From the Mahabharata.

On word and work irrevocably done,Life’s blending threads of good and ill outspun,I hear, O friends! your words of cheer and praise,Half doubtful if myself or otherwise.Like him who, in the old Arabian joke,A beggar slept and crowned Caliph woke.Thanks not the less. With not unglad surpriseI see my life-work through your partial eyes;Assured, in…

‘From Thy right hand, clothed with thunder,Shake the bolted fire!‘Love is lost, and Faith is dying;With the brute the man is sold;And the dropping blood of laborHardens into gold.‘Here the dying wail of Famine,There the battle’s groan of pain;And, in silence, smooth-faced MammonReaping men like grain.”Where is God, that we should fear Him?’Thus the earth-born…

Flaming out in their violet, yellow, and red;And behind go the lackeys in crimson and buff,And the chamberlains gorgeous in velvet and ruff;Next, in red-legged pomp, come the cardinals forth,Each a lord of the church and a prince of the earth.What’s this squeak of the fife, and this batter of drum?Lo! the Swiss of the…

That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought,Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod,And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowersHang motionless upon their upright staves.The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind,Vying-weary with its long flight from the south,Unfelt; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leafWith faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams,Confesses it. The locust by…

Blew warm the winds of May,And over Naumkeag’s ancient oaksThe green outgrew the gray.The grass was green on Rial-side,The early birds at willWaked up the violet in its dell,The wind-flower on its hill.‘Where go you, in your Sunday coat,Son Andrew, tell me, pray.’For striped perch in Wenham LakeI go to fish to-day.’‘Unharmed of thee in…

My sister asked our guest one winter’s day.Smiling he answered in the Friends’ sweet wayCommon to both: ‘Wherever thou shall send!What wouldst thou have me see for thee?’ She laughed,Her dark eyes dancing in the wood-fire’s glow‘Loffoden isles, the Kilpis, and the low,Unsetting sun on Finmark’s fishing-craft.’‘All these and more I soon shall see for…

The merry monks who kept with cheerThe gladdest day of all their year.But still apart, unmoved thereat,A pious elder brother satSilent, in his accustomed place,With God’s sweet peace upon his face.‘Why sitt’st thou thus?’ his brethren cried.‘It is the blessed Christmas-tide;The Christmas lights are all aglow,The sacred lilies bud and blow.‘Above our heads the joy-bells…

The summer flowers have budded;Once more with summer’s golden lightThe vales of home are flooded;And once more, by the grace of HimOf every good the Giver,We sing upon its wooded rimThe praises of our river,Its pines above, its waves below,The west-wind down it blowing,As fair as when the young BrissotBeheld it seaward flowing,–And bore its…

‘From Thy right hand, clothed with thunder,Shake the bolted fire!‘Love is lost, and Faith is dying;With the brute the man is sold;And the dropping blood of laborHardens into gold.‘Here the dying wail of Famine,There the battle’s groan of pain;And, in silence, smooth-faced MammonReaping men like grain.”Where is God, that we should fear Him?’Thus the earth-born…

Will welcome thy new year,How few of all have passed, as thou and I,So many milestones by!We have grown old together; we have seen,Our youth and age between,Two generations leave us, and to-dayWe with the third hold way,Loving and loved. If thought must backward runTo those who, one by one,In the great silence and the…

We came next morn: that tongue of fireSaid only, ‘He who spake is dead!’Dead! while his voice was living yet,In echoes round the pillared dome!Dead! while his blotted page lay wetWith themes of state and loves of home!Dead! in that crowning grace of time,That triumph of life’s zenith hour!Dead! while we watched his manhood’s primeBreak…

The richest web of the Indian loom, which beauty’squeen might wear;And my pearls are pure as thy own fair neck, with whoseradiant light they vie;I have brought them with me a weary way,-will mygentle lady buy?’The lady smiled on the worn old man through thedark and clustering curlsWhich veiled her brow, as she bent to…