Ho! it’s come, kids, come!

Sometimes my yielding sight of him grows OSo quick of tears, I joy he did not stayTo catch the faintest rumor of them! Nay,Leave always his eyes clear and glad, althoughMine own, dear Lord, do fill to overflow;Let his remembered features, as I pray,Smile ever on me! Ah! what stress of loveThou givest me to…

Of childhood days, I long to beAgain the boy on bended knee,With head a-bow, and drowsy smileHid in a mother’s lap the while,With tender touch and kindly care,She bends above and combs my hair.Ere threats of Time, or ghosts of caresHad paled it to the hue it wears,Its tangled threads of amber lightFell o’er a…

Did kneel, with bleeding knees and rainy face,And mouth the dust, with ashes on my head;Yea, still with knotted scourge the flesh I flayed,Rent fresh the wounds, and moaned and shrieked insanely;And froth oozed with the pleadings that I made,And yet I prayed on vainly, vainly, vainly!A time, from out of swoon I lifted eye,To…

An’ the two boys’ names, you know,Wuz–like _ours_ is,–Jim an’ Jo;An’ their _parunts’_ names wuz same’s,All big grown-up people’s names,–Ist _Miz_ Bear, the neighbers call‘Em, an’ _Mister_ Bear–‘at’s all.Yes–an’ Miz Bear scold him, too,Ist like grown folks _shouldn’t_ do!Wuz a grea’-big river there,An’, ‘crosst that, ‘s a mountain whereOld Bear said some day he’d go,Ef…

No happiness but holds a tasteOf something sweeter, after all;–No depth of agony but feelsSome fragment of abiding trust,–Whatever death unlocks or seals,The mute beyond is just.

The mirth of my glad infancy–The orchard’s earliest bird–The joyous breeze among the treesNew-clad in leaf and bloom,And there the happy honey-beesIn dewy gleam and gloom.So purely, sweetly on the senseOf heart and spirit fellHer song of Spring, its influence–Still irresistible,–Commands me here–with eyes ablur–To mate her bright refrain.Though I but shed a rhyme for…