Upon the gallows hung a wretch,    Too sullied for the hell    To which the law entitled him.    As nature’s curtain fell    The one who bore him tottered in,    For this…

Two swimmers wrestled on the spar    Until the morning sun,    When one turned smiling to the land.    O God, the other one!     The stray ships passing spied a…

    To fight aloud is very brave,    But gallanter, I know,    Who charge within the bosom,    The cavalry of woe.     Who win, and nations do not see,    Who fall, and…

There’s a certain slant of light,    On winter afternoons,    That oppresses, like the weight    Of cathedral tunes.     Heavenly hurt it gives us;    We can find no scar,    But internal difference    Where…

  The pedigree of honey    Does not concern the bee;    A clover, any time, to him    Is aristocracy.

 The one that could repeat the summer day    Were greater than itself, though he    Minutest of mankind might be.    And who could reproduce the sun,    At period of going…

  The heart asks pleasure first,    And then, excuse from pain;    And then, those little anodynes    That deaden suffering;     And then, to go to sleep;    And then, if it should…

 The brain within its groove    Runs evenly and true;    But let a splinter swerve,    ‘T were easier for you    To put the water back    When floods have slit the hills,    And…

 The bee is not afraid of me,    I know the butterfly;    The pretty people in the woods    Receive me cordially.     The brooks laugh louder when I come,    The breezes…

    So bashful when I spied her,    So pretty, so ashamed!    So hidden in her leaflets,    Lest anybody find;     So breathless till I passed her,    So helpless when I turned    And…