TO THE MEMORY OF PATRICK KELLEY, WHO BY HIS MANY GOOD QUALITIES DURING SOME YEARS' RESIDENCE IN MY FAMILY, GREATLY ENDEARED HIMSELF TO ME AND MINE.


From Erin's fair Isle to this country he came,
And found brothers and sisters to welcome him here;
Though then but a youth, yet robust seemed his frame,
And life promised fair for many a long year.

A place was soon found where around the same board,
He with two of his sisters did constantly meet;
And when his day's work had all been performed,
At the same fireside he found a third seat.

His faithfulness such, so true-hearted was he,
That love in return could not be denied;
As one of the family - he soon ceased to be
The stranger, who lately for work had applied.

Youth passed into manhoo...

Spray of song that springs in April, light of love that laughs through May,
Live and die and live for ever: nought of all thing far less fair
Keeps a surer life than these that seem to pass like fire away.
In the souls they live which are but all the brighter that they were;
In the hearts that kindle, thinking what delight of old was there.
Wind that shapes and lifts and shifts them bids perpetual memory play
Over dreams and in and out of deeds and thoughts which seem to wear
Light that leaps and runs and revels through the springing flames of spray.
Dawn is wild upon the waters where we drink of dawn to-day:
Wide, from wave to wave rekindling in rebound through radiant air,
Flash the fires unwoven and woven again of wind that works in play,
Working wonders more than heart may note or...

This is the mockery of the moving years;
Youth's colour dies, the fervid morning glow
Is gone from off the foreland; slow, slow,
Even slower than the fount of human tears
To empty, the consuming shadow nears
That Time is casting on the worldly show
Of pomp and glory. But falter not; - below
That thought is based a deeper thought that cheers.

Glean thou thy past; that will alone inure
To catch thy heart up from a dark distress;
It were enough to find one deed mature,
Deep-rooted, mighty 'mid the toil and press;
To save one memory of the sweet and pure,
From out life's failure and its bitterness.

Three score and ten by common calculation
    The years of man amount to; but we'll say
He turns four-score, yet, in my estimation,
    In all those years he has not lived a day.

Out of the eighty you must first remember
    The hours of night you pass asleep in bed;
And, counting from December to December,
    Just half your life you'll find you have been dead.

To forty years at once by this reduction
    We come; and sure, the first five from your birth,
While cutting teeth and living upon suction,
    You're not alive to what this life is worth.

From thirty-five next take for education
    Fifteen at least at college and at school;
When, notwithstanding all your application,
    The chances are you may turn out a fool.

Still twenty w...

Pompless no life can pass away;
The lowliest career
To the same pageant wends its way
As that exalted here.
How cordial is the mystery!
The hospitable pall
A "this way" beckons spaciously, --
A miracle for all!

We traveled by a mountain's edge,
It was September calm and bright,
Nature had decked its rocky ledge
With flowers of varied hue and height.
It seemed a miracle that they
Should flourish in that meager soil,
As noble spirits oftenest may
Gleam forth through poverty and toil.

Below were rippling, sparkling streams
Through meadows kissed by shadowy hills,
Reflecting autumn's peaceful dreams
Within those swift, translucent rills.
This lesson should these scenes impart
As on the road of life we go,
To do our duty and take heart,
As flowers bloom and streamlets flow.

Perhaps in ages yet to be
May flowers wave here e'en as today,
These streams still rush in merry glee
To cheer and charm who here may stray;
But we upon Time's rapid tid...

Who will say the world is dying?
    Who will say our prime is past?
Sparks from Heaven, within us lying,
    Flash, and will flash till the last.
Fools! who fancy Christ mistaken;
    Man a tool to buy and sell;
Earth a failure, God-forsaken,
    Anteroom of Hell.

Still the race of Hero-spirits
    Pass the lamp from hand to hand;
Age from age the Words inherits -
    'Wife, and Child, and Fatherland.'
Still the youthful hunter gathers
    Fiery joy from wold and wood;
He will dare as dared his fathers
    Give him cause as good.

While a slave bewails his fetters;
    While an orphan pleads in vain;
While an infant lisps his letters,
    Heir of all the age's gain;
While a lip grows ripe for kissing;
    While a moan from ...

The grand, authentic songs that roll
Across grey widths of wild-faced sea,
The lordly anthems of the Pole,
Are loud upon the lea.

Yea, deep and full the South Wind sings
The mighty symphonies that make
A thunder at the mountain springs
A whiteness on the lake.

And where the hermit hornet hums,
When Summer fires his wings with gold,
The hollow voice of August comes,
Across the rain and cold.

Now on the misty mountain tops,
Where gleams the crag and glares the fell,
Wild Winter, like one hunted, stops
And shouts a fierce farewell.

Keen fitful gusts shoot past the shore
And hiss by moor and moody mere
The heralds bleak that come before
The turning of the year.

A sobbing spirit wanders where
By fits and starts...

    What my name is, or where I live, or if
    I am that Alma Bell whose name is broached
    With Elenor Murray's who shall know from this?
    My hand-writing I hide in type, I send
    This letter through a friend who will not tell.
    But first, since no chance ever yet was mine
    To speak my heart out, since if I had tried
    These fifteen years ago to tell my heart,
    I must have failed for lack of words and mind,
    I speak my heart out now. I knew the soul
    Of Elenor Murray, knew it at the time,
    Have verified my knowledge in these years,
    Who have not lost her, have kept touch with her
    In letters, know the splendid sacrifice
    She made in the war. She was a human soul
    Earth is not blest with often.

    First I say

In the rapture of life and of living,
    I lift up my heart and rejoice,
And I thank the great Giver for giving
    The soul of my gladness a voice.
In the glow of the glorious weather,
    In the sweet-scented sensuous air,
My burdens seem light as a feather -
    They are nothing to bear.

In the strength and the glory of power,
    In the pride and the pleasure of wealth,
(For who dares dispute me my dower
    Of talents and youth-time and health?)
I can laugh at the world and its sages -
    I am greater than seers who are sad,
For he is most wise in all ages
    Who knows how to be glad.

I lift up my eyes to Apollo,
    The god of the beautiful days,
And my spirit soars off like a swallow
    And is lost in the light of its rays...

Beautiful Mother, I have toiled all day;
        And I am wearied. And the day is done.
        Now, while the wild brooks run
Soft by the furrows--fading, gold to gray,
    Their laughters turned to musing--ah, let me
    Hide here my face at thine unheeding knee,
        Beautiful Mother; if I be thy son.

The birds fly low. Gulls, starlings, hoverers,
        Along the meadows and the paling foam,
        All wings of thine that roam
Fly down, fly down. One reedy murmur blurs
    The silence of the earth; and from the warm
    Face of the field the upward savors swarm
        Into the darkness. And the herds are home.

All they are stalled and folded for their rest,
        The creatures: cloud-fleece young that leap and veer;
        Mad-mane and...

A beautiful and happy girl,
With step as light as summer air,
Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl,
Shadowed by many a careless curl
Of unconfined and flowing hair;
A seeming child in everything,
Save thoughtful brow and ripening charms,
As Nature wears the smile of Spring
When sinking into Summer's arms.

A mind rejoicing in the light
Which melted through its graceful bower,
Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright,
And stainless in its holy white,
Unfolding like a morning flower
A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute,
With every breath of feeling woke,
And, even when the tongue was mute,
From eye and lip in music spoke.

How thrills once more the lengthening chain
Of memory, at the thought of thee!
Old hopes which long in dust ...

The memory of what we've lost
Is with us more than what we've won;
Perhaps because we count the cost
By what we could, yet have not done.

'Twixt act and purpose fate hath drawn
Invisible threads we can not break,
And puppet-like these move us on
The stage of life, and break or make.

Less than the dust from which we're wrought,
We come and go, and still are hurled
From change to change, from naught to naught,
Heirs of oblivion and the world.

Dum studeo fungi fallentis munere vitae,
Adfectoque viam sedibus Elysiis
Arctoa florens sophia, Samiisque superbus
Discipulis, animas morte carere cano.
Has ego corporibus profugas ad sidera mitto;
Sideraque ingressis otia blanda dico;
Qualia conveniunt divis, queis fata volebant
Vitai faciles molliter ire vias:
Vinaque coelicolis media inter gaudia libo;
Et me quid majus suspicor esse viro,
Sed fuerint nulli forsan, quos spondeo, coeli;
Nullaque sint Ditis numina, nulla Jovis:
Fabula sit torris agitur, quae vita relictis
Quique superstes homo; qui nihil, esto Deus.
Attamen esse hilares, et inanes mittere curas
Proderit, ac vitae commoditate frui,
Et festos agitasse dies, aevique fugacis
Tempora perpetuis detinuisse jocis.
His me parentem praeceptis ...

Even as I watched the daylight how it sped
From noon till eve, and saw the light wind pass
In long pale waves across the flashing grass,
And heard through all my dreams, wherever led,
The thin cicada singing overhead,
I felt what joyance all this nature has,
And saw myself made clear as in a glass,
How that my soul was for the most part dead.

Oh, light, I cried, and, heaven, with all your blue,
Oh, earth, with all your sunny fruitfulness,
And ye, tall lilies, of the wind-vexed field,
What power and beauty life indeed might yield,
Could we but cast away its conscious stress,
Simple of heart, becoming even as you.

I know not what the future may hold,
    Or how to others it seems,
But I know my skies have held more gold
    Than I used to find in my dreams.

Though the whole world sings of hopes death chilled,
    In grateful truth I say,
That my best hopes have been fulfilled,
    And more than fulfilled to-day.

Though oft my arrow I aim at the sun
    To see it fall into the sand,
Yet just as often some work I have done
    Is better than I have planned.

I do not always grasp the pleasure
    For which I reach, maybe;
But quite as frequently over-measure
    Is given by joy to me.

To-morrow may bring a grief behind it
    That will thoroughly change my mood;
But we only can speak of a thing as we find it -
    And I have found lif...

When all the world has gone awry,
And I myself least favour find
With my own self, and but to die
And leave the whole sad coil behind,
Seems but the one and only way;
Should I but hear some water falling
Through woodland veils in early May,
And small bird unto small bird calling -
O then my heart is glad as they.

Lifted my load of cares, and fled
My ghosts of weakness and despair,
And, unafraid, I raise my head
And Life to do its utmost dare;
Then if in its accustomed place
One flower I should chance find blowing,
With lovely resurrected face
From Autumn's rust and Winter's snowing -
I laugh to think of my disgrace.

A simple brook, a simple flower,
A simple wood in green array, -
What, Nature, thy mysterious power
To bind a...

If thou wouldst live unruffled by care,
Let not the past torment thee e'er;
If any loss thou hast to rue,
Act as though thou wert born anew;
Inquire the meaning of each day,
What each day means itself will say;
In thine own actions take thy pleasure,
What others do, thou'lt duly treasure;
Ne'er let thy breast with hate be supplied,
And to God the future confide.