A lone gray bird,
Dim-dipping, far-flying,
Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults
Of night and the sea
And the stars and storms.

Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers,
Out into the gloom it swings and batters,
Out into the wind and the rain and the vast,
Out into the pit of a great black world,
Where fogs are at battle, sky-driven, sea-blown,
Love of mist and rapture of flight,
Glories of chance and hazards of death
On its eager and palpitant wings.

Out into the deep of the great dark world,

A Sonnet is a moment's monument,
Memorial from the Soul's eternity
To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
Of its own arduous fulness reverent:
Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see
Its flowering crest impearl'd and orient.

A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
The soul,--its converse, to what Power 'tis due: --
Whether for tribute to the august appeals
Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,

COME and kiss me, mistress Beauty,
I will give you all that ’s due t’ye.

I will taste your rosebud lips
Daintily as the bee sips;
At your bonny eyes I ’ll look
Like a scholar at his book:

On my bosom you shall rest,
Like a robin on her nest:
Round my body you shall twine,
I ’ll be elm, and you be vine:

In a bumper of your breath
I would drain a draught of death;
In the tangles of your hair
I ’d be hanged and never care.

Then come kiss me, mistress Beauty,

MY faint spirit was sitting in the light
   Of thy looks, my love;
   It panted for thee like the hind at noon
   For the brooks, my love.
Thy barb, whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's flight,
   Bore thee far from me;
   My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon,
   Did companion thee.

Ah! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed,
   Or the death they bear,
   The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove

Now the November skies,
And the clouds that are thin and gray,
That drop with the wind away;
A flood of sunlight rolls,
In a tide of shallow light,
Gold on the land and white
On the water, dim and warm in the wood;
Then it is gone, and the wan
Clear of the shade
Covers fields and barren and glade.
The peace of labor done,
Is wide in the gracious earth;
The harvest is won;
Past are the tears and the mirth;
And we feel in the tenuous air
How far beyond thought or prayer
Is the grace of silent things,

esides what I said of the Four Last Things,
And of the weal and woe that from them springs;

An after-word still runneth in my mind,
Which I shall here expose unto that wind

That may it blow into that very hand
That needs it. Also that it may be scann'd

With greatest soberness, shall be my prayer,
As well as diligence and godly care;

So to present it unto public view,
That only truth and peace may thence ensue.

My talk shall be of that amazing love
Of God we read of; which, that it may prove,

Thus having heard from Gerizzim, I shall
Next come to Ebal, and you thither call,

Not there to curse you, but to let you hear
How God doth curse that soul that shall appear

An unbelieving man, a graceless wretch;
Because he doth continue in the breach

Of Moses' law, and also doth neglect
To close with Jesus; him will God reject

And cast behind him; for of right his due
Is that from whence all miseries ensue.

Cursed, saith he, are thy that do transgress
The least of my commandments, more or less.

FROM far Dakota's cañons,
Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lonesome stretch, the
silence,
Haply to-day a mournful wail, haply a trumpet-note for heroes.

The battle-bulletin,
The Indian ambuscade, the craft, the fatal environment,
The cavalry companies fighting to the last in sternest heroism,
In the midst of their little circle, with their slaughter'd horses
for breastworks,
The fall of Custer and all his officers and men.

Continues yet the old, old legend of our race,

From dewy dreams, my soul, arise,
From love's deep slumber and from death,
For lo! the treees are full of sighs
Whose leaves the morn admonisheth.

Eastward the gradual dawn prevails
Where softly-burning fires appear,
Making to tremble all those veils
Of grey and golden gossamer.

While sweetly, gently, secretly,
The flowery bells of morn are stirred
And the wise choirs of faery
Begin (innumerous!) to be heard.

SHE fell away in her first ages spring,
Whil'st yet her leafe was greene, and fresh her rinde,
And whil'st her braunch faire blossomes foorth did bring,
She fell away against all course of kinde.
For age to dye is right, but youth is wrong;
She fel away like fruit blowne downe with winde.
Weepe, Shepheard! weepe, to make my undersong.

Yet fell she not as one enforst to dye,
Ne dyde with dread and grudging discontent,
But as one toyld with travaile downe doth lye,
So lay she downe, as if to sleepe she went,