Short Poems

Life hurries by, and who can stay
One winged Hour upon her way?
The broken trellis then restore
And train the woodbine round the door.

C HLOE ! mean men must ever make mean loves,
They deal in dog-roses, but I in cloves.
They are just scorch'd enough to blow their fingers,
I am a phoenix downright burnt to cinders.

To Virgil's tomb this honour Silius pays,
Who holds the lands where Cicero spent his days.
As heir and owner of his home and grave
None other Tully or Maro would have.

Of heroes, history, grand events, premises, myths, poems,
The few drops known must stand for oceans of the unknown,
On this beautiful and thick peopl'd earth, here and there a little specimen put on record.
A little of Greeks and Romans, a few Hebrew canticles, a few death odors as from graves, from Egypt—
What are they to the long and copious retrospect of antiquity?

Let me take a good look:
the old cherry,
even its blossoms are sad—
how many more times
will they see the spring?

Once I see
the new green leaves,
my heart may take to them too—
if I think of them as mementos
of blossoms that scattered

Like star lilies
that sway in thick-grown fields
where larks fly up,
this mind bound
to no one thing

Though whose remains lie here
I do not know,
Mount Toribe at sundown:
one by one
the terrible graves

When Jane was absent Edgar's eye
Roved to the door incessantly
But when she came he went away
For the poor youth could nothing say
Yet hated to appear unwise
Before those beatific eyes

A prized memorial this slight work may prove
As bought in charity and given in Love.