Give me October’s meditative haze,

Singest thou still with all thy might,As though ’twere noon, as though ’twere dawn?Silence darkens on vale and hill,But thou, unseen, art singing still.‘Tis because, though in dusky bower,With love delighted still thou art;Nor hath the deepening twilight powerTo lay a curfew on thy heart.Thou lovest; and, loving, dost prolongThe sense of sunlight with thy…

And the dogs of war are loosèd, and the carnagestream unsluicèd,That the might of France abusèd may torment the world like Fate.O thou nation, base, besotted, whose ambition cannons shotted,And huge mounds of corpses clotted with cold gore alone can sate!May the God of Battles shiver every arrow in thy quiver,And the nobly-flowing river thou…

In whose form I catch the tracesOf your mother’s gifts and graces,And around whose head the gloryOf your father’s growing story,O’er whose cradle, fortune-guided,Mars and Venus both presided,May your fuller years inheritFemale charm and manly merit,So that all may know who girt youWith vivacity and virtue,Whence you had the luck to borrowPensive mien without its…

And when, at callow-time, you think to findThe sparrow’s stationary chirp, lo! burstsVoyaging voice to glorify the Spring.’

And that poor drooping Hope whose wingFlags ‘neath the weight of clogging fears,Then let me in the desert hideThis fatal gift, this feverish breast;Or, better,’neath the sounding tideBe hushed, and evermore at rest.What recks it if at length I lieIn my cold bed of narrow earth,And neither wave, nor sun, nor sky,Vex me with its…

Laden with gift of love or load of care,Nimbused with gold, or flecked with locks of gray,Mother, or snow-white bride, or pallid clay,The blithe, the sad, the uncomely as the fair,Each on his secret errand wending there,Nor even the mighty and strong be turned away.And so the poet’s heart should ever bePortal of joy and…