A flock of winds came winging from the North,
Strong birds with fighting pinions driving forth
    With a resounding call!

Where will they close their wings and cease their cries -
Between what warming seas and conquering skies -
    And fold, and fall?

Magician he, who, autumn nights,
Down from the starry heavens whirls;
A harlequin in spangled tights,
Whose wand's touch carpets earth with pearls.

Through him each pane presents a scene,
A Lilliputian landscape, where
The world is white instead of green,
And trees and houses hang in air.

Where Elfins gambol and delight,
And haunt the jewelled bells of flowers;
Where upside-down we see the night
With many moons and starry showers.

And surely in his wand or hand
Is Midas magic, for, behold,
Some morn we wake and find the land,
Both field and forest, turned to gold.

Prate, ye who will, of so-called charms you find across the sea--
The land of stoves and sunshine is good enough for me!
I've done the grand for fourteen months in every foreign clime,
And I've learned a heap of learning, but I've shivered all the time;
And the biggest bit of wisdom I've acquired--as I can see--
Is that which teaches that this land's the land of lands for me.

Now, I am of opinion that a person should get some
Warmth in this present life of ours, not all in that to come;
So when Boreas blows his blast, through country and through town,
Or when upon the muddy streets the stifling fog rolls down,
Go, guzzle in a pub, or plod some bleak malarious grove,
But let me toast my shrunken shanks beside some Yankee stove.

The British people say they "don't believ...

I could have painted pictures like that youth’s
Ye praise so. How my soul springs up! No bar
Stayed me, ah, thought which saddens while it soothes!
Never did fate forbid me, star by star,
To outburst on your night, with all my gift
Of fires from God: nor would my flesh have shrunk
From seconding my soul, with eyes uplift
And wide to heaven, or, straight like thunder, sunk
To the centre, of an instant; or around
Turned calmly and inquisitive, to scan
The license and the limit, space and bound,
Allowed to Truth made visible in man.
And, like that youth ye praise so, all I saw,
Over the canvas could my hand have flung,
Each face obedient to its passion’s law,
Each passion clear proclaimed without a tongue:
Whether Hope rose at once in all the blood,
A tip-to...

The thistle-down's flying, though the winds are all still,
On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill,
The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;
Through stones past the counting it bubbles red hot.

The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread,
The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead.
The fallow fields glitter like water indeed,
And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.

Hill tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,
And the rivers we're eying burn to gold as they run;
Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;
Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.

Rush saves his shoes in wet and snowy weather;
And fears in summer to wear out the leather;
This is strong thrift that wary Rush doth use
Summer and winter still to save his shoes.

    Whose is that noble dauntless brow?
        And whose that eye of fire?
    And whose that generous princely mien,
        E'en rooted foes admire?
    Stranger! to justly show that brow,
        And mark that eye of fire,
    Would take His hand, whose vernal tints
        His other works inspire.

    Bright as a cloudless summer sun,
        With stately port he moves;
    His guardian seraph eyes with awe
        The noble ward he loves,
    Among th' illustrious Scottish sons
        That chief thou may'st discern;
    Mark Scotia's fond returning eye,
        It dwells upon Glencairn.

    I loathed you, Spoon River.
    I tried to rise above you,
    I was ashamed of you.
    I despised you
    As the place of my nativity.
    And there in Rome, among the artists,
    Speaking Italian, speaking French,
    I seemed to myself at times to be free
    Of every trace of my origin.
    I seemed to be reaching the heights of art
    And to breathe the air that the masters breathed
    And to see the world with their eyes.
    But still they'd pass my work and say:
    "What are you driving at, my friend?
    Sometimes the face looks like Apollo's
    At others it has a trace of Lincoln's."
    There was no culture, you know, in Spoon River
    And I burned with shame and held my peace.
    And what could I do, all covered over
    ...

I.

Let’s contend no more, Love,
Strive nor weep:
All be as before, Love,
Only sleep!

II.

What so wild as words are?
I and thou
In debate, as birds are,
Hawk on bough!

III.

See the creature stalking
While we speak!
Hush and hide the talking,
Cheek on cheek!

IV.

What so false as truth is,
False to thee?
Where the serpent’s tooth is
Shun the tree

V.

Where the apple reddens
Never pry
Lest we lose our Edens,
Eve and I.

VI.

Be a god and hold me
With a charm!
Be a man and fold me
With thine arm!

VII.

Teach me, only teach, Love
As I ought
I will speak thy speech, Love,
Think thy thought

VIII....

Vain is the chiming of forgotten bells
    That the wind sways above a ruined shrine.
Vainer his voice in whom no longer dwells
    Hunger that craves immortal Bread and Wine.

Light songs we breathe that perish with our breath
    Out of our lips that have not kissed the rod.
They shall not live who have not tasted death.
    They only sing who are struck dumb by God.

That is work of waste and ruin
Do as Charles and I are doing!
Strawberry-blossoms, one and all,
We must spare them here are many:
Look at it the flower is small,
Small and low, though fair as any:
Do not touch it! summers two
I am older, Anne, than you.

Pull the primrose, sister Anne!
Pull as many as you can.
Here are daisies, take your fill;
Pansies, and the cuckoo-flower:
Of the lofty daffodil
Make your bed, or make your bower;
Fill your lap, and fill your bosom;
Only spare the strawberry-blossom!

Primroses, the Spring may love them
Summer knows but little of them:
Violets, a barren kind,
Withered on the ground must lie;
Daisies leave no fruit behind
When the pretty flowerets die;
Pluck them, and another year
As...

When the summer fields are mown,
When the birds are fledged and flown,
    And the dry leaves strew the path;
With the falling of the snow,
With the cawing of the crow,
Once again the fields we mow
    And gather in the aftermath.

Not the sweet, new grass with flowers
Is this harvesting of ours;
    Not the upland clover bloom;
But the rowen mired with weeds,
Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,
Where the poppy drops its seeds
    In the silence and the gloom.

I.
Of the million or two, more or less,
I rule and possess,
One man, for some cause undefined,
Was least to my mind.

II.
I struck him, he grovelled of course,
For, what was his force?
I pinned him to earth with my weight
And persistence of hate:
And he lay, would not moan, would not curse,
As his lot might be worse.

III.
“Were the object less mean, would he stand
At the swing of my hand!
For obscurity helps him and blots
The hole where he squats.”
So, I set my five wits on the stretch
To inveigle the wretch.
All in vain! Gold and jewels I threw,
Still he couched there perdue;
I tempted his blood and his flesh,
Hid in roses my mesh,
Choicest cates and the flagon’s best spilth,
Still he kept to his filth.
...

O poet, come you haunting here
Where streets have stolen up all around,
And never a nightingale pours one
Full-throated sound?

Drawn from your drowse by the Seven famed Hills,
Thought you to find all just the same
Here shining, as in hours of old,
If you but came?

What will you do in your surprise
At seeing that changes wrought in Rome
Are wrought yet more on the misty slope
One time your home?

Will you wake wind-wafts on these stairs?
Swing the doors open noisily?
Show as an umbraged ghost beside
Your ancient tree?

Or will you, softening, the while
You further and yet further look,
Learn that a laggard few would fain
Preserve your nook? . . .

Where the Piazza steps incline,
And catch late light at eventid...

    How cold is that bosom which folly once fired,
        How pale is that cheek where the rouge lately glisten'd!
    How silent that tongue which the echoes oft tired,
        How dull is that ear which to flattery so listen'd!

    If sorrow and anguish their exit await,
        From friendship and dearest affection remov'd;
    How doubly severer, Maria, thy fate,
        Thou diest unwept as thou livedst unlov'd.

    Loves, Graces, and Virtues, I call not on you;
        So shy, grave, and distant, ye shed not a tear:
    But come, all ye offspring of Folly so true,
        And flowers let us cull for Maria's cold bier.

    We'll search through the garden for each silly flower,
        We'll roam through the forest for each idle weed;
    But chie...

Last night, when at parting
    Awhile we did stand,
Suddenly starting,
    There fell on my hand

Something that burned it,
    Something that shone
In the moon as I turned it,
    And then it was gone.

One bright stray jewel--
    What made it stray?
Was I cold or cruel,
    At the close of day?

Oh, do not cry, lass!
    What is crying worth?
There is no lass like my lass
    In the whole wide earth.

    Oh, be not led away.
Lured by the colour of the sun-rich day.
    The gay romances of song
Unto the spirit-life doth not belong.
    Though far-between the hours
In which the Master of Angelic Powers
    Lightens the dusk within
The Holy of Holies;    be it thine to win
    Rare vistas of white light,
Half-parted lips, through which the Infinite
    Murmurs her ancient story;
Hearkening to whom the wandering planets hoary
    Waken primeval fires,
With deeper rapture in celestial choirs
    Breathe, and with fleeter motion
Wheel in their orbits through the surgeless ocean.
    So, hearken thou like these,
Intent on her, mounting by slow degrees,
    Until thy song's elation
Echoes her multitudinous meditation.

--November 15, 1893

I idly cut a parsley stalk,
And blew therein towards the moon;
I had not thought what ghosts would walk
With shivering footsteps to my tune.

I went, and knelt, and scooped my hand
As if to drink, into the brook,
And a faint figure seemed to stand
Above me, with the bygone look.

I lipped rough rhymes of chance, not choice,
I thought not what my words might be;
There came into my ear a voice
That turned a tenderer verse for me.