Low and mournful be the strain, Haughty thought be far from me; Tones of penitence and pain, Moanings of the tropic sea; Low and tender in the cell

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, thr...

Thy summer voice, Musketaquit, Repeats the music of the rain; But sweeter rivers pulsing flit Through thee, as thou through the… Thou in thy narrow banks art pent:

Your picture smiles as first it sm… The ring you gave is still the sam… Your letter tells, O changing chi… No tidings since it came. Give me an amulet

Can rules or tutors educate The semigod whom we await? He must be musical, Tremulous, impressional, Alive to gentle influence

SHINES the last age, the next w… To—day slinks poorly off unmarked… Future or Past no richer secret f… O friendless Present! than thy bo…

The debt is paid, The verdict said, The Furies laid, The plague is stayed, All fortunes made;

Who gave thee, O Beauty, The keys of this breast,— Too credulous lover Of blest and unblest? Say, when in lapsed ages

Ruby wine is drunk by knaves, Sugar spends to fatten slaves, Rose and vine—leaf deck buffoons; Thunder—clouds are Jove’s festoon… Drooping oft in wreaths of dread,

Knows he who tills this lonely fie… To reap its scanty corn, What mystic fruit his acres yield At midnight and at morn? In the long sunny afternoon,

What care I, so they stand the sa… Things of the heavenly mind,— How long the power to give them fa… Tarries yet behind? Thus far to—day your favors reach,

Winters know Easily to shed the snow, And the untaught Spring is wise In cowslips and anemones. Nature, hating art and pains,

Though loath to grieve The evil time’s sole patriot, I cannot leave My honied thought For the priest’s cant,