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Poems by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

Tuckerman, Frederick Goddard (1821-1873)

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PART I.
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PART II.
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Sonnets.
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PART 1.
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PART II.
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[I. That boy,”—the farmer said, with hazel wand]
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[II. Nor idle all, though naught he sees in thine]
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[III. Yes; though the brine may from the desert deep]
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[IV. But Grief finds solace faint in others' ills]
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[V. No shame dissuades his thought, no scorn despoils]
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[VI. No! cover not the fault. The wise revere]
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[VII. His heart was in his garden; but his brain]
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[VIII. Companions were we in the grove and glen]
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[IX. But unto him came swift calamity]
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[X. Thy baby, too, the child that was to be]
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[XI. Still pressing through these weeping solitudes]
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[XII. How most unworthy, echoing in mine ears]
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[XIII. Even as a lover, dreaming, unaware]
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[XIV. The breeze is sharp, the sky is hard and blue]
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[XV. Gertrude and Gulielma, sister-twins]
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[XVI. Under the mountain, as when first I knew]
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[XVII. Roll on, sad world! not Mercury or Mars]
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[XVIII. And Change, with hurried hand, has swept these scenes]
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[XIX. And faces, forms, and phantoms, numbered not]
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[XX. O hard endeavour, to blend in with these]
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[XXI. Last night I dreamed we parted once again]
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[XXII. Put off thy bark from shore, tho' near the night]
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[XXIII. Some truths may pierce the spirit's deeper gloom]
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[XXIV. Each common object, too,—the house, the grove]
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[XXV. Small gossip, whispering at the window-pane]
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[XXVI. Yet from indifference may we hope for peace]
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[XXVII. But the heart murmurs at so harsh a tone]
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[XXVIII. Yet sometimes, with the sad respectant mind]
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[XXIX. How oft in schoolboy-days, from the school's sway]
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[XXX Yet, even mid merry boyhood's tricks and scapes]
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[XXXI. My Anna ! when for thee my head was bowed]
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[XXXII. Oh for the face and footstep! woods and shores]
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[XXXIII. One still dark night, I sat alone and wrote]
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[XXXIV. My Anna! though thine earthly steps are done]
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[XXXV. Nor all of solemn is my thought of her]
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[XXXVI. Farewell! farewell, O noble heart! I dreamed]
  
[XXXVII. As Eponina brought, to move the king]

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205

[VII. His heart was in his garden; but his brain]

His heart was in his garden; but his brain
Wandered at will among the fiery stars:
Bards, heroes, prophets, Homers, Hamilcars,
With many angels, stood, his eye to gain;
The devils, too, were his familiars.
And yet the cunning florist held his eyes
Close to the ground,—a tulip-bulb his prize,—
And talked of tan and bone-dust, cutworms, grubs,
As though all Nature held no higher strain;
Or, if he spoke of Art, he made the theme
Flow through box-borders, turf, and flower-tubs;
Or, like a garden-engine's, steered the stream,—
Now spouted rainbows to the silent skies;
Now kept it flat, and raked the walks and shrubs.
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