Short Poems

The God, who seeth
All things in secret hidden,
The cloudless bosom
Of man, sincere and faithful,
Will flood with light revealing.

I PICKED up the clod.
“You may yet be a man,” I said. “Dream on.
Are you not glad? Do you not tremble?”
But dully it looked at me.
I could swear I heard a sigh of relief.
There was no ecstasy, no joy.
“I have been a man,” the clod said.

When rowing on the open sea,
The waves, all capped with white,
Roll onward, like the fleecy clouds
With their resistless might;
Truly a wondrous sight!

Yesterday brown was still thy head, as the locks of my loved one,
Whose sweet image so dear silently beckons afar.
Silver-grey is the early snow to-day on thy summit,
Through the tempestuous night streaming fast over thy brow.
Youth, alas, throughout life as closely to age is united
As, in some changeable dream, yesterday blends with today.

By the sandy water I breathe in the odor of the sea;
From there the wind comes and blows over the world.
By the sandy water I breathe in the odor of the sea;
From there the clouds come and rain falls over the world.

The gift is small,
The love is all.

There was an old man of Mahasso,
Who sang both as Tenor and Basso;
His voice was that high, it went into the sky,
And came down again quite to Mahasso.

There was a Young Lady of Turkey,
Who wept when the weather was murky;
When the day turned out fine, she ceased to repine,
That capricious Young Lady of Turkey.

There was an old man of Dumbree,
Who taught little owls to drink tea;
For he said, ‘To eat mice,
Is not proper or nice,’
That amiable Man of Dumbree.

Leave Cod, tobacco-like, burnt gums to take,
Or fumy clysters, thy moist lungs to bake:
Arsenic would thee fit for society make.