Laura, my Laura! 'Yes, mother!' 'I want you, Laura; come down.' 'What is it, mother - what, dearest? O your loved face how it pales! You tremble, alas and alas - you heard bad news from the town?'...
The dove laid some little sticks, Then began to coo; The gnat took his trumpet up To play the day through; The pie chattered soft and long - But that she always does; The bee did all he had to do,...
Ay, Oliver! I was but seven, and he was eleven; He looked at me pouting and rosy. I blushed where I stood. They had told us to play in the orchard (and I only seven!...
We are much bound to them that do succeed; But, in a more pathetic sense, are bound To such as fail. They all our loss expound; They comfort us for work that will not speed, And life - itself a failure....
O fancy, if thou flyest, come back anon, Thy fluttering wings are soft as love's first word, And fragrant as the feathers of that bird, Which feeds upon the budded cinnamon....
The marten flew to the finch's nest, Feathers, and moss, and a wisp of hay: "The arrow it sped to thy brown mate's breast; Low in the broom is thy mate to-day."
Out of the melancholy that is made Of ebbing sorrow that too slowly ebbs, Comes back a sighing whisper of the reed, A note in new love-pipings on the bough, Grieving with grief till all the full-fed air...
White as white butterflies that each one dons Her face their wide white wings to shade withal, Many moon-daisies throng the water-spring. While couched in rising barley titlarks call,...
Heigh ho! daisies and buttercups, Fair yellow daffodils, stately and tall! When the wind wakes how they rock in the grasses, And dance with the cuckoo-buds slender and small!...
A song of a boat: - There was once a boat on a billow: Lightly she rocked to her port remote, And the foam was white in her wake like snow, And her frail mast bowed when the breeze would blow...
O, I would tell you more, but I am tired; For I have longed, and I have had my will; I pleaded in my spirit, I desired: "Ah! let me only see him, and be still...
The fairy woman maketh moan, "Well-a-day, and well-a-day, Forsooth I brought thee one rose, one, And thou didst cast my rose away." Hark! Oh hark, she mourneth yet,...
I love this gray old church, the low, long nave, The ivied chancel and the slender spire; No less its shadow on each heaving grave, With growing osier bound, or living brier;...