O her beautiful eyes! they are as blue as the dew

God’s free gift to me alone,Sanctified by motherhood.‘Bad,’ you say: Well, who is not?‘Brutal’–‘with a heart of stone’–And ‘red-handed.’–Ah! the hotBlood upon your own!I come not, with downward eyes,To plead for him shamedly,–God did not apologizeWhen He gave the boy to me.Simply, I make ready nowFor _His_ verdict.–_You_ prepare–You have killed us both–and howWill you…

Through your vast West; with the time to spend,Stopping for days in the main towns, whereEvery citizen seemed a friend,And friends grew thick as the wayside flowers,–I found no thing that I might narrateMore singularly strange or queerThan a thing I found in your sister-stateOhio,–at a river-town–down hereIn my notebook: _Zanesville–situateOn the stream Muskingum–broad and…

‘Taint liable to git no praiseNer nothin’ like it nowadays;An’ yit that name o’ her’n is jestAs purty as the purtiest–And more ‘n that, I’m here to sayI’ll live a-thinkin’ thatawayAnd die far Marthy Ellen!It may be I was prejudustIn favor of it from the fust–‘Cause I kin ricollect jest howWe met, and hear her…

No care for where the road you take’s a-leadin’ anywhere,–It can but be a joyful ja’nt whilst you journey there.The road you take’s the path o’ love, an’ that’s the bridth o’ two–An’ I will walk with you, my lad — O I will walk with you.Ho! I will walk with you, my lad,Be weather…

And they picked the locks of his palace-gate,The robbers that came to rob him–They picked the locks of his palace-gate,Seized his jewels and gems of state,His coffers of gold and his priceless plate,–The robbers that came to rob him.But loud laughed he in the morning red!–For of what had the robbers robbed him?–Ho! hidden safe,…

That rippled and fell o’er a figure as willowy,Graceful and fair as a goddess of old:Over her jewels she flung herself drearily,Crumpled the laces that snowed on her breast,Crushed with her fingers the lily that wearilyClung in her hair like a dove in its nest–.And naught but her shadowy form in the mirrorTo kneel in…