A Library of Poetry and Song: Being Choice Selections from the Best Poets

Utensils domestic and civil and social | Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground, I give you an evening to pack up ;

The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with thee. But if the moon of this night does not rise on your Here is continual worship ; - nature, here, flight,

In the tranquillity that thou dost love, To-morrow I 'll hang each man Jack up. Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly around, You'llthink of my peasand your thievish tricks, From perch to perch, the solitary bird With tears of slime, when crossing the Styx. Passes; and yon clear spring, that, midst its herbs,

ANONYMOUS. Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the roots

Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale

Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left
A FOREST HYMN.

Thyself without a witness, in these shades,

Ofthy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace TIIE groves were God's first temples. Ere man Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak, learned

By whose immovable stem I stand and seem To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, Almost annihilated, -- not a prince, And spread the roof above them,-- ere he framed in all that proud old world beyond the deep, The lofty vault, to gather and roll back

E'er wore his crown as loftily as he The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, Wears the green coronal of leaves with which Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down, Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare And supplication. For his simple heart Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower Might not resist the sacred influences

With scented breath, and look so like a smile, Which, from the stilly twilight of the place, Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould, And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven | An emanation of the indwelling Life, Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound A visible token of the upholding Love, Of the invisible breath that swayed at once That are the soul of this wide universe. All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed His spirit with the thought of boundless power My heart is awed within me when I think And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why

Of the great miracle that still goes on, Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect In silence, round me, – the perpetual work God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore

Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
Only among the crowd, and under roofs

Forever. Written on thy works I read
That our frail hands have raised ? Let me, at least, The lesson of thy own eternity.
Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,

Lo! all grow old and die ; but see again,
Offer one hymn, - thrice happy if it find How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Acceptance in his ear.

Youth presses, - ever gay and beautiful youth

In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees Father, thy hand | Wave not less proudly that their ancestors Hath reared these venerable columns, thou Moulder beneath them. O, there is not lost Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look One of Earth's charms ! upon her bosom yet, down

After the flight of untold centuries, Upon the naked earth, and fortlwith rose The freshness of her far beginning lies, All these fair ranks of trees. They in thy sun And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate Budded, and shook their green leaves in thy breeze, of his arch-enemy Death, — yea, seats himself And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow, Upon the tyrant's throne, the sepulchre, Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe Among their branches, till at last they stood, | Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth As now they stand, massy and tail and dark, From thine own boson, and shall have no end. Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults, There have been holy men who hid themselves These winding aisles, of human pomp or pride Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave Report not. No fantastic carvings show

Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived The boast of our vain race to change the form The generation born with them, nor seemed of thy fair works. But thou art here, - thou fill'st Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds Around them ; - and there have been holy men That run along the summit of these trees Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus. In music; thou art in the cooler breath

But let me often to these solitudes That from the inmost darkness of the place | Retire, and in thy presence reassure

THE ARAB TO THE PALM.

My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,
The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink
And tremble, and are still. O God! when thou |
Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire
The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill,

Next to thee, O fair gazelle,
O Beddowee girl, beloved so well ;

Next to the fearless Nedjidee,
Whose fleetness shall bear me again to thee;
Next to ye both, I love the palm,
With his leaves of beauty, his fruit of balm ;

Next to ye both, I love the tree
Whose fluttering shadow wraps us three
With love and silence and mystery !

The swist dark whirlwind that uproots the woods
And drowns the villages ; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep, and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities, — who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by ?
0, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad unchained elements to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of thy works
Learn to conform the order of our lives.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

Our tribe is many, our pocts vie
With any under the Arab sky;
Yet none can sing of the palm but I.
The marble minarets that begem
Cairo's citadel-diadem.
Are not so light as his slender stem.
He lifts his leaves in the sunbeam's glance,
As the Almehs lift their arms in dance, -

A slumberous motion, a passionate sign,
That works in the cells of the blood like wine.

Full of passion and sorrow is he, Dreaming where the beloved may be.

And when the warm south-winds arise,
He breathes his longing in servid sighs,
Quickening odors, kisses of balm,
That drop in the lap of his chosen palm.

The sun may slame, and the sands may stir, But the breath of his passion reaches her.

O tree of love, by that love of thinc, Teach me how I shall soften niine !

THE BRAVE OLD OAK. A song to the oak, the brave old oak,

Who hath ruled in the greenwood long ; Here 's health and renown to his broad green crown,

And his fifty arms so strong. There 's fear in his frown when the sun goes down,

And the fire in the west fades out;
And he showeth his might on a wild midnight,
When the storm through his branches shout.
Then here's to the oak, the brave old oak,

Who stands in his pride alone ;
And still flourish he, a hale green tree,

When a hundred years are gone !
In the days of old, when the spring with cold

Had brightened his branches gray,
Through the grass at his feet crept maidens sweet,

To gather the dew of May.
And on that day to the rebeck gay

They frolicked with lovesome swains ;
They are gone, they are dead, in the churchyard |

laid, But the tree it still remains.

Then here's, &c. He saw the rare times when the Christmas chimes

Was a merry sound to hear, When the squire's wide hall and the cottage small

Were filled with good English cheer.
Now gold hath the sway we all obey,

And a ruthless king is he;
But he never shall send our ancient friend
To be tossed on the stormy sea.
Then here's, &c.

H. F. CHORLEY.

Give me the secret of the sun, Whereby the wooed is ever won !

If I were a king, 0 stately tree,
A likeness, glorious as might be,
In the court of my palace I'd build for thee!

With a shaft of silver, burnished bright, And leaves of beryl and malachite;

With spikes of golden bloom ablaze, And fruits of topaz and chrysoprase.

And there the poets, in thy praise,
Should night and morning frame new lays, -

New measures sung to tunes divine ;
But none, O palm, should equal mine!

BAYARD TAYLOR.

THE PALM-TREE. Is it the palm, the cocoa-palm, On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm ? Or is it a ship in the breezeless calm ?

A ship whose keel is of palm beneath,
Whose ribs of palm have a palm-bark sheath,
And a rudder of palm it steereth with.

Branches of palm are its spars and rails,
Fibres of palm are its woven sails,
And the rope is of palm that idly trails !
What does the good ship bear so well ?
The cocoa-nut with its stony shell,
And the milky sap of its inner cell.

Ordered by an intelligence so wise
As might confound the atheist's sophistries.
Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen

Wrinkled and keen ;
No grazing cattle, through their prickly round,

Can reach to wound;
| But as they grow where nothing is to fear,
Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear.
I love to view these things with curious cyes,

And moralize;
And in this wisdom of the holly-tree

Can emblems see
Wherewith, perchance, to make a pleasant rhyme,
One which may profit in the after-time.
Thus, though abroad, perchance, I might appear

Harsh and austere, -
To those who on my leisure would intrude,

Reserved and rude ;
Gentle at home amid my friends I'd be,
Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree.
And should my youth, as youth is apt, I know,

Some harshness show,
All vain asperities I, day by day,

Would wear away,
Till the smooth temper of my age should be
Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree.

What are its jars, so smooth and finc,
But hollowed nuts, filled with oil and wine,
And the cabbage that ripens under the Line ?

Who smokes his nargileh, cool and calm ?
The master, whose cunning and skill could charm
Cargo and ship from the bounteous palm.

In the cabin he sits on a palm-mat soft,
From a beaker of palm his drink is quaffed,
And a palm thatch shields from the sun aloft !

His dress is woven of palmy strands,
And he holds a palm-leaf scroll in his hands,
Traced with the Prophet's wise commands !

The turban folded about his head
Was daintily wrought of the palm-leaf braid,
And the fan that cools him of palm was made.

And as, when all the summer trees are seen

So bright and green, The holly-leaves their fadeless hues display

Less bright than they ; But when the bare and wintry woods we see, What then so cheerful as the holly-tree ?

Of threads of palm was the carpet spun
Whereon he kneels when the day is done,
And the foreheads of Islam are bowed as one !
To him the palm is a gift divine,
Wherein all uses of man combine, –
House and raiment and food and wine!
And, in the hour of his great release,
His need of the palm shall only cease
With the shroud wherein he lieth in peace.
- Allah il Allah !" he sings his psalm,
On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm ;
“Thanks to Allah, who gives the palm !”

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

So, serious should my youth appear among

The thoughtless throng;
So would I seem, amil the young and gay,

More grave than they ;
That in my age as cheerful I might be
As the green winter of the holly-tree.

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

THE GRAPE-VINE SWING.

LITHE and long as the serpent train, | Springing and clinging from tree to tree, Now darting upward, now down again,

With a twist and a twirl that are strange to see ; Never took serpent a deadlier hold,

Never the cougar a wilder spring, Strangling the oak with the boa's fold, | Spanning the beech with the condor's wing.

THE HOLLY-TREE.'

O READER ! hast thou ever stood to see

The holly-tree? The eye that contemplates it well perceives

Its glossy leaves

Yet no foe that we fear to seek, — | The boy leaps wild to thy rude embrace ;

Thy bulging arms bear as soft a cheek

As ever on lover's breast found place; On thy waving train is a playful hold

Thou shalt never to lighter grasp persuade ; While a maiden sits in thy drooping fold,

And swings and sings in the noonday shade!

Almond blossom, sent to teach us
That the spring days soon will reach us,
Lest, with longing over-tried,
We die as the violets died, -
Blossom, clouding all the tree
With thy crimson broidery,
Long before a leaf of green
On the bravest bough is seen, -
Ah ! when winter winds are swinging
All thy red bells into ringing,
With a bee in every bell,
Almond bloom, we greet thee well.

O giant strange of our southern woods,

I dream of thee still in the well-known spot, Though our vessel strains o'er the ocean floods,

And the northern forest beholds thee not; I think of thee still with a sweet regret,

As the cordage yields to my playful grasp, — Dost thou spring and cling in our woodlands yet ? Does the maiden still swing in thy giant clasp ?

WILLIAM GILMORE SIAMS.

EDWIN ARNOLD,

FAIR PLEDGES OF A FRUITFUL TREE. Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,

Why do ye fall so fast ?

Your date is not so past
But you may stay yet here awhile
To blush and gently smile,

And go at last.

What! were ye born to be

An hour or half's delight,

And so to bid good night? "T is pity Nature brought ye forth, Merely to show your worth,

And lose you quite. But you are lovely leaves, where we

May read how soon things have

Their end, though ne'er so biave; And after they have shown their pride Like you awhile, they glide

Into the grave.

THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE-TREE.

COME, let us plant the apple-tree. Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; Wide let its hollow bed be made ; There gently lay the roots, and there Sift the dark mould with kindly care,

And press it o'er them tenderly, As round the sleeping infant's feet We softly fold the cradle-sheet;

So plant we the apple-tree.

What plant we in this apple-tree?
Buds, which the breath of summer days
Shall lengthen into leafy sprays;
Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast,
Shall haunt, and sing, and hide her nest;

Wo plant, upon the sunny lea,
A shadow for the noontide hour,
A shelter from the summer shower,

When we plant the apple-tree.

What plant we in this apple-tree?
Sweets for a hundred flowery springs
To load the May-wind's restless wings,
When, from the orchard row, he pours
Its fragrance through our open doors ;

A world of blossoms for the bee,
Flowers for the sick girl's silent room,
For the glad infant sprigs of bloom,

We plant with the apple-tree.

What plant we in this apple-tree ?
Fruits that shall swell in sunny June,
And redden in the August noon,
And drop, when gentle airs come by,
That fan the blue September sky,

While children come, with cries of glee,
And seek them where the fragrant grass
Betrays their bed to those who pass,

At the foot of the apple-tree.

And when, above this apple-tree,
The winter stars are quivering bright,
And winds go howling through the night,

ROBERT HERRICK.

ALMOND BLOSSOM. Blossom of the almond-trees, April's gift to April's bees, Birthday ornament of spring, Flora's fairest daughterling ; -Coming when no flowerets dare Trust the cruel outer air, When the royal king-cup bold Dares not don his coat of gold, And the sturdy blackthorn spray Keeps his silver for the May ;Coming when no flowerets would, Save thy lowly sisterhood, Early violets, blue and white, Dying for their love of light.

Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, | In climes of the East has the olive been sung, Shall peel its fruit by cottage lacarth,

And the grape been the theme of their lays, And guests in prouder homes shall sce, But for thee shall a harp of the backwoods be Hicaped with the grape of Cintra's vinc

strung, And golden orange of the Line,

Thou bright, cver beautiful maize ! The fruit of the apple-tree.

Afar in the forest the rude cabins rise, The fruitage of this apple-trec

And send up their pillars of smoke, Winds and our flag of stripe and star

And the tops of their columns are lost in the skies, Shall bear to coasts that lic afar,

O'er the heads of the cloud-kissing oak; Where men shall wonder at the view, Near the skirt of the grove, where the sturdy arm And ask in what fair groves they grew;

swings And sojourners beyond the sea

The axe till the old giant sways,
Shall think of childhood's careless day And ccho repeats every blow as it rings,
And long, long hours of suinmer play,

Shoots the green and the glorious maize ! In the shade of the apple-tree.

There buds of the buckeye in spring are thc first, Each year shall give this apple-trce

And the willow's gold hair then appears, A broader flush of roseatc bloom,

And snowy the cups of the dogwood that burst A deeper maze of verdurous gloom,

By the red bud, with pink-tinted tears. And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower, And striped the bolls which the popny holds up The crisp brown lcaves in thicker shower.

For the dew, and the sun's yellow rays, The years shall come and pass, but we And brown is the pawpaw's shade-blossoming cup, Shall hear no longer, where we lie,

In the wood, near the sun-loving maize! The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh, In the boughs of the apple-trec.

When through the dark soil the bright steel of

the plough And time shall waste this apple-tree.

Turns the mould from its unbroken bed, 0, when its aged branches throw

The ploughman is cheered by the finch on the Thin shadows on the ground below,

bough, Shall fraud and force and iron will

And the blackbird doth follow his trcad. Oppress the weak and helpless still ?

And idle, afar on the landscape descried, What shall the tasks of mercy be,

The deep-lowing kine slowly graze, Amid the toils, the striles, the tears

And nibbling the grass on the sunny hillside of those who live when length of years

Are the sheep, hedged away from the maize. Is wasting this apple-trec ?

With springtime and culture, in martial array “Who planted this old apple-tree ?”.

It waves its green broadswords on high, The children of that distant day ,

And fights with the gale, in a fluttering fray, Thus to some aged man shall say ;

And the sunbeams, which fall from the sky; And, gazing on its mossy stem,

It strikes its green blades at the zephyrs at noon, The gray-haired man shall answer them : And at night at the swift-flying fays, “A poct of the land was he,

Who ride through the darkness the beams of the Born in the rude but good old times ;

moon, "T is said he made some quaint old rhymes | Through the spears and the flags of the Maize! On planting the apple-tree." WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. When the summer is fierce still its banners are

green,
Each warrior's long beard groweth red,

His emerald-bright sword is sharp-pointed and
THE MAIZE.

keen, "That precious seed into the furrow cast

And golden his tassel-plumed head.
Earliest in s ringtime crowns the harvest last."

As a host of armed knights set a monarch at
PHQRE CAREY,

naught, A song for the plant of my own native West, They defy the day-god to his gaze, Where nature and freedom reside,

And, revived every morn from the battle that's By plenty still crowned, and by peace ever blest, fought,

To the corn! the green corn of her pride! | Fresh stand the green ranks of the maize !

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