And men, whose sole crime was their hue,
The impress of their Maker’s hand,
And frail and shrinking children too,
Were gathered in that mournful band.
Ye who have laid your lov’d to rest,
And wept above their lifeless clay,
Know not the anguish of that breast,
Whose lov’d are rudely torn away.
Ye may not know how desolate
Are bosoms rudely forced to part,
And how a dull and heavy weight
Will press the life-drops from the heart.
A Double Standard
Do you blame me that I loved him?
If when standing all alone
I cried for bread, a careless world
Pressed to my lips a stone?
Do you blame me that I loved him,
That my heart beat glad and free,
When he told me in the sweetest tones
He loved but only me?
Can you blame me that I did not see,
Beneath his burning kiss,
The serpent’s wiles, nor even less hear
The deadly adder hiss?
Can you blame me that my heart grew cold,
That the tempted, tempter turned—
When he was feted and caressed
And I was coldly spurned?
Would you blame him, when you drew from me
Your dainty robes aside,
If he with gilded baits should claim
Your fairest as his bride?
Would you blame the world if it should press
On him a civic crown;
And see me struggling in the depth,
Then harshly press me down?
Crime has no sex and yet today
I wear the brand of shame;
Whilst he amid the gay and proud
Still bears an honored name.
Can you blame me if I’ve learned to think
Your hate of vice a sham,
When you so coldly crushed me down,
And then excused the man?
Yes, blame me for my downward course,
But oh! remember well,
Within your homes you press the hand
That led me down to hell!
I’m glad God’s ways are not your ways,
He does not see as man;
Within his love I know there’s room
For those whom others ban.
I think before His great white throne,
His theme of spotless light,
That whited sepulchres shall wear
The hue of endless night.
That I who fell, and he who sinned,
Shall reap as we have sown;
That each the burden of his loss
Must bear and bear alone.
No golden weights can turn the scale
Of justice in His sight;
And what is wrong in woman’s life
In man’s cannot be right.
She’s Free!
How say that by law we may torture and chase
A woman whose crime is the hue of her face?—
With her step on the ice, and her arm on her child,
The danger was fearful, the pathway was wild....
But she’s free! yes, free from the land where the slave,
From the hand of oppression, must rest in the grave;
Where bondage and blood, where scourges and chains,
Have placed on our banner indelible stains....
The bloodhounds have miss’d the scent of her way,
The hunter is rifled and foiled of his prey,
The cursing of men and clanking of chains
Make sounds of strange discord on Liberty’s plains....
Oh! poverty, danger and death she can brave,
For the child of her love is no longer a slave.
ETHEL LYNN BEERS (1827—1879)
The famous Civil War poem “All quiet along the Potomac,” originally published as “The Picket Guard” in 1861, was first printed in Harper’s Magazine. Born in Goshen, New York, Ethelinda Eliot began to submit her poems to periodicals under the name Ethel Lynn (adding “Beers” after her marriage in 1846). She often contributed to the New York Ledger, and in 1863 published General Frankie: a Story for Little Folks. Beers was reluctant to publish her collected poems, sensing that her death would coincide with its publication. Her eerie prediction came true; Beers died on October 11—the day after All Quiet Along the Potomac and Other Poems was published in 1879.
“All quiet along the Potomac”
“All quiet along the Potomac,” they say,
“Except now and then a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his beat to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
’T is nothing: a private or two, now and then,
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost—only one of the men,
Moaning out, all alone, the death rattle.”
All quiet along the Potomac tonight,
Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming;
Their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon,
Or the light of the watch-fire, are gleaming.
A tremulous sigh of the gentle night-wind
Through the forest leaves softly is creeping,
While the stars up above, with their glittering eyes,
Keep guard, for the army is sleeping.
There’s only the sound of the lone sentry’s tread
As he tramps from the rock to the fountain,
And thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed
Far away in the cot on the mountain.
His musket falls slack; his face, dark and grim,
Grows gentle with memories tender,
As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep—
For their mother—may Heaven defend her!
The moon seems to shine just as brightly as then,
That night, when the love yet unspoken
Leaped up to his lips—when low-murmured vows
Were pledged to be ever unbroken.
Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes,
He dashes off tears that are welling,
And gathers his gun closer up to its place
As if to keep down the heart-swelling.
He passes the fountain, the blasted pine-tree;
The footstep is lagging and weary;
Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light,
Towards the shade of the forest so dreary.
Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves?
Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing?
It looked like a rifle . . . “Ha! Mary, good by!”
The red life-blood is ebbing and plashing.
All quiet along the Potomac tonight—
No sound save the rush of the river,
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead—
The picket’s off duty forever!
ROSE TERRY COOKE (1827—1892)
Rose Terry Cooke, born in Connecticut, attended the Hartford Female Seminary and was graduated at sixteen. Cooke was a teacher and governess in New Jersey before concentrating fully on her writing. Her first story was published in Graham’s Magazine in 1845. At the height of her popularity, Cooke contributed a leading story for the first issue of the Atlantic Monthly at the request of James Russell Lowell. Cooke supported herself financially for most of her life, and married for the first time at the age of forty-six. When her husband had financial troubles, Cooke supported him and her stepchildren by selling her stories to magazines.
Bluebeard’s Closet
Fasten the chamber!
Hide the red key;
Cover the portal,
That eyes may not see.
Get thee to market,
To wedding and prayer;
Labor or revel,
The chamber is there!
In comes
a stranger—
“Thy pictures how fine,
Titian or Guido,
Whose is the sign?”
Looks he behind them?
Ah! have a care!
“Here is a finer.”
The chamber is there!
Fair spreads the banquet,
Rich the array;
See the bright torches
Mimicking day;
When harp and viol
Thrill the soft air,
Comes a light whisper:
The chamber is there!
Marble and painting,
Jasper and gold,
Purple from Tyrus,
Fold upon fold,
Blossoms and jewels,
Thy palace prepare:
Pale grows the monarch;
The chamber is there!
Once it was open
As shore to the sea;
White were the turrets,
Goodly to see;
All through the casements
Flowed the sweet air;
Now it is darkness;
The chamber is there!
Silence and horror
Brood on the walls;
Through every crevice
A little voice calls:
“Quicken, mad footsteps,
On pavement and stair;
Look not behind thee,
The chamber is there!”
Out of the gateway,
Through the wide world,
Into the tempest
Beaten and hurled,
Vain is thy wandering,
Sure thy despair,
Flying or staying,
The chamber is there!
Segovia and Madrid
It sings to me in sunshine,
It whispers all day long,
My heartache like an echo
Repeats the wistful song:
Only a quaint old love-lilt,
Wherein my life is hid,—
“My body is in Segovia,
But my soul is in Madrid!”
I dream, and wake, and wonder,
For dream and day are one,
Alight with vanished faces,
And days forever done.
They smile and shine around me
As long ago they did;
For my body is in Segovia,
But my soul is in Madrid!
Through inland hills and forests
I hear the ocean breeze,
The creak of straining cordage,
The rush of mighty seas,
The lift of angry billows
Through which a swift keel slid;
For my body is in Segovia,
But my soul is in Madrid.
O fair-haired little darlings
Who bore my heart away!
A wide and woful ocean
Between us roars to-day;
Yet am I close beside you
Though time and space forbid;
My body is in Segovia,
But my soul is in Madrid.
If I were once in heaven,
There would be no more sea;
My heart would cease to wander,
My sorrows cease to be;
My sad eyes sleep forever,
In dust and daisies hid,
And my body leave Segovia.
—Would my soul forget Madrid?
HELEN HUNT JACKSON (1830—1885)
Close friends with Emily Dickinson in Amherst, Massachusetts, Helen Hunt Jackson was the daughter of a classics professor. After the death of her husband and her two young sons, the grief-stricken Jackson turned to writing. Using the pseudonyms “Saxe Holm” and “H. H.,” she contributed poems to the New York Evening Post, the Nation, and a few others. Her books of poetry were published in the 1870s, and during this time, Jackson remarried and moved to Colorado. While there, she sympathized with the plight of the Indians, and wrote A Century of Dishonor (1881) and Ramona (1884), both of which described the cruel treatment of Native Americans. In 1882, Jackson was appointed by the U.S. government to investigate the condition of the Mission Indians of California.
My Lighthouses
At westward window of a palace gray,
Which its own secret still so safely keeps
That no man now its builder’s name can say,
I lie and idly sun myself to-day,
Dreaming awake far more than one who sleeps,
Serenely glad, although my gladness weeps.
I look across the harbor’s misty blue,
And find and lose that magic shifting line
Where sky one shade less blue meets sea, and through
The air I catch one flush as if it knew
Some secret of that meeting, which no sign
Can show to eyes so far and dim as mine.
More ships than I can count build mast by mast
Gay lattice-work with waving green and red
Across my window-panes. The voyage past,
They crowd to anchorage so glad, so fast,
Gliding like ghosts, with noiseless breath and tread,
Mooring like ghosts, with noiseless iron and lead.
“O ships and patient men who fare by sea,”
I stretch my hands and vainly questioning cry,
“Sailed ye from west? How many nights could ye
Tell by the lights just where my dear and free
And lovely land lay sleeping? Passed ye by
Some danger safe, because her fires were nigh?”
Ah me! my selfish yearning thoughts forget
How darkness but a hand’s-breadth from the coast
With danger in an evil league is set!
Ah! helpless ships and men more helpless yet,
Who trust the land-lights’ short and empty boast;
The lights ye bear aloft and prayers avail ye most.
But I—ah, patient men who fare by sea,
Ye would but smile to hear this empty speech,—
I have such beacon-lights to burn for me,
In that dear west so lovely, new, and free,
That evil league by day, by night, can teach
No spell whose harm my little bark can reach.
No towers of stone uphold those beacon-lights;
No distance hides them, and no storm can shake;
In valleys they light up the darkest nights,
They outshine sunny days on sunny heights;
They blaze from every house where sleep or wake
My own who love me for my own poor sake.
Each thought they think of me lights road of flame
Across the seas; no travel on it tires
My heart. I go if they but speak my name;
From Heaven I should come and go the same,
And find this glow forestalling my desires.
My darlings, do you hear me? Trim the fires!
Poppies on the Wheat
Along Ancona’s hills the shimmering heat,
A tropic tide of air with ebb and flow
Bathes all the fields of wheat until they glow
Like flashing seas of green, which toss and beat
Around the vines. The poppies lithe and fleet
Seem running, fiery torchmen, to and fro
To mark the shore.
The farmer does not know
That they are there. He walks with heavy feet,
Counting the bread and wine by autumn’s gain,
But I,—I smile to think that days remain
Perhaps to me in which, though bread be sweet
No more, and red wine warm my blood in vain,
I shall be glad remembering how the fleet,
Lithe poppies ran like torchmen with the wheat.
EMILY DICKINSON (1830—1886)
Emily Dickinson, one of the most famous American poets of all time, was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, and educated at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Dickinson led a reclusive life, writing her poetry on tiny scraps of paper that she never intended to
have published. One of her poems was published anonymously by fellow poet Helen Hunt Jackson, a lifelong friend. Dickinson never married, and hardly ever left her home. Her sister, Lavinia, Mabel Loomis Todd, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson published Poems by Emily Dickinson (1890) after her death. This was followed by Poems: Second Series (1891) and Poems: Third Series (1896). Dickinson left a poetic legacy of over 1,700 lyrical poems that remain popular today.
“Success is counted sweetest”
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,
As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear.
“Wild nights! Wild nights!”
Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port,—
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.
Great Poems by American Women Page 9