These are the Gardens of the Desert, these The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, And fresh as the young earth, ere man had sinned -- |
These are the gardens of the Desert, these The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, For which the speech of England has no name -- The Prairies. |
These struggling tides of life that seem In wayward, aimless course to tend, Are eddies of the mighty stream That rolls to its appointed end. |
They waste us-ay-like April snow In the warm noon, we shrink away; And fast they follow, as we go Towards the setting day- Till they shall fill the land, and we Are driven into the Western sea |
Thou blossom bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven's own blue. . . . |
Thou dost know The faults to which the young are ever prone; The will is quick to act, the judgment weak. |
Thus change the forms of being. Thus arise Races of living things, glorious in strength, And perish, as the quickening breath of God Fills them, or is withdrawn. |
Thy early smile has stayed my walk; But midst the gorgeous blooms of May, I passed thee on thy humble stalk. |
To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language. |
To me it seems that one of the most important requisites for a great poet is a luminous style. The elements of poetry lie in natural objects, in the vicissitudes of human life, in the emotions of the human heart, and the relations of man to man. |
Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger |
Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; Th' eternal years of God are hers; But Error, wounded, writhes in pain, And dies among his worshippers. |
We plant, upon the sunny lea,
A shadow for the noontide hour, A shelter from the summer shower, When we plant the apple-tree. |
Weep not that the world changes - did it keep a stable, changeless state, it were cause indeed to weep |
Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood
In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood? |