His prayer was granted. The vast world was chained
A captive to the chariot of his pride.
The blood of myriad provinces was drained
To feed that fierce, insatiable red heart.
Invulnerably bulwarked every part
With serried legions and with close-meshed code,
Within, the burrowing worm had gnawed its home,
A roofless ruin stands where once abode
The imperial race of everlasting Rome.
“O Godhead, give me Truth!” the Hebrew cried.
His prayer was granted; he became the slave
Of the Idea, a pilgrim far and wide,
Cursed, hated, spurned, and scourged with none to save.
The Pharaohs knew him, and when Greece beheld,
His wisdom wore the hoary crown of Eld.
Beauty he hath forsworn, and wealth and power.
Seek him to-day, and find in every land.
No fire consumes him, neither floods devour;
Immortal through the lamp within his hand.
The New Ezekiel
What, can these dead bones live, whose sap is dried
By twenty scorching centuries of wrong?
Is this the House of Israel, whose pride
Is as a tale that’s told, an ancient song?
Are these ignoble relics all that live
Of psalmist, priest, and prophet? Can the breath
Of very heaven bid these bones revive,
Open the graves and clothe the ribs of death?
Yea, Prophesy, the Lord hath said. Again
Say to the wind, Come forth and breathe afresh,
Even that they may live upon these slain,
And bone to bone shall leap, and flesh to flesh.
The Spirit is not dead, proclaim the word,
Where lay dead bones, a host of armed men stand!
I ope your graves, my people, saith the Lord,
And I shall place you living in your land.
SARAH ORNE JEWETT (1849—1909)
Born in South Berwick, Maine, Sarah Orne Jewett was the second daughter of a highly respected physician. Accompanying her father on house calls, Jewett learned about her home state and its people. This served as a background for Jewett’s later short stories. She contributed local-color stories to the Atlantic Monthly, and published many books over the next twenty-five years: Deephaven (1877), A Country Doctor (1884), A White Heron and Other Stories (1886), and The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896). Jewett was a prominent figure in the literary community, and was friends with other authors such as James Russell Lowell, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Willa Cather. She died of a stroke at her family home in Maine in 1909.
A Caged Bird
High at the window in her cage
The old canary flits and sings,
Nor sees across the curtain pass
The shadow of a swallow’s wings.
A poor deceit and copy, this,
Of larger lives that mark their span,
Unreckoning of wider worlds
Or gifts that Heaven keeps for man.
She gathers piteous bits and shreds,
This solitary, mateless thing,
To patient build again the nest
So rudely scattered spring by spring;
And sings her brief, unlistened songs,
Her dreams of bird life wild and free,
Yet never beats her prison bars
At sound of song from bush or tree.
But in my busiest hours I pause,
Held by a sense of urgent speech,
Bewildered by that spark-like soul,
Able my very soul to reach.
She will be heard; she chirps me loud,
When I forget those gravest cares,
Her small provision to supply,
Clear water or her seedsman’s wares.
She begs me now for that chief joy
The round great world is made to grow,—
Her wisp of greenness. Hear her chide,
Because my answering thought is slow!
What can my life seem like to her?
A dull, unpunctual service mine;
Stupid before her eager call,
Her flitting steps, her insight fine.
To open wide thy prison door,
Poor friend, would give thee to thy foes;
And yet a plaintive note I hear,
As if to tell how slowly goes
The time of thy long prisoning.
Bird! does some promise keep thee sane?
Will there be better days for thee?
Will thy soul too know life again?
Ah, none of us have more than this:
If one true friend green leaves can reach
From out some fairer, wider place,
And understand our wistful speech!
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX (1850—1919)
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, born in Johnstown Center, Wisconsin, was educated at local public schools and attended the University of Wisconsin. At fourteen, Wilcox contributed to her family’s income by publishing some sketches in the New York Mercury. Wilcox’s first book, Drops of Water, was published in 1872. Shells (1873) and Maurine (1876) followed, but it was the publication of Poems of Passion (1883) that caused an uproar. This book of love poems was rejected by one publisher for being too racy and “immoral.” Sales skyrocketed, and Wilcox continued to publish her poetry in such books as Men, Women, and Emotions (1893), Poems of Pleasure (1888), and Poems of Power (1901). She married in 1884, and wrote fiction stories and two autobiographies. Of her more than forty books, Wilcox is best remembered for her poem “Solitude.”
Solitude
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
Individuality
O yes, I love you, and with all my heart;
Just as a weaker woman loves her own,
Better than I love my beloved art,
Which, till you came, reigned royally, alone,
My king, my master. Since I saw your face
I have dethroned it, and you hold that place.
I am as weak as other women are—
Your frown can make the whole world like a tomb.
Your smile shines brighter than the sun, by far;
Sometimes I think there is not space or room
In all the earth for such a love as mine,
And it soars up to breathe in realms divine
I know that your desertion or neglect
Could break my heart, as women’s hearts do break,
If my wan days had nothing to expect
From your love’s splendor, all joy would forsake
The chambers of my soul. Yes, this is true.
And yet, and yet—one thing I keep from you.
There is a subtle part of me, which went
Into my long pursued and worshiped art;
&n
bsp; Though your great love fills me with such content
No other love finds room now, in my heart.
Yet that rare essence was my art’s alone.
Thank God you cannot grasp it; ’tis mine own.
Thank God, I say, for while I love you so,
With that vast love, as passionate as tender,
I feel an exultation as I know
I have not made you a complete surrender.
Here is my body; bruise it, if you will,
And break my heart; I have that something still.
You cannot grasp it. Seize the breath of morn,
Or bind the perfume of the rose as well.
God put it in my soul when I was born;
It is not mine to give away, or sell,
Or offer up on any altar shrine.
It was my art’s; and when not art’s, ’tis mine.
For love’s sake, I can put the art away,
Or anything which stands ’twixt me and you.
But that strange essence God bestowed, I say,
To permeate the work He gave to do:
And it cannot be drained, dissolved, or sent
Through any channel, save the one He meant.
Friendship After Love
After the fierce midsummer all ablaze
Has burned itself to ashes, and expires
In the intensity of its own fires,
There come the mellow, mild, St. Martin days
Crowned with the calm of peace, but sad with haze.
So after Love has led us, till he tires
Of his own throes, and torments, and desires,
Comes large-eyed friendship: with a restful gaze,
He beckons us to follow, and across
Cool verdant vales we wander free from care.
Is it a touch of frost lies in the air?
Why are we haunted with a sense of loss?
We do not wish the pain back, or the heat;
And yet, and yet, these days are incomplete.
Delilah
In the midnight of darkness and terror,
When I would grope nearer to God,
With my back to a record of error
And the highway of sin I have trod,
There come to me shapes I would banish—
The shapes of the deeds I have done;
And I pray and I plead till they vanish—
All vanish and leave me, save one.
That one, with a smile like the splendor
Of the sun in the middle-day skies—
That one, with a spell that is tender—
That one with a dream in her eyes—
Cometh close, in her rare Southern beauty,
Her languor, her indolent grace;
And my soul turns its back on its duty,
To live in the light of her face.
She touches my cheek, and I quiver—
I tremble with exquisite pains;
She sighs—like an overcharged river
My blood rushes on through my veins;
She smiles—and in mad-tiger fashion,
As a she-tiger fondles her own,
I clasp her with fierceness and passion,
And kiss her with shudder and groan.
Once more, in our love’s sweet beginning,
I put away God and the World;
Once more, in the joys of our sinnings,
Are the hopes of eternity hurled.
There is nothing my soul lacks or misses
As I clasp the dream-shape to my breast;
In the passion and pain of her kisses
Life blooms to its richest and best.
O ghost of dead sin unrelenting,
Go back to the dust, and the sod!
Too dear and too sweet for repenting,
Ye stand between me and my God.
If I, by the Throne, should behold you,
Smiling up with those eyes loved so well,
Close, close in my arms I would fold you,
And drop with you down to sweet Hell!
ROSE HARTWICK THORPE (1850-1939)
Rose Hartwick Thorpe was born in Indiana and grew up in Kansas and Michigan, where she attended public school. Her most famous ballad, “Curfew Must Not Ring To-Night,” was written when Thorpe was a teenager, and was first published in the Commercial Advertiser in Detroit in 1870. Based on a short story from Peterson’s Magazine, the narrative poem was immensely popular, and an illustrated edition appeared in 1882. Thorpe married in 1871, and continued submitting poetry to periodicals while raising her two daughters. After her husband’s death, she worked for women’s suffrage and was a member of the Women’s Club of San Diego. In addition to her verse, published in Temperance Poems (1887), Ringing Ballads (1887), and The Poetical Works of Rose Hartwick Thorpe (1912), Thorpe also wrote a number of books for children.
Curfew Must Not Ring To-Night
England’s sun was slowly setting o’er the hill-tops far away,
Filling all the land with beauty at the close of one sad day;
And its last rays kissed the forehead of a man and maiden fair,—
He with steps so slow and weary, she with sunny, floating hair:
He with bowed head, sad and thoughtful; she with lips so cold and white,
Struggled to keep back the murmur, “Curfew must not ring to-night!”
“Sexton,” Bessie’s white lips faltered, pointing to the prison old,
With its walls so tall and gloomy,—moss-grown walls dark, damp, and cold,—
“I’ve a lover in that prison, doomed this very night to die
At the ringing of the curfew, and no earthly help is nigh.
Cromwell will not come till sunset”; and her lips grew strangely white
As she spoke in husky whispers, “Curfew must not ring to-night!”
“Bessie,” calmly spoke the sexton (every word pierced her young heart
Like a gleaming death-winged arrow, like a deadly poisoned dart),
“Long, long years I’ve rung the curfew from that gloomy, shadowed tower;
Every evening, just at sunset, it has tolled the twilight hour.
I have done my duty ever, tried to do it just and right;
Now I’m old I will not miss it: Curfew bell must ring to-night!”
Wild her eyes and pale her features, stern and white her thoughtful brow,
And within her heart’s deep centre Bessie made a solemn vow.
She had listened while the judges read, without a tear or sigh,
“At the ringing of the curfew Basil Underwood must die.”
And her breath came fast and faster, and her eyes grew large and bright;
One low murmur, faintly spoken, “Curfew must not ring to-night!”
She with quick step bounded forward, sprang within the old church door,
Left the old man coming, slowly, paths he’d trod so oft before.
Not one moment paused the maiden, but, with cheek and brow aglow,
Staggered up the gloomy tower where the bell swung to and fro;
As she climbed the slimy ladder, on which fell no ray of light,
Upward still, her pale lips saying, “Curfew shall not ring to-night!”
She has reached the topmost ladder; o’er her hangs the great, dark bell;
Awful is the gloom beneath her, like the pathway down to hell.
See, the ponderous tongue is swinging! ’t is the hour of curfew now!
And the sight has chilled her bosom, stopped her breath and paled her brow.
Shall she let it ring? No, never! Her eyes flash with sudden light,
As she springs and grasps it firmly: “Curfew shall not ring to-night!”
Out she swung, far out; the city seemed a speck of light below,
There ’twixt heaven and earth suspended, as the bell swung to and fro.
And the sexton at the bell-rope, old and deaf, heard not the bell;
Sadly thought that twilight curfew rang young Basil’s funeral kn
ell.
Still the maiden, clinging firmly, quivering lip and fair face white,
Stilled her frightened heart’s wild beating: “Curfew shall not ring tonight!”
It was o’er!—the bell ceased swaying, and the maiden stepped once more
Firmly on the damp old ladder, where, for hundred years before,
Human foot had not been planted. The brave deed that she had done
Should be told long ages after. As the rays of setting sun
Light the sky with golden beauty, aged sires, with heads of white,
Tell the children why the curfew did not ring that one sad night.
O’er the distant hills comes Cromwell. Bessie sees him, and her brow,
Lately white with sickening horror, has no anxious traces now.
At his feet she tells her story, shows her hands, all bruised and torn;
And her sweet young face, still haggard with the anguish it had worn,
Touched his heart with sudden pity, lit his eyes with misty light.
“Go! your lover lives,” cried Cromwell. “Curfew shall not ring tonight!”
Wide they flung the massive portals, led the prisoner forth to die,
All his bright young life before him, ’neath the darkening English sky.
Bessie came, with flying footsteps, eyes aglow with lovelight sweet,
Kneeling on the turf beside him, laid his pardon at his feet.
In his brave, strong arms he clasped her, kissed the face upturned and white,
Whispered, “Darling, you have saved me! curfew will not ring tonight.”
ROSE HAWTHORNE LATHROP (1851-1926)
The youngest child of author Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop was born in Lenox, Massachusetts, and lived in England, Portugal, and Italy before marrying in 1871. Between 1875 and 1892, Lathrop published fiction for children as well as poetry on the themes of relationships, death, and grief. After converting to Roman Catholicism, she began writing about issues of social justice. In 1896, Lathrop founded an order of nuns to help care for indigents dying of cancer. From then on, Lathrop was known as Mother Mary Alphonsa.
Great Poems by American Women Page 14