While She Sang / William Dean Howells

I.

She sang, and I heard the singing,

Far out of the wretched past,

Of meadow-larks in the meadow,

In a breathing of the blast.

Vagary / William Dean Howells

Up and down the dusty street,

I hurry with my burning feet;

Against my face the wind-waves beat,

Fierce from the city-sea of heat.

Deep in my heart the vision is,

Of meadow grass and meadow trees

Blown silver in the summer breeze,

And ripe, red, hillside strawberries.

Through the Meadow / William Dean Howells

The summer sun was soft and bland,

As they went through the meadow land.

The little wind that hardly shook

The silver of the sleeping brook

Blew the gold hair about her eyes,--

A mystery of mysteries!

So he must often pause, and stoop,

And all the wanton ringlets loop

Behind her dainty ear--emprise

Of slow event and many sighs.

The Two Wives / William Dean Howells

I.

The colonel rode by his picket-line

In the pleasant morning sun,

That glanced from him far off to shine

On the crouching rebel picket's gun.

The Thorn / William Dean Howells

"Every Rose, you sang, has its Thorn,

But this has none, I know."

She clasped my rival's Rose

Over her breast of snow.

The Song the Oriole Sings / William Dean Howells

There is a bird that comes and sings

In the Professor's garden-trees;

Upon the English oak he swings,

And tilts and tosses in the breeze.

The Snow-Birds / William Dean Howells

The lonesome graveyard lieth,

A deep with silent waves

Of night-long snow, all white, and billowed

Over the hidden graves.

The Sarcastic Fair / William Dean Howells

Her mouth is a honey-blossom,

No doubt, as the poet sings;

But within her lips, the petals,

Lurks a cruel bee, that stings.

The Royal Portraits / William Dean Howells

I.

Confronting each other the pictures stare

Into each other's sleepless eyes;

And the daylight into the darkness dies,

From year to year in the palace there:

But they watch and guard that no device

Take either one of them unaware.

The Poet's Friends / William Dean Howells

The robin sings in the elm;

The cattle stand beneath,

Sedate and grave, with great brown eyes

And fragrant meadow-breath.

The Pilot's Story / William Dean Howells

I. It was a story the pilot told, with his back to his hearers,-- Keeping his hand on the wheel and his eye on the globe of the jack-staff, Holding the boat to the shore and out of the sweep of the current, Lightly turning aside for the heavy logs of the drift-wood, Widely shunning the snags that made us sardonic obeisance. II. All the soft, damp air was full of delicate perfume From the young willows in bloom on either bank of the river,

The Mysteries / William Dean Howells

Once on my mother's breast, a child, I crept,

Holding my breath;

There, safe and sad, lay shuddering, and wept

At the dark mystery of Death.

The Mulberries / William Dean Howells

I.

On the Rialto Bridge we stand;

The street ebbs under and makes no sound;

But, with bargains shrieked on every hand,

The noisy market rings around.

The Long Days / William Dean Howells

Yes! they are here again, the long, long days,

After the days of winter, pinched and white;

Soon, with a thousand minstrels comes the light,

Late, the sweet robin-haunted dusk delays.

The First Cricket / William Dean Howells

Ah me! is it then true that the year has waxed unto waning,

And that so soon must remain nothing but lapse and decay,--

Earliest cricket, that out of the midsummer midnight complaining,

All the faint summer in me takest with subtle dismay?

The Faithful of the Gonzaga / William Dean Howells

I.

Federigo, the son of the Marquis,

Downcast, through the garden goes:

He is hurt with the grace of the lily,

And the beauty of the rose.

The Empty House / William Dean Howells

The wet trees hang above the walks

Purple with damps and earthish stains,

And strewn by moody, absent rains

With rose-leaves from the wild-grown stalks.

The Doubt / William Dean Howells

She sits beside the low window,

In the pleasant evening-time,

With her face turned to the sunset,

Reading a book of rhyme.

The Bobolinks are Singing / William Dean Howells

Out of its fragrant heart of bloom,--

The bobolinks are singing!

Out of its fragrant heart of bloom

The apple-tree whispers to the room,

"Why art thou but a nest of gloom,

While the bobolinks are singing?"

The Battle in the Clouds / William Dean Howells

"The day had been one of dense mists and rains, and much of

General Hooker's battle was fought above the clouds, on the top of

Lookout Mountain."--GENERAL MEIG'S _Report of the Battle before

Chattanooga_.

Where the dews and the rains of heaven have their fountain,

Like its thunder and its lightning our brave burst on the foe,

Up above the clouds on Freedom's Lookout Mountain

Raining life-blood like water on the valleys down below.

O, green be the laurels that grow,

O sweet be the wild-buds that blow,

In the dells of the mountain where the brave are lying low.