Albert Pike Poems

I.
Hear, blue-eyed Pallas! Eagerly we call,
Entreating thee to our glad festival,
Held in the sunny morning of the year,
On this our rosy isle, to thee most dear.
...

'Should auld acquentance be forgot,
'And never brought to min'?
'Should auld acquentance be forgot,
'And Auld Lang Syne?
...

O, thou delicious Spring!
Nursed in the lap of thin and subtle showers,
Raining from clouds exhaled from dews that cling
To odorous beds of rare and fragrant flowers,
And honeysuckle bowers,
That over grassy walks their tendrils fling:
Come, gentle spring!
...

Our shallop, long with tempest tried,
Floats calmly down life's tranquil tide;
Blue skies are laughing overhead,
The river sparkles in its bed;
The sunbeams from the waters glancing,
...

One day last Spring,—one sunny afternoon,—
Lapt in contented indolence, I lay
Within a pillared circle of old trees;
Deep-bedded in the smooth luxurious sward,
...

I.
I had a dream: Methought Ariel came,
And bade me follow him; and I arose:
Lighter my body seemed than subtle flame,
Or than the invisible wind that always blows
Above the clouds. So upward I did aim,
With quick flight, as the sky-lark sunward goes,—
Led by the splendour of Ariel's wing,
Whose snowy light before fled, glittering.
...

The young leaf lives in Spring its little hour,
And falleth from the limb—who knoweth why?
The fair young bud blooms not into a flower,
But sickening droops and hasteneth to die.
Who knoweth why?
Our Father knows, from whom the bud and leaf
Received their life, so beautiful and brief.
...

Oh, who with the sous of the plains can compete,
When from west, south and north like the torrents they meet!
And when doth the face of the white trader blanch,
Except wheu at moonrise he hears the Comanche!
...

Who rideth as fleet as a fleet Nabajo?
Whose arm is so strong with the lance and the bow?
His arrow in battle as lightning is swift;
His march is the course of the mountainous drift
...

These lines are to thee; and they come from a heart,
Which hath never to thee spoken aught but the truth,
And which fain would, ere life from its fountains depart,
Speak to thee of the sorrows which clouded its youth.
...