| C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917. | | | | T. B. Aldrich |
| | | | A mighty wind, like a leviathan, |
| Ploughed through the brine, and from these solitudes |
| Sent Silence frightened. |
| 1 |
| | All the panes are hung with frost |
| Wild wizard-work of silver lace. |
| 2 |
| | Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows |
| In yonder West: the fair, frail palaces, |
| The fading Alps and archipelagoes, |
| And great cloud-continents of sunset-seas. |
| 3 |
| | Day is a snow-white Dove of heaven |
| That from the East glad message brings: |
| Night is a stealthy, evil Raven, |
| Wrapt to the eyes in his black wings. |
| 4 |
| | For the poplars showed |
| The white of their leaves, the amber grain |
| Shrunk in the wind—and the lightning now |
| Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain. |
| 5 |
| | In her eyes a thought |
| Grew sweeter and sweeter, deepening like the dawn,— |
| A mystical forewarning. |
| 6 |
| | October turned my maple’s leaves to gold; |
| The most are gone now; here and there one lingers; |
| Soon these will slip from out the twig’s weak hold, |
| Like coins between a dying miser’s fingers. |
| 7 |
| | The air is full of hints of grief, |
| Strange voices touched with pain— |
| The pathos of the falling leaf |
| And rustling of the rain. |
| 8 |
| | The Summer comes and the Summer goes; |
| Wild-flowers are fringing the dusty lanes, |
| The shallows go darting through fragrant rains, |
| Then, all of a sudden—it snows. |
| 9 |
| | The unchecked thought |
| Wanders at will upon enchanted ground, |
| Making no sound |
| In all the corridors * * * |
| The bell sleeps in the belfry—from its tongue |
| A drowsy murmur floats into the air, |
| Like thistle-down. Slumber is everywhere. |
| The rook’s asleep, and, in its dreaming, caws; |
| And silence mopes where nightingales have sung; |
| The Sirens lie in grottos cool and deep, |
| The Naiads in the streams. |
| 10 |
| | The poplars showed |
| The white of their leaves, the amber grain |
| Shrunk in the wind,—and the lightning now |
| Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain! |
| 11 |
| | There is a sadness in sweet sound |
| That quickens tears. |
| 12 |
| | These Winter nights against my window-pane |
| Nature with busy pencil draws designs |
| Of ferns and blossoms and fine spray of pines, |
| Oak-leaf and acorn and fantastic vines, |
| Which she will make when summer comes again— |
| Quaint arabesques in argent, flat and cold, |
| Like curious Chinese etchings. |
| 13 |
| | We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed |
| The white of their leaves, the amber grain |
| Shrunk in the wind,—and the lightning now |
| Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain. |
| 14 |
| | What is a day to an immortal soul! |
| A breath, no more. |
| 15 |
| | What probing deep |
| Has ever solved the mystery of sleep? |
| 16 |
| | What thought is folded in thy leaves! |
| What tender thought, what speechless pain! |
| I hold thy faded lips to mine, |
| Thou darling of the April rain. |
| 17 |
| | When I behold what pleasure is pursuit, |
| What life, what glorious eagerness it is, |
| Then mark how full possession falls from this, |
| How fairer seems the blossom than the fruit,— |
| I am perplext, and often stricken mute, |
| Wondering which attained the higher bliss, |
| The winged insect, or the chrysalis |
| It thrust aside with unreluctant foot. |
| 18 |
| | When to soft Sleep we give ourselves away, |
| And in a dream as in a fairy bark |
| Drift on and on through the enchanted dark |
| To purple daybreak—little thought we pay |
| To that sweet bitter world we know by day. |
| 19 | | |
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