Sidney Lanier
A Florida Sunday
From cold Norse caves or buccaneer Southern seas Oft come repenting tempests here to die; Bewailing old-time wrecks and robberies, They shrive to priestly pines with many a sigh, Breathe salutary balms through lank-lock’d
The Stirrup-Cup
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
The Tournament
Joust First. I. Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies, And the knights still hurried amain To the tournament under the ladies’ eyes, Where the jousters were Heart and Brain. II. Flourished the
To Beethoven
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
Jones's Porvate Argyment
That air same Jones, which lived in Jones, He had this pint about him: He’d swear with a hundred sighs and groans, That farmers MUST stop gittin’ loans, And git along without ’em: That
At First. To Charlotte Cushman
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
Nirvana
Through seas of dreams and seas of phantasies, Through seas of solitudes and vacancies, And through my Self, the deepest of the seas, I strive to thee, Nirvana. Oh long ago the billow-flow of
The Wedding
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,”
To Charlotte Cushman
Look where a three-point star shall weave his beam Into the slumb’rous tissue of some stream, Till his bright self o’er his bright copy seem Fulfillment dropping on a come-true dream; So in this
Ireland
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,
Baby Charley
He’s fast asleep. See how, O Wife, Night’s finger on the lip of life Bids whist the tongue, so prattle-rife, Of busy Baby Charley. One arm stretched backward round his head, Five little toes
Ode To The Johns Hopkins University
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
Strange Jokes
Well: Death is a huge omnivorous Toad Grim squatting on a twilight road. He catcheth all that Circumstance Hath tossed to him. He curseth all who upward glance As lost to him. Once in
Thar's More In the Man Than Thar Is In The Land
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
Laus Mariae
Across the brook of Time man leaping goes On stepping-stones of epochs, that uprise Fixed, memorable, midst broad shallow flows Of neutrals, kill-times, sleeps, indifferencies. So twixt each morn and night rise salient heaps: