Like Crusoe, Walking By The Lonely Strand

Like Crusoe, walking by the lonely strand
And seeing a human footprint on the sand,
Have I this day been startled, finding here,
Set in brown mould and delicately clear,
Spring's footprint--the first crocus of the year!
O sweet invasion!    Farewell solitude!
Soon shall wild creatures of the field and wood
Flock from all sides with much ado and stir,
And make of me most willing prisoner!

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Thomas Bailey Aldrich was an American writer, poet, critic, and editor. He is notable for his long editorship of The Atlantic Monthly. Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, much of his writing was inspired by his experiences in the city. He wrote volumes of poetry, novels, and short stories. Aldrich's semi-autobiographical book, "The Story of a Bad Boy," is considered an early example of the "bad boy" genre in American literature.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

An Elective Course

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Simple Poetry

I Vex Me Not With Brooding On The Years

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Simple Poetry

At A Reading

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Simple Poetry

Piscataqua River

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

A Touch Of Nature

When first the crocus thrusts its point of gold
Up through the still snow-drifted garden mould,
And folded green things in dim woods unclose
Their crinkled spears, a sudden tremor goes
Into my veins and makes me kith and kin
To every wild-born thing that thrills and blows.
Sitting beside this crumbling sea-coal fire,
Here in the city's ceaseless roar and din,
Far from the brambly paths I used to know,
Far from the rustling brooks that slip and shine
Where the Neponset alders take their glow,
I share the tremulous sense of bud and briar
And inarticulate ardors of the vine.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The Walk At Midnight

Soft, shadowy moon-beam! by the light
Sleeps the wide meer serenely pale:
How various are the sounds of night,
Borne on the scarely-rising gale!

The swell of distant brook is heard,
Whose far-off waters faintly roll;
And piping of the shrill small bird,
Arrested by the wandring owl.

Come hither! let us thread with care
The maze of this green path, which binds
The beauties of the broad parterre,
And thro yon fragrant alley winds.

Or on this old bench will we sit,
Round which the clustring woodine wreathes;
While birds of night around us flit;
And thro each lavish wood-walk breathes,

Unto my ravishd senses, brought
From yon thick-woven odorous bowers,
The still rich breeze, with incense fraught
Of glowing fruits and sp...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Lines - Written On Visiting A Scene In Argyleshire

At the silence of twilight's contemplative hour,
I have mused in a sorrowful mood,
On the wind-shaken weeds that embosom the bower,
Where the home of my forefathers stood.
All ruin'd and wild is their roofless abode;
And lonely the dark raven's sheltering tree;
And travell'd by few is the grass-cover'd road,
Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode,
To his hills that encircle the sea.

Yet wandering, I found on my ruinous walk,
By the dial-stone aged and green,
One rose of the wilderness left on its stalk,
To mark where a garden had been.
Like a brotherless hermit, the last of its race,
All wild in the silence of nature, it drew,
From each wandering sun-beam, a lonely embrace,
For the night-weed and thorn overshadow'd the place,
Where the flowe...

Thomas Campbell

The Walk

    You did not walk with me
    Of late to the hill-top tree
    By the gated ways,
    As in earlier days;
    You were weak and lame,
    So you never came,
And I went alone, and I did not mind,
Not thinking of you as left behind.

    I walked up there to-day
    Just in the former way:
    Surveyed around
    The familiar ground
    By myself again:
    What difference, then?
Only that underlying sense
Of the look of a room on returning thence.

Thomas Hardy

A Country Pathway.

    I come upon it suddenly, alone -
        A little pathway winding in the weeds
    That fringe the roadside; and with dreams my own,
        I wander as it leads.

    Full wistfully along the slender way,
        Through summer tan of freckled shade and shine,
    I take the path that leads me as it may -
        Its every choice is mine.

    A chipmunk, or a sudden-whirring quail,
        Is startled by my step as on I fare -
    A garter-snake across the dusty trail
        Glances and - is not there.

    Above the arching jimson-weeds flare twos
        And twos of sallow-yellow butterflies,
    Like blooms of lorn primroses blowing loose
        When autumn winds arise.

    The trail dips - dwindles - broadens then, and lifts

James Whitcomb Riley

The Crooked Footpath

Ah, here it is! the sliding rail
That marks the old remembered spot, -
The gap that struck our school-boy trail, -
The crooked path across the lot.

It left the road by school and church,
A pencilled shadow, nothing more,
That parted from the silver-birch
And ended at the farm-house door.

No line or compass traced its plan;
With frequent bends to left or right,
In aimless, wayward curves it ran,
But always kept the door in sight.

The gabled porch, with woodbine green, -
The broken millstone at the sill, -
Though many a rood might stretch between,
The truant child could see them still.

No rocks across the pathway lie, -
No fallen trunk is o'er it thrown, -
And yet it winds, we know not why,
And turns as if for tree or stone...

Oliver Wendell Holmes