Winter's a robber,
He hides a loot,
Grass and song,
Leaf and fruit.

Winter's a thief,
Under your nose
He thrusts a hand
And your treasure goes.

Winter's a robber,
One day he
Came to my garden
And took from me.

A rainbow scarf
And a jeweled cup
And gold that a dahlia
Wand held up.

There must be a cave
In sea or sky
Where he hides what he takes
As he passes by.

I wish I could find
His treasure heap
With the guarding winds
All fast asleep.

I'd snatch a flower,
A song, maybe;

The Patriarchs bold and strong
Have followed Christ among
The millions of the sky.
Where they shall shout his praise
In everlasting lays
And never, never die!

What bodies the saints shall come up with from dust,
For glitter and shine and sparkle they must!
With their Saviour-like beauty each person appears
While their bright, whiten'd robes dispet all their fears.
But amazing difference there will be
At Christ's return we all shall see.

O all important, infinite concern,
I fear and tremble now to launch away
For fear that I in hell must surely burn,
In prison! yet the debt can never pay!

Oh! was my faith as strong as mountains be,
Then I would stretch my pinions to the skies;
My blessed Jesus I would joyful see,
On heavenly, richer gems would fix my eyes.

What rich profusion here,
Is scatter'd all abroad,
To make us love and fear,
Obey and worship God.
And sound his praise,
Through every clime,
In constant lays,
Till end of time.

The huge leviathan,
The oyster and the eel,
The lion and the lamb,
Each in their nature feel.
And go abroad,
In quest of food,
Depend on God,
For every good.

These shining crumbs of clay,
With yellow, green and gold,
March on their lucid way,
And day in night unfold.
And shine so bright,
And please themselves,

Glory to Thy ways O Lord!
We praise Thy Holy Name:
Sacred is the precious word
That tells the Christian's claim.

Children of the Blood of Love.
We bow before Thy Throne;
Faith in Thee, the Hope above,
Shall be our corner-stone.

Bethel's star is guide to Thee,
For Angels point the way:
We at last are once more free
To watch and sing and pray.

Princes then shall come to rule,
As Sheba did of old:
Nevermore, as black foot-stool,
Shall Afric's sons be sold.

For ages we've been in pain,
While trusting in the Psalms—

Black in blazonry means
prudence; and niger, unpropitious. Might
hematite—
black, compactly incurved horns on bison
have significance? The
soot-brown tail-tuft on
a kind of lion-

tail; what would that express?
And John Steuart Curry's Ajax pulling
grass—no ring
in his nose—two birds standing on the back?


The modern
ox does not look like the Augsburg ox's
portrait. Yes,
the great extinct wild Aurochs was a beast
to paint, with stripe and six-
foot horn-spread—decreased
to Siamese-cat-

Brown Swiss size or zebu-

If external action is effete
and rhyme is outmoded,
I shall revert to you,
Habakkuk, as when in a Bible class
the teacher was speaking of unrhymed verse.
He said—and I think I repeat his exact words,
“Hebrew poetry is prose
with a sort of heightened consciousness.” Ecstasy affords
the occasion and expediency determines the form.

It stands alone on a haunted shore,
With curious words of deathless lore
On its massive gate impearled;
And its carefully guarded mystic key
Locks in its silent mystery
From the seeking eyes of the world.

Oft do its stately walls repeat
Echoes of music wildly sweet
Swelling to gladness high—
With mournful ballads of ancient time,
And funeral hymns—and a nursery rhyme
Dying away in a sigh.

Pictures out of each haunted room,
Up through the ghostly shadows loom,
And gleam with a spectral light;
Pictures lit with a radiant glow,

Today in America people were bought and sold:
five hundred for a “likely Negro wench.”
If someone at auction is worth her weight in gold,
how much would she be worth by pound? By ounce?
If I owned an unimaginable quantity of wealth,
could I buy an iota of myself?
How would I know which part belonged to me?
If I owned part, could I set my part free?
It must be worth something—maybe a lot—
that my great-grandfather, they say, killed a lion.
They say he was black, with muscles as hard as iron,
that he wore a necklace of the claws of the lion he'd fought.

Guernsey ! to me and in my partial eyes
Thou art a holy and enchanted isle,
Where I would linger long, and muse the while
Of ancient thoughts and solemn memories,
Quickening the tender tear or pensive smile:
Guernsey!—for nearly thrice a hundred years
Home of my fathers! refuge from their fears,
And haven to their hope—when long of yore
Fleeing Imperial Charles and bloody Rome
Protestant martyrs to thy sea-girt shore
They came to seek a temple and a home,
And found thee generous—I, their son, would pour