‘Twas the dusky Hallowe’en —    Hour of fairy and of wraith,    When in many a dim-lit green,    ‘Neath the stars’ prophetic sheen,    As the olden legend saith,    All the future…

    In the valley of my life     Sings a “Singing-Bird”,    And its voice thro’ calm and strife     Is sweetly heard.     In the day and thro’ the night    …

    When falls the soldier brave,     Dead at the feet of wrong,    The poet sings and guards his grave     With sentinels of song.     Songs, march! he gives…

    Strange Sea! why is it that you never rest?     And tell me why you never go to sleep?    Thou art like one so sad and sin-oppressed…

   Far from “where the roses rest”,     Round the altar and the aisle,    Which I loved, of all, the best —     I have come to rest awhile    By…

    To-day a bird on wings as white as foam        That crests the blue-gray wave,    With the vesper light upon its breast, flew home        Seaward. The God who gave    To…

           One idle day —    A mile or so of sunlit waves off shore —            In a breezeless bay,            We listless lay —    Our boat a “dream of rest” on…

   We laugh when our souls are the saddest,     We shroud all our griefs in a smile;    Our voices may warble their gladdest,     And our souls mourn…

           Only a few more years!             Weary years!            Only a few more tears!             Bitter tears!    And then — and then — like other men,     I cease to wander,…

[Written after the yellow fever epidemic of 1878.]     Purer than thy own white snow,     Nobler than thy mountains’ height;    Deeper than the ocean’s flow,     Stronger than…