With shirt wide open at the collar,
Maned as Beethoven's bust, it stands;
Our conscience, dreams, the night and love,
Are as chessmen covered by its hands.

Italy : 25. Don Garzia

© Samuel Rogers

Among those awful forms, in elder time
Assembled, and through many an after-age
Destined to stand as Genii of the Place
Where men most meet in Florence, may be seen

The Courtship Of Miles Standish

Thereupon answered the youth: "Indeed I do not condemn you;
Stouter hearts that a woman's have quailed in this terrible winter.
Yours is tender and trusting, and needs a stronger to lean on;
So I have come to you now, with an offer and proffer of marriage
Made by a good man and true, Miles Standish the Captain of Plymouth!"

To the Comet of 1843 [late version]

© Charles Harpur

But human eyes
As many and beautifulyea, more sublime
And radiant in their passion, from a more
Enlarged communion with the spirit of truth,
Shall welcome thee instead, mysterious stranger,
When thou returnst anew.

Epochs

© Emma Lazarus

Thin summer rain on grass and bush and hedge,
Reddening the road and deepening the green
On wide, blurred lawn, and in close-tangled sedge;
Veiling in gray the landscape stretched between
These low broad meadows and the pale hills seen
But dimly on the far horizon's edge.

The Purgatory Of St. Patrick - Act III

© Denis Florence MacCarthy

LUIS. Oh, that name
Do not mention! do not kill me
By repeating what doth thrill me
To the centre of my frame
As with lightning. Yes, I know
That at length Polonia died.

The Truth Suppressed

© Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer

Why do people sit in darkness as regards the Negro race?
Why so ignorant are nations of conditions in the case?
'Tis because the facts are strangled by a prejudice intense,
Truth is murdered in the forum when she cries in his defence.

The Forfeiture

© Henry King

My Dearest, To let you or the world know
What Debt of service I do truly ow
To your unpattern'd self, were to require
A language onely form'd in the desire

A Forest Hymn

The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned

To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,

Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 1. The Musician's Tale; The Saga of King Olaf II. -- The King's Return

And King Olaf heard the cry,
Saw the red light in the sky,
Laid his hand upon his sword,
As he leaned upon the railing,
And his ships went sailing, sailing
Northward into Drontheim fiord.

Sudden Calm

There is a bellowing in me, as of might

Unfleshed and visionless, mangling the air

Conscription Camp

© Karl Shapiro

Your landscape sickens with a dry disease
Even in May, Virginia, and your sweet pines
Like Frenchmen runted in a hundred wars
Are of a childs height in these battlefields.

The Crum Appointment

You, no doubt, have heard the story told of Charleston by the sea,
How they persecute a Negro when a man he tries to be,
'Tis of national importance and the world enjoys the sport,
Caused by William Crum's appointment as collector of the port.