OFT have I walked these woodland SWEET winter roses, stainless as the paths, To-day the south-wind sweeps away O prophet-flowers! bloom, A cross of lilies that our tears bedew, A garland of the fairest flowers that grow, And filled with fragrance as the thought of thee, We lay, with loving hand, upon thy breast, Wrapt in the calm of Death's great mystery; with lips of Ours still to feel the pain, the unlanguaged woe, Outvying in your beauty The bitter sense of loss, the vague Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood. Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse, HESTER. WHEN maidens such as Hester die, Their place ye may not well supply,` Though ye among a thousand try, With vain endeavor. A month or more has she been dead, A springy motion in her gait, I know not by what name beside She did inherit. Her parents held the Quaker rule, Which doth the human feelings cool; But she was trained in nature's school, Nature had blessed her. A waking eye, a prying mind, Ye could not Hester. My sprightly neighbor, gone before Seeking to find the old familiar To that unknown and silent shore! The poet, when his lyre hangs on the palm; The statesman, when the crowd proclaim his voice, And mould opinion' on his gifted tongue: They count not life's first steps, and never think Upon the many miserable hours When hope deferred was sickness to the heart. They reckon not the battle and the march, The long privations of a wasted youth; They never see the banner till unfurled. What are to them the solitary nights Passed pale and anxiously by the sickly lamp, Till the young poet wins the world at last To listen to the music long his own? The crowd attend the statesman's fiery mind That makes their destiny; but they do not trace Its struggle, or its long expectancy. Hard are life's early steps; and, but that youth Is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope, Men would behold its threshold, and despair. |