Bayard Taylor

"If she but smile, the crystal calm shall break In music, sweeter than it ever gave, As when a breeze breathes o'er some sleeping lake, And laughs in every wave."

"Knowledge alone is the being of Nature, Giving a soul to her manifold features, Lighting through paths of the primitive darkness, The footsteps of Truth and the vision of Song."

"From the Desert I come to thee On a stallion shod with fire; And the winds are left behind In the speed of my desire. Under thy window I stand, And the midnight hears my cry: I love thee, I love but thee, With a love that shall not die Till the sun grows cold, And the stars are old, And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!"

"They sang of love, and not of fame; Forgot was Britain's glory; Each heart recalled a different name, But all sang Annie Lawrie."

"Sleep, soldiers! still in honored rest Your truth and valor wearing: The bravest are the tenderest,— The loving are the daring."

"Peace the offspring is of Power."

"The hollows are heavy and dank With the steam of the Goldenrods."

"All, wherein I have part, All that was loss or gain, Slips from the clasping heart, Breaks from the grasping brain. Lo, what is left? I am bare As a new-born soul, — I am naught: My deeds are dust in air, My words are ghosts of thought. I ride through the night alone, Detached from the life that seemed, And the best I have felt or known Is less than the least I dreamed."

"Once let the Angel blow! — A peal from the parted heaven, The first of seven! For the time is come that was foretold So long ago! As the avalanche gathers, huge and cold, From the down of the harmless snow, The years and the ages gather and hang Till the day when the word is spoken: When they that dwell in the end of time Are smitten alike for the early crime, As the vials of wrath are broken!"

"Yes, let the Angel blow! A peal from the parted heaven, The first of seven!— The warning, not yet the sign, of woe! That men arise And look about them with wakened eyes, Behold on their garments the dust and slime, Refrain, forbear, Accept the weight of a nobler care And take reproach from the fallen time!"

"Thunder-spasms the waking be Into Life from Apathy: Life, not Death, is in the gale, — Let the coming Doom prevail!"

"No visitors shall yonder valley find. Except the spirits of the rain and wind: Here you must bide, my friends, with me entombed In this dim crypt, where shelved around us lie The mummied authors."