[Illustration: JULIA CARTER ALDRICH,
(PETRESIA PETERS.)]
HAZEL BLOOM,
BY
JULIA CARTER ALDRICH.
(PETRESIA PETERS.)
_Mother! O, holy music in the sound_
_Of that dear word—Mother! O, visions sweet_
_That crowd the mind and thickly cluster round,_
_To drive out tempting wiles, and leave replete_
_The soul’s most lofty plans, and purest thought!_
* * * * *
_Could man have known the part divine, repressed_
_Through youthful life, for noblest womanhood,_
_When she should pass to dear maternity—_
_Had he the Christ, in Mother, rightly known,_
_Kind Heaven had spared the pains of Calvary._
_Through her the first of Heavenly love is shown—_
_Through her, first glimpses caught of Christ, of God._
_B. F. Aldrich._
[Illustration]
BUFFALO:
CHARLES WELLS MOULTON,
1899.
COPYRIGHT BY
JULIA CARTER ALDRICH.
1899.
_In memory of that sainted one,
My Mother,
This volume is inscribed to the
Mothers—
The Home-makers of our land,
By one who has known
The breadth and depth
Of maternal hope and joy—
Whose soul has continually drank,
Thro’ all the years of
Motherhood,
From that well-spring of
Blessing—
Unfailing, filial devotion._
_J. C. A._
INDEX.
The Weaver 9
Mystery 11
In Childhood’s Years 14
In the City of Suffering 15
Heliotrope 18
Constancy 20
Estranged 22
My Inkstand 25
History of One Life 26
Evening 27
Rondeaux 29
Solace of the Flowers 30
Regret 32
Hazel Bloom 35
Life’s Shuttle 38
Springtime 40
For Insomnia 42
Mother 45
Eoline’s Dream 48
Our Own 52
Wounded Faith 55
Destiny 57
Unclaimed 60
Death 61
Night-Blooming Cereus 64
My Muse 66
We Never Know 68
A June in Childhood 70
Goldenrod 74
An Evening in June 75
Yosemite 77
Blight or Blessing 80
O, For a Rainy Day 82
The Great Poet 83
Love’s Riches 88
Complainings 90
Questionings 92
Persecuted 94
O, Kindly Speak 96
He is Risen 97
The Christ 99
Feed My Lambs 102
The Kingdom of Heaven 103
Supplication 106
The Portrait 107
Out in the Woods 109
Unforgiven 112
The Evening and the Morning 114
The Unseen 116
Painting 117
The Christian’s Armor 120
To My Friend 121
Hill-Crest Home 124
Lilies of the Valley 135
Pearly Shells 138
Courage 140
Trailing Arbutus 141
Encouragement 145
Faith 147
Nirvana 149
Heredity 150
Pebbles 152
Words 157
Mother 159
Hands 161
Endymion 163
Calypso—The Lover’s Pocket 167
What is Love 171
Sleighing 173
First Love 175
Man 176
Trust of Childhood 177
Alone 180
Night 183
Disappointment 185
Love’s Ideal 186
A Legend of the Lily 187
To James Newton Mathews 190
The Great Hereafter 191
Late October 195
On the Beach 198
Hidden 200
My Robins are Gone 202
Winterbloom 204
The Old Home 206
Thought 209
Columbus 212
HAZEL BLOOM
The Weaver.
With warm desire to please the captious ones,
Whose fervency the finished fabric suns,
With ardent conjurations she besought
The thronging sprites, that feed the loom of thought,
To gather shining woof, from climes afar—
From lands where all things bright and wondrous are—
To seek the dame whose tireless hand doth hold
The distaff yielding threads of fine spun gold,
And bring the gathered treasures in to her,
All sweet with far-fetched frankincense and myrrh:
Instead of quest in distant lands for woof
From near they brought, and with it sharp reproof.
“The glow and flame of thy desire
Is lit by an unholy fire.
We bring thee shreds for needs of life
With which its ways are ever rife;
Weave these as we shall bring them in
(None leads with Lotus-charm to sin)
And when the web falls from thy care,
Who needs takes self-apportioned share.
If one is girt by it for storm,
Or one lone home, made glad and warm—
If one bruised heart finds through it balm,
One groping soul, up-lifting psalm,
Then, thank thy God that thou hast wrought
The humble shreds that we have brought.”
Mystery.
All the earth’s history
Is mingled with mystery;
Thrid its long pathways thro’ Time’s gathered pages,
Struggle with theories,—delve as you will,
Wrapped in uncertainty, mystery still,
Baffling the lore of philosophy’s sages.
Wishes ungratified,
Longings unsatisfied;
Search is untiring and effort is eager,
Reaching for aye for the far, unattained,
Feeling the spirit to narrowness chained,—
All we may know, to the unknown is meager.
Yet, human pomposity,
Rich in verbosity,
Leads us afar, thro’ the limitless spaces,
Parting so boldly the cometal robes,
Shows us their bodies, as infantile globes,
Sportively seeking maturity’s places.
It measures Infinity,
Questions Divinity—Talks
of the universe at its inception;
Theory, feeling the pulse of the Earth,
Tells us how long since the planet had birth
And when we may look for its utter disruption.
Yet LIFE’S remote decimal—
The infinitesimal,
Puzzles the agnost for Nature’s great mother;
Never a blade without fertilized germ,—
Never a seed without blossoming term,—
Each is a subsequent unto the other.
* * * * *
Most wondrous, mysterious,
Throned and imperious,
Mind, in the beautiful temple of Being,
Rules o’er its realm with absolute sway
Till, broken and crumbling, the structure of clay,
Then swift on the wings of the silences fleeing.
Thought, strained to intensity,
Ranging immensity,
Asks for their home—for the spirit’s bright heaven;
A speck in the universe—our little earth,
’Mong millions, all grander and greater of girth—
Will God’s central glory to _this_ one be given?
Ah! Safely He has hidden it,
From earth-gaze forbidden it:
Humbled and weary the bold Thought, returning,
Nestles down closer to God’s written word;
By grief’s parching thirst its sweet fountains are stirred;
Its pages yield balm that will soothe the heart’s yearning.
There, Heaven comes near to us,—
Those who were dear to us,
Safe in its mansions—we’ll question not where,—
Live in the light of an Infinite Love!
Faith sweetly whispers—“They beckon above,—
The loved ones, who’ve left us, are waiting us there.”
The hidden earth-histories—
The sought-after mysteries
Are veiled, but in blessing;—we seek for them ever;
Wisdom hath woven this mystical bond,
Binding the soul to God’s greater Beyond,
Enlarging, enriching, thro’ constant endeavor.
In Childhood’s Years.
In childhood’s years, what dreamy days
In spring’s soft airs or autumn’s haze!
How golden bright the sunset skies
Where just beyond our heaven lies!
Each dawn the sun has merry plays
With Rosy-mist, who veils his rays
To shield us from his glory blaze,
While she paints morn such lovely dyes
In Childhood’s years.
We tread but joy-lit, sunny ways,
Nor dream of dread, that is decay’s:—
No sorrow comes but quickly flies—
No love is known that cools and dies—
No crafty selfishness betrays
In childhood’s years.
In the City of Suffering.[1]
In the city of suffering souls grow large,
And money-greed languishing lies;
’Neath the hurrying feet, of God’s messengers there,
That pompous, old Selfishness dies:
Ambition, so eagerly climbing to heights
Where glory, alone, is the prize,
Forgets his wild dreams at the shriek of distress
And goes where Humanity cries.
In the city of suffering, sympathies blend
As valley rills, blend in a stream;
The high, and the low, all forgetful of rank,
Are thrilled by calamity’s scream.
There Wealth’s jeweled hand and the toil-hardened palm,
Have neither a preference in claim,
But agony ardently stretching them forth,
Makes common appeal, in His name.
In the city of suffering hearts grow warm—
Aye, flame in the darkness of woe;
The spark God gave, from His infinite love,
Neath the hot breath of pain is aglow.
There, swift to the rescue, goes valorous strength,
Surprising the world with his deeds—
There, Courage will struggle with death for a life,
While yielding his own up, if needs.
In the city of Suffering, Avarice hides
In the gloomy old vault with his gold,
Nor dares to meet Charity’s love-lighted face,
His own is so pitiless and cold;
There, cowardice, envy—all drosses of soul
In the crucial test are consumed—
Dark altars, once glowing with brotherly love,
In the shadow of sorrow, relumed.
The city of Suffering is Heaven’s wide door
For victims its horrors enthrall;
E’en martyrs have sung when the fagots blazed high—
So ever He heareth our call;
And those who, with fellow-love prompting their deeds,
Fought there, with the mounting flame fiends,
Have wrought in the plan, for ennobling the world,
With God’s own, mysterious means.
In the city of Suffering souls break the bonds
That indolent selfishness forged in the womb,
And lives, that were dwarfed by their mammon-cut groove,
Find growth in Love’s labor, and sunshine in gloom.
When raven-winged Sorrow sweeps over the land,
An angel attends where its shadow may fall,
And, out from its darkness, brings heavenly light,
And faith, in the Wisdom, that’s over us all.
[1] “There was a puff—a muffled roar, and the tower was literally rent by
an explosion. A moment later the flames burst out thro’ every rent and
fissure, and the men, away up there, in mid air, fighting the fire, were
cut off from the world below, by an outpour of smoke and flame, soon to
become a mighty conflagration.”
Heliotrope.
There’s a charm in its fragrance bewitchingly sweet—
A something that binds with a magical spell;
E’en silence, thro’ this, to the heart can repeat
The message that’s sent in its purple fringed cell.
’Tis an odorous breath, from the heavenly heights—
An angel hand, beckoning to the bloom scented fields,
Where the soul in its freedom may taste the delights
That the garden of Paradise yields.
Like childhood’s sweet dreams of the holy and true,
That float thro’ Life’s dusk in the ether of Thought,
Or morn’s rosy blush, melting into the blue,
With tint of the beryl and amethyst caught.
’Tis an exquisite messenger, given the heart,
That winsomely speaks to the spirit, alone,
And whatever sentiment sent, will impart—
Will tell it so sweetly, in language its own.
When souls must needs pass thro’ Grief’s wordless abyss,
Then heart unto heart, through it, uttereth speech—
The sympathy, seeking expression through this,
Is told with a tenderness words never reach.
If you’ve aught that’s too sacred for words to express,
Too tender to breathe in a wish or a hope,
’Twill be fittingly draped in the delicate dress,
And borne in the perfume of HELIOTROPE.
Constancy.
The Fates have decreed thou canst never be mine,
Yet, constant, my soul turneth ever to thine
With love that outreaches Time’s cruel decree.
Too holy the passion with others to name—
Thoughts deepest and purest feed ever the flame,
That burns on the altar, kept sacred to thee.
As ocean in silence embosoms the light
That beams from the gems in the crown of the night,
Yet dimming its purity never,
So thou, in my bosom a presence shalt be,
As stars shining down in the depths of the sea—
Unsullied thy brightness forever.
Like a verdure-girt spring in the wide desert plains—
Like the stroke, bringing freedom, by the riving of chains,
Aye, Life’s every essence of pleasure
Had been love’s requital, that long ago morn;
Still ever I’ll count, (yet this rose has its thorn)
Having loved, though I lost, as a treasure.
* * * * *
Tho’ hopes were all blighted that haloed my youth,
And withered the flowers I deemed rooted in truth,—
Tho’ sunshine will brighten no morrow,
Yet never accusing’s deep bitterness stirs
The heart, that would only pour joy into her’s,
And the tenderest soothing for sorrow.
Her spirit dwelt ever in dreamy ideal,
While mine was so earthy and chained to the real,
With the heavens all brazen above me:—
All nature to hers echoed hymnings divine,
While doubts of a future, stirred ever in mine—
No marvel she never could love me.
But somehow, with Destiny’s mystical skein,
My love has entangled my infidel brain
And bound it with hope, to a heaven;
I dream of a sphere, we may find beyond this
Where—blessed fruition! life’s coveted bliss
To the purified soul will be given.
Estranged.
O, to be near to you!—Oh, to be dear to you!—
To feel in my heart, that your heart is my own.
All days have been dreary—my soul is aweary,
And still, must I walk in this dark way alone?
O, fond was my dreaming, when hope’s star was beaming,
When fancy’s bright web like a mantle of gold,
Lay over life’s losses—its trials and crosses,
And hid them, in splendors, of fold upon fold.
I thought then to follow (Oh, heartless and hollow!)
Where Fashion’s throng led, and to kneel where it knelt—
Thought Love’s nectared chalice was found in a palace—
In princely halls only, true happiness dwelt.
But Fashion’s vile brew, is of wormwood and rue—
It prays where the virtues are trampled and dead—
The bane we thought gladness, has led to this madness;
Dissipation came in, and the Peace-angel fled.
No wandering emotion e’er sullied devotion,
But anger’s hot lava my reason o’erran;
In the coolness of pride, (that love’s fervor belied)
The sorrows and pangs of estrangement began.
Be rashness forgiven, bring back to us heaven—
Our Eden-like home, with its love-lighted skies;
Tho’ parted forever, affection dies never—
’Tis knit into life with indissoluble ties.
The rills that have mingled, can never be singled—
They’ll flow on as one in their course to the sea;
By love, early plighted, our souls were united,
And ever—forever united must be.
Entwining each thought—with tenderness fraught—
Is loving, enduring remembrance of thee,
And, deep in your heart, in its holiest part,
I know there’s a hidden affection for me.
Shall life be all nighted—Love’s flame ne’er be lighted,
While I—by its altar with ashes o’er strewn—
Must ever remember thro’ constant December,
The balmy bright days and the roses of June?
O, desert, Sahara!—Oh, waters of Marah!
I tread the hot sands—press the fount with my lips—
In sorrow, go roaming, thro’ the shadowy gloaming
That falls, o’er a life, with love’s sun in eclipse.
My Inkstand.
This new one is thought both convenient and nice—
The atmosphere forcing the ink to the brim;
I question the worth of this modern device,
For seldom great thoughts on the surface will swim,
But something like whales, when they find themselves sought,
Down, swiftly from sight, in the depths they will sink—
At the bottom, the angled for ideas are caught,
And only by multiplied thrusts in the ink.
1855.
History of One Life.
Its morning dawned thro’ penury’s narrow pane—
A noon of wealth, with glory’s laurel crown—
Human weakness—one mistake—a felon’s stain—
The evening gloomed with all his fellow’s frown.
Evening.
Vermillion and gold
In beauty unfold
On the light, floating clouds of the West;
The low, crooning sound
Of all Nature around
Is lulling the world into rest.
Like a rover of Sin
The zephyr steals in
’Mong roses and carnations rare—
In ecstatic bliss
Gives each one a kiss,
Then scatters their sweets on the air.
In the shadowy hush
The linnet and thrush
Have gone to their nests in the grove;
The blue pimpernell
To the lilly’s wee bell
Is whispering his story of love.
Blest hour of delight
That verges the night,
What beauties and glories are thine,
When the great car of day
With its din rolls away,
And silence seems Presence divine.
Now the sparkle of dew
And the rich violet hue
Of the fast purpling clouds of the West,
Hint of time’s rapid flight
And of life’s coming night
That shall lull into heavenly rest.
Rondeaux.
A brilliant thought leaps out and glows,
Or scatters fragrance like the rose,
Nor needs an artizan’s design
To plan and shape to make it shine,—
Not all is brilliance in rondeaux.
The labored effort plainly shows
The mind has passed thro’ mighty throes
To give the world, with stamp divine,
A brilliant thought.
The music wins which sweetly flows,
Not that which falls like stunning blows,
And ease and grace, with sense combine,
To clothe with elegance the line,
Where Genius gives, in verse or prose,
A brilliant thought.
Solace of the Flowers.
Oft a deep, unspoken anguish
In the secret soul is stirred,
And the wounded heart, though yearning
For a kindly, loving word,
Opens not its sacred portal,
For the arts of friendly healing—
Only God is told the sorrow,
Through a mute-lipped, sad appealing.
“I am with you”—seems responded,
From the hush of Nature’s bowers,
And the spirit feels God nearer
Where He’s strewn the earth with flowers;
Nature’s language, rich with blessing,
For its unobtrusive words,
Speaks through softly murm’ring streamlets,
And the low, sweet trill of birds.
E’en a tiny, bruised allyssum,
Or a trampled mignonette,
Teach the heart, by sweet example,
That ’tis better to forget.
Like the touch of seraph pinions,
Or a faintly whispered hope,
Is the charm of perfume floating
From a hidden heliotrope.
Ah! there’s soothing for the spirit
Where the humid coolness lingers,
Where the breezes touch us gently
With their dainty, fairy fingers,—
Where the woodland nymphs are gliding,
Noiseless, o’er the mosses bright,
Spreading Sylva’s vestal altar
With a cloth of violets white.
All these tiny, fragrant flowers
Speak to us in tender tone,
Gently winning us from sorrow
With a language all their own;
Little beauties, sent in blessing,—
In our pathway angels strew them,
That we hear, when joy is shrouded,
Loving voices whisper through them.
Regret.
“—if only it never had been
All the world had been brighter and then—”
Will a hope never throb, but it comes back a sob,
From the echoing halls of the soul?
Do the joy-bells stirred, by a low thrilling word,
Forever resound with a funeral toll?
Will the roses we grasp, like the bite of an asp,
Give back to our sense but the stinging of pain?
Can there float a perfume, from the lillies’ white bloom,
That blends with enchantment Tofana’s slow bane?
Where but flowers were sown, has a thistle seed blown,
To root in their soil, a vile bramble to grow?
Doth each lovliest vine, ’round a hyssop entwine?
And out from sweet fountains must bitterness flow?
Does there lurk in each joy, a vile fiend to destroy
All the pleasure and blessing it brought,
With the stings of regret, as with thorns thickly set,
That will pierce, as it turns, every retrospect thought?
Ay, there’s never a spot, where this demon is not;
Like a serpent he creeps in this Eden of ours,
Where its pleasures are purest, its treasures securest,
And blights with his poison its loveliest flowers.
But we’ll act for the right, as God gives us the light,
Nor complain that the end from our vision is veiled;
’Twas in blessing and love, that the Father above,
Secured us from loss that prevision entailed.
In mercy, dear Father, still veil from our sight,
The dawn of a joy, or a grief’s brooding night,
That we faint not, expecting the gathering gloom,
Nor cease in the strife that ennobles the life,—
That we cloud not our joys with a shadowy tomb,
Nor a heart ever miss the delectable bliss,
Of a sweet, unexpected delight.
Hazel Bloom.
When paths that in summer were fringed with lush grass,
Are raspy with frost-whitened blades as you pass,
When the arbor’s denuded of clusters and leaves,
And the Ivy’s bare vines are entwining the eaves,
When the bright tinted sumach has changed to a brown
And the wind-shaken forest drops summer wealth down—
The autumn’s rich robings of crimson and gold
In the path of the years, to be trampled as mould—
When the beauty of purple-hued asters is shed,
And the glory of goldenrod faded and dead,
When the song-birds, we loved for their jubilant tune,
Have gone where they find a perennial June,
When clouds that were downy on the summer’s bright blue,
Have draped all the skies in a somberly hue,
When the orchard has yielded its riches of fruit,
And its life-feeding myst’ry is hid in the root—
The Aftermath gathered—the last sheaves of grain—
When Nature seems all in a funeral train,
Then Hazel buds burst thro’ their scales into bloom,
And glow like the stars that rob midnight of gloom.
When brooklets, unfettered, went leaping in glee,
O’er rocks and thro’ woodlands, adown to the sea—
When the bloom-time of Spring, in its glory, was here,
And earth all resounding with music and cheer,
When asphodels loaded with fragrance the air
And vied with the roses in loveliness rare,
Witch-Hazel, from Nature, seemed standing apart,
The wee, golden buds were asleep in its heart,
And sunshine and shower besought it, in vain,
To star, with its bloom, Flora’s garlanded fane.
Oh, marvel of beauty—bright blossoms of gold!
They show us the life leafless branches enfold.
’Tis the flower of hope with this lesson of cheer—
’Tis the season of rest, not “The death of the year,”
When, Nature, reposing in the bosom of God,
Feels the throb of His heart ’neath her snow-mantled sod—
At the soul of All-life with new life is imbued—
At the Fountain of Beauty, enriched and renewed.
* * * * *
Aye, symbol of Hope and the star gleam of Faith,
That give to Life’s autumn a glow—
A spirit revealed, while the seeming of Death
Lies palled in the brown leaves below.
A mission it has that was given of Him
Who gave it its blossoming time;
Thus blooming alone—desolation around,
Defying the glittering rime,
It speaks to the soul—’tis an oracle sweet,
His token, His promise and bond
That, tho’ passing thro’ change that leads down thro’ the tomb,
There’s a beautiful Springtime beyond.
Life’s Shuttle.
The Shuttle went flying
With sympathy sighing,
While it shot all the gold weft with threadings of woe.
There was murmured complaining,
The Shuttle arraigning—
That grief, with the joy, was unwound in the throw.
A whispered regretting:—
“No blessing forgetting,
God knoweth thy needs—it is His to bestow:—
From LOVE I’m receiving
The woof I am weaving.”
The Shuttle’s reproof was subduing and low,
And, blent with Time’s beating,
I heard it repeating
The lesson it taught in love’s tenderest flow.
Aye, softly it chanted this simple refrain—
“’Tis wisdom that mingles the sorrow and pain.
The sunlight, that gilds, with its glory the earth,
Would blight with its blaze, but for clouds and the rain,
And lives would be arid and smitten with dearth
If beamed on forever with joy and mirth—
_In blessing I weave in the sorrow and pain_.”
Springtime.
When meadows are strewn with the buttercup’s gold,
There’s gladness for childhood that song never told;
The laugh of a child, bubbling up from the heart,
Is linked with the spring, a most beautiful part.
A bevy of children—sweet far away dream!—
They trip o’er the sward, lit with dandelion gleam—
We’ll join in their sports with a heartiness true;
Our own vanished springtime, with them, we’ll renew.
The woods, (that are reached by a romp thro’ the lane
Where the grass is made velvet by sunshine and rain)
Have infinite beauty, in blossom outspread—
Delights for the gods in the fragrance they shed.
Come, drink in the perfume of blossoming trees—
Take lessons of patience from murmuring bees,
And listen to brooklets—they’ll sing you a song
As, wild in their glee, they go leaping along.
Come, watch the wild birds as they cheerily dart—
Their music, with sunshine, take into your heart—
Let the gladness of childhood thrill you, and be gay,
Thus keeping your soul in perpetual May.
When Nature is robing her forests anew,
And heaven spreads over her loveliest blue—
When earth is aglow with spring’s ravishing bloom,
Ingratitude only sits shrouded in gloom.
For Insomnia.
When Somnus is giddy and flies from my pillow,
And care’s elfin throngs come to vex me—
When mem’ry, perverse, all the sweet things forgetting,
Will mention but those that perplex me,
I ask that monotony’s rigid insistence
Shall drive out the gibberous crew;
They flee from his presence—will hie back to elfland,
Where their Night shade and astrofell grew—
Ask thought for a theme that’s subduing in power—
The sea, with its billows all hushed to a calm—
Not mantled with darkness, but lit with the sunset,
When Day, unto Evening, is chanting her psalm.
All life’s petty griefs in the grandeur evanish,
The spirit is freed from its thrall,
And unto the faint heart a trustfulnesss whispers,
“Be brave—there’s a God over all.”
* * * * *
In fancy I launch on the shimmering sea
That’s lighting with glory its waters for me;
Like a sprite of the ocean the boat seems to glide,
As lightly the oars dip the opaline tide,
Till out in expanses, afar from the shore,
Away from life’s din and tumultuous roar
Where, gently I’m rocked on the breast of the deep,
While symphonic waves woo the Lethe of Sleep.
A broad, shining pathway is westward unrolled—
I watch the bright wavelets, with tresses of gold,
Run out in wild play to the visual rim
Where the sky bends to kiss them in distance so dim,
Till thought is enchanted—anxiety flees,
And weariness slips into somnolent ease;
The silences seem to have rhythmical beat—
’Tis footfalls of wakefulness, now in retreat.
Forgetfulness softly creeps into the mind,
Suspecting no trace of resistance to find,
But wakefulness turns back, commands and forbids—
Yet, Slumber steals past her and touches the lids;
Then Morpheus bears me away in his arms
To his realm that’s swept of all fears and alarms
Where, lulled with his stupors, of poppy and rose,
I dreamily, dreamily sink to repose.
Mother.
When evening falls softly, with far away dreaming,
Oft steals o’er my spirit a rapturous seeming—
I feel the light touch of her hand as of old,
When bending above me with good night caresses,
She lovingly pushed back the long heavy tresses,
And smoothed out the tangles of gold.
Touch memory’s harp in the silence of even,
And loved ones will leave e’en the raptures of heaven,
And come to us then when the gates are ajar:
With mother’s face, ever most central and tender,
They light all the Past with a rosy-hued splendor
And the soul’s secret chamber’s unbar.
From hidden recesses they bring out its treasures—
Among them are shining youth’s dream-lighted pleasures,
When mother-love blent with, and hallowed them all;
The haunts that the years with their sunsets have gilded,
The castles of beauty that child-fancy builded,
All come in the gloaming at memory’s call.
’Twas down by the river, where bluebells were sweetest
And swift-footed hours forever ran fleetest,
Enthralled by the charm, that I loved most to roam—
To watch where the sunshine and ripple wove wimples,
Like smiles, on a rosy face, dancing with dimples,
Forgetful of duty till mother called home.
Right-angled with the river-bank’s water-worn ledges
The forest and farm knit their raveled-out edges,
In a brambled rail-fence. From the pasture’s green field,
Thro’ the edge of the woodland, a path, fringed with mosses
And bushy green tangles with clematis flosses,
Half the charms of the deep wood revealed.
When sunset was tinting each shadowy hollow
’Twas gladness, the kine, from the pasture, to follow
And dream, as I wandered, of fairy and gnome—
To loiter ’mong ferns, with great trees spreading over,
And breathe the perfume of wild roses and clover
Enrapt, until mother called home.
I’m lingering now on the banks of the River—
The sunset of Time on its ripples a-quiver—
How peaceful the flowing—no turmoil or foam—
A luminous mist o’er the landscape is falling—
The evening has come, I hear a voice calling,—
’Tis mother’s voice calling me home.
Eoline’s Dream.
One long day of toil was ending,
And my head was hot with pain
When a thought, akin to envy,
Racing thro’ my throbbing brain,
Muttered to my fevered fancy
“Only wealth has power to please—
Rocking in the lap of riches
Life were fair as summer seas.”
Wealth for me would bridge the ocean,
Open Europe’s storied lore,
Rome and Greece, with art and beauty,
Each would open wide her door;
These my hungering soul had longed for—
Oft they seemed within my clasp,
But like gold beneath the rainbow
They escaped my eager grasp.
How I spurned the homely hangings
That in poverty were wrought,
E’en the couch, whose dingy plushings
Now in weariness I sought.
“Common things,” I said, repining,
“Ne’er for me can blessing hold”;
But the Sun, just then declining,
Flooded all with molten gold.
And a benison, descending
On the wings of closing day,
Soothed and hushed my wild complaining—
Drove the evil sprite away—
Brought before me _my_ possessions,
Richest in the long array,
Wealth of home, where all my dear ones
Make it bright with love, alway.
Lightly drooped the shining fringes
Of the evening’s twilight hour,
While the playful, roving zephyr
Gently kissed each folding flower;
Softly gliding into dreamland
On the sunset’s gilded car,
Soon for me, his golden splendor
Wrapped all objects, near and far.
In his grand effulgent shimmer
“Common things,” grew strangely bright;
And my home became a palace
All resplendent in the light;
E’en the russet garb of labor,
If unstained by deed of shame,
There outshone imperial purple,
With its throne and titled name.
Sweeter than the grand exotics,
Were my lillies, pure and white—
All was beauty—all about me
Whispered to me—“Life is bright,”
And its sweetest flowers are blooming
In the toil-worn paths of earth,
And its purest gems will sparkle
On the brow of honest worth.
Diamonds, oft, are but the tear-drops
Avarice wrings from orphaned trust,
And his gorgeous, gilded trappings
Steal their hues from hearts he’s crushed.
More I saw in raptured dreaming—
Seraphs holding crowns of gold,
Beckoning up the shining pathway
Where the gates of Rest unfold.
Some whose wealth did bow them earthward
Sought for this to enter in,
Others, wearing robes of priesthood,
Thought that these absolved from sin;
But no easier passed the portal,
Those in purple, cowl, or gown;—
He who bore life’s burden’s bravely,
Won the race and wore the crown.
* * * * *
Then a touch of dimpled fingers
Woke my heart with mother-joy—
Golden head upon my bosom—
Tired, sleepy, baby boy
Poured a wealth of love and kisses
On the lips that had complained.
He (sweet angel!—God had sent him)
Quick the demon, Envy, chained.
Our Own.
Not all we name as friends, the soul receives as such,
Nor ever those whose lip-born love weaves smoothest claim;
Those only who, to ours, give genial spirit touch
Can light that hidden shrine with friendship’s holy flame.
’Tis by this sign the friends God made for us are known;
Dear ones! We count their names as precious gems which lie
Within the hearts most sacred place—its very own—
A circlet bright that’s bound by sympathy’s silken tie.
There’s still another bond for which no word is found—
A gift of His, so high the minds extremest reach
Doth fail to find it name, or ontologic bound,
Tho’ undefined—beyond the subtlest grasp of speech,
This wondrous, unseen realm, to spirit sense, remains,
And o’er its lines the soul, to kindred soul, conveys
Joy’s glad, exultant flash, or sorrow’s woeful pains,
Which, thro’ this gift divine, love’s tenderness allays.
* * * * *
’Tis sweet in twilight’s hush, when noisy day has fled
And evening’s azure glows with beauty’s single star—
When roses, gemmed with dew, their richest fragrance shed,
To feel the silence thrill with signals from afar
Feel the thought-lines warmly pulsing with a message from OUR OWN—
To know the call of dear ones, as we know the breath of flowers,
And catch love’s fond impulsion, thro’ this mystic Psychephone,
Trembling on the stillness of the dreamy, evening hours.
Thro’ distance, o’er these subtile, sentient threads of mind,
We feel, by finest sense, our answering heart-beats throb
Till every fluttering, white-winged joy doth find
Response, and every grief a sympathetic sob.
O, blessed bond! It links us to the Life Divine!
Thro’ this our prayers may reach the holy Fount of Love—
The league of kinship which these spirit cords entwine,
By fervent sway of soul, is felt in realms above.
Wounded Faith.
Mine open enemy hath no power to wound—
His poison shafts fall hurtless to the ground;
He may wreak a treach’rous lynx-like deed
And yet will never cause my heart to bleed.
If he should glare on me in hottest hate,
With tiger fierceness, plan the direst fate,
With claws distended, lusting for the roon,
I’d smile and do him kindness over soon,
Or, give a sure nepenthe for his wrath
By silent, strewing favors in his path.
But when those to whom my heart is bound in trust,
With aim concealed, make unexpected thrust,—
When those I’d counted friends, as friends had served,
Whose joy and weal my strongest effort nerved—
If THEY shall stab and gaze with hungry eyes
To catch my wince of pain, ’neath friendship’s guise,
Then, a wound is made, that all the quivering senses feel—
A wound, that only trusted friends could deal;
And, saddest hurt of all, the heart will find,
The same stab struck its faith in human kind.
“Destiny.”
She freighted a thistle-down once with a wish,
And gave to the breeze with her breath;
The Fates were to hold its invisible leash
And, if to be granted ere death,
Bring back, at her will, to her out-reaching hand
This wealth-laden embassy sent.
Unheeding her will and its pleading command,
Up, up toward the zenith it went,
Till will, it would seem, at the last had controlled,
When, earthward it came, like a fairy rigged sail—
Came straight toward the hand that was eager to hold
The zephyr-tossed feather, whose course should unveil
What Destiny held, in the Future concealed—
Life’s weightiest questions decide.
Almost within grasp and it wavered and reeled,
Then, mounting again the etherial tide,
It floated—was lost in the depths of the blue.
That thistle down, swayed by a pulse of the air,
Had wrecked her heart’s hopes on the rocks of despair,
As billows of ocean rich argosies strew.
Now listless and faithless she sits on the shore
Where Time’s restless surge casts its wrack at her feet;
She sees not the sunshine—hears only the roar
Of dark, sullen waves as they ceaselessly beat.
In Fate-ridden weakness she shrinks from all strife—
Lets Destiny’s elves to her fancy repeat
The early “decrees” that have shadowed her life—
No effort essays that might wreak a defeat—
Just waits for the stroke of pale Atropos’ knife.
* * * * *
A faith in the hidden controllings of FATE,
Enchains, with its might, even Reason and Will:
In wreakless inaction her devotees wait
For the slow-turning grind of her mill—Let
circumstance bind them with torturing gyves,
Pass doors that would open to Industry’s keys
And when, with his braided pangs, Poverty drives,
Receive all his lashings as “Fortune’s decrees.”
E’en tho’ Opportunity’s latch-string is out,
They, shelterless, wait for events to compel,
And deem themselves goaded by Destiny’s knout
While held in the toils of her mystical spell.
Credulity, Sloth and their following throngs
Forever are weaving entangling snares—
’Tis not till a victim is bound with their thongs,
To thwart his endeavor that Destiny dares.
Bring WILL to the front—strike Destiny down,
And throttle the Fate that would hinder success—
You’ll find that dame Fortune will put off her frown
And yield, for past sufferings, an ampleredress.
Unclaimed.
Just beyond the reach of thought,
Just beyond the grasp of mind
Is a sense of Presence—fraught
With blessing—felt, yet undefined.
At times it seems a wondrous power—
A strength, awaiting _Faith’s_ command—
For trusting soul, a proffered dower,
That’s held by Love’s omniscient hand.
Is it the gift, reserved of God
For those whom Faith brings nearest Him?—
The power that smote the rock?—the rod
That rives the fountain’s brim,
That all His thirsty souls may drink?
“O, ye of little faith,” He cries—
So many faithless Peters sink,
_And the proffered power dies_.
Death.
When thou, O Death, art come to be the old man’s guest
Who, bowed beneath the heavy weight of toil and years,
So longeth for thy rest,
Or to the weary mother, looking through her tears,
To the bright celestial shore
Where her loved have gone before,
Then, truly, thou art blest.
To them the ties that bound are broken, all,
And they will stretch glad hands of welcome unto thee
Who comes to break their thrall—
To slip the leash of weary life and set them free;
They, impatient, wait release
To pass the golden gates of Peace
And gladly list thy call.
But, in Love’s young home, where Life is one bright, pulsing sea
Of joy and hope, thy summons hath heart-breaking sound,
Like cruel Fate’s decree;
As tho’ alone, by stealth, she had thy gyves unbound,
When thou hadst to this Eden crept
And wrought, while guardian angels slept,
What Envy’s dream might be.
We feel the surging depth of Sorrow’s stifled cry,
Yet in thy presence, helpless, dumb with grief, we stand
And silent question—Why?—
Why budding life is frozen by thine icy hand,
Why yielded to thy devastating claim
Are all the loveliest of earth,—
E’en God’s sweetest, dearest gift of birth—
A mother-love,
Which is for life’s most holy joys, the precious name.
While cloud-depths veil in gloom the steely form of truth,
The heart, athrob with grief, still questions why:—
Ah, why Love’s brightly burning flame
Is ever smothered by thy breath,—
Its altar, dark and cold, whereon dead ashes lie;—
Oh! why are love, and hope, and youth,
All left within thy grasp, O, Death?
Night-Blooming Cereus.
Birth of darkness! bloom of night!
Bringing me such rare delight;
Floating charm, thy rich perfume
Stirs the lagging, weary brain,
Hushes all the thoughts of gloom,
Soothes or dulls the pangs of pain.
This floral wonder, glistening white,
Scorning Day’s broad, glaring light,
In the sacred stillness now
Beams in beauty on my sight,
As the star on evening’s brow
Beams upon a moonless night.
Like a rainbow on the skies,
Looked for, yet a glad surprise—
Like a meteor’s flash and gleam
Crossing midnight’s sullen gloom,
Like the fairy forms of dream
Is this wondrous, starry bloom.
Tell me lovely, mystic flower,
Why you gem this gruesome hour?
Were the jasper gates ajar?
Did the Night, from angel’s crown,
Pluck for us its brightest star,
And cast the gleaming jewel down?
O, thou, pearly, radiant flower!
Why give Night such wealth of dower?
Why with anthers, dipped in gold,
’Round a carpel, rosy red,
Wait in darkness to unfold,
And thy queenly beauty spread?
Now a sentient presence seeming—
Ah! it whispers, or I’m dreaming:
“An evangel I’m to thee,
With this message from the Past;
How e’er full life’s joys may be,
Like my bloom they may not last.
Throngs are gone—the voices stilled
That once these halls with gladness filled;
Here, with thee, I stand alone
Where, before Night’s ebon throne,
Silence holy, waits to bear
From thy heart its inmost cry,
Wrought into such fervent prayer
As doth bring God’s presence nigh.”
My Muse.
She wanders on, at her sweet will,
Thro’ gloomy vales or paths of pleasure,
Nor asks the world if grave, or gay,
Shall be her theme and measure.
She scorns the stilty, stiff Rondeau
That artizans must fashion,
But loves the brooklets romping flow
And Nature’s gush of passion.
Tho’ common use has smoothly worn
The Sonnet’s polished fetter,
She wonders how its chains are borne
When freedom’s range is better.
The triolet she never tries—
She’d lose in such endeavor
The glory of the sunset skies,
The music of the river.
My muse is not a Hellenese
With bright, Olympian halo,
But that strong, helpful one, that feels
The heart-throbs of her fellow.
She lifts me from the slough, Despond—
Bids Nature hush my sighing
By crooning for me sweetest song,
While in her bosom lying.
The violets, the Spring first kissed,
To us, are sweet as heather—
We climb the hills, thro’ shining mist,
In Autumn’s golden weather.
When, Lotus-drugged, Ambition sleeps,
She whispers—“Come up higher”—
Thro’ starry fields of azure deeps
I’m led and feasted by her.
She breaks the locks which golden keys
Could only open to me,
And kindly joins her gift, with Art’s,
Earth’s grandest views to show me.
While those who sing for fame and crown
Must bide the Poet’s tether,
Dear Muse and I will wander down
Thro’ Freedom’s vale, together.
’Tis sweet to us, the path we tread—
All Nature’s song is ours,
Her wildest scenes, the stars o’erhead
And all her fragrant flowers.
We Never Know.
Ah, me! we never know
What cold, wild winds may blow
Across the springtime’s balmy promise, sweet—
By what untimely frost
The fruit germs may be lost,
And rosy petals beaten down with sleet.
The eyes that glow tonight
With childhood’s loving light,
To-morrow may, with pallid lids be veiled—
The bounding pulse be stilled,
Life’s crimson current chilled,
And rich, red lips with Death’s cold kisses paled.
We never know the fate
So near, until too late;
Tho’ oft the black-winged demon’s shadow falls
In heavy gloom upon the heart—
A thousand dreads upstart,
Yet onward, all, until the shock appalls.
Warm love anticipates,
With open arms awaits,
’Till hissing wires the stunning message brings.
Oh, God! the wild despair
That hushes e’en the voice of prayer,
And makes the soul forget all offerings.
Such sudden, crushing grief!
Hope, rising, scouts belief,
But falls down, prone, before the sorrow-flashing wires.
Hear Sympathy’s whispered tone,
Oh, ye, who sit alone,
With but the light of memory’s altar fires.
A June in Childhood.
I stood in the flush of an evening in June
When leafage and blossom and fragrance triune,
Crown this, of the months, the most queenly and fair;
The clover and roses had poured on the air
A nectar I drank with enjoyment rare;
Baptized in this flood of ecstatic delight
My child eyes were blessed with miraculous sight.
O, gladly I’d yield up the wisdom of years,
If gazing out now, thro’ the mist of my tears,
I could think as I tho’t in that beautiful dream,
That the gates were ajar, and the shimmer and gleam
Of golden-paved streets on that silvery stream,
“The River of Life”—shining thro’ in the west,
Gave us a bright glimpse of the home of the blest.
I saw, as I gazed with my dream-lighted eyes,
A broad, gilded stairway let down from the skies,
And angels came out with their robings of white,
All ’broidered and shining with flosses of light,
And bound on each brow with a coronet bright,
Was a veil of soft gossamer, fold upon fold,
With amethyst border, and flutings of gold.
And spread on the sky, to my glorified view,
Was a foam crested ocean, pavillioned with blue;
Bright islands of azure thro’ cloud-rifts were seen,
Then sunk, like Atlantis, in billowy sheen:
While ships, that I fancied from shores evergreen,
Afloat on its bosom, at anchor would ride,
Or cut with their prows thro’ the rose-tinted tide.
Some angels sailed far, where the cloud-waves grew dark,
In boats that were graceful as gondolier’s barque,
And those I tho’t sailing far over the seas
To watch over missions and little Burmese;
Then others swept down, where the glory-crowned trees
Hid them on the stairs, but I knew from that band
Some went to each household, all over the land,
Where children would whisper “I lay me to sleep,
Send angels dear Father, my spirit to keep
Thro’ midnight and darkness, to guard me from harm,
To give me sweet dreams, and to shield from alarm—
To watch me till morning dawns, rosy and warm,
Or, dying before, let them bear me above
To the bosom of Jesus, on pinions of love.”
* * * * *
These memories float in on the fragrance to night,
While sunset is veiling in glory the light,
And seasons, repeating in cyclical rune,
Bring forward in beauty, rose-garlanded June;
All earth seems an altar with flowers o’erstrewn—
’Tis Nature’s thank offering—my heart is in tune
With her grand _De Profundis_, now rolling in praise;
Send angels, dear Father, a grown-up child prays,
And a rose-wreathed June for my sunset of days.
Goldenrod.
O, Goldenrod, bright goldenrod!
It fringes all the wayside hedges,
And makes the forest mantle rich
With lovely tasseled edges.
It lights with sunshine of its own
Each dark, neglected dingle,
And links itself with memories of
The cheery, old-time ingle.
Despite the summer’s burning drought,
It blooms profuse and bright as ever,
And where spring fountains rippled forth
With laughter to the river,
It kisses now their parching lips
To woo their music mellow,
And wreaths our dying flowers with
An aureole of yellow.
It gaily lifts its nodding plumes
Above decay’s inceptive traces,
And hides beneath its cloth-of-gold
The season’s fading graces.
Bright goldenrod! ’tis autumn’s crown
And summer’s sunset glory—
Each blooming-time is new with joy
As Love’s old charming story.
An Evening in June.
Glory won ’gainst beauty’s brush in painting sunset skies,
But paling now, upon the hills in rosy languor lies:
All breathing life, with her, seems panting for a cooling breeze,
For winds have stopped ’mid ocean isles, to toss the gleaming spray
And spicy odors rich, along the golden path of day;
And motionless, awaiting Beauty’s Star, stand all the trees,
While Erse, from her stores, besprinkles earth with gems,
From mantling robes of green, to flower-broidered hems.
But mortals, restless aye, will burden all life’s golden hours
With low complainings, forgetting bounty’s blessing showers,
Impatient, beg the _one_ withheld for other days and needs,
Nor see the plan inwoven, that the world’s wide hunger feeds;
Nor ken the flashes on the sultry air, above the plain,
Are the wings of ripening angels, sweeping o’er the grain.
Yosemite.
With humbled heart, subdued and awed I look on thee,
Thou time-defying granite pile; with senses rapt
Behold thee, grand and world-renowned—YOSEMITE—
Thy spray-enwreathing stream—
Thy rock-walled vale and sunset clouds, all glory capped
With evanescent gleam.
Aye, gaze and wondering gaze, until the centuries swing
Their massive doors ajar, and glimpses give when Earth was young;
But farthest grasp of human thought but weakling reasons bring
To solve thy problem vast;
In vain the Present asks the voiceless silences that hung
Their mysteries o’er the Past—
The far, dim Past, that wrapped our sphere in shoreless sea—
The mantling gloom, that swathed its infancy in mist,
While yet our central orb did wait Omnipotent decree
To bless the world with Light—
Ere Day’s first, smiling morn with rosy beams had kissed
Away the brooding night.
What engine wrought in Nature’s great completing plan
To ope for thee thy chasm’s broad, abysmal deeps?
Was it the glacier’s ponderous plow, that smoothed for man
The verdant, fertile plain,
Or, rolling waters that thro’ circling eons, wore thy steeps
With solemn, sad refrain?—
Or from Earth’s central fires, did fierce, volcanic throes
Expel, in molten mass, the elemental rock,
That o’er the wilds to mountain majesty arose,
And while yet warm with throbbing strain,
Did earthquake rend with pole-disturbing shock,
Thy mighty walls amain?
O, puny mind! be still and catch the chant sublime,
Of Nature’s psalm, that here is poured in never ending praise;
Accept the truth that God, by His right hand, did raise
These templed rocks, to stand thro’ an eternity of time,
An altar place of worship, where
All nations come, and every heart an offering lays
Of mingled praise and prayer.
Blight, or Blessing.
“But saddest is the tho’t of joys
That never yet were tasted.”—John Hay.
And yet the heart will never turn,
Tho’ all its wealth beside were wasted—
’Twill never cease to plead and yearn
For joys it covets, yet untasted:
And at its secret altar kneeling,
Whereon the life an offering lies,
The soul will lift its one appealing
For joy that Wisdom still denies.
It watches for the longed-for beaming
With hidden, cherished, fond delight,
As tho’ the hoping, wishing, dreaming
Could make the shadowed pathway bright;
As tho’ from out some shining mist,
By radiant bow of promise kissed,
That joy might come, to bless it yet
And soothe the pain of long regret.
Tho’ at our feet fall blessing showers,
All worthless in our grasp they seem,
De-gloried, as are withered flowers,
If still denied the soul’s fond dream.
For lack of it—that single joy,—
The life is robbed of sweet employ;
Each cup seems blent with Upas drips,
Each day seems gloomed with cold eclipse.
Sweet sleep will sometimes give the boon,—
Possession’s own supreme delight,—
Oh, sad that Day dissolves so soon
The bright, warm vision—gift of Night!
Brief joy! The rapturous dream diffused,
Swims round the soul like golden mist,
And life a moment seems suffused
With dawn’s own rose and amethyst.
And shall it be,—this sorest need—
To us, eternal, haunting loss?
Or will this spirit-hunger lead
Up, from this life-enduring cross,
With sentience large, evolved by this,
(When change the mortal veil shall rift,)
To take our own supremest bliss
From God’s infinitudes of gift?
O, For a Rainy Day.
BY REQUEST.
These days are hot, and dry, and dreary;
The burning sun seems never weary
The vine lies limp on the thirsty earth—
The grass grows sere in the long, long dearth—
The days are dusty, hot and dreary.