Thanksgiving / William Dean Howells

I.

Lord, for the erring thought

Not into evil wrought:

Lord, for the wicked will

Betrayed and baffled still:

For the heart from itself kept,

Our thanksgiving accept.

Tennyson / William Dean Howells

I.

She lies upon the soft, enamoured grass,

I' the wooing shelter of an apple-tree,

And at her feet the tranced brook is glass,

And in the blossoms over her the bee

Hangs charmed of his sordid industry;

For love of her the light wind will not pass.

Sweet Clover / William Dean Howells

"... My letters back to me."

I.

I know they won the faint perfume,

That to their faded pages clings,

From gloves, and handkerchiefs, and things

Kept in the soft and scented gloom

Sketch / William Dean Howells

Parting was over at last, and all the good-bys had been spoken.

Up the long hillside road the white-tented wagon moved slowly,

Bearing the mother and children, while onward before them the

father

Trudged with his gun on his arm, and the faithful house-dog beside

him,

Grave and sedate, as if knowing the sorrowful thoughts of his

master.

Saint Christopher / William Dean Howells

In the narrow Venetian street,

On the wall above the garden gate

(Within, the breath of the rose is sweet,

And the nightingale sings there, soon and late),

Rapture / William Dean Howells

In my rhyme I fable anguish,

Feigning that my love is dead,

Playing at a game of sadness,

Singing hope forever fled,--

Prelude / William Dean Howells

In March the earliest bluebird came

And caroled from the orchard-tree

His little tremulous songs to me,

And called upon the summer's name,

Pordenone / William Dean Howells

I.

Hard by the Church of Saint Stephen, in sole and beautiful Venice,

Under the colonnade of the Augustinian Convent,

Every day, as I passed, I paused to look at the frescos

Painted upon the ancient walls of the court of the Convent

By a great master of old, who wore his sword and his dagger

While he wrought the figures of patriarchs, martyrs, and virgins

Into the sacred and famous scenes of Scriptural story.

Pleasure-Pain / William Dean Howells

I.

Full of beautiful blossoms

Stood the tree in early May:

Came a chilly gale from the sunset,

And blew the blossoms away;

No Love Lost / William Dean Howells

I.

On your heart I feign myself fallen--ah, heavier burden,

Darling, of sorrow and pain than ever shall rest there! I take you

Into these friendless arms of mine, that you cannot escape me;

Closer and closer I fold you, and tell you all, and you listen

Just as you used at home, and you let my sobs and my silence

Speak, when the words will not come--and you understand and forgive

me.

--Ah! no, no! but I write, with the wretched bravado of distance,

What you must read unmoved by the pity too far for entreaty.

Louis Lebeau's Conversion / William Dean Howells

Yesterday, while I moved with the languid crowd on the Riva,

Musing with idle eyes on the wide lagoons and the islands,

And on the dim-seen seaward glimmering sails in the distance,

Where the azure haze, like a vision of Indian-Summer,

Haunted the dreamy sky of the soft Venetian December,--

While I moved unwilled in the mellow warmth of the weather,

Breathing air that was full of Old World sadness and beauty

Into my thought came this story of free, wild life in Ohio,

When the land was new, and yet by the Beautiful River

Dwelt the pioneers and Indian hunters and boatmen.

Lost Beliefs / William Dean Howells

One after one they left us;

The sweet birds out of our breasts

Went flying away in the morning:

Will they come again to their nests?

In Earliest Spring / William Dean Howells

Tossing his mane of snows in wildest eddies and tangles,

Lion-like, March cometh in, hoarse, with tempestuous breath,

Through all the moaning chimneys, and thwart all the hollows and

angles

Round the shuddering house, threating of winter and death.

In August / William Dean Howells

All the long August afternoon,

The little drowsy stream

Whispers a melancholy tune,

As if it dreamed of June

And whispered in its dream.

Gone / William Dean Howells

Is it the shrewd October wind

Brings the tears into her eyes?

Does it blow so strong that she must fetch

Her breath in sudden sighs?

The sound of his horse's feet grows faint,

The Rider has passed from sight;

The day dies out of the crimson west,

And coldly falls the night.

Forlorn / William Dean Howells

I.

Red roses, in the slender vases burning,

Breathed all upon the air,--

The passion and the tenderness and yearning,

The waiting and the doubting and despair.

For One of the Killed / William Dean Howells

There on the field of battle

Lies the young warrior dead:

Who shall speak in the soldier's honor?

How shall his praise be said?

Cannon, there in the battle,

Thundered the soldier's praise,

Hark! how the volumed volleys echo

Down through the far-off days!

Feuerbilder / William Dean Howells

The children sit by the fireside

With their little faces in bloom;

And behind, the lily-pale mother,

Looking out of the gloom,

Flushes in cheek and forehead

With a light and sudden start;

But the father sits there silent,

From the firelight apart.

Elegy on John Butler Howells / William Dean Howells

I.

In the early morning when I wake

At the hour that is sacred for his sake,

And hear the happy birds of spring

In the garden under my window sing,

Dead / William Dean Howells

I.

Something lies in the room

Over against my own;

The windows are lit with a ghastly bloom

Of candles, burning alone,--

Untrimmed, and all aflare

In the ghastly silence there!