Summer

And sleeps thy heart when flower and tree
Adorn the summer stillness?
And did young Spring pass over thee
In chillness?

Their scent delights and pleases,
On petalled breezes blown,
But in their beauty freezes
Thine own.

The flower awakes, the tree is leafed,
Yet love in thee is dumb,—
Flowers fall, fruits ripen, corn is sheafed,
Ho! Winter’s cold will come.

When wakens some November morn
Dew-soft, around thee brightly,
And blossoms on the grey hawthorn
Lie whitely,

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poem by Johannes Carl Andersen
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Soft, Low and Sweet

Soft, low and sweet, the blackbird wakes the day,
And clearer pipes, as rosier grows the gray
   Of the wide sky, far, far into whose deep
   The rath lark soars, and scatters down the steep
His runnel song, that skyey roundelay.

Earth with a sigh awakes; and tremors play,
   Coy in her leafy trees, and falt'ring creep
Across the daisy lawn and whisper, "Well-a-day,"
   Soft, low and sweet.

From violet-banks the scent-clouds float away
   And spread around their fragrance, as of sleep:
   From ev'ry mossy nook the blossoms peep;
From ev'ry blossom comes one little ray
That makes the world-wealth one with Spring, alway
   Soft, low and sweet.

poem by Johannes Carl Andersen
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Maui Victor

Unhewn in quarry lay the Parian stone,
   Ere hands, god-guided, of Praxiteles
Might shape the Cnidian Venus. Long ungrown
   The ivory was which, chiselled, robbed of ease
   Pygmalion, sculptor-lover. Now are these,
The stone and ivory, immortal made.
   The golden apples of Hesperides
Shall never, scattered, in blown dust be laid,
   Till Time, the dragon-guard, has lived his last decade.

The Cnidian Venus, Galatea's shape,
   A wondering world beheld, as we behold, --
Here, in blest isles beyond the stormy Cape,
   Where man the new land dowers with the old,
   Are neither marble shapes nor fruits of gold,
Nor white-limbed maidens, queened enchantress-wise;
   Here, Nature's beauties no vast ruins enfold,
No glamour fills her such as 'wildering lies
Where Mediterranean waters laugh to Grecian skies.

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poem by Johannes Carl Andersen
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