Great Poems by American Women
Page 11
Virtuosa
As by the instrument she took her place,
The expectant people, breathing sigh nor word,
Sat hushed, while o’er the waiting ivory stirred
Her supple hands with their suggestive grace.
With sweet notes they began to interlace,
And then with lofty strains their skill to gird,
Then loftier still, till all the echoes heard
Entrancing harmonies float into space.
She paused, and gaily trifled with the keys
Until they laughed in wild delirium,
Then, with rebuking fingers, from their glees
She led them one by one till all grew dumb,
And music seemed to sink upon its knees,
A slave her touch could quicken or benumb.
Her Horoscope
’T is true, one half of woman’s life is hope
And one half resignation. Between there lies
Anguish of broken dreams,—doubt, dire surprise,
And then is born the strength with all to cope.
Unconsciously sublime, life’s shadowed slope
She braves; the knowledge in her patient eyes
Of all that love bestows and love denies,
As writ in every woman’s horoscope!
She lives, her heart-beats given to others’ needs,
Her hands, to lift for others on the way
The burdens which their weariness forsook.
She dies, an uncrowned doer of great deeds.
Remembered? Yes, as is for one brief day
The rose one leaves in some forgotten book.
A Georgia Volunteer
Far up the lonely mountain-side
My wandering footsteps led;
The moss lay thick beneath my feet,
The pine sighed overhead.
The trace of a dismantled fort
Lay in the forest nave,
And in the shadow near my path
I saw a soldier’s grave.
The bramble wrestled with the weed
Upon the lowly mound;—
The simple head-board, rudely writ,
Had rotted to the ground;
I raised it with a reverent hand,
From dust its words to clear,
But time had blotted all but these—
“A Georgia Volunteer!”
I saw the toad and scaly snake
From tangled covert start,
And hide themselves among the weeds
Above the dead man’s heart;
But undisturbed, in sleep profound,
Unheeding, there he lay;
His coffin but the mountain soil,
His shroud Confederate gray.
I heard the Shenandoah roll
Along the vale below,
I saw the Alleghanies rise
Towards the realms of snow.
The “Valley Campaign” rose to mind—
Its leader’s name—and then
I knew the sleeper had been one
Of Stonewall Jackson’s men.
Yet whence he came, what lip shall say—
Whose tongue will ever tell
What desolated hearths and hearts
Have been because he fell?
What sad-eyed maiden braids her hair,
Her hair which he held dear?
One lock of which perchance lies with
The Georgia Volunteer!
What mother, with long watching eyes,
And white lips cold and dumb,
Waits with appalling patience for
Her darling boy to come?
Her boy! whose mountain grave swells up
But one of many a scar,
Cut on the face of our fair land,
By gory-handed war.
What fights he fought, what wounds he wore,
Are all unknown to fame;
Remember, on his lonely grave
There is not e’en a name!
That he fought well and bravely too,
And held his country dear,
We know, else he had never been
A Georgia Volunteer.
He sleeps—what need to question now
If he were wrong or right?
He knows, ere this, whose cause was just
In God the Father’s sight.
He wields no warlike weapons now,
Returns no foeman’s thrust—
Who but a coward would revile
An honest soldier’s dust?
Roll, Shenandoah, proudly roll,
Adown thy rocky glen,
Above thee lies the grave of one
Of Stonewall Jackson’s men.
Beneath the cedar and the pine,
In solitude austere,
Unknown, unnamed, forgotten, lies
A Georgia Volunteer.
ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN (1832—1911)
Elizabeth Akers Allen grew up in Farmington, Maine. Her first book of poems, under the pseudonym “Florence Percy,” was published in 1856. After the success of this first volume of poems, Allen traveled to Europe and worked as a correspondent for the Portland Transcript and the Boston Evening Gazette. While in Rome, Allen met a Maine sculptor who would become her second husband. (Her first marriage was brief, ending in divorce.) In 1865, she married for the third time and the two made their home in Virginia and Maine before settling in Tuckahoe, New York, after 1881. Meanwhile, Allen worked as a government clerk in Washington, D.C., and as literary editor for the Portland Daily Advertiser. Her best-known work, the poem “Rock Me to Sleep,” was first published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1860.
Rock Me to Sleep
Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for to-night!
Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore;
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;
Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother—rock me to sleep!
Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!
I am so weary of toil and of tears,—
Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,—
Take them, and give me my childhood again!
I have grown weary of dust and decay,—
Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away;
Weary of sowing for others to reap;—
Rock me to sleep, mother,—rock me to sleep!
Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,
Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you!
Many a summer the grass has grown green,
Blossomed and faded, our faces between:
Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain,
Long I to-night for your presence again.
Come from the silence so long and so deep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother,—rock me to sleep!
Over my heart, in the days that are flown,
No love mother-love ever has shone;
No other worship abides and endures,—
Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours:
None like a mother can charm away pain
From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.
Slumber’s soft calms o’er my heavy lids creep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother,—rock me to sleep!
Come, let your brown hair, just lighted with gold,
Fall on your shoulders again as of old;
Let it drop over my forehead to-night,
Shading my faint eyes away from the light;
For with its sunny-edged shadows once more
Haply will throng the sweet visions of yore;
Lovingly, softly, its bright billows sweep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother,—rock me to sleep!
Mother, dear mother, the years have been long
Since I last listened your lullaby son
g:
Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem
Womanhood’s years have been only a dream.
Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace,
With your light lashes just sweeping my face,
Never hereafter to wake or to weep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother,—rock me to sleep!
CELIA THAXTER (1835—1894)
Celia Thaxter was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and grew up on Appledore Island in the Isles of Shoals, where her father worked as a lighthouse keeper and owned a summer hotel. Thaxter adored the sea and missed it enormously when she moved to Massachusetts after her marriage in 1851. Homesick for the sea, Thaxter wrote a poem about nature, which was published without her knowledge by James Russell Lowell in the Atlantic Monthly. After this, she sent in her poems, children’s stories, and sketches for publication in various magazines. Among her books are Poems (1872), Poems for Children (1884), and the prose Among the Isles of Shoals (1886). Thaxter also painted illustrations for her books.
Seaward
To—
How long it seems since that mild April night,
When, leaning from the window, you and I
Heard, clearly ringing from the shadowy bight,
The loon’s unearthly cry!
Southwest the wind blew, million little waves
Ran rippling round the point in mellow tune,
But mournful, like the voice of one who raves,
That laughter of the loon!
We called to him, while blindly through the haze
Uprose the meagre moon behind us, slow,
So dim, the fleet of boats we scarce could trace,
Moored lightly just below.
We called, and, lo, he answered! Half in fear
We sent the note back. Echoing rock and bay
Made melancholy music far and near;
Sadly it died away.
That schooner, you remember? Flying ghost!
Her canvas catching every wandering beam,
Aerial, noiseless, past the glimmering coast
She glided like a dream.
Would we were leaning from your window now,
Together calling to the eerie loon,
The fresh wind blowing care from either brow,
This sumptuous night of June !
So many sighs load this sweet inland air,
’T is hard to breathe, nor can we find relief:
However lightly touched, we all must share
This nobleness of grief.
But sighs are spent before they reach your ear;
Vaguely they mingle with the water’s rune;
No sadder sound salutes you than the clear,
Wild laughter of the loon.
The Sandpiper
Across the narrow beach we flit,
One little sandpiper and I,
And fast I gather, bit by bit,
The scattered driftwood bleached and dry.
The wild waves reach their hands for it,
The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,
As up and down the beach we flit,—
One little sandpiper and I.
Above our heads the sullen clouds
Scud black and swift across the sky;
Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds
Stand out the white lighthouses high.
Almost as far as eye can reach
I see the close-reefed vessels fly,
As fast we flit along the beach,—
One little sandpiper and I.
I watch him as he skims along,
Uttering his sweet and mournful cry.
He starts not at my fitful song,
Or flash of fluttering drapery.
He has no thought of any wrong;
He scans me with a fearless eye:
Staunch friends are we, well tried and strong,
The little sandpiper and I.
Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night
When the loosed storm breaks furiously?
My driftwood fire will burn so bright!
To what warm shelter canst thou fly?
I do not fear for thee, though wroth
The tempest rushes through the sky:
For are we not God’s children both,
Thou, little sandpiper, and I?
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON (1835—1908)
Louise Chandler Moulton was educated in Pomfret, Connecticut, and spent a year in Emma Hart Willard’s Female Seminary in Troy, New York. In 1854, Moulton published the successful book of verse This, That, and the Other. A year later, she married a journalist and continued publishing her poems in popular magazines of her day. Her writing was collected in several books such as Bed-Time Stories (1874—1880), Some Women’s Hearts (1874), Random Rambles (1881), and a social narrative entitled Ourselves and Our Neighbors: Short Chats on Social Topics (1887). In the 1870s and 1880s, Moulton worked as literary correspondent in Boston for the New York Tribune and as book critic for the Boston Sunday Herald. Living in London after 1876, Moulton befriended several late-Romantic British poets and helped introduce their poetry to America.
To-Night
Bend low, O dusky Night,
And give my spirit rest.
Hold me to your deep breast,
And put old cares to flight.
Give back the lost delight
That once my soul possest,
When Love was loveliest.
Bend low, O dusky Night!
Enfold me in your arms—
The sole embrace I crave
Until the embracing grave
Shield me from life’s alarms.
I dare your subtlest charms;
Your deepest spell I brave,—
O, strong to slay or save,
Enfold me in your arms!
Louisa May Alcott
In Memoriam
As the wind at play with a spark
Of fire that glows through the night,
As the speed of the soaring lark
That wings to the sky his flight,
So swiftly thy soul has sped
On its upward, wonderful way,
Like the lark, when the dawn is red,
In search of the shining day.
Thou art not with the frozen dead
Whom earth in the earth we lay,
While the bearers softly tread,
And the mourners kneel and pray;
From thy semblance, dumb and stark,
The soul has taken its flight
Out of the finite dark,
Into the Infinite Light.
A Painted Fan
Roses and butterflies snared on a fan,
All that is left of a summer gone by;
Of swift, bright wings that flashed in the sun,
And loveliest blossoms that bloomed to die!
By what subtle spell did you lure them here,
Fixing a beauty that will not change,—
Roses whose petals never will fall,
Bright, swift wings that never will range?
Had you owned but the skill to snare as well
The swift-winged hours that came and went,
To prison the words that in music died,
And fix with a spell the heart’s content,
Then had you been of magicians the chief;
And loved and lovers should bless your art,
If you could but have painted the soul of the thing,—
Not the rose alone, but the rose’s heart!
Flown are those days with their winged delights,
As the odor is gone from the summer rose;
Yet still, whenever I wave my fan,
The soft, south wind of memory blows.
AUGUSTA COOPER BRISTOL (1835—1910)
The New Hampshire-born Augusta Cooper Bristol was an educator and lecturer. The youngest of ten children, Bristol excelled in mathematics and reasoning, and wrote poems as a child. She began teaching when she was fifteen years old, and her fi
rst marriage, ending in divorce, lasted only five years. She remarried in 1866 and moved to Vineland, New Jersey, with her new husband. Bristol lectured on behalf of numerous societies and traveled extensively as a speaker. She wrote several books on social topics, and her book of poems, The Web of Life, was published in 1895.
Night
I stood and watched the still, mysterious Night,
Steal from her shadowy caverns in the East,
To work her deep enchantments on the world.
Her black veil floated down the silent glens,
While her dark sandalled feet, with noiseless tread,
Moved to a secret harmony. Along
The brows of the majestic hills, she strung
Her glorious diamonds so stealthily,
It never marred their dreams; and in the deep,
Cool thickets of the wood, where scarce the Day
Could reach the dim retreat, her dusky hand
Pinned on the breast of the exhaling flower,
A glittering gem; while all the tangled ferns
And forest lace-work, as she moved along,
Grew moist and shining.
Who would e’er have guessed,
The queenly Night would deign to stoop and love
A little flower! And yet, with all her stealth,
I saw her press her damp and cooling lip
Upon the feverish bosom of a Rose;
At which a watchful bird poured sudden forth
A love-sick song, of sweet and saddest strain.
Upon the ivied rocks, and rugged crags