There was a flame, oh! such a tiny flame –One fleeting hour had spanned its birth and death,But for a silly child with playful breathWho fanned it into fury. It becameA mighty conflagration. Ah, the cost!House, home, and thoughtless child alike were lost. Lady beware. Fan not the harmless glowOf admiration into ardent love,Lean not […]

Regret with streaming eyes doth seem alwayA maiden widowed on her wedding day. While dark Remorse, with eyes too sad for tears,A crushed, desponding Magdalene appears. One, with a hungering heart unsatisfied,Mourns for imagined joys that were denied. The other, pierced by recollected sin,Broods o’er the scars of pleasures that have been.

A truth that has long lain buriedAt Superstition’s door,I see, in the dawn uprisingIn all its strength once more. Hidden away in the darkness,By Ignorance crucified,Crushed under stones of dogmas –Yet lo! it has not died. It stands in the light transfigured,It speaks from the heights above,“EACH SOUL IS ITS OWN REDEEMER;THERE IS NO LAW […]

Ho! sportsman Time, whose chargers fleetThe moments, madly driven,Beat in the dust beneath their feetSweet hopes that years have given;Turn, turn aside those reckless steeds,Oh! do not urge them my way;There’s nothing that Time wants or needsIn this contented by-way. You have down-trodden, in your race,So much that proves your power,Why not avoid my humble […]

This game of life is a dangerous play,Each human soul must watch alway,From the first to the very last.I care not however strong and pure –Let no man say he is perfectly sureThe dangerous reefs are past. For many a rock may lurk near by,That never is seen when the tide is high –Let no […]

I want more lives in which to loveThis world so full of beauty,I want more days to use the waysI know of doing duty;I ask no greater joy than this(So much I am life’s lover),When I reach age to turn the pageAnd read the story over.(O love, stay near!) O rapturous promise of the Spring!O […]

The first flower of the spring is not so fairOr bright as one the ripe midsummer brings.The first faint note the forest warbler singsIs not as rich with feeling, or so rareAs when, full master of his art, the airDrowns in the liquid sea of song he flingsLike silver spray from beak, and breast, and […]

As yon great Sun in his supreme conditionAbsorbs small worlds and makes them all his own,So does my love absorb each vain ambition,Each outside purpose which my life has known.Stars cannot shine so near that vast orb’d splendour;They are content to feed his flames of fire:And so my heart is satisfied to renderIts strength, its […]

So, thou hast the art, good dame, thou swearest,To keep Time’s perishing touch at bayFrom the roseate splendour of the cheek so tender,And the silver threads from the gold away.And the tell-tale years that have hurried by usShall tip-toe back, and, with kind good-will,They shall take the traces from off our faces,If we will trust […]

While forced to dwell apart from thy dear face,Love, robed like sorrow, led me by the handAnd taught my doubting heart to understandThat which has puzzled all the human race.Full many a sage has questioned where in spaceThose counter worlds were? where the mystic strandThat separates them? I have found each land,And Hell is vast, […]

As we gaze up life’s slope, as we gazeIn the morn, ere the dewdrops are dry,What splendour hangs over the ways,What glory gleams there in the sky,What pleasures seem waiting us, highOn the peak of that beauteous slope,What rainbow-hued colours of hope,As we gaze! As we climb up the hill, as we climb,Our hearts, our […]

Somebody’s baby was buried to-day –The empty white hearse from the grave rumbled back,And the morning somehow seemed less smiling and gayAs I paused on the walk while it crossed on its way,And a shadow seemed drawn o’er the sun’s golden tract. Somebody’s baby was laid out to rest,White as a snowdrop, and fair to […]

(At the Old Homestead) I tread the paths of earlier timesWhere all my steps were set to rhymes. I gaze on scenes I used to seeWhen dreaming of a vague To be. I walk in ways made bright of oldBy hopes youth-limned in hues of gold. But lo! those hopes of future blissSeem dull beside […]

I left the farm when mother died and changed my place of dwellingTo daughter Susie’s stylish house right on the city street:And there was them before I came that sort of scared me, tellingHow I would find the town folks’ ways so difficult to meet;They said I’d have no comfort in the rustling, fixed-up throng,And […]

I am sorry in the gladnessOf the joys that crown my days,For the souls that sit in sadnessOr walk uninviting ways. On the radiance of my labourThat a loving fate bestowed,Falls the shadow of my neighbour,Crushed beneath a thankless load. As the canticle of pleasureFrom my lovelit altar rolls,There is one discordant measure,As I think […]

‘Let go the Cross’–GERTRUDE RUNSHON. I heard a strange voice in the distance callingAs from a star an echo might be falling. It spoke four syllables, concise and brief,Charged with a God-sent message of relief: Let go the cross! Oh, you who cling to sorrow,Hark to the new command and comfort borrow. Even as the […]

Slowly the People waken; they have been,Like weary soldiers, sleeping in their tents,While traitors tiptoed through the silent campIntent on plunder. Suddenly a sound –A careless movement of too bold a thief –Starts one dull sleeper; then another stirs,A third cries out a warning, and at lastThe people are awake! Oh, when as oneThe many […]

I asked the rock beside the road what joy existence lent.It answered, ‘For a million years my heart has been content.’ I asked the truffle-seeking swine, as rooting by he went,‘What is the keynote of your life?’ He grunted out, ‘Content.’ I asked a slave, who toiled and sung, just what his singing meant.He plodded […]

I know it is early morning,And hope is calling aloud,And your heart is afire with Youth’s desireTo hurry along with the crowd.But linger a bit by the roadside,And lend a hand by the way,‘Tis a curious fact that a generous actBrings leisure and luck to a day. I know it is only the noontime –There […]

Before the statue of a giant Hun,There stood a dwarf, misshapen and uncouth.His lifted eyes seemed asking: ‘Why, in sooth,Was I not fashioned like this mighty one?Would God show favour to an older sonLike earthly kings, and beggar without ruthAnother, who sinned only by his youth?Why should two lives in such divergence run?’ Strange, as […]