Hope

Now those days arrive when, stem throbbing,
each flower sheds its fragrance like a censer:
sounds and scents twine in the evening air:
languorous dizziness, Melancholy dancing!


Each flower sheds its fragrance like a censer:
the violin quivers, a heart that’s suffering:
languorous dizziness, Melancholy dancing!
the sky is lovely, sad like a huge altar.


The violin quivers, a heart that’s suffering:
a heart, hating the vast black void, so tender!
the sky is lovely, sad like a huge altar:
the sun is drowned, in its own blood congealing.


A heart, hating the vast black void, so tender:
each trace of the luminous past it’s gathering!
The sun is drowned, in its own blood congealing
A vessel of the host, your memory shines there.

        I then acted as agent for the "Zion Record," published by Rev. R. A. Adams, 39 St. Catherine Street, Natchez, Miss., until August 20, 1902. Knowing that there was a dormitory to be built for girls at Alcorn, I went there, hoping to get work and to be there when school opened. On arriving, I failed to get employment. I had no money. The Boarding Hall was run by boys who stayed over summer. Finding I was unemployed, they refused to let me take meals with them. There I was - friendless and penniless - without a bite of bread and nowhere to lay my head. To drive the wolf of starvation away and to keep from being devoured, I made arrangements with President Lanier to cut wood for something to eat, until school opened Sept. 2, 1902.

        When school opened, the Faculty met the first day and distributed the positions to the...

I did but dream. I never knew
What charms our sternest season wore.
Was never yet the sky so blue,
Was never earth so white before.
Till now I never saw the glow
Of sunset on yon hills of snow,
And never learned the bough's designs
Of beauty in its leafless lines.

Did ever such a morning break
As that my eastern windows see?
Did ever such a moonlight take
Weird photographs of shrub and tree?
Rang ever bells so wild and fleet
The music of the winter street?
Was ever yet a sound by half
So merry as you school-boy's laugh?

O Earth! with gladness overfraught,
No added charm thy face hath found;
Within my heart the change is wrought,
My footsteps make enchanted ground.
From couch of pain and curtained room
Forth to thy light and...

Day! Faster and more fast,
O'er night's brim, day boils at last:
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim.
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.

All service ranks the same with God:
If now, as formerly He trod
Paradise, His presence fills
Our earth, each only as God wills
Can work God's puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first.

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn:
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pea...

The night of affliction, with its long hours of sadness,
Will soon pass away to be remembered no more;
And the weeping will end in a morning of gladness;
For no sorrow is known on the evergreen shore.

In this world we shall have tribulation and sorrow;
'Tis enough for the subject to be as his king;
But if we are faithful, joy will come with the morrow,
And with the blood-washed a new song shall we sing.

Time looked me in the eyes while passing by
The milestone of the year.    That piercing gaze
Was both an accusation and reproach.
No speech was needed.    In a sorrowing look
More meaning lies than in complaining words,
And silence hurts as keenly as reproof.

Oh, opulent, kind giver of rich hours,
How have I used thy benefits!    As babes
Unstring a necklace, laughing at the sound
Of priceless jewels dropping one by one,
So have I laughed while precious moments rolled
Into the hidden corners of the past.
And I have let large opportunities
For high endeavour move unheeded by,
While little joys and cares absorbed my strength.

And yet, dear Time, set to my credit this:
NOT ONE WHITE HOUR HAVE I MADE BLACK WITH HATE,
NOR WISHED ONE LIVING CREATURE...

"I leave my child to Heaven."    And with these words
Upon her lips, the Lady Mildred passed
Unto the rest prepared for her pure soul;
Words that meant only this: I cannot trust
Unto her earthly parent my young child,
So leave her to her heavenly Father's care;
And Heaven was gentle to the motherless,
And fair and sweet the maiden, Gladys, grew,
A pure white rose in the old castle set,
The while her father rioted abroad.

But as the day drew near when he should give,
By his dead lady's will, his child her own,
He having basely squandered all her wealth
To him intrusted, to his land returned,
And thrilled her trusting heart with terrors vague,
Of peril, of some shame to come to him,
Did she not yield unto his prayer - command,
That she would to Our La...

Not all the bravery that day puts on
Of gold and azure, ardent or austere,
Shall ease my soul of sorrow; grown more dear
Than all the joy that heavenly hope may don.
Far up the skies the rumor of the dawn
May run, and eve like some wild torch appear;
These shall not change the darkness, gathered here,
Of thought, that rusts like an old sword undrawn.
Oh, for a place deep-sunken from the sun!
A wildwood cave of primitive rocks and moss!
Where Sleep and Silence, breast to married breast
Lie with their child, night-eyed Oblivion;
Where, freed from all the trouble of my cross,
I might forget, I might forget, and rest!

    Still anxious to secure your partial favour,
    And not less anxious, sure, this night than ever,
    A Prologue, Epilogue, or some such matter,
    'Twould vamp my bill, said I, if nothing better;
    So sought a Poet, roosted near the skies,
    Told him I came to feast my curious eyes;
    Said nothing like his works was ever printed;
    And last, my Prologue-business slyly hinted!
    "Ma'am, let me tell you," quoth my man of rhymes,
    "I know your bent, these are no laughing times:
    Can you, but, Miss, I own I have my fears,
    Dissolve in pause, and sentimental tears;
    With laden sighs, and solemn-rounded sentence,
    Rouse from his sluggish slumbers, fell Repentance;
    Paint Vengeance as he takes his horrid stand,
    Waving on high the des...

On her return from Europe.


How smiled the land of France
Under thy blue eye's glance,
Light-hearted rover
Old walls of chateaux gray,
Towers of an early day,
Which the Three Colors play
Flauntingly over.

Now midst the brilliant train
Thronging the banks of Seine
Now midst the splendor
Of the wild Alpine range,
Waking with change on change
Thoughts in thy young heart strange,
Lovely, and tender.

Vales, soft Elysian,
Like those in the vision
Of Mirza, when, dreaming,
He saw the long hollow dell,
Touched by the prophet's spell,
Into an ocean swell
With its isles teeming.

Cliffs wrapped in snows of years,
Splintering with icy spears
Autumn's blue heaven
Loose rock and frozen slide,

    High on the hill, with moss o'ergrown,
    A hermit chapel stood;
    It spoke the tale of seasons gone,
    And half-revealed its ivied stone.
    Amid the beechen wood.

    Here often, when the mountain trees
    A leafy murmur made,
    Now still, now swaying to the breeze,
    (Sounds that the musing fancy please),
    The widowed mourner strayed.

    And many a morn she climbed the steep,
    From whence she might behold,
    Where, 'neath the clouds, in shining sweep,
    And mingling with the mighty deep,
    The sea-broad Severn rolled.

    Her little boy beside her played,
    With sea-shells in his hand;
    And sometimes, 'mid the bents delayed,
    And sometimes running onward, said,
    Oh, where is Holy Land!<...

            Aye, but she?
            Your other sister and my other soul
            Grave Silence, lovelier
            Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her?
            Clio, not you,
            Not you, Calliope,
            Nor all your wanton line,
            Not Beauty's perfect self shall comfort me
            For Silence once departed,
            For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,
            Whom evermore I follow wistfully,
        Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;
        Thalia, not you,
        Not you, Melpomene,
        Not your incomparable feet, O thin Terpsichore,
        I seek in this great hall,
        But one more pale, more pensive, most beloved of you all.
        I se...

While Anna's peers and early playmates tread,
In freedom, mountain-turf and river's marge;
Or float with music in the festal barge;
Rein the proud steed, or through the dance are led;
Her doom it is to press a weary bed
Till oft her guardian Angel, to some charge
More urgent called, will stretch his wings at large,
And friends too rarely prop the languid head.
Yet, helped by Genius, untired comforter,
The presence even of a stuffed Owl for her
Can cheat the time; sending her fancy out
To ivied castles and to moonlight skies,
Though he can neither stir a plume, nor shout;
Nor veil, with restless film, his staring eyes.

There is no joy of earth that thrills
My bosom like the far-off hills!
Th' unchanging hills, that, shadowy,
Beckon our mutability
To follow and to gaze upon
Foundations of the dusk and dawn.
Meseems the very heavens are massed
Upon their shoulders, vague and vast
With all the skyey burden of
The winds and clouds and stars above.
Lo, how they sit before us, seeing
The laws that give all Beauty being!
Behold! to them, when dawn is near,
The nomads of the air appear,
Unfolding crimson camps of day
In brilliant bands; then march away;
And under burning battlements
Of twilight plant their tinted tents.
The truth of olden myths, that brood
By haunted stream and haunted wood,
They see; and feel the happiness
Of old at which we only guess:

The rising moon on the peaks was blending
Her silver light with the sunset glow,
When a swagman came as the day was ending
Along a path that he seemed to know.
But all the fences were gone or going,
The hand of ruin was everywhere;
The creek unchecked in its course was flowing,
For none of the old clay dam was there.

Here Time had been with his swiftest changes,
And husbandry had westward flown;
The cattle tracks in the rugged ranges
Were long ago with the scrub o’ergrown.
It must have needed long years to soften
The road, that as hard as rock had been;
The mountain path he had trod so often
Lay hidden now with a carpet green.

He thought at times from the mountain courses
He heard the sound of a bullock bell,
The distant gallop of stockme...

    Oh, be not led away.
Lured by the colour of the sun-rich day.
    The gay romances of song
Unto the spirit-life doth not belong.
    Though far-between the hours
In which the Master of Angelic Powers
    Lightens the dusk within
The Holy of Holies;    be it thine to win
    Rare vistas of white light,
Half-parted lips, through which the Infinite
    Murmurs her ancient story;
Hearkening to whom the wandering planets hoary
    Waken primeval fires,
With deeper rapture in celestial choirs
    Breathe, and with fleeter motion
Wheel in their orbits through the surgeless ocean.
    So, hearken thou like these,
Intent on her, mounting by slow degrees,
    Until thy song's elation
Echoes her multitudinous meditation.

--November 15, 1893

Let us quit the leafy arbor,
And the torrent murmuring by;
For the sun is in his harbor,
Weary of the open sky.

Evening now unbinds the fetters
Fashioned by the glowing light;
All that breathe are thankful debtors
To the harbinger of night.

Yet by some grave thoughts attended
Eve renews her calm career;
For the day that now is ended,
Is the longest of the year.

Dora! sport, as now thou sportest,
On this platform, light and free;
Take thy bliss, while longest, shortest,
Are indifferent to thee!

Who would check the happy feeling
That inspires the linnet's song?
Who would stop the swallow, wheeling
On her pinions swift and strong?

Yet at this impressive season,
Words which tenderness can speak
From the t...

I.

She should never have looked at me
If she meant I should not love her!
There are plenty . . . men, you call such,
I suppose . . . she may discover
All her soul to, if she pleases,
And yet leave much as she found them:
But I’m not so, and she knew it
When she fixed me, glancing round them,

II.

What? To fix me thus meant nothing?
But I can’t tell . . . there’s my weakness . . .
What her look said! no vile cant, sure,
About “need to strew the bleakness
“Of some lone shore with its pearl-seed.
“That the sea feels” no “strange yearning
“That such souls have, most to lavish
“Where there’s chance of least returning.”

III.

Oh, we’re sunk enough here, God knows!
But not quite so sunk that moments,
Sure tho’ seld...