May-day, and Other Pieces

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Ticknor and Fields, 1867 - American poetry - 205 pages

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Page 111 - To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.
Page 75 - God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more ; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor. Think ye I made this ball A field of havoc and war, Where tyrants great and tyrants small Might harry the weak and poor ? My angel, — his name is Freedom, — Choose him to be your king ; He shall cut pathways east and west, And fend you with his wing.
Page 164 - CHARACTER The sun set; but set not his hope: Stars rose; his faith was earlier up: Fixed on the enormous galaxy, Deeper and older seemed his eye: And matched his sufferance sublime The taciturnity of time. He spoke, and words more soft than rain Brought the Age of Gold again: His action won such reverence sweet, As hid all measure of the feat.
Page 140 - IT is time to be old, To take in sail : — The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said : ' No more ! No farther shoot Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.
Page 20 - A subtle chain of countless rings The next unto the farthest brings ; The eye reads omens where it goes, And speaks all languages the rose ; And, striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form.
Page 79 - Pay ransom to the owner And fill the bag to the brim. Who is the owner? The slave is owner, And ever was. Pay him.
Page 74 - Of honor o'er the sea, And bid the broad Atlantic roll, A ferry of the free. And henceforth there shall be no chain, Save underneath the sea The wires shall murmur through the main Sweet songs of liberty. The conscious stars accord above, The waters wild below, And under, through the cable wove, Her fiery errands go. For He that worketh high and wise, Nor pauses in his plan, Will take the sun out of the skies Ere freedom out of man.
Page 84 - IN an age of fops and toys, Wanting wisdom, void of right, Who shall nerve heroic boys To hazard all in Freedom's fight, — Break sharply off their jolly games, Forsake their comrades gay, And quit proud homes and youthful dames, For famine, toil, and fray ? Yet on the nimble air benign Speed nimbler messages, That waft the breath of grace divine To hearts in sloth and ease. ' So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.
Page 157 - EXPERIENCE THE lords of life, the lords of life, I saw them pass, In their own guise, Like and unlike, Portly and grim, Use and Surprise, Surface and Dream, Succession swift, and spectral Wrong, Temperament without a tongue, And the inventor of the game Omnipresent without name;— Some to see, some to be guessed, They marched from east to west: Little man, least of all, Among the legs of his guardians...
Page 138 - The bittern's boom, a desert make Which no false art refines. Down in yon watery nook, Where bearded mists divide, The gray old gods whom Chaos knew, The sires of Nature, hide. Aloft, in secret veins of air, Blows the sweet breath of song, O, few to scale those uplands dare, Though they to all belong! See thou bring not to field or stone The fancies found in books; Leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own, To brave the landscape's looks.

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