A Leaf For Hand In Hand A LEAF for hand in hand! You natural persons old and young!
You on the Mississippi, and on all the branches and bayous of the
Mississippi! You friendly boatmen and mechanics! You roughs! You twain! And all processions moving along the streets! I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for you to walk hand in hand!
A Clear Midnight THIS is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best. Night, sleep, and the stars.
1861 ARM’D year! year of the struggle! No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year! Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisping cadenzas piano; But as a strong man, erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing, carrying a rifle on your shoulder,
With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands–with a knife in
the belt at your side, As I heard you shouting loud–your sonorous voice ringing across the continent; Your masculine voice, O year, as rising amid the great cities, Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you, as one of the workmen, the dwellers in Manhattan; Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and Indiana, Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait, and descending the Alleghanies;
Or down from the great lakes, or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along
the Ohio river; Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at
Chattanooga on the mountain top, Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs, clothed in blue, bearing weapons, robust year; Heard your determin’d voice, launch’d forth again and again; Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp’d cannon, I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.
Robert Frost
A Late Walk When I go up through the mowing field, The headless aftermath, Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew, Half closes the garden path.
And when I come to the garden ground, The whir of sober birds Up from the tangle of withered weeds Is sadder than any words
A tree beside the wall stands bare, But a leaf that lingered brown, Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought, Comes softly rattling down.
I end not far from my going forth By picking the faded blue Of the last remaining aster flower To carry again to you.
A Prayer in Spring Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day; And give us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night; And make us happy in the happy bees, The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
And make us happy in the darting bird That suddenly above the bees is heard, The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill, And off a blossom in mid air stands still.
For this is love and nothing else is love, The which it is reserved for God above To sanctify to what far ends He will, But which it only needs that we fulfil.
A Soilder He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled, That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust, But still lies pointed as it plowed the dust. If we who sight along it round the world, See nothing worthy to have been its mark, It is because like men we look too near, Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere, Our missiles always make too short an arc. They fall, they
rip the grass, they intersect The curve of earth, and striking, break their own; They make us cringe for metal-point on stone. But this we know, the obstacle that checked And tripped the body, shot the spirit on Further than target ever showed or shone
John Keats
To Sleep O soft embalmer of the still midnight! Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine; O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close, In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes. Or wait the Amen, ere thy poppy throws Around my bed its lulling charities; Then save me, or the passed day will shine Upon my pillow, breeding many woes; Save me from curious conscience, that still hoards Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole; Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed casket of my soul.
A Draught Of Sunshine Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port, Away with old Hock and madeira,
Too earthly ye are for my sport; There's a beverage brighter and clearer. Instead of a piriful rummer, My wine overbrims a whole summer;
My bowl is the sky, And I drink at my eye, Till I feel in the brain
A Delphian pain - Then follow, my Caius! then follow: On the green of the hill We will drink our fill Of golden sunshine, Till our brains intertwine With the glory and grace of Apollo! God of the Meridian, And of the East and West, To thee my soul is flown, And my body is earthward press'd. - It is an awful mission, A terrible division; And leaves a gulph austere To be fill'd with worldly fear.
Aye, when the soul is fled To high above our head, Affrighted do we gaze After its airy maze, As doth a mother wild, When her young infant child Is in an eagle's claws - And is not this the cause Of madness? - God of Song, Thou bearest me along Through sights I scarce can bear: O let me, let me share With the hot lyre and thee, The staid Philosophy. Temper my lonely hours, And let me see thy bowers