Great Poems by American Women
Page 5
To Edgar Allan Poe
If thy sad heart, pining for human love,
In its earth solitude grew dark with fear,
Lest the high Sun of Heaven itself should prove
Powerless to save from that phantasmal sphere
Wherein thy spirit wandered,—if the flowers
That pressed around thy feet, seemed but to bloom
In lone Gethsemanes, through starless hours,
When all who loved had left thee to thy doom,—
Oh, yet believe that in that hollow vale
Where thy soul lingers, waiting to attain
So much of Heaven’s sweet grace as shall avail
To lift its burden of remorseful pain,
My soul shall meet thee, and its Heaven forego
Till God’s great love, on both, one hope, one Heaven bestow.
To—
Vainly my heart had with thy sorceries striven:
It had no refuge from thy love,—no Heaven
But in thy fatal presence;—from afar
It owned thy power and trembled like a star
O’erfraught with light and splendor. Could I deem
How dark a shadow should obscure its beam?—
Could I believe that pain could ever dwell
Where thy bright presence cast its blissful spell?
Thou wert my proud palladium;—could I fear
The avenging Destinies when thou wert near?—
Thou wert my Destiny;—thy song, thy fame,
The wild enchantments clustering round thy name,
Were my soul’s heritage, its royal dower;
Its glory and its kingdom and its power!
Sonnet V
On our lone pathway bloomed no earthly hopes:
Sorrow and death were near us, as we stood
Where the dim forest, from the upland slopes,
Swept darkly to the sea. The enchanted wood
Thrilled, as by some foreboding terror stirred;
And as the waves broke on the lonely shore,
In their low monotone, methought I heard
A solemn voice that sighed, “Ye meet no more.”
There, while the level sunbeams seemed to burn
Through the long aisles of red, autumnal gloom,—
Where stately, storied cenotaphs inurn
Sweet human hopes, too fair on Earth to bloom,—
Was the bud reaped, whose petals pure and cold
Sleep on my heart till Heaven the flower unfold.
The Morning-Glory
When the peach ripens to a rosy bloom,
When purple grapes glow through the leafy gloom
Of trellised vines, bright wonder, thou dost come,
Cool as a star dropt from night’s azure dome,
To light the early morning, that doth break
More softly beautiful for thy sweet sake.
Thy fleeting glory to my fancy seems
Like the strange flowers we gather in our dreams;
Hovering so lightly o’er the slender stem,
Wearing so meekly the proud diadem
Of penciled rays, that gave the name you bear
Unblamed amid the flowers, from year to year.
The tawny lily, flecked with jetty studs,
Pard-like, and dropping through long, pendent buds,
Her purple anthers; nor the poppy, bowed
In languid sleep, enfolding in a cloud
Of drowsy odors her too fervid heart,
Pierced by the day-god’s barbed and burning dart;
Nor the swart sunflower, her dark brows enrolled
With their broad carcanets of living gold,—
A captive princess, following the car
Of her proud conqueror; nor that sweet star,
The evening primrose, pallid with strange dreams
Born of the wan moon’s melancholy beams;
Nor any flower that doth its tendrils twine
Around my memory, hath a charm like thine.
Child of the morning, passionless and fair
As some ethereal creature of the air,
Waiting not for the bright lord of the hours
To weary of thy bloom in sultry bowers;
Nor like the summer rose, that one by one,
Yields her fair, fragrant petals to the sun,
Faint with the envenomed sweetness of his smile,
That doth to lingering death her race beguile;
But, as some spirit of the air doth fade
Into the light from its own essence rayed,
So, Glory of the morning, fair and cold,
Soon in thy circling halo dost thou fold
Thy virgin bloom, and from our vision hide
That form too fair, on earth, unsullied to abide.
EMMA C. EMBURY (1806-1863)
The oldest child of a prominent New York City physician, Emma C. Embury sent in her poems to the New York Mirror under the name “Ianthe.” Embury began publishing under her own name after her marriage in 1828. Her husband, a bank president, was praised for supporting his wife’s writing. Embury was the leader of a literary salon, which included Edgar Allan Poe and Rufus W. Griswold. Embury’s poems were published in Guido, a Tale: Sketches from History and Other Poems, and in periodicals of her time, including Godey’s Lady’s Book, The Knickerbocker Magazine, and The Ladies’ Companion. Embury’s writings—both prose and verse—frequently centered on the themes of love and affection.
The Widow’s Wooer
He woos me with those honeyed words
That women love to hear,
Those gentle flatteries that fall
So sweet on every ear:
He tells me that my face is fair,
Too fair for grief to shade;
My cheek, he says, was never meant
In sorrow’s gloom to fade.
He stands beside me when I sing
The songs of other days,
And whispers, in love’s thrilling tones,
The words of heartfelt praise;
And often in my eyes he looks,
Some answering love to see;
In vain—he there can only read
The faith of memory.
He little knows what thoughts awake
With every gentle word;
How, by his looks and tones, the founts
Of tenderness are stirred:
The visions of my youth return,
Joys far too bright to last,
And while he speaks of future bliss,
I think but of the past.
Like lamps in eastern sepulchres,
Amid my heart’s deep gloom,
Affection sheds its holiest light
Upon my husband’s tomb:
And as those lamps, if brought once more
To upper air grow dim,
So my soul’s love is cold and dead,
Unless it glow for him.
Love Unsought
They tell me that I must not love,
That thou wilt spurn the free
And unbought tenderness that gives
Its hidden wealth to thee.
It may be so: I heed it not,
Nor would I change my blissful lot,
When thus I am allowed to make
My heart a bankrupt for thy sake.
They tell me when the fleeting charm
Of novelty is o’er,
Thou ’It turn away with careless brow
And think of me no more.
It may be so! enough for me
If sunny skies still smile o’er thee,
Or I can trace, when thou art far,
Thy pathway like a distant star.
A Portrait
A gentle maiden, whose large loving eyes
Enshrine a tender, melancholy light,
Like the soft radiance of the starry skies,
Or Autumn sunshine, mellowed when most bright,
She is not sad, yet in her look appears
Somethi
ng that makes the gazer think of tears.
She is not beautiful, her features bear
A loveliness by angel hands impressed,
Such as the pure in heart alone may wear,
The outward symbol of a soul at rest;
And this beseems her well, for Love and Truth
Companion ever with her guileless youth.
She hath a delicate foot, a dainty hand,
And every limb displays unconscious grace,
Like one, who, born a lady in the land,
Taketh no thought how best to fill her place,
But moveth ever at her own sweet will,
While gentleness and pride attend her still.
Nor has she lost, by any sad mischance,
The happy thoughts that to her years belong—
Her step is ever fleetest in the dance,
Her voice is ever gayest in the song;
The silent air by her rich notes is stirred,
As by the music of a forest bird.
There dwelleth in the sinlessness of youth
A sweet rebuke that Vice may not endure;
And thus she makes an atmosphere of truth,
For all things in her presence grow more pure;
She walks in light—her guardian angel flings
A halo round her from his radiant wings.
ELIZABETH OAKES-SMITH (1806-1893)
One of the first American women to lecture on abolition and women’s rights, Oakes-Smith was born in North Yarmouth, Maine. She married a newspaper publisher when she was seventeen and had four sons. In the 1840s, Oakes-Smith edited The Mayflower, an annual published in Boston. She also wrote poems, criticisms, and essays under her own name and under the pen name of Ernest Helfenstein. Some of her published works include: The Sinless Child and Other Poems (1843), and children’s stories such as The True Child and Rosebud (1845). Woman and Her Needs (1851) was originally published as a series in the New York Tribune. At the age of forty-five, Oakes-Smith was a public speaker on women’s rights, and in 1868, she became a charter member of Sorosis, the first women’s club in New York.
Ode to Sappho
Bright, glowing Sappho! child of love and song!
Adown the blueness of long-distant years
Beams forth thy glorious shape, and steals along
Thy melting tones, beguiling us to tears.
Thou priestess of great hearts,
Thrilled with the secret fire
By which a god imparts
The anguish of desire—
For meaner souls be mean content—
Thine was a higher element.
Over Leucadia’s rock thou leanest yet,
With thy wild song, and all thy locks outspread;
The stars are in thine eyes, the moon hath set—
The night dew falls upon thy radiant head;
And thy resounding lyre—
Ah ! not so wildly sway:
Thy soulful lips inspire
And steal our hearts away!
Swanlike and beautiful, thy dirge
Still moans along the Ægean surge.
No unrequited love filled thy lone heart,
But thine infinitude did on thee weigh,
And all the wildness of despair impart,
Stealing the down from Hope’s own wing away.
Couldst thou not suffer on,
Bearing the direful pang,
While thy melodious tone
Through wondering cities rang?
Couldst thou not bear thy godlike grief?
In godlike utterance find relief?
Devotion, fervor, might upon thee wait:
But what were these to thine? all cold and chill,
And left thy burning heart but desolate;
Thy wondrous beauty with despair might fill
The worshipper who bent
Entranced at thy feet:
Too affluent the dower lent
Where song and beauty meet!
Consumed by a Promethean fire
Wert thou, O daughter of the lyre!
Alone, above Leucadia’s wave art thou,
Most beautiful, most gifted, yet alone!
Ah! what to thee the crown from Pindar’s brow?
What the loud plaudit and the garlands thrown
By the enraptured throng,
When thou in matchless grace
Didst move with lyre and song,
And monarchs gave thee place?
What hast thou left, proud one? what token?
Alas! a lyre and heart—both broken!
The Drowned Mariner
A mariner sat on the shrouds one night;
The wind was piping free;
Now bright, now dimmed was the moonlight pale,
And the phosphor gleamed in the wake of the whale,
As he floundered in the sea;
The scud was flying athwart the sky,
The gathering winds went whistling by,
And the wave as it towered, then fell in spray,
Looked an emerald wall in the moonlight ray.
The mariner swayed and rocked on the mast,
But the tumult pleased him well;
Down the yawning wave his eye he cast,
And the monsters watched as they hurried past
Or lightly rose and fell;
For their broad, damp fins were under the tide,
And they lashed as they passed the vessel’s side,
And their filmy eyes, all huge and grim,
Glared fiercely up, and they glared at him.
Now freshens the gale, and the brave ship goes
Like an uncurbed steed along;
A sheet of flame is the spray she throws,
As her gallant prow the water ploughs,
But the ship is fleet and strong:
The topsails are reefed and the sails are furled,
And onward she sweeps o’er the watery world,
And dippeth her spars in the surging flood;
But there came no chill to the mariner’s blood.
Wildly she rocks, but he swingeth at ease,
And holds him by the shroud;
And as she careens to the crowding breeze,
The gaping deep the mariner sees,
And the surging heareth loud.
Was that a face, looking up at him,
With its pallid cheek and its cold eyes dim?
Did it beckon him down? did it call his name?
Now rolleth the ship the way whence it came.
The mariner looked, and he saw with dread
A face he knew too well;
And the cold eyes glared, the eyes of the dead,
And its long hair out on the wave was spread.
Was there a tale to tell?
The stout ship rocked with a reeling speed,
And the mariner groaned, as well he need;
For, ever, down as she plunged on her side,
The dead face gleamed from the briny tide.
Bethink thee, mariner, well, of the past,—
A voice calls loud for thee:—
There’s a stifled prayer, the first, the last;—
The plunging ship on her beam is cast,—
Oh, where shall thy burial be?
Bethink thee of oaths that were lightly spoken,
Bethink thee of vows that were lightly broken,
Bethink thee of all that is dear to thee,
For thou art alone on the raging sea:
Alone in the dark, alone on the wave,
To buffet the storm alone,
To struggle aghast at thy watery grave,
To struggle and feel there is none to save,—
God shield thee, helpless one!
The stout limbs yield, for their strength is past,
The trembling hands on the deep are cast,
The white brow gleams a moment more,
Then slowly sinks—the struggle is o’er.
Down, down where the storm is hushed to sleep,<
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Where the sea its dirge shall swell,
Where the amber drops for thee shall weep,
And the rose-lipped shell her music keep,
There thou shalt slumber well.
The gem and the pearl lie heaped at thy side,
They fell from the neck of the beautiful bride,
From the strong man’s hand, from the maiden’s brow,
As they slowly sunk to the wave below.
A peopled home is the ocean bed;
The mother and child are there;
The fervent youth and the hoary head,
The maid, with her floating locks outspread,
The babe with its silken hair;
As the water moveth they lightly sway,
And the tranquil lights on their features play;
And there is each cherished and beautiful form,
Away from decay, and away from the storm.
LUCRETIA DAVIDSON (1808—1825)
Born in Plattsburg, New York, Lucretia Davidson was a precocious youth who learned the alphabet at the age of three. A sickly child, Davidson’s health began to worsen in 1823. She wrote her longest poem, “Amir Khan,” and a prose storv while visiting relatives in Canada. In 1824, Davidson attended Emma Hart Willard’s seminary in Troy, New York, and then went to a boarding school in Albany. Her life was short; she died one month shy of her seventeenth birthday and her poems and prose were published after her death. Lucretia’s younger sister, Margaret (1823-1838), was only two years old when her sister died. Margaret aspired to follow in Lucretia’s footsteps and wrote poems as well. Mirroring her older sister, Margaret, too, died in her teens, just before her sixteenth birthday.