C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

R. W. Gilder

From all the misty morning air, there comes a summer sound,

A murmur as of waters from skies, and trees, and ground.

The birds they sing upon the wing, the pigeons bill and coo.

I am a woman—therefore I may not

Call to him, cry to him,

Fly to him,

Bid him delay not!

In the embers shining bright

A garden grows for thy delight,

With roses yellow, red, and white.

But, O my child, beware, beware!

Touch not the roses growing there,

For every rose a thorn doth bear.

None who e’er knew her can believe her dead;

Though, should she die, they deem it well might be

Her spirit took its everlasting flight

In summer’s glory, by the sunset sea,

That onward through the Golden Gate is fled.

Ah, where that bright soul is cannot be night.

Now you who rhyme, and I who rhyme,

Have not we sworn it, many a time,

That we no more our verse would scrawl,

For Shakespeare he had said it all!

Oh, father’s gone to market-town, he was up before the day,

And Jamie’s after robins, and the man is making hay,

And whistling down the hollow goes the boy that minds the mill,

While mother from the kitchen door is calling with a will,

“Polly!—Polly!—The cows are in the corn! Oh, where’s Polly?”

The smile of her I love is like the dawn

Whose touch makes Memnon sing:

O see where wide the golden sunlight flows—

The barren desert blossoms as the rose!

What babe new born is this that in a manger cries?

Near on her lowly bed his happy mother lies.

Oh, see the air is shaken with white and heavenly wings—

This is the Lord of all the earth, this is the King of Kings.

What is a Sonnet? ’Tis the pearly shell

That murmurs of the far-off, murmuring sea;

A precious jewel carved most curiously;

It is a little picture painted well.

What is a Sonnet? ’Tis the tear that fell

From a great poet’s hidden ecstacy;

A two-edged sword, a star, a song—ah me!

Sometimes a heavy tolling funeral bell.

Ye living soldiers of the mighty war,

Once more from roaring cannon and the drums

And bugles blown at morn, the summons comes;

Forget the halting limb, each wound and scar:

Once more your Captain calls to you;

Come to his last review!

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