Hours fly,

Above the smooth green pasturesInto the azure skies!With blue and purple hollows,With peaks of dazzling snow,Along the far horizonThe clouds are marching slow.No mortal foot has troddenThe summits of that range,Nor walked those mystic valleysWhose colors ever change;Yet we possess their beauty,And visit them in dreams,While the ruddy gold of sunsetFrom cliff and canyon gleams.In…

Lover of peace, he looks beyond the strife,And rides through hell to save his country’s life.

But that was a long while ago!And meantime man said, ‘No,–I like their looks in their robes and rings.’So he crowned a few more,And they went on playing the game as before,Fighting and spoiling things.Man said, ‘I am tired of kings!Sons of the robber-chiefs of yore,They make me pay for their lust and their war;I…

Thine eyes at last look far and clear, thou liftest high thy handTo spread the light of liberty world-wide for every land.No more thou dreamest of a peace reserved alone for thee,While friends are fighting for thy cause beyond the guardian sea:The battle that they wage is thine; thou fallest if they fall;The swollen flood…

And I’ll not ask to touch thy face,Or fold thee with mine arm.For in thine eyes a girl doth rise,Arrayed in candid bliss,And draws me to her with a charmMore close than any kiss.A loving-cup of golden wine,Songs of a silver brook,And fragrant breaths of eglantine,Are mingled in thy look.More fair they are than any…

Quick to throb with her hopes and fears,Fierce to flame with her sense of wrong!You, who hailed with a morning songDream-light gilding a throne of old:You, who turned when the dream grew cold,Singing still, to the light that shonePure from Liberty’s ancient throne,Over the human throng!You, who dared in the dark eclipse,–When the pygmy heir…