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...

Towards the close of the First French Revolution, Joseph Leopold SigisbertHugo, son of a joiner at Nancy, and an officer risen from the ranks in theRepublican army, married Sophie Trébuchet, daughter of a Nantes fitter-outof privateers, a Vendean royalist and devotee. Victor Marie Hugo, their second son, was born on the 26th of February, 1802, at Besançon, France. Though a weakling, he was carried,... more...

ANALYSIS OF THE FIRST PART. THE Poem begins with the description of an obscure village, and of the pleasing melancholy which it excites on being revisited after a long absence. This mixed sensation is an effect of the Memory. From an effect we naturally ascend to the cause; and the subject proposed is then unfolded with an investigation of the nature and leading principles of this faculty. It is... more...

PREFACE The poems garnered up in this little volume were written at different periods in the life of the author, dating from her early girlhood up to recent years. They were not written with a view of making a book, each poem being the spontaneous outpouring of a deeply poetic nature and called forth by some experience that claimed her attention. The "Old Man of the Mountain," for instance, was... more...

Gerontion Thou hast nor youth nor ageBut as it were an after dinner sleepDreaming of both. Here I am, an old man in a dry month,Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.I was neither at the hot gatesNor fought in the warm rainNor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,Bitten by flies, fought.My house is a decayed house,And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner,Spawned in some estaminet... more...

THE AGES. I. When to the common rest that crowns our days,Called in the noon of life, the good man goes,Or full of years, and ripe in wisdom, laysHis silver temples in their last repose;When, o'er the buds of youth, the death-wind blows,And blights the fairest; when our bitter tearsStream, as the eyes of those that love us close,We think on what they were, with many fearsLest goodness die with... more...

Birth-night of the Humming Birds The Departure of the Fairies I. I'll tell you a Fairy Tale that's new: How the merry Elves o'er the ocean flew From the Emerald isle to this far-off shore, As they were wont in the days of yore; And played their pranks one moonlit night, Where the zephyrs alone could see the sight. II. Ere the Old world yet had found the New, The fairies oft in their... more...

THE PILOT’S STORY. I. It was a story the pilot told, with his back to his hearers,–– Keeping his hand on the wheel and his eye on the globe of the jack-staff, Holding the boat to the shore and out of the sweep of the current, Lightly turning aside for the heavy logs of the drift-wood, Widely shunning the snags that made us sardonic obeisance. II. All the soft, damp air was full of delicate... more...

CROWS.THEY stream across the fading western skyA sable cloud, far o'er the lonely leas;Now parting into scattered companies,Now closing up the broken ranks, still highAnd higher yet they mount, while, carelessly,Trail slow behind, athwart the moving treesA lingering few, 'round whom the evening breezePlays with sad whispered murmurs as they fly.A lonely figure, ghostly in the dimAnd darkening... more...

Life’s Conflict. In the deep recess of the inmost heart, Where Satan tempts and angels come to shield, Are foes by which we would be overcome, Were Christ not with us on the battle-field. The tempter, seeking whom he may devour, Would sift as wheat, and finally prevail; But Jesus intercedes and prays for us, That faith in these dread conflicts may not fail. These calls unheeded, who the end can... more...