John Jay Chapman Poems

THE dreamy earth is flooded o'er
With warm and hazy light,
September's latest boon, before
She feels the hoar frost in the night;
...

O GOD when the heart is warmest,
And the head is clearest,
Give me to act:
To turn the purposes thou formest
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WHEN from a mighty storm far out at sea
Roll in the glassy and gigantic waves,—
Wreck-laden Tritons, bearing in their arms
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THE evening wore on with the Judge in the chair
While song after song sought the rafter;
We crowned him with holly to match his white hair
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THROW open the shutters, it's seven o'clock!
And impertinent crows take their flight at the shock;
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PAST happiness dissolves. It fades away,
Ghost-like, in that dim attic of the mind
To which the dreams of childhood are consigned.
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THE dim and wintry river lies
Torpid and ice-bound, like a giant snake;
And, shouldering round his course, the mountains rise,
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THE poets have made Autumn sorrowful;
I find her joyous, radiant, serene.
Her pomp is hung in a deep azure sky
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BATHED in a dying light
The far out-stretching valley lies
Beneath the mingling veils of day and night;
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HAPPY the man who with steadfast devotion
Walks through the turmoil where passions are rife,
Feeding one flame of enduring emotion,
...