Poems, illustr. by B. Foster

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Page 1 - TWAS in the prime of summer time, An evening calm and cool, And four-and-twenty happy boys Came bounding out of school : There were some that ran and some that leapt, Like troutlets in a pool. Away they sped with gamesome minds, And souls untouched by sin; To a level mead they came, and there They drave the wickets in : Pleasantly shone the setting sun Over the town of Lynn. Like sportive deer they coursed about, And shouted as they ran, — Turning to mirth all things of earth, As only boyhood can...
Page 3 - The Usher took six hasty strides, As smit with sudden pain, — Six hasty strides beyond the place, Then slowly back again ; And down he sat beside the lad, And talked with him of Cain ; And, long since then, of bloody men, Whose deeds tradition saves ; Of lonely folk cut off unseen, And hid in sudden graves ; Of horrid stabs, in groves forlorn, And murders done in caves ; And how the sprites of injured men Shriek upward from the sod, — Aye, how the ghostly hand will point To show the burial clod...
Page 48 - O'er all there hung a shadow and a fear ; A sense of mystery the spirit daunted, And said, as plain as whisper in the ear, The place is Haunted!
Page 37 - A spade ! a rake ! a hoe ! A pickaxe, or a bill! A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow, A flail, or what ye will...
Page 8 - With breathless speed, like a soul in chase, I took him up and ran ; — There was no time to dig a grave Before the day began : In a lonesome wood, with heaps of leaves, I hid the murder'd man I " And all that day I read in school, But my thought was other-where.
Page 47 - All ruined, desolate, forlorn, and savage : No hand or foot within the precinct came To rectify or ravage. For over all there hung a cloud of fear, A sense of mystery the spirit daunted, And said, as plain as whisper in the ear, The place is haunted 1 PART II.
Page 41 - SOME dreams we have are nothing else but dreams, Unnatural, and full of contradictions ; Yet others of our most romantic schemes Are something more than fictions. It might be only on enchanted ground ; It might be merely by a thought's expansion ; But in the spirit, or the flesh, I found An old deserted Mansion.
Page 45 - The coot was swimming in the reedy pond, Beside the waterhen, so soon affrighted ; And in the weedy moat the heron, fond Of solitude, alighted. ' The moping heron, motionless and stiff, That on a stone, as silently and stilly Stood, an apparent sentinel, as if To guard the water lily.
Page 9 - Then down I cast me on my face, And first began to weep, For I knew my secret then was one That earth refused to keep: Or land or sea, though he should be Ten thousand fathoms deep. "So wills the fierce avenging Sprite, Till blood for blood atones! Ay, though he's buried in a cave, And trodden down with stones, And years have rotted off his flesh,— The world shall see his bones!
Page 28 - The Aspens — one and all, With solemn groan And hollow moan Lament a comrade's fall ! A goodly Elm, of noble girth, That, thrice the human span — While on their variegated course The constant Seasons ran — Through gale, and hail, and fiery bolt, Had stood erect as Man.

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