For in the night, unseen, a single warrior, In sombre harness mailed, Dreaded of man, and surnamed the Destroyer, The rampart wall has scaled. He passed into the chamber of the sleeper, The dark and silent room, And as he entered, darker grew, and deeper, The silence and the gloom.
The day is dark and cold and dreary; it rains, and the wind is never weary.
I do not love thee less for what is done, And cannot be undone. Thy very weakness Hath brought thee nearer to me, and henceforth My love will have a sense of pity in it, Making it less a worship than before.
And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, and silently steal away.
For hate is strong, And mocks the song Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Very hot and still the air was, Very smooth the gliding river, Motionless the sleeping shadows.
The first pressure of sorrow crushes out from our hearts the best wine; afterwards the constant weight of it brings forth bitterness, the taste and stain from the lees of the vat.
Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science Can from the ashes in our hearts once more The rose of youth restore? What craft of alchemy can bid defiance To time and change, and for a single hour Renew this phantom-flower?
Ah! What would the world be to us If the children were no more? We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before.
But oftentimes celestial benedictions Assume this dark disguise.
Good-night! good-night! as we so oft have said Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days That are no more, and shall no more return. Thou hast but taken up thy lamp and gone to bed; I stay a little longer, as one stays To cover up the embers that still burn.
In the mouths of many men soft words are like roses that soldiers put into the muzzles of their muskets on holidays.
The course of my long life hath reached at last in fragile bark over a tempestuous sea the common harbor, where must rendered be account for all the actions of the past.
The sunshine fails, the shadows grow more dreary, And I am near to fall, infirm and weary.
What child has a heart to sing in this capricious clime of ours, when spring comes sailing in from the sea, with wet and heavy cloud-sails and the misty pennon of the east-wind nailed to the mast.
What seems to us but dim funeral tapers may be heaven's distant lamps.
Enjoy the Spring of Love and Youth, to some good angel leave the rest; For Time will teach thee soon the truth, there are no birds in last year's nest!
The surest pledge of a deathless name Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.
There rises the moon, broad and tranquil, through the branches of a walnut tree on a hill opposite. I apostrophize it in the words of Faust; "O gentle moon, that lookest for the last time upon my agonies!" --or something to that effect.
Two ways the rivers Leap down to different seas, and as they roll Grow deep and still, and their majestic presence Becomes a benefaction to the towns They visit, wandering silently among them, Like patriarchs old among their shining tents.
Time rides with the old At a great pace. As travellers on swift steeds See the near landscape fly and flow behind them, While the remoter fields and dim horizons Go with them, and seem wheeling round to meet them, So in old age things near us slip away, And distant things go with us.
O little feet! that such long years Must wander on through hopes and fears, Must ache and bleed beneath your load; I, nearer to the wayside inn Where toil shall cease and rest begin, Am weary, thinking of your road!
Winter giveth the fields, and the trees so old, their beards of icicles and snow.
Thus thought I, as by night I read Of the great army of the dead, The trenches cold and damp, The starved and frozen camp,-- The wounded from the battle-plain, In dreary hospitals of pain, The cheerless corridors, The cold and stony floors. Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom And flit from room to room. And slow, as in a dream of bliss, The speechless sufferer turns to kiss Her shadow, as it falls Upon the darkening walls.
Simplicity is the character of the spring of life, costliness becomes its autumn; but a neatness and purity, like that of the snow-drop or lily of the valley, is the peculiar fascination of beauty, to which it lends enchantment, and gives what amiability is to the mind.
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