There's a little gable window in a cottage far away,
Where a child in purple twilights used to softly kneel and pray,
While across the marge of evening fell the darkness, and the stars
Peeped in tender benediction over Heaven's silver bars.

Song

© Helen Maria Williams

I.

Slow spreads the gloom my soul desires-

The Building

© Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Were our vision clearer far,
In this sin-dimmed world of ours,
Would we not more thankful be
For the love that sends us flowers?

Here, At A Meagre Earth

© Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev

Here, at a meagre earth, despondent
And listless stare the dull grey skies,
And, as if plunged in leaden slumber,
A eary nature moveless lies.

Envy And Avarice

© Victor Marie Hugo

The only words that Avarice could utter,
Her constant doom, in a low, frightened mutter,
"There's not enough, enough, yet in my store!"
While Envy, as she scanned the glittering sight,
Groaned as she gnashed her yellow teeth with spite,
"She's more than me, more, still forever more!"

The Old Gray Wall

© Bliss William Carman

Children roving the fields
With early flowers in spring,
Old men turning to look,
When they heard a blue-bird sing,

Sonnets XCII: XCIII: The Sun's Shame

© Dante Gabriel Rossetti

I

Beholding youth and hope in mockery caught

The Menagerie

© Osip Emilevich Mandelstam

The rejected word "peace"
At the beginning of an outraged era;
A church lamp in a grotto
And the air of mountain lands

On Seeing The Diabutsu--At Kamakura, Japan

© Wilcox Ella Wheeler

Long have I searched, Cathedral shrine, and hall,

To find a symbol, from the hand of art,

Quiet

A log-hut in the solitude,
A clapboard roof to rest beneath!
This side, the shadow-haunted wood;
That side, the sunlight-haunted heath.

"O great golden head lie in my lap"

O great golden head lie in my lap,
Sweet, sweet, lie there.
Sleep and I'll watch thee lest evil behap.
Sweet, sweet and fair.

Parody of a Translation from the Medea of Euripides

Ere shall they not, who resolute explore
Times gloomy backward with judicious eyes;
And scanning right the practice of yore,
Shall deem our hoar progenitors unwise.

Nothing To Laugh At

'Taint nothin' to laugh at as I can see!

If you'd been stung by a bumble bee,

In The St. Gotthardt Pass

So does the face of this scarred mountain height
Relax its stony frown, while slow uprolled
Invidious mists are changed to veiling gold.
Wild peaks still fluctuate between dark and bright,
But when the sun laughs at them, as of old,
They kiss high heaven in all embracing light.