Nourished by peaceful suns and gracious dew,Your sweet youth budded and your sweet lives grew,And all the world seemed rose-beset for you. The rose of beauty was your mutual dower,The stainless rose of love, an early flower,The stately blooms of ease and wealth and power. And treading thus on pathways flower-bestrewn,It well might be, that, […]

Love me for what I am, Love. Not for sakeOf some imagined thing which I might be,Some brightness or some goodness not in me,Born of your hope, as dawn to eyes that wakeImagined morns before the morning break.If I, to please you (whom I fain would please),Reset myself like new key to old tune,Chained thought, […]

A little, rudely sculptured bed,With shadowing folds of marble lace,And quilt of marble, primly spreadAnd folded round a baby’s face. Smoothly the mimic coverlet,With royal blazonries bedight,Hangs, as by tender fingers setAnd straightened for the last good-night. And traced upon the pillowing stoneA dent is seen, as if to blessThe quiet sleep some grieving oneHad […]

“Do their errands; enter into the sacrifice with them; be a link yourself in the divine chain, and feel the joy and life of it.”–ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY What can I do for thee, Beloved,Whose feet so little while agoTrod the same way-side dust with mine,And now up paths I do not knowSpeed, without sound […]

She stood among the liliesIn sunset’s brightest ray,Among the tall June lilies,As stately fair as they;And I, a boyish lover then,Looked once, and, lingering, looked again,And life began that day. She sat among the lilies,My sweet, all lily-pale;The summer lilies listened,I whispered low my tale.O golden anthers, breathing balm,O hush of peace, O twilight calm,Did […]

The punctual tide draws up the bay,With ripple of wave and hiss of spray,And the great red flower of the light-house towerBlooms on the headland far away. Petal by petal its fiery roseOut of the darkness buds and grows;A dazzling shape on the dim, far cape,A beckoning shape as it comes and goes. A moment […]

If I were told that I must die to-morrow,That the next sunWhich sinks should bear me past all fear and sorrowFor any one,All the fight fought, all the short journey through:What should I do? I do not think that I should shrink or falter,But just go on,Doing my work, nor change, nor seek to alterAught […]

Darlings of June and brides of summer sun,Chill pipes the stormy wind, the skies are drear;Dull and despoiled the gardens every one:What do you here? We looked to see your gracious blooms ariseMid soft and wooing airs in gardens green,Where venturesome brown bees and butterfliesShould hail you queen. Here is no bee nor glancing butterfly;They […]

A STORY OF OLD FLORENCE. So it is come! The doctor’s glossy smileDeceives me not. I saw him shake his head,Whispering, and heard poor Giulia sob without,As, slowly creaking, he went down the stair.Were they afraid that I should be afraid?I, who had died once and been laid in tomb?They need not. Little one, look […]

This is the street and the dwelling,Let me count the houses o’er;Yes,–one, two, three from the corner,And the house that I love makes four. That is the very windowWhere I used to see her headBent over book or needle,With ivy garlanded. And the very loop of the curtain,And the very curve of the vine,Were full […]

Dry leaves upon the wall,Which flap like rustling wings and seek escape,A single frosted cluster on the grapeStill hangs–and that is all. It hangs forgotten quite,–Forgotten in the purple vintage-day,Left for the sharp and cruel frosts to slay,The daggers of the night. It knew the thrill of spring;It had its blossom-time, its perfumed noons;Its pale-green […]

Each day upon the yellow Nile, ’tis said.Joseph, the youthful ruler, cast forth wheat,That haply, floating to his father’s feet,–The sad old father, who believed him dead,–It might be sign in Egypt there was bread;And thus the patriarch, past the desert sandsAnd scant oasis fringed with thirsty green,Be lured toward the love that yearned unseen.So, […]

She has been just a year in Heaven.Unmarked by white moon or gold sun,By stroke of clock or clang of bell,Or shadow lengthening on the way,In the full noon and perfect day,In Safety’s very citadel,The happy hours have sped, have run;And, rapt in peace, all pain forgot,She whom we love, her white soul shriven,Smiles at […]

All night the thirsty beach has listening lain,With patience dumb,Counting the slow, sad moments of her pain;Now morn has come,And with the morn the punctual tide again. I hear the white battalions down the bayCharge with a cheer;The sun’s gold lances prick them on their way,–They plunge, they rear,–Foam-plumed and snowy-pennoned, they are here! The […]

Long reaches of wet grasses swayWhere ran the sea but yesterday,And white-winged boats at sunset drewTo anchor in the crimsoning blue.The boats lie on the grassy plain,Nor tug nor fret at anchor chain;Their errand done, their impulse spent,Chained by an alien element,With sails unset they idly lie,Though morning beckons brave and nigh;Like wounded birds, their […]

How easily He turns the tides!Just now the yellow beach was dry,Just now the gaunt rocks all were bare,The sun beat hot, and thirstilyEach sea-weed waved its long brown hair,And bent and languished as in pain;Then, in a flashing moment’s space,The white foam-feet which spurned the sandPaused in their joyous outward race,Wheeled, wavered, turned them […]

Go, sun, since go you must,The dusky evening lowers above our sky,Our sky which was so blue and sweetly fair;Night is not terrible that we should sigh.A little darkness we can surely bear;Will there not be more sunshine–by and by? Go, rose, since go you must,Flowerless and chill the winter draweth nigh;Closed are the blithe […]

I sit alone in the gray,The snow falls thick and fast,And never a sound have I heard all dayBut the wailing of the blast,And the hiss and click of the snow, whirling to and fro. There seems no living thingLeft in the world but I;My thoughts fly forth on restless wing,And drift back wearily,Storm-beaten, buffeted, […]

She stood in the open door,She blessed them faint and low:“I must go,” she said, “must goAway from the light of the sun,Away from you, every one;Must see your eyes no more,–Your eyes, that love me so. “I should not shudder thus,Nor weep, nor be afraid.Nor cling to you so dismayed,Could I only pierce with […]

Ah! grown a dim and fairy shade,Dear child, who, fifteen years ago,Out of our arms escaped and fledWith swift white feet, as if afraid,To hide beneath the grass, the snow,that sunny little head. This is your birthday! Fair, so fair,And grown to gracious maiden-height,And versed in heavenly lore and ways;White-vested as the angels are,In very […]