The lily-bells ring underground,
Their music small I hear
When globes of dew that shine pearl round
Hang in the cowslip's ear
And all the summer blooms and sprays
Are sheathed from the sun,
And yet I feel in many ways
Their living pulses run.

The crowning rose of summer time
Lies folded on its stem,
Its bright urn holds no honey-wine,
Its brow no diadem,
And yet my soul is inly thrilled,
As if I stood anear
Some legal presence unrevealed,
The queen of all the year.

Oh Rose, dear Rose! the mist and dew
Uprising from the lake,
And sunshine glancing warmly through,
Have kissed the flowers awake—
The orchard blooms are dropping balm,
The tulip's gorgeous cup
More slender than a desert palm
It's chalice lifteth up.

The birds are mated in the trees,
The wan stars burn and pale—
Oh Rose, come forth!—upon the breeze
I hear the nightingale
Unfold the crimson waves that lie
In darkness rosy dim,
And swing thy fragrant censer high,
Oh royal Rose for him!

The hyacinths are in the fields
With purple splendours pale
Their sweet bells ring responsive peals
To every passing gale
And violets bending in the grass
Do hide their glowing eyes,
When those enchanting voices pass,
Like airs from Paradise.

We crowned our blushing Queen of May
Long since, with dance and tune,
But the merry world of yesterday
Is lapsing into June—
Thou art not here,—we look in vain—
Oh Rose arise, appear!—
Resume thine emerald throne, and reign
The queen of all the year!

THE PLOUGHBOY.

I wonder what he is thinking
In the ploughing field all day.
He watches the heads of his oxen,
And never looks this way.

And the furrows grow longer and longer,
Around the base of the hill,
And the valley is bright with the sunset,
Yet he ploughs and whistles still.

I am tired of counting the ridges,
Where the oxen come and go,
And of thinking of all the blossoms
That are trampled down below.

I wonder if ever he guesses
That under the ragged brim
Of his torn straw hat I am peeping
To steal a look at him.

The spire of the church and the windows
Are all ablaze in the sun.
He has left the plough in the furrow,
His summer day's work is done.

And I hear him carolling softly
A sweet and simple lay,
That we often have sung together,
While he turns the oxen away.

The buttercups in the pasture
Twinkle and gleam like stars.
He has gathered a golden handful,
A leaning over the bars.

He has shaken the curls from his forehead,
And is looking up this way,—
O where is my sun-bonnet, mother?
He was thinking of me all day,—

And I'm going down to the meadow,
For I know he is waiting there,
To wreathe the sunshiny blossoms
In the curls of my yellow hair.

THE VOICE OF MANY WATERS.

Oh Sea, that with infinite sadness, and infinite yearning
Liftest thy crystal forehead toward the unpitying stars,—
Evermore ebbing and flowing, and evermore returning
Over thy fathomless depths, and treacherous island bars:—

Oh thou complaining sea, that fillest the wide void spaces
Of the blue nebulous air with thy perpetual moan,
Day and night, day and night, out of thy desolate places—
Tell me thy terrible secret, oh Sea! what hast thou done.

Sometimes in the merry mornings, with the sunshine's golden wonder
Glancing along thy cheek, unwrinkled of any wind,
Thou seemest to be at peace, stifling thy great heart under
A face of absolute calm,—with danger and death behind!

But I hear thy voice at midnight, smiting the awful silence
With the long suspiration of thy pain suppressed;
And all the blue lagoons, and all the listening islands
Shuddering have heard, and locked thy secret in their breast!

Oh Sea! thou art like my heart, full of infinite sadness and pity,—
Of endless doubt and endeavour, of sorrowful question and strife,
Like some unlighted fortress within a beleagured city,
Holding within and hiding the mystery of life.

THE DEATH OF AUTUMN.

Discrowned and desolate,
And wandering with dim eyes and faded hair,
Singing sad songs to comfort her despair,
Grey Autumn meets her fate.

Forsaken and alone
She haunts the ruins of her queenly state,
Like banished Eve at Eden's flaming gate,
Making perpetual moan.

Crazed with her grief she moves
Along the banks of the frost-charmed rills,
And all the hollows of the wooded hills,
Searching for her lost loves.

From verdurous base to cope,
The sunny hill-sides, and sweet pasture lands,
Where bubbling brooks reach ever-dimpled hands
Along the amber slope,—

And valleys drowsed between,
In the rich purple of the vintage time,
When cups of gold that drop with fragrant wine,
From orchard branches lean;—

And far beyond them, spread
Broad fields thick set with sheaves of yellow wheat,
Where scarlet poppies, slumberously sweet,
Glow with a dusky red—

To the remotest zone
Of hazy woodland pencilled on the sky,
On whose far spires the clouds of sunset lie,—
She held her regal throne!

Queen of a princely race,
Whose ministers were all the elements;
Sunshine, and rain, and dew she did dispense
With a right royal grace.

Now, not a breath of air,
Nor sunbeam, nor the voice of beast or bird,
Stirring the lonely woods, hath any word
To comfort her despair.

Insidious, day by day
A smouldering flame, a lurid crimson creeps
Into the ashy whiteness of her cheeks,
And burns her life away.

The cavernous woods are dumb!
Through their oracular depths and secret nooks,
To the mute supplication of her looks
No mystic voices come

And through the still grey air
The night comes down, and hangs her lamp on high,
Like a wan lily blossomed on the sky,
Shining so ghostly fair,

Or looming up the heights,
Those awful spectres of the frozen zone
Splinter the crystal of heaven's sapphire dome,
With arrowy-glancing lights.

The while hoarse night winds rave,
The old year looking backward to his prime
With dim fond eyes, down the last steps of time
Goes maundering to his grave!

A FAREWELL

Down the steep west unrolled,
I watch the river of the sunset flow,
With all its crimson lights, and gleaming gold,
Into the dusk below.

And even as I gaze,
The soft lights fade,-the pageant gay is o'er,
And all is grey and dark, like those lost days,
The days that are no more.

No more through whispering pines,
I shall behold, in the else silent even,
The first faint star-watch set along the lines
Of the white tents of heaven.

Before the earliest buds
Have softly opened, heralding the May
With tender light illuming the gray woods,
I shall be gone away.

Ah! wood-walks winding sweet
Through all the valleys sloping to the west,
Where glad brooks wander with melodious feet,
In musical unrest,—

Ye will not miss me here
With all the bright things of the coming May,
And the rejoicing of the awakened year,—
I shall be far away.

Yet in your loneliest nooks,
I know where all the greenest mosses grow,
And where the violets lift their first sweet looks,
Out of the waning snow.

And I have heard, unsought,
Under the musing shadows of the beech,
Wood-voices answering my unspoken thought,
In half-articulate speech.

And oh! ye shadowy bands,
Rank above rank along yon rocky height,
That lift into the heavens your mailed hands,
And linked armour bright.

What other eyes will trace
From this dear window haunted with the past,
Strange likeness to some well beloved face,
Among your profiles vast?

What stranger hands will tend
The nameless treasures I must leave behind,—
My flowers, my birds, and each inanimate friend,
Linked closer than my kind.

These glorious landscapes old,
Framed in my cottage windows,—hill-sides dun,
With umber shadows lightened to pale gold
By touches of the sun,—

Valleys like emeralds set
Lonely and sweet in the dusk hills afar,
That half enclose them, like a carcanet
That holds a diamond star.

Will any gentler face,
Weary and sad sometimes, like mine grow bright
Touched with your simple beauty-in my place,
My garden of delight?—

I know not,—yet farewell
Sweet home of mine,—my parting song is o'er,
And stranger forms among your bowers shall dwell,
Where I return no more.