Nay , not rewardless did your hero fall!
No pealing fame could match this great repose;
Death's grassy calm, after life's bugle call,
And love's white lily after war's red rose.

Was there ever such a hue
O Loves bonny Mary Green
On the rosey pearled in dew
As on thy cheek is seen
On choice carnation leaves
Was there e'er so rich a streak
When thy white bosom heaves
As thy lips that music speak.

Shall I twine the weeping willow
Round the bloom of Mary Green
Oer her bosoms snowy pillows
& her face so like a queen
Shall the cypress glooms be wreathing
Like a lump o' coffined clay
Round that form o' beauty breathing
All the witcherys o' May.

O my lovely Mary Green
The richest flower o' May

O sometimes comes to soul and sense
The feeling which is evidence
That very near about us lies
The realm of spirit-mysteries.

The low and dark horizon lifts,
To light the scenic terror shifts;
The breath of a diviner air
Blows down the answer of a prayer.

Then all our sorrow, pain and doubt
A great compassion clasps about;
And law and goodness, love and force,
Are wedded fast beyond divorce.

Then duty leaves to love its task,
The beggar self forgets to ask;
We feel, as flowers the sun and dew,
The one true Life our own renew.

When a lover hies abroad
Looking for his love,
Azrael smiling sheathes his sword,
Heaven smiles above.
Earth and sea
His servants be,
And to lesser compass round,
That his love be sooner found!

Beware the man who's crossed in love;
For pent-up steam must find its vent.
Stand back when he is on the move,
And lend him all the Continent.

O prairie mother, I am one of your boys.
I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise, or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.
I speak of new cities and new people.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,
A sun dropped in the west.
I tell you there is nothing in the world
Only an ocean of tomorrows,
A sky of tomorrows.

I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say at sundown:
Tomorrow is a day.

Weeping for thee, my love, thro' the long day,
Lonely and wearily life wears away.
Weeping for thee, my love, thro' the long night—
No rest in darkness, no joy in light!
Naught left but Memory whose dreary tread
Sounds thro' this ruined heart, where all lies dead—
Wakening the echoes of joy long fled!

They told me you were lovely—yes,
The word is true, the judgment just,
While you are silent, motionless
As pictured form or waxen bust;
Your speech turns love to sheer disgust,
Your face it mars, your charm it balks;
Beware the aedile, all mistrust
The omen if a statue talks.

Tho Ive sung in rambles cheery
Springs & summers almost weary
Ere since my boyish hand dare try
To cull a wreath of poesy
& woo that sun tand beautious maid
The rural muse beneath the shade
Binding free her carless hair
To win her smiling favours there
Tho ere since wi countless pleasures
In unpremedi[t]ated measures
Ive sung of woods & dribbling rills
& pastures speckt wi little hills
& meadows smooth as bowling greens
& fields of grain & many scenes
Were manhoods leisure joys to dwell

Light hearted, careless, shall I take my way,
When I to thee this being have resigned,
Well knowing where upon a future day,
With usurer's craft, more than myself to find.