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What plant we in this apple tree?
Sweets for a hundred flowery springs
To load the May-wind's restless wings,
When, from the orchard-row, he pours
Its fragrance through our open doors;
A world of blossoms for the bee,
Flowers for the sick girl's silent room,
For the glad infant sprigs of bloom,
We plant with the apple tree.
Topic: Apples
Source: The Planting of the Apple Tree
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When April winds
Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush
Of scarlet flowers. The tulip tree, high up,
Opened in airs of June her multiple
OF golden chalices to humming birds
And silken-wing'd insects of the sky.
Topic: April
Source: The Fountain
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The melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.
Topic: Autumn
Source: The Death of the Flowers (l. 221)
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Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson,
Yet our full-leaved willows are in the freshest green.
Such a kindly autumn, so mercifully dealing
With the growths of summer, I never yet have seen.
Topic: Autumn
Source: Third of November
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Modest and shy as a nun is she;
One weak chirp is her only note;
Braggarts and prince of braggarts is he,
Pouring boasts from his little throat.
Topic: Bobolinks
Source: Robert of Lincoln
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Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest,
Wearing a bright black wedding-coat;
White are his shoulders and white his crest.
Topic: Bobolinks
Source: Robert of Lincoln
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Weep not that the world changes--did it keep
A stable, changeless state, it were cause indeed to weep.
Topic: Change
Source: Mutation
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Weep not that the world changes -- did it keep a stable, changeless state, it were a cause indeed to weep.
Topic: Change
Source: None
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No trumpet-blast profound
The hour in which the Prince of Peace was born;
No bloody streamlet stained
Earth's silver rivers on the sacred morn.
Topic: Christmas
Source: Christmas in 1875
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The daffodil is our doorside queen;
She pushes upward the sword already,
To spot with sunshine the early green.
Topic: Daffodils
Source: An Invitation to the Country
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Wild was the day; the wintry sea
Moaned sadly on New England's strand,
When first the thoughtful and the free,
Our fathers, trod the desert land.
Topic: December
Source: The Twenty-second of December
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Thine eyes are springs in whose serene
And silent waters heaven is seen.
Their lashes are the herbs that look
On their young figures in the brook.
Topic: Eyes
Source: Oh, Fairest of the Rural Maids
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The February sunshine steeps your boughs
And tints the buds and swells the leaves within.
Topic: February
Source: Among the Trees (l. 53)
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Come when the rains
Have glazed the snow and clothed the trees with ice,
While the slant sun of February pours
Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach!
The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps
And the broad arching portals of the grove
Welcome thy entering.
Topic: February
Source: A Winter Piece (l. 60)
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Where fall the tears of love the rose appears,
And where the ground is bright with friendship's tears,
Forget-me-not, and violets, heavenly blue,
Spring glittering with the cheerful drops like dew.
Topic: Flowers
Source: trans. of N. Muller's "Paradise of Tears"
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The windflower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;
But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the first from the clear cold heaven, as falls the
plague on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland glade and
glen.
Topic: Flowers
Source: Death of the Flowers
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Here the free spirit of mankind, at length,
Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place
A limit to the giant's unchained strength,
Or curb his swiftness in the forward race?
Topic: Freedom
Source: The Ages (XXXIII)
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And the blue gentian-flower, that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.
Topic: Gentians
Source: November
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Thou blossom! bright with autumn dew,
And colour's with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.
Topic: Gentians
Source: To the Fringed Gentian
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I gazed upon the glorious sky
And the green mountains round,
And thought that when I came to lie
At rest within the ground,
'Twere pleasant, that in flowery June
When brooks send up a cheerful tune,
And groves a joyous sound,
The sexton's hand, my grave to make,
The rich, green mountain-turf should break.
Topic: Grave
Source: June
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The rugged trees are mingling
Their flowery sprays in love;
The ivy climbs the laurel
To clasp the boughs above.
Topic: Ivy
Source: The Serenade
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And at my silent window-sill
The jessamine peeps in.
Topic: Jasmines
Source: The Hunter's Serenade
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The linden, in the fervors of July,
Hums with a louder concert. When the wind
Sweeps the broad forest in its summer prime,
As when some master-hand exulting sweeps
The keys of some great organ, ye give forth
The music of the woodland depths, a hymn
Of gladness and of thanks.
Topic: July
Source: Among the Trees (l. 62)
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I gazed upon the glorious sky
And the green mountains round,
And thought that when I came to lie
At rest within the ground,
'Twere pleasant, that in flowery June
When brooks send up a cheerful tune,
And groves a joyous sound,
The sexton's hand, my grave to make,
The rich, green mountain-turf should break.
Topic: June
Source: June
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The linden, in the fervors of July,
Hums with a louder concert. When the wind
Sweeps the broad forest in its summer prime,
As when some master-hand exulting sweeps
The keys of some great organ, ye give forth
The music of the woodland depths, a hymn
Of gladness and of thanks.
Topic: Linden
Source: Among the Trees (l. 62)
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The moon is at her full, and riding high,
Floods the calm fields with light.
The airs that hover in the summer sky
Are all asleep to-night.
Topic: Moon
Source: The Tides
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Fair insect! that, with threadlike legs spread out,
And blood-extracting bill and filmy wing,
Dost murmur, as thou slowly sail'st about,
In pitiless ears full many a plaintive thing,
And tell how little our large veins would bleed,
Would we but yield them to thy bitter need.
Topic: Mosquitoes
Source: To a Mosquito
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Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings.
Topic: Nature
Source: Thanatopsis
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To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language.
Topic: Nature
Source: Thanatopsis
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The groves were God's first temples.
Topic: Nature
Source: None
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That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man.
Topic: Ocean
Source: Thanatopsis (l. 43)
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And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief,
And the year smiles as it draws near its death.
Topic: October
Source: October
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Pain dies quickly, and lets her weary prisoners go; the fiercest agonies have shortest reign.
Topic: Pain
Source: None
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Thou unrelenting past.
Topic: Past
Source: To the Past
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The fiercest agonies have shortest reign;
And after dreams of horror, comes again
The welcome morning with its rays of peace.
Topic: Peace
Source: Mutation (l. 4)
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Loveliest of lovely things are they
On earth that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
Topic: Roses
Source: A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson
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A sculptor wields
The chisel, and the stricken marble grows
To beauty.
Topic: Sculpture
Source: The Flood of Years
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Vainly the fowler's eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.
Topic: Sea Birds
Source: To a Water Fowl
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The sad and solemn night
Hath yet her multitude of cheerful fires;
The glorious host of light
Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires;
All through her silent watches, gliding slow,
Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go.
Topic: Stars
Source: Hymn to the North Star
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Pleasantly, between the pelting showers, the sunshine gushes
down.
Topic: Sun
Source: The Cloud on the Way (l. 18)
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The groves were God's first temple. Ere man learned
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them,--ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication.
Topic: Trees
Source: A Forest Hymn
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Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs
No school of long experience, that the world
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes and cares,
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood
And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm
To thy sick heart.
Topic: Trees
Source: Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood
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The shad-bush, white with flowers,
Brightened the glens; the new leaved butternut
And quivering poplar to the roving breeze
Gave a balsamic fragrance.
Topic: Trees
Source: The Old Man's Counsel (l. 28)
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Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger.
Topic: Truth
Source: None
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Where hast thou wandered. gentle gale, to find
The perfumes thou dost bring?
Topic: Wind
Source: May Evening (st. 2)
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Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay
In the gay woods and in the golden air,
Like to a good old age released from care,
Journeying, in long serenity, away.
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I
Might wear out life like thee, mid bowers and brooks,
And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,
And music of kind voices ever nigh;
And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men as thou dost pass.
Topic: Wind
Source: October (l. 5)
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A breeze came wandering from the sky,
Light as the whispers of a dream;
He put the o'erhanging grasses by,
And softly stooped to kiss the stream,
The pretty stream, the flattered stream,
The shy, yet unreluctant stream.
Topic: Wind
Source: The Wind and Stream
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Look! the massy trunks
Are cased in the pure crystal; each light spray,
Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven,
Is studded with its trembling water-drops,
That glimmer with an amethystine light.
Topic: Winter
Source: A Winter Piece (l. 66)
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Woo the fair one when around
Early birds are singing;
When o'er all the fragrant ground
Early herbs are springing:
When the brookside, bank, and grove
All with blossom laden,
Shine with beauty, breathe of love,
Woo the timid maiden.
Topic: Wooing
Source: Love's Lessons
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Alas! to seize the moment
When the heart inclines to heart,
And press a suit with passion,
Is not a woman's part.
If man come not to gather
The roses where they stand,
They fade among their foliage,
They cannot seek his hand.
Topic: Wooing
Source: Song, translated from the Spanish of Iglesias
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