Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“
[blocks in formation]

Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood.

Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse,

HESTER.

WHEN maidens such as Hester die, Their place ye may not well supply, Though ye among a thousand try, With vain endeavor.

A month or more has she been dead,
Yet cannot I by force be led
To think upon the wormy bed
And her together.

A springy motion in her gait,
A rising step, did indicate
Of pride and joy no common rate,
That flushed her spirit:

I know not by what name beside
I shall it call;-if 't was not pride,
It was a joy to that allied,

She did inherit.

Her parents held the Quaker rule, Which doth the human feelings cool; But she was trained in nature's school,

Nature had blessed her.

A waking eye, a prying mind,
A heart that stirs, is hard to bind;
A hawk's keen sight ye cannot
blind. -

Ye could not Hester.

My sprightly neighbor, gone before Seeking to find the old familiar To that unknown and silent shore!

faces.

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,

Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling?

So might we talk of the old familiar faces

How some they have died, and some they have left me,

And some are taken from me; all are departed,

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces!

Shall we not meet as heretofore
Some summer morning;

When from thy cheerful eyes a ray
Hath struck a bliss upon the day,
A bliss that would not go away,
A sweet forewarning?

THE HOUSEKEEPER.

THE frugal snail, with forecast of repose,

Carries his house with him where'er he goes;

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Flashes red triumph in the noonday sun;

The poet, when his lyre hangs on the palm;

The statesman, when the crowd proclaim his voice,

And mould opinion on his gifted tongue:

They count not life's first steps, and never think

Upon the many miserable hours When hope deferred was sickness to the heart.

They reckon not the battle and the march,

The long privations of a wasted youth;

They never see the banner till unfurled.

What are to them the solitary nights Passed pale and anxiously by the sickly lamp,

Till the young poet wins the world at last

To listen to the music long his own? The crowd attend the statesman's fiery mind

That makes their destiny; but they do not trace

Its struggle, or its long expectancy.

Hard are life's early steps; and, but that youth

Is buoyant, confident, and strong in Men would behold its threshold, and hope, despair.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Whereat their stupid tongues, to And down the hollow from a ferny

[blocks in formation]

nook Bright leaps a living brook!

BETRAYAL.

THE sun has kissed the violet sea,
O Sea! wouldst thou not better be
And turned the violet to a rose.

Mere violet still? Who knows?

who knows?

Well hides the violet in the wood:
The dead leaf wrinkles her a hood,
And winter's ill is violet's good;
But the bold glory of the rose,
It quickly comes and quickly goes;
Red petals whirling in white snows,
Ah me!

The sun has burnt the rose-red sea:
The rose is turned to ashes gray.
O Sea! O Sea! mightst thou but be
The violet thou hast been to-day!
The sun is brave, the sun is bright,
The sun is lord of love and light;
But after him it cometh night.
O anguish of the lonesome dark!
Once a girl's body, stiff and stark,
Was laid in a tomb without a mark.
Ah me!

LUCY LARCOM.

HANNAH BINDING SHoes.

POOR lone Hannah,

Sitting at the window, binding shoes, Faded, wrinkled,

Sitting, stitching, in a mournful

muse.

Bright-eyed beauty once was she, When the bloom was on the tree: Spring and winter,

[blocks in formation]

Fair young Hannah,

Hannah's at the window, binding Ben, the sunburnt fisher, gayly woos:

shoes.

Not a neighbor,

Passing nod or answer will refuse,

Hale and clever,

For a willing heart and hand he sues. May-day skies are all aglow,

And the waves are laughing so!

« AnkstesnisTęsti »