Sidney Lanier

Death, thou’rt a cordial old and rare: Look how compounded, with what care! Time got his wrinkles reaping thee Sweet herbs from all antiquity. David to thy distillage went, Keats, and Gotama excellent, Omar

In o’er-strict calyx lingering, Lay music’s bud too long unblown, Till thou, Beethoven, breathed the spring: Then bloomed the perfect rose of tone. O Psalmist of the weak, the strong, O Troubadour of love

My crippled sense fares bow’d along His uncompanioned way, And wronged by death pays life with wrong And I wake by night and dream by day. And the Morning seems but fatigued Night That

O marriage-bells, your clamor tells Two weddings in one breath. SHE marries whom her love compels: And I wed Goodman Death! My brain is blank, my tears are red; Listen, O God: “I will,”

Written for the Art Autograph during the Irish Famine, 1880. Heartsome Ireland, winsome Ireland, Charmer of the sun and sea, Bright beguiler of old anguish, How could Famine frown on thee? As our Gulf-Stream,

How tall among her sisters, and how fair, How grave beyond her youth, yet debonair As dawn, ‘mid wrinkled Matres of old lands Our youngest Alma Mater modest stands! In four brief cycles round

I knowed a man, which he lived in Jones, Which Jones is a county of red hills and stones, And he lived pretty much by gittin’ of loans, And his mules was nuthin’ but

Through all that year-scarred agony of height, Unblest of bough or bloom, to where expands His wandy circlet with his bladed bands Dividing every wind, or loud or light, To termless hymns of love

Down mildest shores of milk-white sand, By cape and fair Floridian bay, Twixt billowy pines a surf asleep on land And the great Gulf at play, Past far-off palms that filmed to nought, Or

Inscribed to the Memory of John Keats. Dear uplands, Chester’s favorable fields, My large unjealous Loves, many yet one A grave good-morrow to your Graces, all, Fair tilth and fruitful seasons! Lo, how still!

To-day the woods are trembling through and through With shimmering forms, that flash before my view, Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue. The leaves that wave against my cheek caress Like

Look off, dear Love, across the sallow sands, And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea, How long they kiss in sight of all the lands. Ah! longer, longer, we. Now in the

Fine-tissued as her finger-tips, and white As all her thoughts; in shape like shields of prize, As if before young Violet’s dreaming eyes Still blazed the two great Theban bucklers bright That swayed the

Swift, through some trap mine eyes have never found, Dim-panelled in the painted scene of Sleep, Thou, giant Harlequin of Dreams, dost leap Upon my spirit’s stage. Then Sight and Sound, Then Space and

What time I paced, at pleasant morn, A deep and dewy wood, I heard a mellow hunting-horn Make dim report of Dian’s lustihood Far down a heavenly hollow. Mine ear, though fain, had pain

In the South lies a lonesome, hungry Land; He huddles his rags with a cripple’s hand; He mutters, prone on the barren sand, What time his heart is breaking. He lifts his bare head

A rose of perfect red, embossed With silver sheens of crystal frost, Yet warm, nor life nor fragrance lost. High passion throbbing in a sphere That Art hath wrought of diamond clear, A great

My soul is sailing through the sea, But the Past is heavy and hindereth me. The Past hath crusted cumbrous shells That hold the flesh of cold sea-mells About my soul. The huge waves

“Order A. P. Hill to prepare for battle.” “Tell Major Hawks to advance the Commissary train.” “Let us cross the river and rest in the shade.” The stars of Night contain the glittering Day

I was drivin’ my two-mule waggin, With a lot o’ truck for sale, Towards Macon, to git some baggin’ (Which my cotton was ready to bale), And I come to a place on the

Chapter I. Once on a time, a Dawn, all red and bright Leapt on the conquered ramparts of the Night, And flamed, one brilliant instant, on the world, Then back into the historic moat

Superb and sole, upon a plumed spray That o’er the general leafage boldly grew, He summ’d the woods in song; or typic drew The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay Of languid doves

“So pulse, and pulse, thou rhythmic-hearted Noon That liest, large-limbed, curved along the hills, In languid palpitation, half a-swoon With ardors and sun-loves and subtle thrills; “Throb, Beautiful! while the fervent hours exhale As

Young palmer sun, that to these shining sands Pourest thy pilgrim’s tale, discoursing still Thy silver passages of sacred lands, With news of Sepulchre and Dolorous Hill, Canst thou be he that, yester-sunset warm,

Fair is the wedded reign of Night and Day. Each rules a half of earth with different sway, Exchanging kingdoms, East and West, alway. Like the round pearl that Egypt drunk in wine, The

To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly height, O’erseeing all that man but undersees; To loiter down lone alleys of delight, And hear the beating of the hearts of trees, And think the thoughts that

At midnight, death’s and truth’s unlocking time, When far within the spirit’s hearing rolls The great soft rumble of the course of things A bulk of silence in a mask of sound, When darkness

I. O Age that half believ’st thou half believ’st, Half doubt’st the substance of thine own half doubt, And, half perceiving that thou half perceiv’st, Stand’st at thy temple door, heart in, head out!

O Hunger, Hunger, I will harness thee And make thee harrow all my spirit’s glebe. Of old the blind bard Herve sang so sweet He made a wolf to plow his land.

Sometimes in morning sunlights by the river Where in the early fall long grasses wave, Light winds from over the moorland sink and shiver And sigh as if just blown across a grave. And

By Sidney and Clifford Lanier. O wish that’s vainer than the plash Of these wave-whimsies on the shore: “Give us a pearl to fill the gash God, let our dead friend live once more!”

Once, at night, in the manor wood My Love and I long silent stood, Amazed that any heavens could Decree to part us, bitterly repining. My Love, in aimless love and grief, Reached forth

A Story of Christmas Eve. Strange that the termagant winds should scold The Christmas Eve so bitterly! But Wife, and Harry the four-year-old, Big Charley, Nimblewits, and I, Blithe as the wind was bitter,

Sail fast, sail fast, Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams; Sweep lordly o’er the drowned Past, Fly glittering through the sun’s strange beams; Sail fast, sail fast. Breaths of new buds from

The robin laughed in the orange-tree: “Ho, windy North, a fig for thee: While breasts are red and wings are bold And green trees wave us globes of gold, Time’s scythe shall reap but

From the German of Heine. In the far North stands a Pine-tree, lone, Upon a wintry height; It sleeps: around it snows have thrown A covering of white. It dreams forever of a Palm