The summer nights are short
Where northern days are long:
For hours and hours lark after lark
Trills out his song.

The summer days are short
Where southern nights are long:
Yet short the night when nightingales
Trill out their song.

Because you never yet have loved me, dear,
Think you you never can nor ever will?
Surely while life remains hope lingers still,
Hope the last blossom of life's dying year.
Because the season and mine age grow sere,
Shall never Spring bring forth her daffodil,
Shall never sweeter Summer feast her fill
Of roses with the nightingales they hear?
If you had loved me, I not loving you,
If you had urged me with the tender plea
Of what our unknown years to come might do
(Eternal years, if Time should count too few),

Leaning her head upon my breast,
There on love's bed she lay to rest;
My panting heart rock'd her asleep,
My heedful eyes the watch did keep;
Then, love by me being harbour'd there,
(No hope to be his harbinger)
Desire his rival kept the door;
For this of him I begg'd no more,
But that, our mistress to entertain,
Some pretty fancy he would frame,
And represent it in a dream,
Of which myself should give the theme.
Then first these thoughts I bid him show,
Which only he and I did know,
Arrayed in duty and respect,

Might I lie where leans her lute,
When her fingers thrill & thrill
Thrice the wild strings; and, bending mute,
In her ear they throb, and spill
Music so tremulous; soul-betrothed; panting to death.
Sweetlier then would I awake
All the loveliness I know
Into sweet song; and sweetlier make
On her bosom overflow
All my great passion in one yearning rapture of breath.

This love of nature, that allures to take
Irregularity for harmony
Of larger scope than our hard measures make,
Cherish it as thy school for when on thee
The ills of life descend.

When Will was at home in his palace of zinc,
He had no room to move; but plenty to think!

At Plymouth in the friendly crowd
Mamma was not a little proud
To see her beaming candlesticks
Almost outshine their lighted wicks
Why not? since shafts of solid silver
Might tempt the Plymouth saints to pilfer
But Time, a more relentless thief
Betrayed Mamma & these to grief
He stole the silver grain by grain
Nothing but copper would remain
But when Aladdin came to town
Hiding his famed lamp in his gown
Touched the old sticks with fingers new
As if with starshine riddled through
And now they beam like her own feats

One night he dreamed of a palace fair,—
Next year, it stood in marble strong,
Sheltered a nation's proudest throne,
There sate the fathers of the state,
There echoed freedom's shrill debate
A thousand years it will stand the same
Enacting laws & breathing Fame.

The comrade or the book is good
That puts me in a working mood:
Unless to thought be added will,
Apollo is an imbecile.
What parts, what truth, what fancies shine!
—Ah! but I miss the just design.

The years had worn their seasons' belt,
From bud to rosy prime,
Since Nellie by the larch-pole knelt
And helped the hop to climb.

Most diligent of teachers then,
But now with all to learn,
She breathed beyond a thought of men,
Though formed to make men burn.

She dwelt where 'twixt low-beaten thorns
Two mill-blades, like a snail,
Enormous, with inquiring horns,
Looked down on half the vale.

You know the grey of dew on grass
Ere with the young sun fired,
And you know well the thirst one has