John Jay Chapman

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
...

WHEN from a mighty storm far out at sea
Roll in the glassy and gigantic waves,—
Wreck-laden Tritons, bearing in their arms
...

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
...

THROW open the shutters, it's seven o'clock!
And impertinent crows take their flight at the shock;
...

PAST happiness dissolves. It fades away,
Ghost-like, in that dim attic of the mind
To which the dreams of childhood are consigned.
...

THE dim and wintry river lies
Torpid and ice-bound, like a giant snake;
And, shouldering round his course, the mountains rise,
...

THE poets have made Autumn sorrowful;
I find her joyous, radiant, serene.
Her pomp is hung in a deep azure sky
...

BATHED in a dying light
The far out-stretching valley lies
Beneath the mingling veils of day and night;
...

HAPPY the man who with steadfast devotion
Walks through the turmoil where passions are rife,
Feeding one flame of enduring emotion,
...

ALL is one issue, every skirmish tells,
And war is but the picture in the story;
The plot's below: from time to time upwells
...

YE caverns, and ye rills
That from the beetling hills
Down every rocky wall
Glide, gleam, and fall;
...

THE hills of Camden mile on mile
Fling their green mantle o'er the bay;
The dark waves dance about the isle
Where we have nested many a day.
...

ALAS, too much we loved the glittering wares
That art and education had devised
To charm the leisure of philosophers;
...

MY heart was emptied like a mountain pool
That sinks in earthquake to some pit below,
As thou did'st leave me. All my waters cool
...

I SEE—within my spirit—mystic walls,
And slender windows casting hallowed light
Along dim aisles where many a shadow falls
...

SILENCE: the sunset gilds the frozen ground,
But here within all's curtained; stands are set
In the wide salon where gilt chairs abound,
...

BEHOLD, the harvest is at hand;
And thick on the encircling hills
The sheaves like an encampment stand,
Making a martial fairy-land
...

I SEE them hasting toward the light
Where war's dim watchfires glow;
The stars that burn in Europe's night
Conduct them to the foe.
...

SORROW, that watches while the body sleeps,
Parted the curtains of the cruel dawn
And glided noiselessly to her sad seat
...