The tree hangs high over my friend and me. I am ten years old. The park is young and the fresh life of small trees sprouts from three rolling hills, which elongate beside a long deep green soccer field of thick untrimmed grass. The distant hiss of the highway mixes with the rustling of the brittle green beneath our small feet. We call it the V Tree because its trunk  [ Read More ]

All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all. Each little flower that opens, Each little bird that sings, He made their glowing colors, He made their tiny wings. The purple-headed mountain, The river running by, The sunset, and the morning, That brightens up the sky; The cold wind in the winter, The pleasant summer sun, The ripe  [ Read More ]

The sky is overcast With a continuous cloud of texture close, Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon, Which through that veil is indistinctly seen, A dull, contracted circle, yielding light So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls, Chequering the ground–from rock, plant, tree, or tower. At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam Startles the pensive traveller while he treads His lonesome path, with unobserving eye Bent earthwards; he  [ Read More ]

Lo! where the Moon along the sky Sails with her happy destiny; Oft is she hid from mortal eye Or dimly seen, But when the clouds asunder fly How bright her mien! Far different we–a froward race, Thousands though rich in Fortune’s grace With cherished sullenness of pace Their way pursue, Ingrates who wear a smileless face The whole year through. If kindred humours e’er would make My spirit droop  [ Read More ]

FANCY, who leads the pastimes of the glad, Full oft is pleased a wayward dart to throw; Sending sad shadows after things not sad, Peopling the harmless fields with signs of woe: Beneath her sway, a simple forest cry Becomes an echo of man’s misery. Blithe ravens croak of death; and when the owl Tries his two voices for a favourite strain– ‘Tu-whit–Tu-whoo!’ the unsuspecting fowl Forebodes mishap or seems  [ Read More ]

I marvel how Nature could ever find space For so many strange contrasts in one human face: There’s thought and no thought, and there’s paleness and bloom And bustle and sluggishness, pleasure and gloom. There’s weakness, and strength both redundant and vain; Such strength as, if ever affliction and pain Could pierce through a temper that’s soft to disease, Would be rational peace–a philosopher’s ease. There’s indifference, alike when he  [ Read More ]

Three years she grew in sun and shower, Then Nature said, “A lovelier flower On earth was never sown; This Child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A Lady of my own. “Myself will to my darling be Both law and impulse: and with me The Girl, in rock and plain In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing  [ Read More ]