In Youth
NOT lips of mine have ever said:
"Would God that I were dead!"
Nay, cruel griefs! ye cannot break
My love of life; nor can ye make
Oblivion blest in any wise,
Nor death seem sweet for sorrow's sake.
Life! life! my every pulse outcries
For life, and love, and quickened breath,
O God,—not not for death!
Dandelion
Hey-a-day-a-day, my dear! Dandelion time!
Come, and let us make for them a pretty little rhyme!
See the meadows twinkling now, beautiful and bright
As the sky when through the blue shine the stars at night!
Once upon a time, folks say, mighty kings of old
Met upon a splendid field called 'The Cloth of Gold.'
But, we wonder, could it be there was ever seen
Brighter gold than glitters now in our meadows green?
Dandelions, dandelions, shining through the dew,
Let the kings have Cloth of Gold, but let us have you!
Showery Time
The April rain-drops tinkle
In cuckoo-cups of gold,
And warm south winds unwrinkle
The buds the peach-boughs hold.
In countless fluted creases
The little elm-leaves show,
While white as carded fleeces
The dogwood blossoms blow.
A rosy robe is wrapping
The early red-bud trees;
But still the haws are napping,
Nor heed the honey-bees.
And still in lazy sleeping
The apple-buds are bound,
But tulip-tips are peeping
From out the garden ground.
And yonder, gayly swinging
Upon the turning vane,
A robin redbreast singing
Makes merry at the rain!
Budding-Time Too Brief
O LITTLE buds, break not so fast!
The spring's but new.
The skies will yet be brighter blue,
And sunny too.
I would you might thus sweetly last
Till this glad season's overpast,
Nor hasten through.
It is so exquisite to feel
The light warm sun;
To merely know the winter done,
And life begun;
And to my heart no blooms appeal
For tenderness so deep and real,
As any one
Of these first April buds, that hold
The hint of spring's
Rare perfectness that May-time brings.
So take not wings!
Oh, linger, linger, nor unfold
Too swiftly though the mellow mould,
Sweet growing things!
And errant birds, and honey-bees,
Seek not to wile;
And, sun, let not your warmest smile
Quite yet beguile
The young peach-boughs and apple-trees
To trust their beauty to the breeze;
Wait yet awhile!
Flood-Time on the Marshes
DEAR marshes, by no hand of man
Laboriously sown,
My river clasps you in its arms
And claims you for its own!
It laughs, and laughs, and twinkles on
Across the reedy soil,
That heed of harvest vexes not,
Nor need of any toil.
And in my heart I joy to know
That safe within this spot
Sweet nature reigns; let other fields
Bear bread, it matters not.
—What matters aught of anything
When one may drift away
Into the realms of all-delight,
As I drift on to-day?
Beneath the budded swamp-rose sprays
The blue-eyed grasses stand,
Submerged within a crystal world,
A limpid wonderland;
And where the clustered sedges show
Their silky-tasselled sheaves,
The slender arrow-lily lifts
Its quiver of green leaves.
The tiny waves lap softly past,
So musical and round,
I think they must be moulded out
Of sunshine and sweet sound.
And here and there some little knoll,
More lofty than the rest,
Stands out above the happy tide,
An island of the blest;
Where fringed with lacy fronds of fern
The grass grows rich and high,
And flowering spider-worts have caught
The color of the sky;
Where water-oaks are thickly strung
With green and golden balls,
And from tall tilting iris tips
The wild canary calls.
—O gracious world! I seem to feel
A kinship with the trees;
I am first-cousin to the marsh,
A sister to the breeze!
My heartstrings tremble to its touch,
In throbs supremely sweet,
And through my pulses light and life
And love divinely meet.
Far off, the sunbeams smite the woods,
And pearly fleeces sail
Athwart the light, and leave below
A purple-shadowed trail;
The essence of the perfect June
So subtly is distilled,
Until my very soul of souls
Is filled, and overfilled!
