A NEEDLE small, as small can be,
In bulk and use, surpasses me,
Nor is my purchase dear;
For little, and almost for nought,
As many of my kind are bought
As days are in the year.

Yet though but little use we boast,
And are procur'd at little cost,
The labour is not light,
Nor few artificers it asks,
All skilful in their sev'ral tasks,
To fashion us aright.

One fuses metal o'er the fire,
A second draws it into wire,
The shears another plies,
Who clips in lengths the brazen thread

Scatter a few cold cinders into the empty grate;
On these lay paper puffed into airy balloon,
Then wood—parched dry by the suns of Summer drowsy and sweet;
A flash, a flare, a flame; and a fire will be burning soon—

Fernlike, fleet, and impetuous. But unless you give heed,
It will faint, fade, fall, lose fervour, ash away out.
So is it with anger in heart and in brain; the insensate seed
Of dangerous fiery enkindling leaps into horror and rout;

But remaining untended, it dies. And the soul within

No flower grew where I was bred,
No leafy tree
Its canopy of greenness spread
Over my youthful head.

My woodland walk was gutter stone,
Nowhere for me
Was given a place where I alone
Could to myself be gone.

In leafless Summer's stench and noise
I'd sit and play
With other as lean-faced girls and boys,
And sticks and stones for toys—

Homeless, till evening dark came down;
And street lamp's ray
On weary skulking beggary thrown
Flared in the night-hung town.

Then up the noisome stairs I'd creep

Rise, thou best and brightest morning!
Rosy with a double Red;
With thine own blush thy cheeks adorning
And the dear drops this day were shed.

All the purple pride that laces
The crimson curtains of thy bed,
Guilds thee not with so sweet graces
Nor setts thee in so rich a red.

Of all the fair-cheek't flowrs that fill thee
None so fair thy bosom strowes,
As this modest maiden lilly
Our sins have sham'd into a rose.

Bid thy golden God , the Sun,
Burnisht in his best beames rise,
Put all his red-ey'd Rubies on;

Horizon to horizon, lies outspread
The tenting firmament of day and night;
Wherein are winds at play; and planets shed
Amid the stars their gentle gliding light.

The huge world's sun flames on the snow-capped hills;
Cindrous his heat burns in the sandy plain;
With myriad spume-bows roaring ocean swills
The cold profuse abundance of the rain.

And man—a transient object in this vast,
Sighs o'er a universe transcending thought,
Afflicted by vague bodings of the past,
Driven toward a future, unforeseen, unsought.

Hail, noble face of noble friend!—
Hail, honoured master hand and dear!—
On you may Christmas good descend
And blessings of the unknown year
So soon to overtake us here.
Unknown, yet well known: I portend
Love starts the course, love seals the end.

My old admiration before I was twenty,—
Is predilect still, now promoted to se'enty!
My own demi-century plus an odd one
Some weight to my judgment may fairly impart.
Accept this faint flash of a smouldering fun,
The fun of a heavy old heart.

She will not die, they say,
She will but put her beauty by
And hie away.

Oh, but her beauty gone, how lonely
Then will seem all reverie,
How black to me!

All things will sad be made
And every hope a memory,
All gladness dead.

Ghosts of the past will know
My weakest hour, and whisper to me,
And coldly go.

And hers in deep of sleep,
Clothed in its mortal beauty I shall see,
And, waking, weep.

Naught will my mind then find
In man's false Heaven my peace to be:
All blind, and blind.

Two nymphs, both nearly of an age,
Of num'rous charms possess'd,
A warm dispute once chanc'd to wage,
Whose temper was the best.

The worth of each had been complete,
Had both alike been mild;
But one, although her smile was sweet,
Frown'd oft'ner than she smil'd,

And in her humour, when she frown'd,
Would raise her voice, and roar;
And shake with fury, to the ground,
The garland that she wore.

The other was of gentler cast,
From all such frenzy clear;
Her frowns were seldom known to last,

The shadow of a poplar tree
Lay in that lake of sun,
As I with my little sword went in—
Against a thousand, one.

Haughty and infinitely armed,
Insolent in their wrath,
Plumed high with purple plumes they held
The narrow meadow path.

The air was sultry; all was still;
The sun like flashing glass;
And snip-snap my light-whispering steel
In arcs of light did pass.

Lightly and dull fell each proud head,
Spiked keen without avail,
Till swam my uncontented blade
With ichor green and pale.