs. Like some horrific Gorgon's mammoth skull,Thrown up by Titan spade,From out those cavesWhere saurians with mastodons had played,Before the sea had made their homes their graves,And scared their ghosts with screech of sea-born mew and gull, Is Ragnor's beetling brow, the seaman's dread,That scowls by night and dayOn that same seaAnd with earth-shaking sound is... more...

Little Bo-peep has lost her sheep,And cannot tell where to find ’em;Leave them alone, and they’ll come home,And bring their tails behind ’em. Little Bo-peep fell fast asleep,And dreamt she heard them bleating;When she awoke, she found it a joke,For still they all were fleeting. Then up she took her little crook,Determined for to find them;She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed,For... more...

The Twelve-Forty-Five (For Edward J. Wheeler) Within the Jersey City shedThe engine coughs and shakes its head,The smoke, a plume of red and white,Waves madly in the face of night.And now the grave incurious starsGleam on the groaning hurrying cars.Against the kind and awful reignOf darkness, this our angry train,A noisy little rebel, poutsIts brief defiance, flames and shouts —And passes on, and... more...

SMALL MEANS AND GREAT ENDS; OR, THE WIDOW'S POT OF OIL. BY JULIA A. FLETCHER. "Oh! how I do wish I was rich!" said Eliza Melvyn, dropping her work in her lap, and looking up discontentedly to her mother; "why should not I be rich as well as Clara Payson? There she passes in her father's carriage, with her fine clothes, and haughty ways; while I sit here—sew—sewing—all day... more...