A Song Before Grief
Sorrow, my friend,
When shall you come again?
The wind is slow, and the bent willows send
Their silvery motions wearily down the plain.
The bird is dead
That sang this morning through the summer rain!
Sorrow, my friend,
I owe my soul to you.
And if my life with any glory end
Of tenderness for others, and the words are true,
Said, honoring, when I’m dead,—
Sorrow, to you, the mellow praise, the funeral wreath, are due.
And yet, my friend,
When love and joy are strong,
Your terrible visage from my sight I rend
With glances to blue heaven. Hovering along,
By mine your shadow led,
“Away!” I shriek, “nor dare to work my new-sprung mercies wrong!”
Still, you are near:
Who can your care withstand?
When deep eternity shall look most clear,
Sending bright waves to kiss the trembling land,
My joy shall disappear,—
A flaming torch thrown to the golden sea by your pale hand.
KATE NICHOLS TRASK (1853-1922)
Kate Nichols Trask, born in Brooklyn, New York, to a wealthy family, was educated in private schools and married a banker in 1874. After her children died, Trask turned to writing, and published three long love poems anonymously in 1892. All of her subsequent books, including Sonnets and Lyrics (1894), White Satin and Homespun (1896), Free, Not Bound (1903), and In the Vanguard (1914), an antiwar play, were signed with the name “Katrina Trask.” She was also very active in various philanthropies. As early as 1899, Trask and her husband hoped to open their large Saratoga Springs estate, Yaddo, as an artists’ colony. After Trask’s death in 1922, Yaddo served as a summer retreat for artists.
Sorrow
O thorn-crowned Sorrow, pitiless and stern,
I sit alone with broken heart, my head
Low bowed, keeping long vigil with my dead.
My soul, unutterably sad, doth yearn
Beyond relief in tears—they only burn
My aching eyelids to fall back unshed
Upon the throbbing brain like molten lead,
Making it frenzied. Shall I ever learn
To face you fearlessly, as by my door
You stand with haunting eyes and death-damp hair,
Through the night-watches, whispering solemnly,
“Behold, I am thy guest forevermore.”
It chills my soul to know that you are there.
Great God, have mercy on my misery!
Aidenn
Heaven is mirrored, Love, deep in thine eyes,
Soft falls its shimmering light upon thy face;
Tell me, Beloved, is this Paradise,
Or but Love’s bower in some deep-sheltered place?
Is that God’s burning bush that now appears,
Or but the sunlight slanting through the trees?
Is that sweet song the music of the spheres,
Or but the deep andante of the breeze?
Are we blest spirits of some glad new birth
Floating at last in God’s eternity?
Or art thou, Love, still but a man on earth,
And I a woman clinging close to thee?
EDITH M. THOMAS (1854-1925)
Edith M. Thomas, born in Chatham, Ohio, wrote poems at an early age, greatly inspired by the poetry of John Keats and her appreciation of Greek literature. She taught school for two years and worked as a typesetter before visiting New York City in 1881. While there, Thomas met Helen Hunt Jackson, who encouraged her to contribute her poems to Century magazine and the Atlantic Monthly. Her first collection, A New Year’s Masque, was published in 1885, and was followed by many more successful books, such as Lyrics and Sonnets (1887), The Inverted Torch (1890), and several books for children.
The Mother Who Died Too
She was so little—tittle in her grave,
The wide earth all around so hard and cold—
She was so little! therefore did I crave
My arms might still her tender form enfold.
She was so little, and her cry so weak
When she among the heavenly children came—
She was so little—alone might speak
For her who knew no word nor her own name.
Winter Sleep
I know it must be winter (though I sleep)—
I know it must be winter, for I dream
I dip my bare feet in the running stream,
And flowers are many, and the grass grows deep.
I know I must be old (how age deceives!)—
I know I must be old, for, all unseen,
My heart grows young, as autumn fields grow green,
When late rains patter on the falling sheaves.
I know I must be tired (and tired souls err)—
I know I must be tired, for all my soul
To deeds of daring beats a glad, faint roll,
As storms the riven pine to music stir.
I know I must be dying (Death draws near)—
I know I must be dying, for I crave
Life—life, strong life, and think not of the grave,
And turf-bound silence, in the frosty year.
LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE (1856-1935)
Maryland-born Lizette Woodworth Reese attended St. John’s Parish School and the public schools of Baltimore. She was a teacher for forty-five years, and her leisure time was devoted to writing poetry. “The Deserted House” was her first published poem, appearing in the Southern Magazine in 1874. Her first book of poems, A Branch of May, was published thirteen years later, in 1887. Among Reese’s fourteen books are: A Handful of Lavender (1891), A Quiet Road (1896), and Spicewood (1920). “Tears” is her most famous sonnet, first appearing in Scribner’s Magazine in 1899. Reese also published two books of her memoirs entitled A Victorian Village (1929) and The York Road (1931). In 1931, Reese received the Mary L. Keats Memorial Prize and was named poet laureate of Maryland.
One Night
One lily scented all the dark. It grew
Down the drenched walk a spike of ghostly white.
Fine, sweet, sad noises thrilled the tender night,
From insects couched on blades that dripped with dew.
The road beyond, cleaving the great fields through,
Echoed no footstep; like a streak of light,
The gaunt and blossoming elder gleamed in sight.
The boughs began to quake, and warm winds blew,
And whirled a myriad petals down the air.
An instant, peaked and black the old house stood;
The next, its gables showed a tremulous gray,
Then deepening gold; the next, the world lay bare!
The moon slipped out the leash of the tall wood,
And through the heavenly meadows fled away.
Tears
When I consider Life and its few years—
A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun;
A call to battle, and the battle done
Ere the last echo dies within our ears;
A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears;
The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat;
The burst of music down an unlistening street—
I wonder at the idleness of tears.
Ye old, old dead, and ye of yesternight,
Chieftains, and bards, and keepers of the sheep,
By every cup of sorrow that you had,
Loose me from tears, and make me see aright
How each hath back what once he stayed to weep;
Homer his sight, David his little lad!
Spicewood
The spicewood burns along the gray, spent sky,
In moist unchimneyed places, in a wind,
That whips it all before, and all behind,
Into one thick, rude flame, now low, now high.
It is the first, the homeliest thing of all—
At sight of it, that lad that by it fares,
Whistles afresh his foolish, town-caught airs—
A thing so honey-colored and so tall!
It is as though the young Year, ere he pass,
To the white riot of the cherry tree,
Would fain accustom us, or here, or there,
To his new sudden ways with bough and grass,
So starts with what is humble, plain to see,
And all familiar as a cup, a chair.
KATHARINE LEE BATES (1859-1929)
Famous for writing the unofficial national hymn, Katharine Lee Bates wrote “America the Beautiful” after climbing Pike’s Peak while on a western tour in 1893. It was first published in the Congregationalist in July 1895 and revised in the Boston Evening Transcript in November 1904. It appeared in its final form in 1911. The poem was set to the music of Samuel A. Ward’s “Materna.” Born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, Bates was graduated from Wellesley College in 1880 and worked as a professor of English there for forty years. She retired as professor emeritus in 1925. In addition to her work as an educator, Bates also wrote children’s stories, travel books, and scholarly works.
America the Beautiful
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine!
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860-1935)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a leading American feminist and economist, was born in Hartford, Connecticut. At eighteen, Gilman attended the Rhode Island School of Design and worked as a teacher and commercial artist. After divorcing her first husband, artist Charles Walter Stetson, in 1894, she lectured on women’s issues in California. She wrote The Yellow Wallpaper in 1892 and her only book of poems, In This Our World, the following year. She earned critical acclaim for her 1898 book Women and Economics, which attacked women’s financial dependency on men. Gilman remarried in 1902 and continued to publish her stories in various periodicals, including her journal, The Forerunner. In 1932, Gilman was diagnosed with breast cancer; she took her own life on August 17, 1935.
A Common Inference
A night: mysterious, tender, quiet, deep;
Heavy with flowers; full of life asleep;
Thrilling with insect voices; thick with stars;
No cloud between the dewdrops and red Mars;
The small earth whirling softly on her way,
The moonbeams and the waterfalls at play;
A million million worlds that move in peace,
A million mighty laws that never cease;
And one small ant-heap, hidden by small weeds,
Rich with eggs, slaves, and store of millet seeds.
They sleep beneath the sod
And trust in God.
A day: all glorious, royal, blazing bright;
Heavy with flowers; full of life and light;
Great fields of corn and sunshine; courteous trees;
Snow-sainted mountains; earth-embracing seas;
Wide golden deserts; slender silver streams;
Clear rainbows where the tossing fountain gleams;
And everywhere, in happiness and peace,
A million forms of life that never cease;
And one small ant-heap, crushed by passing tread,
Hath scarce enough alive to mourn the dead!
They shriek beneath the sod,
“There is no God!”
The Beds of Fleur-de-lys
High-lying, sea-blown stretches of green turf,
Wind-bitten close, salt-colored by the sea,
Low curve on curve spread far to the cool sky,
And, curving over them as long they lie,
Beds of wild fleur-de-lys.
Wide-flowing, self-sown, stealing near and far,
Breaking the green like islands in the sea;
Great stretches at your feet, and spots that bend
Dwindling over the horizon’s end,—
Wild beds of fleur-de-lys.
The light keen wind streams on across the lifts,
Their wind of western springtime by the sea;
The close turf smiles unmoved, but over her
Is the far-flying rustle and sweet stir
In beds of fleur-de-lys.
And here and there across the smooth, low grass
Tall maidens wander, thinking of the sea;
And bend, and bend, with light robes blown aside,
For the blue lily-flowers that bloom so wide,—
The beds of fleur-de-lys.
A Conservative
The garden beds I wandered by
One bright and cheerful morn,
When I found a new-fledged butterfly,
A-sitting on a thorn,
A black and crimson butterfly,
All doleful and forlorn.
I thought that life could have no sting
To infant butterflies,
So I gazed on this unhappy thing
With wonder and surprise,
While sadly with his waving wing
He wiped his weeping eyes.
Said I, “What can the matter be?
Why weepest thou so sore?
With garden fair and sunlight free
And flowers in goodly store:“—
But he only turned away from me
And burst into a roar.
Cried he, “My legs are thin and few
Where once I had a swarm!
Soft fuzzy fur—a joy to view—
Once kept my body warm,
Before these flapping wing-things grew,
To hamper and deform!”
At that outrageous bug I shot
The fury of mine eye;
Said I, in scorn all burning hot,
In rage and anger high,
“You ignominious idiot!
Those wings are made to fly!”
“I do not want to fly,” said he,
“I only want to squirm!”
And he drooped his wings dejectedly,
But still his voice was firm:
“I do not want to be a fly!
I want to be a worm!”
O yesterday of unknown lack!
To-day of unknown bliss!
I left my fool in red and black,
The last I saw was this,—
The creature madly climbing back
Into his chrysalis.
HARRIET MONROE (1860-1936)
With literary mentors like Robert Louis Stevenson, William Dean Howells, and Edmund Clarence Stedman, Harriet Monroe submitted her poetry to Century magazine, and wrote a cantata for the dedication of a theater in Chicago. In 1891, Monroe published Valeria and Other Poems. Later that year, she wa
s asked to write the “Columbian Ode” for the opening of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1892. The poems, recited to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America, were published in 1893. Monroe’s greatest contribution was her Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, which first appeared in October, 1912, and showcased both well-known poets and fresh, young voices. Collaborating with Alice Corbin Henderson, Monroe published some free verse in her anthology, The New Poetry (1917; revised 1932). Her autobiography, A Poet’s Life, appeared in 1938.
To W. S. M.
With a copy of Shelley.
Behold, I send thee to the heights of song,
My brother! Let thine eyes awake as clear
As morning dew, within whose glowing sphere
Is mirrored half a world; and listen long,
Till in thine ears, famished to keenness, throng
The bugles of the soul—till far and near
Silence grows populous, and wind and mere
Are phantom-choked with voices. Then be strong—
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