Not faultless, for she was not fashioned so,
    A mingling of the bitter and the sweet;
    Lips that can laugh and sigh and whisper low
    Of hope and trust and happiness complete,
    Or speak harsh truths; eyes that can flash with fire,
    Or make themselves but wells of tenderness
    Wherein is drowned all bitterness and ire -
    Warm eyes whose lightest glance is a caress.
    Heaven sent her here to brighten this old earth,
    And only heaven fully knows her worth.

Aloft on the brow of a mountain,
And hard by a clear running fountain,
In neat little cot,
Content with her lot,
Retired, there lives a sweet maiden.

Her father is dead, and her brother,
And now she alone with her mother
Will spin on her wheel,
And sew, knit, and reel,
And cheerfully work for their living.

To gossip she never will roam,
She loves, and she stays at, her home,
Unless when a neighbour
In sickness does labour,
Then, kindly, she pays her a visit.

With Bible she stands by her bed,
And when some blest passage is read,
In prayer and in praises
Her sweet voice she raises
To Him who for sinners once died.

Well versed in her Bible is she,
Her language is artless and free,
Imparting pure joy,
That...

There is no woman living who draws breath
So sad as I, though all things sadden her.
There is not one upon life's weariest way
Who is weary as I am weary of all but death.
Toward whom I look as looks the sunflower
All day with all his whole soul toward the sun;
While in the sun's sight I make moan all day,
And all night on my sleepless maiden bed.
Weep and call out on death, O Love, and thee,
That thou or he would take me to the dead.
And know not what thing evil I have done
That life should lay such heavy hand on me.

Alas! Love, what is this thou wouldst with me?
What honor shalt thou have to quench my breath,
Or what shall my heart broken profit thee?
O Love, O great god Love, what have I done,
That thou shouldst hunger so after my death?
My heart...

FEBRUARY 1, 18 - .

        Here - am I here?
        Or is it fancy, born of fear?
        Yes - O God, save me! - this is I,
        And not some wretch of whom I've read,
        In that bright girlhood, when the sky
        Each night strewed star-dust o'er my head;
        When each morn meant a gala-day,
        And all my little world was gay.
        I had not felt the touch of Care;
        I'd heard of something called Despair,
        But knew it only by its name.
        (How far it seemed! - how soon it came!)
        Yes, all the bright years hurried by;
        Sorrow was near, and - this is I!

        Is't the same girl that stood, one night,
        There in the wide hall's thrilling light,
        With all the costly robes ast...

    When rathe wind-flowers many peer
        All rain filled at blue April skies,
    As on one smiles one's lady dear
        With the big tear-drops in her eyes;

    When budded May-apples, I wis,
        Be hidden by lone greenwood creeks,
    Be bashful as her cheeks we kiss,
        Be waxen as her dimpled cheeks;

    Then do I pine for happier skies,
        Shy wild-flowers fair by hill and burn;
    As one for one's sweet lady's eyes,
        And her white cheeks might pine and yearn.

There grew a fragrant rose-tree where the brook flows,
With two little tender buds, and one full rose;
When the sun went down to his bed in the west,
The little buds leaned on the rose-mother's breast,
While the bright eyed stars their long watch kept,
And the flowers of the valley in their green cradles slept;
Then silently in odors they communed with each other,
The two little buds on the bosom of their mother.
"O sister," said the little one, as she gazed at the sky,
"I wish that the Dew Elves, as they wander lightly by,
Would bring me a star; for they never grow dim,
And the Father does not need them to burn round him.
The shining drops of dew the Elves bring each day
And place in my bosom, so soon pass away;
But a star would glitter brightly through the long summer...

Now lonely is the wood:
    No flower now lingers, none!
The virgin sisterhood
    Of roses, all are gone;
Now Autumn sheds her latest leaf;
And in my heart is grief.

Ah me, for all earth rears,
    The appointed bound is placed!
After a thousand years
    The great oak falls at last:
And thou, more lovely, canst not stay,
Sweet rose, beyond thy day.

Our life is not the life
    Of roses and of leaves;
Else wherefore this deep strife,
    This pain, our soul conceives?
The fall of ev'n such short-lived things
To us some sorrow brings.

And yet, plant, bird, and fly
    Feel no such hidden fire.
Happy they live; and die
    Happy, with no desire.
They in their brief life have fulfill'd
All Nature in them will'...

I

Here are the orchard trees all large with fruit;
And yonder fields are golden with young grain.
In little journeys, branchward from the nest,
A mother bird, with sweet insistent cries,
Urges her young to use their untried wings.
A purring Tabby, stretched upon the sward,
Shuts and expands her velvet paws in joy,
While sturdy kittens nuzzle at her breast.

O mighty Maker of the Universe,
Am I not part and parcel of Thy World,
And one with Nature?    Wherefore, then, in me
Must this great reproductive impulse lie
Hidden, ashamed, unnourished, and denied,
Until it starves to slow and tortuous death?
I knew the hope of spring-time; like the tree
Now ripe with fruit, I budded, and then bloomed;
We laughed together through the young May morns;

Be of good cheer, brave spirit; steadfastly
Serve that low whisper thou hast served; for know,
God hath a select family of sons
Now scattered wide thro' earth, and each alone,
Who are thy spiritual kindred, and each one
By constant service to, that inward law,
Is weaving the sublime proportions
Of a true monarch's soul. Beauty and strength,
The riches of a spotless memory,
The eloquence of truth, the wisdom got
By searching of a clear and loving eye
That seeth as God seeth. These are their gifts,
And Time, who keeps God's word, brings on the day
To seal the marriage of these minds with thine,
Thine everlasting lovers. Ye shall be
The salt of all the elements, world of the world.

Nothing is better, I well think,
Than love; the hidden well-water
Is not so delicate to drink:
This was well seen of me and her.

I served her in a royal house;
I served her wine and curious meat.
For will to kiss between her brows,
I had no heart to sleep or eat.

Mere scorn God knows she had of me,
A poor scribe, nowise great or fair,
Who plucked his clerk’s hood back to see
Her curled-up lips and amorous hair.

I vex my head with thinking this.
Yea, though God always hated me,
And hates me now that I can kiss
Her eyes, plait up her hair to see

How she then wore it on the brows,
Yet am I glad to have her dead
Here in this wretched wattled house
Where I can kiss her eyes and head.

Nothing is better, I well know,<...

Love has earth to which she clings
With hills and circling arms about,
Wall within wall to shut fear out.
But Though has need of no such things,
For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.

On snow and sand and turn, I see
Where Love has left a printed trace
With straining in the world's embrace.
And such is Love and glad to be
But Though has shaken his ankles free.

Though cleaves the interstellar gloom
And sits in Sirius' disc all night,
Till day makes him retrace his flight
With smell of burning on every plume,
Back past the sun to an earthly room.

His gains in heaven are what they are.
Yet some say Love by being thrall
And simply staying possesses all
In several beauty that Thought fares far
To find fused in another star.

        How swift they go,
        Life's many years,
        With their winds of woe
        And their storms of tears,
And their darkest of nights whose shadowy slopes
Are lit with the flashes of starriest hopes,
And their sunshiny days in whose calm heavens loom
The clouds of the tempest -- the shadows of the gloom!

        And ah! we pray
        With a grief so drear,
        That the years may stay
        When their graves are near;
Tho' the brows of To-morrows be radiant and bright,
With love and with beauty, with life and with light,
The dead hearts of Yesterdays, cold on the bier,
To the hearts that survive them, are evermore dear.

        For the hearts so true
        To each Old Year cleaves;
        Tho' the hand of the New<...

"O Lord, how canst Thou say Thou lovest me?
Me whom thou settest in a barren land,
Hungry and thirsty on the burning sand,
Hungry and thirsty where no waters be
Nor shadows of date-bearing tree: -
O Lord, how canst Thou say Thou lovest me?"

"I came from Edom by as parched a track,
As rough a track beneath My bleeding feet.
I came from Edom seeking thee, and sweet
I counted bitterness; I turned not back
But counted life as death, and trod
The winepress all alone: and I am God."

"Yet, Lord, how canst Thou say Thou lovest me?
For Thou art strong to comfort: and could I
But comfort one I love, who, like to die,
Lifts feeble hands and eyes that fail to see
In one last prayer for comfort - nay,
I could not stand aside or turn away."

"Alas...

She sat in the cottage door, and the fair June moon looked down
On a face as pure as its own, an innocent face and sweet
As the roses dewy white that grow so thick at her feet,
White royal roses, fit for a monarch's crown.

And one is clasped in her slender hand, and one on her bosom lies,
And two rare blushing buds loop up her light brown hair,
Ah, roses of June, you never looked on a face so white and fair,
Such perfectly moulded lips, such sweet and heavenly eyes.

This low-walled home is dear to her, she has come to it to-day
From the lordly groves of her palace home afar,
But not to stay; there's a light on her brow like the light of a star,
And her eyes are looking beyond the earth, far, far away.

She was born in this cottage home, the sweetest rosebud of sp...

Eve must have wept to leave her flowers,
And plucked some roots to tell
Of Eden's happy, sinless bowers,
Where she in bliss did dwell.

Roses and lilies, pansies gay,
Violets with azure eyes,
Her favorites must have been, for they
Seem born in paradise.

And when they drooped, did she not sigh
And kiss their petals fair,
Thinking, "Alas, ye too must die
And in our sorrow share"?

And then perhaps unto her soul
This answer sweet was given,
"Like you we fade and perish here;
For you we'll bloom in heaven."

Roses and lilies are the type
Of him who from above,
The lamb of God, gave up his life,
A sacrifice of love.

He was her hope in those sad hours
Of blight and sure decay;
The sin that drove her from her f...

Do not ask me, the name of my love
I fear for you, from the fragrance of perfume
contained in a bottle, if you smashed it,
drowning you, in spilled scent

By God, if you even croaked a letter,
Lilacs would pile up on the paths

Do not look for it here in my chest
I have left it to run with the sunset

You can see it in the laughter of doves
In the flutter of butterflies
In the ocean, in the breathing of dales
and in the song of every nightingale
in the tears of winter, when winter cries
in the giving of a generous cloud

Do not ask about his lips...as elegant as the sunset
And his eyes, a shore of purity
And his waist, the sway of a branch
Charms...which no book has contained
Nor described by a literate's feather
And his ches...

    A prayer of love, O Father!
    A fair and flowery way
    Life stretches out before these
    On this their marriage day.
    O pour Thy choicest blessing,
    Withhold no gift of Thine,
    Fill all their world with beauty
    And tenderness divine!

    A prayer of love, O Father!
    This holy love and pure,
    That thrills the soul to rapture,
    O may it e'er endure!
    The richest of earth's treasures,
    The gold without alloy,
    The flower of faith unfading,
    The full, the perfect joy!

    No mist of tears or doubting,
    But in their steadfast eyes
    The light divine, the light of love,
    The light of Paradise.
    A prayer of love, O Father!
    A prayer of love to Thee,
    God's best be th...

When I am dead, and all will soon forget
My words, and face, and ways --
I, somehow, think I'll walk beside thee yet
Adown thy after days.

I die first, and you will see my grave;
But child! you must not cry;
For my dead hand will brightest blessings wave
O'er you from yonder sky.

You must not weep; I believe I'd hear your tears
Tho' sleeping in a tomb:
My rest would not be rest, if in your years
There floated clouds of gloom.

For -- from the first -- your soul was dear to mine,
And dearer it became,
Until my soul, in every prayer, would twine
Thy name -- my child! thy name.

You came to me in girlhood pure and fair,
And in your soul -- and face --
I saw a likeness to another there
In every trace and grace.

You c...