May-day, and Other Pieces

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Ticknor and Fields, 1881 - American poetry - 205 pages

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Page 111 - DAUGHTERS of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.
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 75 - THE word of the Lord by night To the watching Pilgrims came, As they sat by the seaside, And filled their hearts with flame. God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more ; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor.
Page 140 - TERMINUS. 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 189 - THOUGH love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply, — "'Tis man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die.
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 137 - Cities of mortals woe-begone Fantastic care derides, But in the serious landscape lone Stern benefit abides. Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy, And merry is only a mask of sad, But, sober on a fund of joy, The woods at heart are glad.
Page 200 - He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.
Page 136 - I do not count the hours I spend In wandering by the sea; The forest is my loyal friend, Like God it useth me. In plains that room for shadows make Of skirting hills to lie, Bound in by streams which give and take Their colors from the sky; Or on the mountain-crest sublime, Or down the oaken glade, O what have I to do with time? For this the day was made.

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