There is a place I search for still,
Sequestered as the world of dreams,
A bushy hollow, and a hill
...
Some drink to Friendship, some to Love,
Through whom the world is fair, perdie!
But I to one these others prove,
Who leaps 'mid lions for a glove,
Or dies to set another free
I drink to Loyalty.
...
April calling, April calling,
April calling me!
I hear the voice of April there
In each old apple tree:
Bee-boom and wild perfume,
...
Wild ridge on ridge the wooded hills arise,
Between whose breezy vistas gulfs of skies
Pilot great clouds like towering argosies,
...
Dark, drear, and drizzly, with vapor grizzly,
The day goes dully unto its close;
Its wet robe smutches each thing it touches,
Its fingers sully and wreck the rose.
...
Over the hills, as the pewee flies,
Under the blue of the Southern skies;
Over the hills, where the red-bird wings
Like a scarlet blossom, or sits and sings:
...
So Love is dead, the Love we knew of old!
And in the sorrow of our hearts' hushed halls
A lute lies broken and a flower falls;
...
And these are Christians! God! the horror of it!
How long, O Lord! how long, O Lord! how long
Wilt Thou endure this crime? and there, above it,
Look down on Earth nor sweep away the wrong!
...
Bird, with the voice of gold,
Dropping wild bar on bar,
To which the flowers unfold,
Star upon gleaming star,
Here in the forest old:
...