John Bannister Tabb Poems

The wizard of the woods is he;
For in his daily round,
Where'er he finds a rotting tree,
He makes the timber sound.
...

Upon my soul,
O wicked mole,
I'll punish thy misdoing!
'O pardon me!-
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Blood-shotten through the bleak gigantic trees
The sunset, o'er a wilderness of snow,
Startles the wolfish winds that wilder grow
...

Full many a noonday nook I know
Where memory is fain to go
And wait in silence till the shade
Of sleep the solitude invade.
...

No need, O weary traveller,
To seek the ocean far;
For here, whene'er the coast is clear,
The schooners cross the bar.
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No mother minds so tenderly
Her babe, to mirror back its smiles,
As moves the never-resting sea
About a slumbering isle.
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Methinks, when first the nightingale
Was mated to thy deathless song,
That Sappho with emotion pale,
Amid the Olympian throng,
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Though from the waking world withdrawn,
Night's boundary to keep,
Thou floodest with a softer dawn
The hemisphere of Sleep.
...

When God had made a host of them,
One little flower still lacked a stem
To hold its blossom blue;
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I
Long, long before the Babe could speak,
When he would kiss his mother's cheek
And to her bosom press,
...