SWEET EYES OF BLUE.

  Sweet eyes of blue!  The stars by night,
  That swoon the world with laughing light,
    And touch the hills with tender glow
    While all the vales are kissed below,
  Beside you would no more be bright.

  My worlds ye are, and while I throw
  My heart to catch the beams that flow
    From your fair shrine, my woes take flight,
      Sweet eyes of blue!

  Glad orbs of beauty!  In your sight
  My soul mounts up with secret might,
    Till Eden’s lovely bowers I know;
    And as through Heaven’s gates I go,
  The pleasures all my sorrow smite,
      Sweet eyes of blue!

HAD WE NOT MET.

  Had we not met, the brooding woe
  And all the griefs that greater grow,
    Might not have been, and happy-wise
    Our lives have laughed with lullabies
  And quaffed such joys as few may know.

  Our days beneath embittered skies
  Where anguish moans and sorrow cries,
    Might not have wept and wandered so,
      Had we not met!

  But ah, my darling!  All we prize,—­
  Love and sweet trust that never dies,
    Wild yearnings that with constant flow
    From kindred heart to bosom go,—­
  Would never in our souls had rise,
      Had we not met!

A SONNET.

  We gentler grow by sorrow; not the breast
    That never crouches in the nights of tears,
    That never bends beneath the loads of years,
  Has sympathies that are the kindliest. 
  There is a strength in agony that best
    Can link the careless heart with human fears,
    And teach it that fond kindness which endears
  The millions that with sadness are oppressed.

  Grief softens while it saddens; pleasure smites
    The timid soul with harshness, till it knows
    Small earnest of the great world’s grievous woes
  And little of its struggles; sorrow plights
  Her troth with sorrow, and in tears unites
    Man unto man and hatred overthrows.

OKLAHOMA,—­A SONNET.

  Here, through the ages old, the desert slept
    In solitudes unbroken, save when passed
  The bison herds, and savage hunters swept
    In thund’ring chaos down the valleys vast;
  But, lo!  Across the barren margins stepped
    Advancement with her legions, and one blast
    From her imperial trumpet filled the last
  Lone covert where affrighted wildness crept.

  Full armed, full armored, at her wondrous birth,
    Her shining temples wreathed with gorgeous dower,
  She sits among the empires of the earth;
    Her proud achievements o’er the nations tower,
  Won by her people with their royal worth,
    With lofty culture, wisdom, wealth and power.

ESTRANGED.