Hark! the owlet flaps his wings

And the young winds fed it with silver dew,And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light.And closed them beneath the kisses of Night.And the Spring arose on the garden fair,Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breastRose from the dreams of its wintry rest.But none ever trembled…

Be your wounds like eyesTo weep for the dead, the dead, the dead.What other grief were it just to pay?Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they;Who said they were slain on the battle day?Awaken, awaken, awaken!The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes;Be the cold chains shakenTo the dust where your kindred repose, repose:Their…

Through public scorn,–mud from a muddy spring,–Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,But leech-like to their fainting country cling,Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,–A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,–An army, which liberticide and preyMakes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,–Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and…

Far far away into the regions dimOf rapture—as a boat, with swift sails wingingIts way adown some many-winding river,Speeds through dark forests o’er the waters swinging…

A Spirit of activity and life,That knows no term, cessation, or decay;That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,Extinguish’d in the dampness of the grave,Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babeIn the dim newness of its being feelsThe impulses of sublunary things,And all is wonder to unpractis’d sense:But, active, steadfast and eternal, stillGuides…

To the woods and to the fields!Dearer than this fairest dayWhich, like thee to those in sorrow,Comes to bid a sweet good-morrowTo the rough Year just awakeIn its cradle in the brake.The eldest of the Hours of Spring,Into the Winter wandering,Looks upon the leafless wood,And the banks all bare and rude;Found, it seems, this halcyon…