STARS of the summer night!

The sister of Svend the Dane;And the song of the garrulous birdIn the streets of the town is heard,And repeated again and again.Hoist up your sails of silk,And flee away from each other.To King Burislaf, it is said,Was the beautiful Thyri wed,And a sorrowful bride went she;And after a week and a day,She has fled…

Ah, yes, like thee I fear the throng,Like thee I love the solitude.O brooklet, let my sorrows pastLie all forgotten in their graves,Till in my thoughts remain at lastOnly thy peace, thy flowers, thy waves.The lily by thy margin waits;–The nightingale, the marguerite;In shadow here he meditatesHis nest, his love, his music sweet.Near thee the…

And, striped with white and blue,Downward fluttered sail and banner,As alights the screaming lanner;Lustily cheered, in their wild manner,The Long Serpent’s crew.Her forecastle man was Ulf the Red,Like a wolf’s was his shaggy head,His teeth as large and white;His beard, of gray and russet blended,Round as a swallow’s nest descended;As standard-bearer he defendedOlaf’s flag in…

And marrow from the ancient mythOf some one with an iron flail;Or that portentous Man of BrassHephaestus made in days of yore,Who stalked about the Cretan shore,And saw the ships appear and pass,And threw stones at the Argonauts,Being filled with indiscriminate ireThat tangled and perplexed his thoughts;But, like a hospitable host,When strangers landed on the…

Youth and spring are all about;It is I that have grown old.Birds are darting through the air,Singing, building without rest;Life is stirring everywhere,Save within my lonely breast.There is silence: the dead leavesFall and rustle and are still;Beats no flail upon the sheaves,Comes no murmur from the mill.

And, where the maple’s leaf was brown,With soft and silent lapse came down,The glory, that the wood receives,At sunset, in its golden leaves.Far upward in the mellow lightRose the blue hills. One cloud of white,Around a far uplifted cone,In the warm blush of evening shone;An image of the silver lakes,By which the Indian’s soul awakes.But…