This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 edition. Excerpt: ... A LETTER TO MISS A. MARY F. ROBINSON. A PROMISE is the frailest thing I know: A very soap-bubble which rashness flings On whatsoever breeze may chance to blow; We watch it float, and in its iris-glow See fair precarious things. And you have promised to return and spend A while with us ere Tuscan leaves be sere; Oh break your promise not, nor grieve a friend To whom the Fates but little pleasure send, I ween, from year to year. Come with the dying summer's golden mist; Come with the ripeness of the autumn air; Come when the sun aweary shall desist, And when all Nature, long too fiercely kissed, Lies weak, but not less fair. Come when no more the endless noontide creeps, And each hot tile-roof tremulously steams; Come when no more the shrill cicala keeps Sawing the empty air, and he who sleeps Abhors it through his dreams. Come when no more the vesper bell shall rouse The inmates of each sun-entranced abode; And when no more the peasant shades with boughs His slow, white oxen's fly-tormented brows, Upon the glaring road. Come when the hungry yellow wasp forestalls The vintager, and mars the prosperous grape; And when the vine leaves on the trellised walls Take hectic patches ere the bunches fall In hods of conic shape. Come when the splitting wrapper of the maize The massive golden lump no more can hold; And when the meanest cottage front displays A tapestry of ingots, which outweighs All Eldorado's gold. Come when the chestnut drops with rustling sound, Through scanty leaves, and bursts its bristly husk Just at your feet upon the mossy ground, Where fragrant ferns and flowers wild abound And scent the early dusk. Oh, they are sweet, those chestnut woods where never My foot, alas, can trample down the moss--Those woods where others, full...