Lavender and Other Verse (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE OLD, OLD DAYS O golden-hearted, richly-hallowed days That loom through deepening mists on memory's shore, When boyhood fed from joy's unmeasured store As hope sang loud her sweetest roundelays! How romped we in the wood's far-opening ways When irksome studies for the time were o'er; How plied we games in their abounding lore, How felt as gods when victory led to praise! The Master's strenuous voice ceased long ago, While few of all that throng on earth can be, And these are burdened with the weight of years; Yet on that fruitful spot still others glow With youthful fire and sport the same as we, Undreamt the future's struggle and its tears. TO ANDREE'S PIGEON IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN. 80" 44' NORTH. 20 20' EAST. JULY 16, 1897. No voice but thine, O ill-requited bird, Has come to tell of mighty-souled Andree, Since that uniquely memorable day His polar voyaging the whole world stirred; And as on sheltering mast?thy flight deterred By cold and weariness?thy body lay, Wrapped in the dreams of home-cote far away, Man gave thee death for thy recorded word. Thy master sailed into the depths unknown Along the paths no human wing had beat, And fell with frozen plume, no more to rise; While he and thou, as Fame is proud to own, Have added, with transplendency complete, A new Aurora to the Arctic skies. Since the above was written news has come which indicates that Andree and his party were killed by natives. TO THE OX I see thee standing firmly as an oak, In contemplation of the field and sky, With resignation in thy plaintive eye, Though thy broad back has felt full many a stroke; And though thy mighty neck beneath the yoke, Day after day, that passed unvarying by, Has bowed and strained until the stars were nigh Since ...