Thomas Bailey Aldrich
First Lines
A certain bird in a certain wood,
A glance, a word -- and joy or pain
A little mound with chipped headstone,
A poor dwarf's figure, looming through the dense
Black tragedy lets slip her grim disguise
Bonnet in hand, obsequious and discreet,
Day is a snow-white Dove of heaven
Faint murmurs from the pine-tops reach my ear,
Fixed to her necklace, like another gem,
Great thoughts in crude, inadequate verse set forth,
Herewith I send you three pressed withered flowers:
Honest Iago." When his breath was fled
I gave my heart its freedom to be gay
I little read those poets who have made
If my best wines mislike thy taste,
Imp of Dreams, when she's asleep,
In youth my hair was black as night,
Let art be all in all," one time I said,
Manoah's son, in his blind rage malign,
No slightest golden rhyme he wrote
No wonder Sajib wrote such verses, when
October turned my maple's leaves to gold;
Or light or dark, or short or tall,
See where at intervals the firefly's spark
So closely knit are mind and brain,
Such kings of shreds have wooed and won her,
The big-lipped Sphinx, with bent perplexed brow,
The face that Carlo Dolci drew
The fault's not mine, you understand:
This one sits shivering in Fortune's smile,
To him that hath, we are told,
Touched with the delicate green of early May,
Up from the dark the moon begins to creep;
We often fail by searching far and wide
When friends are at your hearthside met,
When from the tense chords of that mighty lyre
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