Poetry Books

GEORGIC I What makes the cornfield smile; beneath what starMaecenas, it is meet to turn the sodOr marry elm with vine; how tend the steer;What pains for cattle-keeping, or what proofOf patient trial serves for thrifty bees;-Such are my themes.O universal lightsMost glorious! ye that lead the gliding yearAlong the sky, Liber and Ceres mild,If by your bounty holpen earth once changedChaonian acorn for... more...

This book contains the undesigned, but all the more spontaneous and authentic, biography of a very rare spirit. It contains the record of a short life, into which was crowded far more of keen experience and high aspiration—of the thrill of sense and the rapture of soul—than it is given to most men, even of high vitality, to extract from a life of twice the length. Alan Seeger had barely passed his... more...

BOOK I Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore.Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,And in the doubtful war, before he wonThe Latian realm, and built the destin'd town;His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine,And settled sure succession in his line,From whence the race of... more...

 1. How, my dear Mary,—are you critic-bitten (For vipers kill, though dead) by some review, That you condemn these verses I have written, Because they tell no story, false or true? What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten, _5 May it not leap and play as grown cats do, Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time, Content thee with a visionary rhyme.  2. What hand would crush... more...

embellished with designs.Young Master Pig you here may seeUpon his tender Mother’s kneeNo longer he with patience sucksFor See, he’s cutting both his tusks.Behold him now in Go Cart safely tiedHis pretty feet go trotting side by sideOld Granny smiles and grunting seems to say“Ce petit prodige c’est moi qui l’ai fait.”To Master Goat next Pig is sentWhose learning is most excellentBut all his... more...

The poetry of each age may be considered as vitally connected with, and as vividly reflective of, its character and progress, as either its politics or its religion. You see the nature of the soil of a garden in its tulips and roses, as much as in its pot-herbs and its towering trees. We purpose, accordingly, to compare briefly the poetry of the past and of the present centuries, as indices of some of... more...

THE FAR AWAY COUNTRY NORA HOPPER CHESSON Far away's the country where I desire to go, Far away's the country where the blue roses grow, Far away's the country and very far away, And who would travel thither must go 'twixt night and day. Far away's the country, and the seas are wild That you must voyage over, grown man or chrisom child, O'er leagues of land and water a... more...

I A prince I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face,Of temper amorous, as the first of May,With lengths of yellow ringlet, like a girl,For on my cradle shone the Northern star. There lived an ancient legend in our house.Some sorcerer, whom a far-off grandsire burntBecause he cast no shadow, had foretold,Dying, that none of all our blood should knowThe shadow from the substance, and that oneShould come to... more...

BOOK FIRST THE COMING OF AENEAS TO CARTHAGE I sing of arms and the man who of old from the coasts of Troy came, an exile of fate, to Italy and the shore of Lavinium; hard driven on land and on the deep by the violence of heaven, for cruel Juno's unforgetful anger, and hard bestead in war also, ere he might found a city and carry his gods into Latium; from whom is the Latin race, the lords of Alba,... more...

THE THREE KINGS OF COLOGNE. A CHRISTMAS TALE FROM AN OLD ENGLISH CHRONICLE. (Written by John of Hildesheim in the Fourteenth Century.) Here followeth the manner and form of seeking and offering; and also of the burying and translations of the three Holy and Worshipful Kings of Cologne: Jaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. Now when the Children of Israel were gone out of Egypt and had won and made subject... more...