Great Poems by American Women
Page 6
On the Birth of Her Sister Margaret
Sweet babe, I cannot hope thou wilt be freed
From woes, to all, since earliest time, decreed;
But may’st thou be with resignation blessed,
To bear each evil, howsoe’er distressed.
May Hope her anchor lend amid the storm,
And o’er the tempest rear her angel form!
May sweet Benevolence, whose words are peace,
To the rude whirlwinds softly whisper, “Cease!”
And may Religion, Heaven’s own darling child,
Teach thee at human cares and griefs to smile;
Teach thee to look beyond this world of woe,
To Heaven’s high fount, whence mercies ever flow.
And when this vale of tears is safely passed—
When Death’s dark curtain shuts the scene at last—
May thy freed spirit leave this earthly sod,
And fly to seek the bosom of thy God.
America
And this was once the realm of Nature, where
Wild as the wind, though exquisitely fair,
She breathed the mountain breeze, or bowed to kiss
The dimpling waters with unbounded bliss.
Here in this Paradise of earth, where first
Wild mountain Liberty began to burst,
Once Nature’s temple rose in simple grace,
The hill her throne, the world her dwelling-place.
And where are now her lakes, so still and lone,
Her thousand streams with bending shrubs o‘ergrown?
Where her dark cat’racts tumbling from on high,
With rainbow arch aspiring to the sky?
Her tow’ring pines with fadeless wreaths entwined,
Her waving alders streaming to the wind?
Nor these alone,—her own,—her fav’rite child,
All fire, all feeling; man untaught and wild;
Where can the lost, lone son of Nature stray?
For art’s high car is rolling on its way;
A wand’rer of the world, he flies to drown
The thoughts of days gone by and pleasures flown
In the deep draught, whose dregs are death and woe,
With slavery’s iron chain concealed below.
Once through the tangled wood, with noiseless tread
And throbbing heart, the lurking warrior sped,
Aimed his sure weapon, won the prize, and turned,
While his high heart with wild ambition burned
With song and war-whoop to his native tree,
There on its bark to carve the victory.
His all of learning did that act comprise,
But still in nature’s volume doubly wise.
The wayward stream which once, with idle bound,
Whirled on resistless in its foaming round,
Now curbed by art flows on, a wat’ry chain
Linking the snow-capped mountains to the main.
Where once the alder in luxuriance grew,
Or the tall pine its towering branches threw
Abroad to heaven, with dark and haughty brow,
There mark the realms of plenty smiling now;
There the full sheaf of Ceres richly glows,
And Plenty’s fountain blesses as it flows;
And man, a brute when left to wander wild,
A reckless creature, Nature’s lawless child,
What boundless streams of knowledge rolling now
From the full hand of art around him flow!
Improvement strides the surge, while from afar
Learning rolls onward in her silver car;
Freedom unfurls her banner o’er his head,
While peace sleeps sweetly on her native bed.
The Muse arises from the wild-wood glen,
And chants her sweet and hallowed song again,
As in those halcyon days, which bards have sung,
When hope was blushing, and when life was young.
Thus shall she rise, and thus her sons shall rear
Her sacred temple here, and only here,
While Percival, her loved and chosen priest,
Forever blessing, though himself unblest,
Shall fan the fire that blazes at her shrine,
And charm the ear with numbers half divine.
MARGARET FULLER (1810-1850)
Tutored by her father in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, Margaret Fuller was fluent in four foreign languages. Through her friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson, she became editor of The Dial, a Transcendentalist magazine, and began to give public speeches in Boston on furthering women’s education. At Horace Greeley’s invitation, Fuller worked as a literary critic for the New York Tribune, and in 1845 she published the classic work Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Fuller spent some time in Europe, becoming the first American woman to work as a foreign correspondent. She married an Italian nobleman in 1849 and, when she was returning to the U.S. in 1850, Fuller, her husband, and their child died in a shipwreck off Fire Island, New York.
Flaxman
We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone,
Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought,
And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought
Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone,—
A higher charm than modern culture won
With all the wealth of metaphysic lore,
Gifted to analyze, dissect, explore.
A many-colored light flows from one sun;
Art, ’neath its beams, a motley thread has spun;
The prism modifies the perfect day;
But thou hast known such mediums to shun,
And cast once more on life a pure, white ray.
Absorbed in the creations of thy mind,
Forgetting daily self, my truest self I find.
Instrumental Music
The charms of melody, in simple airs,
By human voices sung, are always felt;
With thoughts responsive careless hearers melt,
Of secret ills, which our frail nature bears.
We listen, weep, forget. But when the throng
Of a great master’s thoughts, above the reach
Of words or colors, wire and wood can teach
By laws which to the spirit-world belong—
When several parts, to tell one mood combined,
Flash meaning on us we can ne’er express.
Giving to matter subtlest powers of mind,
Superior joys attentive souls confess:
The harmony which suns and stars obey,
Blesses our earth-bound state with visions of supernal day.
ELIZABETH CLEMENTINE KINNEY ( 1810-1889)
Poet and essayist Elizabeth Clementine Kinney was born in New York City. Her poems appeared in Knickerbocker Magazine, Graham’s Magazine, and others. She is the mother of poet and critic Edmund Clarence Stedman, and wrote Felicita (1855), a verse romance, and Poems (1867). She lived in New Jersey for a time and then moved to Europe, where she remained for fourteen years. Kinney was a close friend of the Brownings, and was considered a leader in both American and English literary circles.
A Dream
’Twas summer, and the spot a cool retreat—
Where curious eyes came not, nor footstep rude
Disturbed the lovers’ chosen solitude:
Beneath an oak there was a mossy seat,
Where we reclined, while birds above us wooed
Their mates in songs voluptuously sweet.
A limpid brook went murmuring by our feet,
And all conspired to urge the tender mood.
Methought I touched the streamlet with a flower,
When from its bosom sprang a fountain clear,
Falling again in the translucent shower
Which made more green each blade of grass appear:
“This stream’s thy heart,” I said; “Love’s touch alone
Can change it to the fount
which maketh green my own.”
FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD (1811-1850)
As a child in Hingham, Massachusetts, Frances Sargent Osgood submitted poems to Lydia Maria Child’s Juvenile Miscellany. Osgood married in 1835 and gave birth to her first daughter, Ellen, whom she often included in her sentimental poems. Osgood and her husband lived in London in the late 1830s, and she published two books of poetry there. She wrote and edited six books in the 1840s, including The Poetry of Flowers and Flowers of Poetry (1841) and Poems (1846). Osgood also attended meetings at New York’s literary salons, and was soon acquainted with Edgar Allan Poe, who published her poems regularly in the Broadway Journal. After her third daughter died in infancy, Osgood became ill and died of tuberculosis in 1850.
Ellen Learning to Walk
My beautiful trembler! how wildly she shrinks!
And how wistful she looks while she lingers!
Papa is extremely uncivil, she thinks,—
She but pleaded for one of his fingers!
What eloquent pleading! the hand reaching out,
As if doubting so strange a refusal;
While her blue eyes say plainly, “What is he about
That he does not assist me as usual?”
Come on, my pet Ellen! we won’t let you slip,—
Unclasp those soft arms from his knee, love;
I see a faint smile round that exquisite lip,
A smile half reproach and half glee, love.
So! that’s my brave baby! one foot falters forward,
Half doubtful the other steals by it!
What, shrinking again! why, you shy little coward!
’Twon’t kill you to walk a bit!—try it!
There! steady, my darling! huzza! I have caught her!
I clasp her, caress’d and caressing!
And she hides her bright face, as if what we had taught her
Were something to blush for—the blessing!
Now back again! Bravo! that shout of delight,
How it thrills to the hearts that adore her!
Joy, joy for her mother! and blest be the night
When her little light feet first upbore her!
A Dancing Girl
She comes—the spirit of the dance!
And but for those large, eloquent eyes,
Where passion speaks in every glance,
She’d seem a wanderer from the skies.
So light that, gazing breathless there,
Lest the celestial dream should go,
You’d think the music in the air
Waved the fair vision to and fro!
Or that the melody’s sweet flow
Within the radiant creature played,
And those soft wreathing arms of snow
And white sylph feet the music made.
Now gliding slow with dreamy grace,
Her eyes beneath their lashes lost,
Now motionless, with lifted face,
And small hands on her bosom crossed.
And now with flashing eyes she springs,—
Her whole bright figure raised in air,
As if her soul had spread its wings
And poised her one wild instant there!
She spoke not; but, so richly fraught
With language are her glance and smile,
That, when the curtain fell, I thought
She had been talking all the while.
Ah! Woman Still
Ah! woman still
Must veil the shrine,
Where feeling feeds the fire divine,
Nor sing at will,
Untaught by art,
The music prison’d in her heart!
Still gay the note,
And light the lay,
The woodbird warbles on the spray,
Afar to float;
But homeward flown,
Within his nest, how changed the tone!
Oh! none can know,
Who have not heard
The music-soul that thrills the bird,
The carol low
As coo of dove
He warbles to his woodland-love!
The world would say
’Twas vain and wild,
The impassion’d lay of Nature’s child;
And Feeling so
Should veil the shrine
Where softly glow her fires divine!
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (1811—1896)
Daughter of clergyman Lyman Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe soared to fame with her antislavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), which sold 300,000 copies in its first year. It was originally published in the National Era as a serialized story in 1851—2. Born in Connecticut, Stowe became a teacher in the seminary founded by her sister, Catherine Beecher. After marrying a professor in 1836, she contributed stories, articles, and poems to periodicals to augment their small income. Stowe’s home was directly involved in the Underground Railroad, and her powerful Civil War book intensified the abolitionists’ struggle. In 1853, Stowe published A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which contained authentic evidence on the evils of slavery. She also published Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (1854) and another antislavery book, Dred: A Tale of the Creat Dismal Swamp (1856).
The Other World
It lies around us like a cloud,
The world we do not see;
Yet the sweet closing of an eye
May bring us there to be.
Its gentle breezes fan our cheeks
Amid our worldly cares;
Its gentle voices whisper love,
And mingle with our prayers.
Sweet hearts around us throb and beat,
Sweet helping hands are stirred,
And palpitates the veil between,
With breathings almost heard.
The silence, awful, sweet, and calm,
They have no power to break;
For mortal words are not for them
To utter or partake.
So thin, so soft, so sweet they glide,
So near to press they seem,
They lull us gently to our rest,
They melt into our dream.
And, in the hush of rest they bring,
’T is easy now to see
How lovely and how sweet a pass
The hour of death may be;—
To close the eye and close the ear,
Wrapped in a trance of bliss,
And, gently drawn in loving arms,
To swoon from that to this:—
Scarce knowing if we wake or sleep,
Scarce asking where we are,
To feel all evil sink away,
All sorrow and all care!
Sweet souls around us! watch us still,
Press nearer to our side;
Into our thoughts, into our prayers,
With gentle helping glide.
Let death between us be as naught,
A dried and vanished stream;
Your joy be the reality,
Our suffering life the dream.
MARY E. HEWITT (1818?—1894)
One of the more obscure women poets, Mary E. Hewitt (Stebbins) was born in Malden, Massachusetts. Popular in her time, Hewitt’s poetry has been overlooked in anthologies of nineteenth-century poets. Hewitt moved to New York with her first husband, James L. Hewitt, a music publisher. Her verses first appeared in Knickerbocker Magazine under the pseudonyms “lone” and “Jane.” In the 1840s and 1850s, Hewitt was at the apex of her fame, publishing her dramatic poetry in various periodicals and in books such as The Songs of Our Land, and Other Poems (1845), reissued in 1853 as Poems: Sacred, Passionate, and Legendary. She also published a biography of Frances Sargent Osgood in 1850 and Heroines of History (1856), a series of prose sketches.
Imitation of Sappho
If to repeat thy name when none may hear me,
To find thy thought with all my thoughts inwove;
To languish where thou’rt not—to sigh when near thee:
Oh, if this be to love
thee, I do love!
If when thou utterest low words of greeting,
To feel through every vein the torrent pour;
Then back again the hot tide swift retreating,
Leave me all powerless, silent as before:
If to list breathless to thine accents falling,
Almost to pain, upon my eager ear—
And fondly when alone to be recalling
The words that I would die again to hear:
If ’neath thy glance my heart all strength forsaking,
Pant in my breast as pants the frighted dove;
If to think on thee ever, sleeping—waking—
Oh! if this be to love thee, I do love!
Harold the Valiant
I mid the hills was born,
Where the skilled bowmen
Send with unerring shaft
Death to the foemen.
But I love to steer my bark—
To fear a stranger—
Over the Maelstrom’s edge,
Daring the danger;
And where the mariner
Paleth affrighted,
Over the sunken rocks
I dash on delighted.
The far waters know my keel,