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"Hermione and other poems [electronic text]." In the digital collection American Verse Project. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/BAP5349.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 16, 2024.
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A CALIFORNIAN'S DREAMS
A THUNDER-STORM of the olden days!The red sun' sinks in a sleepy haze; The sultry twilight, close and still,Muffles the cricket's drowsy trill.Then a round-topped cloud rolls up the west,Black to its smouldering, ashy crest,And the chariot of the storm you hear,With its jarring axle rumbling near;Till the blue is hid, and here and thereThe sudden, blinding lightnings glare.Scattering now the big drops fall,Till the rushing rain in a silver wallBlurs the line of the bending elms,Then blots them out and the landscape whelms.A flash—a clap, and a rumbling peal:The broken clouds the blue reveal;
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The last bright drops fall far away,And the wind, that had slept for heat all day,With a long-drawn sigh awakes againAnd drinks the cool of the blessed rain.
November! night, and a sleety storm:Close are the ruddy curtains, warmAnd rich in the glow of the roaring grate.It may howl outside like a baffled fate,And rage on the roof, and lash the paneWith its fierce and impotent wrath in vain.Sitting within at our royal easeWe sing to the chime of the ivory keys,And feast our hearts from script and scoreWith the wealth of the mellow hearts of yore.
A winter's night on a world of snow!Not a sound above, not a stir below:The moon hangs white in the icy air,And the shadows are motionless everywhere.
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Is this the planet that we know—This silent floor of the ghostly snow?Or is this the moon, so still and dead,And yonder orb far overhead,With its silver map of plain and sea,Is that the earth where we used to be?Shall we float away in the frosty blueTo that living, summer world we knew,With its full, hot heart-beats as of old,Or be frozen phantoms of the cold?
A river of ice, all blue and glare,Under a star-shine dim and rare.The sheeny sheet in the sparkling lightIs ribbed with slender wisps of white—Crinkles of snow, that the flying steelLightly crunches with ringing heel.Swinging swift as the swallows skim,You round the shadowy river's rim:Falling somewhere out of the skyHollow and weird is the owlet's cry;The gloaming woods seem phantom hosts,And the bushes cower in the snow like ghosts.
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Till the tinkling feet that with you glideSkate closer and closer to your side,And something steals from a furry muff,And you clasp it and cannot wonder enoughThat a little palm so soft and fairCould keep so warm in the frosty air.
'T is thus we dream in our tranquil clime,Rooted still in the olden time;Longing for all those glooms and gleamsOf passionate Nature's mad extremes.Or was it only our hearts, that swelledWith the youth and life and love they held?
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